From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.54) id 1FS04f-0003tW-PR for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:09:06 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.6/8.13.5) with SMTP id k37N8Zur003703; Fri, 7 Apr 2006 23:08:35 GMT Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [134.68.220.30]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.6/8.13.5) with ESMTP id k37N6f1K030380 for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2006 23:06:42 GMT Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=home.wh0rd.org) by smtp.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.54) id 1FS02L-00003W-EK for gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org; Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:06:41 +0000 Received: (qmail 17953 invoked from network); 7 Apr 2006 18:51:05 -0400 Received: from unknown (HELO vapier) (192.168.0.2) by 192.168.0.1 with SMTP; 7 Apr 2006 18:51:05 -0400 From: Mike Frysinger Organization: wh0rd.org To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 19:07:36 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 GEOMAN: IS A RETARD Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200604071907.36596.vapier@gentoo.org> X-Archives-Salt: 0d932215-c8c8-4c0f-8120-d1a098e1017a X-Archives-Hash: ce61f67c695f37e023a3a87659fe3d1a here's a big old brain dump of all the fun stuff that went down this year - the dual core amd64 demo machine was running XGL and some movies like FF7 Advent Children (due later this month in the US btw!) ... this was such a pimp demo, it caught everyone's attention ... and the best part was, opensuse was across from us with nothing to show but free hats ... so bad when we snipe their tech demos and get the credit ;x - quad g5 ppc64 running e17 and burning livecds for people on the fly (by far the i686/installer was the most popular but amd64 was pretty strong too ... we gave away prob like 8 ppc and 4 ppc64 cds) - laptop hooked up to a projector showing off the graphical installer (props by the way to the guys who write this thing ... the 2006.0 version is really quite damn mature) - lots of interest in kickstart-like features in our installer ... people want to throw install media into a fresh box, boot it, and come back later and have it be done/usuable - x86/amd64 usage was quite common - bunch of ppc/laptop guys that JoseJX was fixing bugs for :) - people were interested in expanding our Gentoo/binary package support ... basically, more up-to-date and more expanded GRP stuff - i got one guy with a room of ia64 workstations - chatted with another about s390/s390x - bunch of interest in Gentoo on arm based PDA's - random cross-compiling stuff with mips targets (embedded and SGI) - people wanted to buy shirts/hats ... they werent so interested in going online, they wanted to buy from us right then and there ... we had to explain that our NFP status is still in the air and we cant take the chance of screwing up - unisys' sound system caught on fire on the first day, it was pretty cool - amd64 marketting guys love us long time ... first they gave us amd lanyards to replace the intel ones, then they were redirecting people who had questions about gaming on linux and such to our booth :) - the i-hydra guys had this sick ass machine that they wanted us to install Gentoo on for demoing at LWE (chris can fill in these details cause he did it with the graphical installer) - people like Gentoo stickers - the information cards that cshields sent us were friggin awesome - devs need to make personal Gentoo business cards cause when people ask for *your* card, you look retarded when you say you have none (i know i felt retarded ;x) ... some just want a generic Gentoo business card and the ones we had were great, but when you get into real conversations, the guy wants to follow up later with *you* - in general, we had a pretty strong showing; in devs (i lub you all), in users, and in people who had heard of us but were interested in learing more or why we were "better" than say Ubuntu/Fedora/etc... (their words ... it's best imo if you take the approach of how our distro *differs* rather than falling into how we're "better" than others ... it's up to the user to figure out which distro is better *for them*) - the Debian booth was missing, quite sad :( - the KDE booth had a friggin Jacksons Chameleon ... he was so cool looking - we were invited to a convention O'Reilly hosts (forgot the name) - we were invited to a convention mysql hosts (forgot the name) - same general feeling as we've seen over time ... people mention they use Gentoo in corporate envs, but more hidden in the background and no real public acknowledgment that they do it ... mostly because we cant offer any sort of corporate support like RedHat/SuSE can - LWE this year had more business suite types that just "dont get" opensource ... so devs should be prepared to meet people and try to explain that we give away everything ... real open source does not involve free crippleware (like the cruel joke Oracle plays with their "express" version), we do this for fun, and we dont actually get paid to do this stuff ... but dont feel bad if you cant get the message through, some suits will never "get it" that's all i got, i'm sure the other guys that were there can chime in with their experiences (i almost got rajiv to ride piggy back ... maybe next year) -mike -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list