Just back from the combined openSUSE 11.2 and Ubuntu Launch party. We had over 120 people attending the event, much more than we had expected. Luckily we had enough of pizza slices and DVDs for all

The event started with the welcome by Prof. Vupul Kalamkar, PhD of Bachelors of Computer Application Department, Faculty of Science, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara. The first presentation was by Kartik Mistry,  Debian Developer on how to get started with contributing to Free Software world.

Next up was my talk featuring all the goodies we have packed in openSUSE Edu Li-f-e based on the latest openSUSE 11.2. A very passionate discussion on “user friendliness” of GNU/Linux distributions vs M$ Windows erupted when asked from the audience what was preventing them from using Linux, hopefully we were able to convey the ease of use by demonstrating many softwares that are present on Li-f-e and live demonstration of coding java, and C# by Nitin. How much easy can it get then getting IDEs such as MonoDevelop, Netbeans, Eclipse and compilers of all major programming languages out of the box.Some videos were also shown, among them Shayon’s(he is the the dude behind the camera in all pictures) promo and the stylish arrival of the geeko ending the presentation with this great video.

The hybrid iso technology was really a WOW! factor, many participants didn’t know something like this was possible and were thrilled with seeing it in action.

There were few laptops getting Linux installed, some running Ubuntu and some openSUSE, tons of live USB sticks were created and every participant went home with Ubuntu and the Li-f-e DVD.

We ended the event with a lucky draw, 3 Ubuntu t-shirts, 2 openSUSE Li-f-e t-shirts, and 2 USB sticks with Li-f-e installed on them were the prizes. Kartik Mistry had a random number generator script picking numbers, unfortunately it kept calling people who had already left or repeating numbers, so we went old fashioned with everyone present writing their names on a piece of paper and esteemed faculties of MSU BCA doing the honors of drawing the name of the winners.

Some of the pictures from the event.

We surely had a lot of fun…

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