[HLUG] Topics at Meetings

[Malcolm Herbert]

[top posting apology]

I'm also a non-attender at HLUG meetings (usually through work/travel)
commitments, but a follower of HLUG discussions. 

Like Matt, my world is server/configuration/management and increasingly
virtualisation, for server workloads and environments. Big things in the
Linux IT world at the moment are consolidation, operation efficiency,
certification etc and the ongoing threat from M$, Oracle and
increasingly vmWare to an open source future. 

I'd be also interested in providing a market update and review of the
commercial world of Linux (its still smaller than that of commercial
Unix's globally) as well as key technology (puppet is one). Novell /
Suse is dead (and we can discuss why), Canonical is moving to business
from home-users, but is it doing it the right way ?

perhaps we can arrange something and I'll look to plan to attend and
provide a presentation and lively discussion. Other LUGs (like London
and Surrey) have lots of people who make a living from Linux 

Malcolm

On Fri, 2010-02-19 at 09:47 +0000, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> 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/
> 


-- 
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Dr Malcolm Herbert
Director, EMEA Strategy & Solutions Office
t: +44 7720 079845
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