Past Meetings

Lori Paniak will discuss the firewall configuration tool Shorewall. Bob B will discuss the graphical firewall tool FirewallBuilder, aka FWBuilder.

Jason Eckert will share his experiences running Asahi Linux on his Silicon M1 Apple Mac Mini.

Ron Barnes will demonstrate how to create dynamic graphs using the D3.js library.

Ken Taylor will tell us about how an assisted living community he is associated with uses open source software, and he will solicit help for development residence management tools using home automation software such as OpenHAB or Domoticz.

Mikalai Birukou will give us some updates on his project 3NWeb.

Note: Jason will present Ahasi Linux in July.

Bob B will tell us about Pass, the standard UNIX password manager.

John Steel will tell us about the Helm packaging format Helm Charts. (Helm describes itself as the package manager for Kubernetes)

During a recent laptop re-installation Andrew Sullivan Cant had to re-install Firefox and review what plugins were still useful. He will describe whatplugins he is currently using, and why they might be useful to you to achieve a safe and enjoyable web browsing experience.

R. Brent Clements will demonstrate some practical uses of Open Broadcaster Software Studio for live video production and streaming applications. He will cover some of the techniques used to produce the FASS Theatre Company Winter 2022 show, as well as some common features used by countless Twitch and Youtube streamers. But first he is going to complain a lot about OBS Studio.

In this beginner-oriented presentation, Paul Nijjar will discuss considerations you should have in mind when deciding whether you can install Linux on a particular device. He will cover what factors make installing Linux easier, what factors make it more difficult, and some practical tips.

Mikalai Birukou will discuss WebAssembly, a low-level language embedded into web browsers. The discussion will start with the instruction set and a stack-based virtual machine, then move into system design. If you have ever wondered how operating systems interact with userspace, this talk will be of interest to you. If there is time, Mikalai will also relate WebAssembly to Rust.

Ilguiz Latypov will demonstrate a project he created which notifies vulnerable network owners of their security vulnerabilities using the device search engine Shodan.

Jason Eckert will follow up on the Kubernetes round table with walking through a Kubernetes quickstart.

Tim Laurence will spread some of his enthusiasm about home automation and ESPHome, which allows you to specify firmware using YAML files.

Cris Waurechen will discuss his attempts to create a bootable USB Linux distro with persistence. He writes:

This presentation will cover my attempt to make a persistent linux install on a USB drive. Attempts were made with both Manjaro and Mint, but Mint was unsuccessful so far. The presentation will focus on Manjaro but will touch on the problems while attempting to make a persistent Mint USB drive. I will include some warnings and observations from this experiment, a walk through of how to create your own persistent USB drive and stream a demonstration of a PC booting from persistent USB storage.

Andrew Cant will give us an overview of unit testing, with a focus on Ruby tools.

We will hold a collective demo/roundtable/Q&A session about Kubernetes. Apparently it is mandatory that we refer to this as the "pod cast". To kick things off, Mikalai Birukou will describe his own situation. He writes:

Docker Swarm sorta goes away and those of us using it have to move production pieces to something that is more widely used. And it is Kubernetes. We'll approach it from noob-ish perspective. I'll talk. I may answer some questions, but I'll also ask audience. If you k8s-ed, come to help.

Update Andrew points us to the projects https://github.com/sugarcrm/sugar_utils and https://github.com/nesquena/gitdocs as two projects containing some of his testing examples.

John Steel will relate his adventures building a privacy-focused Smarthome system with Home Assistant and ZigBee2Mqtt .

Brent Clements will relate his adventures with SQLite. the "self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine".  In addition to  quickly covering what each of those statements means, he will talk about and (to the best of his ability) demonstrate with some examples, how this public domain software tool can be a springboard for rapid development of applications that require fast and  reliable local file access or moderate to large collections of data.

Paul Nijjar will relate his experiences using the learning management system Open edX as an instructor, and why in the world he would use it when his workplace already has D2L's Brightspace available.

Jeff Smith will discuss the popular configuration management software Ansible.

Michael Hitchens will follow up his LMMS presentation with another music-related project: the music composition software MuseScore.

Jason Eckert will demystify containerization and orchestration for us. Docker, Kubernetes, Swarms, Rancher... what are these tools used for? Why are they useful? How do they fit together? How has the industry evolved over the past seven years? Jason will answer these questions and more.

In May we had a Blender/Krita presentation that emphasized Blender. This month we have a followup from Kyle Murphy, who will emphasize the digital painting tool Krita. He will offer some tips and techniques, shows how he incorporates Krita into game design, and demonstrate cross-functionality with Blender.

Bob B will give us a tour of his homelab: a collection of servers, storage and networking that lives in his house.

This meeting will be held on our BigBlueButton instance: https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug 

Paul Nijjar will explain how and why he transitioned from the GNU Screen multiplexer to Tmux.

The group will collectively hold a trivia night. You can bring some free-software trivia to share and maybe we will get stumped.

This meeting will be held on BigBlueButton: https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug .

Brent Clements will demonstrate a few "real world" uses for inexpensive Arduino  controllers. He will start with a crash course on what they are and how to work with them. Next he will demonstrate how to control simple lights and other devices with simple programs, as well as discuss a couple of ways he has used Arduinos in the past. 

Tim Laurence will tell us about text formats. A few common human readable file formats connect many of systems in our lives together. Tim will introduce us to some of the more common and useful ones you may encounter and show examples of them in use.

This meeting will be held on BigBlueButton: https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug

Michael Hitchens will discuss LMMS, a digital audio workstation application used to create sounds and music. He writes:

Learn how to make music with LMMS, the GPLv2 digital audio workstation!  Well maybe not how to compose music, but at least how to realize your musical endeavors in digital form. Michael Hitchens will guide you through the basics of how to navigate the interface, enter notes, use multiple built-in instruments, apply built-in effects, and to unleash your musical creations unto the world.

(Michael has also publish supplementary material on his blog.)

Rocco Commisso will show us how he uses Kritia and Blender to create illustrations and video game art. Rocco is a talented artist and educator, and will be taking us on an informal tour of what these tools do, and how artists can you them to express themselves.

This meeting will be held on BigBlueButton: https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug

John Kerr will tell us about Joplin, an open source note taking app that can be easily synchronized to cloud services. He writes:

Joplin is a Markdown based note taking application. You can have numerous notes in tabs.  Information can be hosted on dropbox to synchronize with all of your devices. This feature makes Joplin a reasonable personal Wiki substitute for OwnCloud or NextCloud. I create a calendar page that I find more useful than many calendar apps, mainly because I do not have multiple meetings on many days of the week.

Doug Moen will give an update on Curv, focusing on the new design of the programming language. Curv is a programming language for creating art through mathematics, focusing on 2d and 3d geometric modelling. He writes:

After 5 years of messing around with Curv, the limitations of the current  design and implementation are quite clear. It's time to redesign everything. This will be the 3rd major design for the language and its internals.

This meeting will be held on BigBlueButton: https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug .

Jason Eckert will give us a beginner-friendly introduction to the  fast, modern, secure, formally-verified, multi-platform and trendy VPN tunnelling software WireGuard.

Marc Pare from the local LibreWaterloo group will give us the inside scoop on some internal projects, and demonstrate how to read ODF files without the GUI.

Update: You can download both presentations below. Jason has posted a blog post with roughly the same content as his presentation here: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/an-introduction-to-wireguard-vpn/

Update: Alisa had to postpone her presentation, but we will reschedule.

Christian Snyder worked on a digital storytelling project for Reception House, a local refugee settlement agency. He developed a workflow to help new refugees share their stories on social media, and he turned to open source for help. Among the tools he recommended was OpenShot, the free software video. Christian will discuss the project and lead us through the technology decisions he made.

The PinePhone is a recently-released open hardware phone that runs mainstream Linux. Stephen Paul Weber owns one, and will share his experiences about it. Stephen also owns a Novena laptop, and may share his experiences with that as well.

This meeting will be held on BigBlueButton: https://webconference.kwlug.org/room/kwlug . There will be no passcode.

Mikalai Birukou will give us an update about his 3NWeb project. He writes:

There is no separate cybersphere, there is only life here. Online is real  life. Your digital rights are no different from everyday human rights.  Unfortunately, today most people live in a digital feudalism.

Unlike physical space that was here already, we've been creating digital realm. Disrespect towards users is not a technical phenomena, but it is made possible by certain architectural choices.                                                                       

3NWeb gives a practical architecture for spaces that users own, where it is safe to build one's life, the promised land.                                 

 

Raul Suarez decided to move to a minimalist desktop using  XMonad on Archlinux. He will tell us about his journey, how he is adapting to the desktop, and the applications he uses. Part of his journey involved switching from bash to fish, which he says he "should have done years ago."