One of my personal side projects that I have been neglecting (mostly because I don’t know how to proceed or where to take the project) is The Linux Lab. I originally got the idea from a hacker space in Cincinnati, Ohio called Hive13. I forget what really inspired me but all I know is that one day I was researching hacker spaces and LUGs (Linux User Groups) and I wanted to combine the two. I really want to thank the guys behind Hive13 for inspiration and giving me ideas. The Linux Lab (or LX Lab) is supposed to be a mix hacker space and LUG.
My idea behind LX Lab (The Linux Lab) is providing something similar to a hacker space except Linux and open source related. Sort of a lab where you can freely try out a different distro on a machine, and the goal is every distro in the world. We’d accomplish this probably through virtual machines and being able to pick a distro from a central server in the lab.
Something else I would want LX Lab to be, is a learning environment for learning about different open source systems and provide professional training to professionals. For example, Some Company, Inc. wants to test out Red Hat virtualization but they don’t want to spend the money on the resources to find out they don’t like it. They can come to the LX Lab, grab a server, pull the Red Hat image from the Image Library, some clients and test it out.
I’ll share more of my ideas about LX Lab in more posts. If you’d like to see what I have setup so far, you can go to http://www.lxlab.org or http://www.thelinuxlab.org.
