Some Statistics:

• Over 100000 visitors in three days
• Novell sent 300KG of magazines, posters, caps to give away
• We “sold” 200 Sabayon Live CDs that runs Compiz Fusion out of box on any hardware
• We gave away over 100 openSUSE DVDs
• There were three seminars on Linux and Open Source out of total 10

Here are some pictures from the event(click the image for entire gallery).

Here are the designs that are going in print for the IT(BITA 2008) exhibition we are participating at Akota Stadium, Vadodara, India this 25 - 27 January 2007.

Handbill Front:

Handbill Back:

Calander/Bookmark:

Handbills are 8.5″x5.5″ and the calender is 7″x2″.

I am sure these handouts, live CDs and demo of Compiz Fusion in all its glory would raise little interest in what GNU/Linux OS is capable of and make Linux more popular.

On Sunday 4 pm I would be doing a presentation at the seminar hall highlighting all the goodies openSUSE brings to the home user.

Couple of days back the new drivers were released. Here is the changelog from our friend sndirsch, maintainer of X for openSUSE:

 Sat Jan 19 00:05:37 CET 2008 - sndirsch
- update to release 8.45.4
* Corruption will no longer be noticed in the lower right corner
of the display or on the mouse pointer after the system is
running for a long period of time
* Connecting a display device that supports 1680×1050 to a system
running Linux will no longer result in a maximum display
resolution of 1280×1024 only being available
* Custom mode lines in xorg.conf will no longer be ignored by the
fglrx driver
* Suspending to RAM or DISK on kernel version 2.6.23 or later no
longer fails

It is still not possible to play videos when compiz is running like we can do it on nvidia drivers. The ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager options required are here.

We are participating in BITA (Baroda IT Association) Exhibition 25 -27 January 2008, putting up one and only GNU/Linux and Free Software stall amongst over 100 stalls displaying hardware and software that is targeted towards M$’ OS.

When we participated last year, there was a huge interest in what ‘Linux’ is all about, visitors couldn’t believe that there is something available for free with no strings attached, it even does most of the jobs much better than paid counterparts.

To introduce visitors to Linux we had distributed Kanotix(Imprvoised Knoppix) and Sabayon Linux live CDs. This year too we will be distributing Sabayon Live CD. Here are the reasons why not PCLinuxOS, openSUSE or any other distro.

1. I wanted the distro to run Compiz Fusion out of box, PCLinuxOS did not do that, Kanotix can do it but only on Intel hardware. Sabayon is the only distro that can handle ATI/nvidia hardware and offer AIGLX or XGL as choice on booting. openSUSE live, created by KIWI, too can run compiz with Xgl but only on Intel hardware, the process is not as simple as it is on Sabayon.

2. Play multimedia- openSUSE was limited to playing MP3 only.

3. Sabayon provides the glimpse of what Linux distros could be if they are not crippled by legalities.

Once users ’see’ what a great thing GNU/Linux OS is, I am sure they would want it installed on their machines, installation of openSUSE is free, all they need to do is bring their box at our office , multimedia, drivers etc. are just 1-click away on installed system

Hopefully this year we will see open source drivers for ATI and openSUSE 11 with all the bling enabled by default.

Cool new PlexyDesk project, development 7 days old, has just taken off and already there is something that the developers have got to show us.

The PlexyDesk project is started by  a group of Indian and Sri Lankan developers making this perhaps the first ever Asian Desktop. This is what they intend to achieve:

“PlexyDesk will render your workspace and help organize all your information with a touch, yes heard us right, Plexy will support multi touch screens. Plexy might not be the new Desktop Environment you came looking for, be it will be the Ultimate Desktop Experience you never expect to get.”

PlexyDesk will run on KDE3/4 or GNOME, with or without compiz.

Head to the project home page to see the videos of it in action and join in the development.