It's always been my impression that, appearances to the contrary, Linux aficionados are no different than the rest of us. So I wasn't surprised when I saw a post on the Ubuntu Women forum, from a guy, who's wondering if there are "any good places online to meet like-minded free software women." (The "free," of course, refers to the software.)The post, entitled "Ubuntu is for lovers," is from a 24-year-old North Carolina man who's lamenting the fact that it apparently isn't. Why is he putting this up on the Ubuntu Women forum? Let's let the post speak for itself:

"So, the fact that we have 1 active female in an organization dedicated to open source software (and she's a Windoze user...) got me wondering if there were any good places online to meet like-minded free software women. I did a Google search and got some software for setting up a dating service and some people talking about using blogs as a dating service, but there's got to be some Match.com wannabe that caters to the tech crowd, right? The women seemed to love the Firefox posters we gave out at Software Freedom Day, which say "please don't hurt the web" and have a cute, pouty looking firefox on them (generously provided by Mozilla) but no new women on the listserv or at meetings since then."

The utility of the Firefox fox aside -- it is cute -- this guy's got a business idea that's as valid as much of the other stuff that's floated in the post-Web 2.0 bubble. Any entrepreneurs out there up for starting a dating service for techies? With all the losers out there, it seems like lots of ladies would be happy to meet someone who could give good tech support. (I know, there are numerous non-PC assumptions in that statement. Just as many guys need technical help. And relationships aren't just about who has the most powerful processor. I could go on, but I've said too much already.)

Turns out, while there are no dating services specifically for Linux guys, there are a bunch of organizations aimed at encouraging the participation of women in open-source software.

Leading that list is LinuxChix. It bills itself as "a community for women who like Linux and Free Software, and for women and men who want to support women in computing."

LinuxChix is a sponsor of She's Geeky, a conference (actually, they call it an "un-conference") to be held Oct. 22-23 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

The conference has an academic-sounding description: "[it] will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved." But it actually sounds like a fun confab, where everything from online video to open-source software will be discussed. And it's got an interesting list of attendees, including people who work at Google and O'Reilly.

The other distaff open-source org is Ubuntu Women. It's hard to say how large or active this group is, since there's nothing about the membership on the site. They do quote a sobering statistic that only 1.5% of the open-source community is female, compared with 28% in "proprietary" software.

The group has a valuable page of resource links and a companion blog, Planet Ubuntu Women. The latter is just your average blog, without any gender-specific orientation.

Which brings us back full-circle, and punctuates the obvious point that software and sex are pretty much separate spheres.

Still, if you know of an open-source girl who's looking, GNU guru Richard Stallman may be interested.