openSUSE at LinuxCon

20. Nov 2012 | Jos Poortvliet | No License

Two weeks ago, openSUSE Ambassadors Ilias and Diomidis joined the SUSE crew at LinuxCon in Barcelona, Spain, to represent the Geeko to the visitors of this conference. As most ambassadors do, they wrote an excellent report about the event which we didn’t want you all to miss. To give you a taste of the event, Ilias send the report with the following comment: “it was an amazing experience for me and Diomidis.” Read on for more details!

[caption id=”attachment_14594” align=”alignright” width=”300”] Booth after setting it up (with us in it)[/caption]

Introduction

The openSUSE Project participated at LinuxCon Europe 2012 (05-08 Nov 2012), sharing booth space with SUSE. Two ambassadors (Zoumpis,Diomidis] were there to represent the openSUSE Community during the conference. Let’s see what happened there!

Pre conference Day

On Sunday evening we made our first visit at the Linuxcon Venue. Our first mission was to visit the registration desk and get our ID’s and T-Shirts, then we went to the co-hosted (SUSE/openSUSE) booth and started to unpack the SUSE goodies. Allan Clark, who organized the SUSE attendance at the event, also joined us to help with the booth setup.

First day

Our day started early, at 7.30 am. We went directly to Hotel Fira Palace, where the LinuxCon was hosted and we prepared the booth. We attended the morning keynotes: Advancing the User Experience by Mark Suttleworth and Why Evernote runs their own Linux servers instead of “The Cloud” by Dave Engberg.

We didn’t attend more presentations than the above because we had to be at the booth. At the booth our main job was to welcome, assist and help the visitors. Also we had the biggest promo staff give away on Monday. openSUSE dvd’s, hats, stickers, lighters, openSUSE Community flyers and USB sticks. Finally we had a contest for winning 4 SUSE laptop bags and the draw took place on Wednesday.

Feedback

The feedback we got from the conference attendees was very good and friendly about the openSUSE distro and community of course. The common questions that people had were:

Which is the difference between SUSE and openSUSE
What software and features does include the openSUSE 12.2 Promo DVD
Does openSUSE 12.2 support ARM architecture
Asking if the promo stuff was free.

Furthermore we got very good and promising feedback about the Open Build Service (OBS). We also went to a few presentations: Open Source Community Metrics : Tips and Techniques for Measuring Participation by Down Foster (Puppet Labs) and The Giant IT Vending Machineby Daniel Roberts Ridruejo (BitNami)

[caption id=”attachment_14595” align=”alignright” width=”300”] Ralf Flaxa, SUSE’s VP of engineering talks at LinuxCon[/caption]

Second day

As we spent the full first day at the booth, it was the right moment to attend more presentations: this time we took turns staffing the booth. The day begun as the previous one by attending the keynotes, like Open Source Cloud Platforms by Marten Mickos [CEO,Eucalyptus Systems] and Importance of Linux at Intel by Imad Sousou [OTC,Intel]. As the openSUSE Release Party was about to take place we informed people about it.

After the day at the conference was over, we went to the party organized by Zoumpis and a Spanish friend, Fran L. Murcia. Many people from the local KDE community attended at the party but people from the Conference as well (Alan Clark, SUSE Employees, HP employees, Director of Spanish-spoken Linux Magazine). Furthermore some other people who read the party announcement were there. In total we had about 15 people talking about the openSUSE 12.2 release and its features, openSUSE in general and of course we had fun.

he first day we (me and Diomidis) were at the openSUSE booth , but we attended the Keynotes as well. The other days we did take turns. We assisted the openSUSE booth and attendedpresentations as well. The SUSE booth was asisted only by Alan Clark and SUSE employees. The stuff we had was, openSUSE Promo DVD’s, the new openSUSE leaflets, SUSE hats, usb sticks, openSUSE flashlights.

This time, we went to way more presentations, of course.

[caption id=”attachment_14596” align=”alignright” width=”300”] Meeting famous people (yes, that is Linus)[/caption]

Day Three

The day started with Linus Torvarlds interview, no need for introduction! Many questions were made, many of them were about on how Linus sees the future of Linux, what features the next kernel will have and of course there was a discussion about embedded arm devices. Again, we attended presentations as well and talked to many people at the booth.

At the end of the second day of the conference it was time to deconstruct the booth and do the raffle for the SUSE bags. Four laptop bags were given away.

Fourth day

As there was no booth we were free to attend any of the presentations that were taking place. So we chose to attend the Gluster Workshop and Yocto Project Developer Day .

Conclusion

Now we have so many things to share, many good memories and so much enthusiasm to pass to you openSUSE community people. But let’s keep it short: LinuxCon is one of the best experiences that a Linux fan/developer/user etc can get. Motivational speeches, enthusiastic people talking about open software and hardware, workshops from top-tier developers around the world, literally EVERYTHING about Linux and it’s derivatives. Embedded devices and yocto were probably most visible. All we can say its that going to LinuxCon was a dream that became true for us!!