My CeBIT review
Good morning,
allthough CeBIT didn't ended yet, I'll send you now my review for the first
half, awaiting Grisu's one for the second:
prologue:
LinuxLand [1] sponsored this year some space at their own booth for us to
present Debian. Grisu did all the planing, so I can't tell you anything
about that. Allthough much of you offered help maning the booth, we decided,
to do a one man show, since we had only a small presentation table with one
computer and internet access.
I arrived the day before opening, and got impressed very fast. Neither I
have been at CeBIT nor in Hannover, but I like the international flair.
The computer of the demonstration point has been brought by the LL people,
too. I just needed to set up a propper Debian system. I decided to use the
stable release (You might remember AJ's warning [2], that things will break,
when libc6 moves to testing), and use and show apt-pinning, but I had some
problems with the graphics card. It was some kind of ATI 128 card, which was
not supported by stables XFree 4.1. I tried to run it with the vesa and the
framebuffer driver, but both times X crashed several times. Then I found
out, that sarge's XFree 4.2 would support this chipset with the ati driver,
and so I installed testings XFree. But this didn't solved the problem. I
realy thought the hardware has been broken while transporting it - I phoned
the guy who used this machine daily, but he didn't had a good idea, too.
Luckily I had my brother's notebook with me. The past events I used it for
Debian installation presentations, because it is very easy to install it.
If a visitor comes up, telling that he would like to use Debian, but heard
it would be so difficult to install, I set him in front of it, give him a CD
and guide him through the installation, telling him the possible traps and
why it is, like it is.
Since X kept on crashing, I got a little bit panic, and wrote a mail, that
it would be nice, to get a replacement machine, because I would travel home
on sunday and didn't want to leave Grisu just a systems, of which I thougth
it had hardware problems.
I left the area arround 9:00pm and the people of LL, Linux New Media [3]
(who organized much of CeBITs LinuxPark) and me went to a greek restaurant
with very fair prices (Haha), we talked much about different exhibitons, and
such stuff.
I arrived at my sleeping place soon before midnight. A nice former farm in a
suburb of Hannover, owned by the parents of the Debian fan Johrrit Fahlke.
Very nice to stay there, where it is silent and you can see the stars, when
you live in central Frankfurt.
Day 1:
Well, I was waked up by the farms cat greeting me ... with her claws ...
already at 6 o'clock. My hosts, teachers at a school near to the exhibition
area, took me there early, since I warnted to try a few ideas to get that
$@&!§ machine running, I even tried a Knoppix [4] generated configuration
for X, but it failed, too.
Andreas Tille arrived very early, and tried to fix the X11 problem, but he
didn't succeed, too, because the computer decided to run stable for himself.
Perhaps he just wanted to be touched by a real DD, not just a guy with to
much spare time and a self invented title ;)
He installed his debian-booth [5] pakage, too. It configures a nice
x-planets backgrounds and gives you some good configuration examples (e.g.
sudo).
I can't tell you how much visitors we had that day, I even can't estimate
their number. There were much, who heard of Linux before, but didn't know
anything about it. So I went to hall 11 (which is on the oppisite of the
area), where Klaus Knopper had his own cubicle at the common booth of the
district Rheinland-Pfalz. He was very busy, but I got some boxes of his
Knoppix, so we could give them to such people.
There were some visitors, who just want to tell us, how much they like
Debian. there was even a guy from Korea, who was a real fan. We discussed a
little bit about i18n, and he considered showing up again, when Grisu has
arrived. He realy wanted to help us, and so we thought, that he might start
a korean translation of the pakage descriptions [6].
Thomas Lange, the developer of FAI [7] and some other developers showed up,
and Thomas left some FAI flyers, and we talked a little bit about it, since
I try to <s>assimililate</s> convert the admins of our institute to Debian,
which is not easy: They use Red Hat, because they always used Red Hat.
Some other developers (Sorry, forgot your names) showed up, too, and LL gave
them nice Baseball-Caps [8] and mousepads [9] with our swirl for free. Even
a guy from SuSE arrived, and asked, if he might buy one :)
Of course we exchanged fingerprints, too. (Yes, I'm too lazy to take a look
at the fingerprints to remeber the lost names.)
Allthough our booth was in the corner of the hall, we had a good position.
Openened by two sides, much people crossed it going to hall 5 (or the
restrooms), and some got stopped by us. On the other side was the Linux
Forum, where some talks were held. So sometimes, if the talk was
interesting, we were idle (and able to take a look at the talk, too), while
we were very crowded after the talk ended. Luckily Adreas Tille stayed
nearly the full time at the booth, and we had much to do, and showed things
both of the computers we had. Some times it looked more more like a Debian
booth, hosting LinuxLand.
After 5pm the halls emptied very fast, so could talk a little bit with the
guys in the open booth. Free projects, which didn't had the luck of big
sponsorship, had the possibillitie to get a (part time) booth from LNM. So I
talked a little bit with the PHP-Guys, and took a small view at NetBSD.
I was very tired, so I left early. Later that evening I gave my hosts the
presents I brought with me: Ebblwoi (spoken applewoy) and a bembl, and we
discussed a little bit about this and that, mainly why there are guys doing
such good work, without getting payed in there free time. That was very
nice.
Day 2:
I sleeped a little bit too long, so I missed my train and didn't arrived in
time. Bad Luck, but the first half our happenend nothing.
A nice thing was the exhibitions supply service. They send girls which
sandwiches, drinks and coffee to the boothes (of course they are not cheap),
and you can get bigger thermos of coffee, too.
On this day Alexander "formorer" Wirt showed up, and stayed a while at the
booth with me as well as acting for Klaus Knopper, while Klaus had some
important dates. Again we where quite busy, but this time we didn't had the
oportunitie to listen tot he talks, too, but I heard that John "Maddog"
Halls keynote had some highlights, and that one guy from Ximian [10] hold a
nice talk, why Microsofts licence politics is working for Ximian.
Later that day, when it has become a little bit emptier, I did two or three
of the installation demonstrations.
After that I talked a little bit with the Gnome [11] people. They are quite
impressed of the Debian pakages of gnome, "which are very fast and stable
but a little bit outdated", so we had a good conversation while eating, and
they love Debian (one them weared a LL Debian T-Shirt [12]) and I like gnome
much.
Day 3:
Well, at this point I stopped writing my diary in the evening. I can't
remeber anything unusual at this day... Oh, wait! There is one funny thing
to tell: LinuxLand sells a boxed Debian version [13]. The boxes look very
nice. A student, who allready burned Debian, realy wanted such a nice box,
but could not afford buying one. LL gave much stuff away for addresses for
their newsletter (they are still a company and want to make money), so Franz
from LL made the joke, he could habe one, if he would gave them his address,
and I made the joke, I would get a donation, because you can read on the
box, that our project gets 2Eur. I don't know he understood, we where
joking, since he did both: He left his address and gave me 2Eur ;)
I remember, how the visitors changed on this friday. There where not just
businessman, but "normal" people and much students. Some has come, to get
their key signed by a developer because they considered becoming a DD. I
complicated the things a little bit, as I am not a DD (yet). But as far as I
can remeber, every time this happenend, I found a DD nerby.
Did I mention, that we had much questions, which were not debian specific?
Of course there were Knoppix-Related questions (I can't unmount my harddisk,
etc.), which were easy to answer. After answering them, I told them, that
the new version of Knoppix, comes with Selflinux [14] (Knopper made even a
shortcut on the desktop). So I had often Knoppix booted on the notebook,
showing it there, while showing the normal Debian related things there.
After the show, the LL and LNM guys and Max, the moderator of the
Linux-Forum, went to a nice american diner. They have nice looking female
waitresses, wearing short skirts... Oh, and the food is good, too ;)
We visited a pub nearby for some darts, and that took a long time, since
Franz didn't let us go, before he won against every one of us ;)
Day 4:
Did I mention, the good coffe supply? It was a gift on that morning!
Luckily we were to busy to get tired - it was sunday and much saturday and
students got in cheaper. Grisu has allready arrived, and Frank Ronneburg,
who wrote the german "Debian Anwender Handbuch" [15] arrived early, too. So
we had enough manpower to stand against all arriving visitors on that
saturday. On this day it _was_ a Debian booth, while LinuxLand had a small
table in our booth.
I think I installed Debian more than four times on this day, every time
explaining the same things, making the same jokes. That became a little bit
boring, but I don't think, our visitors became aware of it. My failure,
should have gone to sleep not that late.
Sometimes newbies (or even wannabe newbies) asked, which distribution they
should use, and I usaly pointed them to the LUGs. I showed them the
Pro-Linux List of LUGs [16] and told them, that it would be the best for
newcomers, to install, what their LUG is using. So they find a good
reference in their LUG if they encounter problems, and they don't waste
money, since they can get a copy from one of their LUG.
On that evening, we went to that american diner again (because of the milk
shakes, not the waitresses!) but it was a little bit difficult to find. The
day before that I took a flyer, and found out, that they don't list they
address on them (but show a waitress). Very strange marketing.
Day 5:
This was my last day, and since I my presence was not needed, I sleeped
long, and had the oportunitie to take breakfirst with my hosts, after
refused to do so the last days under time pressure. Again it was nice to
have a talk with them (this time mostly about politics, especialy of the
united states).
The rest of the fornoon I took a look at the exhibition myself. Of course I
couldn't stop being at work, and always asked, if I could by a computer
without os, and such things.
When I got through hall 11, and saw that Knopper's booth was quite empty, I
talked a little bit to him. I got a little bit confused, because he thought,
Heise, who payed the Knoppix CDs, would be pleased if we gave them away,
too. But before I could apologize, because I missunderstood him on the first
day, he gave me another box. So I don't think it can be that worse ;)
I went to our booth and stayed there till 4pm, showing two other Debian
installations, before I left for a small dinner (again in the short skirt -
hmpf - good shake diner) and went home.
On my way home the train had some techincal problems, and while sitting
together with other railway custumers I got another oportunitie for
improvised talks about Free Software in general an Linux particular. So I
gave away a big part of the Knoppix CDs I took, before even arriving at
home.
Last thing to mention: Donations. One guy wanted to get a quittance, so I
pointed him to the ffiis-site [17]. Beside the 2Eur I metioned above, I got
4Eur from other Visitors, 5Eur from the Gnome guy with the Debian Shirt (in
exchange for a 5Eur donation to the gnome project) and 50Eur from LinuxLand,
which I got for food, but didn't used at all.
Summa summarum: EUR 61.
Uh, well, I think thats all I have to say, so I wish Grisu a nice time in
Hannover.
Want we could make better next year:
- Having more FAI flyers.
- Having a faster machine at the demo point, most things went fine, but it
was to slow to show nice things like make-kpkg, zgrep Contens-i386.gz and
sucht hings.
- I met a fellow student, of whome I neither know, that he used Debian, nor
that he orginally comes from Hannover. So it will become easier to get a
accomodation.
- Don't write me Emails, if you need something from me! I didn't had a
chance to take a closer look at my Emails!
- Get an (nearly) anonymous Mailaccount. Some asked me to mail them a link I
showed them, which is a good Idea, but I'm not sure, if it was a good idea
to use my private one.
Links:
1: http://www.linuxland.de/
2: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/debian-devel-announce-200303/msg00006.html
3: http://www.linuxnewmedia.de/
4: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/
5: http://people.debian.org/~tille/xplanet-ltk/
6: http://ddtp.debian.org/
7: http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
8: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/21_fanartikel/debian_fanartikel/debiancap/framify
9: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/21_fanartikel/debian_fanartikel/debianmousepad/framify
10: http://www.ximian.de/
11: http://www.gnome-de.org/
12: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/21_fanartikel/debian_fanartikel/debianshirtxl/framify
13: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/01_linuxdistri_bs/debian/debian30/framify
14: http://www.selflinux.de/
15: http://www.openoffice.de/linux/buch/
16: http://www.pl-berichte.de/lugs/
17: http://www.ffis.de/Verein/spi-de.html
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