I hosted it at a local maker space. It wasn’t like super structured. My wife and I took care of most people who came in and occasionally delegating help to the knowledgeable volunteers with the space. I brought some personal laptops with a few distros installed for test driving. Linux Mint was by far the most popular choice. https://endof10.org/ has some useful resources.

Mouse acceleration sucks in general. My work computer is a Mac an until Sonoma came out I needed a dedicated app to disable mouse acceleration. I agree with your other points as well.

He picked PopOS again???

Look, I have nothing against people who prefer Pop. But the issue with Steam last time around gave me a very negative impression of it. A few months ago I organized a local Linux install party and tried giving it a chance. I could not get the damn thing to install, even after trying multiple ISOs. You can say “skill issue” but if you want a headache-free distro, which Linus very clearly does, my recommendation is to try something else. If Pop works for you, again, more power to you.

Might not be necessary, time will tell.

I should add that first order of business will be deciding on a communication platform. I know mailing lists and IRC are the traditional solutions, but I’m trying to start a LUG that is more accessible to newbies who want help using Linux and don’t necessarily want to learn how to connect to IRC or learn mailing list etiquette. I’m going to push for some kind of forum software, possibly Discourse.

I’m in the process of setting one up right now.

If you’re looking for easy, meetup.com probably is the way to go. Personally I’m leveraging the connections I made via a recent end of 10 install event I organized. My state also has a directory of LUGs that I got added to. Our first meeting is in January so we’ll see how it goes 🤞