[gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

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
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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mark Loeser]

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Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> said:
> - 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

Yea, people loved the spinning cube.

> - 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)

It would probably be good to bring a crapload of livecds with us next
time, maybe the ones from cafepress so they look all cool?  And CD
sleeves/cases would be awesome so people don't have to just throw them
in their bag.

> - 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

A lot of people love the installer and said they have been looking
forward to it.  I was surprised how many people were into it.

> - 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*

Yea, I felt like an idiot too and will be making some for the next event
I go to.  Could someone send me that Gentoo business card template?

> - 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*)

No one really seems to know how we worked, and were surprised that we
are entirely volunteer based and don't get paid.  They seemed to respect
us even more once they heard about that.  The people that walked up to us
and just told us, "You guys rock!" were awesome too :)


Just my two cents, :)

-- 
Mark Loeser   -   Gentoo Developer (cpp gcc-porting qa toolchain x86)
email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
                  mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web           -   http://dev.gentoo.org/~halcy0n/
                  http://www.halcy0n.com

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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Roy Marples]

On Saturday 08 April 2006 00:07, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> - 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)

Meh, you just look retarded :P

> ... 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*

Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the cards 
should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the organiser 
could organise some cards?

FWIW, after 6 years at my present company I got my first ever box of business 
cards with my name on em. Wow. I didn't take them out  on company business 
because I hardly ever do, but the one time I did I looked a right tit for not 
having one!


>
> - 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*)

Shows our users are mor intelligent than most :)

> 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

Sounds like you had a blast! How about a nice writeup for GWN?

Thanks

-- 
Roy Marples <uberlord@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux Developer
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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Friday 07 April 2006 19:38, Mark Loeser wrote:
> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> said:
> > - 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)
>
> It would probably be good to bring a crapload of livecds with us next
> time, maybe the ones from cafepress so they look all cool?  And CD
> sleeves/cases would be awesome so people don't have to just throw them
> in their bag.

ideally we'd be able to use some of the donations to help fund this sort of 
thing ... otherwise, i'll just have to make sure i buy a spindle before LWE 
(reminds me, i need to get one now to replace the ones we used heh)
-mike
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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
> > ... 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*
>
> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
> organiser could organise some cards?

we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere

another thing for the events team to help collect in one place though
-mike
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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 07:07:36PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> - 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
The 'CLI' frontend I wrote ~9 months ago worked back then for completely
automated installs - just feed it URLs to your two profiles (client profile and
install profile) and come back later. Some wrapping is needed to
distribute the profiles nicely still (I netbooted to an env with GLI).
(Disclaimer: I changed employment, and haven't personally used it for ~8
months now).

> - we were invited to a convention mysql hosts (forgot the name)
MySQLUC perhaps?
I'll be there representing phpMyAdmin.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Lance Albertson]

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Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
>>> ... 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*
>> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
>> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
>> organiser could organise some cards?
> 
> we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere

I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).

[1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net


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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Greg KH]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
> >>> ... 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*
> >> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
> >> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
> >> organiser could organise some cards?
> > 
> > we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere
> 
> I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
> Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).
> 
> [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg

Looks great, I was just looking for this today after seeing brix's card.
Did you print out the cards yourself or have a company do it for you?

thanks,

greg k-h
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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Lance Albertson]

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Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
>> Mike Frysinger wrote:
>>> On Friday 07 April 2006 19:39, Roy Marples wrote:
>>>>> ... 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*
>>>> Quite an important point, but to have that fuzzy corporate feel then the
>>>> cards should look the same across the Gentoo devs at the event. Maybe the
>>>> organiser could organise some cards?
>>> we have a template already ... it's floating around somewhere
>> I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
>> Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).
>>
>> [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg
> 
> Looks great, I was just looking for this today after seeing brix's card.
> Did you print out the cards yourself or have a company do it for you?

I went to staples to got it on cheap card stock. I created a PDF, handed
them a thumbdrive and they opened it up. The only thing is, the size of
it may be a little off. And make sure you embed the font :)

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

---
GPG Public Key:  <http://www.ramereth.net/lance.asc>
Key fingerprint: 0423 92F3 544A 1282 5AB1  4D07 416F A15D 27F4 B742

ramereth/irc.freenode.net


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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Mike Frysinger]

On Saturday 08 April 2006 00:36, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Lance Albertson wrote:
> > I used this [1] for the last LWE I went to. Its an OO2 drawing file.
> > Edit to your liking (I took out my real numbers).
> >
> > [1] http://dev.gentoo.org/~ramereth/misc/gentoo-buscard2.odg
>
> Looks great, I was just looking for this today after seeing brix's card.
> Did you print out the cards yourself or have a company do it for you?

one suggestion i got was to go to like staples and buy the avery business card 
pages ... OOo.org generally has templates for avery products and if they 
dont, you can usually download them

of course, the quality then depends on your printer ...
-mike
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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Mike Frysinger wrote:
> - we were invited to a convention O'Reilly hosts (forgot the name)

OSCON, and it's really quite good dev/suit ratio. I was there last year,
along with Corey and some other OSL people. I'd like to get a booth if
we can have enough people to staff it.

Thanks,
Donnie


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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Rajiv Aaron Manglani]

> 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)

key word is _almost_ ...

several (but unfortunately not all) of the devs verified gpg key  
fingerprints. those of you who did should now sign keys. <http:// 
dev.gentoo.org/~rajiv/LWE2006Boston/> has instructions.


wolf31o2 and i also had an interesting conversation with david shaw  
of the gpg project. apparently gpg 1.4.3 has a some new features to  
automatically pull public keys from an ldap server or a dns zone  
based on a uid. this might solve the problem of how to distribute  
devs' public keys with portage and manifest signing. if we setup a  
publicly accessible ldap server with the proper schema at ldap:// 
keys.gentoo.org/ then properly configured gpg setups will  
automatically download keys as needed.

here is the relevant note from the gnupg 1.4.3 announce email:

>     * New auto-key-locate option that takes an ordered list of methods
>       to locate a key if it is not available at encryption time (-r or
>       --recipient).  Possible methods include "cert" (use DNS CERT as
>       per RFC2538bis, "pka" (use DNS PKA), "ldap" (consult the LDAP
>       server for the domain in question), "keyserver" (use the
>       currently defined keyserver), as well as arbitrary keyserver
>       URIs that will be contacted for the key.
>
>     * Able to retrieve keys using DNS CERT records as per RFC-2538bis
>       (currently in draft): http://www.josefsson.org/rfc2538bis

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Re: [gentoo-dev] LWE/Boston 2006 summary

[Joseph Jezak]

My 2 cents from LWE:

It was really nice to see the huge turnout of Gentoo devs, we had one of 
the more busy booths and it's a testament to our community that so many 
of us were there. Besides that, O'Reilly rocks, the guys from Slashdot 
really do sit around and play XBox 360 all of the time, and Mike is 
exactly the same as on IRC. :)

-Joe
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