[GLLUG] Penguicon

[Richard Houser]

> - The Terminal Server rocked that place, we had a lot of good reviews of
> the service, and because of the wireless fiasco by Hilton, it was pretty
> much the only access to people that needed out either for business or
> plain emailing/surfing. Kudos to GLLUG!

The terminal server was VERY well done once it was up and going. 
Excellent work!

The wireless was, as we know, a disaster.  I eventually figured out it 
was the Hilton router itself that was dying, but I had to power cycle it 
a few times and it kept having issues again, just delayed a little.  For 
next year, I think we need to bring our own OpenWrt router for the 
wireless.  I'll gladly do the setup for this if it comes down to it.

If at all possible, I think Penguicon should really pressure the hotel 
to do something about the speed at least during our stay (or at a 
minimum, provide QoS priority to our lounge router so we can get the 
things that we really need for the event).  The peak speed I saw was 
something around 45KBps near 10:00a.m. Friday and it dropped rapidly 
from there.  The connection didn't meet the government definition of 
broadband and certainly wasn't high-speed.


> - The Burn Box and the Print Box also provided a very good service, Ops
> used and abused the Print Box, just as the general public did, and the
> Burn Box was flawless! Kudos to GLLUG!

I thought the burn box did it's job wonderfully, although slow.  If we 
could get the burner upgraded to a DVD-R 16X+ and get the cdrecord 
binary updated to support DVD burning, I think we should be set on the 
hardware side.  If we then just make a process change of burning 1-4 
copies of each in advance (depending on expected demand for the distro 
in question), and replenish those as we use them (ie, start a burn for 
each we give out), I think we would be set.  We did have the problem of 
some install sets being incomplete, however.  For example, only the 
first Mandriva disc was on the image, and the network was way to slow to 
get any other needed packages.  DVD images would mostly relieve this, 
but it might be a good idea to have just one copy of those on-hand for 
the techs to use.


Hopefully, the printer connectivity problem is solved.  I snagged a 
printer cable from the junk pile after we won the event.  With any luck, 
it stayed with the printer through teardown.  It would be much, much 
more convenient for us to have the print machine networked.  We could 
avoid the abuse by not advertising the printing service to the terminals 
or the wireless, but providing instructions to scp the file over and 
then print it from the print box.

As far as printing, I think a high-volume inkjet would be sufficient and 
I would expect it to draw a lot less power (OfficeJet K550 - 37 ppm 
black, 34ppm color).  I've got one, but I won't know the ink situation 
or if I could physically bring it until closer to next con (this year, I 
had a gaming machine, two suitcases of gear, a bag of clothes, and three 
large CRTs.  Did anyone happen to get a print count from the laser we had?



> Now for he bad stuff
> 
> - I believe(and it's just MY OPINION) that the Game Box should be more
> then one, and I also think that should be about OPEN SOURCE gaming more
> then anything else. Playing commercial games is cool, but does not
> contribute to the Open Source Community. I believe more planing and
> discussion is necessary about this.

I thought it was a poor showing of the gaming machine as well.  The 
problem is that I could only bring one machine and a second video card 
myself.  I didn't even find out that Jason's machine wasn't going to be 
at the con until we were already there and my machine was setup.

As far as the game selection, I personally disagree.  We need both 
community created and commercial offerings for a proper demonstration.

My collection of non-native games will not be growing.  The last game I 
purchased without native binaries was Warcraft 3.  This is a personal 
choice and I won't be supporting any new loaned Windows/wine only titles 
either.  Anyone else that cares to get these type of games running is 
welcome to install an additional, licensed copy on my machine for the 
duration of next con.

I heard TuxRacer getting played constantly.  Both the OSS and commercial 
versions were installed and they were both utilized.  FreeSpace and 
FreeSpace2 have an open source engine (the artwork and levels are not). 
I hope to add other open sourced games to the list for the next con. 
NWN, Doom3, UT2004 were all Linux native closed source games.  Diablo 
II, Warcraft II: BNE, and Warcraft III were all wine-based games.  I'll 
have more for the next round, but they aren't likely to be much newer 
(except for maybe UT3, Savage 2, Quake IV, etc.).  I'll get the full set 
of the distro games installed, however.

We had far fewer OSS games installed than I had hoped, but that was 
mostly due to timing.  I was not originally doing the system images and 
all the games supported by the chosen distro were already supposed to be 
installed.  I only had about 24hrs to get an image up and going, so 
arrived early at the hotel to use the high-speed Internet connection to 
finish installing the rest of the OSS games from the repositories.  You 
all know how fast the connection was, so the games I was able to pull 
down with urpmi were rather minimal.

There are a LOT of people out there that pick an OS based largely on 
whether it can run their favorite software; this is particularly true of 
gamers.  If a user thinks that Doom3 won't run on Linux, they might not 
even consider the OS.  For the most part, that type of game is not a 
feasible target for a strictly OSS project due to budget concerns.  Game 
developers need to see Linux as a viable market to support; without 
them, these types of high budget titles will never get developed.  Even 
some community driven games like Planeshift have realized this and taken 
the OSS engine, non-OSS content approach to maintain their contributing 
numbers.

 > - We could have had more items for sale, to raise funds to our pizza
 > money. This is something that only Chick acted on, more of us should
 > follow the example.

If I didn't say so earlier, wonderful job on the pins, Chick.  I 
personally would rather not get involved in sales (as in coordination, 
not selling things while on duty), but it's great you are.

> - When we volunteer to help at the lounge, we make a commitment. Other
> volunteers also want to attend panels and have fun, and by not showing
> up, some volunteer(s) disrespected the group, and I honestly think
> something should be done about it.

> - I strongly suggest that GLLUG need a "GLLUG Suite", for all the
> volunteers to crash and also so we can trow a party!

Personally, I think the sleeping + party thing is destined for failure. 
  I wouldn't mind chipping in for a GLUUG sleeping room, however. 
Someone (Clay?), mentioned sleeping shifts at the Con.  It might sound 
kinda tacky, but I think it could work with something like a 7 hour 
sleep shift (8-3 and 3-10).  Seven hours is enough that when you factor 
in early (yeah, those people are weird) vs. late people, it's doable. 
When you figure that most people are only going to sleep 4-5 hours, I 
think those are really sensible times (11-3 and 3-7 if down to 4 hours). 
  During the day, I think it could be used for a naps, etc. with just a 
common sense rule to respect those napping.

Someone else mentioned not pointing fingers (reading these out of order, 
so maybe after this message).  I agree that what's done is done, but I 
think the carrot instead of the stick is a good idea.  If we were to do 
something like this, let the people that helped the most from the 
previous Con get the choice of the sleeping area (assuming 2 beds, two 
cots) and time slot.