I think the issue here is that we’re looking at several distinct
categories of people who might be interested in a LUG, and it’s
hard to be relevant to all of them.
In particular, I think there’s a difference between those who use
Linux professionally as a major part of their day job, and those who
use it at home on their own computers or in a side business. Those
using it professionally are interested in servers, cloud
deployments, containers and the like, but that’s typically not
relevant to those using it primarily on their own computers. Those
people are interested in GUIs, gaming, office suites and the like.
For the professional people, I’m not sure that a LUG is the best
option. These days, Linux is so much a part of the corporate
landscape that in many cases people just take it for granted. I read
that, even in Microsoft’s Azure cloud hosting service, over 1/3 of
the servers are running Linux, and for other providers the
proportion is probably much higher. I think that people managing
fleets of Linux servers are probably more interested in groups for
specific technologies, such as Docker or Hadoop, than they are for
Linux itself. Looking through the Tech category for Calgary [3] on
Meetup.com shows a lot of technology-specific groups, although
nothing specifically for Linux. Linux doesn’t seem to be a
‘technology’ any more, it’s just a part of the tech landscape.
These professional people, however, most likely don’t run Linux on
their computers at home, or on their corporate-issue laptops. (These
days, they’re most likely to be running Mac, I hear.) They see
Linux as simply a means to an end in the datacentre.
There’s a third, and growing, category I believe: the maker
community. These are people experimenting with embedded devices like
Raspberry Pi and Arduino, and developing the next generation of
personal and industrial tech in their garage, just as was done for
the first personal/gaming computers. I’m amazed by how quickly
this community has embraced Linux as a part of what they do, but I
think it’s mainly because Linux is such an enabler for these
commoditized embedded processors. However, I get the impression that
only a small proportion of these people are also using Linux on
their personal computers.
Personally, I span all three categories. I’m a freelance software
developer by day, writing exclusively for Linux, and deploying my
work on multiple servers in the cloud that I then administer.
However, I also run Linux on all my personal computers, both
desktops and laptops. In addition, I own two Raspberry Pis, and I
run OpenWRT on my router. So I would find almost any Linux-related
talk interesting, and I could give talks on quite a range of
subjects.
However, I’m not sure how many other people are in multiple
categories. If so, should we be focusing on just one or two
categories? Let’s call the ones I’ve identified
‘enterprise’, ‘personal’ and ‘maker’. Do we have takers
for all three? Are there any other categories we should be
considering?
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