Its hard to believe that I have been in South Africa for a month already!!  I hit the ground running and took in Software Freedom Day which was in Pretoria a few days after my arrival.  Despite the jet lag, I had a great time and enjoyed the presentations.  We wrapped up the day as guests on 'Lets Talk Geek' video cast.  http://vimeo.com/15136714

The response to the Open Office/Mozilla translations has been very positive.  I had one person point out that English is the language used in business, and therefore he thought the project was irrelevant.  However, not all end users are heading to offices & I felt that this project addresses the needs of a group of users whom are first encountering computers.  Having the option to use an Office suite in your native language removes a huge barrier to learning.

I attended the Ubuntu 10.10 launch party yesterday here in Joburg.  Though it was a small crowd, we had great discussions as we enjoyed the braai.  Had a round table discussion about the features everyone was looking forward to in 10.10.  Comments included mention of Upstart, the install/update process, less Mono, no Fspot.....and also that there were some things which perhaps should not have been rolled out in 10.04 LTS.  However given that it has a 5 yr support cycle, perhaps they did not want to use Grub 1 for that long (though it works & has since Unix).  However Grub2 is still unstable and perhaps not the best candidate for a LTS. Could it have something to do with the large number of MAC users in the Ubuntu/Canonical organization??

The Open Source community is great here in Africa & I found out how tight knit it can be when a fellow stopped by to pick up a copy of Ubuntu 10.04 alternate release to use for an LTSP project and we discovered that he worked for a company in Zim that I had been corresponding with over the past year to deploy some Ubuntu systems.  Got to love it.....

On a final note, I am working on getting some LPI training lined up in Zambia in order to support a telecentre project.  My experience has been that properly trained Linux support people are essential to the success of any large FLOSS project.

Now to record a podcast after a bit of a dry spell....as I am now accustomed to Johannesburg and driving like a local (look out taxi drivers)