Much of the talk leading up to this year’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo centered on how the open source OS has become so mainstream, it seemed somewhat silly to have its own conference. However, the conference (bolstered by the concurrent Next Gen Data Center show) did highlight the continuing evolution of Linux and other open source software and, more importantly, what’s next. Rather than hearing about cost savings and flexibility advantages of Linux and open source software (still key attributes for sure), attendees were treated to more demos, integrations and other examples of open source innovation than ever.

Let’s take open source networking and security player Untangle and its anti-virus ‘Fight Club.’ Here, an open source player helped provide a wake-up call that some well-known AV players may not do as well against malware as they do against their competitors. We saw some significant interoperability and data integration work from the Open Solutions Alliance, which corralled together no fewer than six open source products from AdaptivePlanning, CentricCRM, JasperSoft, Openbravo, Talend and Unisys with its Common Customer View (CCV) interoperability and data integration prototype.

Oracle was busy feeding the penguins, and made several significant announcements at the show, including a new, scalable Linux file system, an open sourced test kit, new I/O interface and more. Linux on the desktop continued its recent progress with Lenovo and Novell’s announcement of ThinkPads pre-loaded with SUSE Linux. IT pillars such as Dell, HP, Motorola and others all reinforced Linux and open source vitality by rolling out their work for and with the open source OS. A whole industry show devoted to Linux and open source? Considering the developments covered here represent just a sampling of what came out of LinuxWorld, why not?