[Nottingham] Notlug RFC1

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Tony Leake wrote:

> I've never made it to a meeting yet (but may do one day :)) heres my 2cents
> below
>
>
> >Defining a neonate as "someone who has installed and is using an easy
> >distro (SuSe, Mandrake...)"
>
> Hmm, don't know what neonate means but i'm not sure it's too complementary
> :)
>

hmm odd reaction, "neonate, I don't know what it means so I'll assume the
worst."

Picking up the trusty dictionary we find:

neonate: A newly or recently born individual.

>
> >We have a few neonates in the group, hopefuly more after the awareness day.
> >We also have quite a few seasoned Luggites.  I don't know what it would
> >cover
> >but a session where the veterans could help expand neonates use of
> >Linux into new areas could work.
> >
>
> Been using 'easy' distros for 4 years and am currently trying out Debian
> (which I'm sure is what most of you hardcore people would call a real
> distro) I would certainly come to a talk about the benefits of other distros
> as I seem to miss the point a little.
>

Why are people obsessed with distributions ?  What about finding
lots of weird and wonderful things you can do with your existing distribution ?

This idea wasn't about trying different distributions but about expanding people's
horizons.  Given an "easy" distro it is a comparativly simple task to get a
Linux system up and running and happily use it.  I was thinking along the
lines of a session where acolytes and adepts could pass on some wisdom
and maybe introduce some interesting things that can be done which
if you stuck to a cuddly gui you would never find.

This could be anything from "optimizing for go faster stripes"
to "The Joys of Lex".

>
> >I guess something like:
> >Given a standard distro what should I install and how do I go about setting
> >up a cool secure website with all sorts of whistles and bells (dynamic
> >updates,
> >database backend, authentiaction, authorization, yodelling penguin in the
> >corner) ?
> >
> >It could also cover things like:
> >	Which 'language' would be best
>
> I could help  out a little here, I make a living as a php developer and have
> written some sites in perl and jsp to boot.
>

Cool, I'll keep that in mind.

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.