The first
ALE OSPREX PROJECT MEETING
has been scheduled for
TUESDAY, APRIL 29th, 7:30pm **
at
MELTON’S APP & TAP
NW corner of North Decatur Road
at Scott Blvd. intersection
— Melton’s home page — map
This is a casual brain storming and volunteer organizing
session to consider a plan for expanding ALE outreach and
improving support for the increasingly diverse groups of
people who are now being introduced to (and liberated by)
Linux and Open Source computing.
Everyone reading this is invited to bring ideas and materials
addressing the project goals of building a concise Open Source
educational presentation and delivering it to various Atlanta
area public venues as detailed in the proposal below.
PROJECT PROPOSAL:
— Given the increasing numbers of successful OSS projects
like Ubuntu, gOS, Firefox, Linspire, OLPC, Open Office,
Mandriva and EEPC, it is clear that Linux and OSS computing
are expanding and gaining greater public acceptance in the
consumer, educational and business market places. To
build on this momentum and public attention, this seems
an especially opportune time for our ALE users group to
expand its outreach and educational efforts to better include
and welcome the diverse groups of freedom seekers that are
now settling the Open Source frontier. Toward that goal,
I’m inviting participation in a project idea that I’ve
tentatively dubbed ALE OSPREX, standing for
Open Source PRomotion and Educational eXchange.
The vision is to build a pre-packaged, community crafted,
easy to deliver 30 to 60 minute presentation targeted at
the general computer user and focused on the numerous
advantages and simplicities of installing and using today’s
ubiquitous Linux and OSS solutions for common computer
tasks. The presentation would be a ready and thorough
teaching tool which active OSS advocates could use
for hosting Linux promotional events, educational forums
or installation workshops at schools, libraries and other
public venues.
In combination with the distribution of Live Install CD’s of
user friendly Linux distros at the events, or as an invitation
to participate in a Linux installation festival, hosting regular
OSPREX presentation events at various locations around
Atlanta could quickly expand the base of enlightened Linux
and OSS users throughout our region. (e.g., one hope is
that we can arrange 2 or 3 OSPREX events as lead up to
the May 17th Ubuntu/ALE Install Fest).
To reach the initial goal the OSPREX project might only
require the commitment of 2 or 3 motivated OSS evangelists,
but to be truly successful in providing broader public education
on the value and values of Open Source, I hope that many
more members of this group will want to contribute their time
and expertise.
With sincere appreciation for your attention,
Aaron Ruscetta
ALE Event Coordinator
arxaaron at gmail
404.315.0406
=====================
**NOTE that this meeting was moved from the Thursday,
April 24th date announced at this month’s ALE Central.
As you are probably aware, the ale@ale.org mailing list is
currently down and has been for more than a week. Word
is that the mailman user files are in need of a complete
rebuild and, due to other problems with the server, our
current system administrator has not had time to resolve
the mailing list issues.
Just prior to the recent list problems our long time system
administrator and hosting provider, ALE founding member
Chris Farris, had asked for new volunteers and contributors
to take on the hosting and administration of and ALE server
as he could no longer contribute the time and resources to
continue doing the job himself. Several members have
volunteered to share the group’s admin duties and an ALE
member who is a partner in Xilogix has offered
to donate new site hosting services.
We expect to be migrating the ALE site and mailing lists
to the new Xilogix server and hosting facilities over the
coming week of February 11 to 16, and getting the mailing
list back on line will be a priority.
For an interim mailing list solution (that will subsequently
be used as a list archive) ALE members can sign up on the
Atlanta-Linux-Enthusiasts list that has been set up with
Google Groups.
Apologies for the repair delays and any inconvenience they
may be causing. Thanks to the contributions of our volunteers,
both past and present, the regular ALE mailing list discussions
should be resuming shortly.
Aaron Ruscetta
Volunteer Event Coordinator,
Associate Site Manager,
Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Thanks to all who attended and made our GNU Freedom Fest
Info & Install day such a great event!
I know we can count at least half dozen newbies that we aided
with distro installs, problem solving or detailed Linux info. We
even helped a fellow from Texas lasso his laptop challenges:
===
“I want to thank ALE for all the help I received on Saturday
at the Freedom Fest. Everyone was very helpful and stuck
with me for HOURS working through partitioning problems,
dual boot problems, permissions problems and display drivers
problems. It would have been hard for me to figure all that
out by myself. I even got some great swag!”
– Bradley
(The guy from Dallas with the HP laptop
with Ubuntu Breezy and XP dual boot.)
====
As with all our ALE Install Fests of the past few years, special
thanks go to Harold Bieber for arranging the great space,
supplying the power strips & network connections and
collecting all the Linux books for door prizes. (With the help
of his Ximian web monkey, of course.)
Special thanks also go out to Bob Stevens and Trey Sizemore
for their help with SUSE installations, the Novell Linux Desktop
distro packages and the great Novell and SUSE hat swag!
So hey… lets do this again sometime in the Spring! :-)