[sf-lug] andrew morton's kickoff talk at LinuxWorld Expo

[jim stockford]

Andrew Morton is a lead developer on the Linux kernel project.
http://www.kernel.org/
http://kernelnewbies.org/

http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/ # Andrew's home page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Morton_%28computer_programmer%29
# bio of Andrew Morton

He gives the impression of warmth and discipline.

Seemed to me his most important message was a request
that everyone test the kernel. Just download it, config your
box to run it, then boot it up. If it boots, great; if not, let them
know. The reason is that the Linux Foundation cannot afford
to purchase all the machines necessary to test every possible
CPU, BIOS, motherboard, device extension, and whatever
else people are running. (NOTE: neither can any other
software development group.) They need our help.
http://kernel.org/doc/Documentation/HOWTO

He made particular note that the embedded systems
community seems under-represented.

He began his talk by being careful to define "Linux" == the kernel
and nothing else.

He commented that it's too bad that Sun went with open
source Solaris rather than Linux on Sun boxes. Had they
decided to cease work on Solaris and put their operating
system engineers to work on the Linux kernel, things would
have been much better for the world in general (MSFT
excepted).

------

    I'll note, in this regard, that there's some joyfully derisive
email going around pointing out the 70% drop in SCO's
stock since Friday's decision against SCO's suit to claim to
Unix brand ownership. SCO looks sunk, and seems good
riddance to a company that tried to sue the deep pockets
supporting the free software and open source communities.