[clug] RE: Open Source promo stall

[Simon Haddon]

My company would be willing to pay for the stall and table/chairs if you 
want to go ahead with this. At least for one fair and then see from 
there.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 24/07/03, 5:50:13 PM, Darren Freeman <daz111 at rsphy1.anu.edu.au> wrote 
regarding [clug] RE: Open Source promo stall:


> On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 13:42, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
> > Darren Freeman wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 12:36, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
> >
> > Yes, it's a bit more involved than that. I was thinking a second drive 
that
> > had a selection of useful ISOs on it, something to boot from that fired 
up
> > a UI that let you dump the ISOs onto a CD burner. Would be a pretty cool
> > facility for a computer fair to offer. Say:

> If we knew someone with a DVD burner we could burn a few "distro distro"
> DVDs which contain several compressed ISOs and some ISOs of free
> software collections for Win/Mac (the Linux version would be pointless
> as everybody already has them with their distro, or knows where to get
> it). The distro distro would be based on Knoppix and could boot to a
> lightweight GUI that lets the user choose what to burn. We could call it
> the Free Distro Disc or similar.

> >     - Red Hat
> >     - SuSE
> >     - Mandrake
> >     - Knoppix
> >     - Open Office (Windows, Linux & Mac)
> >     - Mozilla (Windows, Linux & Mac)
> >     - IPCop or Gibraltar
> >     - Gimp (Windows & Linux)
> - and burn a copy of itself of course ;) (if you had a DVD burner)

> > > The honesty jars - how do people specify where the money goes? Wouldn't
> > > it be easier to just make the honesty jars pay for the CDs, and lunch
> > > for the volunteers, and any excess goes to
> > > EFA/FSF/the_next_stall_we_run?
> >
> > Probably. I was thinking that donating to charity is usually 
publicity-worthy.
> > FSF is a logical choice, but something warm and fuzzy would be nice as 
well.

> FSF *is* warm and fuzzy =) They fight for the forces of good against
> evil, that's good enough for me! Plus I'm sure they love puppies.

> > > However creating a distro distro sounds cool ;) Maybe it connects to a
> > > central site with every distro and caches the most recent burns. So even
> >
> > Meta-Linux?  :o)

> Cute! But it shouldn't be Linux-specific in its title if it's got tons
> of non-Linux stuff on it (like GNU/OpenOffice/Mozilla). If there's room,
> whack on some bootable toolboxes and a BSD or three ;) (got a 10GB DVD
> anyone? ;)

> How about FUD, the Freedom United Disc.

> > > a laptop plugged into a school network becomes a distro kiosk, off a
> > > boot CD. You can cache ISOs on the existing FAT32 partition and leave
> > > Winblowz intact. For as long as people stick to the cached ISOs the
> >
> > That's better than what I was thinking (sticking an extra drive in).
> > Defintely cached rather than trying to suck stuff over the wire.
> > Pressed CDs are most convenient, but date pretty quickly (I only
> > downloaded Open Office 1.0.3-1 two weeks ago)

> Certainly having a distro that comes crammed with ISOs on a DVD, *and*
> knows when they are out of date and gets fresh ISOs for the local cache,
> would be the best solution I think. It does require a DVD-ROM in
> addition to the burner though, but a combo drive would be OK if it used
> RAM / loopback off FAT32 to store the system, and cached the ISOs from
> the DVD to the hard disc if you elect to remove the DVD.

> > Antti

> Have fun,
> Darren