[Ambassadors] LinuxTag at Fachhochschule Salzburg

[Oliver Falk]

Hi!

As one or the other knows, there was a LinuxTag in Salzburg/Austria at 
the Fachhochschule 
(http://www.fh-salzburg.ac.at/News_Detail.82.0.html?&no_cache=1&L=%3F%3F%3F%3F&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=938&tx_ttnews[backPid]=58).

As you can read in the above mentioned URL, SuSE and Ubuntu where there 
as well as myself (speaking for Fedora instead of DavidHackl who was 
busy with business).

However. My experience/notes.

It was my first (bigger) speach. I was quite enthusiastic, but also 
quite nervous, as you can guess. :-) I only received positive feedback 
yet, that's fine.

OpenSuSE Xen Workshop
=====================
They where in trouble. FH installed OpenSuSE 10.3 on the day before. 
Every time you booted the machine with Xen kernel and X came up, the 
machine crashed (blank/black screen) nothing except holding the power 
key to power it off worked. I was asked if I may help. As a clear 
statement I answered yes and tried to debug the problem. OK, in the 
first moment I was quite amused, that it doesn't work - but thinking as 
a technician, I though if it would happen to me with Fedora, I would 
also be happy if someone tries to help me. At one moment I thought it 
has something to do with the vga option they pass along and the vgabios 
patching they do, but actually this wasn't the reason and I gave up 
without a real solution. At this time, a Fedora-Xen-LiveCD would have 
helped. :-P

User question: YaST is free, cannot Fedora also use it?
======================================================
Clear answer: Yes, we could. I believe it's FOSS, as it has GPL license, 
but it would be hard to accomplish this mission, as SuSE does 
configuration in a total different style. AFAIK.

However, the question showed me: Users want a single point of entry for 
their configuration (tasks). Like 'Control panel' under Windows it 
seems. They want to configure their resolution, theme, desktop 
background, etc. And even Xen they want to see inside there it seems - 
SuSE has Xen in YaST.

Fedora Beryl Workshop
=====================
Not too many people joined it, as it was the first Workshop at this day, 
but the people who where there actually enjoyed it. The beryl settings 
manager is better now. But it's overloaded. A simple GUI as we have it 
with beryl-settings-simple, would be the best entry point for the users 
I believe! For people with more experience, we still have an advanced 
button there, isn't it? :-)

Ubuntu/SuSE/Fedora
==================
We had a clear statement; A linux user is a good user, which 
distribution he begins with or uses doesn't mind in the first line. We 
where nice to each other and didn't flame-war; That wouldn't make be a 
good picture for none of us.

Dress code
==========
I'm not sure if I will wear a suite next time. I actually felt a bit 
overdressed (you'll see on the pictures - I'll send a link as soon as I 
have one). On the other hand, I think I stated, that we are not geeky, 
freaky staff, making geeky, freaky stuff. :-)

Users
=====
I actually had the feeling that many SuSE users joined. SuSE is 
definitely the desktop distribution of choice in Austria. I'm not sure 
why... A buyable package with a book - documentation. No need to 
download ISOs. See next paragraph as well.

What users think about Fedora/SuSE/Ubuntu
=========================================
I already told JoergSimon. I'm quite sure I was able to find out what 
people think about the 3 distributions.

- SuSE is for desktop/laptop
   They have good tools like KNetworkManager. And it actually seems to 
work fine for most home-/laptop-users.

- Ubuntu is for starting with Linux
   Easy to install, easy to use, not the big decision, which of the x 
mail clients to use - there's only one...

- Fedora is for professionals and servers
   That's the picture about us. OK, it's not a bad picture, but it would 
be better if it would be Fedora is for experienced users. (point!).
   Fedora on the Desktop. If we want this, we need to get an idea of 
what users prefer, how they work. I have 100 % clear idea of that. I'm a 
technician; I don't use OpenOffice regular, I don't need to switch 
between networks every day or even every few hours. I don't know if 
there are big bugs in Gnome/KDE. I use XFCE. :-)

Presentations Group/Team
========================
Already talked with JoergSimon also about this. I had the Chitlesh 
presentation with me. I removed a few section, updated a few others and 
translated it to German - where possible (Release early, release often: 
You cannot really translate it to German).

Joerg told me, that there already is a Wiki for this and if I have time 
to come to LT Berlin, I will bring this up at Fedora Ambassadors day; If 
not Joerg will do this for me.
For short: The idea. A new group "Fedora Presentations Team". A team, 
that works together with Documentation, Artwork and Translation; 
Creating short presentations with nice artwork translated to different 
languages. For Ambassadors it would be easier then to put together a 
bigger presentation - if needed. It would be also easier hold a speech 
about whatever people are interested (not the full-blown presentations). 
If you're fast, open another presentation, ... many options here....

Behind the idea; Presentations team, would make sure, that presentations 
are kept up 2 date and translated. The team would be mostly made of 
Ambassadors I guess, but under a new hood, with separate m/l-list and so 
on. Ambassadors without interest in this part would be overwhelmed with 
another bulk of mails.
Got it? :-)

/me should have written this in English at the first time. Not first 
tellin' Joerg and now to the list. Silly /me. :-)

A hope you enjoy(ed) the report.

-- 
Oliver Falk
UNIX/Linux Systems Administrator
Mail: oliver at linux-kernel.at
Phone: +43 (664) 838 59 25