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.

I keep a close eye on Microsoft research because over the years there have been a few cool items to come out of their research department. Much of what you don't see, of course, is what ends up in their products. Some of it you can even download early through the Microsoft Research site.

Obviously something about the way they work is going right, and reading this piece gives some insight to the people, methods and environment in which some of the ideas are developed.

If there's one aspect of Linux that has lead to its popularity it is the ability of a suitably enthused individual to produce their own distribution. It has spawned thousands of different solutions and, in turn, has lead to the creation of numerous tools and products that we all find useful; the RPM package management system was introduced to help install the packages that made up the RedHat system. Today, most software is distributed in RPM format, even if your system isn't necessarily Redhat based.

The distribution model of Linux has also spawned companies: RedHat, SuSe and others would not exist without Linux.

There was a recent flurry of activity and discussion on the CW site about Outsourcing. (Actually, since we're now in October and this was August, maybe it's not that recent...).

I've been fortunate enough never to have to experience outsourcing at the 'business' end. My clients are small companies who either do stuff in house, or use a third party (like me) rather than doing the sort of large scale outsourcing normally experienced in larger companies. Mergers, yes, but not outsourcing. I do of course come across all the time. Phoning up a bank or utility here in the UK and you are almost guaranteed to come across outsourced customer services.

Well, I used StarOffice 8 all day thursday while working on one of the chapters for my new book (a Linux title, of course). So here's a quick run down of what I've found so far.

First up - compatibility: the chapter was originally written in Word from Office.X on Mac OS X and there were no problems loading up the file, or saving it and opening again on the Mac. The templates, using the different styles and online layout and formatting all work fine. Compatibility is certainly not an issue.

Second up - general use: Fine. There's nothing here that I had a problem with. There are some UI elements which I've always found to be slightly odd (for example, the separate window of styles) but I realize that this is largely a limitation of the base Unix UI (the X Windows System). Nothing though that scares you - just, different...