[NTLUG:Discuss] Meeting topics (Leroy Tennison)

[Fred]

Leroy:

I have been a lurker on this list for years, never attended a meeting but have been using Linux since the mid '90s, was a unix sys admin in the late 80s so my understanding of the OS is a bit above novice level, which leads into my current situation: I am down to one laptop running Leap 15.5 (yes, it is out of date and I'll upgrade it whenever), Plasma desktop and a few important-to-me programs, along with VirtualBox to handle those Windows programs that I find useful that wine won't handle.

My operating has changed from programming to that of "appliance operating", in that I just want to turn on the 'puter, run my traps on the web and get on with other things besides sitting in front of a screen. I occasionally edit videos or use gimp or some of the other nice tools in the box like RX-SSTV for decoding slow scan tv when I am hamming.

I have become what many have tried to convince their friends and family to become: someone with linux on the desktop instead of Windows, just in time to see most computer usage migrate to smart phones. 

What would I like to see as a meeting topic? I suppose that would depend upon the audience and I have no clue as to the makeup of ntlug but I suspect it has a very strong core of techno-geeks honed in on linux with a few less experienced people who would like to learn more. Since much of the world's computer operations are web based now, from banking to shopping to whatever, maybe a presentation of the salient differences between distros - not minutia - and their typical associated GUIs so that those not familiar with them can get an overview of their choices. For example, I run opensuse and Plasma because I don't care for the look and feel of Gnome and it suits me more than a minimalist approach. I spent too many years banging on the CLI and now I want to be lazy and let the GUI do what it is supposed to do and, yes, I can shift into CLI if need be but that takes time which I prefer to give to something else, since I may not have a lot of it left. Who knows? Anyway, the more developed GUIs are quite good at their job now, a far cry from just a few years ago.

Maybe one day I'll zoom in and catch one of your meetings.

Fred