I have a feeling that if the UUG could somehow harness or take advantage
of the skills of its members, we would not have any problem coming up
with a long string of very interesting meetings -- ones I at least would
be passionate about. That's why, for example, I like some of Evan's
suggestions: they're useful, fun, and there are people in the group that
know how to do them. My skill set, for example, has recently expanded
to include several different types of clusters (load-balancing,
high-availability, high-performance - Linux can be used for all of
these), and I'd be willing to, given some time to prepare, give
presentations on these. Would anyone else find these of interest?
I guess what I'm saying is that it seems the answer will lie in
utilizing the skills of the UUG members. When you look at us and our
total skill-set, we're a pretty impressive group.
Lloyd Brown
Evan N. McNabb wrote:
I agree. Whenever a "new" product comes out, there is a lot of buzz.* In
the late 90's and early 2000's, there was a lot of talk in the media
about Linux and its potential. Overall, Linux has lived up to the hype
and has become very common place.
Most people who become CS majors (or anything technical) have heard of
Linux, and can even get it installed on a machine without much help.
Yeah, there will be problems with wireless cards and winmodems, but
Linux has come a lot way. I'm personally glad I don't have to spend a
week getting XFree86 working correctly, and I don't have to worry about
zapping hardware because of incorrect refresh rates. Anyone remember
those days?
Because Linux is easier to use, user groups need to start focusing more
on the interesting open source applications that are available. Why
should someone care about running Linux? How about telling people the
following at the UUG booth:
You can take a standard PC, and make it into:
* A digital video recorder with MythTV.
* You can take five 200 GB drives and have a terabyte of space available
with LVM and software RAID.
* You can build a phone system (a complete PBX) to create voice menus,
forward calls, etc. with Asterisks.
* Create a webserver, file server, mail server, and database server.
* Wouldn't your parents be impressed if you registered the domain
"jansenfamilyreunion.com", set up a photo album with Gallery, and
configured Postfix so you had e-mail addresses such as
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
* You can work on your school work from home.
* You'll have the ability to easily install almost any programming
language out there.
* Set up your own Jabber server that can now connect to anyone who uses
gtalk.
* The list goes on. Feel free to add your own.
ALL OF THIS IS FOR FREE. Yeah, it will take some time, but you'll learn
a lot, and it will help you in your future career. What is going to make
you different from everyone you graduate with?
This is why I use Linux. This is why I'm passionate. Not so much because
of "Linux", but because of what it allows me to do.
-Evan
* Linux has been around for a while, but only recently has it become
"mainstream".
/********************************************************************\
Evan McNabb: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Instructor, Guru Labs
http://evan.mcnabbs.org
GnuPG Fingerprint: 53B5 EDCA 5543 A27A E0E1 2B2F 6776 8F9C 6A35 6EA5
\********************************************************************/
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BYU Unix Users Group
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The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their
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