On 06/23/2015 09:00 PM, Brian J. Rogers wrote:
> What would be the advantage of having both PLUG and BYU UUG? I'm not asking
> sarcastically, I'm genuinely curious. They seem to be geographically too
> close with not enough active members (from what I've observed) to
> necessitate two groups. Am I wrong?

At one time, when I was a student sysadmin at BYU CS (just before the
McNabb era), the UUG acted as a campus club to introduce CS and EE
students to Unix and Linux.  It's main focus was BYU students.  Officers
had to be students (still is the case I think).  Install fests,
involvement with the programming contest.  Though the contest was put on
by the ACM.  UUG had official faculty oversight, typically from a CS
professor.  We had access to BYU resources, and the resources of the CS
department including labs.  And it met on campus, which allowed students
without cars to participate.  A primary focus back then was helping
students get Linux up and running at home to support their CS classes'
Unix and Linux programming requirements.  CS 240 was a main one, if I
recall correctly.

UUG became a lot more active when we first started rolling out Linux
machines in the CS labs.  It really got a lot of people interested I
think.  Maybe Linux is so mainstream now that people just don't get
excited over it. I know I don't really.  It's a good tool and it works
best for me, but other OS's matured along the way also.  And I think the
nature of CS students changed a bit.

PLUG is different in that it's not primarily about college students
necessarily, and certainly not tied to an academic institution.  PLUG
certainly could fill role that UUG used to play for BYU students.
Though I note that PLUG, despite its name, hasn't met in Provo in quite
some time!

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