Installfest has been /.'d

[bob at sinister.com (Bob Keyes)]

On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Derek Martin wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 09:20:40PM -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
> > > is there a signup page for volunteers? Or is it just "come and bring the
> > > distro of your choice" ?
> >
> > Johannes,
> >
> > We've had some discussions about deciding on a "standard" distro for
> > installfests, but I don't think we decided on one.
> >
> > I'd like to limit it to two or three: it used to be RedHat and Suse by
> > default, but now RedHat is out, so I invite debate over
> > whether we'll push a "standard" distro or not, and if so, which one.
>
> It seems ironic that these installfests take place on the very campus
> where the GNU project and the FSF came to be, yet their "home team"
> distro should not be on the list.  I have no great love for debian
> personally, but many people do, and it's sort of relevant to MIT...

The problem is, that Linux started for geeks (for lack of a better term)
and the appeal and neccessity has spread to others. So how to deicde
between the more 'user friendly', hardware chauvinist distributions, and
those that are more focused on the user experience.

My opinion is that the end result is dependant on the number and
affectiveness of the proponents of an operating system, therefore it
is important for a representative number of various OSs to be present.


> Of course, I'm half-way across the world, and extremely unlikely to
> attend, so I guess my opinion doesn't count for much...  ;-)

In general, you opinion does count, though I wonder what (other that a
slashdot article) may have brought  you so far from home to such a
regional list.