PLUG Inaugural Linux InstallFest

Penang, Thursday: On the evening of June 24, the Linux scene in Penang changed forever. This is due to PLUG, the brand new Penang Linux User Group, has commenced their activities with a traditional Linux installfest.

PLUG is started with nothing big or fancy in mind by two Linux loonies (none other than Squidster and Vortman) who are in Penang for a project. It was just something to do during the weekend... (or so they thought).

Activities

First off, participation was much better than planned. It was estimated only three people would bring their PCs for the installfest. But lo and behold the last count was three PCs (two Pentiums and a 486) and three notebooks.

Started off with some introduction of all the members, which included a pre-school kid (who was pretty excited when he saw xflame running on Window Maker).

Membership is pretty diverse, ranging from professional developers to a student to customer support engineers. The evening started off with Pizza and Coke of course! Nobody has a Linux installfest without these two important ingredients!

After the members were sufficiently powered up (by Pizza and Coke), they enthusiastically dived into the actual install. Note that out of the eight members (Squidster and Vortman NOT included), only one had installed Linux before, so everybody is a newbie. With only two CDs of Redhat 6.0 and three "experienced" Linuxer, it was pretty frantic/hectic.

The whole affair was interspersed with short tutorials on Unix/Linux theory; e.g. sizing of swap partition, the Unix "everything is a file" philosophy, etc. The attendees asked a lot of questions and were very enthusiastic. Most of the questions alluded to typically, "yeah..but can it run/do foo", "that's cool, but does it work with bar", those kind of questions.

At the end of the evening two PCs and all the three notebooks were successfully installed with RH6.0. But the owners of these machines were sufficiently excited to reinstall the whole thing again by themselves. In fact this was encouraged!

Plans

Current plans include setting up an external website for PLUG stuff, ramping up members' Linux knowledge, and my favorite PLUG T-Shirt project! We hope to solicit corporate sponsorship as we go along... (hint! hint!)

Date: 24 June 1999
Main story by Squidster.
Photos by Squidster as well except the one where he's in it,
in which case it's by Vortman.