I am interested and eager to participate too, but the topics of the meetings need to be posted prior to the meetings and it needs to be relevant to what the group wants and needs, rather than what someone may want to teach. I felt that we were well on the road to that end with the EXCELLENT e-mail that Sue Smith wrote some six months or so ago outlining what she felt would be of value to the group. I was 100% in agreement with the opinions that she stated then. Most of us in the newbies group are not computer gurus or IT professionals but rather are Window$ refugees that need and want to move away from the Evil Empire. Even though compiling the kernel, writing script files, and loading modules is of interest to me personally, I think it is W A Y down the list of priorities and interests of most in the newbies group, but things like getting a printer working, getting ones e-mail from Outlook to Evolution, burning CD's with K3B rather than Nero, managing ones checking account with GNUcash rather than Quicken, having our Linux box talk to our Window$ home network, getting our laptop working wirelessly, getting a parallel port Zip drive working under Linux, etc, are the kinds of topics that,in my humble and admittedly noobie opinion, the newbies want and need. In a nutshell, most of us, at least at this point, want to use our computers to do productive work, we don't want to just play with them. I think that without that being the direction of the newbies group, it will surely, and very quickly, cease to exist. That was certainly my primary reason for becoming involved with the BRLUG newbies group and for initially joining and this year renewing my membership in CCCC. I have managed to free myself about 80% of the shackles of the Evil Empire with a lot of digging and experimenting on my part and the excellent help of a lot of people in the BRLUG. However, I am, and always have been, something of a computer geek and enjoy learning how things work. I think that, in general, my geekiness is an exception to the rule regarding the general membership of the newbies group and most are not interested in or willing to dig in to the degree that I am and was to get away from Window$. It is just too ease to boot up and do what you need to do, even with the insane licensing fees, the viri, trojans, continuous hardware upgrades and software patches, BSOD's, etc. If we in the Linux are going to conquer the desktop, then we in the Linux community MUST welcome the Window$ refugees with open arms, without attitude regarding their willingness or lack thereof to RTFM, and be willing and CAPABLE of teaching them/us what they/we need to know to be productive and contributing members of the Linux community. Without that being the case, all of the Window$ cheerleading squads will continue their cheers that Linux is NOT ready for the desktop and will never take it over, and no matter how good Libranet, LindowsOS, Lycoris, Xandros, and the hoards of other distros targeting the desktop are or may be, THEY WILL BE RIGHT!
Just my thoughts. Ed Richards
