CeBIT AU: Open Source and OLPC

Heading up CeBIT Open this year, Jeff Waugh and the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG) had a great booth including a display of the widely known $100 laptop, part of the One Laptop Per Child project.

SLUG were giving away Ubuntu and Fedora CD’s and showing of both distro’s on large displays. Members from SLUG were representing Linux Australia, the fantastic people who present Linux.Conf.Au every year. It was great to be able to geek out a little with fellow Linux users!

While I didn’t get a good look at the $100 laptop (which is actually worth about US$175), it looked pretty good! Small, reasonably simple to use and very portable. The person from Linux Australia displaying the device said that firmware upgrades might be possible via wifi, which would be awesome considering the potential cost of maintenance on so many devices.
Jeff Waugh and all the crew at Linux Australia/SLUG are quite friendly and definitely worth going too for a chat if you’ve got even a small interest in Linux. I highly recommend going along, picking up a copy of Ubuntu and giving it a try!

I also checked out the crew at Joomla, but missed their presentation at 3pm. I used Joomla in its previous form (Mambo) and never quite liked it, but from what I’ve been told the new platform has progressed quite a lot since the project split, so I’ll consider giving it a try for some projects I’m currently working on.

-james