On 8/26/25 6:24 PM, Karen Lewellen wrote:
Hi all,Was going to mark this as off topic. then I realized it may be where many of you engage with Debian.Having a discussion on the board of the lug in my area. someone feels lugs are largely failing. Do you find this to be true? If not, why not? Thanks, Karen
Back in 1996, I helped found the Suncoast Linux Users Group (SLUG) in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, USA. At our first meeting, I handed out a survey asking why people would want to be part of this group and attend meetings. There were two answers. First, people wanted to be able to hang out with other people who had the same interest. Second, they wanted help with Linux. At the time, Linux could be devilishly hard to get installed and working. We had monthly meetings in three different locations, and people were encouraged to bring their setups in for help in getting things working. We several mailing lists, and a website.
I ran that group for about ten years, and then turned it over to someone who mostly shut it down. It has been defunct now for over a decade.
My take on the decline of LUGs is that Linux got too easy to set up and use. I've been using Debian for decades, and I reinstall every time Debian changes versions. I haven't had install problems in years and years. Everything just works. The system figures out my graphics card, my sound card (on the motherboard), my ethernet connections, etc. These things used to be nightmares for a lot of people. Now they're not.
There probably still is the factor that people would like to hang out with others with similar interests. But at the time when LUGs were popular, members were mostly hobbyists. It was definitely a niche pursuit. Now Linux, while only having 6-8% of the desktop market, is much more "mainstream". Linuxers are less interested in the guts of the system and how it works than they are in just getting work done. And that's far easier now than it used to be.
Someone mentioned SVLUG during the discussion. They have a website, but it doesn't look like they've had meetings in years, so I'd consider them dormant. And I don't personally know of any U.S. based LUGs which are still operating.
Paul
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Paul M. Foster
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