[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Tiling Window Managers

Paul Nijjar paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca
Fri Jan 2 22:31:18 EST 2009


Oh January. Along with credit card debt and bitter cold you bombard us with
your expectations, and in response we dutifully make our resolutions.
Some of us resolve to manage our waistlines, insisting that we'll
exercise every single day and get a health club membership and
actually use it this time. Some of us resolve to manage our finances,
promising to cut up our credit cards and budget wisely and never, ever
be tempted by gargantuan plasma TVs and androidy phones. Some of us
resolve to manage our relationships better, vowing to phone Mom more
often and spend time with the kids and make a habit of coming home
from work on time. And then comes February, and all of our resolve
has mysteriously evaporated away. 

Some of us have been on that metaphorical treadmill a few times too
often. Fat, broke, and dysfunctional, we choose more... moderate...
resolutions. Some of us, for example, resolve to manage our windows
better (not to be confused with managing Windows, a subject not
appropriate for a family-friendly announcement). Our virtual desktops
are a-clutter with open programs, and we keep getting distracted by
our web browsers when flipping through windows and... argh! 

Fortunately, Kyle Spaans has an answer to share with us. This month he
will discuss tiling window managers, which lay out windows so that
nothing overlaps. You might think that only crazy people would be
attracted to such a scheme, but Kyle will demonstrate why they may be
relevant to your life. He will demonstrate the cool factor (as well as
the care and feeding of) the StumpWM, dwm, and XMonad window managers.
If nothing else, his presentation will demonstrate just how strikingly
flexible the Linux desktop can be, which is something you can
appreciate well past February. This presentation will start at 7pm. 

Our FLOSS Fund nominee for January is OpenVPN, which is used to create
secure private networks over the Internet. Unlike some other VPN
solutions (which I should not comment on in a family-friendly
announcement) OpenVPN is designed to combine security with ease of
use. Their website is http://www.openvpn.org . If you would
like to contribute, you can attend the meeting, contact Andrew at
acant at alumni.uwaterloo.ca .

Also at this meeting, Richard will tell us about the filming of a
Linux User Group documentary (?!) that he is conspiring to create. In
addition we may discuss the possibility of trying out a different
location for future KWLUG meetings. 

Also of note: last year our discussion mailing list kwlug-disc has had
problems with user registrations. We think the problem has been fixed,
so if you would like to join, the website signup is: 
http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org

This month's meeting will be held at our usual location:

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

There is free rowing machine parking at the back lot after 6pm, free
exercise bike parking always, and a handy-dandy transportation
terminal a couple of blocks away. 

- Paul




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