Last September 20, 2008, DabaweGNU celebrated Software Freedom Day at the University of Mindanao. It was a very well attended affair. There were more than 450+ students, faculty, and enthusiasts who attended the SFD presentations. The event was not only well attended it was fun and entertaining as well. The audience enjoyed the presentations and the showing of "Big Buck Bunny", an animated film created using Blender.

The course, which delved into web programming using Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, was well attended by programmers from Emcor Inc., University of Southeastern Philippines, Segworks Inc., and other programmers. It was the first class that used the new computer lab setup at the DabaweGNU office. Most of the lab computers were donated by Tom Brough and friends from the UK. To complement the donated computers, DabaweGNU purchased 3 new computer servers. The lab is now using a remote X windows setup with the donated computer acting as thin clients.

Next to the WebIT course was the Linux training, LiSA 1.4. The training had lesser participants than the previous LiSAs but the lower number of attendees is preferred because the trainer can give more attention to the participants. As with the other Linux trainings, the participants came from various cities and provinces all over Mindanao. LiSA 1.4 was also held at the DabaweGNU computer laboratory. The remote X window setup was extended to use virtual machines so that the participants can simulate installation and configuration. The virtualization technology used was KVM and QEMU. And virtual networking was enabled by using VDE Switch.  The virtualization worked well for the class and it will now be used in future classes.

Coming soon to the lab will be a training on Desktop Publishing using Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus.  An introduction to computers and the Internet for kids is also being planned.  So stay tuned folks!  There will be more activities conducted by the organization.