Manchester Free Software, "What makes Debian special?" and cryptography un-workshop February 16, 2010

Manchester Free Software meets at 19:00 on the third Tuesday of each month at The Lass’O Gowrie on Charles Street just off Oxford Road.

The normal format of the meeting is a talk, where a speaker will disseminate information on a specific topic to an audience of around twenty people. After the meeting informal discussion will take place over favourite beverages.

This month’s talk will be delivered by Leslie I’Anson from Manchester Free Software. Leslie’s talk has one very simple objective, which is to answer the following question:

“From the literally hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions in existence, what makes Debian special?”

Leslie has been using some form of the GNU/Linux operating system as his primary desktop environment since the Summer of 2007 and since then he has experimented with a multitude of different distributions; form the “easy-to-use” ( i.e Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE) to the down-right “hardcore” ( LFS, Slackware, Gentoo and Arch). All in all, Leslie’s estimates that he’s used over twenty different incarnations of this popular free software platform.

However, one distribution keeps drawing him back – Debian (which indecently was Leslie’s first ever experience of a free software operating system). Believing that he has finally settled down with his one true love, Leslie attempts to explain why this is and, as you will no doubt discover, the rational behind this decision is far from purely technical.

So join us if you will for, what will (hopefully) be, an entertaining and enlightening introduction to both Debian as operating system and as a project.

Also, as a special treat, Robert Burrell Donkin will be following this month’s talk with what he is dubbing a “Cryptography Un-Workshop”. Robert’s plain is to use this opportunity to gauge the level of interest before possibly embarking on a full-blown, audience-led, un-conference style, interactive talk and workshop later in the year.

Official Website: http://manchester.fsuk.org/