Linux User Groups

I've found that the time of LUG's seems to be about over. Maybe that was the goal all along? Get Linux to the state where we don't need support forums or installfests..

The LUG in my area pretty much just holds get togethers and parties. Sometimes they'll pull in an interesting speaker, but even now it's becoming hard to find someone with general appeal. It has quickly turned into a "general user" presentation or a slideshow and demonstration about something very in-depth system administration-y. I find those two groups get a little bored by the other.

I was tumbling through some records today where the LUG ordered a box of 500 floppy disks to image Slackware 2 media onto and sell to members. Now, everyone has a CD burner and a fast enough connection to get their Ubuntu media quickly and easily..

 

Yep they are not really necessary anymore. However many people still like the more personal approach, so I believe they are still a good resource for newbies - yet most LUGs don't throw the install parties anymore.

 

I used Linux for years but I was never part of a LUG. There is one in Uruguay though.

However, by now I've kind of given up on Linux. I'm tired of the endless discussions over things not being as "free" as they should and seeing applications and the OS itself get crippled/forked as a result of them. Thanks to that now we have 4,294,947,296 unfinished derivatives of the same thing, none of which is completely functional...

 

There aren't any LUGs around my city. :/ Although the people I have met in technology didn't seem to be accepting of girls 'infiltrating their brotherhood.' >.< They hate it even more when you know more then them in sometime. I have kinda given up on finding an accepting group. This post is not to bash men, since I have met some very nice men that use Linux. I am just tired of being brushed off when I give ideas or given insulting compliments (ie, I see you managed to sucessfully install Slax). I have been using Slax for quite a while, and its kinda insulting for people to be amazed that I managed to connect to the internet. I am not sure what they are more shocked about, that the connection was set up in Linux or that a girl was the one to get it work. >.< Ah well. </rant> It would be cool to go to a convention or LUG sometime that people actually did stuff. Hey, we should start an EC LUG. XD I kid.

sudo apt-get linuxusingecmen

 

E: Invalid operation linuxusingecmen
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
add in
deb http://www.emptyclosets.com/ubuntu dapper universe multiverse

sudo apt-get linuxusingecmen

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
ecmen3-mt-dev: Depends: men-ec-dev (>= 4.3.0.dfsg.1-4) but it is not going to be installed

Wow, linux really is there!

 

Maybe I have to try building from sources

./configure
make
sudo make install

Nope still having problems. Now there's a half installed half compiled mess of a program thrown all over my file system! The disk is fsck 'd!

 

I find that if the authors' of a program have been kind to their users and made use of GNU Autoconf, appending a --prefix=/opt/my_great_package to the configure makes much less mess if you want to remove the silly program after finding out that you're missing the other half of those 200 libraries it wants. :dry:

Then, of course, there are always those programs that didn't use autoconf and replaced your configure script with coffee grinds. :tantrum:

 

I will assert, and stand by my dissertation that software installation on Linux is a disaster if a package isn't available for your EXACT distro and version, and of course endless dependencies is just fucking annoying.

I have better luck just installing Wine and running Windows programs.

Say nothing about having an active internet connection being essential to install software. Sometimes for various reasons I like to be able to install software offline, but that's a PITA with Linux.

Look at MacOS, proof that *nix software installation can be easy.

 

I find that apt rarely looses itself unless you've force it to do something. (Like manually installing/purging a package through dpkg and not informing apt.) Redhat based distributions have never liked me..

Also, you can easily create a local mirror of the Debian repository for offline installation. May not be pretty on an older machine, but with laptop hard disks measuring above 300gb of capacity, it's very doable now.

What other OS can you keep an entire copy of all available programs locally in case you want to install them?

 

I used to be a member of the ubuntuforums, if that's what you would call a user group. Mainly it was to help me get used the OS during my tinkering days and it was a very new and promising distro when it first came out. Now, I'm actually using a spinoff of ubuntu, called Mint and am more than happy with it, except for the occasional hiccup that you always get in any Linux environment.

I actually noticed that there was a program built into Mint, called "AptOnCD," which the sole purpose is to burn every package that you've downloaded and installed on your system. Pretty cool way to nearly replicate your install if you ever need to wipe your system, or install it on another computer.

 

Package management really depends on your distribution. I couldn't stand Ubuntu's either. But I'm using Arch and it's friggen awesome - just takes time to understand it.

But yeah, an internet connection is pretty much essential for any Linux.