Comdex 98

Rick Moen

Foreword

This year has been most interesting because by doing the whole comdex show, like the previous years, it wasn't difficult to notice that it was noticably smaller this year (Unlike last year when the Hilton had a couple of showrooms and there were a couple of huge tents which contained even more exhibits that just wouldn't fit anywhere else, those places were empty this year).
I was told that many companies went on a comdex diet this year, by not even showing up, or by having much smaller/less impressive booths (it seems that with the Asian stock crisis, companies have had to watch their expenses in order to salvage their stock).
The good news however, is that this didn't apply to the Linux pavilion which was there as always, and this year it was even easy to find as there were several signs like this one:

Linux and Comdex history

In 1994, Bob Young, then of ACC Bookstores, Michael Johnston, Patrick Volkerding and Mark Bolzern of WGS (WorkGroup Solutions)shared a Comdex booth. It was there that Mark came up with the "Linux Pavilion at Comdex" concept. It was first implemented at the following Uniforum95, where Linux Journal, and Infomagic joined in.

Mark then convinced Comdex show management to let him put together the first Comdex Linux Pavilion in Fall/1995 with 3 vendors, WGS, Microway, and also the booth for Linux International which Linux Journal helped to staff, and Mark paid expenses for. At this Comdex, WGS received a "Best of Comdex" Byte Magazine Editor's choice award for Linux Pro. Mark then proceeded to coordinate the following two years.

It was difficult to get vendors to cooperate at first (this is all pre-Maddog!). The Pavilion has approximately doubled in size every year. Now vendors love it and more want in every year.

The linux pavilion

Applix, with their office suite, Applixware



The friendly folks from Caldera (they were showing their video commercial)



Of course, the Infomagic booth was there, like every year. They have all the CDs you could dream of .
Of course, they are also famous for their linux 6 CD set featuring all the major distributions.



Linux Hardware Solutions, which will sell you custom made linux PCs





The linux international booth, more or this later

In the booth, two of the volunteers on the left, and Mark Bolzern from Linuxmall


What would a linux show be without linux journal?





Phil Hughes is on the right


Pacific HiTech, with their new distribution: turbolinux (it's a fork of an older redhat version).
PHT is also known for having the only linux distribution fully in Japanese

On the left, you have Craig Oda, and on the right...


you have Scott Stone, the main developper of turbolinux and a really nice guy I'm told


RedHat of course was there. It's been interesting to see them grow in the last three years.
Two years ago, I was able to help them in their booth to answer questions.
However, they have more than enough people to handle the crowd themselves now.


People come, people go, but Donnie Barnes is still there


Sprechen Sie Suse?
They had a bunch of people this year, including some of their German staff that we don't get to see very often over here
I tell you, they have cool people





Nick Moffitt (whose name I can spell if my life depends on it) is on the left, and Todd on the right


V.A. Research was also there, they build linux servers.
They are well also well known in the Silicon Valley for the support they've given to the Silicon Valley Linux User Group



Larry Augustin (the big boss, in the middle) is really a cool guy, trust me


Someone got Don Marti (on the left) to put a suit and tie, and go help at the V.A. booth.
I don't know how they did it :-)
On the right is SVLUG's vice president, Chris Dibona enjoying his new job at V.A.


As you can see, Don came back to his senses later, and lost the suit
Here we were having a conversation with Jon "maddog" Hall. I am proudly wearing my SVLUG badge
(BTW, I wish to thank Ada Spade, SVLUG's president's wife, for sewing the nice SVLUG penguin badges)


Last but not least, Patrick Volkerding, creator of Slackware was also there in the Walnut Creek booth
(they are the guys you should thank for ftp.cdrom.com)

Linux International

Luckily, Suse and Caldera gave us lots of CDs when we ran out, but even though I wasn't there until the last day, at the rate they were going, I'm sure that we didn't have enough. I didn't keep an exact count, but I know we gave out several thousand CDs. This is obviously great
Here's aobut a day's worth of bills in our money jar:

Mark also brought a few penguins for the L.I. booth

On wednesday evening, when we heard the good news about the new QT license, so we celebrated the end of desktop wars.

What can I say... Well, we'll make sure we bring a bag for Maddog next year :-)

Linux Journal Editor's Choice Awards

Seven awards were presented at this year's Linux Journal Editor's Choice Awards Reception. Most Desired Port: Quark's QuarkXpress. Best New Gadget: Schlumberger's Smart Card. Best New Hardware: Corel's NetWinder. Best New Linux Application: Informix's Infomix SE. Best Business Solution: Cisco's print system. Best New Book: John Blair's SAMBA. Product of the Year: Netscape's Communicator.
(quoted from Linux ressources)

Phil Hughes made the presentation


Those were some of the troffees that handed out

Comdex

Zip, your days are counted


Dilbert was there too


Sony had a really cool demo with very good robots. One would pur one petted


and another one was able to very accurately follow a ball, go fetch it, and then kick it further.
Amazingly enough this robot could even stand back up when put on its back

Vegas

Here they're building a French place with the Arc de triomphe, and an effel tower

Ticket to enter the museum/ride

Last words

Marc Merlin marc_web@merlins.org
(feel free to write me to give your name if you recognize yourself on a picture)

Last updated on November 25th 1998. V 1.9