[ubuntu-uk] Non-technical events?

[Rob Beard]

On 19/07/10 13:21, pmgazz wrote:
> Environmental events are good, foreground stuff like how to refurbish
> their XP kit and keep perfectly good electronic kit out of landfill . . .
>
> Paula

I agree, someone in our local LUG donated a couple of old PCs (I think 
they were around early Pentium 2's) to a local nursery, one was running 
Windows and another was running some Linux distro, turns out the kids 
preferred the Linux PC and I believe Windows was replaced with Linux too.

Also in our local LUG we've installed an LTSP server and 6 client 
machines (old Dell P3's which were donated by a local business) at a 
local community centre.  The server (albeit a rather beefy, if not too 
beefy) is running as an LTSP server running Ubuntu 8.04 and the clients 
netboot.  It was great to see the machines actually being used at an 
open day, I believe they're really benefiting the community as some 
folks in the area can't afford internet access or don't have a computer 
at home and they can pop down to the community centre and get access to 
the internet and learn computer skills, and the kids (especially the 
older teens) like to go down in the evenings and browse the Internet 
giving them something to do in a safe secure environment.

I'm hoping as a LUG in Devon we can start to do more of this in the 
future, I'd even refurbish machines and stick Ubuntu on them if it 
wasn't for another guy on our local Freecycle list who gets old 
machines, refurbishes them and sticks Windows XP and Office 2003 on them 
(I think he's either got a whole load of Office 2003 licenses he wants 
to give away or he's installing pirate copies of the software, however 
good his intentions are I'm sure one day he'll come unstuck).

Rob