Yesterday I was at the LinuxWorld Expo 2005 at London here in the UK.

It was busy, although smaller than I was expecting. But I think it's fair to say it was perfectily formed and attended by people really only interested in Linux and what it can do, and what products there are out there that we can use.

What a change from a show I went to just two years ago. It wasn't a Linux show, but it was a business IT show. Most of the people there - even the larger companies said 'What's Linux?'. Have we really come so far so quickly?

Needless to say there was lots of good stuff, and I made a lot of new friends too. But everybody I spoke to was enthused about Linux to a degree I wasn't expecting. I spent more than hour talking to a guy from Cap Gemini about Linux; nothing to do with the stand he was on, we spent most of the time speaking about MythTV and the problems we'd been having. We moved on to other topics (some of which I'll be expanding on here over the next few days), but the key point is that he was so enthusiastic about Linux and Open Source that it was hard not to have a good conversation and not come away being excited by the enthusaism that had been shown.