[SC.LUG] [Fwd: Promoting LUGs to new (accidental?) Linux retailers]

[Richard Smedley]

The Asus EEEPC is generating a lot of excitement by its form factor
and price - but the sudden appearance of GNU/Linux in thousands of
homes suggests the community readies itself to help.

This is a suggestion from the LUGmaster list:

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Mark Rogers 
To: <lugmaster at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: [lugmaster] Promoting LUGs to new (accidental?) Linux retailers
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:57:22 +0000

The idea of walking into a store and finding a Linux-based PC is no 
longer the speculative dream it might once have been. Even Toys-R-Us is 
selling EEE PCs.

I've been thinking that we (ie LUGs generally) should be looking for a 
good form of words (maybe even a brochure?) that we can start 
distributing to retailers selling Linux-based products, as it would do 
us no harm at all and would potentially ease the support requirement 
faced by the retailer. Also, think "free informal Linux training and 
experience for your staff"...

Does anything like this already exist? Would it even be a good thing? It 
ought to promote wider acceptance of Linux (retailers will soon go off 
the idea if they get hit with support they can't handle - they'll just 
"blame" Linux to get themselves off the hook). On the other hand getting 
a flood of newbies with insufficient resource to support them might not 
make us look so good either! I doubt that floods are likely though.

If we wanted something to distribute you'd think that one of the Linux 
rags ought to be interested; they have the printing capability, they 
stand to gain customers without that treading on the retailer's toes, 
and they already know LUGs exist.