Gates, Torvalds face off at Comdex
By Lisa M. Bowman
April 19, 1999
ZDNN

CHICAGO -- Alter operating system egos, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Linux's Linus Torvalds, spoke back-to-back at Spring Comdex Monday morning, with Gates pontificating from a podium on a back-lit stage before Torvalds held a casual forum in a glorified conference room.

In typical Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) fashion, Gates held a marketing extravaganza, including demonstrations of the Windows 2000 OS and videos featuring Gates and company President Steve Ballmer as performers in a Lord of the Dance production.

Torvalds, meanwhile, took repeated shots at his opposite number during his keynote -- telling attendees that Windows "sucks" and calling Microsoft "Big Brother."

'If you're going to sit there or stand there with me giving a talk, we're all going to be very bored.' -- Linus Torvalds

Dressed in a brown sweater, button-down shirt and gray-brown pants, and sporting his trademark boyish haircut, round spectacles and furrowed brow, Gates methodically walked the audience through a series of slides touting the PC.

At one point, Microsoft rolled out an eight-foot replica of its new mouse, which rolled onto the stage to the backdrop of the theme from the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Gates and his Microsoft minion wandered around the monstrous product like game show hosts showing off the features of a brand new car. "It's beautiful," Gates said as he strolled along the monolith of a PC peripheral.

Infamous glitch recalled
Last year during his speech at this event, Windows 98 crashed, which resulted in negative coverage just weeks before the product was released.

But instead of hoping the audience would forget that glitch, Gates, somewhat demurely, showed a tape of the infamous crash. Then he brought out the Microsoft employee who was onstage when the crash occurred.

"A lot of the people have asked me in the past year what happened to that guy," Gates quipped. "He wants to try again."

Then the employee, Chris Capossela, ran through the same demonstration as last year, this time connecting a scanner to a Windows 2000 computer. It worked, much to the relief of Capossela, who joked that it should after he spent "365 days of practicing this demo."

Attendees greeted Gates with tepid applause, laughing at all the right moments during the speech and the accompanying pre-produced videos.

Waiting for Linus
After Gates' speech, Linux fans marched across a bridge to another section of the conference room, then snaked their way downstairs to a beige-walled conference room.

The metal chairs filled up quickly, and those who didn't get one of the 400 seats crammed in the back or sat in the aisle between the chairs. While waiting for their hero, those in the front row tried to start a wave, but it only caught on for a moment.

When Torvalds strolled out to take his place before a small folding table, attendees jumped to their feet, clapping and cheering the originator of the Linux OS phenomenon.

Dressed in a denim shirt and jeans, Torvalds offered the audience some recycled slides from LinuxWorld, but said he preferred audience feedback.

"If you're going to sit there or stand there with me giving a talk, we're all going to be very bored," he said, adding that he was gearing the presentation toward technical, not marketing, people.

The audience then peppered Torvalds with questions about everything from the splintering of the kernel to scaling Linux down to the desktop.

Torvalds: Windows 'sucks'
Unlike Gates, the soft-spoken Torvalds took multiple jabs at his OS rival, saying repeatedly that Windows "sucks," and referring to Microsoft as "Big Brother," which drew chortles from the hardcore Linux fans.

Torvalds also said he wanted to thank all the people who've boosted Linux's momentum, including testers -- which he jokingly described as "low-lifes who can't program" -- and Linux distributors, or the "people who live off me like leeches."

Those phrases resulted in nervous laughter from the audience.

During the presentation, Torvalds also promised "world domination" for Linux, copping his wry smile. And after his speech, when a fan presented him with a disk and asked for an autograph, Torvalds signed his name -- right below Gates' John Hancock.

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