I arrived at LinuxWorld myself a few hours ago. Initial impressions? Following up on Raven’s post, there is definitely no shortage of hardware vendors here, complimented by other vendors that make up the data center ecosystem: storage and high availability vendors and data center and server management vendors, as well as user groups and education offerings.

PogoLinux’s “Redmond Sux” baseball shirts were the first thing I noticed when I hit the show floor and a good choice for a show in the heart of Red Sox Nation, where “Yankees” usually comes before the s-word. Though the lettering on the shirts is curiously in Red Sox script. Maybe it’s the dreary, rainy Boston weather, but I don’t pick up much of a buzz on the show floor. Take away the vendors, analysts and press and I’m not sure there’d be anyone left, which I hope is testimony to the conference sessions. Most vendors I’ve talked to so far are bemoaning how “quiet” the show is and that the three-day expo is too long, though most are also extolling the “quality” of attendees, which in my nine years of covering technology tends to be a familiar refrain at these things. Some blame IBM and HP’s lack of participation (though IBM does have some partner kiosks). And of course, there’s no big splashy Microsoft “pavilion” at a Linux show.

Nonetheless, there seems to be plenty of innovation going on from some of the folks I’ve talked to so far. I’ll share some of that here and report more indepth on these vendors for our Market Insight Service (MIS) in the weeks ahead. But for now, it’s back to the show.