Which CD to burn enmasse for ITEC? (was Re: Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 5 now available)

[Kendric Beachey]

(peeking out of the lurking cave)

I side with Leo on this issue...have a large stash of Ubuntu 8.04 (or 8.04.1
if it is available) to give to the folks who drop by.  I'd think the
majority of people coming by would be the folks who have, as noted earlier,
maybe heard of Linux but never used it.  They're not going to want any
particular distro.  They may not even know there's more than one.  Chances
are many of them aren't going to want ANY distro and we'll just be hoping to
get them to try it out some Saturday when they have nothing else lined up.
For newbies such as these, Ubuntu 8.04(.1) makes good sense because it's
designed to be easy, and the LTS means it will be supported longer, plus it
won't be hassling them to upgrade to 8.10 in just a few weeks.

Having a machine or two on site to burn more is also a good idea, although
I'd say if it looks like the pre-burned stash is going quickly, just start
burning those babies non-stop rather than waiting for someone to ask.  Then
hopefully you can just stay ahead of demand and there'll always be some
ready to go right away.

As far as being a source of other distros, I would say just focus on Ubuntu
for giving out, although it's certainly fine to describe the others.  But
anyone who genuinely wants one of the others probably already knows enough
to get it themselves (and probably already runs it anyway).

My two cents.

Kendric Beachey


On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 5:04 AM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- On Fri, 9/5/08, Billy Crook <billycrook at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 17:29, Leo Mauler
> > <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > And on another note, I'm getting ready
> > > to burn a spindle of Linux CDs for ITEC.
> > > Should I wait until October and then burn
> > > one of the newer alpha images, or get
> > > started now on the "stable" Ubuntu 8.04
> > > LTS image?
>
> > You're going to sit at home, and burn a complete
> > spindle of disks all to one distro.  And what if
> > people want something other than the one image
> > you burned.  If you try to guess how many of what
> > you'll need, there's no way you'll get it right.
> > Maybe burn a couple of each of the top 5 distros'
> > stable releases as a buffer,
>
> Well, I've got 50 blank CDs (right now), Ubuntu is the easiest Linux
> distro, and we'll be talking to a lot of people who may have heard about
> Linux but never used it before, and who aren't going to want to spend a lot
> of time uber-customizing their Linux installation.
>
> We can tell people about all the other distros, but frankly I'm not all
> that keen to tell people about any distro other than Ubuntu, for the simple
> reason that I don't like the other distros very much.  What we need in the
> booth is a passion for Linux, and I'm not going to be as passionate about
> Fedora or Gentoo as I am going to be about Ubuntu.
>
> > and bring a couple "Freedom Toaster"s:
> >
> > http://www.freedomtoaster.org/
> >
> > I don't see why you'd have to actually build a
> > stand like on the site.  Just run the software
> > on a laptop with a burner.  CD burners are FAST
> > these days, and the few seconds someone would
> > have to wait for a disc could be spent telling
> > them what is actually *on* the disk, and why
> > they shouldn't just throw it away when they get
> > home and find out it's not a freeware or sample
> > version of some expensive, proprietary windows
> > program.  It'd make the burning process itself
> > a cool Linux thing to show off.
>
> While I agree that burning onsite is cool, the faster you burn the more
> likely you will have CD errors, and slow burns mean trying to keep 50 people
> waiting around at our booth for 20 minutes or more each.  If I burn all 50
> at home I can test all 50 before coming out, and replace the few that do end
> up as coasters.  If I burn all 50 at ITEC, we could be sending home 50 cheap
> *coasters* instead of 50 Linux CDs.
>
> Now what *does* make sense is to make 50 Ubuntu 8.04 LTS discs, and then
> bring along a demo PC (like I always do) with a CD Burner and a hard drive
> containing other Linux CD ISOs, and burn the other ISOs people may want.
>  They can grab a i386 Ubuntu Linux CD right away, or stick around to find
> out that there are 64bit Linux ISOs and "uber-coolness" Gentoo ISOs, and
> even 50MB DamnSmallLinux ISOs for any size computer.  If they want a
> non-standard ISO, they may be willing to hang around a bit longer to get
> one.
>
>
>
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