August 2001 Meeting
About fifteen people turned out for the August meeting
and even one small girl. It was the usual mixture of friendly
chat and informed comment about the latest Linux stuff. The
Stoddart building is proving to be a very popular venue with all people.
We are now seeing more of the academic people from local Universities. This is a welcome thing since Linux started it's life in an academic institution as a curio that not many people understood. We still get the home users and the business people who are probably more enthusiastic when it comes to using Linux for things that no one else has tried to do with it.
The earliest arrival at the meeting was Pete Smith. Pete's a home user who makes a living collecting tickets on Midland Mainline trains. He wanted to upgrade his machine and for a long time now he's had problems with Mandrake 7.2 to 8.0. So, he finally decided to have a go at SuSE 7.2. I set to work and installed the SuSE distribution into his dual boot PC. The other operating system is Win 98. It didn't take much time at all and we were soon looking at a working Linux machine that took care of it's own boot options.
We had some new people come along which is always very reassuring. Newbies are always welcome because they have a tendency to point out someone else's mistakes.
James Mears brought his notebook along again. He wanted to connect his palmtop to his notebook so that he could transfer data over but he couldn't work out where Kpilot was on his CDs. I installed it for him. Now all he's got to do is work out how to use it. Fuad Saeed came along later on. It was nice to see him again. Since his baby came along we haven't seen much of him at meetings although we do see him and talk to him on the phone quite a bit. There was much general chat about what to do at future meetings. The Birmingham Linux Expo has been cancelled and so more than a few people are wondering what to do just now. If anyone would like to suggest a person for a lecture or a topic for another meeting then please do send some e-mail to us.
Sheffield Hallam University in the shape of their R&D team turned up for this meeting. We do hope that they will come back for another one. They say that they hope to get some more of their students interested in Linux and all that it has to offer.
At the end of the session James Mears and myself trundled off down the corridor to the lift and the car park happy in the fact that we didn't have to go outside with a large pile of junk and get soaked through in the pouring rain or hit by a close by bolt of lightening. One more meeting in the can and some more people with working computers and others who now know that someone is out there and can help them with their new found interests.
Richard
People who were there ................
David Parkinson Arun Mudiganti Pete Smith James Mears Ed Chivers Eric Moore John Brooke Michael Ford Robert Pumphrey Fuad Saeed Richard Ibbotson and some others
We are now seeing more of the academic people from local Universities. This is a welcome thing since Linux started it's life in an academic institution as a curio that not many people understood. We still get the home users and the business people who are probably more enthusiastic when it comes to using Linux for things that no one else has tried to do with it.
The earliest arrival at the meeting was Pete Smith. Pete's a home user who makes a living collecting tickets on Midland Mainline trains. He wanted to upgrade his machine and for a long time now he's had problems with Mandrake 7.2 to 8.0. So, he finally decided to have a go at SuSE 7.2. I set to work and installed the SuSE distribution into his dual boot PC. The other operating system is Win 98. It didn't take much time at all and we were soon looking at a working Linux machine that took care of it's own boot options.
We had some new people come along which is always very reassuring. Newbies are always welcome because they have a tendency to point out someone else's mistakes.
James Mears brought his notebook along again. He wanted to connect his palmtop to his notebook so that he could transfer data over but he couldn't work out where Kpilot was on his CDs. I installed it for him. Now all he's got to do is work out how to use it. Fuad Saeed came along later on. It was nice to see him again. Since his baby came along we haven't seen much of him at meetings although we do see him and talk to him on the phone quite a bit. There was much general chat about what to do at future meetings. The Birmingham Linux Expo has been cancelled and so more than a few people are wondering what to do just now. If anyone would like to suggest a person for a lecture or a topic for another meeting then please do send some e-mail to us.
Sheffield Hallam University in the shape of their R&D team turned up for this meeting. We do hope that they will come back for another one. They say that they hope to get some more of their students interested in Linux and all that it has to offer.
At the end of the session James Mears and myself trundled off down the corridor to the lift and the car park happy in the fact that we didn't have to go outside with a large pile of junk and get soaked through in the pouring rain or hit by a close by bolt of lightening. One more meeting in the can and some more people with working computers and others who now know that someone is out there and can help them with their new found interests.
Richard
People who were there ................
David Parkinson Arun Mudiganti Pete Smith James Mears Ed Chivers Eric Moore John Brooke Michael Ford Robert Pumphrey Fuad Saeed Richard Ibbotson and some others