Past Meetings

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.

Spencer Hughes will show us how he plans his annual Christmas party using FLOSS. He writes: 

This talk describes the technology I use to organize and operate my annual Christmas party using open‑source software and other tech services. Topics include RSVP handling, inventory and food scheduling, network and media, sharing useful links, and some fun party favours we’ve setup.

Mark Connolly from the Cycling Guide Foundation will discuss the Cycling Guide app, including lessons about ranking route safety, and effective OpenStreetMap integration.

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 Monday. 

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 

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. 

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.

Location note: Once again we have changed rooms for the in-person meeting. This month's meeting will be held in DC 1568 at the University of Waterloo. Note that this is in the Davis Centre library, not the Dana Porter library. Don't get confused! 

Update: Unfortunately, Bob B won't be able to present his Stupid Bash Tricks presentation this month. We will reschedule it.

Jason Eckert will tell us how to use Hugo to generate static websites.

Mikalai Birukou will demonstrate system maps in PrivacySafe.

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 Monday. 

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 

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.

Megan McDermott and Martin Anderson-Clutz from the Waterloo Region Drupal User Group will tell us about the venerable content management system Drupal, and its relevance in the modern web. They will review Drupal basics, show examples of what Drupal can do and demonstrate installation, setting up content, adding functionality and more. 

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. 

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 2025, a celebration of what’s been built here, and what’s still to come. We’re building something great together. September 8-11, 2025. waterlootechweek.ca

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.

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.

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 Monday. 

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