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GNU is Not Unix Software Linux

106 Install-Fests At Once 25

Posted by timothy from the latinamerica-and-then-the-world dept.
TrixX writes "Yesterday, a free software install-fest happened in 106 cities in 13 Latin American Countries, in a coordinated event called FLISOL (Latinamerican Free Software Install Fest). This event was coordinated by about 40 user groups. In most places, different distributions of GNU/Linux were installed, and also Free software for Windows (like OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox). At the time there is a partial count of about 1000 assistants and hundreds of computers installed, and the count is not complete yet." We mentioned this event a few weeks back; now that it's happened, I'd like to read accounts from some of the participants about their impressions of the events.
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106 Install-Fests At Once More

106 Install-Fests At Once

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  • Yesterday, a free software install-fest happened in 106 cities in 13 Latin American Countries, and no one in particular noticed a thing.

  • Really interesting. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vidarlo ( 134906 ) <vidarlo@bitsex.net> on Sunday April 03, 2005 @03:44PM (#12128220) Homepage
    This shows what I've been thinking for a long time... Free software has a huge potential in poor countries, that has the need for a IT system working on a old infrastructure, and in this field Linux/FLOSS plays very nice. Imagine a win2k3 server running on 5 year old hardware? No, but then imagine a GNU/Linux server, serving web pages or such? Yeah, it works!

    • Re:Really interesting. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TrixX ( 187353 )

      Our LUG server (at Cordoba, Aegentina) runs a Pentium 200 MMX, with 64MB de RAM. It serves a static apache website, a dozen mailing lists through GNU/Mailman, mail for some of us, and a big FTP site (40+60+27GB hard disks).

      It's a little strained but runs fine.

      At the local installfest (this time, and at previous event_ there was a wide range of hardware. Some people have an old computer (Pentium I) they don't use anymore, and come to see if they can make it useful with Linux. Some people bring a new 2Ghz

  • Windows installfest (Score:5, Funny)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @03:46PM (#12128237)
    Crap... and what about actually stopping the perpetual Windows installfest we're having at work?

    Fortunately, I'm a programmer/sysadmin and I don't even touch user support. The support guys, though, get 897984789798 calls that "your program stopped working, fix it" from customers per day. And in basically all cases, it's some random Windows machine crappied beyond all recognition.

    The day all those small businesses around start getting it that, indeed, there are better, cheaper alternatives other than Windows, and we're not simply preaching some scam to get more money, I'll be a really happy camper.
    • This is our struggle , and im sure news storys will apear when we manage to persuade more companys and users to move over in the west .
      As for the struggle of those in South America , i see they have been doing rather well lately and i raise a glass in cheer of this .
      I have moved several users over to Unix type OSs such as linux /BSD and even solaris . It takes time but if we each do our part it will keep on going and eventualy we will have an even market share( no monopoly is good, competition keeps the tec
  • Can we get an idea of turnout?

    Were there 106 install-fests attended by 212 people, the two guys hosting each installfest?
    • Hehe,

      I believe that count is wrong.

      In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florianopolis [wikipedia.org], where i live, around 15 people were helping there, including me.

      We couldnt help as much people we wanted couse they were too many and most of them got away with debian-br-ccd - and it takes a while (I,d say 40 minutes) to get it working. There were also only a few, I believe like 8, network access points.

      It was fun to see all those people scared, guarding their computers when we were messing them up!

  • Completely Forgot (Score:3)

    by chochos ( 700687 ) on Sunday April 03, 2005 @10:35PM (#12130635) Homepage Journal
    I checked the FLISOL page a couple of weeks ago, but I completely forgot about the event. Probably because all Mexico City sites were too far away (there were no installfests in the south of the city). And I DID have the time to go to one, maybe help with the installs. Although the real help would have been promoting it so that more people would go.

    I bet there were very few people here, since no one seems to give a flying fuck about intellectual property, copyright theft, piracy, etc. and you can get a copy of Windows for $5 USD on almost any subway station.

  • Crap (Score:2)

    by Micah ( 278 )
    Crap, I'm in Quito, Ecuador and would have loved to help at the event here, but I missed the original announcement! Grrr.

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