Last weekend, Kwartzlab opened its doors to host Software Freedom Day in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Software Freedom Day is an annual event that attempts to raise awareness of the importance of free software (that's free as in freedom).

Raul Suarez from KWLUG (shown above) was on hand to give a talk to an attentive audience (shown below).

More photos after the cut... We didn't have a lot of time to plan and publicize, but the turn-out was pretty good.

A large number of computers were donated for the event by Computer Recycling at The Working Centre. If you're in need of a cheap PIII or P4, ask at the next TON! Proceeds will be donated to the Free Software Foundation.

Of course, being Kwartzlab, an impromptu Ethernet cabling workshop broke out...

Thanks to lothlaurien.ca for taking the photos (I forgot my camera). More photos will be up on her site shortly. They're licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License

Kwartzlab is hosting Software Freedom Day this year.

What's Software Freedom Day? This handy brochure (pdf) explains all!

Come out between 2pm and 7pm. We have a computer running Linux to raffle off, as well as some Ubuntu schwag. If you need help installing Linux on your machine or getting something to work, bring your computer into the lab and we'll help you with it.

At 7pm we'll pop some popcorn and settle in to watch Revolution OS, a documentary about the free software movement.

On Saturday, we got together with some of our friends from KWLUG to hold a release party for Ubuntu 10.04: The Lucid Lynx.

It was great! We had pizza and cake and deviled eggs and free software. Photos after the jump.

From Ubuntu

The cake! Made by a friend of mine. (She also made the lynx for the CDs).

From Ubuntu

From Ubuntu

From Ubuntu

Bob and Laurel brought deviled eggs and cookies.

From Ubuntu

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Software freedom!

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From Ubuntu

We're jammin'.

I'm guessing we had somewhere between 30-40 people out for our Ubuntu release party. It may take a while to get up to the 200-300 they got at the Berlin (Germany) party, but we'll get there, I'm sure.

At the very least, it's gratifying we got more than the 4 people who showed up for the Windows 7 party. :D

• Laurel Russwurm put up a great write-up on her blog
• punkin's photos
• My photos
• Paul has posted slides from his GNU Screen presentation.

Thanks to everybody who helped out with the release party on Thursday. Especially Paul, who brought in a projector for us to use to do his presentation, Bob, for getting the word out and helped burn CDs, Ben, who got pizza, and Steph, Cedric, Mike, Eric, Gus and the rest of the Kwartzlabbers for being awesome as always. And, of course, everyone else who showed up and made it an fantastic party.

See you in April for Lucid Lynx! And stay tuned for open source hackery in the 'lab!

I'm running around getting stuff ready for it. I think tonight I'll be finalizing cake-related details. Parties have to have cake, after all. Pictured are the special, limited edition collectors CDs I'll be handing out. (I'm doing the labels ahead of time, since it takes a while. We'll burn the CDs on release day). There won't be that many, so if you want one, get there early.

Incidentally, the awesome koala was drawn by a friend of mine. He also appears on posters around town.

We've got great support from the local LUG and I handed out a huge stack of posters at Ontario GNU/Linux Fest.

Come out and enjoy the freedom! If you're interested in giving a demo of your favourite Ubuntu-related tool or feature, we'll have a fairly informal BarCamp-style presentation setup. Demos about how you use Ubuntu in your hacking endeavours are especially welcome.

You can contribute ideas on the wiki.