Tag Archives: Fedora

Free/Libre/OpenSource Software

A gathering of the Fedora faithful

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I spent a day and a half at the Freedom in Computer Technology 2008 convention on 26th and 27th of this month. Susmit has already blogged about it. Some pictures are:

People waiting to get the Fedora mediaThe stall

more pictures are available at the usual location. I missed out taking a group picture of the volunteers and the stall before we went into business. My bad. Noted that down as a mandatory picture for next time.

For various reasons it had been a while I have been at a stall, so the “buzz” at seeing folks lining up to hear about F10, L10n and getting their media was exciting enough. Somewhat strangely, not many questions were around the proprietary codec stuff (read: “I want to play mp3”). Having the GLUG-NIT,Durgapur (and, I met Debayan as well) at the next stall meant that we had converging streams of interested audience. It is always a good feeling to finally meeting up with a lot of names from IRC and mailing list. The F10 artwork got rave reviews 🙂

A big round of “Thank You” to all the volunteers (Gopal+his student, Dipanjan, Sarbartha, Ravi, Susmit and Indranil) who made time over the weekend to turn up, tirelessly stand around and answer questions with a big smile. A sizeable quantity of the media and leaflet/handouts were given away. Names of those interested to be on the list have been taken down and Susmit plans to get back in touch with them. Another good thing that came out was the ad-hoc sit down with the colleges who desire to have some “Activity Day”.

I had a small talk on the “Community Model” and how FOSS businesses should begin by looking at getting their act together on it. Had a couple of questions. However, given the audience profile, most questions were around FOSS software and licensing vis-a-vis “freeware”.

Would have been really nice to have network so as to show-off a few stuff – well next time perhaps. The LiveUSB station also got some love 🙂 so I guess that made up for the trouble taken to set it up. The next time IOTA organizes a convention like this it would be good to have a segment for Workshops as well as an Expo area for stalls to be set up. Casting the net a bit more wider in the industry does help in getting stuff being talked about.

ps: I don’t know if the Stallman speech would be having a transcript available, but it would be good to have

pps: Was nice to know that Gopal’s student has been using Fedora since F7 and is proficient with a Linux desktop. It was obvious in the way he helped manage the stall at times.

Free/Libre/OpenSource Software

The FUDCon that was not to be

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Dear Fedora Community Members in India,

A number of you would be aware that we have been working towards a
FUDCon at FOSS.IN. I had recently made a blog post on that note as well.

Today, I would like to share the news that this is a FUDCon that is not
meant to be. Since yesterday evening, certain significant points of
disagreement have come up between the teams working towards FUDCon and
FOSS.IN. As such, in light of those issues, it is best that the FUDCon
is not gone through with at FOSS.IN

I will be getting in touch with the speakers who travel costs have been
sponsored in part or full by The Fedora Project.

FOSS.IN is a leading event and we, at The Fedora Project, wish the event
and the team working tirelessly behind the scenes all the best and
success they so much deserve.

There are positives to everything and the run up to the FUDCon has
brought a small number of wonderful members from the Fedora Community
closer together. They have been planning, coordinating, scheduling and
working like a well oiled machine. That is a great find. And, we will
continue that momentum and harmony.

We have come a long way since The Fedora Project Day at FOSS.IN last
year, and, though we have ambitious dreams for The Fedora Project this
year (and the coming year), we have a fantastic set of people who will
be making that happen.

And, since it is always best to end with a smile – here’s something to
keep you busy : Susmit Shannigrahi is now the proud owner of the largest
set of rare FUDCon swag.

Rock on,

Sankarshan

Read it off the archives if you want.

Free/Libre/OpenSource Software

Fedora, Friends and FUDCon

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The news is out and it is official. There is going to be a FUDCon at FOSS.IN and it is on the 28th of November, 2008. If you needed a reason to be there, this is that single reason. Just be there, jam with friends and while you are at it have loads of fun.

FOSS.IN poster

A big round of applause to 3 folks who have been working in the background to make this happen. I present – Kushal Das, Rahul Sundaram and Susmit. Together they stitched together the agenda, prodded the speakers, coordinated with the organizers, worked on the swag and of course, made everything look so easy.

The FUDCon will provide ample opportunities to meet up with friends, talk about or hack on a few features, soak in the freedom of a world-class operating system and be a leader. We expect good things out of the event, but we can’t do that without you. Fedora has always been about the community and our awesome trio are putting in place many surprises for the participants of the Fedora community who attend FUDCon.

There will be more blogs, I hope to see some of the speakers blogging about their sessions. And there will be pictures. But all that is when the FUDCon is on. So, go ahead and mark that date on your calendar. And remember to drop in to #fedora-india on irc.freenode.net

Catchall Scribbles, Free/Libre/OpenSource Software

F9 -> rawhide -> F9 and some nice URLs in between

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I spent a large part of yesterday evening and the morning of today waiting to download the packages that would make my F9 -> rawhide transition possible. Pulling 2000+ packages (based on the installed set I had and needed to be upgraded) took some time and finally I rebooted the machine.

Plymouth progressed – I anticipated being greeted with the mind-blowing eye-popping grandeur. And … nothing. A fairly standard corporate issue Dell Latitude D630 decided today of all days was not for rawhide.

Took me around 10 minutes to figure out that going back to F9 would be the sensible option. I found my trusted F9 LiveUSB and started the process. I had a few encrypted volumes, and since I hadn’t backed up the data I wanted to figure out how to get access to them. This was as opposed to the instruction flashing on the screen ‘e2fsck -b 8193 ‘. A little bit of searching landed me this fine document for which the author gets my gracious thanks and heartfelt appreciation. A little bit of $ cryptsetup luksOpen magic and I backed up the data to a USB drive, re-installed, re-configured the mirrors, cleaned out the accumulated data bits that weren’t being useful and I was ready to go.

I think I am going to harvest some newer hardware and give rawhide a spin. Can’t just wait to get my hands on the loveliness.

And, being on topic, do remember to drop by the Fedora Project Home Page and check out the banner. It has been 5 glorious years and there’s much much more to come.