moving to linux

Floss Parking Enero 2012

2012-01-28T21:11:00.001-05:00

Floss Pa, group meets once a month on an activity call floss parking, this month we meet at New York Bagels Coffe, this is an unformal event, and there is no specific topics, however this time we had some topics on the agenda, Flisol, SOPA and all other freedom restriction initiatives, the first developing project for floss-pa community was part of the agenda.

On Flisol we share previous experiences organizing Flisol Panama, this year Panama city leader will be one of our own Abdel "Potty" Martinez.

SOPA, PIPA and ACTA was a topic that has rise lots of concerns, and patents trolls.

Floss-pa first software project took more time on the talk, David Narvaez will lead the group and you will soon start reading more details about it, as we organize and start coding, but some code samples are already been done.

It also was an opportunity to meet face to face to python community, that will be starting small project on their own.

The rest of the time we share and enjoy, good coffee, burgers and more.

On the must read list.

2012-01-26T15:39:00.001-05:00

One of my friends David Narvaez, a founder member of floss-pa.org, has wrote an article about SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and all other legislation around and to come, to deal with piracy, or at least try.

On his article title Electrocuting Modern Elephants he take Tomas Alba Edison, and his battle versus AC, back when electricity was the new technology, as sample of what old traditional business model are trying to do, to keep a live promoting this laws.

Definitive an article on the must read list.

Panama 2012 activities

2012-01-26T12:30:00.000-05:00

2011 was a great year, full with floss activities, this year, floss-pa community and Fedora community, is planning to participate on all mayor Panamanian floss activities and FudCon Margarita.

This is the schedule for mayor floss activities on Panama this year.

Document Freedom Day Mach 28 2012

Azuero Campus Party 30 & 31 de March 2012
http://congreso.ls.utp.ac.pa/csp2012/

FLISOL 21 de April 2012

Fedora 17 Release Party May 26 2012

Linux Day August 27 2012

Software Freedom Day September 14 2012

Drupal Camp Centro America October 11-13 2012

Fedora 18 Release Party November 24 2012

We are planning to have other additional activities, plus talks and Fedora boots to any activity we are invited.

Will keep you posted as we reach each one of those dates.

Desarrollando America Latina

2011-12-09T11:36:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I follow one of the best social and open source contributions on Latin America, the event call "Desarrollando America Latina" at desarrollandoamerica.org. An initiative from a group of people or social organizations to organize a hackaton, to address social issues with the open data initiative in latam, the organization manage to held it on 6 countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay. 30 hours of coding with one goal social contribution on subjects as Security, Education and Public budget, one of the rules of this contest was that all code must be release as open source. More info at desarrollandoamerica.org

This is the kind of initiative we do not see very often in latam, and we need more of them.

All code develop on this 30 hours can be found at https://github.com/desarrollandoAmericaLatina

Winners at http://desarrollandoamerica.org/2011/12/ganadores-regionales-dal2011/

Español

El fin de semana pasado tuve la oportunidad de seguir uno de los eventos mas interesantes del año, Desarrollando America Latina desarrollandoamerica.org, un evento organizado por un grupo de personas y organizaciones sociales con el objetivo de reunir a programadores, plantearles problemas sociales de las comunidades o países y desarrollar aplicaciones que ayuden a solucionar los mismos. Los temas escogidos para este año fueron Seguridad, Educación y Presupuesto Publico. Así pues durante 30 horas equipos de Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru y Uruguay se reunieron para desarrollar aplicaciones para los problemas planteados. Lo importante es que dentro de las reglas de participación todo el código generado durante el evento se liberaría como codigo abierto, esto con la finalidad que pueda ser utilizado mejorado, etc. Para mas información desarrollandoamerica.org

No vemos este tipo de iniciativas en latinoamerica con mucha frecuencia por lo que felicito a sus organizadores y esperemos ver mas de eventos de este tipo en el futuro.

Todo el codigo desarrollado durante el evento se encuentra en: https://github.com/desarrollandoAmericaLatina

Equipos ganadores http://desarrollandoamerica.org/2011/12/ganadores-regionales-dal2011/

Felicidades a todos los que participaron de este evento.

Fedora 16 Release Party

2011-11-27T21:48:00.001-05:00

Fedora 16 Release Party, a set on Flickr.

Panama Celebrated the Release Party at UTP (Universidad Tecnologica de Panama) thanks.

Fedora 16 In America Economia Magazine

2011-11-13T15:28:00.001-05:00

Fedora 16 Verne

Interestining Fedora 16 Verne, was mention on an latin America Economic Magazine America Economia. Check out the articule at:
http://tecno.americaeconomia.com/noticias/sistema-operativo-fedora-16-ya-esta-disponible

Fedora 16 "Verne" Beta

2011-10-06T22:44:00.000-05:00

Installed Alpha version of "Verne", in a Toshiba notebook, work smooth and fast, Gnome3 did not work because the ATI Raedon 9200i embed video card, so I have to play a bit with KDE, for a while, wanted to get the module, but there was no module for kernel version 3.1 that come with Verne.

After playing with alpha Beta version was announce, so I got my main machine and upgrade it to Verne using preupgrade tool, it toke some time, around 4 hours to get it to the reboot point to Fedora 16, it did not complain of any thing and found my encrypted partition on the machine with no issue. When I was playing with Verne notice that it did not install the new kernel on grub, so I installed by hand and when it was ready to used my screen when black with a kernel message that could not find my encrypted partition, seems like preupgrade was smart enough to figured out that the kernel image could not manage the encrypted partition, so reboot to the old Fedora 15 kernel and everything when fine, since I did not want to create a new initrd image to include the encrypted module into the image, and everything was working fine with the old kernel, I decide to wait for an updated, two kernel updates later and now I have my Verne update complete running a 3.1 version of the kernel with my encrypted partition.

Verne seem faster than Fedora 15, Gnome 3.2 works fine, but give some issues with version 3 shell extensions that I had to remove. All other things runs pretty well. Seems like it is going to be another rock solid Fedora release. By the way love the background, thanks design team.

Fedora Activity Day At Santiago de Veraguas Panama

2011-09-25T22:27:00.001-05:00

After a little travel, we arrive at Universidad Tecnologica de Panamá, there we meet a wonderful team of students and teachers, and start sharing our experience as part of Fedora community, and share what we knew about fedora packaging, many of them show their interest on become a packager, we work with them with some limitations as the internet connection was really bad, but we manage to show them how to package on two packages one on python and the other in ruby. At the end of the day we create a little contest were we download a orphan package, and created some errors on the spec file, and they have to figured out errors and fixed, that was really fun and two of them find the errors and manage the package. As a price we give them the last Fedora USB. It was fun and we enjoy it as they did. The winner of this contest was Ovidio Grosso.

Thanks to cidetys, Querube Urriola and the UTP Santiago, for organize this event, and Abdel Martinez, Luis Bazan and Issis, and Juan Barba.

Hope we have the opportunity to share another time with them.

FAD Santiago, a set on Flickr.

Fedora Activity Day, Santiago, Veraguas

2011-09-25T22:05:00.002-05:00

Thanks to cidetys, Querube Urriola and the UTP Santiago, for organize this event, and Abdel Martinez, Luis Bazan and Issis, and Juan Barba.

Hope we have the opportunity to share another time with them.

FAD Santiago, a set on Flickr.

Software Freedom Day 2011 Panama

2011-09-20T00:10:00.004-05:00

It was that time of the year once again, Software Freedom Day, this year we held it at UTP (Universidad Tecnologica de Panama), we meet we with all local communities and with all freedom lover, we had talks, and debate about if Linux was ready for the desktop, with an outstanding conclusion, we are ready but we need to educate our new users, our competition is in every school, while we are left out to some university and courses. Debate was moderated by Cris Faw.

Diego Tejera, welcome everyone to the event and give an introduction to free software, and the state of local communities.
Kiara Navarro talked about FEL (Fedora Electronic Lab), trying not to be technical.
Juan Barba, surprise use with his talk about "how to be part of Fedora Design and the process to get his art into Fedora 16", the surprise part was his talk done with Sozi.
Luis Bazan talk about his experience with Fedora, and how it is impacting his job.
Abdel Martinez did his presentation on rpmdev project.
Monica Mora, talk about her experience on the Wikipedia community.
Cris Faw talk about android from an Idea to global revolution.
Adrian Scott talk about python, and how to create your first application with Django.

We give away CD and DVD of Fedora and stickers.

After a great day we enjoy some pizza with the group, and later part of the group enjoy a movie.

Next event will be on Sept 24, were we will visit Santiago de Veraguas Panamá, to crash course on packaging and more Fedora stuff.

Software Freedom Day 2011 Panama

Linux 20 Year Panama Celebration

2011-09-04T00:41:00.000-05:00

It seems like many years has past since I was introduce to Linux, back 1994, when a friend give me a tape, with this sentence "If you are good with computers install this". It was Slackware. Now I can say it was one great experience to do that installation, compiling my first kernel and more. Linux turn 20 years last week, Panama local Linux community got together to celebrate, one of the events that change computer history and keep doing it. Thanks to Linus Tourvalds for starting this and to all that in a way or another has contribute to this great success.

Here are some pics of that day.

more Photos

We have a great lunch and some small talks about Linux. I was a great opportunity to meat and know new Linux users.

Thanks to all

BST - Escuelita Fedora

2011-08-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

Last week we meet on an usual place, Central Park Hotel, Panama, thanks to the folks there that cook something for us and let us use their restaurant to held our meting, all that in really fast and without much notice, as we find out our standard meting place at UTP was going to be close.

People from BST, were working on debuging some Drupal and work on translation, while the Fedora part work packaging.

Next session will be as usual on UTP.

BST - Escuelita Fedora

2011-07-05T09:13:00.000-05:00

On Saturday we had our last training day for packager and translators, the packager group lead by Abdel Martinez and Luis Bazan had almost all group with a complete package, now they will ask for sponsor and become a Fedora Packager.

Translators finish their process working on transifex and some wiki pages. This group is already part of the Fedora translators and will have a translation spring on October, to work on Fedora 16 on the mean while will work on some of the manuals pending for translation.

Once again thanks to Monica Mora from Cidetys, David Narvaez from Floss-pa and Querube Urriola from UTP.

BST - Escuelita Fedora

2011-06-26T23:45:00.002-05:00

On Saturday we have our third, training day at UTP (Universidad Tecnologica de Panama) seven translators join the Spanish translators team, and started to translate some Fedora Wiki pages, as part of the goal, on becoming part of Fedora Community, next Saturday will work on translating, some of fedora manual pages.

In the mean while at same time the other part of the Fedora Panama Team (Abdel and Luis) work on packaging with nine candidates that started doing their first Fedora package, soon will start sending their request for sponsorship of their packages. To become Fedora Packagers.

This is our first round, of training and hope to gain new fedora collaborators in the future. Thanks to Monica Mora from UTP - Cidetys and David Narvaez from floss-pa for organizing the BST and invite us to share this experience.

Later on Saturday we join floss-pa group to have our once a month meting floss-parking,

More pics here

BST (Bug Squashing Team)

2011-06-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

Before the FUDCon Panama, floss-pa group was creating the BST (Bug Squashing Team), the idea was to integrate local college students with some free software projects, in the area Documentation, translation and Bug fixing, to reach that goal Monica Mora from Cidetys and David Narvaez from floss-.pa, worked on getting all infrastructure require to invite students from UTP (Universidad Tecnologica de Panama) all do, it was an open invitations, the main laboratories was going to be provided by UTP, after a week they had over 100 entries of people interested. Many of them users of one or another free software technology. From that list around 25 were choose to start on the BST. While other member of local community were selected to be Team Leaders, the leader will have the capabilities to teach about the subject they were going to lead.

While on the FUDCon Monica Mora ask us if we could join the program, taking a group of people that responded to the BST invitation but were Fedora users, so we gladly accepted to be part of this project, the main goal for the Fedora group will be to share what we know about translation, documentation, packaging, bug zapping and design. To change Fedora users in to Fedora collaborators. To archive this goal we are going to be part of rpmdev..
Fedora Panama also help on setting 4 labs with Fedora 15 thanks for the work of (Abdel Martinez, Juan Barba and Nicolas Nieszawski )

BST started their introduction and training one Jun 4 with the general group. We were there visiting, it was a great start were people meet and learn in which are of the BST they like to participate.

BST first day.

Fedora group started on Jun 11 and we have 20 people join us for 4 hours while we introduce them to each Fedora group and we share our experience with Fedora family.

I introduce people to Translation and Documentation, while Abdel Martinez (Potty) introduce them to packaging and Luis Bazan (LoKoMurdoK) introduce them to IRC and how we communicate on Fedora.

Next session session we will cover RPMDEV and FAS account. And split the groups so we can start tutoring into their interested group.

Will post more into this new adventure for Fedora Panama with high expectation of getting more than one person into each fedora group.

There are many documentation about what BST is doing on it web page, with the tutorial and presentations. http://bst.floss-pa.org

Icaro Project

2011-06-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

Icaro Project is an initiative of fellow ambassador Valentin Basel, with the goal of bringing in a manner transparent to the user the basics of programming (iterations, repetition, recursion, if conditional) applied to a physical context such as a robot or automation system.

To archive this goal, Valentin has develop hardware, with the lowest price, most common electronic components, and easy to find in his country Argentina (the goal is that the hardware can be replicated in other places cheap and easy), with them he has been able to build a robotic arm and a robot controller with a assus eee 4G machine, the idea was to use an OLPC XO computer but since he could not get one on Argentina he use the more like hardware machine he could find.

In the program area he has develop the firmware, c++ interface and python library, so others can expand his project, but to make it easy to use he develop a plugin for TurtleArt, where Icaro module allow any one with no programming skills to interact and start programming the robot.

We have meet Valentin on IRC and have the opportunity to share a couple days with him in Panama, for the FUDCon where his presentation raise laughter and cheers, he come early to the FUDCon and during that time he show his work to the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama (UTP) and Universidad de Panama (UP) and teach the computer club of UTP on how to code and interact with it, code and improve his work, and also give away some of the electronic controller board he bring with him.

Icaro project is now in use as a pilot in two school in Argentina and to make my friend Valentin happy yesterday I was invited to see the start of Project Icaro at a Tecnologica high school in Panama, as pilot program. It was great to see that UTP and UP will work together on this project. We will follow this program to keep everyone on the loop.

Icaro project is hosted on RPMDEV project and initiative of Guillermo Gomez from Venezuela, Fedora Contributors at RPMDEV will package and help on the documentation of project ICARO, so it will be added in Fedora 16.

Thanks Valentin, hope to see you soon.

All hardware designs and software can be found at: http://rpmdev.proyectofedora.org/projects/icaro/wiki

Follow Icaro Project Blog at: http://www.sistema-icaro.blogspot.com/

FUDCon Panama day 3

2011-06-01T18:15:00.000-05:00

It was fun start this new day, learning that Luis Bazan and Juan Barba (Fedora Panama Designer Team) has been sponsor as packagers, other graduate during the day.

Tatica talk to Juan so he can puts his skills to the artwork of Fedora 16, so his inspiration and art skills will shine on Fedora 16.

Many talks and lite talks were done, must impressive to me was one of our younger Fedora Panama, members Joel Batista 14 years old, and his project ayudinga.com, look like there is a future for Fedora Panama. During the Fudcon Joselo another 14 years old was there listening an learning about Fedora, he wants to become a packager, so we will help him to accomplish this goal.

It was a raining day, but we enjoy it as we listen and view all Fedora members having fun, sharing ideas, sharing knowledge and must of all becoming friends.

The afternoon was set so a bus will pick up everyone at the villas, we wait there with Joel, Joselo and all delegations were we work and share before arriving to the FUDPub, the plan was to go to Bolos El Dorado, were everything was ready, except for our big surprice the Fedora 15 birthday cake.

We bowl and celebrate all work accomplish this three exceptional days.

Sharing this experience with all Panamanians that took this opportunity to learn and share with our exceptional fellow Fedorians that join us for the FUDCon. Thanks all of you.

FUDCon Panama 2011 Day 2

2011-06-01T16:57:00.000-05:00

New day new challenges, we started early setting up banners, on building 105 “Centro de Negocios” at City of knowledge” our main local sponsor thanks to Gabino Ayarza for helping us to get this done, we have three rooms for 50 people each prepared for us, all ready with two screens, projectors wireless mics and sound system ready. The staff there have everything ready, many thanks to them.

Once again our protocol staff took care of receiving everyone, the only issue was that a group took a room not assigned to them to give a talk about visualization, that make some people not easy, but Potty come to the rescue and arrange the schedule, talks and rooms so every one has it place. This time more people show us up, the spare unregistered badges run out, the list of attendees grow up to 170, many of them came previous day others did not.

Seen people going to one room to the other to get to the next talks and checking talk schedule was important and encouraging. Some talks fill more rooms than others but that is the beauty of Barcamp format.

Workshops started and one of the most encouraging part of the FUDCon started, it really started the night before when Guillermo Gomez “Gomix” from rpmdev project give Potty and me, the rpmdev official wear, we have graduated as packager from some time now, we wear next day, must local members were asking how to get one of them, to what we reply “this has to be earn, as you graduated as packager”, that also make us hear some jokes, as packagers are the local boys at supermarket who put your groceries on the bags, one of the goal of rpmdev project is to teach packager and developers, the Fedora way.

So may of the local and fedora team started they tutorials to this goal, become a Fedora Packager, one of the best opportunity, as it was a great face to face session on packaging and getting the package done and ready to be reviewed and sponsored.

It was fun as the en of the day came and people wanted to stay on building 105, we move to villas were people continue tutoring and enjoying their self.

FUDCon Panama 2011

2011-05-30T08:59:00.000-05:00

Many days has pass since Panama, has the great honor to be chosen to host FUDCon Latam 2011, many days of meetings, work and perseverance. FUDCon time arrive, with many expectations, we meet, at the beginning a bit confuse, some of the NIC names now become faces and real people, and one of Fedora core values become natural and easy Friendship, we laughs, share and enjoy our self on this opportunity.

Arrival

Part of the plan was to pick up all our friends from Fedora at the airport, and we did, perhaps the only confusing on that part was Itamar and Jared, on our schedule, they have to wait a bit on the airport but we pick them up. On Wednesday after a bit issue with Venezuelans flight we got every one at City of knowledge and we have dinner for first time at the Ñeque small bowling area and restaurant. For many of us it is the first time we meet face to face. Every one prepare to stay at the Villas, a three rooms six beds, with kitchen, air condition, internet and all you need to spend nights at the FUDCon.

First day

It was a rush of emotions and worries, preparing the last details, booklets ready ( Booklets will be an entire post later), badges ready. Taking everything from the villas to the Convention Center, prepare the banners, the room and reception. At around 8:30 people starting to arrive while we run from place to place, checking everything, protocol Team (5 volunteers from the UTP, many thanks to them, they work hard) sign them in, give their badges, t-shirts, Fedora USB key and show them to the room. At the end they got everything to the 140 people who show up.

Getting Ready

Abdel Martinez "Potty", give a sort welcome and introduction to Fedora Project Leader and all guess, FUDCon has begun, after Jared talk Barcamp organization started, thanks to Igor Soares for his effort to set it up while I was taking care of the IRC channel issue it was close, but was fixed by the City of knowledge technical staff, thanks for their quick response.

Lunch hour arrive and we walk to building 105 were lunch was waiting for us, more relax and with a great deal of accomplishment. Other talks were done but Valentin Basel and ICARO project make the people laugh, enjoy and more important see this easy going a bit crazy fedorian doing something great to change children education, trough technology. Thanks Valentin for your great work.

The day end with a talk of technical documentation from Jared, after that we set to the villas one two blocks away from the convention center were we got ready for dinner. After dinner many continue hacking and enjoying their self at the Villas.

Great day.

Nice weekend.

2011-05-01T23:36:00.000-05:00

Well, I was a nice form to end the week, I spend Saturday afternoon with floss-pa, group, a gartering call floss-parking that the group has once a month. Many members came and new member join us for the first time, was a really good talking about technology Linux, FUDCon Panama, Gnome3 and Fedora 15.

Fedora 15 was a subject of really nice comments for many of the attendees.

On Sunday as usual we read the news paper, and my son just mention you have 4 mentions on the news paper, I give the technology section of La Prensa news paper were FUDCon has a full page, and 3 inch add on the main page of the section.

For all I give you the electronic version of the paper La Prensa Mosaico Technology

Well we are on May now -25 day to the FUDCon Panama, hope to see you all in Panama.

Quiet time, worked time.

2011-04-30T10:11:00.000-05:00

Well, It has been a while since I don't write here, many things has come up, many things that keep me busy and tire. But in a sense happy.

Drupal Release party was the main gartering of January. I miss FUDCon Tempe, the opportunity was there but the time and family matters keep me in place, there will be others FUDCon to attend.

Document Freedom Day was also celebrated on March 30 at Universidad Tecnologica de Panama, they have talks and we took the opportunity to promote Fudcon.

Flisol Panama on April 9, was a good event this year many people shows up, there were talks, workshops and install fest. There was a python coder tips and show where "Potty" Abdel Martinez got awarded with a t-shit from fosdev.

Now we are close to the main event FUDCon Panama, we are making a big push to get all of you in Panama, and spend a few days sharing knowledge and Fedora interest with many people.

Video about Free software communities in Panama

2010-12-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

Free Software Communities in Panama Video nice work.

fudcon Panama, small press note

2010-12-12T12:07:00.000-05:00

Today local news paper publish small note about Fudcon Panama 2011,

http://mensual.prensa.com/mensual/contenido/2010/12/12/hoy/vivir/2427673.asp

Release Party Panama, Fedora 14

2010-11-12T10:24:00.000-05:00

Release Party Panama,

Fedora 14 release party Panama, was the fist join release party, between Fedora Panama and Ubuntu Loco Team Panama, we know release parties have to be all about Fedora new release, but showing that these two well known Linux distribution and communities, can do something together was a good way to show that our local communities can work together.

To plan the even we did divide task, organization, promotional time.

The even was also a great point to start a promotional campaign about Fedora Fudcon Latam next year.

First Fudcon Latam Panama poster, we invite everyone to be part of the Fudcon.

Talks about Ubunto 10.10 and Fedora 14 were great, we also talk about the community and the rpmdev project lead by Gomix, many people got interested and probably will see soon a couple of them joining the packing project on rpmdev.

We also talk about the Fudcon.

More pics

Congreso del Conocimiento Libre día tres

2010-10-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

Many talks about open source and free software around this UTP event, experience was great sharing with teacher and students words about Fedora, today was the chance to ear about Panamanian government free software plans.

AIG (Authority Innovation Government by its acronym) talk was given by Ing. Eduardo Briceño, we learn about some plans to use free software on local government, on some source of OLPC project and medical care government agencies, it seem to me that they have a plan and lots of words about it, hope it does not end as another great idea.

We can see UTP crawl into free software, hope we can see them walking to it soon, a mayor change have to be done into this direction that have to involve all faculties.

more pics
Spanish version here