We are Fedora (FUDCon 2010)

The obligatory group shot for the Zurich FUDCon (to bad some people already left the conference and they are missing from the picture):

To play with it, download the large version.

Rock it!

BarCamp: Awesome art stuff

FUDCon's last day, BarCamp sesions, come to jopin the "Awesome Art Stuff" from 15:00 PM in room G46.

Ubuntu @FUDCon

Ubuntu invaded the FUDCon. Or maybe not... :D :D :D

Before flaming me: no, I didn't put them in there nor have any idea who did it, I just noticed the fact and took the picture. Now flame away.

Come to Fedora, we have... cookies

Yes, there are some cookies too... (my favorites were those with chocolate)

The stuff Fedora is made of

If you hurried and answered "crack" you are wrong, look below to learn more about the things Fedora are made of:

Incolor liquids shared freely among the friends in the circle of life

Community dancing

Underground bunker frisbee

Football playing with a tennis ball in the bunker garage while listening to Czech music from the '80s

PS: if you were expecting ponies and strawberries... maybe you are reading the wrong blog. Or maybe not :D

Fedora Webcomic Special ZURICH FUDCon: Bunker Rising

So far at least seven people asked me about a webcomic special for FUDCon, so I had to do one. But I think I am going to have even less shame than usual, trying to change the bribery... I know I have to expect the beers, but can I have something else instead? I need to buy a FUDCon T-shirt, M size. Thank you in advance :) I have no shame :D

Design Team Meeting @FUDCon

Sitting in what was supposed to be a meting of Fedora Design Team contributors at FUD Con Zurich but momentarily was deturned in a boring presentation about not really Free Design books:

Before seeking refuge to blog posting I tried playing a bit with photos, when got served with this simple and clear sign:


So, in conclusion:

• a bit later we will have Pierros' talk about the Design Suite spin, maybe then we will be able to use the time better
• is he right? should I stop? please leave your answer in the comments below

Update: at last! over half hour later we are saved, the session is back on track and we have now Mo talking about real stuff (and I am listening, no time to post photos).

The new Fedora logo?

As you know, with the advice of Red Hat Legal, Fedora is actively protecting its logo and trademark (and we have some real problems in this area. As a consequence, the logo usage is not as Free as we wish, we must apply some restrictions.

One of the ideas to make this easier, an idea which as the moment is not agreed, was to produce a secondary logo, created by the community and used by the community with no restriction in usage. If this idea will ever get steam, I think this night in the bunker I discovered the perfect graphic for it (if you look at those pictures will see the sign practically everywhere):

...if you want to know more about the meaning of this sun-shaped sign, ask our Czech friends :)

Tales from the Bunker

There are many tales to be told about the bunker where many of us, FUDCon participants, are spending the nights but I am in a hurry, with the Design Team meeting starting in less than 30 minutes, so I will tell my story for now only with a few photos. Expect more for later.

Wired Dreams

A the same time with FUDCon another event, FrOSCamp, is tacking place and today they have a party called "Wired Dreams"... unfortunately, the party is boring. How boring? Just look at my friend's Adrian face:

We tried to kill the time for a while as we could, for example Pierros got hiss ass kicked at table football even from Ubuntu users and girls. There are rumors about him going to resign from all Fedora positions and going to Windows.

Now a band started to sing at least, but we are so bored that many started the laptops (we are geeks after all). Waiting for the hour when the bunker will open its gates.

The Mo

FUDCon Zurich day one, end of the day: we are in the middle of Mo's talk about GIMP and Inkscape, the tools we are using the most at Fedora Design.

Funny fact: she's famous enough she can stay all the time with her name tag hidden, everybody around knows her.

Lunch break (FUDCon Day #1)

So we were hungry and went out for some food at a kebab place for the unhealthy (but tasty) stuff:

Good time to prove the Romanians and Greeks can be equally hungry (and equally pervs too, but that's another topic);

Then the crazy bunch returned:

And we can see how disruptive can we be (yup, that Fedora running computer is on the SUSE booth):

FUDCon 2010: the road and the first contact

Just arrived at FUDCon and in a hurry to see as many as my Fedora friends as I can, so will spare the useless prose and just show some photos:

Fun, fun fun! and also somewhat sorry for people who are at home and can't be here... talk to you later.

Half a photographer in Zurich for FUDCon

Less than a day until this year's FUDCon in Europe, and obviously I can't miss it, will definitely be there (not with all my toys for those wondering) but with all my perversitycharm. Unfortunately, I won't be whole as a photographer, only half of me: as the zoom lens, which I use most of the time, is borken (latest estimate repair: next week), I will have with me only the 50mm and the cheap wide one. Will have to manage the situation, but probably will not be excessively enthusiastic about shooting.

If there is enough demand, I can act as a mobile hackergotchi creation station, able to do anything from photos to GIMPing, so if you need one locate me (that may not be trivial as I won't be wearing the beard) and don't be afraid to ask. And don't forget I am bribable :)

My unsexy desktop

Monkey see, monkey do... so when I see other people posting screenshots of their "sexy desktops" and recipes to configure like that, I can't resist the urge and to the same. here is how my desktop looks at the moment:

So the recipe:
- GNOME theme is the unmodified Fedora 13, the same colors, icons widgets - as boring as possible;
- the Panel layout is also standard Fedora/GNOME, with a couple of launchers and applets added to the top panel and with slight transparency to the panels, just for kicks (and with Metacity the transparency is fake anyway);
- the wallpaper is a self-made photo, but it will be probably available in a F14 package;
- the desktop is piled [apparently] chaotically with a bunch of files and folders for projects I am working now or worked lately. Believe me, I can find what I need there.

Am I boring or what?

Caroline^W Andreea and Fimo

Andreea is my friend and besides being a beautiful model she is quite a geek (and a photographer too), she definitely is a Caroline... the only downfall: she does not use Linux, nor plan to do it (she's content with Windows and Photoshop) but she understand and likes the community... enough that when she started making Fimo models, one of the very first things she did was a Fedora bubble :D

Nice, right? Thanks CarolineAndreea :)

Everyone can contribute

In an earlier post I talked about Fedora supplemental wallpapers and our effort to check the license, the replies are positive but I wanted to share with the world one heart warming reply from one of the photographers I contacted:

I'm honored that you chose one of my photos, and I'm quite happy with your attribution mechanisms.

Feel free to contact me if I can be of any further help.

Thanks,

Nic

P.S. I teach computer science at the University of Minnesota, Morris, the public liberal arts campus of the U of M. Our CS lab has approximately 35 clients, all running Fedora Core. Thanks for your good work - it's nice to be able to contribute something small back.

See? Is not hard at all to become a contributor to FLOSS and Fedora.

Thank you Nic.

My love story with Caroline

Caroline is one persona created to illustrate the various categories of Fedora users and she stands for the "Casual User", paraphrasing, she tries to spend as little as possible time on front of the computer but may be involved in some other communities.

Frankly, I used to root for Caroline and want to see her targeted more by our distro, but after seeing the changes in our distro made in the name of catering to her needs... I got to care very little (none?) about her and I am not far from hating her. Why? because those changes are making my life harder and my computer use less pleasant (I acknowledge is not always Caroline's fault, she's sometime used as a strawman to push some agendas).

We look desperate trying to "steal" the Ubuntu audience and forget what made Fedora Fedora and doing it poorly. As I see it, the key to the success on the desktop is: features, features, features, polish, polish, polish. Look at the features we advertise for F14 and, please, show me at least one desktop user that get excited by one of them. Of courde we are not perceived as a desktop distro and losing. Badly.

Sad/FUDCon

I am sad today: learned yesterday a good friend may possibly attend the Zurich FUDCon which would have been nothing short of awesome. Half a day later, sad reality hits: she won't be able to attend for the stupidest reason of all: didn't get a few days off from work. It's a shame! And her employer is supposedly in the FOSS business...

Fedora 14 Supplemental Wallpapers

We at the Fedora Design Team are not arrogant enough to think the default wallpaper we provide is the ultimate choice for everyone, we understand the diversity of our users and their tastes and trying to make a larger audience happy we want to provide a set of alternatives. The idea is not new, we started playing with it a couple of years ago, but only now it came to fruition.

Of course, other distros are doing it too and they may arrived faster to results, but we used the "Fedora way", more Free and more Open :D It started with a wiki page collecting submissions from everyone, it was announced on blogs/Planet, Fedora Weekly News, microblogging and so (as a writer for FWN I made sure the happenings are documented as they go).

After a generous submission interval we had the members of the team expressing their option/preferences/votes (you want the selection made by someone with an understanding about design, usability, photography and such) and this ended in a "winners" page containing the most voted images, some of the submission are creation of Fedora contributors and some are Free images gathered from the internet (Flickr)

The current step is to double-check the licenses (we became quite paranoid about this after the InvinXible/Solar incident) and at the first pass we struck down a couple of them due to restrictive license (CC-BY-ND and CC-BY-NC are not Free, so not acceptable for inclusion on Fedora). The second pass is to contact the unknown photographers and learn if they are happy with the attribution we are able to provide, some already replied positively. Expect the package to hit the repos before the Beta release and get a few improvements until final.

One of the last steps we are still trying to figure is providing attribution (author name, license and URL) in the wallpaper chooser application as tooltip, the current idea is to (ab)use ane XML file in /usr/share/gnome-background-properties/) and another is to try to persuade some spin maintainers into liking and using the package (it will probably be at least part of the Design Suite).

Rock it.

Mission/Vision

Last week being out for a photography camp (don't ask for the photos, I don't have any ready to show yet and then will have to wait more for signed release forms) I missed a good part of the talks (mega-flames?) about the Fedora vision and mission, happening on the advisory board, respectively development lists. Only now I start having a little time to get a glimpse of it and maybe making my point in the process.

People that know me pare probably aware I like to quote a lot an old but famous piece by jwz about software development and its purpose, here's an excerpt:

"How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).

"Social software" is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.

I agree it is true about any type of software, not only "social" and to be clear, is not literary about helping people having intercourse but in a larger sense making their lives better.

So I should obviously ask myself if and how using Fedora is impacting my life, here are a few examples:

• one piece of software that changed my life in the past years is Inkscape (I practically re-started doing graphics thanks to it) with the new released 0.48 version, for which we have packages in Koji for F14 and up. Even if it is a mostly bug-fix release, I am obviously anxious to run it but the only possibility for doing so it to jump my desktop to a pre-Alpha F14 and endure a world of pain. I miss the older, better times when the maintainer could be persuaded in pushing such things to Stable.
• as any desktop user I use the web browser a lot and my choice is Firefox here. The new and exciting new release is Firefox 4, currently in Beta 4 and targeted to a final release around the same time with Fedora 14. Unfortunately, we won't have it in F14, so I am using builds from an external repo (thanks Remi!) and endure the pain (for example session restore always brings the wrong version). I miss the older, better times when we used to track in Rawhide the development of applications with major user impact.
• the Instant Messenging client is practically broken for months for me, being unable to exchange files over the Y!M network with models and photographers really worsened the quality of my life. Even while typing this very paragraph I had to (awful coincidence!) decline receiving a photo from one of my nude models.
• as a photographer I use GIMP a lot and when I found a package for the development version in Koji (thanks Luya!) I jumped at it. Still, it is an early development version, probably F15 material (in older, better times the maintainer could have been persuaded into releasing it as as update for F14) with many annoyances. I continue to endure it on the desktop but I had to downgrade to the stable 2.6.x on the laptop when I had to give a GIMP workshop. 2.7.1 is early, but a future development release could be better, I am still pondering on this one.

So drawing a line, is my life better? It does not look so... I miss some older, better times.

PS: can you believe being at a nude photography camp I managed to give a couple of my Fedora business card and struck a few conversations about what Fedora is and why someone should/should not use it with a few fellow photographers? Talking about GIMP there was natural and I found other people using it.

Workshops

Somehow I managed to put myself together and do my job, a couple of FLOSS graphics workshops, and not suck completely at it... it probably helped the audience was small, 6-7 people at each.

The first one was Friday evening at Ceata and I fulfilled an old-time request, teaching people to make their own hackergotchi with GIMP... pretty much basic introductory things but supposedly to be fun and show various tools. Still... it seems I managed to bore part of them. Maybe the beer & pizza after was too tempting? Or maybe the late hour...

Saturday was the RLUG day and its new tradition of monthly workshops. with my turn today. The idea was to reply to questions from the audience, but as nobody asked I took the freedom to show some pretty but simple things in Inkscape, it was entertaining to see people play with it like kids and to hear "wow! I won't use Dia ever again".

Still, I have to keep myself together even better, next week is going to come with a few days off, in a photography camp for which I know some friends from the community would be full of envy.

FLOSSCamp 2010

I am back home after FLOSSCamp 2010 and swamped with work, having to prepare a lot of content, photos and videos, since many communities are waiting for them (mostly the photos only). So long story short, here are the photos, enjoy them.

Now short story long, we left Bucharest as a group from 3 communities, RLUG, Ceata and Fedora:

Here we meet the people from SbLUG, who arrived early and settled the camp location, it was a good location.

After we placed the tents I disturbed the event (again) by getting out my (in)famous toys and everybody started to play with them:

When the light dimmed, we moved to the nearby chalet for a good dinner and fun time, with music and dance, until late in the night. Sometime over the top (funny to see geeks dancing)

We went to sleep around 1 am, passed a night under a heavy rain with wind, lightning and thunders (my tent resisted well) only to wake-up for one of the most beautiful forest lights I ever saw (hmmm... I guess I should send it as a supplementar wallpaper proposal:

After a late breakfast (so many overslept and lost that magic morning light...) we went for a little walk in the forest, eating a lot of berries (raspberries and blackberries) and playing to a creek

And return just in time for a bowl of spicy community goulash (apparently the cook's speciality):

Once more I showed my evil side, then people tried an afternoon nap and I destroyed it taking out the toys again, I am definitely evil and probably I am going to be banned from community meetings :D

Later we had a few formal presentations, I did catch a couple of them: Open High School and Fii Liber and missed at least another one (can't blame me, I was busy taking photos and such).

After the dinner we moved around a camp fire and talked until late in the night (2 AM, IIRC, when the false alarm of another rain scared us)

In the morning the weather was gloomier, so we sat next to the fire more and talked about community structure with people from openSUSE România and Ubuntu România.

We took the obligatory group photos (unfortunately after some people left, she should have done this one day before):


While everybody was packing I had my tome to get crazy and embarrass myself (like I care!):

And we returned home (not before a last rounds of beers, of course)

See you next year!