I'll drop out of lurk mode for the moment to point out that Jim Willing and I started the CP/M User's Group back in 1980.
We flipped a coin to see who would be President - he won and was member #0 and I was member #1 and Librarian (I even had a rubber stamp made up with a skull and crossbones that said, "Bootleg Copy - Do Not Distribute". We of course did not actually distribute any bootleg copies of anything of course. Heh. In many ways, I think the CP/M-UG NW (or whatever the hell it ended up being called - it all runs together after awhile) was sort of the precursor to this group. A bunch of wonderful folks trying to help each other, despite differences in politics or distros. Back to lurk mode, -Ron On Jan 11, 2012, at 10:36 PM, Keith Lofstrom wrote: > On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 09:28:02PM -0800, [email protected] wrote: >> Richard has a long commute. He lives out past Estacada, even. > > Near Springfield MO, apparently. A bit of googling revealed > this thread from April 2011: > > http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/groups/south-west-missouri-linux-users-group/ > > Apparently "amsweitzer", about 30 miles west of Richard > in Lawrence County, is talking about setting up "SWMLUG" > ... which I suppose could double as "Single White Male", > an amply represented portion of our community. > > Windows comes out of a box, linux comes out of a community. > One of the best parts of Linux is hanging out with other > Linux users, swapping CDs and hardware and lies. While > some of us are quite happy being Moody Loners with > Keyboards, it can be fun to sit down in pairs or threes > and attack problems together. Sometimes it is essential; > if your only computer is hosed, how do you google for > repair ideas? Much easier with helpful friends. > > Richard is certainly welcome on this list, and there are > a few ancient CP/M geeks on it. Another Portland CP/M > geek, Jim Willing, moved to Yates Center, KS, to run a > bowling alley. Perhaps Jim is still around, and ready > to drive two hours east for SWMLUG. > > I suggest Richard picks a distro that offers both "texty" > and "gui" ways to get things done. Do the config with > the gui, in the beginning. Then see what files the gui > changes. That gives two views of the same information. > > Avoid like the plague any distro that keeps configuration > in non-standard files, filters them through a GUI, to > make write-only linux configs. There are a very few > files like that in Redhat distros, more in some of the > oddball "user friendly" distros. > > Ubuntu is a good way to get started. The community is > helpful and welcoming of newbies. After that, the various > clones of Redhat Enterprise are interesting, mostly because > CentOS is the engine underneath so many application specific > distros - a lot of production software ported to CentOS. > After that, if Richard is feeling ubergeeky, skip Debian > and others and go straight to Gentoo - build your own > binaries from source. Unless Richard wants to go all > the way to programming with solder. Starting out with > RHEL/CentOS is like learning to drive on a bulldozer. > > Keith > > -- > Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 > KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" > Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
