ELUG was formed in May/June 1996 following John Phillips tentative call for members.
The first meeting was successfully held on Saturday June 29th, at the Rivenhall Village Hall and featured a presentation by Peter Onion on the 2.0 kernel series. Geoff Blake wrote up a report of the meeting and it was submitted to be published in Linux World, appearing in the 'launch' issue.
ELUG-2 (the second meet) was graciously hosted by Steve Hanselman at the Brendata offices in Laindon on Saturday 31st August and featured presentations on PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) by Alec Clews and INN (Internet Network News) by Ivan Beveridge. John Phillips posted a summary of the days events to the mailing list.
The next meeting (ELUG-3) is currently scheduled for Saturday 8th March.
New members will be made welcome and are encouraged to participate via the mailing list and at the meetings. There is no subscription or joining fee, (NB: it is possible, as was the case for the first meeting, that a small fee may be payable to cover the cost of hiring the meeting venue), and although the name of the group may suggest otherwise, several people from farther afield, (Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, and even Dorset!), have attended the meetings.