Back from FOSDEM
By gildor on Monday, February 25 2008, 22:37 - Permalink
I have spent one day and a half this week-end at FOSDEM. This was not as great as expected, but mostly because i don't have the time to stay the whole sunday. Next year, I will stay the whole week-end in order to have time to attend all the speak i should be interested in.
The beer event was overcrowded, but all the beer i found there was great (in particular the Floris Pear). It was also a great time to have a demonstration of the XO OLPC laptop. This little thing is funny, but i don't get the way the UI should be used. Another bad point, is that the first console allow to login as root by pressing "Enter" (at least on the one i try). I suppose this kind of device is not intended to be secured.
I also have time to talk with some Debian people and some other people -- in particular one who was thinking that Windows 2000 is the best ever OS. At least, it means that there were people from different horizons -- and this is a good thing.
During Saturday, i spend half of the day in the big amphitheater (Janson). The talk about Tux with Shades (Linux in Hollywood) was impressive, regarding the trailer they show us... The talk about FreeBSD was interesting -- but not impressive as a trailer.
I spend Saturday afternoon in the Debian devroom, following all the different talks. I miss the one from MadCoder about managing packages with git... That's a shame because i really want to see this one.
Since my train was at 12am on Sunday, i choose to only pay a visit to the different booths. I have the pleasure to have a demonstration of the EeePC on the Debian booth that really please me. I found the UI more easy to understand than the one from XO. Speaking with the person demonstrating the laptop, she explained me that EeePC is more "standard desktop" and XO more "creative desktop". Conclusion: i am not creative ;-)
Also talking about everything around talks and the meeting, i think Bruxelles is a really nice city for this kind of events. ULB is not near the center of Bruxelles but there are enough transportation. There was really a lot of people attending FOSDEM, and this is a good thing. I also have the pleasure to find some people from the OCaml Meeting.