The PLUG Advocacy roadshow (was Re: X on Dell Inspiron 7000 notebook)

[Bob George]

Just a quick follow-up on the help this group gave me in getting X running
on my Dell Inspiron. After successfully getting everything working nicely, I
was able to take the Inspiron on the road for what turned out to be an
advocacy tour of sorts.

On the flight out to Minneapolis/St. Paul, I just so happened to start
talking to the guy sitting next to me, and found out he was wondering how to
go about learning shell scripting (csh) to automate some diagnostic routines
(he's a tech working for a test equipment manufacturer). I mentioned Linux,
and he'd heard of it, but wasn't sure it was really what he needed. It was
pretty slick being able to pull out the Dell and show him, if only briefly.

On another flight, I pulled out my Palm and started entering stuff when the
guy next to me whipped out his Cassiopeia E-100 and started telling me how
much better it was with Windows CE. When I pulled out my Dell, he whipped
out a sleek IBM ThinkPad and chimed out how monstrous my notebook was in
comparison. As he booted into Windows, I fired up Linux, and he finally shut
the hell up!

Finally, at my destination I fired up Linux to do some testing of host
security. The system admin (DEC Unix) is an earnest guy, but has suffered
from the usual lack of exposure to things other than what's shipped with his
system. He knew about things like wrappers, shutting down services, sniffing
and such, but didn't really kow how to go about checking things out. A quick
run with nmap enough to convince him that powerful tools are readily
available to help. Running Ethereal as he logged in via telnet also helped
him see the need for prudent security as well -- he was amazed at how easily
his root password was scooped up.

Penguin Backup for the Palm (a single-diskette, Linux-based backup) proved
to be interesting to a couple of folks as well.

Sinck,  Michael Farrar and Patrick Stoddard -- you guys helped gain at least
a couple of new out-of-state Linux fans. Thanks guys! It's great being able
to demonstrate some of the things I've only been able to run when chained to
a desktop in the past.

- Bob