On Linux Install Fest 2013

Today was that time of the year again when ROSEdu organized the traditional Linux Install Fest. I managed to be there only a couple of hours, enough to get a grasp of the event and do a few things.
Being a Sunday, there were no electrician available at the university, so the light was less than perfect. Not a problem for the hackers but a challenge for the photographer.
The event surpassed in size the previous year, with an increase from 118 to to 139 participants (preliminary data). Also, compared with the previous year, the Fedora presence increased: thanks to Iosif who sent me a package just in time, I had enough Fedora 19 DVDs to cover the event and some handy stickers. Gabriel also joined, armed with a bunch of Fedora 18 DVDs and more swag he saved from a past event this winter. And actually there were some people installing Fedora! Looking at the numbers some changes are noticeable: after the last years most of the installs were Ubuntu, closely followed by Debian, this year the situation is dramatically different: no Debian install registered, the most installs are MINT with Ubuntu in a distant second place.
There are some possible explanations:

• the Ubuntu install discs arrived 1 hour late, so early in the morning the girl at the registration desk had to reply to Unbuntu inquiries: "don't you want Mint instead? it comes in both 32 and 64 bit versions";
• the computers in the university lab moved from Ubuntu to Mint to get away from Unity;
• Mint was available on USB sticks, which AFAIK were for the students to keep, while the other distros were available on optical media (also for the students to keep).

From my point of view, there is also noticeable the Fedora increase: from zero to 8 students this year. Worth mentioning, almost all of them happened early in the morning (in the first hour).

Enjoy below a few more pictures from the install fest: