[Linux-aus] [Announce] 2024-2025 Annual report and Draft AGM Agenda

[Russell Coker]

On Wednesday, 5 February 2025 13:04:33 AEDT Craige McWhirter via linux-aus 
wrote:
> There's been a deliberate watering down of the LA/LCA community for about a
> decade. This has come from multiple directions, not least of which is the
> ideological shift from being community focussed to everything "open", which
> is an amorphous title to draw in government, academic and business
> interests but entirely erodes the sense of community and camaraderie that
> existed.

My impression was that the "everything open" transition was more about being 
positive towards other OSs, hardware hacking, etc.  In several LCA conferences 
we have had decent support of hardware hacking but there has always been a 
trend against other free OSs.

I think it would be good to learn from the people working on the various BSD 
systems as well as other platforms such as Genode, ReactOS, Haiku, and RedOX.  
I don't plan to use any of those systems but I'm sure the developers have some 
interesting things to teach us about computer science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genode
https://reactos.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
https://www.redox-os.org/

There are other systems that I think have a lot of potential like seL4.  While 
seL4 isn't likely to be used as a complete OS it can give significant benefits 
to the security of a Linux system running as a VM.

https://sel4.systems//
https://www.youtube.com/@seL4

The BioMedical miniconf was a great success and I think we should try to run 
similar things in future.

> In the 90's the various LUGs were doing amazing hacking, brilliant community
> outreach via "install fests", hacking days, refurbishing second hand
> computers to bridge the digital divide etc. At one point SLUG was filling
> multiple lecture chambers at UTS, had multiple meetups every month and over
> 500 members.

In the 90s YouTube didn't exist and attending events was the only way to learn 
about what's going on.  Now instead of spending 3 hours of your evening to 
attend a LUG and see one lecture you could watch 3 lectures on YouTube.  Linux 
people being more introverted than average tend to prefer that.

It used to be that hardware was REALLY expensive.  In the 90s a mid-range PC 
was over $2000 which is equivalent to $4000+ in today's money.  Now you can 
get quite nice laptops new for under $500 and ebay (which had only just 
started at the time LUGs were most popular) has plenty of cheap options to 
choose from.  Instead of the $5800 I spent on my first laptop in 1998 or the 
$4000+ I was spending on new laptops in the 2000s I can now get a very nice 
Thinkpad that lacks nothing compared to the latest models for $350.

With PCI replacing ISA and better driver support installing Linux is a lot 
easier.  Anyone can just get a cheap PC and an image on a USB stick and do it.

> One feeling that does ring true, is that _everyone_ wants to go to a great
> conference again and regain that sense of community but those same people
> have been staying away from the more recent LCA's and "EO".

Also some of us don't want to attend conferences that require multiple flights 
etc due to Covid19 still being a thing.  Changing to more online LUGs and 
communities is a good thing.

> 4. Host Free Software as a Service[0][1][2] (AKA Eat Our Own Dog Food):
> 
> Open to members only,
> 
> * Run a forgejo instance
> * Run a Mastodon instance
> * Run a Nextcloud instance
> * Run a Matrix instance
> * Run a Peertube instance
> * Run a Pixelfed
> * Any tools to collaborate in a distributed way

The LA council doesn't seem to want to be involved in such things citing 
concerns about illegal content and moderation.

LUV has a Matrix server that is open to every Linux Australia member.  Having 
people run some of the other services would be good too.  I can provide 
hosting resources and luv.asn.au DNS names for anyone who wants to run any of 
those things.

> [2] Yes, I'd put my hand up to be a volunteer in the running of these

Which services would you like to run and what hosting resources do you need?

-- 
My Main Blog         http://etbe.coker.com.au/
My Documents Blog    http://doc.coker.com.au/