[advocacy-discuss] Szczecin conference - a quick summary and few ideas

[Damian Wojslaw]

Hi

It happened. We hope to have next one in February.
There were 105 people registered and the peak was 40. Less that I have 
hoped for, but not bad.
It was successful and went without a bigger hitch.

Photos and presentations will be available shortly.

After the conference I had a chat with my Linux using friends.

I would like to argue two points. First is: we don´t impress Linux users 
with GUI. Admins and power users don't believe in GUIs and don't care 
about them. Also, we don't impress Linux users with IPS command line 
tools. Linux distributions have network multiple repositories and tools 
to install, fetch and upgrade packages since forever.
What we can impress them with?
Clone your root file system with beadm, delete /kernel and /etc, reboot, 
show them that it doesn't work and then reboot into the new boot 
environment. I do this and this is what make them go Wow!
Also, consider this: people that we want to switch use Linux as their 
file server, internet gateway and firewall, www and mail server. And 
they use ONE BOX for all of this. So, we lack a good firewall/routing 
point. What Michal Bielicki pointed out is: every Linux admin had to 
fight Samba to share files, implement access policies, create AD server. 
Show them how to do this with ZFS share and sharemgr in few minutes. 
They are won for our case.

The second thing is the same I have argued when Indiana was formed. We 
compare to Linux too much. Stating that we want to make OS easier for 
Linux users is telling those users:
1. They are too stupid to learn. This is what they think, really.
2. OS is worse that Linux, since it has to imitate it. Does OS X imitate 
Linux or Windows? Is anyone complaining?
3. Why the hell should they switch from Linux, if they actually get a 
Linux with some alien kernel? They won't.

I use Linux since 1996. I know, drink beer with, work with people that 
use Linux on their desktops and as their servers. They don't want an 
imitation of Linux. IF they take the pain to go and look at something 
new, they will like it for its fantastic features and learn. If it took 
me two weeks to learn Solaris commands well enough to use it without 
more problems, they can to this also. Solaris has a personality which it 
consequently looses with OS experiment. And why the hell do we mindlesly 
break the features? Why do I have, during my resources management, have 
the friggin slide telling people that default OS PATH breaks Solaris 
tools in regard to projects and tasks?

Please, give it a thought.

Regards

Damian Wojsław