Re: [LUG] Life ?? (longish reply)

[John Horne <J.Horne at plymouth.ac.uk>]

On 15-Apr-00 at 00:09:02 Jon Still wrote:
> Yes, there is life out there!
> 
> Bear in mind that a lot of us are students and it's the Easter hols at the
> mo.  Plus projectwork, exams, etc.
> 
Bear in mind that some of us are (non-academic) staff and it's the Easter
hols at the mo...and hence a busy time. It is not always realised that for
the support staff at the Uni hols are usually a busy time - Summer hols
especially. With few staff/student problems - since they're all away doing
whatever else - it gives us time to modify/change/upgrade things. We can't do
it during term-time (could get flamed for this I guess...:-) ), so the hols
are used. At present one task I have is planning the changes we need to make
during the Summer break to some of the central servers - could be a very
busy time :-(

I think perhaps what needs to be asked is 'What do I (you) want from the
mailing list?' And in that respect I could throw the question back to the
original poster and ask what sort of 'life' are they expecting from the list?

For me I am happy with the list as it is, I currently belong to about 24
mailing lists; some are active - 100+ messages per day, others like this one
tend to show a flurry of activity when something is asked, at other times it
is quiet. Most of the lists are work related and thus I tend to read most of
the messages - very time consuming. When I get time I read newsgroups as
well but prefer mailing lists.

I also belong to the Bath/Bristol lug and I wouldn't call that one 'active'
either - it has a bit more activity but that is probably due to more
members. Again, it goes quiet until something is asked.

Okay, so what do I want from the list? There are probably 3 main reasons for
my 'using' a mailing list - (1) opinions - what do others think about
something not yet happened (see below re linux future); (2) advice - if you
want an actual question then do others think in implementing a secure
software mechanism that perhaps Kerberos is the way to go? With the relaxing
of the US export laws, and the fact that RH6.2 (I gather) comes with Kerberos
support, as does Sun Solaris and I gather MS Windows 2000 has 'a version' of
it as well, then perhaps Kerberos would be better than ssh, rsync, stunnel,
etc. since we use all those types of O/S? (3) information - pure and simple
(sometimes) questions - e.g. 'how do I get this damn computer to show me
todays date?'. Real example was a short while ago when someone pointed out
the 'locate' command to me. Didn't know about that one, but has been useful
since.

I use all three in trying to sort out problems. The problems themselves are
usually work related, and in that respect not always asked on Linux lists -
I use linux at work on my own PC but it is only little used as part of the
University's central services ( - in only one part at present). I am (sort
of and partly) employed to resolve problems, and hence always try and sort
them out myself first. Mailing lists are used when I am really stumped, but
that doesn't always mean they are hard questions! Usually they just require
advice or info from someone with more experience :-)

I could ask more questions on the list but they are not always relevant to
Linux - I work with Sun Solaris mainly. Secondly they are specific questions
and do not always get an answer simply because they are too specific.

> Get-together - sounds good.  Beer gets my vote - a nice little social
> occasion once everyone's calmed down a bit from work pressures!
> 
Could be argued as a fourth reason for a list :-) I'd agree that dclug is
(obviously) more local than some of the lists I'm on. Got offered an
interview in California some time ago now because of something I wrote in a
(USA) mailing list - a young company, recruiting people and they thought I
showed a certain aptitude to problem solving that they liked. So lists -
local or not - can have unexpected spin-offs :-)

> Anyway - to get some traffic going - what kind of direction do people see
> Linux going in?  It's earnt it's respect with the server market - will it
> ever breach the windows/mac desktop market?
> 
A question that pops up every now and then - a good question though. I think
I'd have to say marketing and support are the two areas I'd look at. Linux
seems to have little public marketing; it has it in the Computing press but
not (as far as I can tell) much outside. To get on the desktop
generally requires Joe public seeing it being marketed - obviously
something that Microsoft are good at. Secondly support, because one of the
first things I'm usually asked by management about hardware and software is
the support we have for it. With linux at present my support is through
mailing lists and anything I can fix myself. Redhat and others have already
made moves in the corporate support direction, and I believe LinuxIT in
Bath/Bristol offer linux support. If this takes off okay then the support
issue may become resolved.

Needless to say to achieve desktop status, I think, requires continued
development and probably in particular of the X window system - KDE/gnome,
etc. Joe public seems to like the pointy-clicky interface. I do myself :-)
On the other hand, linux is also for those who prefer a pure command-line
interface - no problem with that and I can't deny that when the X window
stuff craps out then the command-line comes into its own to sort out the
problem. This is a plus; push it; market it.

> On another note - what do people feel about the current drops in the
> NASDAQ (and other stock markets) due to the mass selling of shares (due to
> the inability of the public to distinguish between "dotcoms" and *real*
> tech. companies (e.g. Cisco, MS, Oracle, etc)).
>
Not so sure about this. I haven't really been following the news/press about
this, but I guess if it makes people think and start to ask questions and
perhaps to realise that there is more to IT than Microsoft, then its a good
thing. Simple, and probably naive, answer.

Enough said.

John.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK             Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: jhorne at plymouth.ac.uk
Finger for PGP key: john at jhorne.csd.plymouth.ac.uk
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