Fedora 29 Pre-Release Party @fossaegean

On Saturday we had our Fedora 29 Pre-Release event at the University of the Aegean. The event was hosted at fossaegean, a physical space in our university dedicated to Free and Open Source Software. The release party this time took place slightly ahead of the release schedule, and the reason for this is because the new year in the university started on October 3rd, and we would like to organize a generic Intro to Linux and Fedora event for freshmen as soon as possible.

In fossaegean, we are running a “series” of Linux workshops for our community, mostly for freshmen students. This would be the second Linux workshop for this academic year, where Fedora is featured. The first one was a generic introduction to linux and linux distributions. I started by explaining the Fedora Project, and its 4 Foundations. Then I moved on to the different flavors of Fedora, its spins, and the supported secondary architectures. I also made an introduction to Fedora Modularity, and explained it’s importance to Fedora. I mantioned and showcased the new features of the Fedora 29 Beta for workstation. I didn’t want to take too much of the student’s time and bore them with technical details, so I moved on and explained how easy it is for someone to start contributing and make an impact to the Project. One particular student was interested in joining the Design team, as he is already experienced with graphic design. We were very happy to give away plenty of Fedora stickers and pins in the meantime!

After a short break for coffee/tea and cookies, we demonstrated the installation of the new version of Fedora (F26 Beta), and explained how easy it is to install it side-by-side with Windows. Students were interested in Modularity and Flatpacks, and we had a nice discussion about these two features. Students were also particularly interested on the Fedorator, and wanted to know more about it. In the picture above, we see people playing around with the Fedorator.

It was a very nice gathering of Linux enthusiasts and people that were interested to learn more about Fedora. In the next workshop I would like to use the 3D printer we have on the space, and organize a workshop about the 3D printer and Fedora. Like our previous release parties, those who stayed till the end were awarded with pizza and cold beverages!