KWLUG Meeting: Monday, August 12 2013, 7pm

Mind Mapping Software, Virtualization for Beginners

Meeting Date

Note: Because of the Civic Holiday this meeting will be held on the second Monday in August.

This month's presentations will be beginner-friendly.

It's August, and the living is languid. Many user groups (but not us!) have taken the summer off. The festivals are making their circuits; people are taking their vacations, and those of us at work are not getting much done. (oops. Did I just incriminate myself?) People are relaxing and laying back.

Meanwhile, Raul Suarez has a lot on his mind. He likes to lighten his summer load by mapping and organizing his thoughts, and he uses mind mapping software to do so. In this presentation he will use FreeMind (and possibly other tools) so that you can free your mind too.

During the hot summer months, Jim Kelsh likes to chill, but it is difficult to keep your cool sitting in a roomful of computers blowing hot air. Jim has consolidated his operating systems: first converting his Windows 7 laptop installation into a virtual hard disk, and then running that virtualized installation on Ubuntu. He will take us through those steps in his talk.

It feels way too early to start organizing fall events, but September is approaching quickly, and with it comes Software Freedom Day, which is officially being held on September 21 and perhaps unofficially on September 28. KWLUG has helped organize Software Freedom Day events for the past several years, and it would be nice to do so again -- but in order to make it happen, we need volunteers. There is work to be done in organizing the day (talks, installfests, and maybe other events like BBQs), doing publicity to reach out to people who may not know much about Free Software, offering talks and presentations, and lots more. Can you help out? If so, please contact sfd@theworkingcentre.org .

... and that's it for this month's lackadaisical installment of "Remind everybody of the KWLUG meeting this month."

* * *
This meeting will be beginner-friendly.

Raul Suarez uses mind-mapping software to organize his ideas. He writes:

If you sometimes have ideas to organize, presentations to prepare, trips to
plan, a book to write; and cannot keep  all those thoughts on the top of your
head head, you may would benefit from capturing and categorizing those thoughts
using mind mapping software.

For several years I have been using FreeMind for these, and many other tasks
and can give a "user level" - hands on - presentation of mind mapping software.

Jim Kelsh uses virtualization. He writes:

If you own a laptop or desktop that came installed with Windows 7 but you want to run Linux as well, you usually have several ways to do this.

  1. You can dual boot Windows and Linux.
    - this means physically partitioning your computer hard drive and installing Linux “beside” Windows. At boot time, you see a menu that allows you to choose which system you want to boot into.
  2. You can replace your Windows OEM installation with Linux and run a program called WINE (WINE Is Not An Emulator), or its commercial counterpart Crossover, which will run some Windows software applications.
  3. You can leave Windows as the only operating system, and install your Linux system into a virtualization program, such as Virtualbox from Oracle.

Each solution will work, but you may have some issues.

For example, if you keep Windows as a physical operating system on your computer (solutions 1. or 3.), you are allowing it to control your hardware. If it gets a virus or other serious malware, you may have to reinstall Windows, which can put your computer out of commission for hours.
Or, if Windows decides to restart itself automatically in the middle of a time sensitive on line transaction (after an update that was running in the background and was not visible, true story) you may be very upset!

If you use solution 2., WINE, some newer users find it difficult to set up and WINE and Crossover do not support (yet) all Windows applications.

This presentation will show you how to (legally) convert your Windows OEM installation, without an install disc, into a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk), replace your Windows OEM installation with Ubuntu Linux and run Windows inside Ubuntu using Virtualbox.

And the best part: you don't have to break the bank. I am running this type of setup on a $379.00 Asus laptop from 2012 with $30.00 of extra RAM added.

* * *

The host for this meeting was LPaniak.