I was manning the booth at SCALE on Sunday with Cecil. Dale was under the weather so we missed each other. There was a lot of interest in KM as many people were looking for a replacement to their commercial media solutions. Feedback from the crowd was nothing but positive.

Someone has inquired about running KM on a Mac. Cecil says the kernel patches are there, but without any hardware to test it on he could not comment if it would work, but would, "bend over backwards" to help him get it going if he could provide feedback.

Speaking of "bending over backwards" that's exactly what Cecil did for another user who brought his PC in for troubleshooting. Cecil happily checked things out and found the problem -- a setting was left unconfigured. What other distro maintainer would do that for their users? First class.

Some attendees who were wowed by Cecil's presentation, "Linux Entertain Me!" stopped by after the talk (I did not see the talk, I was manning the booth!) and were very enthusiastic and complementary about the talk and wanted to know more about KM. We ran out of CDs (I believe 300 were made) between 3 and 4 pm.

I'd say the number of people interested in pre-built systems from http://mythic.tv and do-it-your-selfers was a 65-35 split in favor of DIY. A lot of questions about what kind of hardware is needed, what type of tuners to buy, etc. were asked. After findng out the potential user's needs, http://mythic.tv was cited often as a big supporter of Knoppmyth and a great place to shop.

It was gratifying to see many linux newbies interested in leaving M$ in their rearview. They had many questions and it made me realize how far I've come in a short time. Most that I encountered were under 35 (I did not take a survey, but my best guess at ages ), but one in particular stood out. I never caught his name, but if I had to guess I'd say he was in his mid-70's and quite possibly the most enthusiastic person at the expo. He was practicaly coming out of his skin in excitement for KM, linux and open source in general. He lit up the room and it was simply great to see.

My general observations of what went over well:

The large LCD TV/Monitor for demoing HD content. There were a lot of stares, especially at the nature videos. I feel this helped attract people to the booth.

The KM CD's. How are you going to get people to try your distro if you make it difficult to get?

The IR keyboard Cecil was using. I never saw one in action and I thought it was cool. I can see why those who use them bought it. Very handy.

My general observations of what I think we could do to improve presentation:

A small sign or handout informing the attendees what minimum hardware recomendations are for both SD and HD. I don't believe it would take up much space on the table. Possibly a condensed version of the Pamphlet of KM?

Perform an actual install at the booth once or twice a day. We can tell people until we're blue in the face how easy it is to install KM, but seeing is believing.

Thanks to Cecil and Dale for inviting me. It was my first linux convention/expo and I hope not my last.

_________________
Mike
My Hardware Profile

Hi mihanson,

Thank you for the overview for those of us unable to be there, your review is almost as good

Do you know if there will be somewhere to obtain Cecil's presentation?

Sorry to hear Dale was a bit under the weather, hope for a speedy recovery. He was the photojournalist last year, so guessing not many pictures were taken this session?

Mike

Re: Cecil's presentation: Don't know. Maybe Cecil has info on that.

No photos taken by me or Cecil on Sunday, but Cecil said Dale had his camera on Saturday. I actually brought my camera on Sunday, but never had a chance to use it.

_________________
Mike
My Hardware Profile

Sounds like it was a lot of fun!

Thanks for the plugs, too! I greatly enjoy working on KnoppMyth, and spreading the word helps me keep doing that

_________________
KnoppMyth R5.5
MythiC Dragon v2.0
Join the KnoppMyth Frappr!

Thanks for being there, I really appreciate it since I was _really_ _really_ "under the weather" as you put it. More so than I can ever remember having been in the past. That'll teach me to "heat up some leftovers"!

Now why don't we have something like that over here Were you showcasing R6?

_________________
MBE/FE ~ R5F27 ~ Asus A8N-VM-CSM ~ AMD64 3500+ ~ 1GB RAM ~ 1.5TB Storage ~ Nova-T-500 ~ SH-S183A DVDRW ~ LC20M Case ~ iMON-Pad Remote
FE ~ Diskless ~ Asus M2NPV-VM ~ AMD X2 BE-2350 (45w) ~ 1GB RAM ~ TT Lanbox Lite ~ iMON-Pad Remote

That presentation sure would be nice to have...

_________________
Jari-Matti

MBE&FE: GeForce MX440, Athlon XP 2000+, MSI KT333 Ultra, onboard audio, 512 MB, 2 x Technotrend T1500 DVB-T, LiteOn DVD±RW 16x DW1650-488C, Seagate 250 GB
FE: 1500MHz Geforce MX200-V, int. audio, 256MB

No, no publicly available R6 as yet. And you can blame me for that, if you desire.

I usually have to suppress my curiosity about release delays, but this time I don't think I want to know. Ewwww!

Someone asked about pictures. There are pictures up from Scale 6x

There's a link on the scale homepage

http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/

which goes here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/socallinuxexpo/


Note: I didn't take the pictures just reporting that I saw them up there. I only saw one picture of the Knoppmyth booth though which appears to be from Saturday. I got an email stating that the pictures would be up there and that they were working on getting videos from the presentations posted. I didn't notice anyone filming Cecil's presentation although they could have been because was paying attention to the presentation and not anything else.

_________________
R5.5 Dragon 2.0 - like
BE:
Case: GD01-MX
MB: Intel DG965WH
CPU: Intel Q6700
Mem: 4GB
HDD: Hitachi 1TB
Tuner: none/PVR-350
GFx: Nvidia XFX 7600 GS
Audio: on board
FE:
Evo 510 SFF w/ Nvida 6200
Remote: ATI Remote Wonder w/ kernel mod fix.

For those who cant be bothered searching, heres the one photo of the knoppmyth booth:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnstanforth/2262885508/in/pool-socallinuxexpo/

@mihanson: Nice write up! Here is a link to the PDF of my presentation.
http://knoppmyth.net/LME.pdf
Not much to it, I think the live demo and Q&A were the heart of Linux Entertain Me!