Installing Linux Seminar

[Beavbo]

Greetings,

I have recently been asked to give a little seminar on how to install/operate Linux to the younger Computer Science majors at my school as I am considered in some twisted circle to be a Linux "guru" of some sort. I was wondering if anyone out there had a good recommendation on which distro (no, no, NOT a which distro rant I promise) etc I should use and which points I should focus on during the presentation. I was thinking of going w/ a Live distro like Morphix, Mepis, et. al. and mostly just focusing on actually USING the OS and not so much on the installation. Oh boy oh boy where to begin, right? Any suggestions for what to include/ignore in this presentation? All input is welcome as I currently don't have a clue of where to begin with this.


As a side note, it sounds pretty cool that there is actually some more interest in Linux around here than I thought. :D ... now i guess i'll have to do something else to be a unique individual :rolleyes:

Let me know what you guys think...

[mdwatts]

Try installing a few of the main distros yourself and then see which one you are more comfortable with.

What I like for a installer might not be to your liking.

[WayStar]

Wow, what an opportunity to promote Linux and your abilities!

Regardless of which distro you choose, do yourself a favor and, if possible, install it at least once on the same machine upon which you will be demonstrating. Even with glossy detection tools like those included with Mandrake, hardware can put up a fight.

I don't suggest "shielding" your audience from this fact of life, but I do suggest finding out ahead of time what pitfalls you might encounter during the demonstration. That way, you can have the solution ahead of time, explain how you found the solution, and perform that solution as a part of the demonstration.

Best wishes,
Waylena

[ph34r]

I use Fedora Core 1 and Slackware for the installing/configuring/using Linux portion of the Operating Systems course I teach.

[Beavbo]

Originally posted by WayStar

Regardless of which distro you choose, do yourself a favor and, if possible, install it at least once on the same machine upon which you will be demonstrating.

Precisely what I was thinking Waylena, good call. I've successfully installed Redhat 7.3, VectorLinux, PeanutLinux, and Morphix/Debian on this system and each one of those has had its own little quirks that need to be worked out (usually by searching JL). I DO have a 20 gb partition with nothing on it right now, I guess its time to start experimenting and see if I can put together a good little demo distro.

Please keep those suggestions coming on what to include in the actual presentation guys...I somehow can't remember what enticed me to install this OS in the first place anymore but would really like to show these guys how "cool" (maybe more like "nerd-cool" if thats a word) Linux is.:D

[knute]

What you can do is have some config files pre-prepared and stored on the server, so that after you get it setup, you can show them the flexibility of the OS, and at how quickly you can get different looks, and be able to do different things.

Because the point of your presentation is to show installation, you may also want to be prepared to show what can be done post install with a little bit of tinkering.
The wow part will come in when the machine, already hooked up, but with no os on it, considering that you will most likly partition it as part of the demonstration (I'd suggest multiple partitions just to underscore the differences in how linux handles the filesystem than other OS's), to having a fully configured system, and having several configs available as well. :)
Doesn't have to be anything too fancy. show them the shell, and changing from like bash to zsh, and just how much different you can set up that "simple" command line. Then there's all that can be done with X.
(Hence the pre-prepared dot-files. ;) )

My 2 cents,