[coreboot] LinuxTag 2008 Status

[Joseph Smith]

On Thu, 29 May 2008 22:02:23 +0200, Paul Menzel
<paulepanter at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> 
> Am Donnerstag, den 29.05.2008, 13:39 -0400 schrieb Joseph Smith:
>> How is LinuxTag 2008 going Peter, Paul, and Carl-Daniel?
> 
> Pierre, who offered his help with the booth and is considered a spammer
> by trac, is also presenting coreboot.
> 
>> Are you getting alot of people excited about coreboot?
> 
> So I will try to give a quick summary of the first two days. I was there
> about 70 % of it.
> 
> - Peter is talking a lot to people. As evidence he is gravelly.
> Especially after the workshop/talk he gave today.
> 
> - The booth is really small and located in the embedded area. Peter
> brought the GA-M57SLI-S4 SPI and alix1c and their output is displayed
> variantly on a monitor over Peter’s monitor switch. Most of the time
> bayou with coreinfo, tint and filo is shown on the alix1c.
> 
> I would guess that we talk to about 4–6 people in an hour. But since we
> are talking to them about 10 minutes the booth is busy most of the time
> and it would be rather crowded if more people are there. There knowledge
> on coreboot varies. Even more because of the name change early this
> year. So the strategy is like
> 
> 1. Show them how fast it is on by resetting the GA-M57SLI-S4 SPI.
> 
> 2. Tell them a little bit more about coreboot and some advantages from
> Carl-Daniel’s list (mainly speed, free software, C code, English error
> messages).
> 
> 3. Often answer their question: „How risky is this.”
> 
> 4. Tell them to look at the website to see if their motherboard is
> supported.
> 
> 5. Tell them about flashrom.
> 
> 6. Give them a flyer with information about coreboot, the website and
> the list.
> 
> Some people have already seen the project last year and have quiet some
> knowledge about the hardware. Then I need the help from Peter.
> 
> 1. One guy said there is a well-known problem with the alix1c, that the
> temperature sensors are not calibrated correctly and asked if that is
> fixed when using coreboot.
> 
> 2. Another guy was thinking about a NAS-Device with a Celeron processor.
> But he will come back some other time, because Peter or Carl-Daniel were
> busy with the workshop then.
> 
> - Although the booth is small and there is not enough room that more
> than four people have room around the booth, I believe that a lot of
> people are passing by, because their are just two bare boards sitting on
> the table and the monitor is displaying a ncurses-menu. The poster has
> also only coreboot on it. So we do not have a real eye-catcher. Maybe we
> should hack a screensaver payload which just displays „Want to boot
> faster?”, „Free your BIOS?” and so on in big ASCII on the monitor
or
> write it on the poster.
> 
> When they see the demonstration, they are a little bit more excited. And
> some even want to take a deeper look at it.
> 
> There are also not so many business guys running around—especially no
> mainboard vendors. So I guess the main objective is, to make coreboot
> more known to the world and probably attract some potential developers.
> 
> If you have some more marketing ideas or objectives, please tell me/us.
> 
> - Each of Peter (English) and Carl-Daniel (German) gave a talk/workshop
> on flashrom today. I listened to the one of Carl-Daniel and there were
> about 15 people.
> 
> - Presenters are supplied with sandwiches (rolls) and some fruit for
> lunch. I liked, but I do not know, what it is compared to other fairs.
> 
> - Carl-Daniel arrived today. But it looks like he left his alix1c board
> in the cardboard in the workshop room and it was not there anymore when
> we came back. Hopefully we will find it or the one who took it brings it
> to the lost-and-found office, because that was the only presentation
> board, when Peter is leaving tomorrow. And Carl-Daniel is going to have
> a workshop with this board on Saturday.
> 
> Ok, that is it for now. I think I missed a lot and hopefully I did not
> write wrong stuff. I am enjoying it very much and I really like how nice
> you guys are also in “reality”, i. e. face to face. It is a real
> pleasure.
> 
> 
> Greeting from Berlin,
> 
> Paul

Thanks for the update Paul:-)

-- 
Thanks,
Joseph Smith
Set-Top-Linux
www.settoplinux.org