but I agree with Roger about the idea of supporting the un-paid/volunteer IT folks who have Linux Q's
Think of people like Geoff Jutzy (an LSU grad). A few years ago, he got Cisco to donate a boatload of hardware (PIXen, routers, tons of wireless stuff, etc) for his Afghanistan medical project (http://tinyurl.com/yjqydc)
All his Cisco stuff arrived at LLU, and he had no idea how to configure any of it. I helped him with as much as I could (on such short notice before he left), but afterwards it would have been cool if he had some sort of "extended family" who could have helped him.
Say he had a 3900 router and needed support. If he wrote to me at the time, I could have easily logged on my Cisco TAC account, created a case under one of the 3900s I had SmartNET'd at the time, made him a temporary contact, and then someone could have held his hand.
Strategically speaking, I'm hoping little things like this can put LSU (and possibly the SBM) on the map for IT projects. I think a hard core *nix club could be very beneficial to the SDA system (educational institutions, overseas projects, etc) at large.
There are a lot of good IT people who are from LSU (worked here, went to school here, etc). I think that we should make an effort to try to get those interested involved with us (at least via listserv) as well.
Roger
