[sf-lug] Introduction....

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Samir Faci (samir at esamir.com):

> Caldera 2.4 was pretty awesome.. something about having a pacman game
> during the installation process was pretty slick.

D00d.  Yes, it really was.  FWIW, I actually remember Caldera Network
Desktop 1.0 Preview 2, and had a boxed set of it in my garage for many
years.  (I eventually threw it away, about the same time I threw away
the boxed set of StarOffice 4.x for Linux as repackaged by SuSE.

But yes, the 2.4 installer was very cool.

> 1.  I think Maestory mention something about a list that includes a
> few more lugs in the area?  I'm aware of BerklyTipGlobal, BALUG, and
> SFLUG and i'm sure there's a few more in south bay and easty bay.  I'd
> love to see a list that's .... the ring to bind them all sort of
> thing? an announcement list to all the lugs in the area?

Maestro might have had in mind my BALE Web page,
http://linuxmafia.com/bale/ .  

> 2.  I moved here from Chicago originally, and I was a bit surprised at
> some of the lack of organization for concrete events.

For historical and (arguably) geographic reasons, there is a great deal
of fragmentation among separate efforts.  Most of those efforts are,
very frankly, a shadow of their former selves.  The 2000-ish dot-com
tech. industry depression hit the S.F. Bay Area really hard, and a large
part of the vibrant Linux community here ceased to exist because the
participants either moved out of the area (or country, depending) or
ceased to work in technology at all.  The fallout from the post-2008
financial crisis has been less severe (and less focussed on the tech.
industry), but still pretty dire, and again the Linux community took a
hit, making all of the various individual groups each a lot less strong.

Also, there is a widely felt perception that Linux and open source are
just not new and exciting any more.  Instead, they're infrastructure.
There is a perception that LUGs are a solution to a problem from a
bygone decade, and no longer needed.

> I'm not aware of any Linux themed user conferences

SCALE is by far one of the very best in North America.

FWIW, you've just missed the second April meeting of CABAL, the Linux
user group that meets at my and my wife's house in Menlo Park, just
north of Stanford University.  http://linuxmafia.com/cabal/