The Canonical presentations were aimed mostly at businesses, and sysadmins in particular, delving into the Ubuntu Server distribution. IBM on the other hand went deep into Ubuntu Desktop model – this speaker was really entertaining. Mark Shuttleworth was there too of course – smart guy.

There was an open bar, and some really fancy nibbles – I can’t remember what one of them were called. Quite a few fish selections, sushi-ish. Nice though.

The swag was cool too. There was an Ubuntu notepad and pen on each seat, for us to take notes. Then on our way out we were handed a goody bag. This had the usual stickers and Ubuntu CDs, Ubuntu Mousemat, but what I liked the most was an IBM Lotus stamped gadget – a USB charger for all popular mobile/cell phones! This thing has an adapter for Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and mini-USB. So cool!

I must say, IBM really impressed me with their Lotus suite. Not just because of the swag, but their presentation was actually really good. I can really see a place for it in the Enterprise environment. True, it’s just based on Open Office, Eclipse and other Open Source software, but the way it’s put together as a nice full-package is great.

It seems this next version may come with a new name, to avoid Copyright conflicts. No biggie.
I think Ubuntu Eee will continue to be successful, no matter what name it goes under. The Netbook Remix style is just so user-oriented. But not in a newbie way, like the original Xandros OS that comes preinstalled on Asus Eee PCs.

I’m really looking forward to the new version – I’ve been enjoying Intrepix Ibex on my desktop for a few weeks now. There’s only one bug on my Eee, that I hope gets fixed.
I installed a new wifi card, as posted earlier. It works fine with BackTrack3, but to get it working in Ubuntu I had to disable ACPI. Which is obviously not ideal, because I then lose all power management, including the battery icon/status.

I wonder if we’ll be seeing a new theme ^_^

I took a copy, to play around with, as it seemed to have a lot of cool tools on there, some of which I had seen before, lots of which I hadn’t. This looked like a hacker’s distro.

The name is BackTrack. I didn’t look much into it, until I was watching Hak5 on Revision3 this morning, and saw a review on Maltego, which just so happens  to come with BackTrack.

So I started playing around with BT3 (after an easy upgrade), and I love it. It’s so useful.
This is a Network Security / Sysadmin must-have distro. Every tool you could possibly need, is already there, on the disc.

Maltego is pro. It’s basically an Identity lookup tool. You input a person’s details, whatever you happen to know about them, name/email/location/phone etc. and then it will look up all the information it can find on said person.

I found some very old email accounts of mine, linked to forum posts and profiles, just as old. I think I may have also discovered Kevin Rose’s personal e-mail account. No luck with Bill Gates though. ^^