Linux.conf.au 2001

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So where have you been anyway?

I know, I know, OLS, ALS, Comdex and more. So many shows, so little time. Outside of the fact that I don't have enough vacation days to go to all the shows we have now, I've also had too much work to be allowed to leave VA for ALS and Comdex

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That said, part of that work, like redoing the whole DNS and DHCP infrastructure for VA, ended up being useful since this ended up being what the linux.conf.au organizers picked as a tutorial topic, and they invited me to the conference as a result.
Feels weird to have missed comdex though, first time in 4 years. I've been told that it does suck more and more every year though, which does match what I've seen in the previous years.

Considering that Linuxworld in New York is a week later and that there is a Linux Expo in Paris right now too, I'll have to get used to the idea of not being able to be everywhere

Anyway, enough blah blah.

Let's go visit the Aussies

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The linux.conf.au organizers lucked out when they managed to get major speakers to commit to their conference (Alan Cox, Dave Miller, Rusty, Richard Gooch....) and at that time, if you were "in", you just had to go

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Many also took the opportunity to go visit Australia, which is a both an interesting and fun country, you should have a look at the Australia page for more details and to see hackers in shorts

What's in this page?

A page and pictures about Australia, and my report of the expo days.
Unfortunately, I caught a fairly bad flu during the first day of the conference, around when I was giving my tutorial, and was severely knocked down during a couple of days. I still went to the show and attended talks, but wasn't able to get very good notes or many pictures (Some might also notice less pictures than usual, and that's because my step down 220 -> 110V transformer blew out a couple of my battery chargers, so I was a bit short on batteries too).
I hope you enjoy your virtual visit of the conference nonetheless, and if you haven't seen my other ones, you can look at my reviews from previous events on my linux page)

Marc MERLIN

The Show

Thanks

A big thank you to all the conference organizers, they just deserve it.
They did last touches like giving everyone a CD with all the talk proceedings they had (same to those who did not submit theirs in time for inclusion, but because those guys are just good, they're going to make a second CD with the up to date list of talks as they get it. The other cool part is that all the TeX talks on the Cd build their output file formats with a single makefile

I have nothing but good things to say about the conference and my stay in Australia, the organizers did an awesome job to put the whole conference together, and while none of them do this for a living, the conference was a real success.
All in all, I simply had a great time.

This conference proves the point that you now have two big kinds of linux conferences, the commercial ones with a big show floor and good to fair or mediocre conferences (linuxworld), and the homegrown conferences with few means, a small show floor, or just none, but an excellent speaker program (ALS and OLS I'm told, and definitely linux.conf.au too).
If you noticed the absence of Showfloor pictures, it's simply because there was no Showfloor. This was a hacker's conference, not a tradeshow, and I'd say that it was just as well.

You want more? Rodos has written a nice page too, go see it

And here's the now usual little footer note:
If you'd like to use some pictures or text, please Email me first (non commercial use is OK).

'Till next time
Marc Merlin (marc_web@merlins.org)

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2001/01/28 (19:19): Version 1.0
2001/01/28 (19:21): Version 1.1. Added link to Rodo's page