Past Meetings

To commemorate KWLUG's 25th anniversary, a number of early members will reminisce about the origins of KWLUG and reflect on their free software journeys. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and contribute your own thoughts. 

Elsewhere

• Luma
• LinkedIn

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at the Huether Hotel (Barley Works) in Uptown Waterloo, 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 59 King St N in Waterloo, near the intersection of King and Princess St E. Here is a map. Barley Works is on the second floor of the building.

The Huether Hotel does not have its own parking, but parking at some Uptown parking lots are free in the evening. This includes parking at Waterloo Town Square and a lot near Bridgeport and Regina.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org

The restaurant has a covered and heated patio and we will try to be outside, weather permitting. This will probably be the last patio dinner of until sometime in the spring.

Elsewhere

• Luma
• LinkedIn

Cameron Davidson-Pilon will give us some updates from his Pioreactor project, which sells bioreactors for growing microorganisms in science experiments. As per the name, Pioreactors are based on Raspberry Pi devices. 

Chris Irwin will tell us about postmarketOS, a Linux distro for mobile devices based upon Alpine Linux.

(Chris will schedule his "Power Monitoring with Home Assistant" presentation to a future month.)

This month's meeting is part of Waterloo Tech Week. They request that we add the following blurb to our publicity: 

We are official event hosts with Waterloo Tech Week 2026, a celebration of what’s been built here, and what’s still to come. We’re building something great together. September 12-17, 2026. waterlootechweek.ca

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at the Huether Hotel in Uptown Waterloo, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday. 

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

The restaurant is located at 59 King St N in Waterloo, near the intersection of King and Princess St E. Here is a map. 

The Huether does not have its own parking, but parking at some Uptown parking lots are free in the evening. This includes parking at Waterloo Town Square and a lot near Bridgeport and Regina.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org

The restaurant has a patio and we will try to be outside, weather permitting.

Elsewhere

• Luma

Christopher Thompson will describe the components he uses to run self-hosted Large Language Models at home. He writes: 

Get the stack breakdown on the stack path for an LLM that isn't entirely useless. Christopher Thompson walks through the high-level components and integrations you should know"                                                
                                                                            
"Bonus - An agentic build for child safety. Eg. Let your kids have AI, but just not an AI girlfriend(ewe)

Mikalai Birukou will tell us about the components of his platform PrivacySafe, and the establishment of a public charity to assist in its longevity. He writes:

PrivacySafe is a user-controlled platform. This installment presentation will go through tech's foundation describing how security and privacy aspects are implemented on top 3NWeb approach. There is a working client side for desktops. There will be an Android client. There is a server to run from one's home lab, or a Raspberry Pi. This presentation will demo  both server setup process, and usage of applications in one's PrivacySafe installation.                                                   
                                                                           
PrivacySafe Foundation has been set up as a 501(c)(3) public charity in Connecticut, USA, to ensure continual development of 3NWeb standards and  betterment of elements in the commons, i.e. basic client and server code that enables an ecosystem where users have actual privacy, security and control. 

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's 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 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map. 

Parking is free in the Crabby Joe's parking lot with purchase. The waitstaff will scan your ticket when you leave, which will permit you to leave the parking lot for free. In addition, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org

The restaurant has a patio and we will try to be outside, weather permitting.

Elsewhere

• Luma

Chris Nicoll will discuss the Elixir programming language. She writes:

Elixir is a functional language that runs on the Erlang VM. It's rumoured to make small teams extra-productive. It specializes in fault tolerance and concurrency, and as such, it's at home in distributed systems.  Elixir is still a niche language -- but with the current explosion in, ahem, interacting automated systems, is it about to have its day?                 
                                                                           
I'm no computer scientist, but I like Elixir. I'm going to try to develop a defensible opinion on that question and present it to you.

A number of KWLUG members will show off their homelabs and some uses they have found for them:

• Marc Peppin will tell us about some subset of his six servers, two workstations, three laptops, networking gear but no partridge in a pear tree
• Anne DeCusatis will tell us about their collections of Raspberry Pis and a Nintendo Wii running NetBSD
• Mikalai Birukou will share some notes on hardware, computing, ergonomics setups, and uncommon elements
• Thayen Burtenshaw and Spencer Hughes will show off some of their gear

Elsewhere

• Luma
• Linkedin

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Prohibition Warehouse in Uptown Waterloo, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday. 

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

The restaurant is located at 56 King St N in Waterloo, near the intersection of King and Princess St E. Here is a map. 

Prohibition Warehouse does not have its own parking, but parking at some Uptown parking lots are free in the evening. This includes parking at Waterloo Town Square and a lot near Bridgeport and Regina.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org

The restaurant has a patio and we will try to be outside, weather permitting.

Elsewhere

• Luma
• LinkedIn

Jason Paul will continue his exploration of setting up BigBlueButton using GitOps/DevOps principles. His github repo is here: https://github.com/linuxtek-canada/bigbluebutton-aws

Matteo Golin will discuss how he uses Free Software tool suites to make rockets. He writes: 

This presentation covers the free and open-source software tools that can be used (and in fact, are standard use) for designing, modelling, simulating,building and flying high-powered rockets. We will look at everything from flight  simulations, CAD design, deployment electronics and even mission patch design. Open-source is the best way to participate in rocketry!   

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Bobby O'Brien's Irish Pub 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 125 King St E in Kitchener, near the intersection of King and Young St. Here is a map. 

Bobby O'Brien's does not have its own parking, but parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org

This month's meeting will also be a LibreLocal celebration. Please bring your appetites and free-software demos to share with others. 

Room Update: Unfortunately our usual in-person meeting room is unavailable. This month our meeting will be held in DC 2585 in the Davis Centre at the University of Waterloo. This is the same building as the Davis Centre Library, but on the second floor. The room is somewhat tricky to find, but on the second floor there are some floor maps posted that might help. Here are some directions: 

• Enter the building and take the elevator to the second floor. (The elevator is near DC 1301 "The fishbowl", the round meeting room enclosed with glass)
• Walk towards the direction of the library. (You will have to go through some glass doors.) There are narrow corridors that traverse the centre of the building. You want the corridor that is closest to the edge of the building. The nearest room is the men's washroom, DC 2923. If you hit DC 2599 you have gone too far. 
• Go into the corridor and you should find DC 2585. 

We will have greeters at the library to help direct you to the location.

We will still be meeting online at https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug


Thomas Busch will discuss incident response. He writes: 

When something goes wrong on your Linux systems, having a plan matters more than having perfect tools. This talk walks through the NIST incident response phases and shows how free tools like Wazuh, Volatility, and Suricata can handle real-world security problems. You'll leave with practical starter commands and a clearer sense of what to do when things break.  

Bob Jonkman from Radio Waterloo will tell us about LibreTime, the radio automation and scheduling software that runs the station. (This presentation will be held during the second presentation slot. If all goes well it will be simulcast as a radio show.)

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's 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 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map. 

Parking is free in the Crabby Joe's parking lot with purchase. The waitstaff will scan your ticket when you leave, which will permit you to leave the parking lot for free. In addition, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org

J. Lucas Donkers will tell us how he put together a remote garage door opener using Python, an Arduino and some LLM coding. He writes: 

I used free LLM's to help write the bulk of the code to create an interface between my smartphone and a spare garage door remote controller, which allows to me type in a PIN through my phone's browser to open the garage.  

Colin Knapp will share how programming with LLM assistants helped him stay functional while recovering from a health issue. 

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 RSVP to dinner@kwlug.org, so the organizers can make an accurate reservation.

Megan McDermott will tell us about Marp, the Markdown Presentation System. 

Christopher Thompson will relate some adventures (and misadventures) in working with his homelab setup. He will tell us some things that worked and some that very much didn't. 

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Yo Sushi in downtown Kitchener, starting at 7pm. Note that this restaurant meeting is on a Monday. 

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

The restaurant is located at 103 King St W in Kitchener, at King near Ontario St. Here is a map. Parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots is at 40 Ontario St S.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

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.

Shravan Dwarka will tell us about the popular floss database MariaDB and the powerful load balancer, proxy and firewall for SQL traffic ProxySQL. 

Update 2: It looks like the weather will be quite snowy for Wednesday (2026-01-21) as well. We will not cancel the restaurant meetup, but please do not put your well-being at risk trying to attend. Exercise good judgment in deciding whether to attend given the snow.

Update: This meeting has been moved from Monday(2026-01-19) to Wednesday (2026-01-21) because of the yellow weather warning. The warning is forecast for Monday afternoon/evening which is exactly when we would all be moving around to attend. 

We are continuing the dinner meetup tradition at Crabby Joe's 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 70 King St E in Kitchener, at the corner of King and Frederick St. Here is a map. 

Parking is free in the Crabby Joe's parking lot with purchase. The waitstaff will scan your ticket when you leave, which will permit you to leave the parking lot for free. In addition, parking at City of Kitchener parking lots is free after 5pm. The nearest City parking lots are at 40 Ontario St S, or 5 Charles St E.

You can probably just show up, but the organizers would find it helpful if you RSVPed to dinner@kwlug.org 

Update: Unfortunately Megan will not be able to present this month. We will reschedule her Marp presentation. 

Doug Moen will tell us about Fedora Atomic distros such as  Fedora Kinoite. He writes:

Fedora Atomic Linux is a family of distros that combine the ease of maintenance and the worry free automatic system updates of Android and ChromeOS, with the hackability, configurability and privacy of traditional desktop Linux.

There's a old meme about the "year of the Linux desktop", which is somehow always in the future. In order to get there, we need to match the ease of use and maintenance of consumer operating systems. There's more to this than just polishing the GUI. In order to have worry free automatic upgrades, that happen in the background, without impacting the operation of the machine, and that can't fail and trash your disk, we need an architectural change. Fedora Atomic Linux delivers this architectural change. It does this without throwing away our existing package ecosystems, and while still allowing you to freely modify and configure your system.

I will argue that atomic distros are the future of desktop Linux: they will be easier to use and more reliable for novice users migrating from Windows, and provide a better experience for developers and system hackers. And I will share my experiences of using such a distro.
 

Mikalai Birukou will tell us about Incus, a Linux container platform developed as  an alternative to LXD. 

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.