Re: [MLUG] MLUG's early history and upcoming 10th anniversary

[Jack Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 13:53 -0500, Ryan Thornton wrote:
> Don't see many new members on the lists... doubtful that linux is too
> mainstream, guess no one was left to push for the group on campus.
> 
> - Ryan

I was an engineering major, so naturally there were quite a few of us in
engineering classes who were computer enthusiasts even though we weren't
in computer engineering or computer science. I would estimate that about
15% of my graduating class ran Linux solely and about half dual-booted,
with about a sixth running Apple computers. The number of people running
Windows solely was a distinct minority. Also, not too many people I have
come across in tech forums online that aren't strict gamers haven't at
least dabbled with a Ubuntu or Knoppix disk at some point, if they don't
dual-boot or run Linux exclusively. 

What really surprised me was the fact that I would occasionally see
*non*-engineering people running Linux on their own laptops. There were
two biology majors sitting in front of me in a biology lecture in
undergrad that were running Ubuntu on their laptops shortly after it
came out. I have also seen people use Linux laptops in the student union
and one guy wearing a KDE T-shirt in the gym. I'm not surprised that
people run Linux for undergrad as there really isn't much you do that
requires a certain OS or program in very many courses of study.

There are also a couple other people in my medical school class that run
Linux exclusively on their laptops in class. That is a different story
than undergrad as we *do* sometimes have to use specific programs (some
administrator probably got a big "donation" from an educational software
vendor for us to try/use their s*it. Yes, much of it is real s*it as it
is terribly slow, buggy and unstable to the point of making Windows Me,
DOS 4.00, and MacOS 8/9 look good by comparison.) The medical school
used to be very much a Microsoft-only shop and is now grudgingly
starting to accept non-MS software being used by the students because so
many people in the class use Macintoshes and are real zealots. About a
third of my class uses Macintoshes and about half of those people
qualify as Apple zealots in my book. The IT guys are charged with
getting the professors' old, hacked-up, OLE-and-VB macro-ridden
documents to work correctly on students' computers as well as getting us
to use the e-learning junk. The last go-round for the e-learning stuff
led to them installing Vista in a VM on a bunch of Macintoshes and
dual-booting the other guy's Linux machine (I made my own VM- they
weren't touching my machine :D ) just to see the project get canceled.
The IT guys also hear a lot of complaining from the Apple crowd that
uses iWork about Office 2007 file formats as well, so I suppose their
tempers are rather short about any non-MS stuff right now. I just keep a
low profile, OxygenOffice's modded version of amd64 OpenOffice that can
work with Office 2007 files, and a VirtualBox VM of the Windows install
originally shipped on my laptop to stay productive and out of the line
of fire of flying chairs.

--Jack


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