In the tradition of 10 years, the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage were held on the first March weekend. The Chemnitzer Linux-Tage is an event for everybody all around Linux and Open Source. In the same way as last year, Kubuntu was represented by Kubuntu-de.org. This meant that the visitors were able to see Kubuntu first hand.
More than 2400 visitors, 750 online-listeners, 87 presentations, 58 exhibitors, 13 workshops and many, many volunteers participated. A unique program was offered to all of them.
Monika Krug (Monika|K), Rober Müller (commander), Emanuel Goscinski (emu) and Marcus Czeslinski (Czessi) travelled to Chemnitz for Kubuntu. They made this exhibition a big success for Kubuntu. The booth was decorated with new Kubuntu posters and introduced not only Kubuntu, but also many of our community projects. In addition, many questions could be solved, which users of Kubuntu came to ask.
The only problem was the far too low number of Kubuntu CDs available. Similar to the years before, Canonical had made available far fewer CDs than needed. Of the 300 ordered CDs, we only received 150. Even under very strict regiment, they just lasted the first day. We started the second day only with 15 CDs. Nevertheless, a big thanks to Canonical for the provided CDs. Europe and Germany are KDE-country!
To give a full account of the programme would make these reflections overflow. Therefore, we only want to shortly mention all the booths, presentations and workshops that are interesting or Kubuntu, Ubuntu and the general linux user.
The neighbours to us were our colleagues from Ubuntu and Linux4Africa (based on Edubuntu). Also the KDE booth was very well visited. They presented in contrast to us even more of the KDE development. The booths, located behind us, presented Debian, which is a basis of Ubuntu/Kubuntu, and Sidux, that is based on Debian Sid. Other boots showed openSUSE, Fedora, OpenOffice.org, fli4l, Eisfair, RadioTux, Symlink, the CCC (Chaos Computer Club) Sachsen, Kaspersky and AMD. For the gamers among us, areas for “Games under Linux” and “Gaming with linuX-gamers.net” were provided.
87 presentations fully filled the programme. Heiner Marker introduced the KDE desktop environment. He also showed how individual configurations are possible on it. Marko Jung gave a presentation with the title “Free Software: without costs but not for vain”, which gave an introspection into the fight between free and proprietary software. He also emphasised the potential that free software give to businesses. Christoph Derndorfer presented the project “One Laptop per Child”. Dr. Christian Klosterman explained how to choose the appropriate Open Source Licence. Finally, Thomas Feil informed about the meaning of the “hackerparagraph” and how it affects businesses that perform IT security checks.
In the workshop area, the most interesting subjects for beginners were: “Encryption of e-mails with GnuPG” and “OpenOffice.org Calc for migrating users”. Advanced users also found appropriate workshops like “Python, Programming with Fun”, “Debian Packaging for Beginners” and “PostgreSQL Hardcore Performance Tuning”.
Finally, a big thanks to the organisers of the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage. This event was not only organised with an excellent quality offered by booths, presentations and workshops. In addition, the culinary offerings to booth representatives, presenters and workshop staff were marvelous. The social event, that celebrated the 10th Chemnitzer Linux-Tage was an experience not to miss. As a fitting theme for a banner was found: “Free beer creates innovation – Chemnitzer Culinary Days with Linux Presentations”. There was no other way to describe the impressive hospitality. Thanks!
Further links:
- All photographs by Kubuntu-de.org
- Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2008 - Feedback - Photographs and Blogs - In the Media - Audio Recordings (available shortly)
