Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

fabbe writes "The 6th annual Debian Developers Conference (DebConf) was held in Helsinki, Finland from July 10th to July 17th 2005. With over 300 registered participants from around 40 countries, this was the largest DebConf to date. More than 20 sponsors provided DebConf with a total budget of around 125,000 euros. The conference featured talks, workshops, demonstrations, coding marathons and round table discussions on various aspects of the Debian Project. The presentations were captured by the DebConf5 Video Team and are available online at at Debian's site. "

The Utnubu Project

[ballstothat (893605)]

Perhaps one of the more interesting bits to emerge from this was the Utnubu project...

Link:
http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/archives/59-Li nux-Ball-Utnubu.html [joachim-breitner.de]

I think Debian can learn a lot from the rapid success of Ubuntu, and hopefully this project will help heal some of the growing rifts between the two camps.

Re:The Utnubu Project

[diegocgteleline.es (653730)]

I, for one, erase my Ubuntu partition and welcome our new Utunbu overlords!

Re:The Utnubu Project

[electrichamster (703053)]

Compact version of your sig:
10 PRINT "Balls To This Post"
20 GOTO 10

:P

Re:The Utnubu Project

[electrichamster (703053)]

However, it has always been my personal credo that it's "all about goto 10 loops". And frankly, I think that applies to all facets of life, not just BASIC programming.

I think you'll find thats called obsessive compulsive disorder.

wow...RTFA!

[huckda (398277)]

It's most interesting with pretty much zero insight as to what made it "successful"...

Congratulations!

[hobotron (891379)]

You just described the formula for a successful meeting!

"success"? Huh?

[diegocgteleline.es (653730)]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

Success? Could it be different; I mean, successful here means "it was not cancelled"?

Success!

[RumGunner (457733)]

Bill Gates is bankrupt, and everyone now runs Debian. Great conference everybody.

and their consensus...

[gik (256327)]

"let's use redhat as our base distro from now on!"

(DUCKS)

Define Success

[ari_j (90255)]

For some, success is holding a conference on schedule with no deaths or maimings. For others, it is deciding exactly what the goals are for the next release. The blurb does not tell us what success the conference actually met, and from the other comments so far it appears that the article doesn't, either.

Why not just say "Sixth DebConf Ends" instead of "...Ends in Success" when the additional words are meaningless?

Successful end?

[stienman (51024)]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

Ok, so how exactly can a conference be unsuccessfully ended? Is this where the attendees launch a sit-in and prevent the conference from ending, or what?

It just seems like a hollow success.

"What was good about the conference you jsut attended sir?"
"Well, it ended. I'm quite thrilled by how well the organizers were able to get everyone to pack up and go - it was quite a success."

-Adam

Re:Successful end?

[Stauf (85247)]

~$ debconf
Usage: debconf [options] command [args]
~$ echo $?
255

My debconf didn't end in success [clug.org] :(

Phew...

[Momoru (837801)]

Sixth DebConf Ends in Success

At least it wasn't like the previous five DebConf's which ended in bloodshed.

Questions on current Sid

[tyrione (134248)]

Some questions (if these were addressed at the conference my apologies for asking here):

• What is the status on KDE 3.4.1 and accompanying addons becoming current with X.org currently kludging its way through Sid?[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]
• When the hell is GNUstep going to get rebuilt against Freetype 2.1.10?
• When will the Debian Java Policy become standard and agree upon?
• Should I just build my own local debs for Eclipse 3.1 or will they be released before 2010?
• What is the status, or if a plan even exists, regarding Debian working on a seemless Wireless config subsystem similar to say OS X? [waproamd, ndiswrapper, etc are ductape building blocks]*

I am well aware that all these questions could be directed to a package manager, yet when it's broadcast to a higher level audience more attention helps overcome the inertia in place which always causes those package manager to accelerate their updates and/or be more pro-active on such concerns.

[Note: I would assume when municipalities adopt the OSS model they plan on having both wired and wireless options accessible to their employees that could only help us regular users in seeing improvements to a vitally overlooked section of networking]

Re:Questions on current Sid

[andersa (687550)]

What is the status on KDE 3.4.1 and accompanying addons becoming current with X.org currently kludging its way through Sid?[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]

Everybody is working on the transition from GCC 3.3 to GCC 4. A big pile of packages have still to be rebuild. During that time the X Strike Force is working on getting Xorg to compile on all architectures. Once all that is in place. KDE 3.4.1 will be uploaded, and the bug squishing on that will begin. I'm guessing a month or so before a fully working KDE 3.4.1 is in sid, give a couple of months/take a week.. ;)

In the meantime you can still use Alioth KDE 3.4.1 packages with sid and xorg (Yes, Really!). You need to delete all aspell and libjack packages from sid, and get libaspell and libjack from testing, then KDE will install without problems. And hold off on upgrading once you have something that works, unless you are prepared to sort out the dependency issues that are bound to arise

Re:Questions on current Sid

[Overfiend (35917)]

[alioth hasn't updated its 3.4.1 packages since early June, long before Branden submitted X.org into Sid.]

Correction: I didn't upload the X.Org X11 packages to unstable (sid). David Nusinow did. David has taken the lead on X.Org X11 responsibilities, as I have recently acquired others.

Doesn't stop me from helping out and doing commits, but I've been distancing myself from the actual package uploads over the past year or so. For example, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto handled most of the XFree86 4.3.0 uploads.

More info on Available Videos

[sirmikester (634831)]

Check out http://wiki.debian.net/?DebConf5Talks [debian.net] for more details about the available videos (some including slides).

Good lord.

[debrain (29228)]

Google: "Debian bittorrent", [I'm feeling lucky]

Downloading Debian CD images with BitTorrent [debian.org]

Re:Did it help this issue ?

[ssj_195 (827847)]

The only possible things that could help with this are:

1) 100 programmers are hired full-time to reverse-engineer drivers;

2) More than a handful of manufacturers actually open up their specs;

3) Linux freezes its ABI, which I for one am not particularly in favour of.

None of these have happened, to my knowledge. Oh, and Linux Desktop has bigger problems than drivers, but those that can plausibly be solved via hard work are rapidly being addressed.

Re:A question that has been bothering me:

[Darkon (206829)]

Do these confrences ever end in failure?

This one [sco.com] might well do given the current climate.

Re:Debian?!?!?!

[iggymanz (596061)]

I see dead operating systems, they're all around me, on servers shuffling traffic and packets, and they don't even know that they're dead

Re:oh my fucking god.

[garcia (6573)]

It's amazing that "women in software" (of any kind) should raise a comment like "oh my fucking god." and "whoa. just whoa". You wonder why they shy away... A bunch of horny geeks getting excited over something completely mundane.

Get a grip and grow up.

For those of you that don't want to download the video: It's the opening slide for "Women in Debian and Free Open Source Sofware" by Magni Onsoien and Erin Clark (7/15/05).

Re:oh my fucking god.

[alfino (173081)]

I've had the pleasure to meet most of the Debian women at the debconf. And believe it or not: they were there to hack and improve Debian, not to serve as sexual attractors. Strangely, noone at debconf had a problem with that, or even thought otherwise. So why don't you (average slashdot reading horny male geek) go jack off to some porn site and not come back?

Re:Sixth?

[darketernal (196596)]

Yes.

Re:Question

[lspd (566786)]

What really upsets me is they made their video files in something other than ogg theora. Why?

As a member of the Debconf video team, the guy that took all of the video home to finish processing, a Debian Developer and a Free Software nut, I'm probably as well qualified as anyone to answer this question.

In a nutshell it's mpeg rather than Theora because none of the people arguing now, after the fact, that it should have been done in Theora were volunteering to help when the actual work was underway. Ffmpeg is GPL, it's in Debian main, and it has no problem encoding to mpeg-1. There are enough stupid software patents to be relatively certain that both Theora and mpeg-1 infringe on some. If there is a valid freeness issue against mepg-1, file a bug against the ffmepg package.

Mpeg-1 allows anyone on any platform to view the files with minimal fuss. The results look remarkably good at the low bitrate used and AFAIK no one is running around suing over the use of mpeg-1. For a low bitrate encoding, what exactly does Theora add?

It's even more comical that some are saying we should have used Theora while others are arguing that we should make DVD images (mpeg-2, where patents are actively enforced.) You really can't please everyone.

Still, for anyone who wants the wholesome buzzword goodness of Theora, wait until we're finished processing the videos and Theora versions will be made available.