After some considerations and discussion within the Nicaraguan LUGs Community, SUSE-Ni was appointed to carry on with the FLISOL event on April 24th.

FLISOL stands for “Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre”: Free Software Installation Latinamerican Festival, where we make live demostrations and installation of Linux on the computers being carried by the crowd.

Nicaragua’s plans are to host 3 FLISOL events in 3 different cities: Managua, Granada and Leon (for the moment), leaving the management and direction in every site to one particular LUG.

For us, the openSUSE Group in Nicaragua, this is a great opportunity to participate in leading one of the main groups and to send personnel to the remaining places, so we can provide a permanent and effective presence in the Country.

Our Main event will take place at the Casa de los 3 Mundos, a Cultural Meeting place, administrated by Mr. Dieter Stadler. The house has enough room for us and for the visiting public.

More to come in the following days, detailing our plans and organization for the event.

Ok, that was a bit exagerated.

But the truth is that I am enjoying the new SUSE Studio suite. And that’s because it is facilitating my job as an educator. I work with the Nicaraguan Amateur Astronomers Society (ANASA) in teaching basic astronomy to the public. Obviously, my workhorse is an openSUSE laptop, loaded with Stellarium, Celestia, KStars and Xephem (and many other tools for my personal job as an astronomer).

For a long time, I’ve been advocating the use of openSUSE as the reliable, user-friendly and safe Linux distribution that it is, but I face a big barrier: the big majority of people attending our astronomy lessons does not have the needed technical skill and knowledge to install a new operative system, specially one like Linux.

So, I’ve decided to build a Live CD using SUSE Studio, focused entirely in provide the same basic tools for learning the sky and their basic steps in Amateur Astronomy.

The name of the Project: AstroGarrobo

Garrobo is the Nicaraguan name for a male Iguana. The Nicaraguan Linux community have nicknamed our openSUSE mascot as Garrobo instead of the familiar Chameleon, because a Chameleon is a rare species here in my Nation.

So far, there is a Beta version available for download at SourceForge. I have received many valuable reports from Beta Testers from different parts o the world.

My goal here is to obtain a stable LiveCD, for free distribution, that may help others to obtain the tools needed to inspire, feed and motivate their love for Space.

I’ve written a more detailed explanation of this project in my Blog (in Spanish). I would appreciate any comments, insights and recommendations about AstroGarrobo.

Clear skies!

Incoming event @ Nicaragua

Mas informacion, haciendo click en la Ranita

My wife Sonia and me, plus Agustin Chavarria and another SuSE fan!

The Festival took place at the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria Campus (UNI-IES), reaching more than 300 visitors.

OpenSUSE and Novell banners!

Although there were several LUGs performing, OpenSUSE was one of the most solicited distros for installing. We installed the 11.1 version on 7 laptops.  And as usual, all others distros were after our stuffed penguins and geekos!

My wife Sonia. Yeah, she loves the Penguin too!

Agustin Chavarria performing the First Instalation of the event: OpenSUSE 11.1!

Fatima Mendoza and Hellman Taleno

A glimpse of the crowd in the Show Room. More and more coming during the day!

We continue working spreading the word of the Green Lizards!

*Update:  I corrected the name… shame of me! hehe*

Click on “More…” to see the picture…

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

The answer: 3

It’s been a while since the 3 oS Members from Nicaragua were planning to take a picture together, but for time, job and other complications we have been unable to do it.

But yesterday, caused perhaps for a bug in our kernels, the 3 of us gathered together outside Alex’s ex-office, after retrieving some promotional material from Novell at Alex’s place.

We started to talk about one of the Projects for Nicaragua and forgot completely about the picture. Moments laters and got into my car and DANG!, noticed the flat tire. Alex and Decks came and helped me to empty my car’s trunk when I noticed my camera. A bell rang inside my head and CLICK! A picture came out.

Not exactly the situation and posse we were thinking about… but it worked. :p

As a Member of the Nicaraguan OpenSuSE community and the Nicaraguan Amateur Astronomy Group, I’ve set up a small stand running Stellarium in my oS.11 Laptop.

After that, I conducted a small workshop for people interested in learning Stellarium.

That was a big day!