[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Beryl/compiz

Paul Nijjar paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca
Sat Nov 3 22:33:02 EDT 2007


If there's one lesson Hallowe'en teaches us, it's that you can never
have enough candy. Ever. All those stories you have heard about tooth
decay and stomachaches and losing your job after 4-day sugar benders
are dirty lies propagated by Communists. When it comes to candy, more
is better. Even black jellybeans and those so-called "caramels"
wrapped in the Hallowe'en waxed paper have their niches in this
sugary ecosystem. 

Unfortunately, after a few reprimands from our bosses (not to mention
a few pounding headaches) some of us have to find our fixes in other
ways. Fortunately, free software comes to the rescue once again.
Don't believe the haters; far from being the black jellybean of the
computer world, Linux has a lot of sweet sweet eye candy to offer.
The offering in this month's meeting is the set of Beryl/compiz
family of window managers, which offer gooey 3D goodness that make
your windows wiggly-jiggly and your virtual desktops cubic. And in
the spirit of open source, it is plugin-oriented so users can make it
even more delicious. 

In this month's KWLUG presentation, we'll learn more about this funky
window manager and what it can do. Drop by at 7pm and you could end
up the envy of your workplace, with your coworkers spending hours
staring at your screen instead of leaving you alone with your sugar
migraines. 

In other news, how about that Ontario Linux Fest? And Ohio Linux Fest
before that. What? You were too busy snarfing Snickers bars to go? Me
too. I am not sure Richard will ever forgive us, but I'll bet that
some people who did go might give us a report of the escapades. 

While we're talking about candy, how about that FLOSS Fund? Last
month we donated $55.91 to the LaTeX3 project, and this month we'll
shower donations at the Vim project (in particular its designated
charity). You may have heard of Vim. It's a little text editor that
started out as a vi clone and ended up as modal Emacs, complete with
plugins and embedded programming languages. A ridiculous number of
people have typed out a ridiculous amount of text using this editor,
so this month we will show our appreciation. 

In other FLOSS Fund news, we appear to be out of project suggestions.
Do you know of an open source project that takes money and is worth
the LUG's financial support? Then make a nomination! See
http://kwlug.org/node/410 for details. 

Finally, there's a new confection in town: the Waterloo Libre
Software  Group (http://wlsg.uwaterloo.ca) has recently molded itself
into existence. They are based out of the University of Waterloo, but
everybody is welcome to attend their meetings and participate in
their projects. 

I've spent so long composing this message that the candy canes have
started to come out. Hopefully you'll receive it in time to attend
our meeting, which will be held at the usual place: 

The Working Centre 
43 Queen Street South 
(Between King and Charles Streets)
Kitchener

It's only a block away from the Kitchener bus terminal. There is free
car parking at the back lot after 6pm, and free peanut-brittle vendor
cart parking always. 

- Paul


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