On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 21:19:17 -0400, wrote: > As an instructor for the last 8 years the single biggest complaint I get > from new computer users is what I call, "The Computer Guy Syndrome" [...] > This is why I cancelled my original plans to attend Install Fest. I'm sorry you decided that an Installfest doesn't provide any solutions for you without attending one. I think that CompUSA and the volunteer Linux community of Phoenix can bennefit greatly from a relationship. Every business relationship I've seen starts with a meeting of the heads of both organizations where they talk about what each business does and then talk about what kind of relationship they'd like to prusue, and ends with a contract outlining the details of that relationship. I think the same should happen with the local CompUSA's and PLUG. Only the details in the end would be different, especially when it comes to accountability, as PLUG is completely voluteer (not non-profit). Just like the previous repliers have explained, the Installfests are trying to substitute for the role of CompUSA's assemblers and software installers. Your customers usually never see who assembles their computer or installs WinXP. They then take it home, and either learn it by themselves or have a paid reciept and a date for their first CompUSA class. No such assembler/installer thing exists in the Linux world. LUG Installfests try to accomplish this in a strictly volunteer basis. Right now, PLUG's Installfests are a bit rough around the edges. Five months ago, we had them once every six months, with lots of lectures and prizes, but lots of dissapointed "customers". Many thought it would better serve the community to have monthly, smaller installfests, to have a reliable place in addition to the mailing list to come for help. It's worked, but it's not very gentle for people completely new to Linux or computers in general, and that's our highest priority right now. We want to broadcast Installfests to every corporation and have them believe PLUG Installfests are a reliable place to get a new install for a person to play with. We're not quite ready for that, but we want to be very soon. Could Installfest be a free class / training ground as well? Perhaps. I think it's a very good venue and time slot. We have the rooms, we have the people, just not the planning or system to provide it. It's been discussed, but this will come after we have a good reliable Installfest process. > I have purchased enough books on various versions of Linux to rebuild > the Berlin Wall. Remember where Linux comes from. Pre '93, you only got what was considered the best OS for real computing needs if you paid five figures or more for hardware and software from proprietary UNIXen. From '93 to '95, You only got Linux if you were helping to build the kernel. From '95 to '99, you may have needed to write your own kernel patch, device drivers for cards found in your system that the hardware vendors (almost always) didn't supply or another volunteer coder hadn't yet reverse-engineered and coded, and barring that you still needed advanded knowledge so you knew what to do if your window manager didn't work or your hard drive didn't partition correctly. Today, we're actually having debates over whether Linux is ready for Aunt Tillie's desktop, and I believe that now since the debates on both sides of the fence are valid, it's just about ready. But the only big vendor that is commercially supplying free Unix desktops to the general public is Apple. LUG Installfests have always tried to bridge that gap between a mess of computer parts and a working system for those who don't know how to do so themselves, and it's a big one, so forgive us if right now it's only full of advanced computer users. Books just don't work with something like what Linux was pre-2001. Nothing can substitute for burrowing into the system with your own bare hands and seeing what it does. > As I am face to face with thousands of students each year and a rapidly > growing number of them are inquiring about the Linux world I must ask, > where do I send these people? I say, if you can answer the question with, "go to CompUSA's Linux series", and actually make it happen profitably, then you'd be on the board of directors at CompUSA corporate in about six months. No body is doing it. Frustrated computer geeks have been trying to figure out how to do it, and used blog pulpits, legal research and sabatoge of the patent system, barking into the ear of their bosses and boss's bosses, to no avail, all the while paranoically watching every patent wondering when M$ will patent atomic bonding of all materials and lobby congress to collect royalties on movement of all electrons. I think it finally took a superbowl commercial to turn the tide, and believe me every "average" geek was surprised to see that ad. > I had hoped to offer courses to get them started yet even I am hitting > obstacles that my years of computer background are not affording me > passage to. My "years" of computer experience (from 1992, my freshman year at UNLV) started with an Athena-project type programming environment, with Spark, DEC, NeXT, and Silicon Graphics computers, all running UNIX, all networked together with a network file system for all user's home directories. The teacher didn't even explain to me any of this stuff, he just said log in, start your editor by typing "emacs helloworld.f77 &", then when you're done writing compile with "f77 helloworld.f77" and run your program with "./a.out". I could hop from computer to computer, didn't matter which one or even which brand, and this just worked. Later that semester I discovered e-mail, usenet groups, and the instant messaging system on my campus, Zephyr. I started my day by picking any one of those computers in the room, logging in, typing "rwho" at the prompt to see who else was on, Zephyring hellos, checking e-mail, then listing my home directory to remember what I was supposed to be doing that day, and starting programming. For me to let go of this and go to the public Mac lab or the engineer's PC lab was extremely alien. I couldn't do anything, not because I didn't know how, but because the machines _couldn't_. So I ignored the toys in those other labs, and did my real work in UNIX. When Visual Basic came out, I had four years of serious computer science and programming experience behind me. I tried VB, and got fed up quickly. A thing which did not consist of a bunch of text files, that you could not tarball and give to your friends to compile, that you could not execute over a network just wasn't a real computer thing. I ignored it. I worked at the Mirage Hotel taking room reservations, and even got calls there to be transfered to IT responding to job req's for VB programmers. I dismissed the lot as misguided. I'm still doing so today. Point being, Shadex, your experience set and our experience set is radically different. You personally can not make up for that in a reasonable time, but you can find other like-minded people with Linux experience who can do the job. Find people with years of UNIX system administration experience who can assemble Linux systems, train them until they are assembling systems for Aunt Tillie, and sell them. Then find people who can teach Linux effectively, train them to teach to Aunt Tillie, and offer the classes. Make sure the lot is doing things effectively, and doing so flawlessly. Do this, and not only will there not be a need for Installfests, but everyone volunteering as installers at Installfests will be elated beyond any narcotic's capabilities. -- --Alexander --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss