What do you think about the foundation of a FUG ?

ziomario said:
But it's not only about discussing. In my idea there is the chance to bring some hardwares from home and place them on the room,for testing and experimenting. Discussing only it's annoying after some time. To play with some hardware is important to learn and to tinker.
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Yeah, but there is food, too :)

In fact the BSDCan/EuroBSDCon/AsiaBSDCon are one big traveling foodie club, which happens to write a couple operating systems on the side.
 
Long time ago. The sign that even in a big city like Milan,there isn't a great excitement for FreeBSD. I'm not surprised. Still Linux is not well known on a large part of the country. A lot,if not every LUG are dead during the years,mostly on the medium and little cities. Different story could be for the implementation of Linux on the industries as a server. FreeBSD is good for server more than desktop,so I think that it will be hard to make it known on the home / desktop area of the population. It's also true that it COULD be used as a small server on the little artisan businesses, which in Italy are endless. The biggest obstacle is overcoming the Windows centric mentality that is still prevalent in the heads of people who don't like to learn (because for them learning means wasting time, therefore money and risking means that something will break their simple and well established job routine based on a old version of Winzozz and they will then have to spend time and money). Yeah,they hate to spend time and money. For this reason in this country there can't be a real innovation. Here everyone is very stubborn in defending his own backyard.
 
How about

BSD
Enthusiast
Society
Talks ?

Off the top of my head, this would be a spin on the TED Talks... ?
www.ted.com

TED: Ideas worth spreading

TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, with subtitles in 100+ languages. Ideas free to stream and download.
www.ted.com www.ted.com
 
SirDice said:
EuroBSDCon is in a different city/country each year.
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Sure,but on the very end, the countries will finish and it should restart from the beginning ? maybe the next time instead of doing it in Milan,it will hosted in Rome...but anyway,I think that it does not make some relevant difference for italy. It is a very Windows-centric country,stubborn to change and experiment new tools and tecniques,generally speaking.
 
Crivens said:
I would have a problem with the name "FUG". Imagine you put on your coat, your spouse asks if you are going out and you respond "Yes dear, I am going to a FUG meeting". There is a high chance of drama coming your way, don't you think?

Other than that, it sounds like a good idea.
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"The first rule of FUG is that you do not talk about FUG, the second rule of FUG is that you do not talk about FUG..."
 
ziomario if situation is like that in Italy, in Croatia and entire ex-yugoslav language region is 10 times more worse.
I know of few people in entire country that deal with FreeBSD. Most other people have "dealt" with FreeBSD through pfSense and alike. Companies are even scared to roll out Linux solutions due to lack of experts on the local job market, FreeBSD is a total unknown.

Actually wasn't Italy the one to overrule Microsoft's forcing of the OEMs to have Windows installations on all laptops? They (MS) were claiming hardware is useless without OS therefore it's ok to have Windows preinstalled and charged. Could be 15 years ago.

I'm happy to see the user group is strong in the Netherlands.
 
Zare said:
Actually wasn't Italy the one to overrule Microsoft's forcing of the OEMs to have Windows installations on all laptops? They (MS) were claiming hardware is useless without OS therefore it's ok to have Windows preinstalled and charged. Could be 15 years ago.
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Links, please.

I'd also argue that Microsoft's claim does have merit to it. The vast majority of people who try to use a computer - they would probably try to do without if this "Using a computer" idea necessarily meant learning how to install an OS on it. Those of us who know how to install stuff like FreeBSD or Linux on it - we don't care if Windows is preinstalled or not. We'll just wipe the disk, dual-boot, virtualize, and spend time on it, because it's fun. Most people expect stuff like gaming keyboards with backlights to work out of the box, anyway.


Zare said:
Companies are even scared to roll out Linux solutions due to lack of experts on the local job market, FreeBSD is a total unknown.
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I'd say, prioritize reliability of those solutions over everything else. Then everything else will fall in place. ? My personal take: It's OK if the solutions are Windows-based, it's more important to pay attention to delivering results. People should be the ones paying attention to the job, pull their own weight, and make sure results check as many checkboxes as practical.

FreeBSD does have a server on Discord... It's primarily English-language (like the Forums), but it's much more flexible when it comes to languages. I think it's not impossible to get a separate channel on FreeBSD's Discord server that is dedicated to a specific language or a User Group.
 
astyle said:
Links, please.
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Are you really asking me for links for some event I've read about 15 years ago?

And no, Microsoft claimed what they claimed so they could punish OEMs that don't charge for a mandatory windows installation on the laptop, but put FreeDOS on it and let the user install what they want.

If you buy Windows laptop and wipe that Windows clean you paid MS free money.

You might find that for average user computer is useless without a web browser, doesn't mean it has to have one off the shelf to be defined as "operational computer"; which Microsoft claimed laptops without Windows aren't.
 
Zare said:
Are you really asking me for links for some event I've read about 15 years ago?
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I am. If Italy was in fact in court trying to overrule Microsoft over claims that MS forces OEMs to preinstall Windows - that should be recorded somewhere.


Zare said:
And no, Microsoft claimed what they claimed so they could punish OEMs that don't charge for a mandatory windows installation on the laptop, but put FreeDOS on it and let the user install what they want.
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"Punish OEMs" ?

Zare said:
If you buy Windows laptop and wipe that Windows clean you paid MS free money.
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Most Windows-compatible consumer-grade hardware (even nice stuff like gaming laptops) comes with Windows Home edition, which is kinda useless anyway. Microsoft makes its money on Pro and Enterprise editions. That's where the money is, anyway.
 
Zare said:
And no, Microsoft claimed what they claimed so they could punish OEMs that don't charge for a mandatory windows installation on the laptop, but put FreeDOS on it and let the user install what they want.
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That was a loophole MS had to provide or be slammed with antitrust suits. The OEMs had to provide a MS compatible system. They shipped FreeDOS. Forcing them to a MS only system would likely have summoned the banhammer even back then.

Punishing is not the real thing, it was "Look what nice price conditions you have there for only shipping our sh... ^h software. Shame should something happen to that." Only when enough people wasted the time of the company lawyers and induced extra costs, that ballance shifted.

But getting a laptop with preinstalled windows and trying to get MS to repay you the licence you returned unused to them, that was a quest series all in itself. There even were walkthrough manuals.

astyle The link you wanted
 
astyle said:
Links, please.

I'd also argue that Microsoft's claim does have merit to it. The vast majority of people who try to use a computer - they would probably try to do without if this "Using a computer" idea necessarily meant learning how to install an OS on it. Those of us who know how to install stuff like FreeBSD or Linux on it - we don't care if Windows is preinstalled or not. We'll just wipe the disk, dual-boot, virtualize, and spend time on it, because it's fun. Most people expect stuff like gaming keyboards with backlights to work out of the box, anyway.
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but man,we are not living a life isolated from the life of the other people. What a lot of people do,have an impact even on my choices. If a lot of PC comes out with Windows preinstalled,it means that there will less chances for FreeBSD to be preinstalled on that PCs :P and even less chances to be known.
 
In September 2014, the Supreme Court of Italy in ruling 19161/2014 decided that a laptop buyer was entitled to receive a refund of €140 for the price of a Microsoft Windows license and a Microsoft Works license on a computer, saying that bundling was "a commercial policy of forced distribution" and called this practice "monopolistic in tendency",confirmed later with ruling 4390/2016. In December 2020, the Court of Monza (Italy) in ruling 1734/2020 imposed upon the manufacturer punitive damages amounting to €20,000 for abuse of the appeal procedures.
 
astyle good thing to have in head is that MS is a monopolist in several spaces (OS, office suite, formerly browser too) and has had rules and regulations applied to it that wouldn't affect others in a normal market position. Which is OK.

Crivens on the other side OEMs did want those profits. Because extra $10-20 of free money per machine sold is alot. In the end they used the DOS loophole but a lot of them dropped Linux laptops, a lot were SuSE at the time.
 
Honestly though, very small percentage of users buys laptops without preinstalled windows to install Linux/FreeBSD, most of them will just install pirated windows.
 
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