On the 7th October 2013 I sent the following message to LUGM’s mailing list.

Hello folks,

After several pings I finally got a date from the UoM Computer Club. They checked & double-checked with registrar and the only date they could get is 25th November.

So … How about throwing a Linux party on that day @ Octave Wiehe Auditorium?
During the past MSCC & LUGM meetups I’ve been talking about this event which will aim at getting Linux to the general public. Since the last one back in 2011, I’ve known many who started using Linux since then and even got jobs within the industry :)
Let’s have some brainstorming about how the event should proceed; we need speakers, magicians & entertainers … where are the volunteers?
Cheers!
Ish Sookun

The response that I received from LUGM folks was great. Everyone was keen to help with the event. We had an initial meetup at Perfect Pizza to discuss the event. Several emails, phone calls & meetups followed. Folks from UoM Computer Club & LUGM liaised to assign pending tasks. We had little time to arrange/organize yet we synchronized to the best we could.

Finally the day arrived, 25th November 2013!

###Why a Linux Festival?

When we did an openSUSE Installfest back in 2011 it was a successful event. I know several guys who since then started using Linux & got jobs within the industry. Somehow I think the exposure to Linux helped the guys try it, like it & continue use it. I hope of achieving the same this time …

Participating in the Infotech 2013 got us some visibility. In fact, I met several folks at Octave Wiehe, Auditorium for the Linuxfest who actually met us at Infotech first. We invited them & they came. Although exams happening on that day we got 167 students registering & attending.

###How was the event?

We didn’t get time to rehearse or even test the equipment properly. Some of us reached University of Mauritius as early as 08h00. Yet we were not ready with logistics by 10h00. We started the event some time around 10h30. First came a video promo made by Nirvan Pagooah. We didn’t have any host on stage but instead had a whole team working backstage to do announcements & poke some fun from time to time.

Presentations were done as follows:

• Expansion of Linux & Android in the world and particularly, Mauritius, by Avinash Meetoo
• Running Windows applications on Linux, by Jochen Kirstätter
• Skills needed for a Unix System Admin & open source in our current IT industry, by Nitin Bachraz
• MSCC & Development on open source platforms, by Nirvan Pagooah & Nayar Joolfoo
• openSUSE Project / openSUSE Advocate Program, by Ish Sookun
• BSD & Linux, which is which, by Eldergod Sælvøn
• Presentation of Kali Linux, by Nitin J Mutkawoa
• Linux Mint for daily activities, by Nadim Attari

###Photo highlights

Avinash Meetoo, CEO of Knowledge Seven.

Jochen Kirstätter, a.k.a JoKi, CEO of IOS Ltd.

Nitin Bachraz, Senior Engineer & Team Leader, Orange Business Services.

Nirvan Pagooah, Creative Director, Graphics Temple & Student of UoM.

Nayar Joolfoo, student of UoM.

Nayar’s presentation made using HTML5 got some jaws dropped.

Ish Sookun, Engineer at Orange Business Services & openSUSE Advocate.

Nitin Mutkawoa, Police Officer & Linux enthusiast.

Nadim Attari, Web Developer & Linux enthusiast.

After the presentations we invited everyone in the auditorium lobby for some Linux demos. Ajay demoed several tools including Steam running on his Gentoo box.

Ajay interacting with an inquisitive audience.

On my end I met a few students whom I first met at Infotech. I had told them they could bring their laptops if they wanted to install Linux, which they did. They brought two laptops and several pendrives to get copies of Linux distributions. I installed Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon on one of their laptops. On the second one I asked them to install & I would watch. It was fun to have to geek chat while they were busy with the installation. They did the installation fine, dual booting with Windows.

The event over & we felt a sense of satisfaction. We were a bunch of geeks sitting outside afterwards, sharing some of the great moments. We hope to have the same collaboration for future events & we can make things better in many ways.

Photo credits go to Khagesh Teeluck.
Some photos taken using Ajay’s camera.