Twenty people attended the inaugural meeting of the Essex Linux User Group held on Saturday 29th June 1996 at Rivenhall, Witham, Essex. A number of people brought their Linux boxes, these we networked together using a mainly BNC ethernet.
This temporary network was used to run a local email and news system with our own news server. One box went away with a working X-windows set-up that it didn't have before. However an attempted installation of Slackware on another system via NFS failed, seemingly due to a hardware (network interface card) failure in the target PC.
As we all seemed to be enjoying ourselves, the formal part of the meeting began a little later than planned at about 11.45. John Phillips began by introducing himself and outlining how the idea af an Essex Linux User Group began. He also outlined the plans for the rest of the day.
The next item was an excellent presentation by Peter Onion on the new version 2.0.X kernels and of course Linus' penguin, copies of which were distributed at the meeting.
At about 12.45, the meeting took a brief(ish) recess for lunch, either at a local hostelry or with a sandwich, crouched over a steaming computer :-).
The meeting resumed at about 14.00 ish with an open discussion of the aims and wishes of the group. This discussion produced the following points:
Plans for future meetings include :
It was also decided that the group would have a virtual presence on the net which would include:
The name of the group was discussed and "Essex Linux User Group (ELUG)" was proposed. After some discussion it was accepted that "Essex Linux User Group" may be too restrictive geographically and although it will be used temporarily, the membership will seek a possibly more appropriate name.
A couple of decisions were made about the organization of the group viz:
The next meeting will be held early in September at a location to be advised. This meeting will include a new users section at the beginning with some other theme as well.
Return to ELUG Home Page