Good morning, allthough CeBIT didn't ended yet, I'll send you now my review for the first half, awaiting Grisu's one for the second:
prologue: LinuxLand [1] sponsored this year some space at their own booth for us to present Debian. Grisu did all the planing, so I can't tell you anything about that. Allthough much of you offered help maning the booth, we decided, to do a one man show, since we had only a small presentation table with one computer and internet access. I arrived the day before opening, and got impressed very fast. Neither I have been at CeBIT nor in Hannover, but I like the international flair. The computer of the demonstration point has been brought by the LL people, too. I just needed to set up a propper Debian system. I decided to use the stable release (You might remember AJ's warning [2], that things will break, when libc6 moves to testing), and use and show apt-pinning, but I had some problems with the graphics card. It was some kind of ATI 128 card, which was not supported by stables XFree 4.1. I tried to run it with the vesa and the framebuffer driver, but both times X crashed several times. Then I found out, that sarge's XFree 4.2 would support this chipset with the ati driver, and so I installed testings XFree. But this didn't solved the problem. I realy thought the hardware has been broken while transporting it - I phoned the guy who used this machine daily, but he didn't had a good idea, too. Luckily I had my brother's notebook with me. The past events I used it for Debian installation presentations, because it is very easy to install it. If a visitor comes up, telling that he would like to use Debian, but heard it would be so difficult to install, I set him in front of it, give him a CD and guide him through the installation, telling him the possible traps and why it is, like it is. Since X kept on crashing, I got a little bit panic, and wrote a mail, that it would be nice, to get a replacement machine, because I would travel home on sunday and didn't want to leave Grisu just a systems, of which I thougth it had hardware problems. I left the area arround 9:00pm and the people of LL, Linux New Media [3] (who organized much of CeBITs LinuxPark) and me went to a greek restaurant with very fair prices (Haha), we talked much about different exhibitons, and such stuff. I arrived at my sleeping place soon before midnight. A nice former farm in a suburb of Hannover, owned by the parents of the Debian fan Johrrit Fahlke. Very nice to stay there, where it is silent and you can see the stars, when you live in central Frankfurt. Day 1: Well, I was waked up by the farms cat greeting me ... with her claws ... already at 6 o'clock. My hosts, teachers at a school near to the exhibition area, took me there early, since I warnted to try a few ideas to get that $@&!� machine running, I even tried a Knoppix [4] generated configuration for X, but it failed, too. Andreas Tille arrived very early, and tried to fix the X11 problem, but he didn't succeed, too, because the computer decided to run stable for himself. Perhaps he just wanted to be touched by a real DD, not just a guy with to much spare time and a self invented title ;) He installed his debian-booth [5] pakage, too. It configures a nice x-planets backgrounds and gives you some good configuration examples (e.g. sudo). I can't tell you how much visitors we had that day, I even can't estimate their number. There were much, who heard of Linux before, but didn't know anything about it. So I went to hall 11 (which is on the oppisite of the area), where Klaus Knopper had his own cubicle at the common booth of the district Rheinland-Pfalz. He was very busy, but I got some boxes of his Knoppix, so we could give them to such people. There were some visitors, who just want to tell us, how much they like Debian. there was even a guy from Korea, who was a real fan. We discussed a little bit about i18n, and he considered showing up again, when Grisu has arrived. He realy wanted to help us, and so we thought, that he might start a korean translation of the pakage descriptions [6]. Thomas Lange, the developer of FAI [7] and some other developers showed up, and Thomas left some FAI flyers, and we talked a little bit about it, since I try to <s>assimililate</s> convert the admins of our institute to Debian, which is not easy: They use Red Hat, because they always used Red Hat. Some other developers (Sorry, forgot your names) showed up, too, and LL gave them nice Baseball-Caps [8] and mousepads [9] with our swirl for free. Even a guy from SuSE arrived, and asked, if he might buy one :) Of course we exchanged fingerprints, too. (Yes, I'm too lazy to take a look at the fingerprints to remeber the lost names.) Allthough our booth was in the corner of the hall, we had a good position. Openened by two sides, much people crossed it going to hall 5 (or the restrooms), and some got stopped by us. On the other side was the Linux Forum, where some talks were held. So sometimes, if the talk was interesting, we were idle (and able to take a look at the talk, too), while we were very crowded after the talk ended. Luckily Adreas Tille stayed nearly the full time at the booth, and we had much to do, and showed things both of the computers we had. Some times it looked more more like a Debian booth, hosting LinuxLand. After 5pm the halls emptied very fast, so could talk a little bit with the guys in the open booth. Free projects, which didn't had the luck of big sponsorship, had the possibillitie to get a (part time) booth from LNM. So I talked a little bit with the PHP-Guys, and took a small view at NetBSD. I was very tired, so I left early. Later that evening I gave my hosts the presents I brought with me: Ebblwoi (spoken applewoy) and a bembl, and we discussed a little bit about this and that, mainly why there are guys doing such good work, without getting payed in there free time. That was very nice. Day 2: I sleeped a little bit too long, so I missed my train and didn't arrived in time. Bad Luck, but the first half our happenend nothing. A nice thing was the exhibitions supply service. They send girls which sandwiches, drinks and coffee to the boothes (of course they are not cheap), and you can get bigger thermos of coffee, too. On this day Alexander "formorer" Wirt showed up, and stayed a while at the booth with me as well as acting for Klaus Knopper, while Klaus had some important dates. Again we where quite busy, but this time we didn't had the oportunitie to listen tot he talks, too, but I heard that John "Maddog" Halls keynote had some highlights, and that one guy from Ximian [10] hold a nice talk, why Microsofts licence politics is working for Ximian. Later that day, when it has become a little bit emptier, I did two or three of the installation demonstrations. After that I talked a little bit with the Gnome [11] people. They are quite impressed of the Debian pakages of gnome, "which are very fast and stable but a little bit outdated", so we had a good conversation while eating, and they love Debian (one them weared a LL Debian T-Shirt [12]) and I like gnome much. Day 3: Well, at this point I stopped writing my diary in the evening. I can't remeber anything unusual at this day... Oh, wait! There is one funny thing to tell: LinuxLand sells a boxed Debian version [13]. The boxes look very nice. A student, who allready burned Debian, realy wanted such a nice box, but could not afford buying one. LL gave much stuff away for addresses for their newsletter (they are still a company and want to make money), so Franz from LL made the joke, he could habe one, if he would gave them his address, and I made the joke, I would get a donation, because you can read on the box, that our project gets 2Eur. I don't know he understood, we where joking, since he did both: He left his address and gave me 2Eur ;) I remember, how the visitors changed on this friday. There where not just businessman, but "normal" people and much students. Some has come, to get their key signed by a developer because they considered becoming a DD. I complicated the things a little bit, as I am not a DD (yet). But as far as I can remeber, every time this happenend, I found a DD nerby. Did I mention, that we had much questions, which were not debian specific? Of course there were Knoppix-Related questions (I can't unmount my harddisk, etc.), which were easy to answer. After answering them, I told them, that the new version of Knoppix, comes with Selflinux [14] (Knopper made even a shortcut on the desktop). So I had often Knoppix booted on the notebook, showing it there, while showing the normal Debian related things there. After the show, the LL and LNM guys and Max, the moderator of the Linux-Forum, went to a nice american diner. They have nice looking female waitresses, wearing short skirts... Oh, and the food is good, too ;) We visited a pub nearby for some darts, and that took a long time, since Franz didn't let us go, before he won against every one of us ;) Day 4: Did I mention, the good coffe supply? It was a gift on that morning! Luckily we were to busy to get tired - it was sunday and much saturday and students got in cheaper. Grisu has allready arrived, and Frank Ronneburg, who wrote the german "Debian Anwender Handbuch" [15] arrived early, too. So we had enough manpower to stand against all arriving visitors on that saturday. On this day it _was_ a Debian booth, while LinuxLand had a small table in our booth. I think I installed Debian more than four times on this day, every time explaining the same things, making the same jokes. That became a little bit boring, but I don't think, our visitors became aware of it. My failure, should have gone to sleep not that late. Sometimes newbies (or even wannabe newbies) asked, which distribution they should use, and I usaly pointed them to the LUGs. I showed them the Pro-Linux List of LUGs [16] and told them, that it would be the best for newcomers, to install, what their LUG is using. So they find a good reference in their LUG if they encounter problems, and they don't waste money, since they can get a copy from one of their LUG. On that evening, we went to that american diner again (because of the milk shakes, not the waitresses!) but it was a little bit difficult to find. The day before that I took a flyer, and found out, that they don't list they address on them (but show a waitress). Very strange marketing. Day 5: This was my last day, and since I my presence was not needed, I sleeped long, and had the oportunitie to take breakfirst with my hosts, after refused to do so the last days under time pressure. Again it was nice to have a talk with them (this time mostly about politics, especialy of the united states). The rest of the fornoon I took a look at the exhibition myself. Of course I couldn't stop being at work, and always asked, if I could by a computer without os, and such things. When I got through hall 11, and saw that Knopper's booth was quite empty, I talked a little bit to him. I got a little bit confused, because he thought, Heise, who payed the Knoppix CDs, would be pleased if we gave them away, too. But before I could apologize, because I missunderstood him on the first day, he gave me another box. So I don't think it can be that worse ;) I went to our booth and stayed there till 4pm, showing two other Debian installations, before I left for a small dinner (again in the short skirt - hmpf - good shake diner) and went home. On my way home the train had some techincal problems, and while sitting together with other railway custumers I got another oportunitie for improvised talks about Free Software in general an Linux particular. So I gave away a big part of the Knoppix CDs I took, before even arriving at home. Last thing to mention: Donations. One guy wanted to get a quittance, so I pointed him to the ffiis-site [17]. Beside the 2Eur I metioned above, I got 4Eur from other Visitors, 5Eur from the Gnome guy with the Debian Shirt (in exchange for a 5Eur donation to the gnome project) and 50Eur from LinuxLand, which I got for food, but didn't used at all. Summa summarum: EUR 61. Uh, well, I think thats all I have to say, so I wish Grisu a nice time in Hannover. Want we could make better next year: - Having more FAI flyers. - Having a faster machine at the demo point, most things went fine, but it was to slow to show nice things like make-kpkg, zgrep Contens-i386.gz and sucht hings. - I met a fellow student, of whome I neither know, that he used Debian, nor that he orginally comes from Hannover. So it will become easier to get a accomodation. - Don't write me Emails, if you need something from me! I didn't had a chance to take a closer look at my Emails! - Get an (nearly) anonymous Mailaccount. Some asked me to mail them a link I showed them, which is a good Idea, but I'm not sure, if it was a good idea to use my private one. Links: 1: http://www.linuxland.de/ 2: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003/debian-devel-announce-200303/msg00006.html 3: http://www.linuxnewmedia.de/ 4: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/ 5: http://people.debian.org/~tille/xplanet-ltk/ 6: http://ddtp.debian.org/ 7: http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ 8: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/21_fanartikel/debian_fanartikel/debiancap/framify 9: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/21_fanartikel/debian_fanartikel/debianmousepad/framify 10: http://www.ximian.de/ 11: http://www.gnome-de.org/ 12: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/21_fanartikel/debian_fanartikel/debianshirtxl/framify 13: http://www.linuxland.de/katalog/01_linuxdistri_bs/debian/debian30/framify 14: http://www.selflinux.de/ 15: http://www.openoffice.de/linux/buch/ 16: http://www.pl-berichte.de/lugs/ 17: http://www.ffis.de/Verein/spi-de.html
