[ale] How old is this list?

[jonhall80 at comcast.net]

The Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts were a group of mostly university students who loved (GNU).  There are still web pages existent at ale.org that tell much of the history.

The group founded in December of 1994, and in those days the first thing you did was form a mailing list, so I would assume that this list or something deeply connected to it started at that time.

The Atlanta Linux Showcase started in 1996.  If I remember correctly it was held on the Georgia Tech Campus the first year, at the Apparel Mart downtown in 1998, The Cobb Galleria in 1999 and 2000.

In 2001 the original organizers had all graduated and were busy with jobs, buying houses, etc. and the USENIX organization took it over.

USENIX made four gigantic mistakes:

o they renamed it to the Annual Linux Showcase
o they moved it to Oakland, California in November, 2001
o they tried to take a free (as in beer) event and charge 350 dollars for it
o they allowed Osama Bin-Laden to crash airplanes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001

When USENIX had not sold a single reservation within three weeks of the event, I convinced them to make it free and about 300-400 people showed up, but USENIX never produced another Linux only show.

The ale.org web site is still there, with just a few 404s.   If you want to see what the original events were like there are even some pictures.

It is nice that the mailing list is still active.   The Linux group that I started in 1994 and ran for ten years also has a mailing list, but it is much less active than yours.

Congratulations to Tod for thinking about retiring....I still have too much fun and I will retire with my mouse still clutched in my cold, dead hands.

Peace and love,

maddog






>     On 02/02/2021 10:50 AM Paul Manno via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>      
>      
>     There are probably still some of us lurking here who were around when the list was first
>     created and who helped create those Atlanta Linux Showcase shows. In either case, I am 
>     not going to even try to think about when I started using either Linux or UNIX...  LoL
>      
> 
>     On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 9:59 AM Larry Johnson via Ale < ale at ale.org mailto:ale at ale.org > wrote:
> 
>         > > My memory isn't great as I'm about to turn 70, but I first installed
> >         Linux in early 1995, and seem to remember signing up for the list not
> >         long thereafter.
> > 
> >         Which means I might have been a lurker for around 25 years.
> > 
> >         On 2/2/21 8:47 AM, Robert Reese via Ale wrote:
> >         > Hi Tod,
> >         >
> >         > Monday, February 1, 2021, 12:19:30 PM, you wrote:
> >         >
> >         >> Am I misremembering? Because I think I got on this list when I was in grad school which would have been in the mid-late 90s. The reason I'm asking is that I am thinking of retiring. I was a really old grad student and now I'm retiring early. Even so. Is it possible I've been on this list my entire professional career?
> >         > I'd say it's entirely possible. I joined in the late 90's also.
> >         >
> >         > Cheers,
> >         > Robert Reese~
> >         >
> >         >
> >         >> _______________________________________________
> >         >> Ale mailing list
> >         >> Ale at ale.org mailto:Ale at ale.org
> >         >> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         >> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >         >
> >         >
> >         >
> >         >
> >         > Cheers,
> >         > Robert~
> >         >
> >         > _______________________________________________
> >         > Ale mailing list
> >         > Ale at ale.org mailto:Ale at ale.org
> >         > https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >         _______________________________________________
> >         Ale mailing list
> >         Ale at ale.org mailto:Ale at ale.org
> >         https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> > 
> >     >     _______________________________________________
>     Ale mailing list
>     Ale at ale.org
>     https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>     See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>     http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20210202/75a8f3de/attachment.html>