From Linus to Guido: a user group's front-row seat

Scroll through the DC LUG meeting history and you realise how much early Linux history walked through one auditorium at the NIH in Bethesda. The list is almost absurd in hindsight.

In 1994, Don Becker talked networking and the Beowulf project; Eric Youngdale explained shared libraries; Bob Amstadt demonstrated Wine. In May 1995 the group watched Linus Torvalds talk about what interested him. That December, Python's creator Guido van Rossum gave an introduction to his language with a detour through the Grail browser. Later came XFree86's Dirk Hohndel, Red Hat's Bob Young and Eric Troan, and a steady stream of kernel, cluster and desktop talks right up to GNOME in 1998.

No single person planned that line-up. It is what happens when a community meets every third Wednesday for years and keeps good notes. We are glad those notes survived, and glad to host them again here.