Meeting Notes for 20030116

[Travis Saling]

While it might rankle some people on this list, if we're going to ask 
people to sign a waiver I think it might also be a good idea to (at 
least to some degree) ensure that some sort of standard procedure is 
developed prior to the install-fest, and make sure that the volunteer 
installers are following it.  Of the Linux-ers that I know most all are 
knowledgeable, but while some think things through and are careful, 
others fly by the seat of their pants.  This is fine for the personal 
system of a knowledgeable Linux person (some of whom like nothing better 
than to spend hour upon hour tweaking and debugging), but of course most 
people taking advantage of this service will not fall into this category.

Basically, it seems like the goal should be providing a system that 
"just works" - if the user wants to play around with it after that, let 
them be the ones to break it.  :-)  But give them a working system with 
a decent package manager (no slackware for newbies in other words) and 
probably either Gnome 2 or KDE 3.  Maybe later on people can offer 
sessions on "The Wonder that is Emacs", "Why all GUIs are Evil", "Why 
RedHat is Evil" and perhaps even "1337 h4><0r sp43k" (whoever corrects 
my mistakes there can teach it).

-- 
Travis Saling
Webmaster, UW Electrical Engineering
trav at u.washington.edu / webmaster at ee.washington.edu
(206) 543-8984