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

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Martin wrote:

> Michael Simms wrote:
>  >> Now we need lot's of volunteers and ideas for the day ;)
>
> 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?).
>

ha ha ha.
This can work but it can also go horribly wrong.

... much agreement snipped...

> [... 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.
>

If you are old (enough) in the Linux game this is true but I suspect if you
took a straw poll of neonates many more are coming in through SuSe and Mandrake
than via RedHat.

I know SuSe have offered us some stuff but I kind of err on the side
of RedHat (TM) for GPL'd ness even if we use PinkTie (notTM) or equivalent.
But ultimately I think 'ease of use' has to win the day for the install day.

People also need to be willing to present a united front on the day. Choice
is a great thing when you have an idea what you are choosing between.  But
for someone who isn't certain and maybe not too sure it can be confusing
and offputting.

If someone walks in and says "I want Debian" yipeee!

If they walk in and say "I'm interested in linux but I'm not too sure"
I would like to reply "We are offering X because it is easy peezy lemon sqeezy"
not "Would you prefer RedHat|SuSe|Mandrake they all have pros and cons but to
be honest my favorite distro is Debian."

Same goes for Gnome vs. KDE.

I think we will find we need:

	Knoppix for PC try 'before you buy' (is there an equivalent for other hardware ?)
	One of SuSe|RedHat|Mandrake as a default PC install.
	YelloDog for Macs

	Smoothwall|IPCop for firewalls (home and business internet security).
	Debian for everything else.

>
>
>  >> Let's not forget the does it work on my Mac issue...
>
> Yep, there are other devices other than PCs...
>

I know a few people have experience of Linux distro's on other hardware
and it is good to accomodate all we can but I wouldn't be happy
installing on hardware I wasn't familiar with.  So... we kind of need people to
say "I'll be there and I'm happy to install on zSeries"

>
>
>  >>> 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.
>
>

As an aside to this...
I would like to set up a 'hands free' demo of (for example) GIMP.  Something
that will loop, running for a couple of minutes at a time, showing a picture
being drawn and saved.

Does anyone know of any good/easy tools (the best I can think of are Windows
3.1 macros) which would allow such a demo to be created ?


Have fun,
Duncan

-- 
Duncan John Fyfe          X-ray Astronomy Group,
                          Dept. of Physics & Astronomy,
Phone +44 116 252 3635    University of Leicester,
E-mail djf@star.le.ac.uk  University Road,
                          Leicester, LE1 7RH, U.K.