openSUSE 11.4 Release Party-The Next day

Last night the first Release Party for 11.4 of the Greek openSUSE Community took place. We had every reason to celebrate since we have this great distribution that attracted peoples attention from the first day of it's release.

Greek openSUSE community report for 2010

This is the annual report of the Greek openSUSE community. As you all might know this  is the first report since we were formed as a community this year.

 Our first event of the year was the appearance at 3rd FOSSCOMM at 24th and 25th  of April. Greek Ambassador, George Koutsikos, participated with a booth. He with a team of people, were informing participants about openSUSE Project. He was giving away 11.2 DVD stickers and brochures.

Xariseto.gr Bazaar, December 28-29-30, 2010 - report

On December 28-29-30, 2010, we joined the calling from our friends from the web page xariseto.gr. They had a bazaar in Hortiatis, Thessaloniki (Greece). The place was far from our city but it was near for some people that live there.
Many people were bringing items they didn't need, but can be used by someone else that need them. You can see on the last picture what it was all about.
We were there to inform people about FOSS and openSUSE. We had a lot of people asking questions about it. Mostly they didn't know that there's something different than windows. We hope we made a difference even to 1 person.

Report: 1st OpenFest Open Christmas at Florina, December 24th 2010

Merry Christmas to everyone:



Yesterday a small team of the Greek openSUSE community decided to go on a Christmas roadtrip. We traveled about 2 and a half hours to go to the beautiful border town of Florina. We were invited by teachers of The Educational Computer Association of Florina to help them promote FOSS. In the central square of the city they hard wooden houses with different themes (you can see the pictures).
openSUSE Greek team with KLUG and a very active elementary teacher, Mr Ioannis Kaskamanidis, were informing people who was interested in what we do. Mr Kaskamanidis, brought his students with their XO laptops. Kids were showing their laptops with pride and giving away info packs (PromoDVDs, stickers, brochures). We also met with a local doctor, Dr Evangelos Tsoukas. He translated and supports the Electronic Medical Records program called openEMR.
openSUSE team was pretty happy about promoting our distro to citizens of Florina. We didn't mind that we drove 200km to reach the city or the soft rain that made us to put all our equipment inside the wooden house. What is left from this event was:

We did our job and we had fun!!!

Xariseto.gr Bazaar, December 12, 2010 - report

* Event Date: December 12, 2010
* openSUSE Ambassadors: Efstathios Iosifidis, Kostas 'Warlordfff' Koudaras
* Helpers: Christos Soultidis, Athanasios Rousinopoulos
* Event Details
o Tell us about the event, What did you do? We were informing people about FOSS and openSUSE. It's a good opportunity to pass the word since it's crisis and people cannot buy new computers or software.
o How many DVDs taken and distributed? About 40 DVDs. We also used the file Greek help flyer
o How many people were there at the event. Couldn't count.
o Did you have a booth? Yes
o Who staffed the booth? Efstathios Iosifidis, Kostas Koudaras, Athanasios Rousinopoulos
o Would you go again? Yes
o What more can you do to make it better? Maybe use more promo at our booth.


Pictures from the event:

openSUSE at the celebrations for the 100 years Scouting in Greece (report)

In October 1-3, we participated to the celebrations for 100 years Scouting in Greece. The last day was dedicated to animals since it was their world day celebration.

We were guests of GreekLUG. The main idea was to run a future park. Since the audience was mainly kids, we setup computers running network games and games in general.

As community, we made some Geeko origami some Geekos out of empty bottles and plaster. We also informed people about FOSS and openSUSE. Main concern of the adults was if it's easy and if it runs with windows dual boot.

We gave about 50 PromoDVDs and some leafs where they can find help in Greek.

Here are some pictures:

openSUSE team at Xariseto.gr Free Festival-Report

 On October the 3rd we participated at the xariseto Free Festival.We were placed between Greeklug and the Fedora community Project.

A few words about the event:
The event had everything an Free open fest could have,music,theatrical teams ,places for kids to learn through games, free coffee, free clothes,free games and any other kind of items people stopped use and wanted to give away to others instead of throwing them away as garbage,also after the event what people didn’t take the xarise to team gathered it and gave it to institutions.
Our presence there:

Educational Lecture: "Kids and Internet"

openSUSE ambassadors team in association with GreekLUG, on 27th of September, participated to an educational lecture with the subject "Kids and Internet".

The audience was medical doctors of the Paediatric Department of Ippokration General Hospital (Thessaloniki, Greece), and the main speaker was a member of GreekLUG, Dr. Constantine Mousafiris, Paediatrician-Neonatologist, Director of the Neonatology Dpt. of the Interbalkan Medical Centre.

The lecture was focused on various aspects of kids safety in the Web and the deriving benefits from the use of Free Software in the digital era education.

Our community was represented by Greek Ambassador Efstathios Iosifidis (diamond_gr). Our role was only at the end to inform that everything that mentioned at the lecture could be found on the DVD. The main question of most doctors to our ambassador was how they can install parental control.

openSUSE team at the 75th International Trade Fair

openSUSE ambassadors team in association with GreekLUG and Scouts Organization in Thessaloniki, participated from 11th until 19th of September 2010, to 75th International Trade Fair in Thessaloniki. We were at the thematic section called Kids & Fun at the building no16.

The main idea there was to organize some games for the kids. Unfortunately we didn't have the equipment to install couple of games (like Super Tux). So we had a small corner and we were informing the kids and parents about FOSS and what are the positives of using it. We used our laptops to show a small demo.

Our community was represented by Greek Ambassador Kostas Koudaras (warlordfff) and Efstathios Iosifidis (diamond_gr).

Software Freedom Day 2010 in Thessaloniki

On Friday 17th of September we represented the openSUSE community to a general speech organized by GreekLUG about FOSS at a elementary school at the center of Thessaloniki.
The speech was on Friday because on Saturday schools are closed.

The audience were teachers, parents and of course kids (ages from 9-12 years old). We had to do the same speech to 3 different classes. A representative from GreekLUG talked about what is FOSS and what are the benefits of using it.

Our community was represented by Greek Ambassador Kostas Koudaras (warlordfff). The speech was short and the subjects we mentioned were:

1. Distribution that is the leader of technology.
2. Large community around the world that develop the operating system but also help people to use openSUSE.
3. Developing Greek community.
4. There are many versions that everyone can use depending the needs.
5. There is educational software for the kids.