LUG Strasbourg: La Rentrée du Libre

When the idea of La Journée du Libre (3 days linux/open source event) was dropped in June 2006 due to lack of sponsors, the LUG of Strasbourg scheduled La Rentrée du Libre last saturday. Yann Klis was the man in charge, and deserves all the credits.
Who had a booth ?
* Fedora
* Kubuntu
* XGL and compiz
* Debian
* PostgreSQLFr
* IsaacOS
* Musique en Python
* Strasbourg sans-fils
* VOIP
* Bureau Cornavin
* Calaos
* goodies/snacks

Friday Night (18:46-19:43): Fedora Booth preparation
That friday was pretty loaded for me, 0800 to 1200 lecture and 1400 to 1800 Practical Class in PIC16F877. Poor Mirjam was already in Strasbourg waiting for me to finish and head to Illkirch. Mirjam had a kubuntu booth with a superb banner.

Her booth was next to mine (fedora). Everyone had his/her respective booth setup before the alarm strucked its microcode :)
Saturday Morning: No Internet connection on our booths
Only commercial booths had an internet connection in the morning. Our booths was far from them and the only solution was the WI-FI, which none of use had. .org Booths were affected: Fedora, Kubuntu, Debian, PostgreSQLFr.

As usual, Marc did his best to provide the necessary accessories. I got a 50m RJ45 wire from him :)
This is Marc:

So here I am, hanging wires :)

On my schedule (what I talked about):
- OLPC - fedora's contribution, with some photos
- Fedora Core 6 'zod'
- Fedora's contribution to the FOSS ECO system, e.g. Aiglx, gcc, gnome, glic
- distribution of Fedora Core 5 dvds which were left
- sale of Fedora Core 6 dvds (burned at the booth) for 1€
- distribution of Fedora Core 6 handouts in french

I met a lot of people who are using Fedora Core for different reasons:
- can't live without system-config-*
- fedora's french translation is better to them
- cutting edge philosophy
- fedora has always worked for them
- had linux introduction on fedora core and will stick with it
- their children installed fedora core for them

I'll bullet point what people said to me about fedora core during that day:
- I would recommend fedora as the second distro which has a well-maintained KDE (kubuntu, the first)
- when fedora will think about upgrading versions with yum instead of anaconda, hence no need to download the cds to upgrade
- on x86_64 (fc6), yum is installing the i?86 rpms as well

I've gathered a small list to answer MaxSpevack's post "Are you using Fedora in a production or live environment?"
- 7 machines on fedora at a home
- making commercial linux games on fedora
- An accountant using fedora at work, where he had an introduction to linux on fedora. At home the whole family has fedora core 5
- lecturer promoting fedora at university since fedora extras got gEDA, ktechlab, pikdev, gpasm! Since fedora is quick to have those uptodate. (I need to update gEDA apps this week :p)

Photos by Frédéric Boehler
I've missed all the conferences since I was at the booth. See Frédéric Boehler's post for more details (in french) with photos and audios.

I don't know why, but everytime someone has to take a picture of me and ThomasLinard :)
- I don't want to take over the presidency lol:)
- I'm not his vice president lol

In the end, we had to clean and pack up our stuffs as you can see

Saturday Night: The (minus) 5 class restaurant
We ended the Rentrée du Libre badly in a restaurant (I won't advise anyone to go there). We've spent 3 hours to receive our order. That's hilarious! The waitress was so lame!

Thanks everyone who came and BIG thanks to those who participated during this event.