We meet the last Saturday of every month, and the first Thursday of every month. For 2008 these are the dates:

• Thursday January 3 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday January 26 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday February 7 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday March 22 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday March 6 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday March 22 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday April 3 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday April 26 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday May 1 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday May 24 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday June 5 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday June 28 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday July 3 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday July 26 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday August 7 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday August 23 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday September 4 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday September 27 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday October 2 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday October 25 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday November 6 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday November 22 9:00-11:00am
• Thursday December 4 7:00-9:00pm
• Saturday December 27 9:00-11:00am

The meetings are public - come and say hi. No experience required.

• Bill asked a great question about building Firefox, which morphed into... how programs are built, which led to... dynamic linking (and static linking), and how to find out libraries that your programs use, which led to... how to figure out from a configure.ac file what headers you need, and how that ties into packages you need to install to build the binary.
• We also tried to do some troubleshooting of various things, including Bill's OpenSuSE box getting software updates so he could try the newest version of OpenOffice.org, 2.3.
• Peter was having problems with his newfangled Broadcom wireless adapter in his Dell Latitude D830, so if anyone has hints for him that would be appreciated. There was some sort of mismatch between the download of firmware he had and the new b43-fwcutter that is supposed to cut the (now) 5 firmware files out for use in the new driver. We had yet to determine whether he was supposed to be using a different kernel driver than the bcm43xx that was loading.

• Discussed new meeting time -- Looks like no one is too unhappy about us moving to first Thursdays, so starting in January 2008, we'll be meeting on first (1st) Thursdays and fourth (4th) Saturdays monthly. Unfortunately, I can't do much about our schedule for the rest of the year since the library's pretty well booked.
• Brief discussion on some Linux news like the SCO Chapter 11 filing, AMD/ATi open source driver spec contributions, and the Apple iPod/iTunes lockout fiasco.
• We had a nice long discussion about people's favorite apps in a number of categories. Here were some of the areas and apps people like:
• CD BURNING:
• brasero - GNOME
• k3b - KDE
• cdrecord - CLI
• Nautilus - GNOME
• VIDEO EDITING*:
• Cinelerra
• LiVES
• Kino
• Kdenlive
• Diva

(*We all agreed that in this area, Linux is currently lacking in a big way, and all of these tools have deep problems for desktop users.)

• VIDEO CONVERSION:
• avidemux
• winff
• mencoder/ffmpeg
• AUDIO:
• exaile
• Jokosher
• BLOG/RSS/PUBLISHING:
• Listgarden
• rss2email
• BlogLines
• Google Reader
• Liferea
• FoxReader
• WordPress
• Feedblitz
• PODCATCHERS:
• Rhythmbox
• BashPodder
• IcePodder
• Banshee
• Amarok
• Miro

People also listed some of their favorite podcasts, in no particular order. As the list went on, it became less Linux-specific because there are so many fascinating podcasts out there!

PODCASTS:

• LUGRadio UK
• Linux Links Tech Show
• Linux Action Show
• Lotta Linux Links
• Python 411
• FLOSS Weekly
• IT Conversations
• BinRev
• RadioLab
• Quirks and Quarks

We had 6 participants. Paul talked about SSH, VNC and Samba and showed examples of how they can be used to share files. Paul used his own system to show how SSH can do much more than just providing a remote shell by showing how to tunnel web-browsing through an encrypted SSH tunnel.

VNC's remote desktop abilities were discussed as well as how to do the initial setup. A few of Gnome's lesser known features were demonstrated on how to mount remote systems filesystems directly on the desktop allowing simple drag-and-drop operations.

A brief overview of SAMBA was given. Samba is the Linux service to access Microsoft's Windows file shares; and to provide a similar network functionality on windows.

We had 8 participants, including one new Linux devote.

We spend time going over Ubuntu upgrades and specific installation issues. We discussed LVM and did some diagnosis getting one of the members laptops working. The group also talked about software raid install.

We were invited to the Fredericksburg PC Users Group meetings to do a presentation. Check the mailling list for more information about how and when.

We had a new member attend last night, Jenn from Locust Grove. (Sorry I didn't catch your last name, Jenn!) We talked about:

• Backups of production servers. It was generally agreed that there are many ways to do this that trounce the brutish (and usually inflexible) 'dd all the disks/partitions' method. Before designing a *specific* strategy, the administrator needs to define a desired end state and identify any potential blocking factors. We talked about LVM snapshots, kickstart, and star as examples of pieces which could be combined to stage or prep servers for installations requiring more interactivity.
• Jenn's home network configuration, and how she could get more "oomph" out of a Linux box in her environment. Specifically, we discussed issues of printer connectivity, application compatibility, and helpful software packages.
• General Linux issues such as {L,}GPL3
• The upcoming InstallFest

The next meeting will be the InstallFest on Saturday, July 28th, at 9:00am. WE NEED AS MANY MEMBERS TO ATTEND AS POSSIBLE! This is our chance to do real grassroots work, with the public at large invited. Let's all step up to the plate and make a difference!

We had about half-a-dozen in attendance today. Nice to see so many turning out despite the draw of beautiful summer weather!

Paul did a talk on building RPM packages and how spec files work. Find a copy on our Google Groups page, http://groups.google.com/group/fredlug/files. The presentation is under a Creative Commons NC-BY-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) license.

We also discussed the idea of the installfest for July, so we need to start gathering tasks -- and more importantly, (self-)assigning them -- as soon as possible.

Attending:

• Jared (& son)
• Peter
• Bill
• Eddie
• Paul

Jared gave a presentation on PXE and kickstart, and how to use these facilities to do automated and unattended installations. You can use kickstart files with any Anaconda-equpiped Linux distribution to make large-scale or geographically remote installations painless and virtually error-free.

We talked about some odds and ends, including information in the news regarding a variety of free and open source software (FOSS) topics. WAP - should work fine with modern NetworkManager, including F7 Podcasts - check out the Linux Action Show at: http://www.linuxactionshow.com/ (MP3 and Ogg RSS feeds available) Jared gave away some Asterisk books (these will be collectors' editions when the 2d ed. is released!)

We had several attendees today, even with the holiday weekend in full swing. Marie proudly announced that she had several Linux distros to try on her Parallels-capable Mac, and we had two tech talks:

1. Peter talked about virtualization -- what it is, why it's important, what's available, and how to use it.
2. Paul talked about partitioning and LVM, and how to apply the concepts to make a system that's more upgrade-friendly.

Jared, Aaron, Chris, and I were in attendance that evening.

Paul gave a short (?) presentation on logging -- how it works, how to use it to troubleshoot problematic services, how to log SELinux problems, and so forth. Jared helpfully added some very helpful information on remote logging as well. We also had some discussions about open content, people's experience with iTunes with regard to Linux (or lack thereof), and some other odds and ends.

To download the presentation, click here.

4 members showed up. We discussed several issues, from Internet Neutrality to Jared's new house.

Peter showed the latest webmin and some of it's features.

We discussed the features of the newly released Fedora 7 Test 4.

We had seven members in attendance, most of which were new faces to me, so we started with introductions.

• Matt
• Eddie
• Bill
• James
• Aaron
• Marie
• Ali

We then talked a little about using parallels on Mac to do Windows and noted that Marie most likely needed to edit the properties on her Windows image to allocate more memory for the virtual machine.

We then to talked very little about Python.

We assisted with getting people on IRC from both OS X and Linux

Several people talked about using ndiswrapper (unfortunately non very successfully)

We talked about webcams and motion detection under linux.

Aaron mentioned that he had used some X10 brand cameras that could transmit video over 6 conductor telephone wiring.

We then worked more on madwifi and ndiswrapper without any success.

• Was attended by 7 people.
• Jared Smith had two more books to give away. The lucky winners were ......
• Peter Larsen talking about computer networks and how to configure and diagnose networks on Linux
• We lost our www.fred-lug.org site. Tux.org has been very nice and made space for fredlug under fredlug.tux.org. The old www.fred-lug.org now redirects to fredlug.tux.org. We need a stunning design for our new site. Please bring ideas and templates to the meetings so we can get a good lug site up and running.

• Kudos for Peter Larsen for getting to work on our Web site issues. �He is watching tux.org closely to see how their upgrade happens and will report at that time. �Then we can decide our next move.
• New folks introduced themselves. �We talked a little about the availability of the mailing list and also about IRC and the programs people can use to log onto FreeNode (irc.freenode.net) at our channel, #fredlug.
• In response to user questions, we talked generally about virtualization. �A lot of time was spent on VMWare and we also mentioned Xen and some other free software alternatives.
• We also discussed MythTV a little bit and are hoping some of the folks who are building those boxes will share what they learned at a later presentation. �That way we can all benefit from their experience!
• We spent a while helping people troubleshoot various problems, and had varying degrees of success. �We also agreed we can continue working on some of them on the mailing list or IRC.