[HLUG] Topics at Meetings

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

Hi all,

Firstly, I apologies if anything in this email offends people here, I  
don't intend to sound as if I'm belittling people or that I think I'm  
some kind of Linux God (I'm not!), however I also have never really  
trusted email as a communications medium to say things that might not  
seem as good written down as they would sound if spoken!

With all that said, one of the reasons that I've become less  
interested in coming to the meetings is that the discussions tend to  
revolve around how to migrate from Windows to Ubuntu or how to fix an  
issue in Ubuntu.

I often feel that far from being a "Linux User Group" community in  
this country (and I do mean the whole of the UK here), we are rapidly  
becoming a "Ubuntu User Group" and that is not what I'm looking for at  
a meeting.

I can already hear some of you murmuring along the lines of "so why  
doesn't he step up and do something then?" and I'll get to that in a  
minute.

For those of you who don't know, I spend my working life with Linux.   
We have recently implemented Automated Configuration Management using  
Puppet and we're now looking to put together a build system around  
cobbler so that it is easier to rebuild than repair any of our 100+  
servers.

All our servers run Centos or Debian and we tend to experience issues  
with loosing disks from Hardware Arrays, recovering Software Raid,  
analysing security incidents and similar.  I really don't spend much  
time working with Linux on the desktop, I use it and it works for me  
to do my job, but I don't have any issues after the install as a rule  
and (as I run Ubuntu on my desktop - Stop smirking at the back! :oP )  
if I do have any issues, I ask on the Ubuntu Community mailing lists.

So, if any of you are still reading, here's what I'd like to propose:

1) If there is interest in how to run a Linux server for fun and  
profit, or people would like to know more about securing and  
monitoring servers I'm more than happy to do a talk/presenation.

2) If people aren't interested in this, I will continue to lurk on the  
mailing list and help out where I can

3) If people are offended by the above, I'm happy to move on if asked.

As I said at the beginning, I've probably offended someone by the  
above and to put it bluntly the level of discussions generally at  
meetings tend to be on getting the GUI working as opposed to the  
technical in depth discussions that I crave, but that's probably just  
me! :)

Kind regards,

Matt

-- 
Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk
http://www.truthisfreedom.org.uk/