USENIX 1998 LG #30

#### "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

# USENIX 1998

#### By Aaron Mauck

Photo Album

Each year, the USENIX organization (http://www.usenix.org/) puts on a technical conference dealing with UNIX and other UNIX-like systems. This year they had an emphasis on free or Open Source operating systems, primarily Linux and *BSD. The conference was held in New Orleans, Louisiana from June 15th to the 20th.

### Tutorials

Many day-long tutorials were offered on Monday and Tuesday including ``Inside the Linux Kernel'' by Stephen Tweedie, one of the EXT2 developers, and several talks on Networking and Security. I attended ``Hot Topics in System Administration'', taught by Treni Hein and Evi Nemeth. They covered many topics including Samba, Packet Filtering and IPv6.

### Vendor Expo

I found it refreshing to see a vendor exposition (albeit a small one) comprised completely of UNIX-friendly companies. O'Reilly was there, displaying all of their titles for sale at 20% off. Needless to say, this made it one of the most popular booths. Most of the faces were familiar: Red Hat, Linux International, InfoMagic, the three heads of BSD and others. Among the unexpected participants was the FBI, just a short distance from the Free Software Foundation. The whole atmosphere of the exposition was quite relaxed, without the hectic feel of Comdex and other large industry trade shows.

### BOFs and Speeches

Each evening offered several talks by different people on a wide range of subjects. I caught ``The State of Linux'' talk by Linus Torvalds on Thursday afternoon. He set Aug/Sep 98 as a hopeful release date for the 2.2 kernel. Another event that took place every evening was the ``Birds of a Feather'' (BOF) meetings, which were designed as a place for people with common interests to come together and discuss their ideas and goals. It was also a great place to rub shoulders with some of the ``big names'' in the UNIX community, such as Keith Bolstic, Eric Allman and Jon ``maddog'' Hall.

### Terminal Room

What UNIX conference would be complete without a terminal room? Luckily, Earthlink and openBSD donated machines and bandwidth and created a room with thirty or so machines running openBSD, connected to a T1.

### Summary

If I were to do it all over again (and I most definitely want to), I would spend more time planning what I want to learn. I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of talks/events, and therefore found it difficult to focus on exactly what I wanted to get from the experience--I was constantly spreading myself too thin. For any UNIX, Linux, BSD etc. lover, USENIX is a must at least once in a lifetime. It is a very friendly and co-operative environment and has definitely earned its reputation as one of the hubs of the computing community.

##### Copyright © 1998, Aaron Mauck
Published in Issue 30 of Linux Gazette, July 1998