September 2020 - WLUG - {{ block.super }

WLUG history
by Anderson, Charles R 13 Mar '21

13 Mar '21

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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Reminder: Virtual Meeting Tomorrow!
by Tim Keller 11 Oct '20

11 Oct '20

Hey Gang, We've got a virtual meeting tomorrow here: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Starting at 7pm until you know whenever.. I fully expect like our last meetings, it'll go off the rails and we'll end up talking about Linux and filesystems, and 3d printers and sci-fi and in general just a bunch of nerds reveling in our nerdom. See you tomorrow! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Ubuntu update question
by THE HAMMER 21 Sep '20

21 Sep '20

Hello everyone. Thank again for all the recent advice. I have one question. I installed Ubuntu (from a 20.04 flash drive I did a while back) and checked the option to download additional software. It was then up and running. I then had updates available. They were installing, and then the computer said a restart was needed. I clicked restart and rather than restart as expected it went to what I think was a grub menu. Ubuntu was highlighted, I hit the enter key. It said "unpacking failed" (forget if before or after) and started up. Everything seems to be fine, but I am sending this email in case if anyone knows if I will have problems. I tried googling "Ubuntu unpacking failed" and se references to initramfs, but can't say if my message said this. It flashed quickly. I'm confused on what I read there anyway. FYI on the bios to make things work I changed: PTT to off Secure Boot Enable to off Changed RAID to AHCHI The machine seems blazing fast compared to the previous one. Materials much more cheaply made, though. Surprised me that there was no Windows CD or label with license number. cheers Ron

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desktop advice update
by THE HAMMER 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

First off, thanks to everyone for the great advice. It's rather a long story for another day, but I wound up picking up this model: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-3000-desktop-intel-core-i5-10400… [https://pisces.bbystatic.com/image2/BestBuy_US/images/products/6416/6416004…]<https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-3000-desktop-intel-core-i5-10400…> Dell Inspiron 3000 Desktop Intel Core i5-10400 8GB Memory 1TB HDD Ethernet WiFi Bluetooth keyboard and mouse Black i3880-5920BLK-PUS - Best Buy<https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-3000-desktop-intel-core-i5-10400…> Shop Dell Inspiron 3000 Desktop Intel Core i5-10400 8GB Memory 1TB HDD Ethernet WiFi Bluetooth keyboard and mouse Black at Best Buy. Find low everyday prices and buy online for delivery or in-store pick-up. Price Match Guarantee. www.bestbuy.com There are way bigger and badder machines out there, this one should still has way more to offer that what is replacing. I have experience distro hopping and before had no worries about installing a linux distro on a pc, but they have always been older machines. I presume that the one will have uefi which is something I have never worked with. I am a bit apprehensive and hope I can figure it all out without major problems. I hope to get this all up and running tonight or over the weekend. Ron

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desktop advice
by THE HAMMER 18 Sep '20

18 Sep '20

I want to consider getting a new desktop computer. Can anyone advise me as to a specific model and place to purchase from? It's been a long time since I've bought new. I would be using it mostly for emails, a few general apts (like music streams and libre office), and a bit of amateur coding. I am not a gamer. If it is a windows machine, I'd like to load on a linux based os Suggestions? Ron

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Mini Debian Conference Online #2
by Dennis Payne 16 Sep '20

16 Sep '20

Debian is running a mini online conference in Nov. It is specifically about gaming. I've offered a talk on Gamerzilla, my open source achievement system for games. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/internet/2020/MiniDebConfOnline2 -- Dennis Payne dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/dulsi

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Thanks everybody, last nights virtual meeting was great!
by Tim Keller 13 Sep '20

13 Sep '20

Hey Everybody, The mailing list is working again, thanks Chuck! Last night's meeting was great! It was fun to nerd out with everybody. Unless things drastically change, I suspect we'll be virtual for October as well. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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this is a test
by Chuck Anderson 11 Sep '20

11 Sep '20

This is a test of the WLUG email list. This is only a test. If this had been an actual post, the subject line you just read would have been followed by official news, information, or random Linux blather. This concludes this test of the WLUG list. .

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WLUG September 2020