Finally we had the LUGM mini-meetup today.

We had 12 attendees (including me). That was a great response. Some came for the first time.

We started by each one introducing himself, telling more about his Linux experience. It was nice to hear everyone’s short stories and how they encountered/discovered Linux.

Jochen & Ajay brought the kids and added more brightness to the meetup (:

Ok … Let’s get started.

After the introductions I opened today’s meetup with a little bit of LUGM history. Ajay being a founding member was the right person to elaborate and give details. He indeed explained how it all started and what are the advantages of being a member. We however highlighted the fact that LUGM meetings are open to public.

More can be found on LUGM’s website: http://lugm.org Join the mailing list as well: http://discuss.lugm.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_discuss.lugm.org

We then talked about open source licenses. Some among those present today are new to Linux. We thought it would be a good thing to mention a few words about the guru, Richard Stallman, the founder and President of Free Software Foundation and talk about his vision. We explained the difference of having a software free (as in not paying) and free (as in freedom to study, modify and share). We talked about the advantages of having access to source code. Ajay elaborated on points stipulated in the General Public License.

Lastly, I did a presentation on openSUSE Advocate Program. I actually started with a little bit of my encounter with openSUSE, my experience with other distros and projects. I highlighted how welcoming the openSUSE community is and the facilities available within. Yes, I believe openSUSE figures among the most flexible and powerful distributions. I went on and gave examples why (: I briefly went back in history from S.u.S.E to SUSE and then openSUSE. I pointed out the flexibility of having so many download formats for openSUSE (4.7GB DVD including KDE, Gnome, XFCE and LXDE, … then the different Live versions of KDE and Gnome etc). See all these at software.opensuse.org. I talked about the openSUSE Build Service and how packages are available from software.opensuse.org. By the way folks, I forgot to tell you about the 1-click install facility. Check the page, you’ll know what I am talking about. In case of questions, ping me. I talked about YaST, AutoYaST and WebYaST. Nitin Bachraz shared his great moments with YaST too (: and Prithvi (our Slack guy) happens to adore YaST as well. I explained what is Tumbleweed and how to get openSUSE into rolling mode. I also talked about SUSE Studio and how easy it is to brew up your own distribution. Last I showed the magic of susepaste.org.

We finished by 17h00. I was happy to see the smile on everybody’s face. Thank you folks for making this a great meetup.

Photo courtesy, Yuram Venkatiah.