Halcrow posted a good response to a lot of stuff but I'll try to answer a few more of your questions.
> 1) I honestly think we should have them more often if the turnout is that > great! I'm not sure how often we're having them now, but I talked to some > people who had come last year and were just there for an "upgrade" and to > fix a few simple problems. Are there other technical/bureaucratic > limitations to having them more often, or is it just a lot of work on you, > Evan? We really did have a good turnout. I wouldn't mind having another this semester but here are a few reasons why we've only done one a semester: 1) It's a lot of work and pretty tiring. (I was gone from 9am - 5:30pm on Saturday) 2) People (both installers and installees) tend to get really busy after the first month; the response probably wouldn't be nearly as good from both sides. 3) People are much less likely to mess with their computers after classes have been going for a few weeks; if you break your box early on you don't have to worry about not being able to type a paper that's due the next day. If club members are interested in doing another I'd be willing to organize it. > 2) Pre-install instructions. On our flyers, we should have some "fine > print" that lists instructions of what to do, i.e.: > > * Bring your computer case, mouse, and keyboard. We will have a few > monitors available if you're unable to bring yours. > * If you want to be able to use both Windows and Linux, defragment your > hard drive the night before so we can resize the partition. (If you > already have another partition or another hard drive we can erase and > put Linux on, you don't need to do this.) > * Back up all important data (burn it to a CD or copy it to a different > computer) just in case. > > > The important part of the above I think is the "DEFRAG BEFORE YOU COME" > message. There were several people there whose install time could have > been one-tenth the time if they had defragged the night before. I thought > we had put out some message like this, but the people I talked to said > they had heard no such thing. These are very good points. Michael talked about this in his message too. Next time we should designate someone a week before it happens (instead of right before like this time) to be the official "flier/poster maker". I think we need to add all of these points on what we distribute. I would have added them this time but things got a little busy. > 3) Even though it was a /Linux/ install-fest, I think some of those > Windows-software SSS CDs would have been cool to have around. Yes. And we should have extra Knoppix, Mandrake, Debian, etc CDs there too. Sometimes one distro won't install or crashes and your only choice is to try another. We had that happen a few times but we weren't prepared with them. > 4) Aren't there more free alternatives to Partition Magic out there? Back > as far as four years ago or something I used Mandrake's installer to > resize partitions and that worked beautifully. I've heard about parted as > well. Wouldn't those be useful to have on-hand? Halcrow discussed this. I think this (parted/qtparted) would be fine, but I just haven't used them a lot. > The second sheet to pass out could be more of a "Introduction to Linux" > tutorial, with (of course) instructions on how to subscribe to the newbies > list, as well as some other useful information. This is a good point. I think one problem is that by the time the install is done we're already helping another 2 or 3 people and we don't have time to really explain what to do next. We need to help people to know where to go next. Michael Torrie suggested printing up the RH manual and selling it at a break even cost. Well, no matter what, we just need to do something more. Maybe a special howto on the UUG website would be good. > 6) Even more bizarre ideas. > > Some sort of "marking" for the helpers, so that people who are struggling > can see who they need to seek out, and so that other helpers can easily > see who's being helped and who isn't. > > Some sort of "marking" for the computers themselves to see at a glance > what stage they're in. For example, I saw one guy who couldn't get his > wireless ethernet card to work, and so had a piece of paper stuck to his > notebook that said, "NEED WIRELESS HELP!" or something like that. I'm > envisioning something along those lines for everyone, so you can look up > and at a glance see a few "DEFRAGGING" signs, a few "USING PARTITION > MAGIC" signs, a few "NEED PARTITION MAGIC" signs, a few "INSTALLING FILES" > signs, and a few "PROBLEM: NEED HELP" signs. I don't know, though--that > might end up being more complex and more trouble than it's worth. At the > very least, I think, though, there should be something for problems which > hint to the general nature of the problem, so anybody can look around and > see if there are issues which need to be attended to. Yeah. I was trying to direct people to those who needed help but it could have been a little more efficient. For example, everyone with wireless problems was sent to Dave Smith. :-) > Another big thanks to all those who participated. I was, indeed, very > impressed. And thanks for coming. Every time we have some troubles but overall it's getting better and better. On last thing, Frank suggested that we get a bin like the following to put club stuff in: http://www.lowes.com/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=33255-315-2463 This would make it really nice to put extra power cables, ethernet cables, power strips, etc in. We do have a pile of club "junk"; it would be nice to organize it better. Well, I need some sleep. -Evan -- /********************************************************************\ Evan McNabb: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://evan.mcnabbs.org System Administrator, CS Department, BYU GnuPG Fingerprint: 53B5 EDCA 5543 A27A E0E1 2B2F 6776 8F9C 6A35 6EA5 \********************************************************************/
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