Revolution Linux's Blog

Thanks to folks from SCALE8x that did a tremendous job in making this conference possible. On our side, we tried to make the Try-It Lab as interesting as possible, showcasing LTSP-Cluster and its possibilities.

Here are a couple of pictures, taken by OSSIE Chairman Tim Fritchel, who was also responsible for the program in the lab (thanks Tim !). And as usual, thanks to our partner ASUS computers who makes this lab possible by providing the actual machines used as thin clients (as you can see in the pictures).

• Try-It Lab, by Revolution Linux and ASUS !

• Empty Try-It Lab

• A packed room for my Open Source Social Networking Tools session

• Even more people, for my Desktop in the Cloud with LTSP-Cluster session !

• An EeeTop (all-in-one touchscreen) running as a Thin Client on LTSP-Cluster

• An EeePC Netbook, running as a Thin Client on LTSP-Cluster.

Thanks everyone, we had a wonderful time there !

We just finished to setup the Open Source Thin Client Lab, and I can tell you it is beautiful, thanks to the wonderful machines of Asus, and the nice monitors that Michigan City Area Schools landed us.

We had many volunteers that helped us to put everything into place and have the perfect setup. Randy Orwin, Steve Hargadon and I would like to thank Kevin M, Mary, Paul, Kevin C, Mel, Mike L , Mike H, Lucie and her friend, Sugar Labs volunteers, and probably some other people that I don't remember theirs names.

So here is a sneak peek of what the lab looks like.

There is going to be a bunch of sessions going on there tomorrow. Come and meet us there if you are (well, sessions are full, but you could still enter if there is some space left 5 mins before the beginning of a session).

You also will want to see this if you still think that there is no multimedia and all this nice stuff on LTSP thin clients (there IS , even volunteers were surprised !).

You can also come and meet us at the Open Source Playground (and see the thin clients there too), just in front of room 152B (the Open Source Lab's room).

See you there tomorrow until Wednesday !

Here is the talk I just did at Libre Graphics Meeting 2009.

Of course, these are just the slides. I'll update the blog post when we are going to have the recordings available.

We are proud to announce that Revolution Linux will participate at Libre Graphics Meeting 2009.

LGM 2009 will be held in Montreal, Quebec, from May 6th to May 9th.

LGM 2009 is the fourth annual worldwide meeting of teams developing open source graphics applications. Designers, graphic artists and anyone involved in print production and/or web development are cordially invited to attend and meet the developers one to one.

One of the main aspects of our participation will be the presence of Stéphane Graber, Ubuntu liaison at Revolution Linux, who is Ubuntu developer, MOTU and also maintainer of LTSP and LTSP-Cluster. We sure think that his presence will bring more of the spirit of collaboration and sharing that LGM is all about.

I will also be there, bringing my two cents about graphics applications integration into education. I'll try to bring up the user point of view, and share experiences we had with graphics applications in our large scale deployments of thin clients.

We submitted those 3 talks, that we hope are in line with the spirit of LGM :

• LTSP and graphics applications (Stéphane and Benoit)
• Keeping in touch with Ubuntu (Stéphane)
• Discussion about the Impacts of Design Decision on Software Usage and Adoption (Benoit)

See you in Montreal !

Last week, I was at CUE 2009 conference in Palm Springs, California. That was a lot of fun !

Steve Hargadon and I, as part of K12OpenSource.com, did a great setup of thin clients that were used both for email stations, filling up the survey and also as a lab for presentations for the conference. All of this was called the "Open Source Pavilion". We also had the help of Judith Beaudoin as a volunteer to help us do the setup (and the much appreciated remote help from Stéphane Graber).

You can see on this picture people filling up the survey for the conference. CUE had this great idea of giving a t-shirt to people who fill up the survey, this is a great incentive to do so and a trick to keep for other conferences.

I also gave two talks in the Open Source Pavilion

• 10 Common pitfalls on the road to Open Source
• Large scale Open Source infrastructure and thin clients.

Here is a picture of the pavilion, with people looking at Ubuntu and various applications available on our thin clients using LTSP-Cluster, between 2 presentations.

Following these talks time I spent at the Open Source, I had the chance to meet a lot of teachers and IT people from various areas of California and United States. A lot of people almost jumped on us to have our list of "Top 10 Open Source software in Education". By popular demand, you can download it right here. If I have had a thousand copies of it, I'm sure I would have gave them all !

I'm sure that this was just a first time and that we will be back at CUE next year.