Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:10:54 +0000 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <rucus.ru.ac.za@rucus.ru.ac.za> To: Davis <dd002f@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD PR Message-ID: <19990415101054.A87661@rucus.ru.ac.za> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.990414201404.10317A-100000@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>; from Davis on Wed, Apr 14, 1999 at 08:25:11PM -0400 References: <199904142351.QAA80238@rah.star-gate.com> <Pine.SOL.3.96.990414201404.10317A-100000@uhura.cc.rochester.edu>
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On Wed 1999-04-14 (20:25), Davis wrote: > I am not certain of a good way to accomplish this, but I think an > excellent way to start is to aim at college students (in much the way that > Microsoft is). Currently, many of my peers are completely unaware of > FreeBSD, aside from some hardcore computer geeks (of course, I do my best > to make them aware). If people start using FreeBSD during college years > (perhaps the time of greatest increase in computer exposure for many, > myself included), they will likely be hooked for life; I should know, I > think I may be hooked myself. (= I was in the lucky position to arrive at the university that I did, which had a student computer society that provided tons of services (nice email address, web pages, irc, etc) and I was immediately snapped up by the process and ended up becoming one of the sysadmin, and in charge of giving courses. I think the system we have here is very good - we have a few clued people arriving every year, for their first year they hate us and try and break the system, and then by their second year they're our friends, we teach them things, and they teach us things. All through the year a team of people who use computers give courses from WordPerfect and other applications provided on the Windows systems in the labs, to advanced subjects, CGI, Apache administration, make, perl, the ports system, etc. This way we get our money for providing the courses for the people not really interested in the Unix side, and the clued people will start to realize we only give lame courses, and start to go to the ones that sound interesting, and so on. Since the local national Science and Arts festivals are hosted in our city, and we're the clued computer people in the city (according to the organizers, and even the Computer Science department), we give courses on using the Web to designing serious Web pages, and we get to have a course or two on "Unix, the alternative Operating System" (or something like that), and get to expound on how much FreeBSD [and Linux] rules compared to NT, with CDs on sale (for free next year), etc. Since Geoff Rehmet got involved with the society just after its inception, the society and the entire [clued] university student computer movement is FreeBSD-related, leaving a rich heritage to pass on as people leave, and new people arrive. (although we despair at leaving the society in the hands of the "hax0r-kiddies", our current bunch of friendly second years). > Of course, I really do not know specifically how we might accomplish this. > FreeBSD boot disks for all the comp. sci., math, and physics majors? (just > kidding) Seriously, though, I think just making FreeBSD known in my > neighborhood and emphasizing its strong networking abilities would do some > good. We're planning an installathon or two soon, and with our membership fee of only R35 (roughly 4-6 bottles of 2 litre cokes for international comparison), we manage to squish in a serious amount of advocacy and education. We also go behind the university's back and install FreeBSD servers for departments that want them for web or dial-up, since NT just doesn't seem to cut it for even them, and security is a huge problem. Another advantage we're accumulating is a reputation for being a FreeBSD-based university, which we try to cultivate, to make sure we start getting people who are clued to FreeBSD already heading our way, instead of converting or teaching people. Of course, we're also planning on extending this to other universities in the country, which seem to have poorly run, or more of a hax0r (as opposed to hacker) culture. (You may see the occasional pipe from und.ac.za, which is our cultural FreeBSD brother of sorts) Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner nbm@rucus.ru.ac.za To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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