[linux] history of uwlug?

[Michael Hornung]

Before 1999 there was no email list that students were encouraged to use
for linux discussion, though there was a UNIX support list for UW staff.
People who knew about it used the NNTP group uwash.linux.  The linux list
started in December 1998 as a listproc named "linux-l"; not the best of
names, I know.

Like Jen mentioned, see:

http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/linux/1999-February/000000.html

There was an SAO official "club" with an account called "linuxug".  I
don't know off-hand if that's still around and used by anyone.

I was an early officer for the club when I was a student.  Now I'm just an
observer who's learned to self-support mostly via Google and man pages.

There have been meetings over the years, some better than others.  The
club once worked to have RedHat come do a thing at the HUB, which was
pretty neat.  As one of the original club officers I once got a stuffed
HelixCode monkey; probably the highlight of my tenure as club VP.  Now it
sits on a shelf in my office next to the Brick of Ages.

-Mike

On Thu, 6 Apr 2006 at 17:46, Michael Frank wrote:

|On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 08:11 +0900, Evan Martin wrote:
|> I feel like I ought to be making some grandpa "when I was your age"
|> speech...  :)
|>
|> It surprises me a little how dead this list was; back when I was in
|> the CS department at least we had a pretty active and vocal group of
|> Linux users.  I wonder if that's declined, or if they've just moved
|> off to their own lists.
|
|I wonder about the impact of web-based forums.. i remember Gentoo's
|user-base popularizing the format as a means for technical help 4 or so
|years ago, and more recently the ubuntu forums are quite popular.  Most
|user problems these days seem to be framed as distro-specific too (i.e.
|'how do i get my nvidia card working on distro X'), although i say this
|without a shred of actual evidence.
|
|Or perhaps linux has just reached a state of divine perfection.
|
|On a side note, does anyone know when exactly this list (and uwlug) was
|created, and by whom?  Does he/she/they still lurk on the list?  My
|guess is rlotz had something to do with it, but I've only been around
|here since 2000.
|
|Michael
|
|--
|                                      .~.
|Michael Frank                         /v\
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