Ubucon Europe: What is the Ubuntu community doing in Sintra? Sharing technical knowledge and tightening connections

News from the new Ubuntu distribution, the exploration of the several platforms and many “how to”, rule the 4-days agenda where the open source and open technologies are in the air.

The Olga Cadaval Cultural centre in Sintra, is the main stage of a busy agenda filled with several talks and more technical sessions, but at Ubucon Europe there’s also room for networking and cultural visits, a curious fusion between spaces full of history, like the Pena Palace or the Quinta da Regaleira, and one of the youngest “players” in the world of software.

For 4 days, the international Ubuntu Community gathers in Sintra for an event open to everyone, where the open source principles and open technology are dominating. The Ubucon Europe Conference begun Thursday, October 10^th, and extends until Sunday, October 13^th, keeping an open doors policy to everyone who wants to

Afterall, what is the importance of Ubucon? The number of participants, which should be around 150, doesn’t tell the whole story of what you can learn during these days, as the SAPO TEK had the opportunity to check this morning.

Organised by the Ubuntu Portugal Community, with the National Association for Open Software, the Ubuntu Europe Federation and the Sintra Municipality, the conference brings to Portugal some of the biggest open source specialists and shows that Ubuntu is indeed alive, even if not yet known by most people, and still far from the “world domain” aspired by some.

15 years of Ubuntu

This year is Ubuntu’s 15^th birthday after its creation in 2004 by Mark Shuttleworth who gathered a team of Debian developers and founded Canonical, in South Africa, with the purpose of developing a Linux distribution easy to use. He called it Ubuntu, a word that comes from the Zulo and Xhosa languages meaning “I am because we are” which shows its social dimension.

The millionaire Mark Shuttleworth declared at the time “my motivation and goal is to find a way of creating a global operating system for desktops which is free in every way, but also sustainable and with a quality comparable to any other that money can buy”.

And in the last 15 years Ubuntu hasn’t stop growing, following trends and moving from the desktop and servers to the Cloud, the IoT and even phones. Canonical ended up withdrawing from this last one, leaving the development on UBport’s hands.

“Ubuntu has never been better”, states Tiago Carrondo, head of the Ubuntu Portugal Community, explaining that Cloud usage is growing every month and the same is happening on the desktop. “The community has proved being alive and participative” and Ubucon is an example of that capacity to deliver and to be involved in projects.

A new version of Ubuntu is going to be launched in two weeks (October 19^th) and in April, next year, it’s time for Ubuntu 20.04, the new LTS version which is generating expectations and it’s the focus of several talks during Ubucon.

An operating system not just for ‘geeks’

But is this a subject just for some “geeks” who don’t mind getting their hands dirty and mess with coding to adapt the operating system to their needs? Gustavo Homem, CTO of Ângulo Sólido, ensures Ubuntu is increasingly being used by companies and in the cloud Azure, AWS and DigitalOcean is among the most used operating systems, highlighting the ease of use, flexibility and security.

The Ângulo Sólido uses Ubuntu internally and with their clients, from desktops to routers and Cloud solutions, and during Ubucon it presented the more and the least expected uses for Ubuntu, where some hacks with mixing desks take part.

It’s in the Cloud where Ubuntu has grown the most, due to the freedom of the operating system, because at the level of computer’s desktops and laptops it depends on the manufactures willingness to sell devices with a pre-installed operating system, or without any, leaving room for ubuntu’s using.

However, even if it’s easy and more and more prepared to connect to every peripherals and it supports most of the software on the market, Ubuntu is far from being recognised by the majority of computer users, so its use is reserved to a restrict group of people with more technical training and knowledge.

In Cell phones, where there was a movement for creating an operating system in 2014 which could be an alternative to android and IOS, the abandonment of the project by Canonical didn’t help creating a mass movement involving manufactures. The UBports community continues developing the concept and coding, and during Ubucon showed some news and developments with Fairphone and Pine64, but it’s still far from becoming a solid operating system, in which you can fully trust, as Jan Sprinz admitted.

In the audience of the talk which SAPO TEK attended, there were many Ubuntu Touch users, the mobile operating system, but with doubts and concerns, such as the availability of the most used apps. Nevertheless the operating system is cherished, and there was even someone comparing it to a pet, which may destroy the leaving room and chew the shoes, but the owner never stops loving it.

How do you do an Ubucon?

“We wanted to make a memorable Ubucon”, explains Tiago Carrondo, the face of the organisation who, during the last few months dedicated much of his time to the preparation of all the logistics, part of a very small but very committed team, as he stated to SAPO TEK.

The European event is now on its 4^th edition and it arose spontaneously, inside the community, and after Germany (Essen), France (Paris) and Spain (Xixón), Portugal is the 4^th country hosting the community with the purpose of “having an Ubucon without rain” and from here, the community goes, in 2020 to a new location, which should be revealed this week but now still a well-kept secret.

Characterising Ubuntu Portugal as a community of people, Tiago Carrondo explains that companies are “friends”, and appear as associates and sponsors for the event, where there are also connections with educational institutes.

The centre of the organisation and purpose of Ubucon are the people, so there’s a very big social component, allowing volunteers working in Ubuntu’s projects during the entire year to meet face to face and share experiences and knowledge. For that reason, the schedule was designed to start a little later than usual, around 10 am, and to finish early with a long pause for lunch.

The conference ends tomorrow, but those who want to attend the last presentations in Olga Cadaval Cultural Centre in Sintra, can still do it. By registering or by simply showing up at the venue, because the organisation policy is open doors and respect for privacy.

Those who didn’t have the chance to assist will be able to watch everything in video over the next few weeks. Tiago Carrondo explains that they didn’t want to stream it, but everything is being recorded to be edited and will be available soon.

If you registered to make any or all the visits please check the details below:

Before reading further:

• some visit where changed/edited/removed, this is the final plan;
• When you arrive you should always look for someone (Jaime Pereira) with an Ubucon Europe 2019’s poster;
• You will receive an ID at the beginning of each visit, at the end don’t forget to return the ID to Jaime;
• Water, some food and comfortable shoes are almost mandatory;
• Any issue please contact Jaime:
  • https://t.me/joinchat/ALdCekWMIxpRe3eUFW2_XA (Ubucon EU 2019 | Attendees)

October 7th – National Palace of Sintra
Meeting spot is at 9:00 AM we will be waiting for you at the main door of the National Palace, also known as the “Palace of the Village” (above the staircase).
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/38.79771/-9.39086

October 7th – Quinta da Regaleira
Meeting spot is at 14:45 PM we will be waiting for you at the main gate of “The Quinta da Regaleira”
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/38.79643/-9.39613

October 8th – Park and National Palace of Pena
Meeting spot is at at 9:00 AM we should take bus 434 in front of Sintra train station.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/38.79987/-9.38512

October 8th – Countess of Edla Chalet
After visiting the “Pena Palace” and continuing in the Park we will visit the “Countess of Edla’s Chalet.
If you only registered to visit the Chalet:
Meeting spot is at 11:30 AM in front of the chalet.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/38.78513/-9.39918

October 9th – Monserrate Park and Palace
Meeting spot is at 9:15 AM we should take bus 435 in front of Sintra train station at 9:15 AM.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/38.79987/-9.38512

Thank you and see you there.

If you are still undecided if you want to come, have a look at our schedule, we have a ton of cool talks and workshops spanning various topics spanning from community management to security and how to develop applications on UBports.

Besides the talks and workshops, we have also social activities happening during the conference days in the evening. Make sure to register for the social events if you want to have a taste of Portugal and get to know each other better and discuss those nifty patches coming in for your projects. You can view more specific information for the various social events here:

• Warm-up party on Wednesday the 9th of October at Chalet12 (register until Oct, 8th).
• Dinner at restaurant “O Tunel” on Thursday the 10th of October (register until Oct, 9th).
• Dinner and beer tasting at local Sintra brewery “Hopsin” on Friday the 11th of October (register until Oct, 8th).
• Celebrate Ubuntu 15th Birthday party at Bar “O Saloon” on Saturday the 12th of October.

Register as soon as possible to pay for a cheaper price and have a place guaranteed on the venues that require registration.

See you all very soon!

Some of the services that they offer are:

• Professional Systems Administration.
• Desktops and VDI on Linux.
• Networking and Internet access.
• Web Development.

If you appreciate well planned IT systems with low failure rates and a dedicated partner to help you with your needs, make sure to check their website.

You can visit their booth at Ubucon to have a look at the hardware that they are selling, with some surprises that are gonna be displayed there as well as on-stage during the event.

This time we want to inform about the dinner event on Friday the 11th of October!

This is not only going to be a regular dinner event, as we are going to Hopsin, a local beer brewery. We will be tasting their local crafted beers and we will have live music during the event as well.

This is what you can expect:

• Guided tour to the brewery on which they will show you how they produce their beer;
• Workshop that will serve as introduction on how to taste beer, this includes 4 ‘tastings’ of 4 13cl beers which will happen during the dinner.

Dinner includes:
Starters:

• Meat Croquettes, Rissoles and Alheira Balls
• Hummus with vegetables, Olives, and seasoned lupins
• Cheese and Chorizos

Main dish:

• Bacalhau à Brás a.k.a. Codfish Brás style

Desert:

• Chocolate cake

If you have any allergy issue with any of the items on the menu feel free to reach out to us via our e-mail: sintra@ubucon.org.

Price per person is 31€ if you register via our registration form until Oct, 4th. After that you can pay 35€ at the restaurant, the number of seats is limited so we advise to register in advance if you want to make sure that you want to make it to the dinner.

We hope that you can join us for a great evening!

The birthday cake will be offered by the venue at Bar Saloon!

Bar Saloon is not too far from the Ubucon Europe event, besides getting free cake, there is also the possibility to buy some extra food and drinks to celebrate 15 years of Ubuntu.

There is no admission price or registration needed for this event, we will be meeting at Bar Saloon starting at 20:00 until …?

See you there!

This dinner is scheduled to happen on the 10th of October starting at 19:00 on the restaurant O Túnel

The menu is:

• Arroz de cherne com camarões (White grouper fish rice with shrimps)
• Carne de Porco à Alentejana (Pork ‘Alentejana’ style with clams)

Drinks:

• White and Red Wine
• Beer
• Water and soft drinks
• Coffee

There is also a vegetarian dish available if needed.

Price per person is 21€ if you register via our registration form until Oct, 4th. After that you can pay 25€ at the restaurant, the number of seats is limited so we advise to register in advance if you want to make sure that you want to make it to the dinner.

After dinner the Portuguese LoCo will have is regular monthly meetup at Saloon Bar, lets make the biggest Ubuntu meetup in Sintra to date!

Nerdzoom Media is a German media company, they produce a blog and podcast, you can find them at nerdzoom.de. Nerdzoom will be at Ubucon producing a series of articles, videos and podcast shows so that other people know what they are missing by not attending an Ubucon. A word from them:

Ubucons have their own kind of charm and it’s always a great opportunity to meet new people in the community, reconnect with established Linux personalities and most importantly to us: to spread the word using articles, videos and podcast episodes to let other people know what they’ve missed so that they hopefully come around next year!

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