[ale] My iBook

[Michael Hirsch]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:27:01 -0500, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-02-15 at 15:10 -0500, Michael Hirsch wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 14:43:50 -0500, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Issues like this make me think there is a need for a polishing-fest or
> > > a nextstep-fest.  Clearly there are a lot of people who are jaded with
> > > just the everyday installed version of Linux.  I've never been to one of
> > > the install-fests, i'd certainly participate in one of the
> > > polishing-fests.  Any takers?  Is there a room somewhere?  Bueller?
> >
> > It's not clear to me what you are suggesting.  What is a
> > "polishing-fest"?  What would happen there?  I suspect I would be
> > interested if I knew what it was.
> 
> A session to assist users with post-install issues, customizations, and
> demonstrate addons for increased productivity and/or performance.  For
> instance, on my laptop I had to recompile my kernel w/ SpeedStep support
> to enable CPUFreqd to work.  This more than doubled my on-battery time.
> I used OSS but then had to switch to ALSA so that Skype would work (via
> the alsa-oss support no less).  I access Oracle systems some for work,
> well Oracle doesn't install well on Debian.  Yet assisting someone in
> getting Oracle client tools installed could be the difference between
> them giving up on Linux or moving forward.  Evolution integration w/ MS
> Exchange, Cisco VPN, VMWare (with custom MAC address so that Mimic will
> work when eth0 is down ;-).  X.org/XFree86 configs, boot-up logos,
> Crossover Office, etc.  The list goes on.  All those issues that
> frustrate people and keep them feeling behind.

Usually there are aspects of that at the installfests.  Most come just
to get hand holding during an install, but many come with specific
problems in mind to solve.  It would be interesting to have one
devoted to only polishing.  I wonder if we would get the same kind of
interest.  I'd probably come.

Michael