[olug] OLUG Project Club???

[Aaron Grothe]

Hi,

I've been thinking about doing something similar to a
book club for a while for Linux and other Open Source
Projects.  The idea is instead of reading a book to do
a project with some other intrested people, sharing
experiences and the like, then pretty much give a
report on the project at an olug meeting when things
hit a pretty good point.  Also we'd put up our notes
somewhere for those brave souls who follow after us.

The overall proposed rules for the club would be
pretty simple

o - must be a relatively cool project
o - cannot cost a huge amount of money: say $250 - Max
already having a cheap PC or the like could reduce the
amount by quite a bit
o - while it does not have to advance the state of the
art it must be semi-cutting edge or cool
o - project can be ongoing, but has to reach a point
where the level of effort goes down
o - must be able to apply to people of multiple skill
levels (hopefully the group will be able to help newer
people have success :-)
o - cannot expect huge amounts of time from the people
involved a couple of hours a week should be sufficent
to show progress

Quick list of ideas (some are good, some bad - it is
left to the read as an exercise to figure out which
are which)

o - xbox linux, several people on the list experiment
with Linux and the xbox - perhaps taking different
approaches e.g. full replacement, mod-chip and the
like
o - linux on usb boot drives - linux in your pocket
some distros such as Damn Small Linux
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org would be ideal
candidates for this.  Might also work into a security
project I want to do sometime
o - rolling out the 2.6 test kernels on test boxes and
seeing how things go with a wide variety of hardware
work loads and the like
o - hacking tivos - they are embedded linux after all
o - making freevos or other similar projects - I know
a couple of people in the group, have already done
this but I still have to
o - something with the gnu radio project, have not
done anything with this
o - h323 video conferencing/internet telephony under
Linux
o - Linux on WEIRD hardware?  E.g.  I have a webplayer
from Virgin (which is a little flatscreen PC that I've
been thinking about putting DamnSmallLinux on).  I'm
sure others must have equally weird machines E.g.  Old
notebooks, one off hardware and the like.

Who am I?  My name is Aaron Grothe.  I used to be
President/CEO of a company called Heimdall Linux.  We
were working on a Common Criteria certified version of
Linux about 4 years ago before our VCs turned out to
be crooks and that was the end of that.  I'm currently
doing the DBA thing out at infoUSA.  I'm pretty much a
lurker on the mailing list putting my head up every
now and then.

Personally, I'm probably going to do a Linux/Xbox
sometime later this year and would be curious if other
people are interested in little bit of reverse
engineering and possible DMCA violations.  In the
worse case I get a new black and green case for an
athlon motherboard in the best case I get a new Linux
box.

Regards,

Aaron
=-=-=
"The Journey is the Reward" - Old Zen Buddhist Saying

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