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

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Sat, 9/6/08, Sean Crago <cragos at gmail.com> wrote:

> >From: "Kendric Beachey"
> <kendric.beachey at gmail.com>
> > 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.
> 
> I can't help much, but I'd suggest having ISOs 
> on hand for multiple distros, if you go this 
> route. You could burn-on-demand with Ubuntu
> 8.10, Knoppix, Mythbuntu and/or the Knoppix 
> equivelant, Fedora, Mint, CentOS, the UBCD 
> (ships with a couple of mini-distos), DSL,
> DragonFly BSD, and FreeBSD. 

I think it would be a little better if we stuck to Linux distros for ITEC, if we end up doing multiple distros.  While BSD and FreeBSD have their good points and might even be a little more secure out-of-the-box, Linux may be a better starting point for the newcomer and his or her home practice system.

And on a personal note, I'd like to get people hooked on the GPL world before they learn about the "do what you like with the code" BSD-license world.

> All told it wouldn't take but 5-8gigs of space. 
> Post a list of what's available and two or three 
> sentences about each. If you're better able to 
> hit the user with niche distros, and appeal to a
> few more than you would otherwise (I'm sure not 
> many, but some, and you get more face time while 
> the disc is getting thrown together).

I'm not quite sure that people coming from a world where there is no choice will all be yearning for a situation where they have lots of choices, or in other words "way too many choices".  Having lots of CDs of an easy Linux distro means those who just want to try Linux without turning it into a classroom discussion on the merits of this or that distro, will be more inclined to grab a Linux CD.  

This isn't a seminar on Linux, where there is lots of time to tell interested listeners all about ten or more different distros and LiveCDs of Linux.  This is a single Linux user group booth amidst other booths which will be mostly non-Linux in nature.  People will be giving us their average thirty seconds of time and moving on, and if they have to wait ten minutes for a CD burn they may simply move on without getting any CD at all, losing yet another person to a Windows-only world.