LinuxDevices.com founder Rick Lehrbaum takes his customary “walk on the embedded side” of the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo held last week in New York City. In this article, Lehrbaum describes what he observed and gives his impressions of current trends in Embedded Linux — the next big frontier for Linux . . .

After three days of roaming some 100,000 square feet of exhibition area populated by 200 companies' exhibits and attended by perhaps 20,000 “Penguinistas”, I've certainly had an eyeful of Linux!

What a place! I ran into Linus Torvalds (“father of Linux”) twice — once on his way to The Golden Penguin Bowl (“Well, I'm off to make a fool of myself,” said Linus) and once in Linuxcare's booth (with his wife and their new baby). At another point, I found myself sitting beside Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar and credited with being the chief evangelist for open source software (“Hi,” I said, “I'd just like to say thank you for your work on behalf of open source software.”).

In my many zig-zags across the great expo floor, one question I kept hearing was “What do you think of the conference?” After letting it all sink in for a few days, I've come up with a few general observations . . .

• More “suits” — there were a lot more glitzy exhibits, and there were fewer of the small (10 x 10 ft.) booths.

• Linux hits adolescence — there seemed to be much more of an air of a maturing industry in comparison with last year's New York show, with companies like IBM, Intel, Compaq, Sun, SGI, and HP very much in evidence.

• More exhibitors — the exhibit area seemed to have doubled in size since last year's New York show.

• Embedded has arrived — a common theme just about everywhere was the growing importance of Linux in “devices” and embedded systems.

In fact, I'll venture a (self-serving?) prediction that this year is shaping up to be “the year of Linux in Devices” — with products like Linux-based PDAs, cell phones, web pads, and set-top entertainment systems hitting the market in growing numbers as the year rolls on.

Of the 200 exhibitors, roughly twenty identified themselves in the Show Guide as offering “Embedded Systems” products but nearly twice that number were promoting Embedded Linux products or services of one kind or another.

In case you missed the show, here's a brief summary of what I found . . .

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