La Paz. Bolivia: 11.000 feet above the sea there is much less oxygen than you are used to - and you’ll be dragging yourself up at even the smallest hill in the city. Water boils at just 88 degrees Celsius (190,40 degrees Fahrenheit) because of the low air pressure – and my girlfriends skin cream came crawling out of its tube (looking like a long, brown worm) because of the difference in pressure between here and Copenhagen Airport which we had left 36 hours earlier.

(Much more photos from the event are available in English, Danish and Spanish.)

By Janus Sandsgaard

In the cold highland with a spectacular view to the Andes Mountains covered by snow, you hardly notice that you are close to equator and jungles of anacondas and jaguars. Here the world’s highest Linux install event took place Saturday the 12 of December, 11.000 feet above the sea. It was the first of its kind in this part of Bolivia – and maybe a world record when it comes to altitudes and Linux installs events?

Welcome - Linux CDs for everyone!
A few people from La Paz arranged “Festival de installation Linux”. Everything was done for the first time: Posters, the logo, the website, the mail form for signing up and a lot more.

“Yes, it is a lot of work, but it feels good to do something tangible for the Linux community,” says Hardy Beltran who has been one of the main forces in the preparations of the event.

Thanks to economical support from the organization “Free Software” in Denmark it was possible to give away free Linux CDs to every participant and cover expenses for posters, a network card and other things necessary to make the event possible.

People show up
The event was announced to start a 01:00 PM, so at according to ‘Bolivian time’ 01:30 people began to show up. Within half an hour the place was totally crowded with people, machines and different gadgets –and so it continued for the rest of the day. The sound of around 30 people talking and discussing Linux filled the place, the air temperature raised - and so did the attention on the machines that now booted with a Red Hat welcome screen.

"220 or 110 volts" – and the press is here...
An interesting, technical aspect of La Paz is that you'll find two parallel electricity networks: On of 110 volts and one of 220 volts. You'll also find two different plugs - and there is no way to know which is which. You therefore have to think twice (or measure the voltage) before plugging in ... “220 or 110 voltage” you heard all the time as the festival was going on –. Nothing bad happened thanks to attention and a sophisticated collections of adapters and power converters.

A journalist from “Technologia.bo”, a Bolivian ComputerWorld type magazine showed up to interviewing different participant and take photos. Later a journalist from a radio station with a technology related show made a live interview with Hardy Beltran.

Success or fiasco?
The place was totally crowded from 1:00 pm when the party opened until around 7:00 PM, two hour past the official scheduled closing time.

“25 people signed up for the event with their computers, but only six of these actually showed up with their machines. Strange. We don’t know the reason for this - and during the event I was afraid that it was going to be a flop”, Hardy Beltram explains.

“But then new people started showing up; people who hadn’t signed up, and that we didn’t know beforehand. Some brought their computers, asking for Linux. Other brought different Linux distributions and offered to help. And finally a group of generally interested people showed up: Some looking for information and a demonstration of Linux, other simply wanted to talk and hang out – and finally some brought different gadgets or magazines. For instance there was a guy with the ultra compact camera (which is a lot smaller than a Canon Ixus – and compatible with gPhoto). And a guy with latest issue of some Brazilian Linux magazine,” Hardy explains with a smile.

The event was planed to shut down at 05:00 PM, so (once again according to ‘Bolivian Time’) at 07:00 PM people finished their work, configuring the last GUI. The entire group of install activist went for beer at the local bar, evaluating the day. If the 25 people signed up had actually showed up it would have been incredible. For some reason they didn’t, but the event succeeded in establishing contact between people from La Paz interested or active in the Linux community. Furthermore the event worked as a great “demonstration project” for people on the sideline who just heard about Linux. What a pilot-project! Next event is already being planed: An evening with the showing of the documentary “RevolutionOS” about the Free Software movement.

Links:

Picture from the event with comments in
English, Danish and Spanish. Thanks to Hardy Beltran for the Spanish translation.

LUGBOL – Bolivian Linux User Group
www.linux.org.bo/

“Free Software” in Denmark
www.frisoftware.dk/

SSLUG – Linux User Group in Denmark/Sweden.
www.sslug.dk/

Posted by janus at October 19, 2002 04:25 AM