June 2020 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

WLUG history
by Anderson, Charles R March 13, 2021

March 13, 2021

Not sure we are the oldest, but we /might/ be the oldest still in operation. Is GNHLUG still in operation? If so, they are probably older. I was inspired to dig into my archives: An early email from our founder, Andy Stewart: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 22:22:18 -0400 From: Andy Stewart <astewart(a)world.std.com> To: "Worcester Linux Users' Group" <wlug(a)mass-pc.wpi.edu> Subject: [Fwd: Caldera Inc. IT Forum] OK, gang, tell the man what you think! Remember, he is the gentleman who graciously donated the tee shirts and CDROM discs from Caldera... Andy ---------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:30:22 -0600 From: Paul La Fluer <paull(a)caldera.com> Organization: Caldera, Inc. To: astewart(a)world.std.com Subject: Caldera Inc. IT Forum Hello Andy, I hope everything is going good. I am in the process of organizing a conference while in New York. My goal is to rent out a large ballroom in a hotel and have all the usergroups in the area come and listen to Bryan Sparks our CEO and other talk about Linux and OpenLinux. There will be presentations plus a Q&A session. I would like to hear your feedback on the idea and if your group would attend. We would be giving away door prizes like OpenLinux Base and Standard and handing out t-shirts, papers and OpenLinux Lite and OpenDOS to all that attend. Please give me some feedback on this idea. I need to know soon to get things set up. Thanks, Paul La Fleur ---------------------------------------------------------------------- An email about our SECOND meeting (that refers to the first meeting): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 21:29:13 -0400 From: Andy Stewart <astewart(a)world.std.com> To: "Worcester Linux Users' Group" <wlug(a)mass-pc.wpi.edu> Subject: Next WLUG meeting The next scheduled meeting for the Worcester Linux Users' Group (WLUG) is August 21, 1997, at 7 PM in the Gordon Library on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) campus in Worcester, MA. We had a great turnout of about 20 people at our very first meeting last month - I hope to see all of you come back, and I'd like to extend a welcome to anybody who would like to attend. I would suggest parking in the "lower library" parking lot and hiking up the 102 stairs to the library (not to mention the 12 or so more stairs in the library to get to the 2nd floor!). For more information, feel free to send me E-mail at: astewart(a)world.std.com Look for the penguin signs! Hope to see you there! Andy Stewart WLUG ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd guess our first meeting was about July 23 or 24, 1997, or perhaps the week before, July 16 or 17. But maddog from GNHLUG forwarded this, which says "as always, the meeting are free..." which implies that July 30th is NOT their first meeting. If they had monthly meetings, that would place their first meeting in June 1997 or before. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Jul 97 10:28:09 -0400 From: "Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader" <hall(a)zk3.dec.com> To: gnhlug(a)zk3.dec.com Subject: GNHLUG - Linux Cluster meeting July 30th at Martha's Exchange Hi, We now have a venue for the July 30th meeting of the GNHLUG, with Loki, a cluster of 16 Pentium PRO 200s, running Linux as the topic of the talk. We will be meeting on the *second* floor dining room of the Martha's Exchange Building in beautiful downtown Nashua. I will be picking up the speaker in Cambridge that day and transporting him to Martha's for dinner, arriving about 1730 hours. For those of you who wish to join us for dinner, please RSVP. The meeting itself will start at 1900 hours, with the speaker probably getting up steam about 1915 hours. As always, the meetings are free and open to everyone, and as a FINAL enticement I will be handling out *free* CD ROMS with the V1.2 Debian release for Intel on it. M. Patrick Goda, a principal of the Loki ( http://loki-www.lanl.gov/ ) project at the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos National Labs, a Beowulf ( http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux-web/beowulf/beowulf.html ) style computer will be our speaker. I have convinced him to present a talk on the Loki project, one of linking together 16 Intel Pentium Pro machines to create a system that has: o high reliability o high throughput and generally 16-node IBM SP2 performance (over 1.2 GigaFlops) at 1/20th the cost (about $60K)!! Pat is a friend of mine that I introduced to Red Hat Linux when he was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii (long story). Due to the fact that Patrick is a rare find, I will invite the Boston Linux User's Group and the Worcester Linux User's group to join us that night, so I have arranged for larger quarters. Some additional Beowulf pages are from my own alma mater: http://einstein.drexel.edu/beowulf/Beowulf_concept.html including exerpts from the original Beowulf story: http://einstein.drexel.edu/beowulf/original_beowulf.html Warmest regards, maddog ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nevermind, GNHLUG is definitely older by several years according to their web page: http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/PastEvents 1996 When Where What Who How Many 31 Jan 1996 UNH Durham Linux Linus Torvalds 200+ 1994 When Where What Who How Many 19 Oct UNH (?) First meeting Members ??? On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 04:13:25PM -0500, Richard Klein via WLUG wrote: > What do we know about WLUG's history? If it really is one of the oldest > LUGs, it might merit a Wikipedia article. It would be great if we could > flesh that out, too. > > This article seems like it could use a list of LUGs: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_user_group > > On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 1:43 PM Dennis Payne via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> > wrote: > > > The NatickFOSS group uses gettogether.community instead of meetup.com. I > > don't know that it has gotten us any visibility but the software is open > > source. I've been tempted to join meetup to go to Boston Indie Game > > Developer meetings but have so far held off. > > > > The NatickFOSS group also gets a booth at the Science on State Street > > event at Framingham State. It is a free STEM activity fair for kids. My job > > at the event is to generally occupy the time of the kids so the other > > members talk to the parents. First year I had a playstation controller > > hooked up to my laptop and held it out to any kid that walked by. Last year > > I brought the arcade machine assembled by my son's cub scout den. Any idea > > if WPI does any thing similar? Even if it is something only for WPI > > students it might be useful to alert people to the group's existence.

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3D printing RC planes
by Richard Klein June 26, 2020

June 26, 2020

I just watched a webinar from these guys. Those of you with 3D printers might want to check them out. https://www.3daeroventures.com/ -- Rich

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Great meeting last night... but we need topics...
by Tim Keller June 24, 2020

June 24, 2020

Hey Gang, Thanks for everybody who showed up, we had a great time! We also had a couple new people show which was great! However, it's clear that even doing the virtual meetings, we need to have a topic.. we simply ran out of stuff to talk about... For the next meeting I'm going to do a talk on https://min.io/ It's an open source object storage system that works just like S3 only you can host it locally. IF people have things they'd like to talk about let me know! Thanks, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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WLUG Meeting tomorrow night (June 11th) , via Jitsi! @7PM
by Tim Keller June 10, 2020

June 10, 2020

Hey Gang, We've got a virtual wlug meeting tomorrow night via JitSi at 7PM! The link is going to be: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA I also announced it on the meetup so who knows who'll show up! Maybe our meeting will get bombed! The topic is going to be the usual... come, be nerdy we'll talk about everything! Like I said before, at some point in the future we'll be actually meeting up in person, hopefully at Technopia! However, we need to coordinate with them and do it safe and sensibly. Later, Tim Keller WLUG President -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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June virtual meeting!
by Tim Keller June 9, 2020

June 9, 2020

Hey Gang! Well, we're still not quite out of it, so this month's meeting is going to be virtual again. I've been watching Technopia's website and they're now open to members only. I think when it's open to the general public, we'll follow the CDC guidelines, see what Technopia wants to do and have a real in person meeting. I hope everybody has kept sane, okay less crazy, during the quarantine. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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X1 Carbon Gen8 review
by joshua.gage.stone＠gmail.com June 7, 2020

June 7, 2020

Hey all, Since Lenovo has been making announcements about shipping Linux on their machines [1] and expanding on their certifications [2], I decided to purchase an X1 Carbon Gen8 [3] as my newest daily driver. I thought I'd share some thoughts after installing Fedora 32 on it. Chassis: The X1 Carbon has excellent build quality. Despite being an ultrathin laptop, it feels quite solid in my hands and is well-balanced when grasping with one hand. Weighing in at 2.38 lbs, it's much lighter and smaller than my T480 (4.03 lbs) which makes it more ideal for traveling. The laptop doesn't flex or wobble when typing either. Ports: The number of ports is quite good compared to other ultrathin laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and Macbook. Two USB-C ports are available which are its main method of charging (very useful for sharing cables too). There are two also standard USB-A ports, as well as an HDMI port and headphone jack. There isn't native ethernet which is a bit of a disappointment, but fortunately this is mitigated with a dongle that comes with the laptop. There isn't an SD card slot or even a microSD slot either, but the SD card reader dongle I already use with my desktop can be used instead. Monitor: The FHD 400 nit screen is very good. Costa Rica 4K [4] -- which is typically used as a benchmark for demonstrating display quality -- looks quite nice on it. I don't have a colorimeter [5] on hand for measuring the full capabilities of the screen in a more empirical fashion, but it should be capable of showing the full sRGB range as well as covering most of Adobe RGB. The 4K HDR 500 nit configuration should be more ideal if color reproduction and HDR are of utmost importance. Keyboard: Thinkpads are well renowned for their keyboards, and the keyboard on the Carbon is no exception. The keys feel just right to me when typing, not being too mushy or too clicky. They also don't give off much noise, which is very much appreciated when working in a quiet room. Speakers: I'm quite happy with the quality of the Dolby Atmos speakers. Usually laptop speakers are a disappointment to me, but the speakers on the Carbon are more than capable of handling different genres of music. The speaker alignment being upward-facing instead of side-facing as seen in other thinkpads also makes it better for watching videos and listening to music with other people. It does seem a bit lacking in bass-heavy music [6], but the built-in DAC is more than capable of driving a pair of good-quality headphones [7]. I might have to make an update on this later because Dolby Atmos support on Linux appears to be a work in progress and may need a preset to have it more closely match the speaker output on Windows [8] in the meantime. Battery: I can get a decent amount of battery life from the 51Wh battery, usually about 14 hours with light usage and medium screen brightness on stock Fedora. I think I could easily squeeze more battery life out of it if I installed Powertop or TLP, but hopefully battery optimizations land in upstream so no extra work needs to be done by the time Fedora 33 comes out. Noise & thermals: This laptop is quiet! Even when playing 1080p@60fps video in a quiet room, the fan don't make any audible noise. Multi-core workloads like code compiling also don't seem to be an issue on this laptop. Sensors report roughly 70C during such workloads, and the fan gives off a low amount of noise that's well within acceptable range. Performance & Stability: The i7-10510U performs quite well. It appears to be about as fast as the R5 2600X in my desktop at compile tasks, which is especially impressive considering this is in an ultrathin laptop! It also remains responsive for multitasking while compiling, still being able to play fullscreen video in Firefox while dropping a few frames when attempting to switch tabs (considering it's able to sustain full 60fps playback otherwise while most cores are saturated, this is still acceptable). Suspend support on the Carbon is rock solid too. I've repeatedly closed the lid and opened it back up to have it immediately wake up from suspend, making it ideal for keeping around on standby for when I want to look something up. Vendor Support: Almost everything about this laptop works out of the box on Fedora, with one exception being that firmware for the fingerprint sensor is currently still in testing and needs to be explicitly enabled [9] if you want to enable fingerprint login & authentication from Gnome Settings Since I bought the Carbon before Lenovo started offering a configuration with Linux preinstalled, I ended up paying for a Windows license. Lenovo support however was quite understanding of my situation in having no desire to run Windows on it, and provided a refund for the license. I think this is noteworthy since they previously didn't offer a refund when I previously bought my T480 a few years ago. Enabling hardware decoding support for improving CPU usage and battery life [10] is also trivial. Firefox appears to consume 15%-25% CPU during fullscreen 1080p@60fps video playback, and VLC is usually using 8%-15% for the same video. It's worth noting that Firefox's accelerated decoding support is still bleeding-edge and probably has room for optimizations, and I'd imagine VLC could be even more efficient once it has native Wayland support. Conclusion: Overall, I'm very happy with this laptop, both on the software and hardware side. Despite being brand new, the out-of-the-box Linux support has been some of the best I've seen in a long time and the tweaks I've had to do for it were quite minimal. I think once Lenovo sorts out their official Linux support (I still don't see it offered as an OS option in the customization page), they'll have a truly stellar product that they can market to Linux users as a daily driver. Sources: 1. https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-laptops/ 2. https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-brings-linux-certif… 3. https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-Carbon-Gen-8-/p… 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXb3EKWsInQ 5. https://www.amazon.com/X-Rite-Color-Munki-Smile-ColorMunki/dp/B009APMNB0/ 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgRr0CLFhaw 7. https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATH-M50xBT-Wireless-Bluetooth-Headpho… 8. https://github.com/JackHack96/PulseEffects-Presets/tree/master/irs 9. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carbon_(Gen_7)#Fing… 10. https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-…

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Signing a driver for UEFI in Debian
by Richard Klein June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

I'm trying to build Droidcam. Part of the install process wants to sign a driver: "Secure Boot is enabled, attempting to sign the driver please specify signing key location (or leave empty to sign manually later) You can Google 'secure boot' for your distro Enter the path of the public key:" Googling didn't show me a clear answer. Does anyone know what path it's looking for? -- Rich

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