Infopoint Project

Dear Sir/Madam,

In the light of your recent coverage regarding the Linux Operating System and Open Source software in general, we were wondering if you would be interested in a piece about some work we are doing as Linux advocates.

Across the country, people belong to Linux User Groups (LUGs). We meet locally, and in many cases, regularly, to discuss a variety of issues and to provide community support for people using Linux.

An offshoot of this, started by Linux journalist and Wolverhampton LUG founder, Jono Bacon, has been the Infopoint project. This involves Linux enthusiasts of a variety of levels of experience donating their free time, and some resources in the form of ‘Live Linux CDs’ and other informational materials. We attend local Computer Fairs – with stands kindly donated by the organisers – and talk to people about Linux.

We give out CDs (for free or a small charge to cover the cost of the CD and pacakging) that allow people to try out Linux, and answer peoples questions about Linux. We have operated at several events already at a range of locations, and run a mailing list discussing issues and planning future events. The events we have attended have been very sucessfull. Initially, many people had never heard of Linux, but recently, as media organisations such as yourselves increase your coverage, people are starting to have some awareness of Linux as an operating system. However, our experience is that they often have many questions, and are unsure where to go to get them answered.

In light of this, we thought that this might be of interest to you as a way of demonstrating the way the Linux community operates, and providing a free source of information for people. We have some events already organised for the future, and these can be seen at http://infopointproject.org/.

If you are interested in publishing something about us, we can provide any information, or write a small piece ourselves.