Gabriola Linux Users Group

Meetings #36 and #37 Redux

2012-01-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

here we are at Meeting #36. Too late I realized it was actually #36 which implied some sort of anniversary. Happy Birthday Gab-LUG! We've made it past three years which just blows my mind. Thank you all for coming and making it so entertaining.

I talked about Gnome 3 and how I don't hate it. We looked at Gnome 3 vs Unity vs Gnome 3 in Linux Mint 12. Ed was there to get an intro to Linux, see what it can do, and see if he has something to switch to from Windows XP since his computers won't run Vista or Windows 7. I think this was the meeting where I showed off OSX running in a VM on my Linux laptop. This was also the meeting where I discovered not all Core2 CPUs are 64bit as I had previously been assured. Turns out I have a crappy 32bit one which means it can't, no matter what I do, ever, ever, ever see my 4gb of RAM. It also means it won't run VMWare Player 4. Poor me.

Here we are at Meeting #37. I brought along my OLPC with Debian 6 running on it - I resurrected it recently and put ScummVM on it so I can play Monkey Island again. It will also become a monitoring PC for my webserver since I've started a new business - I want something which can run for a long time and not require a lot of power, the OLPC is perfect.

We updated Sheila's MBP with the latest patches for Ubuntu 11.10 - it all went perfectly and as planned her wireless network broke. Thanks to an earlier blog post we had the means to fix this, three lines in a terminal and a reboot later and she was back up and running, new kernel module created and everything.

Ken and Mark spent most of their time looking at the differences between some Unix commands and their Linux counterparts - Ken is taking a programming course and is using a Debian server so he's into learning as many cool commands as possible. Try "history" next time you're in a terminal. Do you see any passwords in there? :)

We're into 2012 suddenly! Happy New Year everybody! Here's to another year of Linux development, FOSS, tinkering, and all the other things we love about running our own computers.

See you next month!

-d

Meeting #34 and 35 Redux

2011-11-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

Hello again beloved reader and (hopefully) fan of Linux. If you're reading this then you'd better come out to a meeting and say Hi - we'd love to meet you.

So what's new?

I've completely failed to bring my espresso maker to the last two meetings. If you want me to bring it to the next one you'd better leave a comment here or on the Facebook page. Speaking of Facebook, we've got eight likes so far, we only need 13 more to get a public URL.

It took two meetings, an extra session in between, a bunch of coffee, a few apple fritters, lots of patience and (of course) some Open Source Software from SourceForge to make it happen but Sheila and I finally got her MacBook Pro booting Ubuntu Linux from an external USB drive. rEFIt is the bomb! It worked a treat, was easy to do, and is easy to remove if you don't want it anymore. Sheila's homework was to update Ubuntu with the security updates, avoid kernel updates, and make it back to the next meeting with Ubuntu still functioning. We'll see how she does come meeting #36!

The next problem after getting the MBP to see Ubuntu on the external drive, was to get her wireless networking working. Thanks to this page it was easy. Kernel updates will break it however, which is why Sheila was told to avoid them. We'll handle it at the next meeting and teach her how to take care of herself.

We talked about BC Hydro and the Smart Meters so everyone got a little lesson in the wireless networks (yes, that's right, plural - networks) they are embedded with. Rusty is hoping to come up with a homebrew device to tap into them and monitor power consumption from his house. I want in on that one Rusty!

We had another new member show up this month. Welcome Doug Hornsey! Turns out Doug and I have some friends in common - which was a nice surprise. Doug installed Ubuntu on a netbook so he can use it while on his boat in Silva Bay where he doesn't have a power hookup. How did it go Doug?

Wylie showed us how he can turn his lights on and off at home via his laptop and an Internet connection - Arduino ftw! - much to the chagrin of his partner. No, it wasn't a UFO, it was Wylie playing around. Pretty darn cool. Marc was there too showing off his XBMC install at home and controlling it via an Android phone at the meeting. Also pretty darn cool. You guys rock!

What's in store for the next meeting?

Linux Mint released a refresh of their Debian Edition and I've been thinking of trying it out and reinstalling my laptop/desktop because of some small issues I've come up against. So far no dice, but it would be nice to be pointed at the Linux Mint Update servers instead of directly at the Debian ones so I get updates tailored to LMDE and not Debian. I keep running into annoying package breakages.

For example LMDE recently updated and upgraded me to Gnome 3 for my desktop. I groaned when it happened (WHY wasn't I paying ATTENTION??!!) but after a day...I like it. Gnome 3 is actually quite nice and once they fix a few bugs (gee, when have I said that before about Linux?) it will be awesome. Mostly they need to add back the power features I miss like being able to customize my panel. So I'll be happy to show off Gnome 3.

There will be more! You can count on it.

Hope to see you there!

-d

Meeting #33 Redux

2011-09-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

We're getting into the swing of things at our new location. I'm considering bringing my espresso maker to the next meeting to make coffees on demand and get me out from behind my screen. :) Tempting! You'll have to show up though to see if I do it.

Lots of good discussion again this month. I was helping migrate Evolution settings and it was proving to be harder than it should have been. We looked and looked but couldn't find the magic steps to copy over the old data and make the Evolution on the new install see it. We gave up! I HATE that!

Ken and Mark went off into some programmer speak because of a new course Ken is taking. Robyn was getting used to a new laptop and Knoppix 6.4.3 - luckily she had Wylie to help her. Wylie was...well..Wylie. :)

As you can see from my laptop screen I was checking out something called Cyanogenmod which is a community-ROM for Android phones. My wife got an Android recently, an HTC Sensation something-or-other and HTC has committed to unlocking their bootloaders so you can load whatever you want on your phone. Awesome! That makes me want an HTC when I replace my iPhone. No more waiting on the carrier to upgrade you to the latest Android.

Power in the hands of the people. Yay!

Ok, that's it for now. Hope to see you next month at The Commons, 7pm! October 5th. Mark you calendar!

-d

Meeting #32 Redux

2011-08-05T14:17:00.001-07:00

And a good time was had by all. It was a small meeting this month - no surprise really. Historically the summertime has been a slow period for Linux Meetings. This month we had the added complication of bring under a tight police presence due to a tragedy on Harrison Road. In the ensuing chaos I don't mind at all that folks decided to stay home.

I hope the word got out that we now meet at The Commons. ;)

Those of us who came got down to it anyways. Gerry and I bought coffees at Mad Rona's on our way to the meeting just so we were prepared. For some insane reason I decided to get a double-americano which stayed with me long into the night. Gerry also brought along cookies to share and I brought along some coffee to brew in the percolator in case it was needed and milk. Robyn had no coffee designs on her mind so we were saved the trouble of finding and figuring out the percolator and then cleaning it and putting it away.

There was a general discussion about our various Linux woes from the last month. I've switched fulltime to Linux Mint Debian Edition and it has been great. Well, it was fantastic when I did my little trial on my laptops. Everything installed just fine, everything worked, all my extra software I love was easily available in the repositories so there was no hunting down and manually installing .deb packages or .tar.gz source code. Avant Window Navigator, XBMC and Clementine are sometimes problematic for me. When I got to my main desktop however Clemetine had disappeared from the repository. Grrr. Also, my desktop has 8gb of RAM while my laptops only have 2gb, so that meant I needed to use the 64bit version of LMDE. Argh! The AWN Extras aren't in the repo compiled for 64bit architecture! So now I have AWN installed but I am lacking my Trash Applet and my Shiny Switcher Applet too. :(

Gerry has been plugging away with Fedora 14 and recently tried to install the latest Firefox. Gerry has discovered the joys of .rpm versus .tar.gz versus yum-based installs. .rpm is easy but you have to keep it up to date manually. .tar.gz installs are painful for regular joes and after jumping through hoop after hoop Gerry couldn't get it going. Really when it comes down to it in Linux you should always stick to an official repository for your software needs so the distributor of your version can take care of the updates for you.

Robyn was wondering how to stop her touchpad from being so sensitive while typing and wanted to keep her mouse cursor from jumping around the screen. We found a few ways to accomplish that but none of them would work. Since Robyn is using the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.04, she has no xorg.conf to edit so that negated one method. SHMConfig was not available in the repositories so that negated method #2. Annoyingly in later editions of Ubuntu they have this all figured out but in 10.04 it was still problematic so for now Robyn is out of luck. An upgrade will fix that one for her, but all in good time.

So, for now, I am off. Summer finally arrived and now I have to get serious about getting in some camping and beach time. I'll continue to struggle with LMDE and report back next month. Perhaps I will switch to the 32bit version - a PAE Kernel was just installed on my laptops and that may unlock access to my 8gb of RAM.

Hope you are having a good time too! See you in September.

-d

We're at it again

2011-08-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

Still going strong!

Though we're sad to say goodbye to Mad Rona's - happily we do have a new home at The Commons. It's our old home! Back to our roots as it were.

Things have changed over there. I know for a fact they have internet connections faster than Shaw Lite Speed. We no longer have to pay a fee to rent a room. We do have to bring our own coffee still but that's no biggie. Maybe I will get a chance to again tease Rusty about leaving it on the roof of his car when he drives off to the meeting.

Here's a picture of our last meeting. I am, as usual, hiding behind the camera. Many things were discussed along with Linux Mint and my hopes that I can displace Ubuntu with it, Mad Rona's and how they let us in that night even though they were technically closed, the prospect of a war drive meeting to research the state of wireless network security on Gabriola and lots more.

Hope to see you at our next meeting!

-d

We're on Twitter too!

2011-05-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

I've been busy playing with bits of Web 2.0 - so now posts to the Facebook page get Tweeted via our new Twitter account - @Gabriola_Linux. You can visit our Twitter page here.

Yipee!

-d

We're on Facebook!

2011-05-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Some other news which isn't meeting-related: I've started a Facebook page for our little group. See it here.

Cheers!

-d

Meetings #25-#29 Redux

2011-05-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Wow am I behind.

I thought I was only a meeting or two behind but apparently life has been keeping me very busy lately and I've fallen waaaay behind. Much further than I had intended...

Well, now that you and I are both here there is news to share!

We've made it to Meeting #29 which warms my heart. Mad Rona's is happy to have us each month. There are new members at almost every meeting and interest in Linux seems to be building. Awesome!

On the Android front (since I mentioned it in my last post) I did succeed in getting my wife's old phone running Android 1.6 aka Donut - but it sucked. Whomever made the port of Android customized for that phone did an awesome job but in the end, the phone was just too slow and the screen just too crappy. Then I had the chance to use a HTC Desire for a few months with Android 2.2 aka Froyo. It was ok - not as polished as iPhone, with some features I still miss (an actual hotspot feature for example and a terminal which just stayed connected via SSH to my box at home) but it couldn't play music very well (gaps between tracks) and in the end I had to give it up when that job dried up. No loss really, I do like my iPhone still. However, I know I am about to be abandoned by Apple (after all my phone is almost two years old - time to force me to upgrade!) since the 3G phones didn't get the last series of iOS updates - my 3GS isn't long for this world. There is hope.

So what's been going on at the meetings? Too much to put here. The last two have featured me bitching about Ubuntu and their new Unity interface which has a lot of people annoyed. I've fled Ubuntu to Linux Mint Debian Edition for now. It offers the thrill of living on the edge via the Debian Unstable branch, the codec support of Ubuntu, and an easy installer of which I would only improve on the partitioning section.

Ubuntu has switched to something called Unity for their UI and Fedora has gone with Gnome 3 since Gnome 2 development has stopped. I'm going to give each of those a rest for now and let them mature before I go back. Gnome 2 is perfect for my needs. I may give Linux Mint 11 a try once they release the final version as it promises to be Ubuntu without the Unity UI.

Wylie has been heavily promoting Knoppix - so after his relentless assault I've put v6.4.3 on some old laptops I have here, mostly for fun. It uses under 100mb of RAM when fully loaded! Also, on my old Alienware laptop which no longer likes Ubuntu (USB problems - nothing USB works including the keyboard and trackpad) Knoppix works great. I love resurrecting old hardware.

On my netbook I've put MeeGo for now - a special distro for netbooks. It is clever, has a unique interface, and would be perfect except for a few problems normal end-users would balk at. There is no codec support in it at all after a raw install - OGG only - it won't play MP3s. Also they decided to include Evolution as the email client and I hate Evolution. It stinks. After some hunting around in the forums I found the Community Repo which added back in all the stuff I missed. So now my netbook has XBMC again, VLC, and Thunderbird. It plays MP3s and the rest of my music collection, it also plays my video collection again too. Not bad for free!

I went on a bit of a search for a distribution of Linux which played nice with my netbook - Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, PCLinuxOS, eLive, Mandriva, openSUSE, JoliCloud...no luck. I couldn't find a version which both supported my hardware (especially the wifi card in my netbook) and could actually power it off when I shut it down. MeeGo fills all my needs.

Well that's about it for now. See you at the next meeting!

-d

Meeting #24 Redux

2010-11-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

We made it!

Two years of Linux on Gabriola is a milestone. I'd like to thank everyone who came out to the meeting for being a part of it and contributing to the arising consciousness that there are alternatives to Windows and OSX which are quite capable of performing for you. Keep up the good work!

In fact it was a record turnout at this meeting. I counted 14 people and was torn enough between answering questions and meeting new faces that I managed to not remember everyone's name. That is another first for a Linux meet! We had to push some more tables together as there wasn't enough room at the big table at Mad Rona's, and we slammed the poor server behind the counter - I waited 10 minutes for my coffee. :) AND THAT'S FINE! Thanks for hosting us, Mad Rona's. We'll be back.

Wylie was hoping to show off some hardware he hacked together involving ethernet ports, LEDs, and more. Sadly for him his eth0 was not cooperating and so we had to make due by looking at his video of the whole thing in action. Wylie: can you help me make some sort of automated door lock using an old keypad from a microwave, VCR parts, and Linux? Let me know, ok? You seem to have the necessary skills. Rusty looked to still be trying to get his Toughbook's touchscreen working to his satisfaction (no small feat that!). I coaxed Steve out of his place for some social time which was well spent complaining about Windows Mobile and extolling the virtues of VPNs and Remote Desktop. Steve when I get my wife's HTC converted to Android you will be one of the first to know.

We had two Mac laptops (a G3 and a G4) which were being used to test out Ubuntu 10.04 by people who have never seen Linux before. Ken actually got his running once he got it home and took my advice of just being patient with the Live CD as it booted (to be fair Ken did most of the work by patiently trying each of the boot options until he found one which worked). It took about 10 minutes before he was presented with a working desktop. The other Mac had no unpartitioned space on the hard drive so Ubuntu was not able to be installed until the owner was confident she had all her data backed up. Her goal was to get a Ubuntu system so she can try Linux and see how it works. Unfortunately there isn't the same support for resizing partitions in the Mac world as there is in the Windows world so she was stuck in the unfortunate position of deciding to reinstall both OSX and then Ubuntu, or just wiping everything and going for Ubuntu. As this is her only machine she opted to wait and possibly get a netbook for her Ubuntu experiments. Robyn's HP 210 provided ample excitement on what that experience would be like. How is that netbook treating you Robyn? I wonder how the new Unity interface will treat you.

Me? I had my OLPC with me running Lucid Puppy XO edition 5.11. I love that the little green machine still works but boy is it ever slow. I brought some Live CDs with PPC builds on them for the Macs I knew were coming and brought some of the older Ubuntu releases so people could see the change in it over time. I found the time over the last month to upgrade all my systems to Ubuntu 10.10 including my MythTV PVR. I had no problems with the upgrade whatsoever and even though I went through the trouble of a complete reinstall on my laptop, hibernation still does not work. Curses! I miss that feature more than I care to admit.

All in all it was a very successful evening and I'm looking forward to Meeting #25. Will you be there?

-d

Meeting #23 Redux

2010-10-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

We did it again and managed to make it out for another night of coffee and chatter about not just Linux, but computers in general, the state of online security, and how nice it really is to have a coffee spot on Gabriola which is open after 7pm.

Thanks to everyone who continues to come out! I should honour your presence better by updating this blog in a more timely fashion but C'est La Vie. :)

Robyn asked about Firewalls and if she really needs one. Wylie is considering dumping Ubuntu for something which he can tinker with - Skype continues to be a problem for him because of his multiple sound cards - I have no problems other than my webcam seems to be get a very low frame rate.

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is out and most of us have upgraded. I like it - evolution not revolution. This is 10.04 but with a little more polish. It does seems snappier on little things like opening a new Nautilus window so I can manipulate files.

VMWare Server does not work on 10.10 without major work - something I try to avoid when dealing with my servers. So I've migrated to VirtualBox OSE. It was pretty easy once I realized VirtualBox can directly open a hard drive file from VMWare, so all I really had to do was create a new VM with the same basic settings as my last one and then attach the hard drive - voila! XP was no problem other than needing to reactivate it. My webserver on the other hand had major problems which in the end were all due to the clock gaining about 9 seconds for every realtime second that passed. Things were crashing all over the place, mail was arriving two days in the future, it was a little distressing.

In the end a adding a few characters to my kernel boot options fixed it - "clock=pit" was the magic phrase. Here's why.

So I am all up and running, happy and enjoying the new bits of the new Ubuntu. I wonder why they removed the "Software Sources" option from System Administration menu though - the only way for GUI users to edit their repositories now is to open Synaptic and then open the repository editor from there.

Next meeting is on November 3rd at 7pm at Mad Rona's! Hope to see you there - it is a bit special as it will be our second anniversary. What should we do to celebrate?

-d

Meeting #22 Redux

2010-09-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

With summer fading, temperatures dropping, and my schedule going like crazy trying to get kids organized for school, trying to get away for a few days to visit relatives on Saltspring, trying to catch up on work and also trying to relax a little...suddenly the meeting was upon us and I hadn't confirmed our reservation at Robert's Place Upstairs (what *does* he call that spot anyways?) Luckily Robyn is nice and thorough about these things and she detected early that the space was taken and we were suddenly out on the street.

Perfect timing.

I had been feeling mildly bad about borrowing the wireless from Mad Rona's Coffee Bar when we had out meetings at the Woodfire Pizza place - so that night we met at Mad Rona's. They are open late (I had wanted to use Raspberries before but they close early) and they serve great drinks and deserts so the word went out on the mailing list and we met at Mad Rona's.

I'm not sure what they made of us - probably nothing, coffee shop types tend to see lots of odd people - but we were a bit of a spectacle. Six or seven of us crowded around the big table, at least one laptop per person, power cables running everywhere, mutterings about Gnu this and Ubuntu that....

Robyn brought her new HP Netbook with 10.04 Netbook Remix on it - being pink AND plaid, it is hard not to like the little thing immediately. She was still hoping Gnucash would solve her accounting needs on Linux and otherwise had a problem where her trackpad was jumpy. I think we fixed that one - Robyn did we nail it? Leave a comment below!

Wylie brought a CD he'd made with five flavours of non-Windows OSes on it which you could boot and run directly from the disc. Most of them actually ran from a RAMDISK which made them very speedy. DSL, MicroCore, TinyCore, Menuet and Lucid Puppy were on the menu. Lucid Puppy is a hybrid of Puppy Linux and Ubuntu Lucid Lynx which brings it close to my heart. Coincidentally I had brought my own copy of Lucid Puppy specifically to show to Wylie - I had found a copy created specifically for my OLPC and last meeting we were talking about the demise of the RAMDISK. Puppy runs completely from RAM and is fast on even an old PII. Now that we have gobs and gobs of RAM - will the RAMDISK make a resurgence?

I brought a Magic-Pro Mini Keyboard which I recently obtained. The box (which I left at home) specifically mentions Linux compatibility so it made the rounds and was tried in several laptops. It worked great and was Plug-And-Play for Linux, Windows and OSX. Pretty cool, now I have a perfect keyboard for the living room to control my XBMC stereo.

After more chatter and coffee, our time was up and we had to go. Everyone had a good time and we agreed to meet at the same place next month. The only downside to Mad Rona's is their lack of liquor license so we can't have cold beers with our Linux. :)

Until next month!

-d

Meeting #21 Redux

2010-08-10T22:22:00.001-07:00

Time to get back to this Blog methinks! Linux can stand the exposure on this here island!

Gab LUG met again - our twenty-first meeting and I'm happy to say we're going strong. I can't believe it has been almost two years already since we started.

Since I last wrote we had two meetings upstairs at Robert's Place. The second one was on a night which was too hot so after Gerry finished his pie we went looking for cold drinks. The patio at Robert's Place was stuffed and rather than sit inside, we found ourselves inside the cool air-conditioned space that is Woodfire Pizza. Borrowing the Wifi from Mad Rona's next door (Thanks! Love your coffee and sandwiches!) and cold beers in hand the discussion of all things computer began.

I had such a good experience there I booked us a table for August and things went off without a hitch. We had a new face visit us interested in how Linux can help her and her business.

Ubuntu 10.04 is proving to be a hit with the group though Gerry sometimes threatens to defect to Fedora. Promoting something you love to someone who is interested is pretty easy to do so we had a good discussion this time about the pros and cons of different operating systems with a few wistful asides into computer history. :)

Anyone wanting to start an Amiga group please get in touch.

Anyone who knows how to get GRUB to boot an ISO please get in touch.

If you want to vote for Woodfire vs Robert's Place for the next meeting please get in touch.

Thanks to everyone who came.

Until next time: September 1st @ 7pm.

-d

Meeting #18 Redux

2010-05-14T19:17:00.001-07:00

The Gabriola Linux Users Group had our 18th official meeting at Rusty's house since Suzy's On Top was busy being renovated into Robert's Place. Rusty was kind enough to host us, provide drinks and refreshments, and then wow us with his cool setup including a Linux computer which is listening to Morse code broadcasts and then translating it one character at a time into text for humans to read. Very cool!

It's had me looking at the trees around my place wondering how hard it would be to stick up an antenna and start my own listening post. Rusty - I think we need to talk.

This was the first meet since Lucid Lynx was released and much of the chatter surrounded our impressions of it, what issues we had discovered and why folks who were lagging should upgrade. It seems everyone in the group has had a pretty positive experience with this version. I've just discovered my webcam is no longer working - which is odd, and I'm sure can be fixed - that is the first real issue I've had. My upgrades went smoothly, my fresh installs went smoothly too.

Well, mostly. One graphics problem since fixed, created due to mucking about with different drivers and driver installers. That and my laptop has developed a spotty suspend mode and hibernation mode has ceased to function. That's par for the course for me (read this blog!) but I still hope I can fix those problems - suspend and hibernate have worked flawlessly on the last two versions of Ubuntu on this laptop.

Most annoying issue to arise this past month for me, is this bug in the Ubuntu Bug Tracker. CBC video doesn't work. The bug has been bothering me for a while, its only just this month I found out what the deal is. "CBC - damn you! Why must you insist on using a version which doesn't work?" I wailed at the meeting. I had read post #17 which contains the CBC response - to paraphrase: "We're aware of the problem but you're less than 1% of our audience." Turns out using the latest Flash 10.1 prerelease fixes the problem (post #59).

Next month we hope to be back on top at Robert's Place. Hope to see you there!

-d

Meeting 18 is upon us!

2010-05-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.

The Gabriola Linux Users Group is alive and well. We're taking a break from our usual meeting spot this month because Suzy's On Top is no more! If you haven't heard the news Suzy sold her business and retired and at the beginning of May 2010 the official handover took place. It is now Robert's Place. Apparently Robert will be reopening the upstairs to groups like us once again after his renovations are done, meanwhile we are displaced for a month.

So I turned to the members of the group for suggestions. Rusty stepped up to the plate and has offered to show us his new spot and hold our meeting this month. Thank you Rusty! A warning though - don't let us enjoy ourselves too much or you'll never get rid of us. ;)

If you would like to attend the meeting please email me for directions. I'll do Rusty the favour of not publishing his address on the Internet.

This month we will celebrate the launch of Lucid Lynx, the new Ubuntu version released about a week ago. Version 10.04 - it is an LTS release which means Long Term Support, or three years of patches for desktops and five years for servers for those to whom strange computer acronyms are meaningless. I've been using it for a while now and I love it as I usually do. I look forward to everyone else's opinions!

Come to the meeting and I'll tell you about how it may have killed my old laptop. :)

In other news, meetings 16 and 17 were held at Suzy's On Top and I was just too darn busy to update this blog with details. That is a bit of an excuse, but I hope you'll let me get away with it anyways. Looking forward I've spoken to my webmaster about folding this blog into my website and moving to Wordpress - he's for it. Now we just need to find time to talk about it in more detail and get 'er done. I want to be able to blog from my iPhone and this seems like a logical course.

I have shut down my other blog - like I said, no time. I will start it up again once I have my new site done and public. I forsee the two blogs folding into one and my site hosting it all. iPhone camera get ready!

So there you have it. The first update in months. Well, minutes really if you count the post below this that I found I hadn't actually published back in February. Oops! Sorry, dear Reader.

-d

Meeting #15

2010-02-03T21:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Derek for the free ad in The Sounder - now I can be really laid back about promoting the Gabriola Linux Users Group and not even bother with posters or email alerts - the people still come. We must have struck a nerve!

Special thanks as well to Suzy for the free use of her space Suzy's On Top. Where is it? What does it look like? Why did the earlier link to Suzy's break? All good questions. Click here to see what Suzy's looks like - but if you've been on Gabriola for more than 10 minutes you've probably already gone past it since it is right "downtown".

This month we talked about why Gerry spent a month without wireless networking on his laptop which last month we put Ubuntu 9.10 onto. I blame his DLink router - which worked fine with Vista. Gerry blames me. This month we brought a few routers and once we got a working combo of WPA2 and Gerry's laptop successfully connecting, he took that router home. Good luck Gerry!

We had a new member visit us too - and I use the word member loosely. There are no fees and anyone is welcome, if you show up - gues what?? You're our newest member!

Come to the next one and become a member too. :)

-d

Meeting #14 Redux

2010-01-10T11:24:00.001-08:00

Everything went perfectly this time! And it has been a while since I could say that about a Linux meeting. Suzie was called, wireless Internet was turned on, I had nothing special planned to talk about or say so there was no demo to go sideways on me, it was fun and everyone went home at the end of the night feeling like it was worth it.

Not the least of whom was Gerry who finally took the plunge and abandoned Vista for Ubuntu 9.10 on his laptop. After troubleshooting some wireless network problems (he needs to use a proprietary Broadcom driver) we got him up and running, updated and even got some extras like VLC installed. Gerry's Vista was sick and taking way too long to boot and launch programs - you made the right choice Gerry! Just stick with it for a bit and you'll see you don't need Windows 7 at all for what you use the computer to do.

XBMC for Linux was demoed since I had it up and running on my laptop. The crowd was awed and Mark even installed the Mac version while he was there to give it a whirl. I like the built-in MythTV support in the PC version (the original Xbox version omits this code) and I am really enjoying the ability of XBMC to tap into an RSS feed and show me the podcast episodes for playback. Truly an awesome project. Perfect for the living room. Next time I will have it controlled by a Wiimote - I'm trying to replace my Xbox in my living room and don't want to switch from using a small Xbox remote to a large Bluetooth keyboard for controlling everything.

The next meeting is in February on the 3rd. Hope to see you there!

-d

Meeting #13 Redux

2009-12-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

We came, we met, we talked about Linux and how we must remember to call Suzy in advance and remind her to turn on the Wifi for us. Next time!

Burtt was bitten by a recent kernel upgrade and has lost the sound again on his Dell Inspiron 1525. He bought it from Dell and has had sound issues in the past brought on by a kernel upgrade bug (though the Dell Support Forum had the solution). We had some other discussion about Karmic Koala and how some people have had no real issues with it while others have had nothing but trouble. Burtt is running Hardy Heron so that entire discussion was pretty moot to him but it did spur us to try some recent releases on his hardware.

If you ask me, this is par for the course with Linux. Although usually it works very very well there are times when you tear your hair out trying to figure out what the hell is going on and why your bug hasn't been fixed. My experiences with Linux have gotten better and better over the years. Hardware which used to pose problems during install no longer does, system performance is better and better all the time, projects like XBMC continue to be developed and amaze. There are still problems though and sometimes you just need to wait out a release. Burtt has tried Gutsy Gibbon and Hardy Heron and is getting more and more blase about what he runs as long as it works.

So, we tried the latest Fedora and Ubuntu releases on Burtt's laptop and both were able to provide him with working sound. Both work quite well and offer the same basic installed package set and features. Burtt cares little for features, he wants stability and is currently on the fence deciding if he wants Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora on his laptop. Or if he wants to go with the special Dell release of Ubuntu 9.04.

Rusty updated us on the news that the ship building school (who's new website looks great by the way - hooray for Wordpress!) has a camera mounted which is taking time lapse photos of the work going on in there and there will be montages for us to look at soon. Why is this important? Because the camera runs on Linux and despite their best efforts could not be wrangled into working under Windows.

The next meeting is coming up in January on the 6th. Clear your calendar!

-d

A good review of our favourite Linux

2009-11-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of press about Ubuntu 9.10 since it was released and not all of it has been good. Finally here is a decent review which puts things in perspective. Enjoy!

Good Karma: An in-depth review of Ubuntu 9.10

Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed Karmic Koala, climbed down from the tree last month with new features and updated software. For five years and eleven releases, the Ubuntu Linux distribution has delivered a capable desktop operating system built largely on open source software. The new version is another important step forward for Ubuntu and its corporate backer Canonical.

The new version offers a user experience that is incrementally better than its predecessors, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Some of the new software introduced in Ubuntu 9.10 feels incomplete and will need a lot more work before it can really shine. This review will take a close look at some of the most significant new features, such as Canonical's Ubuntu One service and the new Software Center application management tool. We will also examine some of the upstream software from GNOME 2.28 that plays a role in defining key parts of the user experience in Ubuntu 9.10 and give you some technical insight into various architectural components of distro, such as Ubuntu's unique CouchDB configuration.

-d

Meeting 12 Redux

2009-11-07T19:30:00.001-08:00

Wherin I attempt to recount the happenings of the Gabriola Linux Users Group at their latest gathering.

I came armed with Windows 7 and Karmic Koala, three laptops, and hope. Things took a turn when it became evident there would be no Internet that evening (I was counting on it to load up some web pages I had lined up for some discussion). Merrily I soldiered on. Allow me to summarize...

- Windows 7 is arrogant in that it completely ignores the existence of Linux and other non-Microsoft operating systems and does not let you do a friendly dual-boot.
- Windows 7 does not come with software which is as good as what you get in a modern Linux offering (OpenOffice included, Evolution for email included - on Windows 7 you have to even go so far as to download Windows Live Mail if you want an email client).
- Windows Update does not cover the needs of the average user since it only updates Microsoft software unlike a Linux distribution where you get central, signed, certified, supported updates for everything from the operating system to Flash Player and beyond.
- While Windows 7 installed and worked flawlessly in my modern hardware tests, it fails miserably on older hardware - witness my laptop which took a hacked video driver to restore proper resolution and graphics (Vista included a driver for this card), Linux shines and brings old hardware to life again.
- Windows 7 is still vulnerable to viruses.
- I would love to share how good Windows is with you and allow you to try it on your own system, but I am prohibited by law whereas if you would like you can come to a GLUG meeting and I will burn you a CD of Ubuntu Linux to try out on your computer at home.

Don't get me wrong, Windows does have its place and there is plenty of great software written for it but I get a little worried when I find the local bank uses the same technology to handle my money (Coast Community Credit Union I am talking to you! That was a distinctly Windows error message and crash I witnessed when I deposited that cheque a few weeks ago and you ate my debit card!) as I like to use for playing video games or processing words.

So anyways...

I mentioned some links. Here you go. Turnkey Linux - free Linux Appliances you can run in a Virtual Machine or launch to your corner of the Amazon EC2 Cloud. Ubuntu Rescue Remix - free version of Ubuntu which focuses on rescuing data. Top things to do after installing Karmic Koala - excellent post on customizing your system.

Windows 7 is no penguin. I'll stick to Ubuntu thanks. My copy of XP still plays all the games I need it to and Microsoft sent me a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate so I can stay current - if I choose. Linux is just so...comfortable now. But now I brought it up and realize I need to reboot into Windows and activate it - I think I have 7 days left before it turns into a nag machine. That's another thing you don't have to put up with when you use Linux.

Ramble ramble ramble.

Wiley showed up with a slice of 40 year old memory - quite the treat, ask him about it if you catch a ride in his cab sometime. Burtt was interested to hear of Dell's newly released custom images of Ubuntu 9.04 - just as 9.10 gets released. Rusty was still delighted to not be responsible for coffee. He's also had trouble with 9.10 installs and it seems he is not alone.

My upgrades have so far gone just fine... (Dum! Dum! Dum!) (insert pipe-organ musical stab here)

See you at the next one!

-d

Meeting #12

2009-11-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

Hello fellow GLUG-ites.

Tonight is meeting #12 - Windows 7 vs Karmic Koala, Are you excited? I'm attempting to be prepared for this one, we will see how this turns out. :)

After the duel we'll examine Karmic Koala more closely and look at upgrades from current versions and what you might face.

Hope you can make it at 7pm @ Suzy's On Top. Anyone who wants to take home a copy of Karmic Koala will be able to. If you want to upgrade your machine during the meeting we can give that a try too.

Hope to see you there!

-d

Gab-LUG Update

2009-10-09T22:04:00.001-07:00

Hi Folks.

Good news.

We've secured our venue and time. Suzy's On Top is the new place to go, first Wednesday of the month at 7pm if you want to learn about Linux and have computer problems discussed, diagnosed, debated and dissected. No solutions guaranteed, just entertainment. The calendar in the upper right corner should be correct.

Suzy has donated the space to us as long as we promise to buy her coffee - no problem there. Thanks Suzy!

Also look for us in The Sounder too, Derek is providing us with a classified ad in the Groups and Clubs section. A tantalizing lead about the topic of the next meeting will be planted there for your amusement.

Next meeting is November 4th. I'll have some results of tests between Windows 7 and Karmic Koala up for discussion.

See you there!

-d

Meeting #11 Redux

2009-10-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

So the Gabriola LUG has finished off its first year of existence. We started out at the Gabriola Commons and ended up at Suzy's On Top. It looks like we'll continue to use Suzy's - the extra perks of that space just make it all the better: fresh hot coffee, snacks, fast wireless, and lots of space for us to spread out.

For the record I did find the rubber piece I was missing from my headphones at my house when I got back from the meeting. Phew!

On another note, does anyone have suggestions on what Linux version to run on a 486 with 48mb of RAM? Puppy, Dreamlinux and DSL all seem to have higher requirements than that. Mark, I suggest you get the Hardy Heron Server CD and try that since you only really want a command line system. I'll try and bring one to the next meeting.

Karmic Koala looks promising but the much-hyped feature of super-fast bootup should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps if I was using an SSD drive or had converted to ext4 for my filesystem I would see more of an improvement - but when I timed my bootup it was at almost 90 seconds, nowhere near the under 30 I was promised. Lucid Lynx has a target of under 10 seconds. Good luck developers!

Karmic Koala comes out at the end of October so we'll be taking a closer look at it at the next meeting as well as talking more about Lucid Lynx and whatever else comes to mind. I'll have a little comparison between Karmic and Windows 7 too.

Until next time!

-d

Meeting #11

2009-09-28T13:29:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone.

If I've tantalized you with the bait on my posters of coming news concerning GLUG here it is. The next GLUG meeting will not be held at the usual venue at the Gabriola Commons - Instead we will be meeting at Suzy's On Top at 7pm.

October 1st marks the 11th Gabriola Linux Users Group meeting and the last one of our first year of existence. Thanks to everyone and anyone who came to a meeting over the last year - we wouldn't have made it this far without you. Pat yourselves on the back.

Why Suzy's On Top? For one thing it is free. The Gabriola Commons currently rents the room to me for use by our group. Since we don't make any money, aren't a for-profit sort of outfit and the meetings are free Suzy agreed to waive the rental fee for us. Thanks Suzy! A second major win is Suzy can provide us with Wifi - I didn't bother her with questions about Shaw Lite Speed vs. Shaw High Speed since it was the lunch rush when I called (I realized with horror when it took her a few minutes to come to the phone) so you'll have to either attend or wait and read that detail here after the meeting to find out. A third major win is Suzy always has hot fresh coffee available (at least until 8pm when the restaurant closes), and treats we can buy to snack on. Carly will just have to deal with not being able to bake us cookies anymore since there is a no outside food rule in effect.

So, in return for the space we will give Suzy our coffee and treat business and look at helping her setup her Wifi securely. I like this match already.

Want to come? October 1st, 7pm, at Suzy's On Top. Park at Suzy's, walk around back behind the Roxy and look for the stairs. Follow them to the top. Could it be any simpler?

Hope to see you there.

-d

Meeting 10 Redux

2009-09-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

Meeting 10 was held on the 3rd of September with the usual suspects in attendance. WiFi was adequate and allowed us to point out things on the web for others to watch at home later on but sadly, Shaw Lite Speed doesn't even let you watch YouTube - it just isn't fast enough. You can get email and browse the web, but forget about downloading your updates during a 2hr Linux meeting while someone tries to show off a cool video featuring say, to choose someone at random, Will Ferrel being taken across the Arctic over 48 hours and surviving. That Will Ferrel - boy is he funny.

Meeting places are still in flux. Stay tuned to this space for updates.

Back to Meeting #10. I was finally able to demo Ubuntu Netbook Remix but the bloke with the touchscreen Toshiba toughbook wasn't there so while it was cool to see on a Dell Inspiron 1525 I will have to bring it back so we can see the touchscreen in action. He's had trouble getting it to fully work in the past, I wonder if this will be his salvation.

We played with the OLPC a little but after a few minutes it quickly becomes tiresome. The kids don't bore of it so soon, I wonder how much that is a result of it not being an expected interface. Windows 95 set a bar for the mass public, few have varied from it. Poking around a system is not as much fun when you don't really know what you are clicking on or what it will do next. The maze game is fun though, everyone agrees on that.

I mentioned jailbreaking an iPod so it would work with Ubuntu but haven't committed to doing mine yet. The v3.1 software is calling me mostly because of the security fixes it brings for the browser etc. but doing that will make it pretty hopeless to jailbreak. Also I noticed that Apple no longer makes/sells the 16gb iPod as of 9/9/09 and instead the 32gb model is now on sale for $30 more than what I paid. I'm within my 90 day return period, but if I do that will I get a 3rd generation device? Then I'll have no option of using it with Ubuntu. So far though this hasn't stopped me from enjoying the iPod experience. Actually I just realized the difference is really only $20 since I still would have to pay $9.99 to upgrade my current iPod to v3.1.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate paying for software when I know something else is out there which does the job just as well and is free? Stupid vendor lock-in. At least Avidemux has presets for creating video compatible with iPods. (Warning - YouTube quality alert!)

More ramblings later. Hope to see you in a few weeks at Meeting #11!

-d

Meeting 10 is around the corner

2009-08-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.

We are a go for meeting at the Gabriola Commons this week. Wifi is up and enabled, relationships have been forged, and it looks like we still have a place to go which wants us there - not that we wreck places or anything. Far from it in fact.

So what is on tap for this month? To be honest I don't know. Bring your questions, problems, and coffee mug to the meeting and contribute. Bring your system if it isn't working right. Or even if it is, bring it anyways and we can see if we can make it better. I enjoy the problem solving. I also enjoy the discussions we have.

I'll bring my usual gear and see what I can find between now and then which might entertain us.

Got anything interesting which is running Linux? Bring it along and show it off!

-d

Cloud 9 - stormy weather ahead

2009-08-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

Well the ninth GLUG meeting went off without a hitch except for the state of the wireless network at the Gabriola Commons. It used to be open and free and now there is a password on it. That means we're forced to use the "Linksys" network which is also reachable from there and we cannot condone stealing WiFi so suddenly the Gabriola Commons is looking like it is unsuitable for the Linux group. I must contact them and find out which network we're supposed to use at this point.

I've heard there is consideration for dropping the WiFi altogether at the Gabriola Commons and if that is the case then we'll be forced to find a new venue.

So far my favorite choice is the patio at Raspberries where the WiFi is provided by Gabriola Radio and there is always hot coffee. ;) Of course that would mean the end of Carly's Cookies which I know everyone enjoys so much. It would also mean a new time and day so if you want to chime in on venues, times, days of the week, etc. please do.

Meanwhile what did you miss? We talked a bit about Debian vs. Ubuntu for those who want stability in their lives vs. the latest and greatest Linux experience. We talked about UbuntuOne's free online storage for users of Ubuntu 9.04, we talked about radios and microwave radiation, and I got to finally show off the OLPC running Ubuntu 8.04 and the Sugar interface. I should have passed that around once I was done - next time!

For next month: I plan on getting back to postering the meeting more and hope to draw in some more people. It will be September so possibly some of you who have come in the past and are away on Summer Vacation or have some other dubious excuse will be able to make it out too. September 3rd - somewhere on Gabriola where there is WiFi and coffee. And lots of power outlets - must check the Raspberries patio and see if we'd be in luck.

-d

(I unconsciously capitalized Summer Vacation - it must be a sign.)

Meeting #9

2009-08-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

Meeting #9 is scheduled for this week at the Gabriola Commons - 7pm.

There is important Linux news to pass on too!

1. Ubuntu 6.06 LTS has reached end of life. If you're still on that one it is time to upgrade to 8.04 LTS.

2. UbuntuOne has launched in beta mode and if you run 9.04 you should check it out and get an account. 2 gigs of free online storage you can use to sync files between machines. For example your laptop and your desktop. Put your data in the cloud! Might want to encrypt it first though depending on how paranoid you are.

3. Pidgin is about to be replaced by Empathy in 9.10, which means video chat and voice chat will become a reality for many of us again. I still don't have a webcam that works under Ubuntu. :)

Oh there's probably more but why spill it all here? Let's save some for the meeting.

Hope to see you there.

-d

Meeting #8b Redux

2009-07-02T20:54:00.001-07:00

B as in Bust. It wasn't 33C tonight, but it was 28C on my back porch when I left. The summer heat took a little break and then came back with a vengeance today (just ask my tomatoes). Plus, you may have noticed it is actually summer now. Are any of you lucky enough to be on vacation?

The Gabriola Linux Users Group hereby admits defeat and cancels meeting #8.

Next month look forward to Meeting #9 and a whole new bag of tricks, barrel of monkeys, and whatnot.

August 6th 2009, 7pm at the Gabriola Commons in the small room upstairs.

Actually, The Commons didn't have their wifi up tonight, I hope that was a glitch and not a new policy. If that's the case I'll have to look for another venue for the meeting - stealing wifi isn't something we promote.

Are you the one with the open wireless network near The Commons labeled "linksys"? ...

-d

Meeting #8b

2009-06-27T15:04:00.001-07:00

Hope you can make it this week to meeting #8b of the Gabriola Linux Users Group. I've got a Debian Virtual Machine to show you (Debian being the father of Ubuntu Linux - our current fav distro) as well as some surprises.

Want to see Ubuntu on a netbook? Want to see the father of the netbook? Want to see this new Ubuntu NBR? Come to the meet. It'll be neat. Bring a laptop and a flash drive or a blank cd or two.

Anyone wanting to be freed from Microsoft is welcome to bring a machine to get Ubuntu installed on - Jaunty Jackalope or Hardy Heron.

Hope to see you there. It looks to be a cooler evening this time - temperature cool not Fonzie cool.

-d

Mystery Meeting #8

2009-06-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Yes there was a meeting planned for June. Yes, I did arrive and unlock the door. Yes, it was also 33C on my back porch when I left and I fully excuse anyone and everyone who elected to stay home and drink cold drinks. That's where I headed as soon as I could.

Looking forward to July. The first Thursday is the 2nd of July and so the meeting is a go. I'll once again try to show off Debian a little and explain why you might want to try it out as well as showing off Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Hope to see you there.

-d

Where do you buy a Linux-powered machine?

2009-05-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

I am often asked that question and until recently I could only say "Dell and some place called System76."

But now I know better.

The Berkeley Linux Users Group has a neat page with all your options laid out. Have a peek here.

Thanks folks! They also point out this page where it seems HP is now getting into the game, selling Linux pre-installed on some systems. I, for one, hope that trend continues.

-d

Magic number 7

2009-05-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Well we've passed a milestone in my mind - we're more than 6 months old and show no signs of stopping. Each meeting has new folks show up and it is always interesting to hear their stories. This month was no different.

Claude, Christine and Konrad stopped by this time - thanks for coming! Christine related her experiences with a Dell Ubuntu laptop and Konrad was there to soak up some Linux and see where he should start reading. Claude took the plunge and installed Ubuntu on his Windows laptop with Wubi - way to go Claude. We're here for you while you get your feet wet. I hope everyone took notes about Medibuntu and the Ubuntu Pocket Guide.

No one fell asleep while I prattled on about MythTV - the demo worked. There was stuff to look at. No I didn't just turn on The Simpsons. Tempting though.

I'm looking forward to next month and what we can talk about - if you have ideas you should post comments here or email me.

-d

Meeting #7 is coming...

2009-04-26T20:53:00.001-07:00

'Tis true - April is nearing the end and that means May is coming and so is the next Linux meet.

Mythbuntu is working so I can show it off as promised. I have it tied into my existing setup so I'll have to extricate it - luckily there is an option in the Mythbuntu Control Center which toggles the machine between roles so I anticipate this will be easy. Now that I have three tuners it needed a little magic tweaking to set its crappy tuner to be avoided when scheduling recordings but still used when watching live TV - I did this because MythTV records everything you watch and this lets me use the space on my secondary backend for live TV recordings and save the space on the primary backend for recordings I want to save.

Jaunty Jackalope is released so I can show it off as promised. Not much to show though - but I can report that it does feel snappier than Intrepid and the clean interface makes this the nicest Ubuntu to use yet. I like it. Anyone who wants to have it installed or get upgraded can do so at the meeting but please arrive early if those are your intentions! If you want to take a copy home with you make sure to bring some blank CDs so I can burn you a copy of the ISO - or bring your laptop/USB key and copy the ISO over to it so you can burn it when you get home.

Anyone else with something to talk about is welcome. Hope to see you there.

Gabriola Commons, 7pm. May 7th 2009.

-d

6th meeting redux

2009-04-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

So we had a sixth meeting. And it was good but could have been better.

Mythbuntu did not cooperate and while the install I had planned went smoothly when it came to running the beast and setting things up it just wouldn't work. I'd start the setup, it would tell me it needed to shut down the Backend to work, I would allow it, it would run the setup then complain about the database and other services not running and wouldn't let us do anything.

So much for that.

YouTube was asked to stand-in and help me show off some of the MythTV features.

In the end the usual questions came up about why you should use this system over something else. Here are my best arguments:

1. Windows doesn't automatically skip commercials, instead you get a 30-second skip button on the remote. MythTV will skip commercials automatically.

2. Windows won't let you export your stuff. While you could do some crude and time-consuming dubbing process to a DVD-recorder or a VCR, MythTV will let me setup a job to automatically export my recordings (sans commercials of course) to a format of my choice such as XViD, Mpeg-2, DivX, FLV, or whatever I can configure FFMpeg/Mencoder to encode to. This means I can record a show at night and in the morning have it ready to be copied to a portable video player such as my wife's Smartphone or new MP3 Player.

3. How many tuners do you need? I've been getting by with two tuners but MythTV will let me add as many as I have. My server has five PCI slots but I'm not limited to only five tuners. I can setup a MythTV Slave Backend on another machine and add more tuners to that. I can setup 50 Backends if I want, all stacked with tuners to capture every minute Shaw broadcasts. I can see this coming into play in the future. Once both kids are grown and have laptops they could watch something on there and then I'd have no tuners left to record stuff. So say we all go anti-social at once, then there's four people watching TV all at once. Then I need at least two more tuners to make sure I actually record the shows I want. So now I'm up to six and at least two Backend servers.

4. Worried about power? You can use Wake-on-LAN technology so that your unused Backend servers sleep when not in use but get woken up when they need to record something. Cool!

5. MythTV teaches you. One thing I consistently love about Linux is it forces me to learn stuff. If you just buy Windows or Apple solutions you get devices which (hopefully) simply plug into your setup and then work. Then you have to master their interface so you can control things and you're done. People of my generation were born with the ability to do this - I could program the VCR in my house well before my mother could and for a long long time never needed to read a manual to work electronic things. Setting up MythTV (Mythbuntu notwithstanding) forced me to learn about TV standards, differing capture cards, the digital TV conversion and a host of Linux software like NFS, SAMBA and MDADM.

As usual there was coffee and cookies at the meeting and we finished off with some discussion of the upcoming release Jaunty Jackalope - of which I am very excited. Not long left now!

See you at the next one. May 7th, 7pm, Gabriola Commons in the small room.

It will be a Jaunty Jackalope installfest where anyone who wants to can have their system upgraded to, or freshly installed with - Jaunty Jackalope. I'll also do my best to bring along the same MythTV server as last time, but this time fully installed and working.

We can also talk about the Pirate Bay verdict, Shaw's Internet and Phone service (I've been converged - so far so good), and of course how much Windows sucks. Remind me to talk about my recent adventure with MDADM and losing my RAID-5 array - 240gigs of movies, music and TV shows down the drain.

Or so I thought.

See you in May!

-d

Jaunty Jackope goes BETA

2009-03-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hi All.

March is almost over and suddenly is feels like spring in the air. Just in time for Ubuntu to release the Beta of their latest incarnation - Jaunty Jackalope.

So with a quick visit to the Update-Manager and a few hundred megs of downloads later I'm running the beta on my previously Alpha systems. Things are good, almost nothing is broken now - it's true.

My laptop had a weird spat where it would take two to three reboots before the wireless cooperated but now it boots easily and never freezes and always connects to my network. Graphics are great and Compiz is impressive as always. Memory consumption seems to be under control and the boot times are impressive as promised. I plan on redoing my main system a little once the final release is made. I have three drives I want to arrange in a RAID-0 for speed and it's time to move Windows onto a better drive instead of the nightmare IDE and USB drive combo I currently use to have enough space for games. USB never felt so slow until you've waited for Crysis to load from it.

Laptop suspend/resume is spotty. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Desktop suspend and resume is not an option. This is very frustrating and you can expect me to complain about it bitterly as often as I can. This is annoying but is status quo so I'm not really all that put out by it, I've learned to adapt. I might go and lend a hand over here though if I can make the time.

My only real annoyance with Jaunty right now is MythTV is still broke on my system with ATI graphics. Turns out this is a major bug and it hit their release notes:

The mythtv frontend in mythbuntu fails to render fonts correctly when using video drivers other than the Intel or closed-source nVidia drivers. This issue is expected to be resolved for the final 9.04 release. 341898

Oh yeah, and here's a nice quote from the release notes.

If any filesystems are mounted when starting the desktop CD installer, then a dialog labelled "Unmount partitions that are in use?" will be presented. Unfortunately, the buttons on this dialog box are poorly named: "Continue" attempts to unmount filesystems and then repeats, which will often just display the same dialog box again, while "Go Back" ignores this condition and continues. This will be corrected for the final release. 346589

It's hard not to chuckle reading that. We've all been there, staring at the screen wondering where the hell the options before you will take you.

So I'm looking forward to next week when the Gabriola Linux Users Group meets again. I promised to bring enough stuff so we could build a PVR using MythBuntu but I haven't decided yet if I want to use the Jaunty BETA or the Intrepid release. Probably Intrepid given the bug above.

Looking for ward to seeing you there. April 2nd at the Gabriola Commons in the small room. 7pm until 10. Bring a powerbar! You can judge for yourself whether Jaunty is ready or not.

-d

5th meeting redux

2009-03-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, time got away from me and it seems I owe an update here! Thanks for coming back to check up on me.

First, to the guy with the Dell Mini 9 who was at the other meeting - I can't remember your name but please come to the next meeting and show us your cool toy. I can't decide if I want something like that for my next portable or if I want a full machine, but what I do know is my Alienware is getting a little heavy to drag around. Also living with no battery life really sucks, I want to be able to use my couch. Did I mention my "laptop" is friggin' heavy?

Ok, back to business - the fifth Gabriola Linux Users Group meeting was fun and entertaining as always. Sadly Rusty didn't make it and his coffee was missed - the cookies I brought needed something to pair with for full flavor.

We talked about Jaunty. I expressed my distress at my broken systems. I shouldn't have done that. Since then I've been bitten by a bug someone uploaded to the repos which nailed ALL my X sessions, I could not login on any machine! I had to drop to the command line and change a link to point somewhere else before I could get back in (I won't bore you with details). Also on all my machines Compiz is now broken (I have no window decorations anymore - no borders or titlebars) and on my machine with ATI graphics MythTV no longer loads, instead I get a garbled mess of a loading screen which never goes away and doesn't let me play any videos.

Now, my issues upgrading to an Alpha release aside - Jaunty is going to be great. The focus is on speed this time (Windows 7 is looming) and thus there aren't really many new whiz-bang fancy features. Having a supported OpenOffice 3.0 install will be nice and I like the changes to the notification schemes. There's a new "Computer Janitor" under the System --> Administration menu which lets you clean up parts of your system. "Screen Resolution" has been changed to "Display" and is still under System --> Preferences but has been updated. If you are using proprietary drivers which it doesn't support, when you launch it you'll get a prompt about the problem and a chance to launch your vendor's graphics properties tweaking tool instead (NVidia anyone?). Suspend AND hibernation work again on my laptop, but I figure they're just waiting until the end to update me with a kernel which breaks that again (this is a joke, I've not had working suspend/hibernate on any machine since about Gutsy and I'm getting tired of it). Here are some release notes.

DreamLinux is quite nice. I got it installed on a USB drive and it runs like a champ with persistence and all. The easy install of common apps like Google Earth (it installed v5.0!) and Firefox 3.1 (soon to be 3.5) is really nice. Skype is on that list too. Did I mention DreamLinux supports all sorts of codecs out of the box like MP3 that Ubuntu doesn't? I am hooked. I will be putting this on machines in the future. Others at the meeting showed an interest too, particularly those with MAC's. ;)

We also talked a little about Icecast2 and streaming audio. A common problem is having audio on a computer somewhere and wanting to play it on a stereo somewhere else. I mentioned my XBMC solution (I run it on an old Xbox) and we talked about other solutions, Icecast2 isn't really among them. Apple makes a device which does this, it's called the Airport Express, but this is a Linux group. So actually neither the Airport nor XBMC qualify. I smell a project here! It is easy to make a livingroom PC with MythBuntu, the hardest part (last time I looked) was getting a remote control to work with it (I resorted to using a USB keyboard on a long extension which was hardly ideal). I've been meaning to take another look at MythBuntu and I have a spare TV card laying around here so next meeting that's what I'll do - I'll bring some hardware and a MythBuntu disc and we can install it and make it work.

Until next time! See you in April.

-d

It's that time again.

2009-03-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

A new month means a new Gabriola Linux Users Group meeting. There is lots to discuss.

1. Jaunty Jackalope. I took the plunge the other day (will I *ever* learn?) and upgraded my three main machines to Jaunty. NFS is broke, AWN is broke, MythTV is broke (ok, just MythVideo), Flash broke on one of them and my sound went to hell too on my main machine. I chalk part of that up to the fact that some packages were unavailable when I upgraded and there is also a dependency problem preventing some XML stuff from being installed and thus preventing MythTV and AWN from installing. Sigh. Hopefully someone fixes this for me, there's still two months to go until the release (April 24th last I peeked).

2. Audio Streaming. I've got a streamer setup for the Gabriola Radio project using software from the Ubuntu repositories - and it was so easy to do once I gave up on MP3 and went to OGG. My next trick is to get Ices0 working so I can stream in MP3. I'll talk about this issue to anyone who's interested as well as developments on the Gabriola Radio front.

3. DreamLinux. I discovered this distribution the other day through a post to the Ubuntu-CA list. It is from Brazil and has minimum requirements which are very frugal - PIII, 128mb RAM, 4gb hard drive or so. This is news because as some of you know I recycle PCs and try to build working systems out of them to donate to anyone who wants one. One challenge of this is what operating system to put on the hardware - I don't have Windows licenses to distribute. I've tried PuppyLinux, DSL, DSL-N, Xubuntu and more, DreamLinux takes them all to task with a beautiful interface (quite MAC-like actually) which really is snappy on a lowly PIII. I've put it on my crappiest laptop (a P2-300 with 256mb RAM) and I love it - however the driver it uses for my wireless card seems to interfere with the cordless phone more than usual. That bears more investigation however so don't quote me on that.

Hope to see you there. We're at the Gabriola Commons, the small room upstairs, at 7pm on Thursday March 5th. It might even be showing in the Google Calendar in the corner up there on the right.

-d

Anyone need a free computer? Anyone have old hardware to donate? Give me a shout before you drag it off to GIRO!

Ubuntu just keeps on giving.

2009-02-19T06:57:00.000-08:00

Windows 7 is coming but recent news has reminded me of why I avoided Vista in the fist place, so while I am interested in the latest from Redmond I am more anxious for the latest from wherever it is in Europe Canonical is located.

Along with a new Ubuntu release comes the new releases of all the Ubuntu derivatives. Here's a short article with a quick rundown of the "top five", kudos to the Ubuntu Newsletter for pointing this one out.

MythBuntu
Ubuntu Studio
Linux Mint
GNewSense
Easy Peasy

-d

Fourth Meeting Redux

2009-02-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

In February we had six attendees which is about double the regular count. This was a good month.

Gerry G. and Burtt attended for their first time and got their eyes opened that there might be support for Linux on Gabriola - Burtt bought a Dell a while ago with Ubuntu pre-loaded on it and Gerry G. was there to see what this Linux thing was all about (He's an OSX user and lucky for him we had some OSX help for him at the meeting this month - thanks again Mark!).

We talked about backing up your Home folder before you reinstall in order to save all your settings and data, we talked about how to change your password if you forgot it, and we talked about what part of Tait Road the coffee might be laying in after Rusty left it on the roof of his car when he drove to the meeting.

The other big news was the announcement that we've been asked to help in a technology role with the Gabriola Co-op Radio station. They need some servers setup for streaming audio and logging the broadcast among other things. Gerry M. is already a Director with the radio station and I've accepted the request, so officially GLUG will be working with Gabriola Co-op Radio to make this a reality. I see a call-out for hardware donations in the future! Interested in helping? Contact myself, Gerry M. or Ken for more info.

Also this month for fun I brought an old iMac G3 and attempted to install Hardy Heron on it during the meet - it went well and I almost had a working desktop at the end. This was more progress than I made with Intrepid Ibex - it had issues finding the CDROM during the install (that was easy to solve with a simple "modprobe ide-scsi" at a virtual terminal and then continuing) however it couldn't install a boot loader properly and rather than figure that one out I switched to Hardy.

You can read more about that on my other Blog here.

Until next time.

-d

February meet is coming...

2009-01-29T20:07:00.000-08:00

February is coming and that means so is February 5th. Actually that's a week from today. Ideas are starting to take shape. Topics are starting to come up. It should be an interesting night.

Let me draw your attention to this Pocket Guide to Ubuntu Linux. the PDF is free and for $9.99 you can order a printed copy from Amazon.com.

Anyone with knowledge of streaming media and podcasting software - the server side - might want to poke their head in on Thursday.

I've been playing with Linux Mint lately as Ubuntu has started to annoy me again with features that don't work like hibernation and standby. I've got some hardware coming to me soon which will result in me rebuilding some machines so its time to make some decisions again. Luckily I figured this out a while ago and put /home on its own partition so there's nothing to really backup before I go and do this.

Hope to see you there.

-d

February 5th
Gabriola Commons
The Small Room
7pm - 10pm
coffee and cookies highly likely to make an appearance

New Gulf Island Work From Home social network started

2009-01-10T14:56:00.001-08:00

While this is not really a topically-Linux slanted post, I mention this group because I've created a GLUG group over there of which, if you become a member of the former you are then allowed to become a member of as well.

There, what a small, efficient post.

-d

Third meet redux

2009-01-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

We came, we saw, we Linuxed.

The third meet went off just fine. The usual time, the usual place, the usual suspects. My planned WEP-cracking demo went beautifully this time, the key to the network was obtained in about three minutes using Backtrack Linux, Kismet, and Spoonwep. Very cool.

Rusty fears he fried his COM port on his Toughbook and was unable to show off his AIS software. Hopefully next time it'll come together.

Peter brought the necessary cables to check out Rusty's Xbox 360 and see if it was toast - it was. Peter also supplied his other Xbox - the one with the possessed optical drive. We cracked it open and checked out the inside - it was much easier than I had thought it would be. Sadly the DVD-ROM takes a non-standard power connector so whilst it is a simple IDE device we can't just swap it out. I bet a little Google search will turn up how to wire a solution.

The next meet is February 5th and I'm not sure yet what we'll cover or talk about. If you have a suggestion why not send it in? I'd love to hear from you.

-d

3rd Meet Update

2009-01-05T06:14:00.000-08:00

It seems my brother-in-law's Xbox has packed it in and he's offered to bring it along with him to the next meet so we can take it apart and see what might be haunting it - you see for a while now the DVD tray has been randomly opening and closing which makes watching videos on it very very hard, not to mention the random shutdowns. He keeps it in a stereo cabinet and usually has to unplug it unless he wants to be woken up in the night by the Xbox tapping on the glass with its DVD tray, wanting to get out.

Wait a minute, play videos on the Xbox you ask? You mean the 360, right? Nope. I mean the old classic black Xbox.

One of my favorite open-source projects is called "XBMC" which stands for "XBox Media Center". If you know how to mod an Xbox you can put this alternate dashboard on there and then turn the Xbox from a simple games machine which plays CDs and DVDs (if you buy the $50 DVD remote control) into the best low-fi TV media player ever, which still plays all your old games. If you don't need HD output, this is simply the greatest media player ever. XBMC has proven so popular the project has been ported to OSX, Windows and Linux so now you can use that frontend to play your media on your preferred platform. This is also a good thing as the Xbox is starting to show its age and the 64mb of RAM which it comes with is just not enough for much Linux hackery. Yes, once you have modded your Xbox you can put Linux on it. There are many flavours - two are XUbuntu (not Xubuntu) and Xebian. I've used Xebian to run a full MythTV Frontend for watching live TV with the ability to pause playback. I', not sure what else I'd want to run Linux on an Xbox for.

How do you mod an Xbox? Well you can either break it open, buy a modchip, solder it onto the board and hope things work, or you can take the software mod route. I took the latter and it uses a specific game, a specially crafted savegame, a laptop, and Linux to leverage a programming flaw and inject itself into the Xbox exactly the same way a virus gets into a computer. It is really quite magical, completely reversible, and you don't have to open anything or use any tools other than your keyboard.

Interested? I hope we can get the Xbox working well enough to demonstrate this hack. I might have to bring along a working one just to show this off too.

I keep hoping someone will accomplish something similar for my Wii. As soon as I can get a PS3 I'm putting Ubuntu on it.

Until Wednesday!

-d

Third time's a charm...

2008-12-30T19:25:00.000-08:00

The third meet is upon us and it is time to get the word out. I've noticed it is Tuesday as I write this - which is a bad thing because it means I may have missed my chance to get a poster up on the board at Village Foods. Blast!

So what's on tap for this meet?

1. My cracking wireless security demonstration went poorly last time - I figure the problem was I needed to have actual traffic on the wireless network to generate enough packets for me to crack the password. I'll try to fix that this time.

2. Fedora 10. I want to play a little with it and see how it compares to Ubuntu 8.10.

3. A little chat about "Wondershaper" is in order. I use a firewall called "Endian" at home but is you only have one machine to run you need something else to help prioritize your traffic and help ease those bottlenecks created when you have too much to download and you just have to play online games at the same time - or you want your YouTube videos or VoIP calls to proceed without jitter.

When: January 7th, 7-10pm
Where: Gabriola Commons
Cost: Free to all

Hope to see you there!

-d

Second meeting was a success!

2008-12-12T14:19:00.000-08:00

Well, to those of us who attended it was anyways. :) Probably somewhat due to my needing to change the date of the meet there were only three of us this month. Rusty brought coffee as promised and I managed to bring cookies too although they almost got left behind since they almost made me late (that's a bad thing - I have the key afterall.)

So I got a chance to show off cracking WEP-encrypted WiFi networks, it failed. My test network had no traffic going through it and thus I wasn't able to gather nearly enough of the 20,000 packets I need to start cracking the password. Next month!

Wubi was demonstrated. It worked flawlessly. If only it did something interesting during the install like say let you play solitaire or pong it would have been more interesting. As it was everyone at the meet has installed Ubuntu as some point and this was not very exciting to watch for any of us.

Pidgin was shown off. I talked a bit about how I've setup an EJabberd IM network at my house which is encrypted end to end for privacy reasons. Then I talked a bit about the OTR plugin for Pidgin which brings this ability to all the other networks Pidgin supports. Privacy is good in my books.

Gerry talked about the growing mountain of game consoles he's gathered at GIRO - if only they would run Linux we could have some serious fun. Sadly there aren't any Original Xboxes or PS3s in his collection yet. Give it time though.

Rusty also showed us a new Operating System called Haiku which shows promise. It is a new OS which is Linux-like but isn't Linux. Read more here.

And that's about where we wrapped it up. Next month is coming - I'm busy brainstorming ideas. If you have any why not send me a note?

Coming next month? Here's the date: January 7th, 7pm. Hope to see you there!

-d

We Did It!

2008-12-02T14:24:00.000-08:00

I'd like to take a page out of The Book Of Stephen Colbert here and for a moment, take credit for and then bask in the glory of what must be the result of the first GLUG meeting. Here is what we were able to accomplish: Windows market share dips below 90%, report says

What's that you say? Can't be? Well allow me to quote you the relevant passages:

In November, 89.5 per cent of internet users who connected to websites monitored by Net Applications Inc. used Windows as their operating system, a decrease of 0.84 per cent from October. The decline was the biggest in the past two years, the company said, and offset a number of recent gains.

Microsoft's decline was to Apple Inc.'s benefit, which saw use of its OS X operating system grow by 0.66 percentage points to 8.9 per cent in November.

Operating systems based on the open-source Linux platform, which make up only a sliver of the total market, also gained in the month, climbing from a share of 0.71 per cent to 0.83 per cent.

Ok, Apple may have taken the largest portion of the market away from Microsoft but let's not forget our own 0.04% contribution. Sky, I hope you're only booting into Ubuntu on that machine! ;)

Anyone coming to the next meet who wants to bring along a machine and take home some Linux goodness is welcome to do so! Let's get that up to 0.05% or even better in December! Stay proud Gabriola Linux Users!

Cheers.

-d

December 10th Meeting Plans

2008-11-27T07:22:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be a good idea to post up here something about what will be going on at the December meeting - this resource is here why not use it right?

So to that end I've had some thoughts.

1. Anyone who wants to bring along a machine and get Ubuntu installed on it should do to. I will also have a LiveCD of the latest Fedora 10 for folks to peek at if they are interested in Ubuntu alternatives. :)

2. I want to demo the "WUBI" system Ubuntu comes with which allows you to install Ubuntu under Windows and then remove it later on should you decide (for some unfathomable reason) that you don't want Linux after all.

3. I want to show Pidgin - the default Instant Messenger app which comes with Ubuntu. I use it to connect to MSN and a Jabber network but it also does ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, IRC, GTalk, and lots more. Read more here.

4. I want to demo hacking a wireless network. I just wrote about this on my other blog and I'm all keen to get the word out on how easy this truly is and prompt folks to check their home network security.

I'll start the evening with some introductions and also mention the possibility of a mailing list for the group to announce things. Then we can start hacking the wireless AP I will bring along. Once that is going we'll have some time to look at the other things I mentioned and we'll see where the night takes us.

I am also interested in ideas from anyone on something they want to learn or something they feel we could do at these meets - if you want to email me directly about something send it here.

So chew on that and I'll see you on the 10th.

-d

December meeting date set

2008-11-20T08:11:00.000-08:00

Hello fellow GLUG folk.

At the last meet it was brought up that January 1st was the first Thursday of the month and wouldn't do for a meeting day. I'm working on that problem and should have a date soon! However recently it emerged that I've stupidly conflicted my own schedule and for medical reasons can't hold the meet on December 4th as planned. Argh.

The good news is the Commons is available and booked for us on December 10th for the usual time 7-10pm. That's a Wednesday, not a Thursday. Hope you can make it!

Time to update my posters.

In other news I've been trying to work on the Blog design a little and add a Google Calendar to the top right side. If you've been to the Blog lately and seen that blob up there looking like it's trying to load a calendar you now know what's been going on. Google isn't cooperating - I can share my calendar but I just can't seem to make it display in the Blog. Stay tuned. Hopefully I can get it working quickly and we'll have a central place to post coming events of interest as well as staying on top of the ever-changing GLUG schedule. ;)

Cheers.

-d

The first meeting was a success!

2008-11-07T08:05:00.000-08:00

Well the first meeting of the Gabriola Linux Users Group was a success and I would like to thank once again everyone who attended. I wasn't expecting to fill the room with bodies and it was a welcome surprise to have done so. In fact we ran out of table space and had to run the upgrade to Peter's portable PC in the kitchen area. (He's got a laptop-shaped portable PC - I call it that since it has no battery and I'm not sure what else to call it.)

Just look at all the computers which came! (Peter's is not in the picture so +1 for it...)

In the back left is Rusty's Toughbook TabletPC - I've wanted a Toughbook forever. Whenever I see one I get the Blues Brothers in my head going over the "cop" specs of the device just like they do for their car in the movie. He's running Ubuntu 8.10 and trying to get the touchscreen working properly. Next to Rusty's machine is Mark's Apple laptop. He's running Ubuntu 8.10 inside Parallels. In front of those is Gerry's Vista laptop - he runs Ubuntu on a home machine but brought this one to the meet to have a computer nearby. :)

Then still in the back row we've got my black IBM Thinkpad 390E which is the P2-300 I've talked about before - it's running ubuntu 8.10 as well. Next in the back right corner is my Alienware laptop which I love so much. It was very well behaved tonight and the screen didn't give me any problems at all until I was home and set it back up on the desk.

And last in the front right corner is Sky's LCD from the Dell PC he brought to get Ubuntu installed on. That was the main event tonight, other than some chatter getting to know each other and some talk about what the group is for, I fixed some BIOS errors Sky was getting when he booted his computer and we were able to resize the Windows partition and install Ubuntu in the freed-up space using the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD Installer. There you can see the Intrepid Ibex wallpaper showing from our successful install. The downside for him was we couldn't get the NVidia driver to cooperate - it had some trouble properly detecting the LCD monitor he has and refused to give him a decent resolution. In the end using the NVidia driver we could only get 640x480. Dropping back to the NV driver allowed us to get the proper 1280x1024. Stuff like that annoys me - but I happen to have a similar video card to his sitting here in my parts pile so I may have to play with it a little and see if I can figure that one out.

Alright, here's a group shot.

Back left to right: Rusty, Mark, Peter, and Johnny.
Front left to right: Gerry, Sky, and Quartz

I'm behind the lens avoiding the public eye.

That's it for now. The next meet is on December 4th at the same place at the same time - Gabriola Commons, Small Room - 7 to 10pm. Now I can give proper directions - come in the front door and up the stairs, the noise will lead you from there. There was mention of coffee for the next one and I promised to get my wife to bake some more cookies. I'll have to see what cool Linux thing I can bring along to entertain everyone.

Perhaps we can do a security workshop or talk about online safety. I can talk about some of the other projects I have going on with Linux in my house. As always I'll be pushing the features of Ubuntu over Windows. ;)

If anyone wants Ubuntu installed on some hardware they have they should bring it along. Other ideas on how to entertain ourselves are welcome too!

Hope to see you there.

-d

Final push...

2008-11-04T16:04:00.000-08:00

As I write this the very first projected results from the American election are coming in and it is a very nervous time no matter whom you are around the world.

In other news I spent some time today making sure my posters were up for the GLUG meet this Thursday. The Meeting Place - check. The Gabriola Commons - check. The Gabriola Ferry terminal - check. The Gabriola Village Food Market - check. Sadly I missed the deadline to get something printed in The Sounder so there's an opportunity wasted - next time. I confirmed it would be a free ad but I need to let them know the Wednesday before it is printed what I want it to say. On the other hand I have only booked the small room and if the phone calls and IMs that just flew around here are anything to go on there will be three of us attending - only a small "M" maybe more. I must confess I don't recall how many seats are in the small room at the Gabriola Commons.

Here's one last paragraph of me trying to get the Googlebot to index my page and alert my fellow Gabriolans that this club exists and we're hoping you'll join us. If you're like me you have a Google Alert set to email you whenever the word "Gabriola" is published. Here's some gratuitous use of the word "Gabriola" in case you do. I recently read an article about Windows 7 and what is coming from Redmond next year. Seems they have a new font in their OS - and it is named Gabriola. Is there a secret someone here on this island who designs fonts for a living? Is this just a coincidence? Did The Haven recently host a conference for the MS Execs or something?

Discuss...

-d

p.s. see you at the meet on Thursday, 7pm at the Gabriola Commons up the stairs at the back in the small room - the one with all the noise coming out of it.

First Post

2008-10-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

Hello world!

This is the first post to the official Gabriola Linux Users Group BLOG. I hope you like it.

What is the Gabriola Linux Users Group? We're a group of people on Gabriola Island BC who like to play with computers and want to use free software. How simple is that? We (will) meet on the first Thursday of every month from 7 to 10pm in the small room of the Gabriola Commons (on top, at the back) to discuss Linux, software, hardware, hacking, and anything else anyone wants to bring up.

I started this group as a way to inform people that there are, in fact, alternatives to both Microsoft and Apple. To boot those alternatives are rock solid and free. All you have to invest is your time and a blank CD or two. Maybe a DVD.

To get wistful for a moment this is a post which really did it for me:

In The Beginning Was The Command Line

...and some snippets...

"Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed."

...

I like their description of Linux:

...

"With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free."

So anyways, that's really why I started this group. Everyone deserves their own tank in this digital age. If you thought your Anti-Virus software, firewall, Anti-Spyware software and Anti-Phishing software were all enough, think again.

Did I mention that you basically can't get a virus when you use Linux? Also there's no Blue Screen Of Death either. Also you don't have to defrag your drive ever...

-d

...see you at the meeting? Nov. 6th is our first one.