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Linux Installfest At MIT On February 28
Bellhead (
Second-Tier Associate to the First-Tier Minion, BLU) writes "The Boston Linux & Unix User Group's 16th Linux Installfest is being held at MIT on Saturday, February 28. Linux users in and around Boston, Massachusetts will have access to expert help and tools in order to install Linux on their computers. The BLU's volunteers will help anyone who shows up and brings their computer, free of charge (they accept donations). See the BLU Website for details and directions. Information about the BLU is at http://www.blu.org."
The support offered will help show some people that they don't need it.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
While the installers may be easy these days, FUD is STILL being cirlced around from the dark days of linux (2.2 kernels, text based installer, No kde, just some scary window manager and netscape and staroffice, yuck). If Linux is going to get popular, then it needs to shake off its FUD. When people, especially joe are shown in public that installing Linux is just insert cd, follow the easy instructions, and then reboot into a colourful desktop environment complete with multimedia software, office suite, games, internet and and utillities all nicely installed they are going to say, WOW, this is a 100 times easier than Windows, I am going to give all my freinds Linux cds and spread the word.
So, I reccomend you grab your beloved fedora cds, burn a few copies of them and organize your own installfest with your family and freinds. Spread the word about Linux.
Once the FUD barrier taken down, Linux wiont need install fests, because people can just grab a CD, and know its goigng to "just work".
With killer software such as KDE 3.2, Kernel 2.6, OpenOffice 1.1, Xfree86 4.4, WineX 3.2, Firefox 0.8, K3b 0.11 and Gimp 2.0 Linux software is really exciting and fun to use.
Our ACM chapter used to do this at our school and it was very benificial. First, for the publicity - all us computer geeks would setup machines showing off what cool things you could do with linux. Furthermore, you would see normal people walking in with their computers throughout the day and getting linux installed on it, by friendly people. These things drew alot more attention that a simple booth to pass out discs would have.
Secondly, having an event like this is a wonderful catalyst. Most of the people who brought in machines had been thinking about installing linux, but had reservations and doubts, or were busy and never got around to it. Having someone to help in the odd case that there are problems is very reassuring and is a good way make sure they get off on the right foot.
Also I heard in the past that there was someone who would every year bring in some machine which they just could not get linux installed on, as a challenge. We had some mad skill kernal hackers, who would go so far as modifing the drivers to get the thing to work, and most of the time they succeeded. One of the guys there gained the reputation as "the guy who could get linux to run on a paperclip wrapped around a pencil".
Third, I can't understate the fact that people like dealing with other people. It was a good time, and everyone walked away with a favorable impression of the free software community.
Sorry cli fans, the future of linux is cli-less.
Yes, it is, in that we will make many more advances in gui design; but you are being misleading here.
Are you implying that Slackware will default to runlevel 4 in the future? Are you implying that bash is dying!!!
I do not know what you actually mean; but to imply that the cli will disappear is heretical poppycock.