Slashdot Log In
Is the LUG a thing of the past?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jul 23, 2007 09:40 AM
from the where-else-do-you-get-cds dept.
from the where-else-do-you-get-cds dept.
tinahdee writes "Linux User Groups dying out? LUG leaders report that attendance is down — but mailing list traffic is still good. Do we still need LUGs, given the ease of installation and ubiquitousness of online information about Linux? Lots of people say, yes, we still need LUGs (and some disagree)."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:2, Funny)
local forms yes, (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't get out much, do you? Now, I've never been part of a LUG, but I can tell you that meeting people face-to-face is oftentimes a lot more productive than exchanging e-mails or even in IRC or IM. Plus, it's about the networking. I've met many people in my life who have became good friends, and some have given me excellent job leads, through other groups I've been involved with (other t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:local forms yes, (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't need to meet up in shopping malls to trade 1.44M discs.
That may be true, but the advantage of a LUG is that your attention is focussed on that one topic - Linux, Open Source, Freedom to Tinker, News things happening, Meeting Real people... the last point being a very important factor.
People make presentations about their offerings, and offer Services for a fee; we get to talk about local and topical issues.. like the impact of Vista on the local IT and user companies; tips and tricks used by Sysadmins etc. etc. Emails, mailing lists etc. are a very poor substi
Re: (Score:2)
That may be true, but the advantage of a LUG is that your attention is focussed on that one topic - Linux, Open Source, Freedom to Tinker, News things happening, Meeting Real people... the last point being a very important factor.
Real people? Do you mean that people I talk with on the Net are all.. Bots? Droids?
Seriously, stop the "real people vs Teh Internet" FUD. The internet is made of the very real people talking on it. What we communicate doesn't change a lot if we communicate it using voice or us
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure they'd still attract plenty of lonely geeks from Mom's Basement at an open meeting though...
Enterprise Linux Users Groups expanding... (Score:2)
There's been a movement lately to create ELUGs - Enterprise Linux User Groups. I know the one I'm involved with in my city just had a long discussion about creating an enterprise group. The problem is one of need. Users need very different things then those of us involved in day-to-day management of an enterprise Linux base.
I know I for one enjoyed being in the different LUGs I was in, but I gave more then I got for
LUG Catch-22? (Score:2)
Second life for LUGs? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly.
LUGs don't fill the same role they used to. I remember, back in the day, the only way I could get my hands on install disks was from the local LUG. Someone there worked someplace with a fat (for the time) pipe and was able to download the software off the 'net. I'd give him a box of blank disks, a
No (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
LUGs not just for information (Score:5, Insightful)
It also never hurts to brush up on inter-personal skills at the same time.
Re:LUGs not just for information (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
LUGs are useful still (Score:2)
What a horrible mess. I was on #linuxhelp on freenode.net and those guys just ignored this noob who waited and asked twice about this in several minutes, he had all kinds of details on what was going wrong. I told him to use the "system-config-display" command and voila, problem solved. Everyone else sent him on a wild goose chase.
I've not seen that kind of incompetence or snobbery in a local LUG.
Instead of LUGS we need... (Score:5, Funny)
...consultants. Time for Ubuntu to move into the enterprise.
Yes, indeed! (Score:3, Insightful)
And people still need to meet each other for brinstorming, experience exchanges and, of course, a good cup of your favourite beverage!
Try doing this on a mailing list!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Brainstorming: Pose a problem and everyone can (after thinking a bit) post a possible attack on the problem. Unlike in-person brainstorming sessions, not everyone has to be there at the same time and everyone can have time to think a bit before screaming answers.
Experience exchanges: As with brainstorming, there's time to think and answer, and no req
Re: (Score:2)
Try to find instantaneously what someone said last Wednesday at the LUG while chewing that pizza, instead.
The user group as a community service organization (Score:3, Informative)
Meeting face-to-face is also how conduct our even
I left when I got married. (Score:4, Funny)
College Intern (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you get a gf, your tech progress stops, and you will be at that level for the rest of your life. Just make sure it is high enough to earn a living. Yeah, I could have been an uber-geek, but I traded it all away for some sex. *wink*
Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I live in a small town (10,000) with very rural surroundings, the group I go to consists of about 10 people that show up at any given meeting. It's a small group, but of a high quality, we usually pass around ideas for projects, things we're doing at work etc. For me, it's kinda like having a computer club after getting out of school, I think windows users are missing out.
We need LUGs (Score:3, Insightful)
LUG is not only about solving or troubleshooting other user's Linux problems, but also about knowing and meeting with people who share the same mindset(mostly). Email is good but effectively in person conversation prevails over emails.
Definitely its not the end of LUGs, but we need more awareness among people and students alike about LUGs. The FOSS
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Now though, I can afford to buy normal hardware, and the stuff I have is all standardized enough that I'm not looking for help guessing the right X config settings for my particular vid card.
Attendance at LUGs being down may actually be indicative of less hand-holding being needed for
It depends on what you get from LUG meetings (Score:5, Interesting)
If you go there to pick up chicks... uh no.
Some people, I have seen, take their LUGs very seriously... they attend them as if they were attending church! For those people, it's a traditionally religious experience... in the most literal sense possible. (inside joke)
I find most of these LUGs to be rather annoying. The ones that are little more than an excuse to get out of the house on a Saturday are pretty good though... burgers 'n beer are always good and a LUG is as good a reason as any.
This is the year of Desktop Linux right? (Score:2, Funny)
LUG... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LUG... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
LUGs, Before the Advent of Wiki and Cheap Server (Score:4, Informative)
Hell no, but needs broader focus (Score:2)
LUG's are definitely still important! (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the things that our LUG has been doing forever is inviting our members to do presentations on things their working on or give talks in areas of their interest/expertise. These presentations have run the gambit from WiFi Security to modeling objects with PovRay to FUSE. We've have distribution comparisions (with proponents for each distribution explaining the pros/cons).
What's cool about a LUG is that your likely to have people who are experts in extremely diverse areas who are all Linux nerds getting together and hanging out.
It's not everyday you get to see a hardware engineer, an English teacher, a chiropractor and a pharamcologist comparing notes on what's the best window manager!
Lugs are good (Score:5, Informative)
LUG as social group (Score:2)
They can be helpful, but... (Score:2)
I speak from bitter experience. When I first encountered our local LUG, they were willing and able to help me get Mandrake loaded on an old laptop machine... and one of them was willing to let me -- some nobody that they'd just met that night -- take home a PCMCIA-connected portable CD-ROM drive, because once things were finally set up, it was closing time at the library.
Unfortunately, my schedule was such that I
BaltoLUG vs BaltoMSDN my observations (Score:2)
The BaltoLUG community has been great for helping me figure out newbie questions regarding Linux, but more often than not the topics were not applicable to my job or even hobby interest. It almost seemed as if there was too much diversity in interests; and overall very little emphasi
Ubiquitousness? (Score:2)
Link doesn't work! (Score:2)
Apparently that didn't stop all the above people
from posting...
LUGs (Score:3, Interesting)
The interesting thing is that I see a lot more Linux usage in corporate environments than ever before. There are lots of requests for administration and setup from SMBs, and in my 9-to-5 corporate IT employer, there are Linux servers running production loads.
Running Linux is no big deal anymore, so has lost some of its attraction. But I noticed the Mac groups have had a resurgence.. Maybe it's in cycles.. I was in a Mac user group a long time ago (about the time of the Centris and Quadra machines), and they faded for a while, but came back. With the Dell offerings, more corporate deployments, "good enough" improvements of Linux in corporate loads, etc.., I think the groups will grow again. The demographics will be different, but people will come.
Plus the Internet has made the community a lot larger. Before it was hard to find like-minded folks.
LUGs: as Bad as Mensa (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean this was at a world class research university (caltech) and when I had trouble getting X to compile I would ask the guy down the hall who would then execute some totally crazy command line using four pipes awk and sed which magically fixed the problem. But instead of being the experts the people at the LUG where the linux equivalents of old school Mac users, trading little tips without any real knowledge. I liked the idea of a LUG but only if it has presentations of the sort of shit on kerneltrap and it's the best users not the worst who attend.
Basically I got the sense that LUGs ware a lot like groups like MENSA (supposedly for smart people). Namely that the best people (most knowledgeable, most savy, smartest) weren't going to come because they were all in universities, or working at tech corporations that provided them with more than enough technological/intellectual stimulation. In the beginning it might have been different but once linux adoption was wide enough in academia and the business world it seems inevitable that LUGs would sink to the lowest common denominator.
Maybe the proximity of caltech really biased my experience and LUGs in other areas are different but somehow I think the internet has worked as a great leveler giving the experts even in the most rural places better options and leaving for LUGs people who can't decipher the man pages
Re: (Score:2)
Just yesterday I formed Manchester Free Software [fsuk.org] for the people of Manchester, UK.
Linux kernel really isn't it all, but sadly, certainly individuals in the local 'LUG', are unwilling to discuss issues of software freedom, so a new group seemed useful.
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds like a joke, but it's not really. At first I thought you meant insurance or something, but now I realize that's not the case. I can only assume you mean it's like a fanclub for... automobiles.
I've driven a car for half my life and never heard of such a thing. I mean, there's the people that have classic cars and travel to different 'shows' to show them off, but I've always heard them called clubs, not associations, and I've