Please Welcome David Whitinger. David is the founder of Linsight network. David also founded Linuxtoday.com which later he sold to internet.com

BT: How did you get involved with Computers ?

David: My father was an electrical engineer, always bringing home new and interesting objects to fill his cluttered basement downstairs.

I grew up surrounded by Teletypes, TRS-80's, TI 99/4a, soldering irons and who-knows-what-else. I eventually started playing with these on my own. Being a self-taught kind of person, I really enjoyed exploring these machines.

BT: How were you introduced to Linux ?

David: I worked for an ISP in Nuernberg, Germany, back in 1995. They were running Linux. I soon after installed it on my own machine at home, and never went back to OS/2. :)

BT: Are you married or single ?

David: Married. I married my wife (Trish) in August, 1996. We have a 14 month old daughter, and another child on the way.

BT: How old are you ?

David: I was born on December 26, 1975.

BT:Your favorite distribution ? Why ?

David: I use Red Hat, because it allows me to get my work done. I like the ideals behind the Debian project, but I simply don't have the time to play around with distributions like I once did. Red Hat gets the job done, so I continue to use it.

BT: Prefer KDE or GNOME ? Why ?

David: Neither, actually. I use WindowMaker (recently switched over from Afterstep). I don't like KDE because I don't think the community needs to standardize on a desktop that is built by non-GPL software. I also despise the KWM window manager, and don't have much interest in looking into using other window managers with KDE.

GNOME is showing a lot of promise, but it's still not ready. It continues to crash on my machine. I don't tolerate software that does not work consistently correct.

I hold high hopes that GNOME will come around and save us, though.

BT: Prefer vi or emacs ? Why ?

David: vi, of course, for all the reasons that vi people use vi. :-)

BT: Have a favorite beer ? :)

David: Hmmmm. Well, I really like Loewenbraeu (not the American one, but rather the German one). I also have a fondness for any local German beer, but unfortunately I don't get to partake in that very often.

I also like Samual Adams, Becks, and occasionally Heinekin.

BT: I read your article on browser for Linux. It said you became involved with Mozilla. How ?

David: Actually, it said that I would become involved with Mozilla. I never become directly involved with the project for a variety of reasons:

1.  The project made it very difficult to report bugs.

2.  The message I received from their website was that they were
looking for feedback, but didn't make it very easy to give that to
them.

3.  I became very busy with my roles with Atipa and Linsight, and 
had to completely stop doing all extra-curricular activities for a 
while.  

BT: Are you still involved ? If yes, doing what ?

David: I am still advocating Mozilla to everyone who I know, and I test nightly builds on a frequent basis.

BT: Will Linux ever be very popular for the Desktop ?

David: Who knows. There are a lot of things that will have to happen first. Building a componentized desktop environment will be crucial for us to reach that goal. This is where the GNOME project comes in. They need to move quickly, though!

Also, small handhelds might make the desktop obsolete (or, rather, it will create a new era of desktops). The work that the embedded Linux groups are doing is very important. When Transmeta-based devices start coming out, I'll be the first in line to buy one. :)

BT: I also read that you're best friends with John "maddog" Hall.

David: maddog is like a brother to me.

BT: How did you meet him ?

David: I met him in late 1997 at the LISA show in San Diego, CA. He was introduced to me by Donnie Barnes, and seemed larger than life. An interesting fellow, always. I was most stricken by his enormous grey beard. :)

BT: How is he like ?

David: He is a fairly tall and large man, big grey beard, and grey hair. He's extremely smart, yet doesn't give off an air of importance or anything like that. He is an educator, and is very good at bringing highly technical subjects down to a level that can be understood by average non-technical people.

He is also very generous with his resources, and has contributed an amazing amount of time and money to free software.

Without maddog, I am certain that Linux would not be where it is today.

BT: If you had to pick one person, who really has not given the credit he/she deserves, who would it be ? Kinda like your vote for an unsung hero.

David: Don Becker. He is starting to finally receive some more attention from people, but he remains to be the least rewarded of the Linux heros.

He is also one of the nicest people I have met in the community.

For second place, though, I'd have to say Jeff Carr of Linux/PPC. Whenever I get down on the community, I always think of Jeff and his generous spirit, and it makes me remember that there are people out there who are in this for the true spirit of the community. I have a lot of respect for Jeff - he's a great guy.

BT: 1999 was a great overall year for Linux. With all the Linux companies having successful IPOs and such. Why do you think it happened last year as oppose to previous years ?
Or was it a break out year ? Do you think it's just a start; that the revolution has just begun and we've yet to see the full potential of the Linux explosion ?

David: Well, remember that the ultimate goal is Total World Domination by 2003. So we're still 3 years away from complete domination.

1999 was an exciting year for Linux, but so was 1998, 1997, 1996, and 1995. I'm sure the years before that were equally exciting, but I wasn't there to experience them.

1999 probably stands out most because it was the year that /everybody else/ stood up and took notice of Linux, but that doesn't make it a different year from any other. Aside from everybody finally noticing Linux, it was a pretty bland year. GNOME development moved forward at a snail's pace. Mozilla rumbled along... I think 2001 will probably be more interesting than 1999 or 2000.

BT: Some people might say its all a bunch of hype. What would you say to those people ?

David: That they obviously don't know what they are talking about. I would then educate them on what all this is really about.

BT: Where do you see Linux in the future ? 1 year ? 5 years ?

David: 1 year - much like what we have today.

5 years - Linux will be a household term, just like the Internet is today. Most people who use computers will be using Linux in one form or another. I don't really know. I'd like to go forward in the future and take a good look around, but that's impossible. All I can do is guess that we'll achieve our goal.

BT: Many say that there is too much fragmentation. Are you worried about too many distributions ?

David: I am not worried about too many distributions, but I am worried about the balance of power. Currently there are a lot of checks and balances in the community, but if that goes away we'll have a problem.

BT: You worked with Red Hat. When did you start ? How long did you work there ?

David: I worked for Red Hat from April, 1997 until December, 1997.

BT: What did you do ?

David: Initially I was the "Director of Technical Support". After some time I moved over and did something like "technical marketing", where I helped the marketing department understand what Linux was all about. I trained their sales and marketing staff in using and understanding Linux, and I advocated the company to the community, and vice versa.

BT: Did you get a whole bunch of stock in Red Hat?

David: No. I left before they gave out stock options to employees, so I was left out. I did get "The Letter", though, but decided not to partipate.

I don't currently own any Red Hat stock.

BT:and became ultra rich like many others ? :)

David: Yes, I did.

BT: How did LinuxToday came about ? Did you start it alone or with someone ?

David: I was running an internal news site at Red Hat. When I left Red Hat, I started publishing news on my own site - threepoint.com. Eventually I was approached by Dwight Johnson who recommended that we partner up and do a professional Linux news site, and Linux Today was born.

BT: What kind of hardware did it run on at first ? and now ?

David: It ran on a AMD K5/233 with 64MG of RAM. I soon upgraded it to 256MG of RAM. It was running on a cable modem out of my house for the first 5 months. :)

When I left Linux Today on October 14th, 1999, it was running on two machines at Hex.net. One machine was built and paid for by Linux Today. The other machine was generously donated by Tom Adelstein of Bynari.

As far as I know, Linux Today is still being served off that same hardware.

Thanks to Tom. He provided us with hardware when he knew that we needed it most. Also thanks to Stephen Denny at Hex.net for providing us with low cost bandwidth, and for being a good friend.

BT: How long did it take for it to become a huge success ?

David: It was a smashing success within 3 weeks. We were averaging hundreds of thousands of hits per day within 2 months.

BT: LinuxToday was sold to internet.com. How did that come about ? Did they contact you ?

David: They contacted us. Many other people also contacted us.

BT: What was the whole process like ?

David: Painfully long. We had to spend a lot of time on the phone with attorneys (on both sides) to negotiate the contract to everybody's liking.

I was very relieved when the deal was finished and the ink on the paper was dry.

BT: Can you tell us about the numbers in the deal ? money ? stocks ? future ad revenues ?

David: I am prohibited from talking about that, and as far as I know, the details have never been publicized. Sorry.

BT: Are you still involved with LinuxToday ?

David: Not at all, except that I am still friends with many of the people who work there. Marty, John, and Paul are good people, and I always enjoy having beer with them at trade shows.

The following questions are Linsight related. Please welcome E.J. Wells, the director of Linsight network. He will answer the following questions.

BT: How did Linsight came about ?

EJ: The Linux industry is currently lacking a focused shop of information, and Linsight was created to solve this problem. Linsight's slogan is "Linux Information for the Linux Age," and we are out to attempt to do just that. :-)

BT: And Linsider ?

EJ: Linsider is the beginning of a vision for creating an intuitive interface for a vast amount of information. In the future you can expect new sites that have a similar look-and-feel to Linsider, but will be geared towards different audiences.

BT: What is the purpose of Linsight and Linsider ?

EJ: Linsight is an almalgamation of several smaller, focused sites. Each site will independently take a segment of the Linux information space and do that piece really well. Linsider is just one spoke of this wheel.

BT: So what does the Linsider spoke offer ?

EJ: Linsider focuses on the corporate/commercial side of Linux.

BT: Linsight is funded by Atipa Corporation. Do you work for Atipa or they are funding the project as an external source ?

EJ: We work for Atipa.

BT: How did the relationship between you and Atipa came about ?

EJ: Atipa approached Dave Whitinger about providing a good service to the community. Dave saw a series of holes in this industry, so he decided to go for it. He brought me in to be the director of the project, and today he spends his time working closely with Atipa doing community relations type work, leaving me in charge of Linsight.

BT: Can you tell us how they are funding the Linsight project ?

EJ: We operate as a business unit of Atipa. We have full-time staff members working exclusively on Linsight. They provide all the resources we need to get this job done.

BT: If someone wanted to become involved with the Linsight project, can they? How ?

EJ: It depends. If they want to contribute, all they need to do is e-mail us and get started. :-)

BT: What does the site run on? Language/OS/Hardware/Database ?

EJ: Our current web server is a Pentium-class machine w/ 256 MB RAM running Red Hat 6.1. We use MySQL for our database and PHP3 on the front-end. I've also written a variety of backend/admin tools in Perl, Python, and C.

We're currently moving over to new servers. The new web server is a Dual Penium III/600 with 512 MB RAM. The new database server is a Dual Penium III/600 with 512 MB RAM with around 80 GB of RAID 5 storage.

BT: What does linsight offer that the other Linux sites do not ? Isn't it just another Linux site ?

EJ: Check it out and see for yourself. :-)

BT: Phase 1 was launching Linsight with linevents and lintraining. Phase 2 was launching linsider. Is there going to be a phase 3 ?

EJ: There is a Phase 3 in the works and it should be launched by the time that you publish this story. It's called LinDeveloper (https://lindeveloper.com or https://developer.linsight.com).

LinDeveloper will be similar to Linsider, except that it will be targeted toward people interested in Linux developer tools and technologies rather than the business/corporate side of Linux.

BT: What't the next phase ? What will the developers bring next to the Linux community ?

EJ: The next phase was LinDeveloper, but that's been launched since our last correspondence (https://www.lindeveloper.com or https://developer.linsight.com). We are currently planning what our next major site is going to be, but a final decision hasn't been made on that yet.

BT: What are the future long range plans for linsight ?

EJ: Linux Information for the Linux Age. In general, if it's not covered elsewhere, we will probably end up doing it ourselves.

BT: Is there anything that I didn't ask that I should have ? Would you like to share anything else with the readers ?

We hope that you enjoy the Linsight network, and please e-mail us with your feedback. We're always looking for new things that need to be done, so hit us with your feedback! :-)

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