Schedule for tests that will take place in our office (Purkynova 99/71, 612 45 Brno):
June 1st, 9.30
June 1st, 13.00
June 4th, 9.30
June 4th, 13.00
June 5th, 9.30
June 5th, 13.00
June 8th, 9.30
June 8th, 13.00

You need to register at Doodle.

If you pass the test successfully you’ll have an interview with teams in 1-2 weeks. It will be scheduled individually.

Internships start on July 16th and will last at least 3-4 months and no longer than 12 months. You will need to work 20 hours a week (half-time) and your work time is usually flexible which means that you can e.g. work one week full-time and have one week off if your manager is OK with that.

It may be interesting for Fedora users that we opened a special intern position that we gave a working title – Fedora enthusiast. We’re looking for someone who would help coordinate and promote Fedora Test Days in the community. Some technical background is required, but what we require the most is some level of enthusiasm for Fedora.

Again, if you have any questions, you can ask at jobscz@redhat.com.

• Do you code in Java, C, Python, Ruby, Perl, or Bash?
• Would you be willing to spend 15-20 hours a week on development and testing?
• Looking for a way to try what working for Red Hat is about with possibility to eventually get a full-time job?

The selection procedure for summer intern positions has just started!

We’re currently opening the following types of intern positions:

• Development Engineering (C/Python/Ruby/Ruby on Rails/Perl)
• Quality Assurance Engineering (Python/Bash/Perl)
• JBoss Quality Assurance Engineering (Java)
• JBoss Engineering (Java)
• Kernel Development Engineering (C)
• Support Engineering (good English, admin)

Got interested?

• send your CV (in English) to jobscz@redhat.com
• upload your CV to HR system at https://careers.redhat.com/ext/detail?redhat9337
• get ready for the selection procedure that will take place at the end of May (final dates will be emailed to you)

The selection procedure consists of two parts:

1. A written test that will test your technical skills. There are two types of tests: one for JBoss candidates and the other one for others. The JBoss test consists of common tasks that will test your knowledge of Java language and some specific Java-related technologies. The other test consists of 3 parts: knowledge of Linux OS,  QA and developer tests. If you’re more interested in development, the developer test will be your priority (written in your favourite language). If you’re interested in QA, the QA test will be your priority. None of the tests require special preps, they are all very general and test your overall knowledge and skills.
2. Candidates that will pass the test successfully will be invited to a technical interview with one or more team representatives. The interviews will be organized individually in the next two weeks.

There are three big Linux portals that are professional or semi-professional (Root.cz, ABCLinuxu.cz, LinuxEXPRES.cz) and bring articles and news from the world of FOSS every day. There are also FLOSS-oriented websites which are not so big, but still very active (OpenOffice.cz, Linuxsoft.cz, Fedora.cz, SUSEportal.cz, Ubuntu.cz,…). There were also two paper Linux magazines (LinuxEXPRES and Linux+), but they closed up. The market was too small for them and paper magazines don’t have good times generally. There is a digital magazine though - OpenMagazin. We don’t have such big events as in Germany, but there are still quite a few big conferences. LinuxAlt and (Red Hat) Developer Conference are attended by hundreds of people. LinuxExpo, which used to be the biggest event in the country (with 2,000 attendants in the best years), didn’t take place this year, but hopefully will be replaced by another Linux conference in Prague. Local LUGs organize events every month. The strongest one is in Brno, followed by Prague.

A vibrant Linux community was one of the reasons why Red Hat and SUSE chose to start their development offices in the Czech Republic. And those offices keep growing. The Red Hat one has over 400 engineers and the SUSE one about 100.

That’s not bad at all for a country with 10 million citizens. Linux in the Czech Republic also has one of the highest market penetrations in Europe (according to StatCounter). All countries higher in the list have government programs which support Linux and FLOSS. Unfortunately, the Czech government has no such programs. We have no “Munich” or “Gendarmerie Nationale”. Quite the opposite. Government organizations, that adopted Linux, were under big pressure, and many of them eventually gave up. So unlike in other countries with higher Linux adoption, Linux in the Czech Republic is doing well in spite of the government.

Of course, people complain that it used to be better, and there should be more active community members, but there is never enough active members and as I said at the beginning when I looked at possibilities to promote Red Hat and Fedora in other countries in the region, I found out that Linux communities are not so vibrant as in the Czech Republic.  Hopefully, we’ll keep up and especially Fedora community will be more and more active.

We also prepared something special for Fedora users. Fedora test days are well-known. You can follow instructions on the wiki, do some test cases, communicate with others via IRC, and submit results. We wanted to go a bit beyond that and organized an event where everyone can come and test together with our developers. We picked the power management test day for this. So everyone, who went to RH Open House, could grab his/her laptop and test it with our developers that takes care of power management in Fedora.

I think it was very successful. The room was full for the whole day and there are twice more results than from F16 power management test day. And the vast majority of them is from  the Czech Republic! It seems to be another way to make test days more attractive.

Our power management guy – Jaroslav Škarvada – in front of the test day room (©vtunka)

For presentation slides go to the conference’s wiki page. We attached there all slides we’d received.

First day, we went from Brno to Žilina which is about 200 km away. We did Afternoon with Red Hat at University of Žilina last year, so we weren’t completely new to students. This time, we focused more on bachelor and diploma thesis topics. We started this program with University of Žilina last year and we already have several students there working on their theses with Red Hat. Hopefully, we’ll get even more students this year. As usually, there were 4 talks:

Thesis with Red Hat (general introduction of Red Hat, how to get involved in Fedora, working on RHT thesis projects,…) – me
BaseOS and Desktop Thesis Topics (FreeIPA, GNOME, KDE, SELinux,…) – Jaroslav Rezza Řezník
Kernel Performance Testing (filesystems etc.) – Adam Okuliar
JBoss Thesis Topics – Robert Balent

After the presentations, we had a beer (alcohol-free in my case :-/ ) with university teachers discussing general Linux topics and further cooperation between the university and Red Hat. Then we jumped in the car and continued another 300 km to Košice.

We were really surprised by the level of organization in Košice. When we arrived to university’s library building where we were going to have our talks our posters were everywhere, including university’s LCDs. We came with red fedoras on and literally everyone was turning to us and looking the way “those are the guys from posters”. We didn’t know what to expect in Košice, neither Red Hat, nor Fedora had ever been there. The audience was pretty large, about 100 people.  And we as speakers could feel the listeners’ passion which you don’t feel any more in cities such as Brno where Linux events take place often. Some of us were really surprised by expert questions, so there are quite a few skilled Linux users in Košice. After I spoke about Fedora release parties, local organizers got an idea to organize Fedora 17 release party in Košice. First Fedora release party in Slovakia? That would be cool!

Our talks were:
Red Hat and Fedora Introduction – me
Fedora Project (governance, how to contribute,…) – Jaroslav Rezza Řezník
Kernel Performace Testing – Adam Okuliar
JBoss Forge (demo – quick and easy app deploying) – Robert Balent

We also gave away a lot of swag (mugs, stickers, 120 DVDs of Fedora 16, hats,…).

I also brought about 120 Fedora Multidesktop DVDs that (to my surprise) ran out very quickly. So did Fedora stickers.

I also talked with several people about venues for our Fedora 17 release party in Prague. Yeah, you heard that right, we’re going to have two release parties in the Czech Republic this time!

A big surprise for us was the audience. Over 600 people showed up. I met a lot of people from the Linux community and from companies that use Red Hat technologies or build their products on them. The conference was finally completely international. 95 % of all talks were in English, most conversations in the hallway were also in English. There were much over 100 foreigners that had come from all over the world. Several “subevents” helped us attract a lot of interesting people from abroad. GTK+ hackfest and GNOME Docs Sprint brought about 30 people from several continents. Mini Logging Summit, that took place in our office on Thursday, brought another bunch of very interesting people. KDE SIG Fedora Activity Day also brought a bunch of interesting people and as Jaroslav Řezník told me, it was very productive.
I wish I could have attended more talks. There were 60 of them and as I could hear I was not the only one who had hard times to decide which talk to attend and which not. It was even harder for me because I spent most of the time taking care of organization and I could attend only a few of them. I’m really glad that I could attend Bryn Reeves’ “How To Lose Data and Implicate People” which was one of the best conference talks I’ve ever attended. Bryn had two talks at DevConf and both were great. I hope he will come next year again.

BTW 600+ attendees make Developer Conference the biggest annual Linux event in the Czech Republic, which is not bad for a conference for developers, right?

I was really glad to see familiar faces from the GNOME and Fedora community. I was especially glad that Fedorians such as Christoph Wickert, Jared Smith, Sirko Kemter, and Rex Dieter came to Developer Conference. We had many interesting conversations over a glass of beer.

BTW I’d like to ask everyone that attended Developer Conference to fill out our feedback form. It will help us make Developer Conference 2013 even better.

It’s just one day away and some people are already here. We’ve improved travel information for those who are on their way to Brno. Mainly information about traveling within Brno. Now, you can find out how to get to Avanti Hotel, where most attendants are accommodated, how to get from the hotel to Red Hat Office (especially useful for those that attend GNOME hackfests and KDE SIG FAD).

There is one universal advice: if you need to get oriented in Brno, use our map.devconf.cz. It’s based on Google Maps and Google Maps work great with Brno public transport system. All stops and stations are shown there. When you click on one of them, all lines that go through the stop/station are shown. And best of all: you can use Google Maps to find how to get from one location to another in Brno using public transport. It calculates you the best combination of  public transport and walking!

If you’re coming to Brno for more days (typically those who will take part in GNOME hackfests), you might want to buy a 5-day public transport ticket which costs CZK 250. There are several places where you can buy it, but the best one for you is probably the main railway station, where you can buy it at any counter (look for the international ones because they more likely speak English).

BTW our conference app has made it to Android Market. Check it out! Our conference schedule is also available in Giggity app.

There has been heavy snowing in the country in the last hours and it should continue on some places. If you’re coming by bus or car, there might be some problems (delays, traffic jams etc.).

See you on Friday!