Booths

Booth Ideas

Compatability:

• What: Have a computer setup with a volunteer to show a variety of

popular formats linux can handle.

• Why: There are a lot of fears/misconceptions about what you can/can't

do with Linux. This is just a booth to show that yes, you can watch YouTube videos, edit Microsoft Word Docuemnts, print .pdf files, play DVDs, etc.

• Cheat sheet: Create a chart of a bunch of popular closed source

formats, how to open/edit them and any programs you need to install to be able to handle them.

Customization:

• What: Show some custom setups and showcase what you can do.
• Why: Show people that no, Linux is not all command line, it can be as

flashy and awesome as any OS and is easy to customize. This will cater to geeks and newbs, and will be something shiny, pretty and polished.

• Cheat sheet: List some good resources for where to find themes and

wallpapers, some popular compiz options and how to set them and some good docks to try if that's your thing.

Speed:

• What: Get some really old computers, make them functional and set

them up for people to try.

• Why: Linux can be fast. This would be a good chance to show off some

ultralight distros for the geeks. For the newbs I think it would open some eyes to see a snappy OS running on a computer the would've thrown away two years ago. Also, it'll be easy to get a couple old computers we can format.

• Cheat sheet: Put info on some usable lightweight distros plus a few

tips to get started with them. Puppy Linux, Tiny Core, and Damn Small Linux come to mind for this.

Small Business:

• Not really sure what we could do for this, but I think it would be

beneficial to have something that could showcase some open source technologies that can help small businesses.

Media:

• What: Have a TV hooked up to a Boxee machine, let people play with

it.

• Why: It's a flashy, polished cross platform program that will be easy

to showcase and also ties in with the whole compatability thing. Also will be good for some background music.

• Cheat sheet: Probably don't need one for this...

Games:

• What: Have a couple computers setup running some Open Source games.
• Why: Games are fun, interactive and will grab peoples attention even

if they're just watching. There are a lot of high quality cross platform open source games people haven't heard about that we can showcase. The only problem is this booth will take higher end computers (which are harder to get loaned) and will need multiple computers to really be effective. The plus side is we don't have to have a configured Linux install for these stations; there are live Linux distros that load into RAM that will run a decent selection of games as well as off the hard drive.

• Cheat sheet: List of good games to check out with brief description/

screenshot of each.