[Nottingham] Re: Linux InstallFest / Awareness Day 1st November

[Martin]

Michael Simms wrote:
 >> Now we need lot's of volunteers and ideas for the day ;)
[...]
 >> PROBLEM: Backing up their data. Personally I think the best we can
 >> do is say "make sure you have everything important backed up before
 >> you come"
 >
 >
 > I agree with this, there is really no feasable way to  ensure
 > complete system recovery. I think for ease we should, before anything
 > else, resize their existing partitions, anyone have a good tool for
 > that that will handle NTFS and other doze partitions (AFAIK the gnu
 > tool only really handles a few basic types). Then we can set them up
 > for dual-boot with little or no risk as long as the resize tool
 > works.

Use Windoze defrag to push all the data to the bottom end of the
partition, and then the partition can be safely resized with such as the
Mandrake disk utility (DiskDrak?).



[...]
 >> 2. Lot's of demos. GIMP, Evolution, games , email.
 >
 > I'll bring in a nice selection of games to demo. Hell, I may even
 > bring in some stock to sell to them so they can buy and take away
 > some decent commercial games if they want to

Sounds good...



 >> 3.  Who are we aiming at ? Joe/Jo public, local businesses ...
 >> (all) ?
 >
 > Id suggest two areas, one for public, one for business, clearly
 > defined and signed, so that the suits can see what they want, the
 > public can see what they want, and they dont have to intermingle too
 > much. They will be interested in completely different things amd
 > mixing it all up will confuse them probably.

And good comment... I agree.



 >> 4.  Linux tutorials. Can we get hold of a screen and projector for
 >> the day (I'd hope Green's Mill would have one).
 >>
 >> 5.  Equipement / People Any offers greatfully received. We will
 >> need machines to run demo's on and probably a network.

I'll no doubt be around to help in various ways...



[... Distros ...]
 >> I think you're right. I think pretty much for absoloute beginners
 >> it's between redhat and SuSE, and I personally would go for SuSE..
 >> But then, I suspect there will be much disagreement on this :)
 >
 > I would say Red Hat. Why, because people know the name red hat. If
 > you say 'Red Hat Linux' people will say 'oh yeah Ive heard of that'.
 > If you say 'Suse Linux' people will say 'huh?' We need to make sure,
 > if we want to give people confidence in letting us butcher their
 > machines, we use words they have heard before and can relate to.

...And the Mandrake dragon logo is very cute (:-))



 >> Let's not forget the does it work on my Mac issue...

Yep, there are other devices other than PCs...



 >>> 4.  Linux tutorials. Can we get hold of a screen and projector
 >>> for the day (I'd hope Green's =
 >> Mill would have one).
 >>
 >> Hmmm, I suspect one-on-one demos would work much better.
 >
 > Depends how many people are there

Some sort of demo sequence running between short 'tutorial shows' should
be a good format to grab interest.



 >> For install: If a machine has floppy|cdrom|network card we can
 >> probably install. Slackware for floppy only, SuSe|Redhat|Mandrake
 >> for the rest.
 >>
 >> We can also use a CD distro like Knoppix for people to 'try without
 >>  commitment'.
 >
 > Good idea
 >
 >
 >> I have to admit to last having tried  RedHat(tm) @ v7.2, SuSe @
 >> v6.? and Mandrake before that but have been lead to believe they
 >> are reasonalby 'novices' friendly ;)
 >
 > RH and MDK are pretty much fine for newbies. My mother worked out
 > redhat and she barely knows what a keyboard is


Mandrake is easy to get started with, and can even look similar to
Windoze XP. I've also got Mandrake 9.1 on DVD and CDs.

There's just the hardware hiccups to overcome for some unfavourable
combinations...


Regards,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin@ml1.co.uk
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