[wplug] 10 years old!

[James O'Kane]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Beth Lynn
Eicher<bethlynneicher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Michael Semcheski<mhsemcheski at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hey Everybody,
>> I just thought I'd mention that this document "What is Linux" authored by
>> The Western Pennsylvania Linux User's Group will be 10 years old this
>> Thursday!
>> http://www.wplug.org/wiki/Image:Whatislinux.pdf
>> Also, the group will be 4,382 days old (or 12 years old if you roll that
>> way) on Saturday the 26th.  Lets all install Slackware with IceWM on that
>> day.  Or maybe not.  Anyway, just wanted to make mention of those two facts.
>> Thanks to billings and mark2d (at #wplug) for digging up those little
>> factoids.
>> Mike Semcheski
>> Chair, Western Pennsylvania Linux User's Group
>
> Incredible.
>
> I remember being new to Linux, reading that flyer, and being hooked.
> Shortly after, I went to an installfest where billings helped me get a
> just barely supported soundcard working. What distro? Caldera Linux.
> markd2 took pitty at my broke college self and gave me 64 whole
> megabytes of RAM. That very same dimm is at Vance's house today.
> Installfests were huge fun back then with all of the swag that jo2y
> could smuggle from the Atlanta Linux Showcase (Now
> www.atlantalinuxfest.org)

I was just thinking about ALS recently. I was in Atlanta for Labor Day
weekend (and again today for a layover), which was about 1 month shy
of 10 years since my last visit to Atlanta which was for ALS.

Some of the swag came from talking to one of the ALS vendors over
lunch. I convinced her that they should send me their old versioned
CDs to give away. They stopped doing that about a year later when they
started selling them at a discount. I can't remember the name for
sure, but they were the CDs with the solid colored labels. I'm sure I
still have some of them somewhere. I recall we ended up with dozens of
disk 3, but no disk 1 or 2 for one of the distributions.
At the time, getting swag was as easy as asking the right people and
giving them an address to ship things to.


> My how things have changed and grown. We talked about time capsuling
> back then but for whatever reason I forgot about this flyer and the
> other paths it took me down memory lane.
>
> For those who want a real retro experience there is the Ohio LinuxFest
> celebrating 40 years of UNIX and 18 years of Linux. There you will
> find Patrick Wagstrom's new coworkers talking about IBM's commitment
> to Linux of the past 10 years, Bdale Garbee talking about how Debian
> got where it is today, Dr. Peter Salus taking us back to 1969, and Dr.
> M. Douglas McIlroy - the genius behind UNIX at BellLabs giving the
> evening keynote. Just in case anybody was wondering: Dr. McIlroy uses
> Linux and goes to his Linux user group in New Hampshire. Simply an
> amazing day on September 26 for ohiolinux.org
>
> I feel so fortunate for being a member of one of the best Linux user
> groups: wplug.org The amount of support you have given me over the
> years is incredible. We've charted new territory by moving to Wilkins
> School Community Center and digging in to setup a network. There are
> those who say they're about community and those who are the community:
> WSCC and WPLUG are the real deal.
>
> Now I can't wait for the next meeting. I was so excited before I
> thought it was a week sooner than I thought. Thanks to all of those
> who made this possible. I hope that dmz, mer, rob, zach, evand, mark
> "slackware" s, gerr, and the landefields see the original post.
>
> Long Live Linux!
>
> Beth Lynn Eicher
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