[Ubuntu PA] NTR Laptop Project: need volunteers

[Michael Maurizi]

I'm interested in helping out, I'm not that experienced with this sort
of thing but it'd be fun to learn.
When would I need to be there?

On Jan 13, 2008 1:33 PM, Kevin Valentine <kevin.valentine at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> NTR (ntronline.org) is having a real problem with their laptop
> inventory.  They have a big room where they keep them and it has become
> very disorganized.  It's so disorganized that they are having a
> difficult time pushing them out to their thrift store and they can't
> find parts to fix existing customers' laptops.  I told Stan that I think
> members of the PA LoCo can help.  This post is my attempt to gather
> volunteers.
>
> I tried doing this same exact thing last year but it was just me a few
> other people.  Ultimately, it failed because we lost an inside man at
> NTR.  Now with the PA LoCo matured, I think this is the right moment to
> try again.  In order to go forward with this, I requested that Stan
> allow us to use Linux in some way.  He said that any laptop that is too
> old or odd (no Win drivers) to accept any flavor of Windows, could have
> Linux installed on it.  And by any flavor of Windows, I'm pretty sure
> that only means Windows 2000 but I'll have to confirm.  If that's the
> case, it opens us up to fairly large portion of his laptop inventory.
>
> The only issue I can foresee the LoCo having with this is that most of
> the laptops we'll have access to will only support stripped down Linux
> distros like DamnSmallLinux and Puppy.  I see that as temporary.  All
> laptops that we can salvage will be put into the thrift store an sold at
> low prices.  The customers will be very aware that these have Linux
> install and there is no support included from NTR.  I believe that
> eventually NTR customers will begin requesting higher end laptops with
> Ubuntu pre-installed.  It could take a year or more.  But when it
> happens we'll be ready for it.
>
> OK, how will we do this?  I'm looking for at least 4 volunteers from our
> PA LoCo that can be at NTR once a month.  The minimal situation would be
> to have one of our people at NTR every Saturday to focus on laptop
> issues.  Being a different person each time, we should only need about 4
> people.
>
> I know some of you would like to help but traveling into the city is
> just not an option.  That's OK.  You can still help!  Jedijf and I
> rarely do our laptop work "onsite".  We take the laptops home and, in
> our spare time, we hack the hell out of them.  If any of you like that
> option, let us know we'll drop off batches to you or we'll help you pick
> them up.
>
> There should be other areas where we could use support, like tracking
> any of the laptops take out of NTR.  We could use a spreadsheet or web
> page for managing laptop information.  Another area of support ... NTR
> sometimes receives laptops as lots on palettes.  In those cases, they
> tend to image the drives one-at-a-time.  Right now, they're doing this
> with a batch of 30 laptops.  Perhaps one of you could introduce them to
> a Linux solution using networked imaging.  Any Clonezilla masters in our
> group?
>
> I'm sure I've missed some details or created some gray areas.  Please
> post your questions and comments.
>
> -kevin
>
> PS: I will be making a wiki page where you can sign up and commit to a task.
>
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