Ontario Linux Fest
Oct. 14th, 2007 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lordshipmayhemSo Friday to yesterday was the Ontario Linux Fest.
Friday: Cocktail hour, sponsored by a company that provides training and support for companies and people that want to do their own websites, but lack the skills. At this event, ("We're not worthy!! We're not worthy!!") I got to shake the hand and chat with the legendary Free/Open Source software guru John "maddog" Hall. ("We're not worthy!! We're not worthy!!") He was gracious, articulate, intelligent, and I may never wash that hand again...
Oh, and Linux babes!!! Kawaii!!! There were many female Linux enthusiasts there (ranging from cute to lovely), although the ratio of male to female (subject of a panel discussion, btw) was still remniscient of the ratio of otaku to otome in the early days of North American anime fandom.
The crowd was nowhere near Anime North crowds: about 350 pre-registered, and I'd guesstimate another 50 or 60 showed up at the door.
I got a ton of stuff there: three pens, pamphlets galore, a live disk of the current release of Fedora (with the next version coming out in less than a month...), some Free Software stickers (including a "biohazard" style anti-DRM sticker) and a free mug. The Research in Motion display was especially generous, giving away brushed-aluminum pens: they weren't there to sell the Crackberry quite so much as they had four jobs on offer for Linux types.
Most fun item: Devil's horns. The little devil is freeBSD's mascot, so the *bsd booth was giving away a set of devil's horns with flashing LED lights in them. It was funny watching the damn things all over the place: on a Tux plushie, for example, or on the head of maddog. With his paunch and fluffy white beard, he looks too much like Santa Claus to make it look anything other than the Juxtaposition of the Incongruous.
Prizes: I won a book, The Official Damn Small Linux Guide, complete with a CD-ROM with DSL and a ton of ancilliary software. Damn Small lives up to its name: it is amazing to see a 486DX listed as "minimal hardware requirements" (although they recommend at least a first-gen Pentium...). At 50 megs, the distribution fits on a business card sized CD.
Friday: Cocktail hour, sponsored by a company that provides training and support for companies and people that want to do their own websites, but lack the skills. At this event, ("We're not worthy!! We're not worthy!!") I got to shake the hand and chat with the legendary Free/Open Source software guru John "maddog" Hall. ("We're not worthy!! We're not worthy!!") He was gracious, articulate, intelligent, and I may never wash that hand again...
Oh, and Linux babes!!! Kawaii!!! There were many female Linux enthusiasts there (ranging from cute to lovely), although the ratio of male to female (subject of a panel discussion, btw) was still remniscient of the ratio of otaku to otome in the early days of North American anime fandom.
The crowd was nowhere near Anime North crowds: about 350 pre-registered, and I'd guesstimate another 50 or 60 showed up at the door.
I got a ton of stuff there: three pens, pamphlets galore, a live disk of the current release of Fedora (with the next version coming out in less than a month...), some Free Software stickers (including a "biohazard" style anti-DRM sticker) and a free mug. The Research in Motion display was especially generous, giving away brushed-aluminum pens: they weren't there to sell the Crackberry quite so much as they had four jobs on offer for Linux types.
Most fun item: Devil's horns. The little devil is freeBSD's mascot, so the *bsd booth was giving away a set of devil's horns with flashing LED lights in them. It was funny watching the damn things all over the place: on a Tux plushie, for example, or on the head of maddog. With his paunch and fluffy white beard, he looks too much like Santa Claus to make it look anything other than the Juxtaposition of the Incongruous.
Prizes: I won a book, The Official Damn Small Linux Guide, complete with a CD-ROM with DSL and a ton of ancilliary software. Damn Small lives up to its name: it is amazing to see a 486DX listed as "minimal hardware requirements" (although they recommend at least a first-gen Pentium...). At 50 megs, the distribution fits on a business card sized CD.
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Date: 2007-10-14 06:59 pm (UTC)