Meeting at Wright State University Thur., Nov. 20

Install / Config Fest Sat. Jan. 24 at SCC

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DLUG Events of 2002
Here are summaries of our events we had in 2002. Our usual meeting time is 7 - 9 p.m. the third Thursday each month. All meetings are free and open to the public unless stated otherwise. See maps and cue sheets for directions. Current events 2006 events 2005 events 2004 events 2003 events December 2002 meeting November 2002 meeting October 2002 meeting September 2002 meeting Installfest Sun. Sept. 8, 2002 Computerfest® Fall 2002 August 2002 meeting July 2002 meeting Installfest Sun. Jun. 23, 2002 June 6, 2002 meeting June 20, 2002 meeting May 16, 2002 meeting May 2002 meeting Installfest Sat. Apr. 13, 2002 April 2002 meeting Computerfest® Spring 2002 February 2002 meeting Gentoo Installfest Sat. Jan. 20, 2002 January 2002 meeting Linux Distros Compared 2001 & 2000 events
December 2002 December 2002 meeting We discussed various hardware devices including wireless cards, HDTV (Telemann HiPix DTV-200 had been rumored to have Linux drivers being developed, but that was apparently dropped) & analog TV cards (Hauppauge WinTV was recommended). Don Corbet and George Ewing briefly mentioned Computerfest® Spring 2003 planning. A Linux contracting opportunity was mentioned. Todd Rovito talked briefly about plans for our Jan. 11 Installfest at WSU. Someone mentioned that Tyler Weaver was on WING AM last Friday with Brad Proctor. Several of us adjourned early to BW3 for food, spirits, and spirited conversation. top last meeting next meeting November 2002 November 2002 meeting David Jones brought in about half a dozen boxes full of old hardware, including a Pentium Pro motherboard (sans CPU), lots of ISA video cards & other controllers, some micro-channel boards, a couple dozen SCSI hard drives, a tape drive or two, some switches, etc. Several people left smiling. Thanks David. Our main topic was Samba, a collection of programs which allow Linux and Windows PCs to share files and printers over a network. Andy Grimm demonstrated configuring Samba using SWAT and via manually editing the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. He also demonstrated using Samba with both a command line tool, smbclient, and a GUI tool, xSMBrowser, and noted that several other GUI clients are available. After the Samba demo, Ken Phelps gave a brief demo of KNOPPIX^® 3.1, a very complete (considering it runs from a single CD) Linux demo. It boots and runs from CD, thus doesn't require repartitioning or formatting a hard drive. It is possible to install KNOPPIX to your hard drive, but it's primary purpose seems to be to demonstrate Linux as easily as possible. It's also an easy way to test for hardware compatibility. Some of us adjourned to Hops Restaurant after the meeting. top last meeting next meeting October 2002 October 2002 meeting This was our second meeting at Wright State and attendance was about 40, nearly filling room 150. There were a few miscellaneous questions before our main topic for the evening. Jason Cook gave a demonstration of a kernel compile, explaining the some of the very many options that must be selected in the process. He highlighted some of the more important performance issues, especially how to use lspci to determine the correct IDE disk controller. He also mentioned using hdparm to possibly boost disk performance even more. If you missed Jason's presentation, couldn't quite keep up, or want more details, you may find The Linux Kernel HOWTO or Kernel Configuration: dealing with the unexpected useful. top last meeting next meeting September 2002 September 2002 meeting We have a new home! Beginning with this meeting, we meet in Room 150, Russ Engineering Center, Wright State University. Here is a map and directions. Thanks to Wright State for their generosity, and to Dr. Doom and Gary Turner for arranging this nice new location. Dr. Doom greeted us and spoke briefly before he had to leave to teach a class. We had brief introductions of everyone present. I didn't do a head count, but I estimate attendance was about 25. Then we had some discussion of topics for future meetings. Some topics suggested included speed tweaking, setting up a server for home use (file and print sharing, etc.), kernel compile (Jason will do that for our October meeting), Apache 2, Samba configuration (Andy Grimm in November), embedded Linux applications, hardware issues (compatibility, drivers, neat toys, etc.), and wireless configuration. There was some Q & A about file system maintenance and the advantages of some of the alternate file systems. Paul Ahlquist discussed the development status of KDE 3.1 and talked briefly about how Red Hat plans to modify both KDE and GNOME from their defaults. We tentatively scheduled our next Installfest for Saturday, January 11, 2003 at WSU. We briefly showed some of this site and I learned of a glitch on our home page, which I've fixed. Jason announced that he will be discussing WINE at the CLUG meeting this Saturday. After the meeting, several of us adjourned to Cold Beer & Cheeseburgers for some food and discussion of numerous topics. top last meeting next meeting Installfest Sun. Sept. 8, 2002 Our last Installfest was Sunday, September 8, 2002, at Town and Country Shopping Center, Kettering, OH. We had a decent turnout - I'm guessing 20 to 25 people showed up. I had expected more since we passed out fliers at Jon "maddog" Hall's talks at the recent Computerfest®. But it was good that we didn't have many more people because we had the room nearly full most of the day. I was somewhat surprised at the number of SuSE installs - I saw at least three. I helped one gentleman install SuSE 8.0 Professional in an unused partition to dual boot with Windows XP. I recall hearing of some special procedure for dual booting Windows XP and Linux, but didn't know the details. Here is an alternate solution. And we since didn't have Internet access, I couldn't search on-line. Since his wife also uses his PC and doesn't want to learn Linux, I decided to simply create a boot floppy and installed LILO in the Linux partition instead of the default MBR. That worked fine. I hadn't done a SuSE install in well over a year. My previous experiences with SuSE hadn't been too good. He had gotten SuSE mainly for the convenience of installing from a single DVD rather than swapping CDs. Unfortunately, we never got the DVD install to work. It would boot from the DVD and begin the install, but the package selection always crashed. :-( Installing from CDs went OK except for a minor glitch with the X configuration. It correctly identified his LCD display, but didn't offer the LCD's native screen resolution. We finally selected generic 70Hz 1024x768 LCD and it worked fine. The only other glitch was that we couldn't get his USB Canon scanner to work. It was recognized during the install, but that's all. I know when I was looking for a scanner with Linux support over a year ago, USB scanner support was nearly non-existent. I just checked USB Scanners under Linux and found that Canon has been uncooperative. Otherwise, it was a very smooth install. top last meeting next meeting August 2002 Computerfest® Fall 2002 We had a great Linux Playground at the fall 2002 Computerfest(R). The highlight was two keynote talks by Jon "maddog" Hall. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend any of the numerous Linux seminars. top last meeting next meeting August, 2002 Meeting We met in room 112 at The Learning Center at Miami Valley Research Park, 1900 Founders Drive, Suite 100, Kettering, OH Thursday, August 15, 2002. Some people, including myself, were a bit late due to insufficient directions. We'll try to have more complete directions for our next meeting, wherever it may be. It was a nice comfortable room with three Internet-connected Windows PCs per table, five rows of tables on one side of the room and four rows on the other. The wide center aisle would probably allow room to seat another fifteen people or so if chairs were brought in. There was a ceiling-mounted projector connected to a PC in the front of the room, but no screen - just the white-board. A few of us also looked at a conference room which was perhaps 30% larger but lacking a projector, and a much larger auditorium, which may be available for our use. With Computerfest(R) only a bit over a week away, Jason reviewed plans for the Linux playground and asked for more volunteers. He also announced his resignation from his Linux Playground and network coordinator positions effective at the close of this show. So, we'll be needing someone to step in to fill these positions for future shows. Thanks to Jason for the great job he has done to build interest in Linux at Computerfest(R). top last meeting next meeting July 2002 July, 2002 Meeting On the 18th we met at 119 Valley St.. There was no scheduled topic. David Jones and Mike Linden tried valiantly to try to configure X for a fellow's laptop with a Savage video controller. Apparently some details were still needed to complete the configuration, such as the native LCD resolution and timings. X was running, but it wasn't a pretty picture, and Xconfigurator crashed consistently. :-( Plans for the Linux Playground were discussed, as were possible meeting locations. Just today we received info from a professor at WSU who is interested in arranging for us to meet there. We had a small swap meet - Dave Nevel brought a box of assorted PC hardware and Dave Lundy brought some Linux distros. Robert Ruby announced that on Tuesday, July 23, Edison College in Piqua, will be selling old computer equipment, some A-V equipment, some chairs, student desks and other miscellaneous items. The sale will be from 8am to 4pm in Parking Lot 6. Terms are cash only, as is, and all sales will be final. top last meeting next meeting June 2002 Installfest Sun. Jun. 23, 2002 Our last Installfest was Sunday, June 23, 2002, from noon to 6:00 p.m. at Town and Country Shopping Center. It was near the storefront we used last time we were there in April, but somewhat smaller. The smaller size wasn't a problem, since we had considerably fewer attendees this time (about 18), probably because of the nice summer weather, people being on vacation, etc. GT brought soft drinks and snacks. A few of us watched intently as Mike Linden walked George Ewing through a SmoothWall firewall installation, which installed quickly and (dare I say it? - smoothly). Another fellow wasn't quite so lucky. He brought in a brand new PC with Win2K installed on a single NTFS partition and was planning on resizing the partition with Partition Commander, but found to his dismay that Partition Commander requires a FAT partition in which to be installed. I did see while writing this that Partition Commander 6.0 can run directly from included boot diskette on any OS - too bad we didn't know that then. We tried fips, but it doesn't know how to deal with NTFS - only DOS and FAT. Another attendee successfully added some missing Mandrake 8.3 packages to his unique i-Buddie 4 "DeskNote". It definitely is a screamer of a laptop, although a bit heavier than many and lacking a battery therefore not truly a laptop. There are nice reviews of it at HardwareZone and t-break. top last meeting next meeting June 6, 2002 Meeting We had a meeting Thursday, June 6 at 119 Valley St., which may be our last regularly scheduled monthly meeting at that location and on the first Thursday. At that meeting, we had planned to vote on whether to permanently move the meeting time to the 3rd Thursday, and whether to permanently move the location to The Reserve Harrigan Auto Center - David Jones has already reserved it for the third Thursday for the rest of the year, but it was decided to give more folks a chance to visit The Reserve before voting. Obviously, we're getting too crowded in the Valley St. location, but we do have ISDN and a projector there (and now we even have a wall-mounted screen for it, and a white board!). There is an 802.11a network at The Reserve, but most users have 802.11b, if they have wireless at all. But there will probably be RJ-45 jacks installed at The Reserve in the near future. However, as nice as The Reserve is, the acoustics leave a lot to be desired and arranging seating so 40 or more can easily see the projector may be difficult. Paul Ahlquist demoed some of the on-line features of KDE 3.0 & described others due to technical difficulty with his PC (Group Scheduling via email, Konqi - some conveniences, and fish, the ssh kioslave). Jason Cook demonstrated several Windows games on Linux using WINE top last meeting next meeting June 20, 2002 Meeting We met at The Reserve Harrigan Auto Center. Most of the discussion was regarding the Linux playground at Computerfest(R) August 24 - 25 at Hara Arena. Don Corbet agreed to be the point person for the Linux playground at the fall 2002 show. There was also discussion regarding possible locations and dates for future Installfests and our monthly meetings. Please contact Gary Turner with your suggestions. One suggestion was to have a room available for informal discussion an hour before the meeting begins at 7:00 p.m. Currently Town and Country Shopping Center is the prime candidate for Installfests, and UD and WSU the prime candidates for monthly meetings. Jason warned of the need to update apache and sshd. top last meeting next meeting May 2002 May 16, 2002 Meeting We had a trial meeting at The Reserve Harrigan Auto Center, 475 Congress Park Drive, Centerville, OH 45459 on Thursday, May 16. Thanks to David Jones for securing this meeting place for us. The acoustics were somewhat problematic, especially when the air conditioner was running, but otherwise it was a very nice place for our meeting. This may become our new regular meeting location and date (ie. third Thursday each month). The main topic was a nice presentation of KDE 3.0 by Paul Ahlquist. Unfortunately he was unable to demo any on-line features due to lack of Internet connection. We expect to have that solved next month, so perhaps Paul will be good enough to continue his demo. The general consensus of the attendees was to continue meeting at The Reserve Harrigan Auto Center and to make the change to the third Thursday permanent. It is available to us on the third Thursday for the rest of the year. However, since attendance was only about 25, as opposed to 40 or so the past few months, we should poll those who weren't there. GT brought soft drinks and snacks. Several of us adjourned to Cozymel's after the meeting for some friendly conversation and good eats. top last meeting next meeting May 2002 Meeting Attendance was down slightly from the last couple months (just over thirty), but still a bit cramped for our current location. Dave Jones is working on making arrangements for a much larger meeting place in Centerville. We're planning to have a test meeting there in two weeks. If it goes well, we're considering making a permanent change of both date and location for our monthly meetings - partly because we're outgrowing our space, and partly to avoid a conflict with a networking meeting at New Horizons on the first Thursday. Mike Linden gave away a few boxes of goodies, including SCSI controllers, a SCSI tape drive, video cards, CPUs, RAM, cables, software and other assorted items. Thanks Mike! There was some discussion of our most recent Installfest. A couple people brought up some issues they're still having trouble with. We've tentatively scheduled our next Installfest for noon to 6:00 p.m. Sunday, June 23. top last meeting next meeting Apr. 2002 Installfest Sat. Apr. 13, 2002 Our Installfest held Saturday, April 13, 2002, inside the Town & Country Shopping Center, Far Hills & E. Stroop Rd., Kettering was a huge success. Thanks to all who helped with that event, especially to GT for finding us the great location, and for bringing snacks, Carol and Leah for handling memberships (we got five new DMA(R) members and one renewal), Don and Nancy for publicity, and all who helped with installs. We had 43 people sign in, and I suspect total attendance may have been as high as 60! We were quite busy all day. Things didn't slow down significantly until after 3:00 p.m. Some of the guys from evolServ did a live remote broadcast from the Installfest. I heard a little bit of it, but didn't really have a chance to listen. I oversaw two Red Hat 7.2 installs, and installed Mandrake 8.2 on my own PC. One attendee reported "I got my PC upgraded to Mandrake 8.2 from 7.1. It took a lot longer than I expected (almost 5 hrs - that includes some s/w glitches & the fact that I have a LOT of packages on my machine). I got help from several members, especially Dave from evolServ, that I really needed. My new system seems to be working well, but I still need to get the firewall & other things set up." See pictures taken by Dave Lundy and Leah Day. top last meeting next meeting April 2002 Meeting Our April meeting wasn't anything special except that for the second consecutive month attendance was near 40! Our meeting room is getting a bit crowded. In the absence of Gary Turner, Don Corbet and Dave Jones led the meeting with a few announcements, asking for a show of hands of new attendees, of which there were several, and by prodding the attendees to ask questions. We had good discussion of several topics. Of course the Installfest coming up in a couple weeks was announced, and Nancy handed out fliers for it. Don promised that some Mandrake 8.2 CDs would be available for the Installfest. He also mentioned the new radio program that evolServ is hosting on WHIO (AM 1290) at noon Saturdays. Paul Ahlquist announced that KDE 3.0 has been released, and Dave Jones announced that the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 is now shipping for $500. For those who have been living in a cave lately, the Zaurus SL-5500 is a really sharp (yes, pun intended) color PDA which is based on Linux. Mike Linden announced that StarOffice 6.0 in now shipping, and that it's now $100. OpenOffice 1.0 is nearly the same product but apparently its import and output filters aren't quite as good, but it's free. See StarOffice Rolls Out Its Business Model. It was also noted that Mandrake 8.2 PowerPack includes StarOffice 6.0 and costs about $70. We also queried the attendees for suggestions for upcoming meeting topics. Suggestions included discussion of Linux applications that correspond to well-known (and not so well-known) Windows apps (take a look at the Linux Applications and Utilities Page), SAMBA, Wireless Linux, etc. top last meeting next meeting Mar. 2002 Computerfest® We had an even larger and quite successful "Linux Playground" at the spring 2002 Computerfest® March 16 and 17. We had several talks scheduled both Saturday and Sunday in two rooms which were well attended. top last meeting next meeting Feb. 2002 February 2002 meeting Jason Cook has been experimenting with the source based distribution Gentoo Linux (which they describe as "a fast, modern distribution with a clean and flexible design") and shared his experiences with it. It's primary advantage, as I understand it, is that it is entirely customized to the hardware it's running on for maximum speed. To attain that, everything is compiled on the machine it runs on. So, it's not for newbies or the faint-of-heart. He also demonstrated the process for updating applications (it's a cross between Debian's apt and BSD's ports. Finally, he showed off his new toy, a neat Linux-based MP3 player he recently got at eBay. Another member showed some of us his developer's model of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000, a Linux-based PDA (see http://developer.sharpsec.com/). However I don't know if he has developed any applications for it. It's a really nice looking design, and seems to function very well and intuitively from by brief experience with it. When my Palm IIIx finally gives up the ghost, I'd like to replace it with a Zaurus. :-) top last meeting next meeting Jan. 2002 Installfest Sat. Jan. 20, 2002 Our last Installfest was held January 20, 2002, at 119 Valley St. We had a modest turnout, and all but one install was successful. We believe there were hardware compatibility issues in that case. I'll probably post some pictures shortly. We haven't scheduled our next installfest yet, but it will undoubtedly be shortly after the Spring 2002 Computerfest(R), March 16 & 17. top last meeting next meeting January 2002 meeting At our January meeting, Gill Stuber discussed his personal experiences with some of the more popular (and some not so well known) recent Linux distributions, and demonstrated features of a few of them. He described what he feels to be the best (and worst) features of several Linux distributions. Unfortunately, due to hardware difficulties, he wasn't able to show some of the features he discussed. He plans a followup discussion in a few months, probably focusing on smaller distributions, such as for embedded applications.

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