Episode: 148
Title: HPR0148: LinuxFest
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0148/hpr0148.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 12:27:14

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Hello again, this is Dave and this is HPR for Friday, July the 25th.
I think, episode 140-something.
And this is coming to you from the Honda Civic, so there'll be a little bit of road noise
if you've not heard one of my pieces of audio before, there may be some road noise.
But today I wanted to talk about some community-related things.
This will be what this is rather in prompt 2, so I'm not exactly sure what I'm going
to say, but it's something I feel relatively strongly about, so maybe it'll be entertaining,
maybe not all that intelligent, but we'll see what happens anyway.
This year I went to the Ohio Linux Fast.
This was last October, September, excuse me, and this year they're having another Ohio
Linux Fast, and it is the sixth or seventh one, I guess to be the sixth Ohio Linux Fast.
In this year's October the 11th, in Columbus, Ohio, registration as far as I know is $65,
and it is voluntary.
You can show up and go to the event for free, I think, or you can pay $65 and get a T-shirt
or something.
I highly recommend anyone who is at all interested in Linux, who is new to the community,
the Linux and open source software community, who is a veteran of that community, anybody
who cares about Linux or free an open source software, I encourage you to go to the Ohio
Linux Fast.
I went last year, I'm going to back up a little bit.
I've been using Linux for, I don't know, 13, 14 years, and for a long time, I was not
very, I'm not going to use the word confident, but I wasn't quite sure that I fit in the
Linux community mainly because I knew I like computers and I knew that I was obsessed
about them and that I lived online, but I wasn't, I didn't work in the IT field, I didn't
have a degree in computer science, I wasn't a programmer, I had a Linux webpage, I had
one for a long time, but I really didn't feel like, and I'm introvert by nature, so I should
say that too, and I was a member of my look, I attended some love meetings, but I never
really felt like I had a right to participate.
I don't know if that was the culture of the day, I do remember when I first started using
Linux, I was subscribed to the Red Hat, made in last year, and there was, it seemed to
me looking back on it now, a little bit more prevalent was the attitude, you know, the
RTFM attitude or the elitism attitude, possibly, I don't know if it was that, I'm not easily
intimidated, but on the other hand, like I said, I am at heart and introvert, but I never
really felt like I had anything to say or that I was really part of the community, I wanted
to be part of the community, but I didn't feel qualified, I guess, is what I was, but
the root of the feeling I was having, like I said, I attended the low because I ate this
stuff up, I really enjoyed Linux, I enjoyed hearing other people talk about Linux, I tried
to participate and it occasionally felt stupid when I did so, I was active on the mating
list, I attended the meetings, but I really sort of felt like an outsider, and I went to,
I remember that there was the Atlanta Linux enthusiast showcase or something like that,
the Atlanta area of Linux showcase or something, it was in the late 90s before the dot com
bubble burst, and before it got a little big and became Linux were moved out west, and
I attended like three of those, and enjoyed myself tremendously, but the whole time I was
there, I didn't know anybody, and I didn't feel like the community was necessarily reaching
out to me as a, not a novice user, I'd been using Linux for a while, even then, but as,
you know, I guess an introverted, not very confident Linux user, someone who, who felt like
an outsider, I didn't really get the impression that my presence was, I don't want to say
needed or wanted, but it was just overlooked, not overlooked by a term too, I just didn't
feel part of the community, I guess is what I'm trying to say, and a lot of this may have to do
with me versus the community, but I'm thinking at the time that it was some parts of both, but
anyway, for whatever reason, in 95, I decided to start a podcast, he meant to say 2005, not 95,
he started a podcast in 2005, and I started podcasting, and it was really, you know, I guess I was
sort of raised to not really care what people thought about me, so I was just going to do this
podcast because I like to talk about Linux, and because, well, I had some prior experience
podcasting sermons for my church, just taking pre-recorded content and making it available on
internet, and I thought, this is fun, this is great, I enjoy doing this, there's an audience out
there, and I thought, well, you know, why not do this with Linux? I enjoy talking about Linux,
if nothing else, I'm passionate about it because I care about Linux, and maybe, you know, maybe,
if I talk about Linux and record it and make a podcast out of it, people are listening,
and they did, you know, not in huge numbers, I'm not, by any stretch of imagination,
going to say that I've become a success or anything like that, because that's the first thing
from the truth, but last October, I went to the Ohio Linux Fest, and even though I had,
you know, I have been an active part of the community, the Linux community for the first time,
and I say active, I mean, it is active, it can be, I'm not, you know, I guess I'm not a
coder or anything like that, I'm a food scientist, I'm a vitamin formulator of all things,
but I went to the Ohio Linux Fest, and even, you know, checking in the hotel that day, I
sat in the hotel, and a lot of this goes back to me being introverted, I sat there and wondered,
you know, why am I here? What do I have to offer? I don't really belong in this community,
these people out there, I wish were my peers, you know, they, they work in the IT industry,
I don't, you know, I'm a, I'm a 41 year old, out of place geek, that, that was what I was
thinking, that was the mindset, but I don't know what had changed since the, the last conference,
like this I went to, the one in the Atlanta that stopped happening in the late 90s,
between that and last year on the Ohio Linux Fest, but Ohio Linux Fest really, really,
opened my eyes to how wonderful the Linux community is, it was, just a, it's one of the best experiences
I've ever had, it was, I was surrounded, I really felt like, while I was there, that I was surrounded
by people of like mine, you know, I, I felt like I could approach people, I felt like I could talk
to them, I felt like they were all there for the same reason, and it was, it was all,
it's hard for me to put into words, but it was, there was a real sense of community there,
and it's one I had not felt before, you know, I had been doing a podcast for a couple of years,
I had, I had a forum in our RC chat room, and I had people emailing me, telling me,
they like the podcast up, and that, that didn't come close, I mean, that, that went even a hint
of what this Linux Fest was like, and I really think, even, you know, even if I'd never
podcasted one time, I really think that I would have gotten the same impression
at a Ohio Linux Fest, I don't think it had anything to do with, with me, and I feel even funny
saying that, because like I don't think I've arrived, I don't think I'm all that in a bag of chips
to use a, probably dated cliche, but, like I said, it's hard to describe, I really think
that the Ohio Linux Fest embodies and epitomizes is a perfect example of what is great about
the Linux community. There were, it's, it's a, it's an event, it takes place yearly, it's,
I drove 10 hours, and there were people that drove further than I did, there were people that,
that flew there from multiple states away, and it's different than a lot of the other
conferences, and I don't say that authoritatively, because I've only been to one other conference,
but, but it's, it's a, it's a conference, there's speakers, there's talks, there's corporate
sponsors with booze, there are, there's, you know, a dot org provision, a lot of conferences have
this, you know, so, but, you know, no corporate entity had a bigger presence than anybody in the
dot org provision, or the dot org row, what are you going to call it, you know, so in addition to
being a conference proper like that, it was a real, it was a real social aspect to it, a social
event to it, a, a geek party aspect to it. I'm not talking about the pre-party or the
actor part, I'm talking about the whole thing. It was just really, it was, it was really great,
the atmosphere was hard to describe. If you've not been to a Ohio Linux Fest, I, I hope you go.
It, I mean, even if you're brand spanking new to Linux, even if you felt like, feel like you
have nothing to contribute, if you just feel like a, a consumer of Linux, and, and, and, have never
given anything back, and they never filed a bug report, anything like that, it doesn't matter,
go, have your eyes open and, and see what it's like to be welcomed into the Linux community.
That's, that's, that's one thing I think a Ohio Linux Fest has excelled at, or at least it
didn't my case. I came there wondering, you know, still after, after years have been, you know,
in, you know, in around Linux, do I fit in, do I belong here, but it, I left, or even before I left,
it wasn't, as soon as I walked downstairs and, you know, into the, the conference or to the
pre-party that night, I knew that I was welcome here. And it was, it was a great, great thing. So,
if you've never been to Ohio Linux Fest, I encourage you to go, you'll have the time of your life.
While I was at Ohio Linux Fest, I got, I got to meet and talk to a lot of people. I talked with
Don Paris, and I talked with Richard Leip, who is the, I'm always worried I say his name,
no, he's like the organizer or the, the guy behind the Ontario Linux Fest. And I, I talked with
a couple of other people about how great this would be, an event like this were to come to
the southeast, where I left, to the Carolinas, to the, the, the, the general southeast area,
the, the, the, the fit to feel the, the whole left when the Atlanta area Linux showcase left
10 years ago. And I came back from Ohio Linux Fest, just all excited. I mean, just super excited
about this and pumped up about it and went to my lug with the, with the Ohio Linux Fest brochure.
And there's one thing I am not, it's a salesman. There's, there are many other things I'm not too,
but that's one of them. But I went to the lug and, and briefly, you know, passed the brochure
around to everybody, you know, in essence, what I've just told y'all sort of this, this, this,
this was great. I've never been anything like this in my life. We need to have some of this down here.
And, uh, the response was sort of like blink, blink. It was just like, you get almost your
crickets chirping. It was deaf ears. And I was a little discouraged, but, you know, I marked it up
to my ineptness as a salesman. And just forgot about it, sort of, uh, guess I got discouraged. But
for, for some reason, I've not talked about it anymore, but for some reason a couple of months ago,
David Nalley, a guy in my lug mentioned, you know, maybe getting
talking about this some more. And, uh, Jeremy Sands, uh, one of the co-hosts at the source cast
podcast. I also got involved. And, uh, since the, and, and we got to talk about on, on the main
list, and there has been a super amount of buzz, uh, you know, bored, you know, going on 100 emails
possibly. Maybe not that many, but hey, a couple of, a couple of three long threads on the, the
U-Clug main list about a southeast Linux fest. And, uh, things have been happening sort of fast.
And they've been happening in a seemingly at times, a chaotic manner. But nonetheless,
happening. Uh, last night, we had the first ever RC planning meeting for the southeast Linux
Fest. In 35 people showed up. Uh, people as far away as Alabama and Louisiana and Virginia,
people in Pennsylvania that are moving to the south, uh, members from the, uh,
tri-log, the research triangle park, uh, lug members in, in various states, uh, in relatively
short amount of time. Lugs from all over the southeast have been contacted. And, uh, I think four
have thrown official support behind it. I, I read today on the main list that the tri-log,
uh, leadership board is having a meeting today to talk about how best it though they're support
behind it. And, uh, things are happening quick, uh, but, uh, to use a term that I thought
aptly described the project in the state that it is right now. Uh, I, I, I heard this in R.C.,
that it is in a very embryonic state of development right now. Uh, it's just getting started. Nothing
is set in stone. It's, uh, very volatile dynamics going on right now with the southeast, uh,
Linux fast. Anyway, there is a wiki. It said, uh, dub dub dub dot south east linux fast dot com slash
wiki. Uh, that, that's where our sea logs are going. That's where, uh, the agenda is going.
There is a meeting in our sea every Tuesday night at nine p.m. Uh, I'm thinking that eventually a,
for lack of a better term, a board of directors will need to be put together from, uh, members of
the regional lugs. So decision-making can be streamlined. Uh, a location will have to be firmed up,
a mission statement, uh, new letters sent out to the lugs, uh, represented us from lugs chosen,
and, uh, details hammered out. And, and expectations set, you know, what do we hope to accomplish in
when, uh, like I said, it is in the very, very early stages, but things are happening and I'm excited
about it. Uh, it will be super cool to have something like this in, in, in the southeast. Uh,
I really think it should be modeled after the work already done by the high linux fast and arterial
linux fast. Uh, I put links in the show notes to, to both of those events, but it's something I'm
excited about and something I wanted to talk about. And, and, uh, sort of a really messy segue,
I just wanted to, I wanted to tie us together and, you know, and talk about the community. And,
being a part of it, I, I guess, is what I want, I want to say, you know, if, if a guy like me, if
a 40, soon to be 42-year-old, food scientist, vitamin formulator, who has had one programming class
his entire life and who's, uh, running a really lame web page in, in, in on a computer from his
home for, for 10 years now and who, who started a podcast in his car and who just rambles on
around about how much he likes Linux. If a guy like me can fit in this community, anybody can.
If a guy like me can be welcomed into this community, anybody can. I think HPR is a, another good
example of this kind of, of its, of its acceptance. If, you know, if you're wondering what kind of
difference can you make, if you're passionate about Linux, you can make a difference. If you care
about Linux, you can make a difference. If, uh, you know, the little ways, like, you know,
a hacker public radio, if this is listener supported radio or community radio or a community
project, ever how you want to put it, uh, anybody can do this. If, if there's something you know,
if there's something you care about as, as the nerdy geek you are, record it, put it, put it up.
I mean, if, if you care about it, people like you are going to care about it. And as was evidence
to me last October, there are lots of people out there just like us. And, and it was, it was
outing for me. I wish I'd known about this community and, and my being part of it a long time ago.
Uh, so if you enjoy hacker public radio, support it. Uh, pimp it out, talk about it,
get other people to listen, contribute to it. I'm sure, uh, enigma needs more, more contributors to
it. And, you know, I'm, I'm also sure there are people out there that can, they can talk more
eloquently and more authoritatively than I can. So, you know, bring it on. We, we need people
better than me to do this. Uh, but get involved it. I guess what I'm trying to say. If you care about
Linux, if you're, if you're passionate about Linux, the, the community is, is waiting with, with
open arms to welcome you into it. Uh, that, this show up, you know, stuff will happen. I'd
really know how to put it. Uh, we, we don't back anymore. I think at one time, maybe the Linux
community did, but I don't, I don't, I don't see it, see it happening anywhere near as much anymore.
It's a really, really good thing. And, uh, it's, it's neat. I'm really running out of words to
describe it. But I just want to talk about that. And I, I guess, is another small segue I wanted to
mention that software freedom day is coming up September 20th. That is less than a month from now.
So if you're, if you're a member of a log, look, go to softwarefreedomday.com first, or maybe
.org. I can't remember. I'll put that in the show notes as well. But there are instructions there,
uh, more or less, uh, how to kit, uh, of, of how to put on a software freedom day event. This is a
good project for a log. And if you're not a member of a Linux users group or a Unix user,
Linux, excuse me, Unix users group or anything like that, seek one out and join it. I think you'll
learn a lot. And that's, that's a lot of what this is about. It's learning and sharing information.
Anyway, I feel like I'm sort of sputtering here and, and I've run out of information. I just wanted
to say, uh, thank you to the, to the Linux community, the free and open source software community,
the hacker putter radio community for making me feel part of it. And for, for sharing with me,
and for allowing me to share back, uh, anyway, I, that's going to do it for this episode of
hacker public radio. It's, it seems like the ones I end up doing are always on Friday. So,
you need again Monday for another edition of hacker public radio.
Thank you for listening to hacker public radio. HPR is sponsored by Carol.net. So head on over to
C-A-R-O dot-N-C. All of us need you.