BL at Linux Fests/FOSS events

lcafiero · 2016-09-25 23:57:39

Not to poke this hornet's nest with a stick of the longest length (and to be honest, I think these are two different issues), but I was wondering if there is any interest in having a BunsenLabs presence at any Linux Fests or other Linux/FOSS events going forward.

A little history: Here in the U.S., we (or actually I) organized events for #! at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) -- what's called "Birds of a Feather" (BoF) events, where those who already use $DISTRO or $SOFTWARE meet and discuss the distro/sofware, and introduce those who may be new to it or interested in it -- and there have been #! booths at two past LinuxFest Northwest (LFNW) events. One year at LFNW, we held a #! gathering where we got corenominal to speak to the group via Google Talk, which went very well (I also did a session on #! at LFNW which went pretty well, too).

As the publicity chair for SCALE, I have a unique skill set in organizing a booth presence and/or a BoF-type events as well as having good connections with all the shows on the continent. So needless to say, I'd be glad to help.

Anyway, unlike the discussion linked at the outset of this post, the question of whether to have a presence at fests is grounded more in the nuts-and-bolts practicality of getting people introduced to, and fostering an interest in, the BunsenLabs project, which would result in growth based on more folks willing to use it and help out. It isn't part of a "grand plan" to make BL the next Ubuntu (God forbid).

Something tells me I should probably put on a fireproof suit now and wait for responses . ...

Horizon_Brave · 2016-09-26 00:40:52

Not from me, I agree, the people contributing, knowing and learning about B.L and linux in general is never a bad thing. As here:
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1839

I sort of suggested more "media" attention earlier as well.
The "birds of a feather" idea seems pretty interesting! I would honestly love to see B.L come out of the shadows a bit, and take a more public self promoting stance, but that's not a decision for the likes of myself.

When is the next SCALE convention ?

lcafiero · 2016-09-26 03:54:23

I seem to have missed that thread, Horizon_Brave, so thanks for posting it (by the way, I know Randal Schwartz -- did anything come of that suggestion about contacting him for his show? I know he's been recovering from an illness lately, but I can check with him if no one else has).

Sharp pic of hhh, by the way

The next SCALE -- SCALE 15X -- isn't until the beginning of March. I can arrange a BoF for SCALE, and I will submit a proposal for a talk which will basically be "Intro to BunsenLabs." Between now and then, at least in the U.S., there's Ohio Linux Fest (which I think is two weekends from now), All Things Open in Raleigh, North Carolina, a couple of weekends after that, and the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL, pronounced "seagull") in November. In 2017, Linux.conf.au is in Australia in January and FOSDEM is shortly afterward in Brussels (I think), then SCALE, followed by a host of other shows here, like OSCON in Austin, Texas, Southeast LinuxFest (SELF), and so on.

My hope is that those "Bunsenistas" who live in an area near a conference will take it upon themselves to at least go to the conference (everyone should go to at least one -- they're pretty informative, you meet a lot of people, and you come away with a lot of swag). If people are so inclined, I would hope they organize/host a BunsenLabs BoF and/or, if they're up to it, submit a presentation to talk about BL (it's not as hard as it sounds, really).

I will probably fire up the Larry the BunsenLabs Guy blog in the next week or so, picking up where Larry the CrunchBang Guy left off . . .

Also, I would agree that there is a lot of media attention to be had about BunsenLabs, and I can poke around with my contacts if there is no objection.

Horizon_Brave · 2016-09-26 04:29:30

Yea, Randel actually returned two weeks ago, so glad to see he's doing better. And no I never really followed up with it, since no one warmed to the idea. I'm in NJ, so I'm not sure if there's anyway I could get out to the SCALE event, but who knows, Maybe in March I'll be looking to travel some to a warmer climate! I can't/won't speak for the Bunsenlab team on rather media attention is wanted. As stated I have my opinions on it's positive affects, but I don't seem to be in the majority on that front. Best of luck though, do keep me posted about SCALE and your blog!

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-09-26 06:23:54

I can only speak for myself but I would prefer that BunsenLabs not be marketed or "pushed" in any way.

We are a community-led distribution and, as such, the target audience is the community rather than other people.

matmutant · 2016-09-26 07:53:36

Btw, how big is the "community" right now ? (I mean, on the forum, here)
like 500+ 1000+, 1500+?
but how many active and contributing people over here?
like 50+?

A fast growing community might lead to active members overflow under the newbies questions.
A bigger community might also lead to better bug tracking (until there are so much newbies the forum gets blown up from inside)
The more bug hunters there is the more the faster go the improvements... ?
==> The "sweet spot" can't be reached, ever: -it is either 'not yet', or 'too late'

I've observed that on xda-developers.com: on the x10mini/pro/x8 sub-forum first, on the MotoG one then.

Too small community: not enough members for efficient bug tracking and devs: 1 issue = 1/2 report = no fix
Hypothetical right community size: 'Golden Age', 1 issue = 1 report = 1 fix
Bigger community size: still works pretty well, the newbies get "educated" by the older members and knowledge is shared nicely -nearly-, 1 issue = 10 reports = 2 conflicting fix
Too big community: at some point the proportion of active and knowledgeable members gets smaller and smaller and they get literally overflown by newbies

Here I am certainly part of the newbies, so thank you for all

lcafiero · 2016-09-27 04:33:21

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I can only speak for myself but I would prefer that BunsenLabs not be marketed or "pushed" in any way.
We are a community-led distribution and, as such, the target audience is the community rather than other people.

So noted. Though I don't entirely agree, I understand this sentiment, and I will talk about this more later.

I am with damo here. A vital component of growing the "community," to me, includes providing more qualified individuals to help folks who are already doing the heavy lifting, as damo mentions above. To do that, you make contact with people who can do the job and you find these people at Linux fests, Linux expos and even at LUGs.

The aim here, again, is not to become the next Ubuntu but to provide interest that would lead to additional personnel to help maintain and improve the distro. I don't find that conflicts with the philosophy behind BunsenLabs, but I'd welcome further discussion.

matmutant wrote:

A fast growing community might lead to active members overflow under the newbies questions.
A bigger community might also lead to better bug tracking (until there are so much newbies the forum gets blown up from inside)
The more bug hunters there is the more the faster go the improvements... ?
==> The "sweet spot" can't be reached, ever: -it is either 'not yet', or 'too late'

I think a "sweet spot" actually can be reached, but it's a target that a great majority of distros (and, generally, any FOSS projects) miss. So back to HoaS's original quote, I do think there's a "happy medium" to achieve here where the community nature does not suffer, though not a perfect balance as matmutant states, and while we might attract some "newbies" (and that's fine -- everyone was a newbie at one point or another), I think attracting some experienced people will help the distro.

That's the intention behind my proposal, anyway, and I'm glad to act (or not act) at the request of the wider community.

Last edited by lcafiero (2016-09-27 04:34:44)

dolly · 2016-09-27 11:19:31

Personally I can see no harm in giving BL some PR. But maybe there are much development going on at the moment towards both "Deiterium" and "Helium"? Could it be a case of bad timing atm? Perhaps BL needs a slow natural Linux gossip growth with a slow influx of new members? We got to remember that "Stretch" will probably be released next summer/late summer/early autumn/when ready something. So there might be a need for tranquillity, we must remember that BL is a very young distro. I do not know, just chattering.

Last edited by dolly (2016-09-27 11:22:25)

pvsage · 2016-09-27 14:00:07

dolly wrote:

Perhaps BL needs a slow natural Linux gossip growth...?

I thought that was what LUGs were. Then again, I'm old enough to remember when "640K ought to be enough for anybody" wasn't a punchline.

Plug away, Larry! BunsenLabs can handle the publicity.

lcafiero · 2016-09-28 01:30:50

dolly wrote:

Personally I can see no harm in giving BL some PR. But maybe there are much development going on at the moment towards both "Deiterium" and "Helium"? Could it be a case of bad timing atm? Perhaps BL needs a slow natural Linux gossip growth with a slow influx of new members?

As far as coverage goes, it's not so much what we're doing at this particular moment as that we're here doing it now. There is always word-of-mouth which works well, but I don't think we should shy away from making our presence known. There are a number of ways to do this, with varying degrees of success depending on your goals. I also think "slow" has its advantages, though sometimes it can be too slow.

pvsage wrote:

I thought that was what LUGs were. neutral Then again, I'm old enough to remember when "640K ought to be enough for anybody" wasn't a punchline.

Same here (and get off my lawn)! LUGs are still a good way to get the word out. I spoke to LUGOD (the Linux User Group of Davis, in Davis, California -- still one of the best acronyms in FOSS ) about #! and there's a good chance they would have me back.

I do want to backtrack for a minute and go back to this:

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I can only speak for myself but I would prefer that BunsenLabs not be marketed or "pushed" in any way.
We are a community-led distribution and, as such, the target audience is the community rather than other people.

Despite the fact that this runs counter to what I am proposing, I think there is a lot of merit to HoaS's post. Hence, I wanted to expand on it further, and as this is a little difficult, I beg your indulgence for several paragraphs.

TL;DR -- CrunchBang may have been a cautionary tale as a victim of its own success, and it highlights the most basic need in keeping as good a balance as possible between growth and the ability to provide and execute support and improvements.

Since the end of #! and through the advent of BunsenLabs up to now, I have given a lot of thought about why things turned out the way they did. I know that Philip Newborough (corenominal) wanted to move on, however I can't help but think that some of the #! promotional efforts, plus his method of doing things (e.g., making changes to #! by himself without assistance from the wider community -- not a criticism by any means, but an observation) may have provided corenominal too big a burden in having a growing user base without an adequate foundation of support.

[If it sounds like I am taking the blame for the demise of #! because of my promotional efforts, there may be some validity to that, and I mention this more out of guilt than ego. To be honest, I was as surprised at the reception #! got in the wider FOSS world as anyone, and it's a testament to the great distro corenominal had started. In addition, for this community to pick up the mantle and continue providing the distro, and the quality and principles behind it, is commendable beyond description, so thank you.]

So damo's point earlier in this thread about "nothing wrong with growing the 'community', which is not the same as marketing BL" is a good thing to keep in mind going forward. Garnering interest while hopefully gaining users and -- yes, more importantly -- contributors to keep the flame alive (pun definitely intended) can be done in an even-handed way that avoids some missteps from the recent past.

Anyway, if you've gotten this far without falling asleep, thanks for your attention and your input, past and future, and I look forward to your ideas and thoughts on how to proceed (or not) on making BL more visible in a rational and even way.

dolly · 2016-09-29 08:12:23

Thanks for the elaboration Icafiero. I have a couple of follow up questions. At an event, how many people ca do you get to really promote BL for? And how does it exactly take place? I am just curious since I have never attended any Linux events.

pvsage · 2016-09-29 08:49:18

^ In my experience, it is usually just one or two people at a booth chatting up whoever passes by. Been that way since the early days of software cons (and this goes back a coupe decades before we started calling conventions "cons").

Kinda like your typical organized flea market, only with software rather than used/stolen/knockoff (or rarely quality hand-crafted) goods.

johnraff · 2016-09-29 09:10:00

lcafiero wrote:

...hopefully gaining users and -- yes, more importantly -- contributors...

This is a good point. There is always a natural "wastage" as people move on to other fields or projects that they find more interesting or challenging, while others find their work or family situations it more difficult to put in time. We need a steady inflow of new contributors.

OTOH the example of CrunchBang has already been raised. Too much interest from too many people in too short a time can be damaging. Especially in its last days, #! was getting an influx of odd characters, some of whom seemed more interested in career building or power trips than helping the project or the community. So by all means let's tell people about BL when the chance arises, but I'm not sure whether we need to put a whole lot of energy into "promotion" at this point. Slowly, slowly...

...making BL more visible in a rational and even way.

What comes to mind, to be honest, after the distrolette (or whatever it is) has been made perfect (around tomorrow afternoon, I think ), is that there remains a lot to be done about Documentation. At the moment user support centres around this forum, which is of course an excellent place in its own right, but I think there's still plenty of room for some "written-down" (as opposed to on-demand) help for users, along with some more material introducing BunsenLabs to people who've never heard of it before.

nobody has already done a fantastic job with the website of course, but after all the work he's done building that framework, it seems unfair to expect him to provide all the content too. His excellent summary could surely be expanded for people who want to know more? There are also a lot of things under the hood that podcast reviewers aren't going to notice, but that we could brag about a bit...

Meanwhile, at system level, while most of our scripts have --help options now, none of them have man pages as far as I know. The BL menu "help" section, along with the forum "Getting Started" section could use some more input.

If this kind of stuff was seriously tackled, that would also make a huge contribution to the face we present to the world in my opinion.

Horizon_Brave · 2016-09-29 14:14:09

johnraff wrote:

lcafiero wrote:
...hopefully gaining users and -- yes, more importantly -- contributors...
This is a good point. There is always a natural "wastage" as people move on to other fields or projects that they find more interesting or challenging, while others find their work or family situations it more difficult to put in time. We need a steady inflow of new contributors.
OTOH the example of CrunchBang has already been raised. Too much interest from too many people in too short a time can be damaging. Especially in its last days, #! was getting an influx of odd characters, some of whom seemed more interested in career building or power trips than helping the project or the community. So by all means let's tell people about BL when the chance arises, but I'm not sure whether we need to put a whole lot of energy into "promotion" at this point. Slowly, slowly...
...making BL more visible in a rational and even way.
What comes to mind, to be honest, after the distrolette (or whatever it is) has been made perfect (around tomorrow afternoon, I think ), is that there remains a lot to be done about Documentation. At the moment user support centres around this forum, which is of course an excellent place in its own right, but I think there's still plenty of room for some "written-down" (as opposed to on-demand) help for users, along with some more material introducing BunsenLabs to people who've never heard of it before.
nobody has already done a fantastic job with the website of course, but after all the work he's done building that framework, it seems unfair to expect him to provide all the content too. His excellent summary could surely be expanded for people who want to know more? There are also a lot of things under the hood that podcast reviewers aren't going to notice, but that we could brag about a bit...
Meanwhile, at system level, while most of our scripts have --help options now, none of them have man pages as far as I know. The BL menu "help" section, along with the forum "Getting Started" section could use some more input.
If this kind of stuff was seriously tackled, that would also make a huge contribution to the face we present to the world in my opinion.

Well as for documentation, as I've stated many times, color me interested in this topic. It'd been discussed before about creating a wiki, but everyone said it'd just be a replica of arch's wiki. I've been double super secretly creating a lot of problem/solution notes for myself that concern debian/bunsen_labs and would love to find a way to share 'em out. But that's a topic for a different thread.

Back to the idea of gaining publicity. Again I think it's a very knee jerk reaction to shun and shy away from being too inclusive, here in the linux community. Which sort of goes against the idea of an open source community in general. I totally get that we don't want to attract the "wrong" type of people who'd take advantage of our kindness, but the point of linux is to distribute it freely and let the users do with it as they please... we can't be the moral police about how they use it can we?

lcafiero · 2016-09-29 18:17:39

dolly wrote:

At an event, how many people ca do you get to really promote BL for? And how does it exactly take place? I am just curious since I have never attended any Linux events.

Good questions. How many people can we get to promote BL at an event? As many as are willing to volunteer. How does it take place? Someone takes the reins and initiates the process by contacting the event to arrange a presence, whether it's a booth or a BoF, or it's a user willing to submit a talk to the expo about BL (or his/her experience with BL). As for the amount of people reached, it varied by show: SCALE and OSCON get 3,500 and 4,500, respectively (and FOSDEM pulls in OSCON numbers, though it's not official what FOSDEM gets because they can't say -- interesting story behind why), and other shows get less, but they range in the hundreds to low thousands.

pvsage wrote:

^ In my experience, it is usually just one or two people at a booth chatting up whoever passes by. Been that way since the early days of software cons (and this goes back a coupe decades before we started calling conventions "cons").
Kinda like your typical organized flea market, only with software rather than used/stolen/knockoff (or rarely quality hand-crafted) goods. wink

Exactly, except the software cons have become quite elaborate over time. Here is a report from LinuxFest Northwest regarding the CrunchBang booth, and it outlines some of the things that transpired.

[Speaking of flea markets, our local LUG -- Felton LUG -- has an "organic software" booth (all-natural and no proprietary fillers ) at the local farmers markets in the Santa Cruz area. We hand out pre-pressed live DVDs provided by the larger distros -- like Ubuntu or openSUSE or Fedora -- but I manage to show people what I'm using when asked ]

johnraff wrote:

What comes to mind, to be honest, after the distrolette (or whatever it is) has been made perfect (around tomorrow afternoon, I think smile), is that there remains a lot to be done about Documentation. At the moment user support centres around this forum, which is of course an excellent place in its own right, but I think there's still plenty of room for some "written-down" (as opposed to on-demand) help for users, along with some more material introducing BunsenLabs to people who've never heard of it before.
nobody has already done a fantastic job with the website of course, . . .

Yes. Yes yes yes. Yes times 1,000, and I completely agree with johnraff while offering eternal hat tips to nobody for this. Also, one of the strengths of the #! forums was that most, if not all, answers were readily available by a search of the forums, which is the same for the BL forums in that tradition. But wait, there's more.

johnraff wrote:

. . . but after all the work he's done building that framework, it seems unfair to expect him to provide all the content too. His excellent summary could surely be expanded for people who want to know more? There are also a lot of things under the hood that podcast reviewers aren't going to notice, but that we could brag about a bit...

Agreed. For the last few weeks, I have been going over both the BL and #! forums to see which materials would be worth putting into a centralized/centralised (for both Englishes) area, unaware of nobody's efforts (hence I may have redoubled nobody's work needlessly, but never mind). I would gladly help here -- nobody, you can ping me either here or on the IRC channel.

And then there's this . . .

Horizon_Brave wrote:

Well as for documentation, as I've stated many times, color me interested in this topic. It'd been discussed before about creating a wiki, but everyone said it'd just be a replica of arch's wiki. I've been double super secretly creating a lot of problem/solution notes for myself that concern debian/bunsen_labs and would love to find a way to share 'em out.

I think a wiki is a good idea, regardless of whether Arch has one or not. I have found many answers in the Arch wiki and I find it a good resource, but it's not Debian/#!/BL specific and I think that's something on which we should focus.

Horizon_Brave wrote:

But that's a topic for a different thread.

Anyone (looking around the room, but focusing on Horizon_Brave and nobody) want to start one, or shall I -- the verbose one -- do it?

One more thing . . .

Horizon_Brave wrote:

Again I think it's a very knee jerk reaction to shun and shy away from being too inclusive, here in the linux community. Which sort of goes against the idea of an open source community in general. I totally get that we don't want to attract the "wrong" type of people who'd take advantage of our kindness, but the point of linux is to distribute it freely and let the users do with it as they please... we can't be the moral police about how they use it can we?

Excellent point. This sort of relates back to what johnraff said about people coming and going in participating, and this point about being inclusive is well noted. Also, Horizon_Brave is right -- we can't control what people do with the distro once it's out there, and that's not really our concern.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-09-29 19:24:48

lcafiero wrote:

I think a wiki is a good idea

This has been discussed quite a few times now and I think the general concensus is that the community is far too small to maintain a wiki properly.

Also, an awful lot of information in the ArchWiki is duplicated from the upstream documentation and, IMO, it would be better practice to simply educate users to take advantage that resource directly instead.

Anyway, sorry for the sidebar.

lcafiero · 2016-09-29 19:31:29

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Also, an awful lot of information in the ArchWiki is duplicated from the upstream documentation and, IMO, it would be better practice to simply educate users to take advantage that resource directly instead.

Well, OK then. I think we should have our own, even if some/most of it adds, "See ArchWiki here . . ." But that's me, and if the consensus is not to have one, then that's fine.

matmutant · 2016-09-30 06:00:03

lcafiero wrote:

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
Also, an awful lot of information in the ArchWiki is duplicated from the upstream documentation and, IMO, it would be better practice to simply educate users to take advantage that resource directly instead.
Well, OK then. I think we should have our own, even if some/most of it adds, "See ArchWiki here . . ." But that's me, and if the consensus is not to have one, then that's fine.

+1 for the wiki, I LOVE FAQs
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr … ?t=2537119

The community doesn't need to be big to maintain a wiki, the wiki simply needs not to grow faster than the community

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-09-30 06:31:01

To be clear, I was not recommending directing users to the ArchWiki.

I was recommending directing users to the upstream documentation, which is always the reference source anyway.

For example, for queries on Openbox configuration http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Contents#Configuration would be preferred over https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Op … figuration, IMO.

Further duplicating any such information here seems pointless and possibly counter-productive.

johnraff · 2016-09-30 08:03:57

As HoaS has pointed out, wikis have been discussed at great length over a period of years. CrunchBang used to have one, but it got into disrepair. Just as some of us were working on trying to get it all straightened out, CrunchBang moved servers and Corenominal made the wiki read-only. End of that.

At the time I was not happy, but I've come round to agreeing with those who say that you need a certain critical mass of users for a wiki to work properly.

What I think we could use is some kind of "knowlege base" - the difference from a wiki being that the content is managed by a small group of people (of course accepting contributions from all, if they're up to standard). That sounds undemocratic, and more work for the administrators, but free-for-all wikis can easily degenerate into chaos...

What is difficult in that situation is how to encourage people to contribute without hurting feelings when something is not accepted for addition. Of course we have to be careful that what we put out with our official stamp on it is at least correct.

Another point: I can see two rather different branches of the DataBase:
1) Help for users.
2) Information for prospective users.

#1 2016-09-25 23:57:39

BL at Linux Fests/FOSS events

#2 2016-09-26 00:40:52

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