Not to trigger a full blown debate...

It doesn't matter what point *we* are at, it matters what point anyone who decides to show up is at.  It also doesn't matter what can fit on a flash drive...  You have to ask yourself who the intended audience is.  If it is techies who already know what a home directory is and might end up playing with Linux without WLUG's help, then it doesn't matter what you show, or if you demo more than one thing. 

If, however, you are trying to interest newbies who might decide to stay with what they already have if the alternative is perceived as a lot of work, then I would advise skipping the discussion about how cool the technology is and focus on why a standard Linux distro is useful.  As I keep reminding my students - the technology is meaningless, the important questions to ask is "what can you do with it".  If you really want to excite a lot of students, show them how they can save money and, more importantly time, and still turn their assignments in on time in a format acceptable to their professors!

The reason for my initial comment in this thread was simple:  In my experience at WPI, a non-trivial minority of students do not have a tremendous amount of experience with computers - even the self professed "programmers."  Students new to WPI are already overwhelmed with some 30-40 hours a week of school work outside of class time.  If they are "into computers" then they are already interested enough to invest their time based on the "technology is cool" camp.  If, however, they are interested in technology as a tool, they will look at the demo, size up how much effort is involved (and that includes how readily available the necessary information is and how easy that info is to use), decide how helpful the venue is to trying Linux, assess if  Linux/WLUG/whatever is worth it to them, and make a decision.  If, as you say, the commercial distributions are no more difficult to install than windows, then that is what we should be showing, as well as OpenOffice, Mozilla, and so forth.

Steve

Matt Higgins wrote:
My 2 cents or less if you will. 

I think Knoppix is the way to go! The point is to showoff Linux-wares not to
teach about a particular distributions configuration mechanism or file system
layout. Knoppix is clean and impressive in many ways and does a great job at
showing off what Linux can do. Furthermore we are to the point were a Linux
install is no more difficult then a Windows install, particularly the commercial
distributions; Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Yellow Dog, etc...

So thats my 2 cents or less, long live Slackware! 

Matt

Quoting Steve Freitag <Steve.Freitag@alum.wpi.edu>:

  
I've recently spent a small amount of time playing around with both the SuSe
8.2 Live Eval, and Knoppix 7-26-03, so I thought I'd pass along my
observation

 

Both default you into KDE and have a similar selection of apps (Like
OpenOffice, Mozilla, the GIMP etc).  Knoppix happens to be based of Debian.

 

There were a couple of things I liked about Knoppix.  The first is that you
don't have to go through all the YaST screens when you boot, Knoppix just
boots right up to KDE and logs you on as user knoppix.  The other neat thing
about Knoppix is that you can save your configuration and home directory of
the size you specify on a USB flash drive.  With SuSE if you want to save
your configuration/home dir it creates a 100MB file on your hard drive (and
another 100MB for swap if you want).  With Knoppix you can carry a cheap
($10 after rebate) 64MB USB flash drive around with you and a Knoppix CD and
boot a PC into your personal environment without touching the hard disk.  

 

-----Original Message-----
From: wlug-admin@mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-admin@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf
Of Stephen C. Daukas
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 4:23 PM
To: wlug@mail.wlug.org
Subject: Re: [Wlug] Re: Next Meeting?

 

Is introducing yet-another-flavor-of-linux useful?  I understand what you
are trying to achieve, but one of the first questions that came to my mind
was "what is the difference between Knoppix and a regular Linux distro"?
(The first was actually "what the hell is Knopix"!)  Will it be confusing to
the people looking at is verusus what they see when they look at SuSe, Red
Hat, etc.?

Andy Stewart wrote:



On Monday 01 September 2003 4:52 pm, albutler33@netscape.net wrote:
  

Andy,
 
I think a great topic especially for the new students would be "Fast Track
to Linux" where you introduce the GNOME and KDE desktops and a few of your
favorite tools and utilities.
 
Al Butler
    

 
HI Al,
 
My most current thoughts are centered on Linux, its origins, the GPL, 
WLUG/WPILA, and then segue into single CD demo distributions for folks who 
want to "kick the tires", as it were, without fully committing their hard 
drives to Linux.  
 
One such single CD demo distribution is Knoppix, which does have KDE (and 
GNOME?).  Once Knoppix is running, many things could be demonstrated.  If I 
go with this idea, I'd want to have copies of the Knoppix CD available for 
people to take home, and hopefully they would try it at their leisure.
 
How does that sound?  Do people have additional ideas?  Let's hear them!
:-)
 
Later,
 
Andy
 
 
  

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