L.O.A.D.

It seems like the LOAD (standing for Linux Open Alternative Day[s]) event is becoming smaller each year, my guess is that may be related to the perceived focus change from Linux as an alternative to the establishment to alternatives to Linux (Microsoft products, antivirus solutions for Windows and such). Anyway, what I wanted to say about it was I may understand to some degree Microsoft being there with presentations and as a sponsor (actually I don't, but this talk is for another day), I may understand almost all talks being about cloud (when the clouds run Linux), I may understand the antivirus presence (when they have Linux server products), I may even understand the opening saying "we move to the cloud, where is not important what runs on the servers, open or proprietary" (no, I don't), but FFS, I can't understand why, at such a Linux event, the laptop for presentations runs Windows 7.

Actually there was a reason for the Windows laptop: one of the Microsoft guys needed it for Hyper-V and Azure demos... To be honest, at one of the presentation the laptop was changed punctually with... a Mac running OS X. It was needed for a Samba 4 demo with Windows clients running on virtual machines (and I am not sure, maybe a Linux server in another VM).

A few points which drew my attention:

• Microsoft is preparing to offer paid support for Linux distros running on their Azure service (most likely CentOS, openSUSE and Ubuntu);
• Avast is a very popular antivirus for Windows, their Linux version is 3 years old, but they are working on a new Linux version. The version after that may have also a management console. Anyway, the "Linux" word was said only after questions from the audience;
• Demotix is a citizen journalism platform and photo agency, it is owned by Corbis, which in turn is owned privately by Bill Gates (his only owned business right now). It runs on Drupal, MariaDB and Linux.