Group: TryGNULinux.com

The Mission

One of the major roadblocks to the growth of free and open source software is a lack of support for the end-user. As techies, many of us don't think twice about searching for an answer, reading forum threads, going to IRC, or even running scripts.

But to a whole new breed of free software users, this process is foreign and complicated. We are here to reach out to those frustrated users who want to try free software and need help getting comfortable.

In addition, we do a biweekly podcast to educate about free software, highlight free software packages, and talk about upcoming and recent events.

Who are we?

TryGNULinux.com was started by David Sterry (User:Dsterry/Profile), a computer consultant, developer, and free software advocate. Ken Simeon co-hosts the podcast and helps with site maintenance. We currently have several members ready to provide support to free software users.

If you'd like to get involved, please fill out the join us form.

How do we do it?

We use free software to produce this podcast, website, and to provide our other services. From GNU/Linux operating systems, Audacity and the Apache webserver, to a free software bug tracker, online collaboration suite and content management system, it is all done with free software.

Sometimes we need to write software to get things done so here are two scripts we've developed to help with the podcast. Both are written in perl and licensed under the GPL.

generate_rss v0.1 - Generates RSS feeds with correct file sizes.

rsstrak v0.2 - Scans Apache 2 logs to summarize RSS subscribers and user agents.