Sunday, March 25, 2007
Report from Cebit 2007
Last week, I've been to Cebit where I was responsible for the KDE booth on Monday and Tuesday.
I had been to several linux events in the past, but never to such a huge (commercial) event. On one hand, I was really impressed, but on the other hand, also a bit disappointed because I had expected much more invention and not just thousands of TFTs, though I have to admit that I didn't have the time to visit the whole fair - it was just too big.
At the booth, everything went fine - except that all the merchandise had been sold out the week-end before. Nevertheless, people were very interested in KDE. Chitlesh had a snapshot of KDE4 on his fedora laptop, while the other two computers had Kubuntu installed (edgy and feisty).
Experienced users were eager to see and hear about every snippet of KDE4, but there were also a lot of people who already had heard about linux but didn't dare the switch yet.
Luckily, on tuesday we had new T-Shirts and pin, so we had some more give-aways than "just" CDs we could hand out. We had a lot of Kubuntu and OpenSuse and some Fedora CDs/DVDs, and people were interested in all of the three. Generally, people were much more generous than at events like LinuxTag - e.g. someone who uses KDE for a very long time in his professional and private life and is very happy about it gave us 20€ without wanting any gadget or cd - and he was not the only one.
I was also surprised how many times people told me: "KDE, of course I know it - I use it!". A lot of OpenSuse users stepped by to have the new OpenSuse DVD, but some of them were also worried about Novell's previous switch to Gnome as well as about the Novell-Microsoft-Deal. One visitor (who runs Suse on 3000 desktop computers in his company) therefore was very interested in Kubuntu - technically but also in the philosophy behind Kubuntu. He liked its usability, lightweight and outfit, the fact that it's KDE and when I showed him Basket (in feisty now integrated in Kmail, yay!) he was intrigued and immediately asked for a CD to try it out and evaluate if it fits his needs. There were some other suse-users who want to try the switch to Kubuntu (mostly they're having problems with Yast or with the updates), but most of them were satisfied with the system they're using.
Another person who I talked to was an instructor looking for an apt distribution to teach his apprentices - he decided that the subject "Operating Systems" should also include linux and I gave him some CDs to try out which one would fit his needs.
Since I myself will (hopefully) be a teacher I was very glad to hear about this.
Generally, Kubuntu was very well received. People just loved Basket, but also Katapult proved to be a killer application. Most complaints concerned nvidia and even much more ati cards people could not get to work.
The Ubuntu booth was just in front us. I'm sure they have done a great job, but I noticed that mostly they had only two people at the booth (which, given the amount of visitors, is pretty few). Hopefully, next time there will be more volunteers to help them. A day at Cebit can be very exhausting if you try to talk to everybody, hand out CDs, answer questions, providing help, introduce the project, and especially being upright all the day. But it's also a lot of fun and interesting talks. Hopefully there will be a Kubuntu booth as well next year
The Canonical booth was not in the Linuxpark in Hall 5, but in Hall 1. On my first day, I stepped by and met Jono Bacon, and we had a very interesting talk. Our opinions may differ on certain points but basically I think we want the same thing - just with different road maps and different views.
Last but not least, I want to say a big thankyou to all the people who helped in organizing and who attended the KDE booth, you have done a great job!
I had been to several linux events in the past, but never to such a huge (commercial) event. On one hand, I was really impressed, but on the other hand, also a bit disappointed because I had expected much more invention and not just thousands of TFTs, though I have to admit that I didn't have the time to visit the whole fair - it was just too big.
At the booth, everything went fine - except that all the merchandise had been sold out the week-end before. Nevertheless, people were very interested in KDE. Chitlesh had a snapshot of KDE4 on his fedora laptop, while the other two computers had Kubuntu installed (edgy and feisty).
Experienced users were eager to see and hear about every snippet of KDE4, but there were also a lot of people who already had heard about linux but didn't dare the switch yet.
Luckily, on tuesday we had new T-Shirts and pin, so we had some more give-aways than "just" CDs we could hand out. We had a lot of Kubuntu and OpenSuse and some Fedora CDs/DVDs, and people were interested in all of the three. Generally, people were much more generous than at events like LinuxTag - e.g. someone who uses KDE for a very long time in his professional and private life and is very happy about it gave us 20€ without wanting any gadget or cd - and he was not the only one.
This was one of the seldom, less crowded moments at the booth
...and this was one of the many, more crowded moments
I was also surprised how many times people told me: "KDE, of course I know it - I use it!". A lot of OpenSuse users stepped by to have the new OpenSuse DVD, but some of them were also worried about Novell's previous switch to Gnome as well as about the Novell-Microsoft-Deal. One visitor (who runs Suse on 3000 desktop computers in his company) therefore was very interested in Kubuntu - technically but also in the philosophy behind Kubuntu. He liked its usability, lightweight and outfit, the fact that it's KDE and when I showed him Basket (in feisty now integrated in Kmail, yay!) he was intrigued and immediately asked for a CD to try it out and evaluate if it fits his needs. There were some other suse-users who want to try the switch to Kubuntu (mostly they're having problems with Yast or with the updates), but most of them were satisfied with the system they're using.
Another person who I talked to was an instructor looking for an apt distribution to teach his apprentices - he decided that the subject "Operating Systems" should also include linux and I gave him some CDs to try out which one would fit his needs.
Since I myself will (hopefully) be a teacher I was very glad to hear about this.
Generally, Kubuntu was very well received. People just loved Basket, but also Katapult proved to be a killer application. Most complaints concerned nvidia and even much more ati cards people could not get to work.
The Ubuntu booth was just in front us. I'm sure they have done a great job, but I noticed that mostly they had only two people at the booth (which, given the amount of visitors, is pretty few). Hopefully, next time there will be more volunteers to help them. A day at Cebit can be very exhausting if you try to talk to everybody, hand out CDs, answer questions, providing help, introduce the project, and especially being upright all the day. But it's also a lot of fun and interesting talks. Hopefully there will be a Kubuntu booth as well next year
The Canonical booth was not in the Linuxpark in Hall 5, but in Hall 1. On my first day, I stepped by and met Jono Bacon, and we had a very interesting talk. Our opinions may differ on certain points but basically I think we want the same thing - just with different road maps and different views.
Last but not least, I want to say a big thankyou to all the people who helped in organizing and who attended the KDE booth, you have done a great job!
