[clue-talk] CLUE : Call for Presentations

[Matt Gushee]

Jeff Cann wrote:

> DTC and North.  We identified some interesting topics at our last admin 
> meeting:

> - CentOS
> - Ubuntu / kbuntu

Sorry to be a grouch, but I'd like to discourage "Intro to <any
distribution>"-type presentations. It's not that distributions aren't
interesting, but I don't think they work very well as brief
presentations. In spite of everything, to a very large extent Linux is
Linux is Linux. And the differences between distros mostly:

 * Are easily grasped by glancing at their Web sites
 * Can only be grasped through hands-on experience
 * Are implementation details that only really matter to people who use
   the distro

... or some combination of the above. Plus, it takes a great deal of
discipline to talk about your favorite distro without sliding into
advocacy. Which is not to say that distribution-*related* topics aren't
good. For example, a case study about "How and why organization X chose
distribution Y" might be enlightening. Or maybe concentrate on a package
manager. I would be interested in learning more about RPM, for example,
even though I don't currently use an RPM-based distro.

> - Programming languages

I personally like this genre, since I have something to say about it.
But I wonder if the membership at large is all that interested. Maybe
I'm just jaded, but it seems like most of the mainstream languages are
old hat, and non-mainstream ones are too weird for most people's taste.

And here's a couple of other ideas:

 * Version control (CVS, Subversion, alternatives)
 * Graphics (e.g. Cairo, SVG tools, ...)
 * ALSA/Jack/Music applications
 * Anything about security (even if it's boring, we need to know it)
 * The new generation of Web development frameworks (Ruby on Rails,
   TurboGears, etc.)
 * How Linux printing works (assuming anybody actually knows ... I sure
   don't ;)

-- 
Matt Gushee
The Reluctant Geek: http://matt.gushee.net/rg/