[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: Hardware Horror Stories

[Paul Nijjar]

Remember the good old days? You would spend three days figuring out
how to configure your network card driver only to find out its IRQ
conflicted with one of the four demanded by your soundcard? Or the
joys of figuring out whether your mouse supported the Microsoft or
Logitech protocols? Or of trying to understand why your USB
connections would lock up when you piped music through the sound
card?

As the old saying goes: "Linux is only free if your time is
worthless." [0] Improved Linux installers (not to mention
improvements in hardware protocols -- USB, anyone?) means that many
in the younger generations do not grow up intimately familiar with
these joys. All too often these whippersnappers install Linux on the
latest doodads and everything Just Works. But sometimes... sometimes
the installer can't handle our demands (hello wireless! hello
auto-suspend!) and then we get to relive the good old days. 

At this month's KWLUG meeting we'll be bonding through shared
suffering. Brin g your troublesome laptops and leprous PCs, and
regale us with tales of what it took to get Linux running on that
machine. Better yet, bring in your obstinate hardware and we will
crack our heads to solve the problem together. This group therapy
session will begin at 7:00pm. There is no formal pre-meeting
presentation planned, but people meet starting at 6:00pm or so to
hobnob. 

In other exciting news: The discussion list is abuzz with all of the
great talks and events happening at Ontario Linux Fest on October 13.
The KWLUG team has been organizing like mad to bring all kinds of
goodies to the event: half-price LPI certification tests, a demo lab,
an additional two breakout rooms, and more great speakers than you
can shake a bucket of herring at. The hotel rooms are all booked, but
you can still register for the conference itself: http://onlinux.ca .


In other other exciting news: last month generous KWLUG members
donated $157.27 to the Public Patent Foundation via the KWLUG FLOSS
Fund. The FLOSS Fund project for October is LaTeX3, a project which
is working on updating the wildly successful (and open source)
typesetting software LaTeX. 

Achtung: after October's meeting the FLOSS Fund queue is EMPTY! In
order to keep the initiative going, we need YOUR suggestions for
worthy FLOSS projects that will take our money. Make a suggestion by
posting to the discussion list, the website or by e-mailing the
secret cabal (Andrew: acant at alumni.uwaterloo.ca and Adam:
adamglauser at wlualumni.ca) . 

As usual, we'll be therapizing at the Working Centre: 

The Working Centre
43 Queen Street South 
(between King and Charles) 
Kitchener 

The central GRT stop is a block away, there is free car parking in
the back lot after 6pm and free bike parking in the back always. Maps
and pictures of our meeting location are at http://kwlug.org

- Paul

[0] Often attributed to Jamie Zawinski, who used "has no value" and
not "is worthless", but also linked to dozens of other famous people,
quite possibly including you and anybody else who has struggled with
getting the penguiny OS to configure troublesome hardware. 


--
Paul Nijjar  http://www.fairvotecanada.org/WaterlooRegion
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