HeliOS Solutions, a company in Austin,Texas, has made some preliminary contacts with several "big box" stores and discussed the possibility of creating and maintaining a live Linux CD display. The CD's will be primarily displayed in the "computer/electronics" section of the store. HeliOS Solutions will take responsibility for maintaining and restocking the display as necessary.

However, they cannot afford to produce the disks and the professional-quality sleeves that are necessary to meet the standards of these stores. We've come to the different distro forums to let you know that the "Austin Live CD Initiative" is looking for distro participants. Along with the disks and sleeves, there will need to be an insert that guides the disk holder to a support or FAQ site specific to that distro disk.

Since the Linux Corporates have adequately proven they have absolutely no interest in proliferating the Linux Desktop, that task again falls to the Linux Community. The Austin Live CD Initiative will be the test bed for other such projects nation and world-wide If it doesn't work, then we can move our efforts elsewhere. If it does, this could be the beginning of what many of us want to see.

The acceptance of Linux as a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows.

Announcement ends.

We need high quality, professional CD's with printed covers. We can print them and put a link to your community forum for new users or if your distro has such available pre-printed we could use those. We are exploring funding options and welcome your input here.

There are a very small group of volunteeers on the ground in Austin. If you are from the area and would like to help, let me know and I will send you their contact info.

The distros currently represented on site are Mandriva, Mepis, Linux Mint, and Ubuntu. Representation consists of a person who feels capable of guiding a new user thru the install and initial setup and is not any official of the distro.

amenditman