Software Freedom Day 2005: Epilogue

I have been so busy that I haven’t been able to post about my experiences in the Software Freedom Day celebration last September 10. Anyhow, here’s a brief account:

Software Freedom Day was held in PUP Sta Mesa. We started a bit late because of the room assignments and certain technical stuff: the internet access and the set up of some computers. Many of those who joined us were students. I demonstrated how the common desktop apps worked. So I showed Open Office, Firefox, Scribus, Screem and the GIMP. Aside from these I also demonstrated using GAIM, Rhythmbox and Soundjuicer. To some people, those who graduated already and had some programming background, I showed Emacs! It was really nice to see so many interested people and that they think that the interface of the apps weren’t really that different from what they have been accustomed to. I mean, most of them seemed very familiar with the MS Office suite and OOo didn’t seem all that different to them. They showed concern over the file format in which they would save their files, if others could read their files, etc. I told them that they could save the files in formats such as .rtf, .doc, etc. There would be certain quirks though when it comes to the slide presentations because of the animation but more or less, the OOo files can be shared with MS Office users. The students were also amazed with GAIM. (Hehehe. A wonderful chat client…) Netrunner, a fellow FOSS advocate from Pampanga, handed me an Ubuntu Linux live CD so I was able to show that they could try using GNU/Linux even from a CD. And that they could recover their files using that live CD 😉 Zak Elep showed up in the afternoon and demonstrated a few games, including Fish Fillet and Wesnoth. Aside from that, he showed his screenshots of Ragnarok on GNU/Linux 😉 Some students had asked for copies of some distros burned. We actually tried to show Knoppix but it had a kernel panic 🙁

It was really good to see how FOSS enthusiasts could work together in such activities even though it was just one of those rare opportunities to see each other in real life. And I am more than happy that the students who were there didn’t seem too intimidated with FOSS =) Maybe they were too shy to play around with my laptop but I could see that a good number of the students who saw the demos were interested.