Hi there, I’m about to organize an install party for my local community with the help of two other Linux enthusiasts. Has anyone ever done that here? Do you have any tips on which distro to install or what people absolutely need to know before leaving the room?
On the distro side I’m thinking fedora or Linux mint buy I have no experience with the latter, it just seems very beginner-friendly.
I’m also planning to start with a quick presentation on what is linux and the basis (distribution, package manager, root, …).
Also, I don’t know how much time we need (I guess it depends on how many people show up but we’ll certainly limit to 10 or so per party).
Thanks for your help 🙂
You can encourage your target audience to back up their important data upfront in order to save them a couple of hours at the beginning of your party. But also try to bring plenty of external drives as others here have suggested already.
I have nothing particular to suggest but I just want to say this sounds great and happy to see. Enjoy!
As you mentioned Linux Mint is very beginner friendly so I’d recommend that.
If any of you have a spare laptop, maybe you can run a live OS for people to play around with?
Thank you all for your precious answers! I’ll have fun preparing that now 🙂
Linux Mint is a really good choice. I recently tried OpenSUSE and ran into all kinds of issues that I didn’t have with Mint. Hardware issues were the only issues I had with Mint. I prefer Xfce to Cinnamon though, preferably with the DesktopPal97 theme.
That is the extent of the help I can provide.
EDIT: Oh also, check that their hardware supports Linux. The glorious Arch wiki has that information available for a lot of distros.
If possible it might help to have a couple demo PCs out so that they and try different desktop environments. Some might be more enthusiastic if they can not only play around with it when it’s up and running (and gives people something to do while your helping others) but also if the DE matches their “workflow better” it also gives you a chance to show them how to do common tasks. Maybe different demos have different “suites”, like here’s the gaming demo, here’s regular, productivity, etc
I agree with some of the other posts, I’d stick with 1 distro (whichever all the helpers are most comfortable with) so that you can speak confidently about it, and decrease the chances of something going wrong and you having to break out Google and the terminal. A DE is an easier choice to explain that different distros affecting and impacting things they can’t see. Especially if you might have to provide tech support during the beginning. Maybe just say a throw away line or 2 about there being different distros, just like there’s different kinds of cheese. Still same thing at its core, just different options.
I also recommend a couple spare external hard drives for them to back up their files.
I’d maybe do just a brief overview at the beginning. And go more in depth afterwards so they don’t get overloaded.
People are having parties for this?
Did you read where OP said they are throwing an install party?
Never heard of a “install party” what do you do on these parties?
Help people install Linux.
@OP, I’d be prepared for very few people to show up. I’ve only taken part in one install party and we had five people turn up the whole evening, and two of them decided not to go for it.
- Make regular backups
- How to spot software we control, libre software
Fedora is great, but it’s also the only distro I’ve had fail to boot after a fresh install and update.
Mint for sure. The slower release cycle is definitely better for nontechnical people, but show them how to install flatpaks from the app store.
Fedora, like other distros, keep multiple previously known-good copies available to boot. If you have an issue with one after an update, just boot to the last one prior to boot and rerun updates.
This issue can happen with any distro, though rare.
It was either failing before grub or wasn’t in the list, I can’t remember now but I know rollbacks were not a possibility. If I remember correctly I had to reboot once after the install, then update, and then reboot once again to have the updated system boot.
This issue can happen with any distro, though rare.
I’ve used Linux for about 15 years, and that was the only time a fresh install crapped out on me.
