[vox-if] How'd it go?

[Christopher James McKenzie]

Replies below:

Alex Mandel wrote:
> Bill Kendrick wrote:
>> So, how did this weekend's IF go!? :)
>>
> Seemed pretty good, although Chris/Seth can give you the numbers. Not a
> huge turnout but decent.

I think I counted about 8 installees and about 4 or 5 installers.  I 
have pictures I'll post this evening.

> I think we learned some lessons, next time we plan to have:
> 1. An Extra hard drive in an machine or external case, for dumping and
> rescuing data.

Agreed.  Seth has an 80GB he'll give.  Either he or I will throw in some 
cash for a USB enclosure.

> -If it's a box we might load one Flavor and have several other common
> flavors running in Qemu to help people choose what they want.

Currently, all installfest hardware and media fits in some samsonite bag 
I found a few years ago.

You would be adding a machine with the assumed responsibility of loading 
on Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, and Mandriva ***whenever there 
is a major update***.  Also, you would need to sync with someone like 
me, who has the installfest media - or you would have to take over that 
also. It is of no use to demo a *version* that you do not actually have.

Furthermore, there is not that much visual difference in between them.

Perpetuity requires sustainability.  Therefore coming up with the lowest 
overhead solution is the best option.

If you are trying to address a problem that I do not see, which is 
"which distribution do I pick?" then I am sure there are plenty of brief 
easy websites that discuss the major ones and what their benefits are.

But really, in my experience there are three people that come to 
installfests

You have

1. The do-it-myselfer.
    Brought the media, starts the install, and basically goes unguided. 
  The stated purpose in coming is the fear that windows may disappear or 
that complications may arise.

2. The fix-me-upper
    You get the email and read it as something like, "Hey, I have an 
Oblogido 5240U wireless network card that supposedly won't have a chance 
to work with Linux and a Dynamite Fire 2500 video card that doesn't run 
X and gives me a kernel panic every time I use seejpeg."

3. The wanderer
    It's the college freshman living in a dorm, that will probably 
uninstall it again in a few months after never using it and finding out 
that they can just go to the lab.  It's the user that has some old 
machine for a family member that they want up and running.

This weekend, we had a wanderer nice enough to stay to help a fix-me-upper.

> --Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva (Open to suggestions)
> ---I'm willing to help set this up if people have hardware to throw in.
> ----I have a case, but the power supply is bad.

Those are easy to come by.

> 2. The latest Helix disc with ntfs-3g (I had 1.7 which has captive-ntfs
> and that didn't quite work)

I've had good luck with captive-ntfs; although I am quite sure that may 
work also.  I recommend knoppix hacks which discusses this, available 
through the lugod library.

> 3. A prebuilt Samba config that works
>  - I have one that I plan to bring which allows any windows user read
> only access to the specified path.

Yeah, I guess that is helpful... :-)

If you are going to bring one, put a dhcp server on it too btw.

IP 192.168.1.200/16
Gateway 192.168.1.254
DNS 169.237.250.250, 169.237.1.250
> 
> Thanks to all who helped, and to the Masters of Installfests Chris & Seth,
> 
> Alex
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