[Fsuk-manchester] Software Freedom Day Results

[Lucy]

Manchester Free Software's Software Freedom Day at the Marbella Cafe

The day started with fitting an extra switch (needed so that both the
office machines and the cluster computers could use the internet
connection) and powering on the LTSP cluster machines to check
everything was still working. The computers were only moved into the
Marbella Cafe Friday afternoon and there was still lots to tidy and
check. Thanks to Robert, Steffi and everyone working at the cafe for
helping out!

>From about 11.30am we had a steady stream of people stop by for a
coffee and a chat. Everyone was interested and impressed by the LTSP
setup. For those who wondered, the server has a 3Ghz Sempron processor
with 2GB ram and runs everything for the four thin client machines
with hardly any load. We hope to add a few more clients in the near
future.

It didn't take people long to start playing games, like asteroids, and
running flash heavy websites on the machines. One of the few problems
we found was that Tux Racer does not play well with LTSP
(unsurprisingly) and slowed down all of the clients!

There was a bit of a lull around lunchtime, which was a shame because
the food was really good. Things picked up again in the afternoon
though. Overall, we handed out plenty of information sheets, CDs,
badges and stickers. We all got to meet a wide variety of people from
lots of different backgrounds, but who had all heard of free software
and were keen to find out more.

I think it was a really fun day and best of all, there's now a cafe in
town using free software to provide free internet access (and wireless
for those with laptops) and serving wonderful food.

Thanks again to everyone who turned up and to those who helped out.

Plenty of people had cameras and some photos can be found at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lucybridges/SoftwareFreedomDay2008#
http://www.flickr.com/photos/address@hidden/2872799118/in/photostream/

I hope to see some new faces at our talk in October.

Lucy

p.s Don't forget about the BCS/NO2ID/ORG talk this Tuesday about
privacy and security in the database state
(http://manchester.no2id.net/content/privacy-and-security-public-meeting)