I'll try and get along this time and finally get to meet some of you. The last couple (incl. the installfest) clashed with holiday's etc.
Unfortunately that's why I missed the Installfest. It occurs to me that June, July and August (and possibly September) are probably bad times for InstallFests as people are either taking exams (or have kids who are) etc or thinking about going on holiday. I suspect October/November or Febrary/March are probably better. But then what do I know? (and that's a rhetorical question if you hadn't guessed :o) )
wrt ideas for the meetings, how about starting a round robin topic list of things we'd like to know more about? for example I'd like someone to spend 1/2 hour going over the whole ./configure, make, make install thing (nothing heavy, you know words of one syllable or less) so I'd have some idea of what I'm doing. And I'd also like some more detail on kernel modules and how they work. Yes, I know there's lots of stuff on the web but I'm going crosseyed with all the reading I've been doing lately, it'd be nice to have someone talk me through these things.
Unfortunately I'm too new to GNU/Linux to offer much in return. I'm wading through a complete system build from source but I'm only up to installing X and Gnome at the moment. I'd be happy to talk about my experiences of that some time in the future (2,3,4,5 years! :o) ). I've got a fair bit of background in relational d/b's if that's of any interest but nothing on any Linux ones.
If there the was a list of potential topics of interest maybe we could pick off those we felt able to say something useful about and also vote for those we'd like to know more about.
Something else that might be of interest. Back when I lived in Reading I was involved with the local BCS branch (I dropped out when I moved to Norfolk), they used to run themed workshop events e.g a series of 4/5/6 meetings on a specific topic, say project management or web page design or whatever. It takes a bit of organising but I remember them being quite a lot of fun. The trick was to get other computing groups involved e.g BCS, local universities, firms, etc. If it's of interest I can go into a bit more detail at the meeting.
I do go on, don't I? Sorry ____________ Words are the fog we have to see through. Zen Saying
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