[Wiltshire] Just a simple intro

[John Larkworthy]

--- On Wed, 11/3/09, daveg at boavon.plus.com <daveg at boavon.plus.com> wrote:

> From: daveg at boavon.plus.com <daveg at boavon.plus.com>
> Subject: [Wiltshire] Just a simple intro
> To: wiltshire at mailman.lug.org.uk
> Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2009, 9:54 PM
> Been a lurking member for a couple of weeks or so now.  At
> one time I
> thought the amount of silence indicated an inactive group.

HI Dave,
Welcome to the group. We haven't been inactive for about 8 years now. Most of us early members realised that the Mailing List broke down a couple of years back and it has taken way way too long to get a replacement going. Pleased and relived to see it is!

> I am new to Linux and using UBUNTU 8.10 but did use KUBUNTU
> also.  

My own home system is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

> Now pleased to see that Wilts LUG is quite active.  

We do need new blood to post! Almost anything goes as long as we ovoid offensive topics, (garlic and tobacco seem to have resulted in a few departures!)

> Sad to say, I'm a little unclear from the contibutors
> exactly what your
> library event is hoping to achieve.  I'm sure the
> contributors know
> exactly what they are doing - but newbies on here will find
> it all sounds
> a little exclusive.

I think this is because it is unclear. Some history, I organised an install fest. at a local school. Kindly sponsored by one of the other members. I am not sure we actually installed any software - I know I failed on one sad machine but others may have had more success. 

I felt afterwards that the school was not a good place because it was in the middle of an anonymous housing estate although we did have a visitor from Bristol LUG (not that well hidden then). We generated a stir but most people have pre-installed Windows and see little reason to move to Linux. I think they will see more sense not to spend a fortune on MS Office when OpenOffice.org is free and does all that Office 2004 does. So better targeting of the audience, and find a bigger audience, are my lessons learnt.


> Re CDs and distros.  I agree that future publishing should
> be able to help
> with some freebie CDs - if not mags.  If the aim is try and
> convince
> people to dip their toes in the water, then in my view you
> cannot beat
> live CDs and a full demo.  

> I'll stop for now, and having finally surfaced hope to
> post a bit more
> often.  Am also a member of ubuntu mailing list which seems
> a bit more
> busy.
> DaveG
> 

I think the problem remains of time to the presentation. What can we get together by the 25th April is my big question. (OK this a number out of the air but somewhere then may be my only chance before the Autumn).
Venue is still to be agreed. I like the idea of North Swindon for the future, but I think Central Library should net us a larger passing trade.
As we are a Linux Group, various distros and Live CDs are a must, but I feel they need to take a back seat to the whole FLOSS application thing on Windows - clearly explaining that these would just work on Linux and we do not need to be spending money or time messing about with likes of the Conflicker Virus (and the Hospital could keep admitting patients).

John.