KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 07 April 2008

New User Night!

Bring a new or potential new GNU/Linux user to the meeting for a night of introductory computer fun.

Doors open at 6pm for casual conversation and networking. The formal presentation starts at 7:00pm sharp!

Some of you may choose to join us at a local restaurant for more discussion and refreshments after the meeting.

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This is a presentation for the desktop home user.

This is not a technical presentation. No admin, no root, no command line.

Bring at least one guest that is new to FLOSS (family/friend/neighbor/co-worker). Promise them that they'll discover many possibilities on how to use their computer without having to spend a fortune on sofware, without running antivirus and without activelly maintaining the OS.

The presentation will have three segments

1. Show how the average home user can use FLOSS for common tasks (These are features that I really use but I'm open to sugestions from other KWLUG members)

• Browsing the internet (email, youtube, facebook)
• Chatting
• Organizing pictures
• Organizing and playing media
• Doing some workd processing
• Use the spreadsheet to run some numbers
• Edit pictures
• Manage home finances
• Creating greeting cards
• Contact management
• Searching a "lost" document
• Searching and installing software

2. Talk about the posibilities for niche uses without going into any details.
For example:

• Ltsp for large families
• Internet trafic blocking and monitoring
• Personal web design
• Multimedia content creation
• Home media and automation
• Portable linux distribution
• etc...

3. With help of all the other KWLUG members answer "can I" kind of questions from the guests.
e.g. I currently do x and y, Can I do it with FLOSS/in linux?

Although not explicitly talking about eye candy I will bring a computer with it turned on showing that now it's normal to have a pleasantly looking Linux desktop.

Even if you think that you know all this, use the oportunity to bring someone else. This won't be a political lecture, It will be a very practical demonstration
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The host for this meeting was Raul Suarez.