Sorry to jump in on this, but being away from campus for over 12 years I had some ideas...
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 09:57:19 -0700 Andrew McNabb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 10:19:39PM -0700, Jacob Albretsen wrote: > I think the main thing that scares me is that we aren't getting any > new > members. A lot of the really strong and enthusiastic members of the > UUG > in the past have been sophomores--people excited to be jumping back > into > school. I have a hard time believing that younger students aren't > interested in Linux anymore. I think they either don't know about > the > UUG or don't want to come. That is, if a freshman really has time for the club. 1. A new freshman is trying to figure out how to get to classes starting in 10 minutes hiking from the Harmon building all the way to the Smith field house. 2. If your local freshman has come to school with a laptop that mom or dad bought them, they are not going to play with linux install that may go south on them and make it so they can't complete their english paper next week. 3. Linux/Unix *isn't* easy. Freshmen have been using Windows 9x/XP for half their life. The idea of having to go to a command prompt to change a config file is scarry for them. 4. Linux/Unix *isn't* intuitive. I mean, before you USED linux, what would you think "ls -al" would do? To view the contents of a file you "cat <file>"? 5. Then you can confuse the freshmen with RELIGION: Suse, Fedora, BSD, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Knoppix, etc, etc, etc. Nah, I think a sophomore is about the earliest your going to get any real enthusiasts. Anyways, just my little rant... > I absolutely don't want the UUG to die. Let's start using Linux > more, doing more fun things with it, having more interesting technical > meetings and on-list discussions, and making something that others > will want to get involved with. How about 1st month "how to turn a $10 DI computer into a cheap gaming system playing Gnometris and Klotski" 2nd month "now add a samba server" 3rd month "now do an NFS share with another $10 DI computer" 4th month "How to deal with a roomate who is upset with your pile of $10 DI computers taking up 1/2 the room" 5th month "Why your girlfriend/boyfriend doesn't think that spending an entire weekend getting Gentoo working on a $10 DI box is healthy to a relationship." Later, Dave -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
