[Ubuntu PA] NTR Laptop Project: need volunteers

[Kevin Valentine]

Hello everyone,

NTR (ntronline.org) is having a real problem with their laptop
inventory.  They have a big room where they keep them and it has become
very disorganized.  It's so disorganized that they are having a
difficult time pushing them out to their thrift store and they can't
find parts to fix existing customers' laptops.  I told Stan that I think
members of the PA LoCo can help.  This post is my attempt to gather
volunteers.

I tried doing this same exact thing last year but it was just me a few
other people.  Ultimately, it failed because we lost an inside man at
NTR.  Now with the PA LoCo matured, I think this is the right moment to
try again.  In order to go forward with this, I requested that Stan
allow us to use Linux in some way.  He said that any laptop that is too
old or odd (no Win drivers) to accept any flavor of Windows, could have
Linux installed on it.  And by any flavor of Windows, I'm pretty sure
that only means Windows 2000 but I'll have to confirm.  If that's the
case, it opens us up to fairly large portion of his laptop inventory.

The only issue I can foresee the LoCo having with this is that most of
the laptops we'll have access to will only support stripped down Linux
distros like DamnSmallLinux and Puppy.  I see that as temporary.  All
laptops that we can salvage will be put into the thrift store an sold at
low prices.  The customers will be very aware that these have Linux
install and there is no support included from NTR.  I believe that
eventually NTR customers will begin requesting higher end laptops with
Ubuntu pre-installed.  It could take a year or more.  But when it
happens we'll be ready for it.

OK, how will we do this?  I'm looking for at least 4 volunteers from our
PA LoCo that can be at NTR once a month.  The minimal situation would be
to have one of our people at NTR every Saturday to focus on laptop
issues.  Being a different person each time, we should only need about 4
people.

I know some of you would like to help but traveling into the city is
just not an option.  That's OK.  You can still help!  Jedijf and I
rarely do our laptop work "onsite".  We take the laptops home and, in
our spare time, we hack the hell out of them.  If any of you like that
option, let us know we'll drop off batches to you or we'll help you pick
them up.

There should be other areas where we could use support, like tracking
any of the laptops take out of NTR.  We could use a spreadsheet or web
page for managing laptop information.  Another area of support ... NTR
sometimes receives laptops as lots on palettes.  In those cases, they
tend to image the drives one-at-a-time.  Right now, they're doing this
with a batch of 30 laptops.  Perhaps one of you could introduce them to
a Linux solution using networked imaging.  Any Clonezilla masters in our
group?

I'm sure I've missed some details or created some gray areas.  Please
post your questions and comments.

-kevin

PS: I will be making a wiki page where you can sign up and commit to a task.