#ohio linuxfest

[corfy]

Ohio LinuxFest was a blast

Yesterday was my second Ohio LinuxFest, and man was it fun. I spent the day with 1,000+ computer geeks, all of whom have heard of Linux. It seems rare when I find someone who has heard of Linux from a source other than me.

Anyway, this convention, held annually, is in Columbus, Ohio. It is an all-day event with speakers and booths devoted to Linux and open-source software in general.

The opening keynote speaker was Max Spevack, a Fedora Core project leader. He gave a great talk about the importance of open-source software.

"Open-source software is all about taking the power away from a few people and spreading it around to everyone," he said.

Later, he added, "Proprietary software doesn't get you to continue to use it because it is the best product, it gets you to continue to use it because you can't get your data out of it."

Mat Kovach gave a really interesting talk about using open-source software and several online resources to compile and process statistics for baseball.

Andrew Pitonyak, who I met at last year's LinuxFest (and was the first "online" friend I ever met "offline") did an excellent job of talking about "OpenOffice.org: Past, Present and Future." When talking about Sun Microsystem's decision to buy StarOffice in the late 1990s, he commented, "Most of their (Sun's) users had two computers, one to run Solaris and one to run Windows for Microsoft Word. After looking at the number of users, Sun decided it would be cheaper to buy a company." He also added that OpenOffice.org was spun off of StarOffice, which was started in 1984, five years before Microsoft Word came on to the scene.

Jon "maddog" Hall gave a very good speech as usual, talking about the importance of open-source software in areas are where computers are hard to come by or afford. The free software gives these people a chance at getting access to job skills, information, and communication.

"We all watched TV and the internet for minute-by-minute updates as Hurricane Felix bore down on Mexico. But there were hundreds of fishermen who died within sight of shore because they had no idea a hurricane was coming until it hit them. We need to get information to the people who need it most," Hall said.

There were several booths with information as well, from companies like Novell, Ubuntu, GNOME, Foresight, IBM, Red Hat, and many others. I got a lot of great information that I haven't had time to process yet.

It was a very fun time, and the fact that I got to hang out with so many Linux users made me feel like less of a loner for using Linux. I do know a few people who use Linux, but not that many. But the number is growing, and I find that encouraging.

I'm already looking forward to next year.

[corfy]

Vacation time

Today starts the first real vacation I have had in months. Ok, so I had a week off in late April, but that was due to the sudden illness and death of my mother-in-law, and had nothing to do with vacation time, even though I was off work for a week.

Anyway, I don't have anything major planned, just taking time off and hanging out. Well, I don't have anything major planned for the first few days. Next weekend, Gayle and I are going to the Ohio LinuxFest, which will be a lot of fun, I'm sure. But the rest of the week, I don't have much planned.

I hope it will be a relaxing week.

[mentaldrizzle]

Presenter Console in LibreOffice

I am currently preparing to give a talk at the Ohio LinuxFest on September 29, 2012.  I was thrilled to be invited!  I'll be talking about Amahi - Powerful, Simple, Home Server.

I have played with several different presentation programs.  I was most familiar with Power Point and have been impressed with the ease of use of Keynote in both desktop and mobile versions.  However, since this was a Linux conference, I committed myself to using LibreOffice Impress.

As I wrapped up the creation of my presentation and started rehearsing my talk, I found myself wanting a notes view.  This is a view that gives the presenter a view that includes notes, a timer, a clock and sometimes a view of the current and next slides.  I had found this in PowerPoint and found the notes view in Keynote presenter remote on my iPhone to be really convenient.

Creating slides in Impress was much the same as in PowerPoint and Keynote.  However I had a very difficult time finding the notes view for LibreOffice. 

Here is my solution:

1 - Download the Presenter Console Extension

Many sites instructed me to download the Presenter Console Extension and then enable it in Libre Office.  I could not find the extension at the LibreOffice extension site.  It turns out that the extension is still an Oracle product.  If you aren't familiar with the split from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, you can read about it here. Long story short - the download link above takes you to the Oracle site, not LibreOffice. 

2 - Enable the extension in LibreOffice

From the top toolbar: [Tools > Extension manager]

3 - Use Multiple Screens

If you are practicing your presentation using only your computer, you will not be able to see the presenter console.  You need to have a second monitor connected to your computer and enable that monitor as a second screen (NOT mirrored displays).