KWLUG - The Kitchener-Waterloo Linux User Group is a monthly meeting of GNU/Linux, Free Software, Open Source and technology enthusiasts.

Where? When? We meet in Kitchener, Ontario, usually on the first (non-holiday) Monday of the month, beginning at 7pm. (Hybrid Directions) (Subscribe to monthly meeting announcements)

How much? Our meetings are free of charge and open to anybody with an interest in Linux and/or free software.

What next?

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, August 11, 2025, 7pm

SadServers, BBB Video Editing Revisited

Meeting Date

Note: The in-person meeting location has changed. Instead of LIB 329 (the "Computer Lab") this meeting will be held in LIB 323 (the "Learning Lab"), which has glass doors. 

Another Note: Unfortunately Jason had to postpone his BigBlueButton Setup presentation. It will be rescheduled.

Fernando Duran will give us an update on SadServers, which teaches users Linux skills by presenting them with interactive challenges on virtual machines. 

Mikalai Birukou will give us an update on how he improved BigBlueButton video recordings based on feedback from his March 2025 presentation.

In-Person Social: Wednesday, August 27 2025, 7pm

Dinner at J&B Family Restaurant, Downtown Kitchener

Meeting Date

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at J&B Family Restaurant in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Wednesday.

This is a supplementary informal meeting; we will still hold hybrid meetings for technical topics.

The restaurant is located at 79 Victoria St N in Kitchener, near the corner of Victoria and Duke Here is a map

There is parking in front of the restaurant. The nearest City parking lot is at Hall Lane.

Normally you can probably just show up, but J&B is a small place. If you plan to attend please make sure to RSVP to dinner@kwlug.org, so the organizers can make an accurate reservation. If you know what you plan to order from the menu, please include your order as well so the restaurant staff can prepare food in advance.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, September 8, 2025, 7pm

Drupal, GrapheneOS

Meeting Date

Note: the location for the in-person meeting will continue to be LIB 323 at the Dana Porter library, not LIB 329. This will be our in-person home for the indefinite future.

Some members of the Waterloo Region Drupal User Group will tell us about the venerable content management system Drupal, and its relevance in the modern web.

Doug Moen will share "A Luddite Perspective on GrapheneOS", a secure and open-source firmware for (some) Android phones. Amongst other things, he will share why GrapheneOS is suited to his threat model and ethical system, why Calyx and other FOSS phone distros are less well suited, and why he rejected the GrapheneOS app store in favor of F-Droid. Along the way he will discuss the philosophies behind his choices, including  Ned Ludd, malware, surveillance capitalism, Kant's Categorical Imperative, and threat models. 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, November 3, 2025, 7pm

AppDaemon for Home Assistant, Using Ceph and Proxmox as a Distributed NAS

Meeting Date

Khalid Baheyeldin will continue his series of talks about Home Assistant by telling us about AppDaemon, an execution environment that interfaces with Home Assistant for writing custom apps in Python. He will demonstrate a simple app, and then show some more involved ones, including an app for emailing weather updates, and an app to replace his humidifier's humidistat.
 

Spencer Hughes will demonstrate how he uses Ceph and Proxmox for network storage. He writes:

Proxmox supports Ceph for VM storage, but the built-in Ceph deployment can be used for much more. Learn how to use the Proxmox-managed Ceph cluster for storing any kind of data and accessing it over the network. 

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, February 2, 2026, 7pm

Home Assistant + 1 more

Meeting Date

Khalid Baheyeldin will demonstrate some additional ways he uses Home Assistant. He will explain voice to text functionality, email and voice alerts for such events as extreme temperatures/humidity and door openings. He will also demonstrate a custom-made garage sensor that informs him about a light that is left on unintentionally, and the surprising reason why he had to swap out the ambient light component in the sensor after several years.