LinuxCon and ContainerCon focus on the evolution of Open Source solutions

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Toronto, ON - LinuxCon and ContainerCon opened earlier today in downtown Toronto and the conference was kicked off by notable keynotes from various luminaries in the Open Source community as well as key players in the industry.

The show floor at the Westin Harbour Castle Toronto's conference centre showed how far the world has come. Linux, which celebrates 25 years on August 25, has certainly come a long way. While various version of open Source Linux operating systems haven't been as widely adopted, it has made a huge impact on enterprise, cloud computing as well as on backend system implementation. 

Hundreds of developers, system administrators and attendees flocked to hear the latest Linux news as well as check out products and software being demoed during the conference.

Microsoft, whose former CEO Steve Ballmer once said "Linux is a Cancer," has done a complete 180' turn under current CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft has been collaborating with Linux since 2009, the company is clearly putting its future in the cloud and enterprise and these are domains that are heavily impacted by Linux.

Developers can now use even use Microsoft's PowerShell on Linux, and run PowerShell scripts on Linux servers. Microsoft provides its own Linux servers through the Azure cloud computing service. 

Microsoft's Azure booth is one of the first to greet you on the show floor and in a reality-latering display of 'openess' had giant versions of Tux the Penguin (the Linux mascot) flanking their display.

There were also giveaway stickers that proclaimed "Microsoft Loves Linux," a new day, indeed. 

Other interesting booths at the trade show floor include Ubuntu maker Canonical who demoed  Juju which allows the ability to odel, configure and manage services with Juju and deploy to all major public and private clouds with only a few commands. Hundreds of preconfigured services available in the Juju store. Their system saves hundreds of lines of code and makes attributing commands as easy as drag and drop.

“Even after 25 years, Linux still serves as an example of how collaborative development can work, which can be applied to other open source projects,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. 

Organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development, many who are represented at the show include Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, SUSE, IBM, Renesas, Google, AMD, Texas Instruments and ARM.

LinuxCon and ContainerCon run simultaneously until August 24. Linux Creator Linus Torvalds will take the stage on Wednesday at 9:00 a.m.