Fedora @ DevConf.CZ 2019 Wrap-Up

Miro Hrončok and I attended DevConf.CZ, the free and annual conference for upstream open source software projects, sponsored primarily by Red Hat. It is in Brno, Czech Republic. It is the counterpart to the newer DevConf.IN, the brand new DevConf.US, and the 1 time DevConf containers roadshow.

The awesome stickers, pamphlets, and Fedorator drew lots of attention.

The event went very well. Although many people stopping by were Fedora contributors, use Fedora, or had used Fedora, even some contributors learned new things from us Fedora Ambassadors. A video looping over Fedora 29's features was on display on the monitor.

Examples of some conversation points were:

• We were right next to the Python booth all 3 days. Fedora loves Python. We literally had stickers for this thanks to Miro, who is involved in both communities and helped out with their booth too. The Python robotics on the table & on the floor drew many people over, and then we discussed Fedora also.
• Multiple people asked about the Python version in Fedora & RHEL/CentOS. Many wanted the latest version, but some wanted older versions. I mentioned the versions with separate package names, and software collections. But I also pointed out Fedora's (and presumably RHEL/CentOS's) new long-term solution; modularity & AppStreams.
• Many current Fedora users were unfamiliar with the ThunderBolt "User Authorization" support added in Fedora 28. This was prominently shown in the video. Great work by the GNOME & bolt developers, after being implemented in the kernel.
• A technical writer for IP phones came by. She was particularly interested in the Czech fonts, and said Fedora's were pretty good, whereas most are terrible. She was very curious about the docs on our website, the migration from Publican to AsciiDoc, and what the ambassadors do.
• One user switched from Windows to Fedora 6 months ago. His driving reason was to do his DevOps work better. He commended Fedora on being easy to install. He asked for an equivalent of mremote for multiple remote desktop sessions. I recommended Remmina from Fedora's repos or Flatpak.
• One user uses Linux Mint. He tried Fedora on a machine with 2GB of RAM but it ran too slowly. I recommended the Fedora MATE spin for him.
• Mohan Boddu came up. As a packager, I had repeatedly seen his name. He answered my questions about release engineering.
• Fedora Silverblue was asked about a few times. People asked how it compared to other distros meant for containerized apps.
• The Fedorator was as always, a great conversation starter. Multiple people flashed Fedora to their USB key.

The Fedorator flashing Fedora. Thank you Sanqui!

I would also like to point out some pleasant surprises with the technical setup:

• The video was being shown from a Raspberry Pi (running Fedora of course). In North America, it is shown on a laptop; which takes up more table space. (The NA ambassadors have separate event boxes from Europe.) Previously I had worked on a Raspberry Pi + Motorola Lapdock for NA (& planned to gift it), but it ran into cabling issues with the non-standard cables/adapters (jiggling a cable slightly would cut USB keyboard & mouse data.) The use of a real monitor & USB hub solves this problem.
• The Fedorator is now running Fedora rather than Android.

Thank you very much to Miro for helping out so much at the booth also. It was a learning experience to see what non-English speakers need from Fedora, and how European Ambassadors do things differently in technical ways.

I'll end this post with an awesome slide from a presentation by Fedora contributors:

Fedora @ DevConf.US 2018 Wrap-Up

In August, Tom Callaway, Brian Exelbierd and I attended the first ever DevConf.US 2018, the free and annual conference for upstream open source software projects, sponsored primarily by Red Hat. It took places in Boston University. It is the counterpart to the less new DevConf.IN, the the well-established DevConf.CZ, and the 1 time DevConf containers roadshow.

A quiet moment with Bex at the booth. Photo by Richard Bowen

The event went surprisingly well. Although it largely felt like we were preaching to the choir at this Red Hat centric conference, there were many CentOS users from the CentOS Dojo, Boston University affiliates, FSF members, etc. There was still much to inform attendees about.

Examples of some conversation points were:

• Although some people had heard of modularity, many developers came by who had never heard of it. I learned that I often had to listen to their problems, and prescribe modularity as the solution to the problem. One Node.JS user was particularly excited to see the multiple versions available. He wanted to be able to switch to a new version at his leisure; which is exactly the point (decoupling the lifecycle of the framework from that of the OS.)
• One user came up and said that he is using Fedora a the University of Nairobi, and has students use it. He said there is lots of local talent in Kenya for Fedora, so the enterprise blockchain application for a Kenyan bank being developed on Fedora.
• Some CentOS Dojo attendees had some ideas about better integrating CentOS with Fedora.

The booth with lots of SWAG. Even headphones originally from Flock.

I also attended the CentOS Dojo beforehand. I gave an unplanned lightning talk on how to speed up Ansible provisioning of CentOS 7 workstations. The advice also applies to Fedora.

Thank you very much to Spot & Bex for helping out with the booth.

Closing ceremony. Chewbacca did not receive a medal.

I'll end this post with a funny story about the photos below. At the end of DevConf.US, we got to pick up free swag based on successfully answering trivia questions. It became surprisingly cold for a mid-August day, so I picked a rain jacket out of necessity. Rather than saying "Red Hat" on it, a Red Hat product name, or a community open source project name, it says"Red Hat PnT DevOps". Somebody commented that at Red Hat's Westford office, they just raided closets of old swag. (I also picked up an "obsolete design" T-shirt for Foreman.) So I am now effectively wearing a jacket for an internal Red Hat build engineering team while being a community contributor.