[ale] RE: ALE NW meeting last night

[Greg Harris]

I am a student at KSU and a member of the LUG.

>> Thanks to Greg Canter and Jeff Hubbs for a superb tag team presentation.

I think both presentations went very well and probably opened some (student's) eyes about Linux.  Unfortunately, 
a lot of the students had classes at 9:30 and were forced to bail-out on the second lecture (more pizza for the 
rest of us).  The whole point of last night's meeting was to increase awareness on campus, and I think it quite 
obvious that we achvieved that goal.

>> So, I'd like feedback from anyone who attended.  What did you like, not like.

The only thing I did not like was the fact that a lot of students were only there for the extra credit...  I did 
not like the mass exodus before the second presentation.  However, as I said above, we achieved the goal.  Next 
time there will be more genuine interest.

>> How did that all go?  Was the timing of the pizza arrival good or was it an interuption?

The pizza timing was good as far as I could tell... it was actually delivered before the installation demo was 
over, but amazingly, everyone stayed in their seats until the presentation was concluded.

>> Thanks for all who attended.  I'm looking for suggestions for upcoming presentations 
>> as well as folks who would like to give a presentation.

I have been using Linux for a couple years now and have installed Redhat and SuSE several times - but I have 
only recently formatted my windows hdd and turned completely to Linux on my home desktop.  That said, I am still 
a newbie, but I would like to learn more in terms of network configuration, (basic) security...  maybe tips and 
tricks with emacs, vi or other editors (i am not trying to start a religious war here).

Dr. Gayler mentioned a side-by-side comparision of editors in Linux vs. M$.  I think this is a great idea and 
would generate interest from the Computer Science majors and other programmer types at the school.  Greg eluded 
to this topic last night when he compared the price of M$ editors vs. the price of powerful Linux editors.

The Computer Science department has recently started requiring the upper-level students to telnet into their 
school account and use pico or vi to write their programs.  Dow spent a few minutes giving a vi tutorial to one 
of these students.  Sounds like a good topic.

>> One suggestion I received yesterday was that we should make a visual
>> comparison of software packages between Windows and Linux.  That is,
>> actually fire up a windows box and a Linux box and make a step by step
>> comparison of features and functionality.  I think this is a great idea,
>> but it would probably require a number of presenters to step up, since I
>> doubt there's anyone who knows everything about a full install of any
>> distro.

This would be a very good topic (sounds like the one above from Dr. Gayler).  The only reason I still have Win98 
on my laptop is because I have to turn in Visio files for one of my classes.  If only OpenOffice could generate 
those...  I think a comparision of OpenOffice or StarOffice with M$ office would be excellent.  I am sure a lot 
of the students do not realize that they can create, read and edit .doc, .xls and .ppt files with OpenOffice.

This has gotten long enough... thank you to the ALE members that put up with all the newbies last night.

-Greg
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It's a big enough umbrella,
But it's always me that ends up getting wet.
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