[SLUG] Last night's meeting and Software Freedom Day

[Ian Eade]

-----Original Message-----
From: scarborough-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
[mailto:scarborough-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of
john at johnallsopp.co.uk
Sent: 07 September 2005 09:27
To: scarborough at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: [SLUG] Last night's meeting and Software Freedom Day

Hi ppl

Last night's meeting at the Valley Bar went well. Personally, I have
to say I prefer the Cricketers because it's light and airy, but
someone said they much prefer this venue. I was going to instigate a
vote but it appears the venue went down well, so that's that. Future
meetings will be at the Valley Bar unless anyone wants to shout about
it.

We debated "Was Debian Sarge worth waiting for?". That format went, I
thought, really very well indeed. Although there were only five people
at the meeting (me, Steve, Dave, Bob and Dawn (new, but a friend from
me, Steve and Dave's course at the uni)), we had a proposer and
seconder for each side and really seemed to get to the root of things.
I'll want to use that format again.

Anyway, we decided, on my casting vote, that it was worth waiting for,
not particularly for the desktop, but for the back-end. Those
applications need a stable, tested, secure platform and aren't
particularly bothered about being completely up to the minute. Debian
also seems to be the protector of all things free and open source,
without it the distinction between free and open source software and
commercial software would be much more blurred. The open source
movement needs Debian, so we welcome Sarge into the world :-)

Things were a little less positive on Software Freedom Day. To get up
and running on the day, I personally was looking at lots of, well,
work, essentially. I really wanted some sort of banner .. we'll need
one eventually for future stands .. saying Scarborough Linux User
Group and I had plans to buy material, print out the letters, cut them
out, and paint the letters using fabric dye. It would work, and
wouldn't be as bad as it sounds. There was the test-Linux box where
people could ask us what they need to do what they want with Linux. It
was going to be my pasting table which I was going to strengthen with
extra legs. I was going to write a couple more handouts, and there are
the books I've bought. That was just my contribution, Bob was also
writing handouts and posters.

Problem is, Mike (the protagonist) wasn't at the meeting (it's been a
busy week for the college, induction) and doesn't seem to join in the
discussions here, so we've no idea of the arrangements for the day.
These ideas need to be followed up rather than just dropped in.
Anyway, between the four established members at the meeting, one
couldn't make the day, and I wanted to leave by 12. With a laptop on
the stand (oh, the only laptop we could muster between us was one from
Dawn, which didn't seem right since she was new in, and anyway, it
wasn't her laptop), we needed two people on the stand all day. It's
also forecast rain. Basically, we fell over on staffing levels. So
between the people at the meeting, which is pretty much all we can go
on, we decided to cancel Saturday's stall.

Bob, however, is going to ask the Library whether we can have a
display there. That sounds like a great idea.

We do still like the idea of twinning with Catux, so we're just
waiting for them to agree to the idea.

That's all for now.

J



=================================
Could have sworn the meeting was tomorrow, ah well maybe I'll get it
right next month, anyway I recently switched to Debian and have now got
3.1 Sarge intalled and must admit installation was a bit like going back
to the dark ages when compared with Mandrake, Fedora etc. 

I began by being "clever" and going for individual package selection -
don't do it! There are thousands of programs/packages (call them what
you will) and unless you know what they are and what the dependencies
etc are you will be in a whole world of pain, better to just install
everything, get logged in and use the package manager (Synaptic is
advisable) to clean things up later. 

To quote this article "However nothing, not in all my 22 years on this
Earth, could prepare me for the horrors of dselect. Sweet merciful
divine!"

http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=831

The guy above is not kidding!

But now I have a working Debian Sarge box and it is pretty good, easy to
manage and stable. In summary it requires some knowledge to get it
installed and configured but its worth it and delivers a box which can
be used for everything from a multimedia desktop to a lean mean server,
unlike other distributions you can get rid of the kitchen sink and other
such baggage and run what you want, how you want.

Shame to hear about the cancellation of the SFD stand on Saturday,
however following on from the stand at the SPA exhibition I cannot help
thinking that the potential from that event was sadly missed. 

As far as I am aware there was no follow up meeting to find out anything
about the SLUG stand and what happened in general. I manned the stand
alone for a day and learned a lot about the public, companies, what SLUG
could offer and benefit from and what the group could aim for and how
the next event could be planned and executed, afterall you need to know
your audience before you can target your product, before which you need
to know your product, your audience and yourself. However the knowledge
and experience gained from the Spa event appears to have gone to waste.

At present I have a couple of dozen Ubunto disks which I planned to
bring to the SFD stand for distribution, I'll aim to bring them to the
next group meeting instead unless someone wants them before then.

Ian Eade




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