<html>  <head>  <title>Report on Solutions Linux 2003</title>  <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta name="Author" content="Charles de Miramon ">  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/spip_style.css"> </head>   <body>  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="0" width="100%" bgcolor="#f5f6fb">  <tr>   <td align="left" valign="middle">   <font face="Lucida,Arial,Helvetica,Verdana" size="-1" color="#FFFFFF">   <a href="http://www.dummieslinux.org" target="_BLANK">Dummies Linux</a> |    <a href="http://www.petitjournal.org" target="_BLANK">Le Petit Journal</a> |    <a href="http://www.bill2tux.org" target="_BLANK">Bill 2 Tux</a> |    <a href="http://www.gynov.org" target="_BLANK">Gynov</a> |    <a href="http://www.koudou.org" target="_BLANK">Koudou</a>  <font face="Lucida,Arial,Helvetica,Verdana" size="-1" color="#FFFFFF">    </font>   </font>   </td>   <td align="right" valign="middle">   <font face="Lucida,Arial,Helvetica,Verdana" size=2 color="#000000">    <b><a 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</table>  <p> <p>  <div class="color"> <table width="100%"> <tr> <td width="30%"> <table> <tr> <td>                          <IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=50">L'histoire de Kde</A><br>                          <IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=52">La traduction et Kde</A><br>                          <IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=54">Participer  la traduction</A><br>  </td> </tr> </table> 				 </td> <td width="5%"> </td> <td width="30%"> <table> <tr> <td> 				<img src="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg">&nbsp;<a  href="/agora/index.php?site=forums&bn=">Les forums</a><br>  				<img src="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg">&nbsp;<a href="/agora/index.php?site=faq&bn=">La faq</a><br> 				<img src="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg">&nbsp;<a  href="galerie.php3">La galerie</a><br>  </td> </tr> </table> 				 </td> <td width="5%"> </td> <td width="30%"> <table> <tr> <td> 				<img src="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg">&nbsp;<a  href="plan.php3">Plan des brves et des articles</a><br>  				<img src="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg">&nbsp;<a href="article.php3?id_article=17">Installer la version CVS de 				Kde</a><br> 				<img src="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg">&nbsp;<a href="article.php3?id_article=89">L'association</a>  				<br><br>  </td> </tr> </table> 				 </td> </tr> </table> </div>  <p> <p>       <table> <tr> <td width="20%" valign="top"> <div class="color"> <table> <tr> <td align="center"> Version imprimable<br> <a href="imprimersans.php3?id_article=98">sans forums</a><br> <a href="imprimer.php3?id_article=98">avec forums</a><br><br> <a href="article_pdf.php3?id_article=98">Version pdf</a>  </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br><br> <div class="color"> <table> <tr> <td> <a href="mail_article.php3?id_article=98">Envoyer l'article  un ami</a><br> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br><br> <div class="color"> <table> <tr> <td> <h3 class="droite">Dans le mme rubrique</h3> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <div class="color2"> 	 	<P class="kdefrance"> 	 	<IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=100">KDE&nbsp;: l'environnement de bureau pour l'entreprise (2me partie)</A><br> 	 	<IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=86">Nouveau systme de filtre MSWord pour KWord</A><br> 	 	<IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=77">Communiqu de presse&nbsp;: KDE 3.0.3</A><br> 	 	<IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=75">Communiqu de presse&nbsp;: KOffice rc1</A><br> 	 	<IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=65">Rapprocher KDE de l'utilisateur (2me partie)</A><br> 	 	<IMG SRC="/IMGKDEFRANCE/puce2.jpg"><A HREF="article.php3?id_article=60">Rapprocher KDE de l'utilisateur</A><br> 	 	 	 	 </div> <div class="color"> <table> <tr> <td> <h3 class="droite">Sur le web</h3> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <div class="color2">  <a href="http://www.kdevelop.org/">KDevelop -&nbsp;Home</a><BR>  <a href="http://www.konqueror.org/">Konqueror</a><BR>  <a href="http://www.koffice.org/">The KOffice Project</a><BR>  <a href="http://kdepim.kde.org">KDE Personal Information Management</a><BR>  <a href="http://www.kde-look.org/">KDE-Look.org</a><BR>  </div> </td> <td width="4%"> </td> <td width="74%" valign="top"> <div class="article"> <table> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> 	<br><br> 	 	<BR><FONT SIZE=6><B>Report on Solutions Linux 2003</B></FONT> 	  	<P> mardi 11 f&eacute;vrier 2003<br> 	<B>par <A HREF="mailto:cmiramon@kde-france.org">Charles de Miramon</A></B><br><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>  	   	<p class='spip' align='justify'> &nbsp;<h3 class="spip"> The Booth </h3><br>  </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>This year, <i class="spip">Solutions Linux</i> (formerly <i class="spip">Linux Expo</i>, the main Linux Show in France) gave a large amount of space for the <i class="spip">Village des associations</i> (non-profit organisation village) which was well organised by Loc Bernable (thanks Loc). The Village gave a good overview of the diversity of the community from global organisations promoting the idea of Free Software to local LUGs, development projects and the now famous Copines de Geek (<a href="galerie/expo2003/jour1/fullsize/expo13.htm" class="spip_out">here</a> you can see Grard with his two new <i class="spip">copines</i>). </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'><i class="spip">KDE-France</i> shared a booth with <i class="spip">OpenOffice.org</i>. It was a happy coincidence because we both had a <a href="galerie/expo2003/jour1/fullsize/expo2.htm" class="spip_out">lot</a> of visitors and we quickly understood that for the layman, ''Linux on the desktop'' today means KDE + OpenOffice.org. <a href="galerie/expo2003/jour1/fullsize/expo1.htm" class="spip_out">Here</a> a photo of the booth with a smiling Eric Bischoff. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>Grard Delafond managed to make our booth cosier and secure, bringing tables and chairs and a file drawer to lock our stuff during the night. Philippe Frmy lent us his 21'' monitor to show KDE on a big screen. Grard's notebook AC/DC broke down the second day and we were short on computers to run KDE. Next year, we should bring more hardware and dedicate one computer just for running a demonstration of KDE. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'> &nbsp;<h3 class="spip"> The Team&nbsp;: </h3><br>  </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>A large number of KDE-fellows were there. Developers&nbsp;: David Faure, Philippe Frmy and Aurlien Gteau. Translators and friends&nbsp;: Grard Delafond, ric Bischoff, Ludovic Grossard, Sbastien Renard, Laurent Rathle, Gilles Thiolires, Cdric Rigaud, myself. Jolle Cornavin member of the translation team popped in. Frdric Crozat, Gnome packager for Mandrakesoft visited us. Mandrake is in a tightening-the-belt mode and had to cancel their booth but several Mandrakesoft employees were there telling us that they are still willing to fight for survival. Laurent Montel had to cancel his visit because of his work on Mandrake 9.1. During the show, several people enlisted in <i class="spip">KDE-France</i>. If you want to put faces on names on this <a href="galerie/expo2003/jour1/fullsize/expo12.htm" class="spip_out">group</a> photo,you can see at the back from left to right&nbsp;: Grard Delafond, David Faure, Aurlien Gteau, Ludovic Grossard and on the frontline me, Konqui and Philippe Frmy. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'> &nbsp;<h3 class="spip"> Promoting KDE&nbsp;: </h3><br>  </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>During the three days of the show, we ran non-stop demonstrations of KDE and answered a lot of questions. We sold goodies (pins, mouse pads and stuffed Konquis) but our prices (and margins) were too low and it was quite a large amount of work ordering the wares from Germany for too little money. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>We had much more success with the <i class="spip">Knoppix-KDE</i>, a specially re-mastered <a href="http://www.knoppix.net" class="spip_out">Knoppix</a> with <a href="http://promo.kde.org/3.1/feature_guide.php" class="spip_out">KDE 3.1</a>. We sold around 200 of them and made some profit. The Knoppix-KDE highlighted the good and the bad of Free Software. The good is our incredible (to use management jargon) time-to-market. We had the idea last week. Laurent Rathle jumped in and learned the art of re-mastering a Knoppix. He finished a first version for the opening of the show and released a second version during the show. We copied the CDs right on the booth or by using the friendly help of others. The bad was that we found minor bugs in the first version and a major one in the second version. Laurent will post a corrected image on the Net when we find available FTP space. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>The success of the <i class="spip">Knoppix-KDE</i> is partly the consequence of the novelty of 3.1 but it also shows that there is a need for a KDE-Demo CD. In my opinion, this demo CD should not be another attempt to create a general Gnu/Linux distribution but rather a promotion tool for people unfamiliar with Gnu / Linux / KDE. It means not only filling the CD to the top with KDE software but also adding some original artwork and a comprehensive set of clickable tutorials and practical information. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>We also gave to our visitors a nice leaflet introducing KDE translated from the German original. The printing cost was shared by <i class="spip">KDEev</i> and <i class="spip">KDE-France</i>. We still have a lot of leaflets left. KDE-fellows from French-speaking countries who need some of them for promotion can send us an e-mail. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>David Faure gave a conference on KDE and had a big success judging from the number of CDs we sold afterwards. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'> &nbsp;<h3 class="spip"> Richard comes to tea&nbsp;: </h3><br>  </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>Richard Stallmann also gave a conference at Solutions Linux and we invited him for a cup of tea at the KDE booth. RMS stayed next to an hour and had the grand 3.1 tour given to him. RMS had only cursory knowledge of recent KDE history and seemed to discover the amount of progress we made lately. He was eager to learn about our decision making policy and showed no hostility towards the project. Nevertheless, RMS is not a C++ fan and not a big user of graphical interfaces. He was very pleased when we showed him that Konsole has a full-screen mode. <a href="galerie/expo2003/jour1/index.html" class="spip_out">Pictures</a> </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'> &nbsp;<h3 class="spip"> Linux desktop in France and KDE&nbsp;: </h3><br>  </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>A quick tour of the commercial part of the show revealed that most of the computers were running KDE and a large minority of them Red Hat Desktop. I saw no pure Gnome or Ximian Gnome but maybe I didn't look enough. During the two days I participated in the show, I spent most of my time talking to users at the booth. I will sum up my impressions dividing our user base into four groups. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'><b class="spip">Geeks</b>&nbsp;: More French geeks have silently migrated to KDE. In these days of renewed unemployment in French IT, nobody came to complain about Trolltech. Nevertheless, KDE is becoming too powerful, easy to use and bug free. The geek is secretly longing for a graphical interface that is more complex to compile, more cryptic to parameter and nastier for his eyes and his brain. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'><b class="spip">Home users</b>&nbsp;: There were many home users. It was interesting to meet them because these people tend to be older and are quite shy on the Internet. Home users looked quite happy with KDE even if they are sometimes bewildered by its complexity and the steep learning curve of Unix. Most of their questions were not KDE related and if somebody from Mandrake reads me, I urge them to create a DrakWinModem. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'><b class="spip">Developers</b>&nbsp;: Several people stopped by the booth to ask information about development tools for KDE. It seems that several R&D departments in big engineer-oriented companies in France want to move away from their hotchpot of proprietary Unix workstations to Gnu / Linux on the PC. I wish we had a working demonstration of all the KDE development tools (<a href="http://www.kdevelop.org" class="spip_out">Gideon</a>, <a href="http://www.freehackers.org/kvim/" class="spip_out">KVim</a>, <a href="http://kcachegrind.sourceforge.net/" class="spip_out">Kcachegrind</a>, <a href="http://kate.kde.org/" class="spip_out">Kate</a>, <a href="http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/designer.html" class="spip_out">QtDevelopper</a>, <a href="http://www.trolltech.com/products/qsa/" class="spip_out">QSA</a>, <a href="http://www.die-offenbachs.de/detlev/eric3.html" class="spip_out">Eric</a>etc.). The Unix development workstation is a niche market but it is a market where KDE can be easily promoted. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'><b class="spip">Business users</b>&nbsp;: A man came to me and explained that he was in charge of switching a mid-size industrial company to KDE. I asked him to send a report when it is done and hope he will be true to his word. Visitors were also interested in the <a href="http://kroupware.kde.org/" class="spip_out">Kollab</a> project. However, there seems to be no large scale project in France for using KDE on the desktop. In these days of shrinking budgets, IT departments are mostly planning users migration to OpenOffice and Mozilla on Windows. Big organisations are also blocked by the Visual Basic applications developed in-house that can't easily migrate to Linux. </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>With the <a href="http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-11/kde_01.html" class="spip_out">kiosk framework</a> and <a href="http://pim.kde.org" class="spip_out">KDE-PIM</a>, KDE has assets for the business users. Compatibility between <a href="http://www.koffice.org" class="spip_out">KOffice</a> and OpenOffice will be an important parameter for managers making IT decisions in the future. <hr class="spip"> </p> <p class="spip" align='justify'>I had a great time at the show meeting KDE-fellows with whom I had contact only on the Net and I'm looking forward for next year Solutions Linux.</p>  	P.S.&nbsp;:<br><p class='spip' align='justify'>More pictures and another point of view can be found in this <a href="http://www.linuxfrench.net/article.php?id_article=1163" class="spip_out">article in French</a> written by Aegir.	 	 	 </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> <td width="2%"> </td> </tr> </table>    <B_forums_liens>   <TABLE> <TR> <td width="10%"> </td> <TD width="20%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> 	<BR><BR> 	<A NAME='liens_forums'> 	 	 	  	<BR><BR> 	 	<BR><BR> </TD>  <td width="5%"> </td>  <TD width="60%" VALIGN="top">  <h3 align="center"><a href="forum.php3?id_article=98&amp;retour=article.php3%3Fid_article%3D98">Poster un message</a></h3> 	   	<BR><BR>  	 </td> <td width="5%"> </td> </tr> </table>    </body>   </html> 
