Tomorrow, the speakers list will go live, but I’ll share a bit of what’s going on. Most of the speakers have confirmed their presence, and we’re looking forward to celebrating 40 Years of Unix! We has several people planned for the fest. Here’s a sampling: Jorge Castro will be there, presenting “Building a Community Around Your Project.” Mackenzie [maco] Morgan will have a sysadmin-oriented talk on the differences between Red Hat and Debian. Fort Wayne LUG’s Vern Ceder is doing Python for Linux System Administration. And for our keynotes, we have Dr Douglas McIlroy and Shawn Powers.

This year, we also have a “Diversity in Open Source” workshop. No matter your background, you are welcome to contribute to Open Source.

We got the banners available online for linkage at Flickr, and Klaatu has done a great job with the design.

I’m hoping Twitter gets fixed soon, as it has been h4×0r’d. Will have to publicize via Identica.

Ubuntu Jaunty did not recognize my sound card nor my wireless card. Fedora 11 balked at installation. MEPIS (another Debian-related distro) had the same trouble as Ubuntu, and Crunchbang (an Ubuntu-based distro) failed to load. I finally decided to install Sabayon 4.1, which is Gentoo-based. I got online easily, but needed to fix up the ALSA driver. I rather deal with the sound not working than the wireless not working. I’ve been typing “equo” at the terminal and so far, no problems compiling.

It was a pity that I cannot get Ubuntu running on my new lappy as it’s a user-friendly Linux flavor and the blokes at Indiana Ubuntu LoCo are great guys. The Prediger liked the dark-colored theme Sabayon installed by default. It was different from the brown palettes Ubuntu offered.

I loved attending OSCON, as it is the yearly event in which I saved and scrimped to get there. The people who organised and coordinated the event are excellent folks. I’ve met wonderful people, learned more about the Open Source movement, and I get to take home the enthusiasm. From what I’ve heard, OSCON is more technical and nuts & bolts than the slick and marketing-heavy LinuxWorld. If I can, I’d take the Prediger to the 2010 OSCON.

But consider this: For those living and working in the Bay Area, it’s little problem to attend. However for Midwesterners, they have to fly out to the West Coast in order to attend. Then they need to rent a decent hotel room for 5-7 days at $189, plus a 10 percent tourist tax. Add meals and incidentals…NOT including the registration fees, that’s about $1800. That is more than the $1500 total I spent when I was at Portland 2008, including the student admission fee at $609. One presenter at that OSCON also mentioned the environmental effects of attending a cross-country convention.

No wonder why we should push for regional conferences like SCaLE in California. The Portland crowd has replaced the gap OSCON left with its own conference, the Open Source Bridge. For the low price of $250, you can attend all of these exciting sessions by the people who get into the nitty-gritty of the movement. I wish we can attend that as the Prediger has not been to Stumptown and I wanted to take him to Powell’s.

And now…here is what I’ve been doing when not studying PHP and CS4. I’ve been asked to join the planning committee for this year’s Ohio LinuxFest and we are planning neat exciting things. This year, we are celebrating 40 years of Unix. If you live within 3-5 hours of Columbus, Ohio…you should come. If you want to hear and learn from passionate people who gave their time, talent, and treasure in the FLOSS community…you should come. If you know a thing or two and you know it VERY well…drop us a line and we’ll contact you. And if you want to promote diversity in our community…you should come.

Best of all… you can register at the starting price of FREE. If you want to support our event, we have a $65 pass and a $350 for professional tutorials, and I highly recommend getting the supporter’s pass as you will get a shirt, some eats and drinks with that.

This year, consider making the regional conference your BIG conference.

Before anything else, I defragged the hard drive and shrank the Vista partition by 12.5 GB.  Vista Business has that option in which you can resize the hard drive.  Just to make sure things are safe, I made backups of my files and then I booted from my Live CD.  After setting up the extra space, I installed Ubuntu.  It also  sets up a boot loader, in which I can either boot from Vista or from Ubuntu.  That’s an extra step when I turn on my lappy, but it’s a small one.

For me, it’s like having a new computer, rediscovering the features.  Now I can enjoy Linux whenever I take my laptop.  I will have to get to the nuts and bolts and blog about how my laptop gets along with Ubuntu.

Got my room for 45 bux a night. It has a nice view of the State Capitol and it’s clean and cozy. But since it’s a four-star hotel, they will charge you for internet. Boo! Found a free hotspot close by, though.

On Friday morning, I went to the convention center and helped with the Professional Attendees’ registration. They were taking tutorials on time management, the LPI exam, security, and other system administration courses. I did meet Tom Limoncelli, the author of Time Management for System Administrators. Tom’s a nice fellow in person. I thanked him for his book, as it helped me and my husband with organizing time. I later bought his other book that he co-authored, The Practice of System and Network Administration. It’s over 950 pages thick and chockful of best practices that system/network administrators should know.

At lunchtime, I helped pass out shirts for the attendees and assembled the lanyard passes. After lunch, I relaxed and went to Barley’s for the pre-party. Went back to my room as sleep was of importance. Saturday was a day of much activity and I needed the sleep.

I was one of the presenters introducing the speakers, and I was assigned the Town Hall stage. The OLF organizers gave me a shirt and a “STAFF” lanyard pass. I got to hear Peter Salus, Elizabeth Garbee, Ilan Rabinovitch, Roland Hess, Paul Ferris, and Jon [Maddog] Hall. I also got to hear Jono Bacon as well. There was some technical difficulties with the overhead projector, but it was solved when presenters directly hooked up their laptops to the projectors instead of via the podium.

There was a huge raffle and HP gave away 5 portable computers and two printers. Simon Ruiz won the Photosmart inkjet. He was thrilled to the gills. The Linux Link Tech Show guys also gave away lots of books.

The after-party took place, with desserts and old school video games. I played a round of Super Mario 2. (The Princess is the best character for the game.) Dualcore performed their nerdcore rap. There was a dance off involving a chubby guy without a t-shirt. Moob-a-riffic! One attendee noticed my new Limoncelli book and I let him browse through it. He did not know that Sarbanes-Oxley regulations do apply to SAs. I advised him to chat with his colleagues about proper compliance. Note to the profs at Ivy Tech: Thank you for teaching me that tidbit.

The final morning was spent at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral across the street from the center. One of the Zenoss guys invited me to attend, so I got to see something new…er…I mean old. They commemorated the fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. I recognized various elements of the Liturgy, but it was different. I’m still sticking to the Book of Concord and high church Lutheranism. At least I understand a bit why various Lutheran clergy crossed over to Constantinople. I ate with Mr and Mrs Ruiz at the North Market and we went back to the Fort.

I’m glad I went to OLF and learned plenty. Much love and kudos to Beth Lynn and the OLF staff. They worked so hard to bring this to fruition. Over 1000 attended the conference and it was a great success. Travis Bigrigg has a great collection of pictures on his Flickr page. Looking forward to next year!

This week, the featured music clip is English Beat’s March of the Swivelheads, from the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off soundtrack.