ALE organization info

[Eric Zundel Ayers]

Okay, so now that we've decided to form Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts, we need to 
come up with some things to meet and talk about.  Let me just throw some
ideas at you.

-----------------------

I'd love to have part of every meeting devoted to general BS, and a
question and answer session.  

I would like to propose that we meet only once or twice a quarter
(That's once or twice every 3 months for those of you not in school at GT),
because I'd really like for the talks to be well done, and not have
people feel pressured to have to throw something together once a month.
I don't want the time commitment to be too great.  Maybe bi-monthly?  

Vernard told me he'd like to give a talk to people at Georgia Tech
interested in Linux about Internet connectivity from Linux boxes (over
phone lines I assume.)  A sort of comparison of the different methods and
packages available for connecting, and an overview of Internet
networking in general.  This sounds really neat to me!  Maybe other Linux
Enthusiasts from Atlanta will coincidently drop by?  Maybe this will
just happen to coencide with an ALE orgainizational meeting?  It's
statistically possible...

I'm all for a pizza and beer thing before/after/during meetings of ALE.
If we do it during, we can't have beer, of course (assuming we hold
meetings at Tech.) Possibly a big meeting every few months with a
speaker and all, and then a less formal meeting at some kind of hangout
place (I was thinking of something like Manuel's Tavern...) If there is
a large under 21 constituency, we'll trash this idea... Any suggestions? 



Here are some other potential meeting topics.  Please step forward if
you'd like to speak on a topic!  (I know a little bit about most of these
topics, but not most about any :)   Maybe several people can present as a
team. 

   Working with Linux Serial Ports
      Adding dumb-terminals, printers, networking over serial ports
      intelligent serial ports
      Terminal programs (seyon, minicom, ...)
      (I wonder who might give this talk?)


   Using CD-ROM's under Linux:
      configuration (this stuff is chaning all the time)
      SCSI, vs propietary card vs IDE vs EIDE
      Comparing the different CD-ROM distributions
      Performance
      Playing Audio CD's
      
   Sound Cards under Linux:
      configuration (this stuff is chaning all the time)
      sound combo cards (i.e. soundblaster with a CD-Rom, SCSI, and ear
         cleaner on board.)       

   Combining Linux and other OS's
      SCO binary compatiblity issues (Word Perfect under Linux!?!)
      COFF & ELF binary compatibility packages
      WINE
      Sharing swap space between Windows and Linux (I've read the
        mini-howto, but it seemed like a difficult thing)
      dos-emu
      
   Bleeding Edge Kernel Research
      Linux on architectures other than intel x86
      Microkernel Linux
      kernel threads under Linux
      Real Time Linux
      (I'm pretty sure there is research in all these areas)

   Filesystem stuff
      Some general info on Unix filesystems (to answer questions like why is
       fsck necessary?) 
      Cleaning up and recovering a file system (What do all the errors mean?)
      History of Linux and other Unix Filesystems
      User FS
      Practical stuff like good ways to parition disks and what all those funny
        errors under fdisk mean.
      Linux File System Standards

   'Porting' to Linux
      Rules of thumb for getting packages to compile
      What ioctl's to use in place of Sun, or whatever
      POSIX
      comparing libraries available to other unices
      Getting Imakefiles and Makefiles to work...

  
   General Interest stuff
      How to upgrade your  [kernel | Xdistribution | libraries | 
                            compiler | device drivers ]
      Cross compiling
      SCSI and Linux
      Cool hardware (tape drives, optical disks...)
      setting up term (maybe Vernard will cover this)
      Other free OS projects (Mach, GNU Hurd, *BSD family)
      ..(you name it)..
      

Let's adopt this position:  The group won't expect the speaker to
be an 'expert' on the subject you agree to speak on, but you should do a fair
amt. of research on the subject before the meeting...  So if you've (for
example) played around with a few soundcards and know other folks who have as
well, you could go around and ask them what kinds of problems they've had, get
the lowdown on how to configure the different types,  try to get different apps
that use sound to work on your system, how to setup to play .au files, 
maybe read comp.os.linux.develop for a while and look for sound related stuff.


We don't have to resolve all of this on the mailing list.  Maybe other folks
want to meet more often than some of us weary old graduate students.  We can
decide on issues like leadership and orgainization at our first meeting.  Do we
need dues? (I hope not)  

Once we decide on the first place and time, someone needs to get the word out:
Computer Currents, comp.os.linux.announce, atl.general newsgroup,
git.unix.linux, and any other resources  (Is there a list of Linux user's
groups archived? Anyone keen on the local BBS scene?) 


If you want, reply to this by posting to the ale at cc.gatech.edu mailing
list, or e-mail to me and I will digest!

Thanks,
-Eric.