Utah Open Source Planet

The Fedora 10 InstallFest/Release Party will be held December 6, 2008.

Fedora Linux 10 has been released. Therefore, a release party is now in order!

Date: Dec 6th, 2008
Time: 6pm-8pm
Place: Bill Good Marketing
Address: 12393 Gateway Park Place, Suite 600, Draper, Utah 84020 - Map

Bring your machines for the installfest. There will also be a USB Creation Station.  Food and drink will be provided.  Come and enjoy yourself.

Hope this party is a blast and we look forward to lots of pictures.

Fedora 10 was released 25 November (earlier this week), a mere six months after Fedora 9 made its debut. The Fedora community has been hard at work improving the distribution which is the descendant of Fedora Core and Red Hat Linux.

Looking over the release notes, it's obvious a lot of changes have been in the works. To name a few:

• A new graphical boot system named Plymoth displays a simple, but effective boot progress screen that leaves old-school hackers like me feeling left out on the details.
• PulseAudio has been rewritten to be "glitch-free." Makes you wonder why they didn't think of that in the first place. Having played (tried to play) Quake III with Fedora 9, I sincerely hope the experience under Fedora 10 is indeed, glitch-free.
• As a KDE user, I am excited to see a more improved KDE4 platform. The kdepim package has been upgraded to 4.x so I hope to be enjoying a new kontact experience.
• There's a new desktop alternative called LXDE. I'll have to try that out. It's a lightweight desktop which makes it perfect for those VNC sessions that come in handy from time to time.
• My kids are already enjoying the new, improved versions of Extreme Tux Racer, Super Tux Kart, and other Fedora-bundled games.

But, unfortunately, I suck

About six weeks ago, I got involved with the Fedora Documentation Project with the aim of making a contribution to my prefered Linux distribution. After a handful of false-starts, I never did get acclimated to the contribution process, which involves learning about git (distributed version control), Fedora's docbook XML, the documentation project trac system, and Fedora's wiki-based stuff. I probably got about 80% through the process of learning how it all works but never got over the hump and actually started doing it.

My goal is to do that and be an active contributor for Fedora 11 and beyond. At the same time, I hope the documentation project leaders make an effort to decrease the "pain of entry" for those who may have lots to contribute but lack the experience working with the required tools.

Installing Fedora 10

I've installed Fedora 10 on four systems so far: three desktops and a laptop. On two of those, I did a network install by burning a bootable CD with the images/boot.iso image provided on the DVD.

One thing I noticed that is different doing network installs with Fedora 10 is that the network source can't just be a path to the ISO file. Instead, it needs to be the "exploded" ISO file directory structure. That's a little inconvenient as I don't like having to store the ISO and its exploded filesystem on my server resulting in about 9GB of used space instead of the normal 4.5GB.

Anaconda, the Fedora installer, has seen some subtle changes over the last couple of releases. One significant change is that the installer writes partition changes and formats filesystems much earlier in the installation process instead of waiting until package selection is finished.

Another change is the introduction of encrypted filesystem options. I haven't played with that yet.

One thing that is glaringly absent from Fedora 10 is the images/diskboot.img file which I have used in the past to create small bootable installation media using a USB flash drive.

It seems there is a way to do it still but you have to download a Live CD image (about 700MB) and use some commands to turn the Live CD ISO image into a bootable image you can write to a USB drive. There's lots of room for improvement here!

The systems I've installed on are as follows:

• HP desktop, Intel P4 2.8Ghz, 512MB RAM, integrate i82865G graphics, 160GB SATA drive
• Generic desktop, AMD Athlon 64 3800+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6150LE integrated graphics, 80GB drive
• Generic desktop, AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1.3GB RAM, GeForce FX 5500 video, 2x 80GB drives
• Dell Latitude D830N laptop, 2.6Ghz Core-Duo, 2GB RAM, NVidia Quadro graphics, 160GB SATA

Running Fedora 10

The only real problem I've encountered is on the HP desktop with games that required OpenGL accelerated graphics. Those games worked well on Fedora 8, but do not run accelerated on Fedora 10. Running glxinfo indicates direct rendering support is enabled, so I'm not sure what I need to do to get it working. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear them. Plus, my kids will enjoy playing SuperTuxKart on that computer again.

One thing that fedora really has over ubuntu, by leaps and bounds, is artwork. Each release has a contest and all the entries are great. The artwork is awesome. I use fedora backgrounds in ubuntu because it is so much better.

So that makes me wonder, is that because ubuntu doesn't have a contest or because fedora folks are just better at art?

Recently, I announced a Fedora 10 release party here on my blog,  It turns out, that not only will it be a release party, with (hopefully) physical and electronic media available, but it will also be an installfest!!

SO BRING YOUR MACHINES AND GET THEM INSTALLED!

Victor Villa of the Utah PHP User Group (UPHPU) and a Utah Open Source Core Team Leader has offered his work as the location for the event.  It’s large, easy to find and best of all, centrally located in Draper, Utah.

We’ll have food, fun and probably even some prizes.  We’re working out the minor details but come on down and enjoy an evening of reverie with your Fedora friends!

Time to Fire It Up!

Clicking on the above poster will show the address and other details.

Here they are in print:

See you all there.

Cheers,

Herlo

Get yours today.

Fedora 10 - Released

Available at mirrors everywhere.  Also via bittorrent ? and jigdo ?.

Freedom, Friends, Features, First!  That’s Fedora!

• Take the Tour
• Read the Release Notes
• Digg it

Cheers,

Herlo

Recently, I’ve been plagued with trying to come up with an organizational model for the Utah Open Source Foundation and it’s relationship to the Utah Open Source Conference.  This is in addition to the new Non-Profit structure we’re building.

To that end, I created a very shabby hierarchical structure which I passed around a week ago at the Core Team after conference dinner.  It went over okay, but people had a lot of questions about how the structure was organized and what not.

Organizing My Thoughts is Hard!

I didn’t know what exactly to do.  As it is, I’ve never been an integral part of an organization before like this one.  Nor have I ever created organizational charts that were very well done.  I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon.  But, something amazing did happen in the span between last Friday and today, that was VYM, or View Your Mind.

When a “Mind Map” was first suggested to me by my buddy Doran Barton, I thought “well, I’ll look into that later”.  However, the more I kept trying to cram jobs into places they didn’t go, the more I got frustrated that there wasn’t a good application to accommodate the structure I was trying to build.

VYM is an application that helps get your thoughts out onto a structure.  It lets you move it around quickly and easily and even associate pictures and notes where applicable.  The problem for me was understanding how to use VYM in an environment I already knew and UTOS was not the right place!

The Fedora Project “Mind Map”

It turns out that a lot of people always wonder how the Fedora Project is structured, where the pieces go and who, what, where and how the project is put together.  Because I could at least see all the pieces, I decided that would be a good place to start.  While it’s not complete by any means, I present to you the Fedora Project VYM “Mind Map”.  From VYM, one can create pdf, png and other output sources, so I created a pdf as well

Contribute!

I’d like to see the Fedora Community take this up and add many pieces to it as it grows and builds into something more than I could make.  It’s fairly simple to add pieces as well.  You can create separate maps which can be integrated into the larger map.  Or, since the format is a zip file (essentially) with an xml definition file, I believe patches could work.

Cheers,

Herlo

So, I ran into an interesting issue two days ago, and it makes me wonder if the ubuntu installer is in fact broken.

Many of you know that a moved back to ubuntu after a two month stint with fedora. I kept my same home folder to keep preferences and such. So, I was a little surprised when I went to go and change some user preferences with the gui tool and my user wasn't there, didn't exist. What happened? Well it seems that as the ubuntu installer made my user it didn't change permissions on my home folder to my new user of will with a uid of 1000, but kept my old user of will with a uid of 500. This caused some kind of hang up and the only thing that I could think to do was to backup and reinstall.

So, what I would expect is what both fedora and Opensuse do. They ask you, "hey, there is already a home folder by that name, should we change the permissions so it is yours?"

In just under 3 hours, I’ll be giving my presentation on SELinux Basics.  There are many other great presentations today as well.  The schedule is available at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/IRC/Classroom

Come by #fedora-classroom irc channel (on irc.freenode.net) today at 20:00 UTC (3:00pm EST for the timezone challenged)

Cheers,

Herlo

As of this afternoon, between myself and Steven Moix, it appears that almost all of the Fedora 10 Tour will be ready for the upcoming release.  Check it out for yourself, we’re only missing the release summary which should be written very soon.

Also, I should note that the countdown has already started:

Also, F10 Preview came out yesterday during the election so nobody probably noticed.  Get yours today!

Cheers,

Herlo

Obviously, my distro is Fedora, but for those of you who might choose something else, let’s play along.

This meme comes from Valent Turkovic’s blog post a few days ago, so I thought I’d share mine.

$ su -c 'yum install nautilus-open-terminal'

This enables me to right click on the desktop and click ‘Open in Terminal’. This is much better than choosing ‘Applications -> System Tools -> Terminal’, which in my opinion is a big pain in the ass!

While it used to open in the user’s home directory, now it opens in their Desktop.  Not sure of the benefit for that, but I’m glad it’s still around.

Cheers,

Herlo

Want to learn a new tool within Fedora?  Interested in getting a better hold on your skillset?  Want to share with others something you’ve learned?  Let us know at the newly formed Fedora Classroom.

As part of the marketing team meeting this week, Kevin Fenzi brought up the Fedora-Classroom.  While #fedora serves a good purpose of troubleshooting, there’s more people can learn with some IRC tutorials.

I will be doing the first session on SELinux Basics, and there are other topics to fit those from beginner to advanced Fedora user.

From the email to the fedora-list:

I’m happy to announce that next weekend we will be opening up the #fedora-classroom irc channel (on irc.freenode.net) for some classroom sessions.

These sessions are intended to be short (30min to an hour) sessions on the IRC network where you can learn about a specific Fedora related topic.

Please see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/IRC/Classroom to look at what topics will offered next week, what times they will be offered, suggest topics or sign up to teach a session yourself!

Hope to see lots of folks there.

Cheers,

Herlo

With some left over funds from the Fedora booth at UTOSC, I created the first Ambassador EventBox.  Not that there wasn’t an event box before, but it wasn’t formal and was pretty trashed as a cardboard box moving from place to place would.

It turns out to be a smash hit in North America.  After only visiting 3 events so far, the EventBox is getting all sorts of publicity.  In fact, there’s a serious plan in place to purchase Pelican boxes and get more EventBoxen ready for the coming onslaught of events in 2009.

I also hope the EMEA Ambassadors will also like to follow suit with an EventBox of their own.  It would be really neat to see it in place throughout the world very soon.  The system works pretty well and provides all of the tools necessary to make a Fedora Booth look professional very quickly and easily.

To make this more of a reality, I’ve modified several pages on the wiki to make it easy to request an EventBox (in North America for now) as well as tracking the EventBox.  We’d also like to hear what you liked and disliked about the EventBox as it comes to your event.  Below is a list of pages regarding the wiki and their purpose:

• Ambassadors/EventBox - The main EventBox page, inspired by the GNOME Foundation.
• FedoraEvents#North_America_Q4 - Request your EventBox for Q4 in North America.
• Ambassadors/EventBox/NA/West - A list of the static contents of the EventBox.  This doesn’t include Media or T-shirts, although they may be inside.
• Ambassadors/EventBox/Details - The travel history of the EventBoxen.  Currently, only the box from the West exists.

Cheers,

Herlo

Back in July, I built gnome-do from scratch, identifying and helping get a few bugs worked out along the way.  It was all in an effort to create a screencast on the future version of gnome-do for Fedora 10.  Gnome-do appears to be based upon Quicksilver from Mac, but gnome-do is bound to surpass it quickly.

This functionality is available in the rawhide repository for those daring enough to try it, but since it requires Mono, it may require upgrades of other applications, like banshee, f-spot, tomboy and others.

WARNING: If you are not comfortable with beta software, wait for this to come out in Fedora 10.

Gnome-do is a great little app to help those who really wish to use more discrete movements but like full-fledged desktops in a graphical user interface (GUI).  Gnome-do is definitely going somewhere in v0.5 and has some really cool plugins.  Now I need to learn how to write plugins…

I really enjoyed doing this screencast, and beware it’s 25MB.

Click me to see the screencast

Cheers,

Herlo

If you haven’t heard, Fedora now has a VOIP (Voice Over IP) server called Fedora Talk.  Information about it can be found at talk.fedoraproject.org.

Essentially, the goal of Fedora Talk is to make it easier for use Fedorans to talk with one another, hold conference calls and accommodate impromptu conversations that need to happen over voice.  A few of the features is that it’s tied into FAS (the Fedora Account System) and authentication uses a password different than your FAS password, which is very nice.

So tonight, I was interested in getting this working because recently I was given a VOIP phone from the Fedora Project and wanted to use it soon.  However, I’m currently in Denver, and the phone was in Salt Lake.  That means it will have to wait for this weekend at least.

But all is NOT lost!!!

I decided to spend a bit of time helping get this great idea off the ground by creating a screencast to configure your machine to use Fedora Talk with Twinkle.  It took me only about 20 minutes to create and only two takes.  It’s fairly easy to set up as my screencast shows.

There are some restrictions I wish to share, mainly because didn’t mention them in the video.

• You must have a computer with a microphone and speakers.
• I recommend you purchase a $5 mic from radio shack, it makes the quality of your voice so much better.
• Headphones work well also.instead of speakers, keeps the feedback down.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the screencast and join the Fedora Project.

Cheers,

Herlo

Well, after staying up until around 4am hacking (2am with David and Cade), I finally finished my presentations slides and went to sleep for a measly 3hrs 45mins.  But that was enough to get me through the rest of the day.  And what a day it was!

When I arrived downstairs just after 8am, people were setting up for FAD NA.  Jeffrey Tadlock had arrived and was loading the food in from the car.  Bagels, donuts, fruit, coffee and orange juice.  Nice array of foodstuffs for the morning.

My presentation went pretty well, we had fun with it and I really enjoyed the gag about the Ambassador Class Starship.  Unfortunately, I forgot to grab the vga cable for my projector so we couldn’t use it but I did have pdfs of the slides online.

I brought up a lot of thoughts about how we should be ambassadors, how we should act and especially how important it is that we represent ourselves well to the community.  I talked a bit about the message we should spread and ways we can represent Fedora to the community.  I think it was well received by the ambassadors and I hope it made a good impression.

The rest of the day was very well focused, we made some serious progress in areas I wanted to see the progress as well as things I hadn’t even considered.  Pascal was gracious enough to take notes and place them online already.  I learned a ton about how FAmSCo works and what we need to do as ambassadors to make sure they will provide us with the tools we need to spread the word about Fedora.

After a good long day, we cleaned up (most of us anyway) around 2pm and started heading out, though my flight wasn’t until almost 8pm.  Brian Pepple, Jon Stanley and I headed to a coffee shop after dropping John Rose off at the airport and me shipping my projector and phone home.  It was a nice relaxing conversation.

UPDATE: Pictures are being uploaded as we speak to my flickr account

Well, the incrementing continues and we’re closing in on the end of our time in Ohio.  I’ve really enjoyed the conference so far and the Fedora Ambassadors are awesome!  13 of us showed up to the booth (pictures coming later) and we interacted with hundreds upon hundreds of interested folks.

As usual, the biggest hit was the One Laptop per Child (OLPC).  The kids would show up (and many adults) and play for some time.  I really enjoyed showing the kids the cool activities and items on these awesome computers.  I’m really looking forward to the updates coming out in the next update!  The kids loved the camera and voice wave activities and the adults really liked the idea of kids learning to program and do amazing things.

A good friend of mine John Weis, who lives in Columbus was at OLF too and so we met up and hung out a bit at the conference.  Still working on converting him over to Fedora, but at least he’s using Linux.

As for others, we had a run on shirts around noon, I think I gave out about 15 in a span of 10 minutes.  The rule was that they had to put them on right then so people could see the fedora on their person!  It was great fun and we have some fun pictures, which I’ll post with tomorrow’s updates.

At the end of the day, I had attended 3 presentations.  The teenage girl who uses open source, one on alsa, and the closing keynote by Jono Bacon.  I, unfortunately, missed Zonker’s presentation, I hear it was just like the one at UTOSC :)  Good stuff!

We headed out to dinner at this greek restaurant where I was able to enjoy some ‘Flaming Cheese!’  Quite a good restaurant.  Grape leaves are good as well, and I got to mock John Weis with some draft NewCastle ale (since he’s only 20) which was also quite good.

After dinner, we returned to the convention center for the after party.  We had a good time and I did the moonwalk to represent Fedora during the dance competition.  I’m pretty reserved though compared to the other distro dance representatives who shook their butts and removed clothing!  After the first round, I bowed out, but it was funny…

Apparently, there as an after after and an after after after party as well.  I heard rumors of bottles being broken and a fight that almost happened.  Hopefully nothing came out of it as it was great conference and I really enjoyed myself.  Fedora was well represented as well and I look forward to seeing another OLF in the future.

Tomorrow is FAD NA and I need to rewrite my slides again (now that I’ve the thoughts more organized in my head), and I’m really looking forward to working with these guys on some really cool projects coming up.

Cheers,

Herlo

I arrived last around 5:30 at the Columbus airport.  Scott Williams (aka vwbusguy) was on his way, but would be another hour, so I sat down and worked on my presentation for FADNA.  Seems my training skills paid off as CMH had a fairly empty set of gates and I could practice my presentation to an empty room.  My presentation does need a bit of polishing, and probably a couple more slides, but all in all the content is there.

After Scott picked me up, we headed over to downtown Columbus.  I noticed the skyline immediately as we headed into town.  It’s kind of surreal when the art you’ve created is part of what you’ve never seen before.  Columbus is a very nice town.

Once we arrived downtown, we met up with the rest of the Fedora Ambassadors for drinks and dinner, it was great to meet Brian Pepple, Brian Powell, John Rose and Jeffrey Tadlock.  Of course, there were others I had already met before including John Stanley and Paul Frields, great fun.

After dinner, OLF had a Pre-Party bash downstairs and the first drink was free (if you purchased the supporter package).  We decided it a good idea to enjoy another beer and headed down there.  We met quite a few people downstairs, talked Fedora, guns, politics; pretty much anything you wanted was discussed.

Had a great time.  We left fairly early since the conference starts at 8am today.  Off to get breakfast now..

Cheers,

Herlo

In last night’s FAmNA meeting, we discussed the fact that nobody had remembered to register to help at the Fedora booth at OLF.  David brought it up and within a few minutes we had most of the spots filled.

As an event organizer, I understand the importance of having a booth manned at all times.  If you have a moment, head on over to the OLF Planning page on the wiki and add your name to a slot.  We could use at least 2-3 people in every spot.

There will be a ‘USB Creation Station’ there run by my little 7″ ASUS EEE PC as well as some XO laptops and other cool swag like stickers, t-shirts and buttons (thanks John).

Thanks to Jeffrey Tadlock for heading up the organization and it will be great to see him at FADNA on Sunday as well.  It will be great to meet all the gang and put faces to names.  Don’t forget to bring your camera!!

Cheers,

Herlo

Get your name on the list for the Fedora Ambassador Day - North America, October 10-12, 2008.  It’s coming in just 2-1/2 weeks in Columbus, Ohio while we’re enjoying the Ohio LinuxFest.  The agenda is being formed, we’re planning a FADPub (maybe), and might even have some FAD - NA shirts to give away.

If you are coming to FADNA, please take a moment and sign up on the wiki page.  OLF doesn’t have any more rooms at the Drury, where some Ambassadors are staying, so many of us are staying a short while out of town at the Holiday Inn Express in Grove City.  If you haven’t reserved a room, they have pretty good rates, even cheaper than the Drury.

In addition, if you haven’t taken a moment to sign up to help at the Fedora booth, we would like to make a good impression there as well.

Many of us will be carpooling in each day and we’re working to reserve a room at the Holiday Inn Express for Sunday’s Meeting.

See you all at FADNA.  I am very excited to meet many of the North American Ambassadors at OLF.

Cheers,

Herlo

I'm Going to FAD-NA

5 years! w00t!

Hi all,

Just another quick reminder that if you are an Ambassador in North America and are wanting to get your input in on what will happen at FAD - NA, come to the meeting tonight.  It will be at 20:00 EDT in #fedora-ambassadors on irc.freenode.net.

Previously, I stated that this was for North American Regional Ambassadors.  I was corrected recently that it could be for any Ambassador with interest, so please feel free to put your $.02.

Sorry for the confusion.

Cheers,

Herlo

Following up with our FAMNA meeting this week, the FAMNA regional ambassadors are meeting tomorrow night at 20:00 EDT in #fedora-ambassadors (irc.freenode.net) to discuss the agenda and events surrounding the Fedora Ambassador Day - North America.  I’m not sure if this is the first FAD - NA, but we’re definitely in a good resurgence with some good folks involved.

In commemoration of this exciting event, which will be held concurrently with the Ohio Linux Fest, October 10-12, I created a badge similar to the one created by Nicu Buculei for FAD EMEA.

I’m excited this looks as good as it does and will show pride for those Fedora Ambassadors in North America who will be joining us at OLF.

Cheers,

Herlo

Day 2 seemed to be even smoother than day 1, much of the time, running around putting out little fires, but not too many.  I was the room manager for Paul’s Fedora Remix talk, quite enjoyed that, even though most of it I already knew.

I also got to enjoy both keynotes today.  Howard Tayler was quite entertaining with his bit about ‘The Price is Right’ and making content that doesn’t suck.  Joe Brockmeier’s keynote was a bit down to earth, yet had some very fun elements.  I really enjoyed the ‘Dairy Council’ idea for Linux that was brought up during the Q&A session.  It reminded me that I need to send him an email for a similar idea with community conferences.

The Fedora booth was going smoothly.  Unfortunately, Paul spent most of his time there, except for his presentation.  Jared Smith and Nathan Blackham helped out while he was gone.  Next year, I want to make sure that if we have Paul or Joe at our conference, they don’t have to spend time in the booth.  It would seem they could help better in other ways.  Maybe I’m wrong?

In the evening, we headed out to Tucanos Brazilian Grill at the Gateway for the UTOSC Geek/Blogger Dinner.  This dinner was a complement to UTOSC 2008 so some who weren’t attendees showed up to join us.  I was able to purchase brazilian lemonades for the entire group.  Its so much fun spending time with geeks of my sort.  Both Paul and Joe were able to attend as well.

After we consumed large portions of meat, socialized and drank ourselves into a stupor, the group started to disperse.  A few of us decided to take light-rail home afterward, which was a nice departure from all of the driving I had done recently.  It also gave me an opportunity to spend a few more minutes with my sweetie, Jennifer.  She’s been so great throughout.  I’m just happy to know she’ll support me, and she said she had a lot of fun as well.

Many, many people came by the booths from what I saw.  I know the OLPC would be a big hit on Saturday, Family Day.  Time to get out the little fedora shirts and show off the coolness that is Fedora.

Cheers,

Herlo

So its soo close.  So very close, to the Utah Open Source Conference 2008.  Only, I have to write this paragraph about the conference itself and what it means to open source in Utah.  What it means to be involved in this amazing conference.

This blog post is supposed to be about something useful, but I think its just going to be a rambling session about all the things I think that are neat about open source, freedom, Utah and the benefits of holding UTOSC every year.

So what do I think, well… I think that UTOSC is my favorite thing I’ve ever done as a tech person.  I have an 8 year old boy, which is much of the reason I do this sort of thing.  He’s the reason I try to get webcams working with Ekiga, or try to record videos to send him with Cheese.  I love my boy, and I want him to be proud of his papa, and this is one way I can make a mark on society, to change the world if you will.

When I talk about changing the world, I don’t mean changing every aspect, but just doing something so simple that you love, to change the way others look at the thing and say, “wow!”.  That’s the thing I mean about changing the world.

I mean, geez, what do we have this year anyway?  Let’s see.  Oh, to start off with, a great theme ‘HOWTO’.  It really can’t get any better than that, can it!?  It points the way to learn how to do something in open source.  A contributor, a learning mechanism, a simple text document that started the whole thing.

We also have a great team of folks involved in making it happen this year.  I would be remiss if I didn’t thank them.  They’ve been instrumental in getting this to be the world class conference I hope it to become.  We’re not there yet, but give us a couple more years to learn all of those little tips and tricks.

Software, that’s another thing we have that’s great.  This coming year, I plan to take the UTOSC conference site and remake it again, this time with a better feature set.  I have to say, however, that the system we put into place more than 8 months ago, has turned out to be a great asset.  I thank those who’ve helped us make conman, our conference management software.  You know who you are, and I appreciate the help.

Because we’re running the conference and are also computer nerds/geeks/etc, we get to play with cool hardware, dink around with printing, do audio, video and invite families to participate in our wondrous extravaganza every year. But we also get to do something else that much cooler, we get to share our joys and passions with others.  Show others why open source is the way of the future.  Why its important to us and why we think that paying for software or having limted access to software is just wrong.

Learning is always part of a hobby.  This great, wonderful, exciting hobby of ours is so great we want to share the wealth with you all.

A couple things that I think are great about UTOSC 2008 are Family Day, I’m excited to set up the try-it lab on Friday night for the kiddies.  The fact that we’ll have booths for all three of the major Linux distributions (Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu). But there’s more.

On Thursday evening, Paul Frields will kick our conference into high gear with Fedora, first.  Friday comes and Joe Brockmeier will entertain us with some community talk.  And finally, on Saturday morning, we have Christer Edwards whose been instrumental in much of the Ubuntu community growth over the past couple years.

I’ve been influenced heavily by the Fedora Project.  And as an North American Ambassador, I’m also in charge of the Fedora booth.  We have a few volunteers and they’ve been great.  I anticipate the booth to be filled with people asking questions all three days.  One thing I wanted to mention, is that the booths/expo area is open to any/all that come through.  Spreading open source means allowing for the opportunity to use the software.  We want you all to come and listen to what our folks have to say.

Okay, so it sounds like my writers block really didn’t happen, but I wasn’t sure I could just sit down and crank out something this easily.  Off to write a simple 100 word intro to the Utah Open Source Conference.

Wish me luck!

Herlo

In the next 3 weeks, I will be among the busiest people I know.  Probably the only people busier are Presidential hopefuls, Olympic organizers and sadly, those fighting in Georgia.  The reason I am writing this post is to help me remember what I have left to complete between now and the Utah Open Source Conference 2008 on August 28-30, 2008.

Recently, I learned that our website doesn’t render well in Internet Exploder, Safari and some older versions of Firefox.  I’m guessing its due to the inability I have to create and maintain css, because well, I’m not a design guy.  Because of this, we’re having a hackfest tonight, both at my house, and online.  Feel free to come by at 8:30 and help out.

Prior to the hackfest, I will be working with Fedora Ambassadors to grow the North American region.  We’ll be discussing such things as AmbassadorKit, EventBox and of course, Fedora’s presence at UTOSC 2008.  This meeting tends to get a lot of good people making the world a better place.  I am interested in making this happen starting with North America.  If you are interested in helping out, or just lurking, feel free to drop by #fedora-meeting on irc.freenode.net at 1:00UTC (9pm EDT).

Prior to the Fedora NA meeting, I’m planning on working on the PCs that we’ll be using for the Utah Open Source Conference.  This will be done over at a friends house, who is loaning the PCs to UTOSC for the week of the conference.

I am attempting to record every presentation this year with either audio or video.  We have been rewarded again this year by having our friends over at KnowledgeBlue come and video record much of the conference, but they don’t have enough staff or equipment to simultaneously record 4-6 rooms.  So the plan went to me to setup recording devices in each room.

The plan is simple setup 6 PCs with Linux, install audacity and darkice.  This way we can stream the keynote audio live over our streaming server and also just record the audio from other presentations to be published at a later date.  I anticipate I’ll be able to install and complete this task pretty quickly.

Well, its now 7:40am here at my desk in my house.  I still have head into the office today for a bit of work, so off I go.  Feel free to come by #utos anytime today and wish me luck (or help if you are so inclined) with anything you can suggest.  Hopefully, today won’t be too long.

Herlo

I’ve been very busy this last two weeks updating pages and working on finalizing details for UTOSC 2008, held August 28-30, 2008.  For instance, the Fedora booth is coming along nicely.  For a conference of around 400, we should have a pretty good booth turnout.  I had Jeffrey Tadlock, Paul Frields (who’s also keynoting btw) and its possible other NA Ambassadors may attend.  I’m really excited about this development.

In addition, Joe Brockmeier of OpenSUSE will also be keynoting and we’ve got quite a list of presenters on our website.  Our goal is to help open source grow in Utah, and by providing this conference once a year, we can help our local LUGs and open source leaders.  We have approximately 50 presentations, plus events and other fun stuff up our sleeve over this 3 day conference.

One of the great events returning this year is the Guru Labs Troubleshooting Challenge.  We hope to have this event bigger and better this year, with cash prizes for the winner(s).  There will be sign-ups available on Thursday morning at the registration booth and the contest will run all day Friday, crowning a winner Friday night!

Another great return from last year is KnowledgeBlue.  With opensourceTV, they’ll be recording the video for several of our presentations and keynotes.  They’ll be working just like last year (only better) to provide interviews as well with some of the leaders of the open source community.  We expect you all will enjoy the videos as they go up on youtube.  This year, they will focus on multiple angles and getting a good quality presentation from the presenters.

Lastly, I’d like to talk a little bit about Family Day at UTOSC, August 30, 2008.  If you take a look at the presentations on Saturday, you’ll notice a bit of a trend.  With a few exceptions, presentations are intended to help the family. Also, we are working on activities for the kiddies such as an OLPC, videos on MythTV, edubuntu, Fedora Electronics Lab demos and more in our try-it lab.  We’re also working to acquire a moon bounce and sumo suits (for the big kids).  Saturday looks to be a ton of fun.

NOTE: This doesn’t mean that we have enough family stuff, and in fact, we really don’t.  One thing I’d like to see, is a presentation on content filtering for the family.  Something like “Howto use Dan’s Guardian effectively” or a discussion of pfsense, smoothwall or other firewalling/filtering tools.  If you have a presentation you’d like to suggest in this area, please let me know by commenting or emailing me.

I hope to see many of you there as the cost is quite low at $70 and if you are LUG member, its only $35 until August 7 for the early bird pricing.  Read more on our website at http://2008.utosc.com or register directly with eventbrite at http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com.

See you all there.

Herlo

One of the things I’ve been working pretty heavily on the past couple weeks is getting more involved in the Fedora Ambassador program.  And let’s just say its been a blast.  I love the new direction of the North American Ambassador program and am excited to be a part of the newly rejuvenated program.

A couple reasons more why I’m extremely excited have to do with the people I’m working with, Alex Maier, GregDek, Jeffrey Tadlock, David Nalley, John Rose and Rashadul Islam among others.  Each of these folks is a leader in their own right, and I’ve especially enjoyed working with David Nalley.

He and I have been working hard to reshape and reinvigorate the NA Ambassadors program.  I suspect others are working tirelessly as well, and I’m excited about that prospect.  David and I are the architects of the new ‘Regional Ambassadors’ in North America.  The idea is to work in our respective regions to get a Fedora Ambassador in every State/Province.  Once we’ve done that, we’ll start working toward major metropolitan areas.  The regional ambassadors currently assigned are:

• Eastern US: David Nalley
• Central US: John Rose
• Western US: Clint Savage
• Canada: Rashadul Islam

This doesn’t mean that we’ve limited the regions to these areas, just that they are a good start.  Regional ambassadors will be the central point of contact, distribution of swag, etc. for each ambassador in that region.  The goal is to make it easier for Ambassadors to go out to events and promote Fedora.  Regional ambassadors will also be responsible for mentoring, providing tools, media, swag, etc. for each ambassador.  All the things needed to make Fedora look like the world class organization it has become.

In the next week or so, I’ll be sending out an email to all of the Ambassadors I can find in the western US.  If you don’t get an email from me soon, feel free to email me and we’ll get you going.  The plan is to get your opinions, have you start coming to meetings and join the mailing list.  Participate where you can, and we’ll help you grow your state/province/city.

As NA Ambassadors, we’ve set new goals too, here’s the bullet points:

• Contacting existing Ambassadors
• Mentoring new and existing Ambassadors
  • Help to remember why they joined ambassadors in the first place
• Delivering media in a more timely and better process
• Working closely with FAMSCo to get a good budget to help NA Ambassadors expected growth

We’ll be discussing much of this at our next NA Ambassadors meeting, as well as progress on contacting all of the current ambassadors.  If you are interested in participating, join us at #fedora-meeting on Wednesday July 30 @ 1am UTC (Tuesday 9pm EDT).  Current agenda and task list are being formed now, so feel free to contribute.

Cheers,

Herlo

Well, its been more than two weeks since my last post about FUDCon.  I figure its high time I posted something about what’s been going on in my neck of the woods.  Things have been quite busy and are bound to continue at this phrenetic pace for a bit longer.

DarkIce - Audio Streaming

I’ve been working this past week on getting darkice packaged for Fedora.  Darkice is a front end audio recording tool for streaming servers like Icecast.  I much prefer it over ices and any other streaming client I’ve tried.  It does have bits for mp3/mp2/faac as well as ogg/vorbis, so I’ll be packaging it for only the latter.

It seems rpmbuild is a bit more cryptic from my last foray into building RPMs and I have to hunt a little harder for the libs and the binaries.  Its coming along nicely, now that I have my virtual machine back in place.  I’m also hoping that darkice will be easy to integrate into Fedora Talk as I’ve never dealt with the asterisk end before.

Utah Open Source Conference

This past weekend, we spent a good bit of time reviewing and selecting presentations for the Utah Open Source Conference.  I am the head organizer and founder of this all volunteer conference. In fact, our very own FPL, Paul Frields will be keynoting on Thursday evening.  Keep an eye on this blog for future updates about the conference.

A New Interest

I’ve recently started to see someone of the female persuasion.  Many of my friends have met her, and I’m guessing they like her as I do (well, not quite as much).  Here’s hoping things go well with Jennifer

There’s more here, and I’ll try to be more vocal about it as I think its good to share.

Cheers,

Herlo

So I am sitting in my hotel in Los Angeles, preparing to head back to Utah, its 2:37am PDT and I have been meaning to post the rest of my experience at FUDCon.  First off, I’d like to thank Mo and Ray for letting me stay at their home with them.  They were great hosts!  I’d also like to re-thank Max and Paul and the FedoraProject for sponsoring me out to Boston on such short notice.  I still feel grateful to be part of such a great community!

FUDCon F10, for me, was a time of realization.  Understanding what it is to get involved in projects that scratch that itch.  For providing services toward something I’m good at, into a larger community who could really take advantage of that service.  And while I am still feeling my way through the Fedora world, I think a few things are clearer now after reflecting on this last FUDCon.

I want to record and stream audio and video.

I’m thinking that along with the Fedora Talk project, I could configure and use tools to provide a non-interactive streaming server for certain events/presentations.  What I am thinking of here is things like FUDCon keynotes and sessions.  In fact, I plan to purchase a higher quality microphone / mixer combo to better record the audio at the source.

Video and screencasting in real-time seems a bit more of a challenge.  Putting that together with the streaming audio seems like a fun project and scratches several itches I’ve been experiencing lately.

I need to learn how build better RPMs

Spot taught a great session at FUDCon F9 in Raleigh about RPM packaging, and Rex Deiter talked this time about becoming a package maintainer.  I’ve got a few packages that I’d like to get into the fedora tree, and I think by the end of this year, that can happen.  I’m okay at packaging, but haven’t ever submitted a spec file to spot.  While I’m nervous about how ugly the first package will look, I’m also excited at the prospect of learning better and more efficient ways of building useful tools for the masses.

I think everyone should build their own spin of Fedora

After the 5+ hour session on Friday’s hackfest regarding the spins website and what the spins SIG has already accomplished, I’ve taken some initiative and started to create content to help the prospective spin enthusiast.  I’m a big fan of the Eee PC and am looking forward to purchasing the 901 in the winter.  Until then, I’m planning on helping improve the spin process so we don’t fail to release spins again.  The custom and official spins ‘built with Fedora’ can be so much more prolific if we just provide the right tools to build a spin.  It really should be nothing more than, here’s my kickstart, build me an iso.  This would of course have to follow the general standards for acceptable software.

The relationships (FUDBuddies) made at FUDCon are up my alley

I met Rex Dieter, Mo Duffy, Ray Strode, Dennis Gilmore and Ian Weller this time.  We had great conversations about the world and of course Fedora.  I also got to talk more to Toshio, Greg and J5 who I had met previously at FUDCon F9.  I indeed learned a bunch from Toshio about TurboGears too.  Its something I’ll treasure for releases to come.

To end this post, I’ve got some audio of the olpc session and paul’s keynote, as well as some photos I’ve posted around the interweb, enjoy.  Paul’s keynote will also be up on our new FedoraTV Miro channel, check it out!

Cheers,

Clint

Got to FUDCon today after a nice semi-sleepy red-eye flight.  I was surprisingly awake for a person who has had less than 3 hours of sleep in the last 24+ hours.  As I arrived, following Max’s instructions to the Hyne’s Convention Center, an announcement.  The spins hackfest was beginning.

I quickly grabbed some coffee and an apple and headed in after Max.  Little did I know how great this fest was going to be, all 4+ hours of it.  After a good list of goals, Max handed control over to Mo and off we went.

Discussion surrounded three main stories, one for a user wanting to download a spin, one desiring to submit a spin and one for reviewers of spins.  As it turns out, developing stories for the first two were pretty easy, and just before 11, we had a good idea of how to implement applications for these two users.

However, the third story, the one for reviewing.  Yeah, that one.  Well, I guess I just need to ask one hard question.  The question I had was a simple one, but the answer is apparently much more complex, including both technical and legal questions about third-party distributions.  And while it seems like a simple distinction, I brought this upon myself, uncovering a discussion that has been going on for 2+ years now.

The biggest problem is for those spins that include software not in the fedora repositories.  How do we treat these spins?  The discussion ended up being that while hosting these spins might not be feasible, we’d like to have a way to market the spins as built on Fedora or something similar. It seems that this is a good choice, but it needs to go through legal.

After an hour long discussion about these details (which I caused), we tabled it and came up with a good list of tasks to get the project started.  Thanks to Ian Weller, there’s a good wiki page covering much of this discussion.  In fact, I have a couple of tasks to complete this week.

At the end of the day, I ended up with some Red Hat folks at Legal Sea Foods, good wine, great company.  If I wasn’t so tired, I’d have stayed much longer.  Good times…

Tomorrow’s FUDCon barcamp looks to be pretty interesting.  I plan to attend the video tools, the getting contributors and bug triage.  In addition, there will probably be a couple that will come up tomorrow morning, so we’ll se how it goes.

Cheers,

Herlo

As I was watching Dr. Who this afternoon during my packing up of my clothing and power cords for FUDCon tomorrow and Saturday, I was thinking a bit more about how I could help.

It turns out, that while we have some great presentations, a suggestion was made to put the User back into FUDCon.  I think this is a great idea.

While I was reading Jesse’s post, I was thinking what could little old me do to help users of Fedora.  I was thinking a simple bug triaging process management, or helping users find documentation for which things they are looking.  But each of these things as I thought about them were more on the contributor side, which seems more like what we want.

A basic user in the Fedora Project, to me, while useful, might not really be those who attend FUDCon, but more of a person who is a user, interested in contributing back to the community.  I feel I fit in that realm.

Not knowing much about the FedoraProject a year ago, and still feeling pretty naive, I have wanted to get more involved.  As such, I’ve made some forays into helping, including my attempt at helping to do some videos and screencasts for the marketing team.  Watch for me this weekend as we will be attempting to record your mug :)  I’ve also done a little bit in the documentation area, logged a few bugs and been a generally good ambassador by handing out tons and tons of LiveCDs and DVDs almost every week.

I’ve also been thinking about how we can get more people from that ‘well, I like Fedora’ user, to a ‘cool, I want to give back’ user.  I think the Fedora Project is built very well for this kind of user (and possible future contributor).  While the project can sustain users who just participate, I’d like to see some education surrounding how one can help with things that are either less technical, or helping someone get into the more technical areas, with something like mentors.

During FUDCon, we could come up with a simple presentation or two about tools that help individual users contribute.  Things like smolt, logging bugs, testing and other items can really be helpful tools to get people attending FUDCon involved in hleping the actual process.  I also think it’d be great on hackfest days to have a ‘how to help’ intro for a few who might want to help, but really don’t know where to start.

I’ll be talking with others as I think more about these things this weekend.  I look forward to a fun two days!

Cheers,

Clint

So it looks like my whining and moaning paid off!  I didn’t expect that anyone could help me, the money had been spent, things were cancelled and I was screwed!

I recieved a comment on my blog from Mo inviting me to stay at her and halfline’s place for the weekend of FUDCon.  So nice, but I still didn’t have the $600+ it would cost to come to FUDCon.

And then I received this email:

Clint,

Don’t cancel your trip.

Give me receipts,…

–Max

Wow! So I’m coming to FUDCon.  I’d like to thank Max, Mo, Paul (and any others I don’t know about) for helping me get to Boston.  I’m sure it’ll be a blast.

I’ve got some serious plans to make it worth Fedora’s while :)  I don’t think there’s a better way than to be included in the community than to know people care about you and want you to be a part of the community as a whole and to succeed.  I’m going to do all I can to make sure the money will be well spent.

So as I said in my reply email to Max.  Thank you! thank you! thank you!  FUDCon will be a blast!

Cheers,

Herlo

PS - I would also like to thank my employer, Guru Labs, for being so kind to let me attend my second FUDCon.

Welcome to my disappointment.  Welcome to my frustration.  Welcome, welcome to my not being able to attend FUDCon!  Did I mention I was frustrated and disappointed?  Well, if I didn’t, I am!

Here’s the story.

Many of you probably know that I work for Guru Labs, and as such, I teach Linux for a living.  This coming week, I was on my way, I really was, to New York City to teach a Local System Administration class.

It was all set.  I was going to fly from NYC to Boston on Friday afternoon after my class.  The room was booked at the conference, I even had committed to helping do video recordings of each of the FUDCon attendees (something like 150 of them) on cheese.

Then Friday the 13th happened….

Normally, I like Friday the 13th, and with the exception of this event, it was a great one.  At the last minute, I was informed the class had been cancelled.  Now, this isn’t an abnormal thing and usually I’m not this upset about a class being cancelled.  Saying that means I was banking on some things which normally pull through, but they didn’t  All in all, I’m only frustrated that I can’t go to FUDCon!

I tried hard to still go.  In fact, I finagled and attempted to convince any of the other instructors I could into letting me teach their class.  I hit up my friends for $600, all to no avail.  The cost of the hotel was $400 already, adding another $600 is not in my budget, I’m afraid.  And people say that airlines don’t make any money!

So I will miss you all and the wonderful barcamp sessions I was planning on attending. I’ll miss Paul’s first State of Fedora address.  I’ll miss chatting Seth up about yum, Spot about RPM and politics in general, or Michael about cobbler and func.  In fact, I wanted to spend a bit of time talking with Jef about video and gstreamer, but I guess I’ll just have to wait until FUDCon F11 in 2009 :(

Could someone video record each of them and post them?  Or at least the audio?  Hehe, I know that’s a lot of work, but hey, it can’t hurt to ask.  In fact, if you are willing to stream audio, I have an IceCast server and I’d be happy to help configure your client to accomplish this task.

Cheers,

Clint

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2008-May/msg00007.html

Get yours today! http://fedoraproject.org

Be sure and digg it too:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Fedora_9_Sulphur_Released

Well, usually I forget to take pictures, because either A) I forget my camera [I brought it this time] or 2) I get wrapped up in the event and forget to bring it with me.  But this release party, I plain just forgot to charge my batteries for my camera, oops!

Fortunately, I was able to snap a few pictures with some of the spare, also not fully-charged, batteries I did have on hand.  However, others took many pictures and I’ve listed them below.

• Sheri Bigelow took some great pictures.  She is a great local photographer, web designer and the local webmistress.
• Tristan Rhodes, a local Asterisk Entrepreneur posted a good blog post.
• Here’s the pictures I took.  Not nearly as many, or as good.

To summarize the party, much celebration was had with foosball, a chess game on one of the largest chess boards around, video games, air hockey and much more was provided by CodeGreene.  The FedoraProject and Utah Open Source sponsored the food and prizes.  If you’ve never had a Chipotle burrito, they are the best burritos around.

I was able to spend time with about 5-7 people myself sharing the Preview Release of Fedora 9 (codename Sulphur) including two who had never had previous success with Fedora or Linux in general.  It was very satisfying to see things work for them.

The Ubuntu folks were there in strength as well.  The Hardy Heron (8.04) CDs were being passed out, while we Fedoran’s provided LiveUSB versions.  I even saw people taking advantage and obtaining both!  Its great to see communities come together and celebrate together.

The party continued at Salt Lake Pizza & Pasta for another couple hours.  Lot’s of talk about the releases, upcoming events, and general mayhem took place including having Heartsbane shoot beer through his nose when I swore at him!

All in all, quite a successful evening and I look forward to helping others in November at our next release party.

Cheers,

Herlo

UPDATE: Another 70+ pictures have been added, check them out!

In case you haven’t heard or read already, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released just a few days ago (April 24). I certainly have noticed plenty of talk about it on blogs and tech news sites. Fedora 9 (Sulphur) was scheduled for release right about now, but the fine folks at the Fedora Project decided they needed a couple more weeks to work out some kinks. In the meantime, there is a fine Fedora 9 Preview release available which can be updated to the official release when it is out (May 13, or so they say).

So what does all this mean? It means it’s time to party like it’s v0.99!

Code Greene, a programming shop located in Salt Lake City, is graciously hosting a release party THIS SATURDAY to celebrate these two latest distribution releases. What?! You’re a OpenSUSE enthusiast? A long-time Slackware user? That’s okay! You can still come and enjoy good food, good company, and fun and games. (Rumor has it these Code Greene people don’t actually do any real work, they just play foosball and videogames all day.)

Here are the vital details:

• Date/time: Saturday, May 3, 6pm to 8pm
• Address: Code Greene, 44 Exchange Place Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Now, if you’re coming, you should take a moment and RSVP via this friendly and easy-to-use Upcoming link.

This release party is being sponsored by us- the Utah Open Source Foundation, the Fedora Project, and Ubuntu Utah.

The following two articles were published in the past couple days.  When they were