[clug] Re: beginners' CLUG

[Paul Wayper]

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Rod Peters wrote:
| On Wednesday 22 April 2009 22:00:34 Paul Wayper wrote:
|> Donald Benesch wrote:
|> | There's a lot of this type of email getting thru lately.
|> | I just today deleted 3.
|> | Don
|>
|> I'm with you Don.  Is there any reason why we need this list to be writable
|> by non-subscribers?  If you want to post to the list, then subscribe - it's
|> that easy.  That way you see the replies to the list too.  The only people
|> who don't join the list before posting to it seem to be spammers and people
|> who want to ask questions about using Samba under Linux, and neither of
|> them seems interested in the replies...
|>
|> Can the person who administrates the list - not I - please set it to
|> subscriber-only posting?
|>
|> Thanks in advance,
|>
| Agreed, why should we promulgate their spam.
|
| Some of the discussion in this thread advocates a need to have a point of
| contact for Linux beginners.  Agreed, but I doubt that CLUG has many
| beginners.  It appears to me that most are either IT professionals or IT
| professionals in training.  It's hardly effective use of scarce Linux skills
| for them to be stepping beginners through eg a distros "repartitioning
| proposal".  After all, a typical Windows user hasn't the foggiest what a
| partition is or why Linux needs more than C drive.

I totally disagree with you there.

It may surprise some people on the list - and be no surprise to others - that
the first time I installed Linux on my own computer was in 2004 (it was Fedora
Core 2).  I'd used Solaris for work before then but up until then I had always
run Windows.

The CLUG, in 2004, certainly felt like it had more of a barrier to a new Linux
user - and one of the things I've tried hard to do in working for the CLUG is
to dispel the notion that it's for serious, technical beards and the talk is
all about kernel tuning and C libraries and networking protocols.  Almost
everyone I speak to at CLUG these days would still say they're learning Linux
- - because it's always changing, there's always something new, and helping
others understand what we grok and learning what someone else knows is part of
the fun!

On this note, I was thinking of having a "Linux for Newbies" night at CLUG -
possibly next month if people are interested - where we get people to bring in
their computers and we answer questions, and I or someone can give a brief
overview of useful things like the file system, the GNOME interface, and how
to install stuff.  This sort of format has been really successful in Melbourne
and I'm keen to try it here.  If you're interested in a talk like this, please
email me!

We've also got the OLPC Hackfest planned for next month's PSIG - Pia, what
should people bring?

Have fun,

Paul
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