Re: CLUG social - Purpose of the CLUG

[Douglas Royds]

Nick Rout wrote: On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:06:25 +1300 Douglas Royds <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Christopher Sawtell wrote: Mandrake virtually installs itself in 20 mins or less on current hardware. ... if you know what you're doing, which I didn't. Overall, it took me about two weeks in what little spare time I have, plus two hours of Greg's time. Finally, once I had everything successfully partitioned, and knew exactly what to do, I did successfully install Mandrake in about 45 minutes. Installfests just to get Linux installed are no longer a necessity. I'd rather have done all of that at an installfest, it's just that I wasn't going to wait until March. The best way to learn is to have an expert available to answer stupid questions. I wonder whether we should include full installations in our workshops, ie a few and often, rather than one big fest a year. maybe even some structured sessions - week one install, week two find your way around the system etc. I suppose that when there's only one beginner wanting to do an install, then you could hardly call it an installfest. If there were two or more people, then an ad-hoc installfest would be appropriate. The benefit of a formal installfest comes from the publicity it (i.e. we, the CLUG) generate - posters and emails and "Hey, just bowl along with your PC" do a lot more than just get people in to the installfest, they raise the Linux profile overall. Also, they sow the idea that there is a community here, and installing Linux is something anyone can do, as there is help available. Perhaps the installfest could be combined with John Carter's return to a computer expo that is actually fun. Forgetting the hassles caused by the shortcomings of the rpm format, which have been largely worked around in various ways, installing applications and their upgrades is usually as simple as falling off a log. Regrettably, my track record so far is poor. I've tried installing Grip, Lame, Ogg Vorbis, and a modem driver. So far only Grip has worked. Back to that installfest. this is obviously distro and package specific, hard to know how to help without details of what you have done and what the results are. I have to do a bit more private head-scratching first, then if I'm still stuck, I'll post for help. Linux's very sucess has had the effect that LUGs are no longer needed for the dedicated support of Linux per se. Installation is OK once you know what you're doing. The need for support won't seriously diminish until you can buy your Linux box ready-to-eat off the shelf at Harvey Norman. well you can, at dse anyway. there are many places selling computers with linux preinstalled. I was aware of the DSE linux box, but I don't think that they stock it any more. They do offer an OS-free box, which is $200 cheaper than the same box with XP Home, and $350 cheaper than with XP Pro. A quick web-troll found these laptops pre-installed with Lindows:   http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2000.html It may be a while yet before you're buying this sort of gear at HN. Douglas.