Blackwell's at West Street 
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The Christmas Demo Days proved to
be one of the high spots of the year. Many people were able
to come over to Blackwell's and ask questions about the latest Linux software.
Thursday the 7th of December saw the traditional Yorkshire weather take over at West Street but in spite of that a few brave people came in through the door to ask questions and to sort out their own problems. I had just received my replacement second user Compaq notebook and I was able to use it with SuSE 7.0 to demonstrate Reiser file system to the people who came in. Very nice :) The notebook came from Sterling Management Limited. Sheffield Computing Services who are over at Taplin Road at Hillsborough very kindly offered to let us have two of their computers for a few days so that we could install Linux and show them to the passing crowd. We reciprocated the arrangement by handing out their price lists to everyone who came in. On Friday morning Roger Whittaker arrived from SuSE Ltd. He brought a Sparc machine with him as well as an Intel workstation and a notebook. Of course, all of these had SuSE 7.0 pre-installed. More than a few people were very impressed by Roger's ability to explain something about Linux in a way that is easy for people to understand. Friday was a dry day and so more people showed interest. It was really good to see people taking a genuine interest and also to see them walking out of the door with UKUUG newsletters and the free copies of Perl Journal. The Red Hat 6.2, SuSE 7.0 and Debian 2.2 CDs proved to be very popular. SuSE Ltd had very kindly produced some A4 flyers for the demo days. If you want to get hold of one then please do click here. Saturday morning came along and so did many more people when they realised that the rain wasn't going to fall on them. I arrived just after 10.00 a.m. to find that someone had already made an attempt on pushing down the front door so that he could talk to Roger. Shortly afterwards a few more people arrived. Saturday afternoon was a very busy day for all of us. The highlight of the afternoon was when an older gent came in with a Dell notebook. Craig Andrews was able to partition the 12Gb hard drive on that machine and install a dual boot MS Windows/ SuSE Linux system that worked first time without problems. This is what Linux user groups are all about. About ten to twenty of us stood around having a good longish chat about the latest issues and releases and how to fix things that don't normally happen. A good time was had by all. At the end of the day we helped Roger to carry his computers back to his car and then we sat around waiting for the Zing Vaa restaurant to open. Our LUG Christmas dinner was quiet but very enjoyable. We look forward to the new year and one more year of a new century. We do hope that 2001 will be yet another year when Linux proves itself to be of much more use to people than other operating systems. We live in an era when any old broken crutch is thought to be good enough for any cripple to use and also when many people are very much misinformed about the realities of network security. A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers.
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Blackwell's at West Street 
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