KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 09 July 2007

Firewalls for home and small office: IPCop

Meeting Date

IPCop is a specialized Linux distribution for firewalls. We'll learn how to acquire and install IPCop and how to use its web-based administration interface.

Addon packages can extend IPCop's capabilities. We'll look at selected addons if time permits.
* * *

The host for this meeting was John Kerr.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 04 June 2007

OpenWRT on the Linksys WRT54GL

Meeting Date

Cedric Puddy will give us the "nickel tour" of installing Linux on the Linux WRT54GL hackable router. He will:

  • flash the routers with OpenWRT
  • demonstrate the flexibility of the built-in switch
  • show OpenWRT's ipkg management
  • share scripts that he wrote to make flashing the boxes easier
  • Discuss differences between the stock Linksys images, OpenWRT and DD-WRT

If there is time Cedric will also demo the Wi-Spy 2.4 GHz spectrum analyser.

Before the meeting Brent Clements will demonstrate package management for newbies.
* * *

The host for this meeting was User 26.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 07 May 2007

Who's Who at KWLUG

Meeting Date

This is a periodic Meet & Greet meeting. Members are encouraged to come with "Show & Tell" from their latest or current projects. No formal presentations are scheduled beyond LUG-maintenance-type discussion.

Members are encouraged to meet and talk in informal groups. This is an opportunity to chat with LUG-folk that they see less-often.
* * *

The host for this meeting was User 26.

Regional event: HICK Tech

Meeting Date

HICK Tech is coming to Owen Sound on the Monday, 30 April and Tuesday 01 May 2007. This two day conference / workshop looks at several aspects of technology with an emphasis on rural users.

KWLUG regulars might even recognize a presenter in the "Digital Lifestyles" stream.

H.I.C.K. Tech is the [Grey-Bruce] region's first technology conference taking place in Owen Sound, Ontario from April 30-May 1, 2007 on beautiful Georgian Bay. Participate in HICK Tech by attending:

  1. The Keynote Address: The Power of Community and How to Build It On-line at the Roxy by Jennifer Evans
  2. The Forum: Attend up to nine workshops and sessions. There are more than 30 sessions to choose from!
  3. The Digital Fair: Meet local IT businesses in our human-friendly trade show area.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 02 April 2007

Using GnuPG with Thunderbird and Mutt; GnuPG - privacy and authentication (plus KMail, perhaps)

Meeting Date

We have a festival of encryption presentations this month. We'll learn about the GnuPG tools, how and why they work and why you should consider them. We'll also look at using GnuPG tools within a few different email clients.

* * *
Andrew Cant will demonstrate and discuss using GnuPG with the Thunderbird and Mutt email clients. After the presentation the attendes should have enough information to go out and use Thunderbird or Mutt to sign, verify, encrypt and decrypt their email.
The presentation is intended for beginner/intermediate.

* * *
What is GnuPG, you might ask? Well, according to the www.gnupg.org:
"GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC2440 . GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key managment system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories."

Adam's presentation will attempt to explain what that means and why you might care. This will include an overview of public key cryptography, its uses, and the GnuPG implementation in particular. Time permitting, the use of GnuPG with the KMail email client will also be demonstrated.

* * *

The host for this meeting was John Kerr.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday 05 March 2007

Drupal content management system

Meeting Date

Our special guest presenter for March is Evan Leibovitch. He's a tireless advocate of Open Source and co-founded the Linux Professional Institute and the Canadian Association for Open Source.

This meeting begins at 7pm. Doors open at 6pm for casual conversation and perhaps a Linux-related video.

* * *
Evan Leibovitch will demonstrate and discuss the Drupal Content Management System.

We've had lots of questions about Content Management Systems. A CMS moves the burden of creating a web site from "writing some HTML" to "writing the content." Drupal is a leading open source CMS. Attend this meeting and you'll see why.

* * *

The host for this meeting was Raul Suarez.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 05 February 2007

Understanding the X window system

Meeting Date

Chris Frey will demonstrate and discuss the X Window System from a user's point of view, focusing on the common tools that come with X, regardless of which desktop system you choose to use. The following topics are planned:

* X configuration overview
* The X startup process
* Connecting to your X server
* X managers
o The display manager
o The window manager
o The session manager
* Cut and paste
o What's the difference between the current selection, cut buffer, and clipboard?
* X toys
* Poking around the X window system
* X fonts
* X authentication
* X forwarding
* Security recommendations and conclusion

The presentation is intended for intermediate audiences.
* * *

The host for this meeting was rbclemen.

KWLUG Meeting: 08 January 2007

VoIP for the SOHO

Meeting Date

This introduction to VoIP is aimed at small office / home office users. John will cover hardware, software and configuration issues at the introductory level. The interested attendee will learn what options they have, and what steps to take to implement their own VoIP system. Expect to hear about VoIP phones, analog telephone adapters, telephony cards, Asterisk, TrixBox, and VoIP providers.

Are you interested in a $2.50 phone line at home? How about I throw in enhanced features like "follow me", voice menus, multiple extensions and voice mail for your staff or teens? Finally how about being able to use off the shelf hardware, open source software, and your choice of provider?
Sound too good to be true! It's not, but there is work involved.
* * *

The host for this meeting was richard.

KWLUG meeting: Monday, 04 December 2006

Top Ten Linux command line

Meeting Date

Our guest presenter, Glenn is from Hamilton LUG.

* * *
We have another interesting Linux presentation this month. Our guest presenter, Glenn, will amaze and entertain you with his mastery of the Linux command line.
Make sure you arrive early to get a seat.
* * *

The host for this meeting was richard.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday, 06 November 2006

blender 3D modelling and animation; Photomanipulation with The GIMP

Meeting Date

It's a festival of graphics presentations this month!

* * *
Chris (et fil) will demonstrate the Blender 3D modelling package and some of the animated results of Blender.

* * *
In Part One Richard will discuss and demonstrate a few of the many capabilities of the GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Programs). We'll look at

  • layers,
  • contrast enhancement,
  • red-eye reduction
  • and expensive wedding photo cliches.

In Part Two we delve deeper into the GIMP and look at other photo-manipulation techniques.

  • Fun with banknotes.
  • Building an alibi: add yourself to a photo.
  • On-line dating or how to put your face on the body of a celebrity.

* * *

The host for this meeting was rbclemen.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday 01 May 2006

Return of MythTV

Meeting Date

This meeting will be held at The Working Centre in Kitchener, Ontario. Our meetings are free and open to those with an interest in Linux.Doors open at 6pm for casual conversation and perhaps a Linux-related video.We have another interesting Open Source project presentation this month. Make sure you arrive early to get a seat. The formal presentation will begin at 7:00pm.
* * *
By popular demand, and no small amount of begging, Robin has agreed to reprise his MythTV presentation. We're told the the new MythTV box includes more goodies now, so prepare to have serious geek-envy.

KWLUG Meeting: Monday 03 April 2006

Extending BASH with BashDiff

Meeting Date

This meeting will be held at The Working Centre in Kitchener, Ontario. Our meetings are free and open to those with an interest in Linux.Doors open at 6pm for casual conversation and perhaps a Linux-related video.We have another interesting Open Source project presentation this month. Make sure you arrive early to get a seat. As host, I'll be entertaining you with my singing and dancing skills, (Okay, perhaps there won't be any singing and dancing, I'm adding this for Adam and I have an unusual sense of humour --richard) but the main focus of the evening will be a presentation by William Park, from the Toronto Linux User Group. His Open Source project is called ...
* * *
William will demonstrate and discuss his open source project BASH-diff. It is a patch to the bash-3.0 shell incorporating many useful features from Awk, Python, Zsh, Ksh, and others. This presentation will be of great interest to programmers and shell / script fans alike!

Bash.Diff is a patch against Bash shell. In the main core, it adds the following syntax: {a..b}; ${var|...}; then-else-fi to for/while/until/case statements; try-block with string exception;<&lt+; and, <<<<.

As builtin, it adds the following: sscanf(3), <string.h>, <ctype.h> wrappers; array, regex(3), stack, queue operations; GDBM, SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL database interfaces; HTML template engine (BASP); Expat XML parser interface; x-y char plot; DOS, CSV, Awk support; Libwebserver interface; RPN calculator with <math.h> functions; and, GTK+2 interface for GUI dialog. Detailed presentation material will be added after the presentation.http://freshmeat.net/projects/bashdiff