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We've got a meeting on Thursday!!!
by Tim Keller Aug. 11, 2020

Aug. 11, 2020

Hey Everybody! We've got a meeting on Thursday! The pandemic continues and Technopia continues to be closed so we'll continue to meet virtually at our same location... I hope everybody is doing okay. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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asterisk or other linux pbx
by Bradley Noyes July 24, 2020

July 24, 2020

Hi All, I’m considering a move from a traditional (and proprietary) PBX to something open-source that i can manage. I know very little about this, so i’m trying to understand if my goal is even possible. Given that our provider (i.e. gatekeeper) is Comcast, i worry they prevent running self-hosted VOIP boxes. Currently the office has 4 lines supplied by comcast. The comcast cable modem has 4 telephone lines going into a Panasonic PBX, which they dispatch the calls to the POTS phones. I want to replace the Panasonic PBX since its proprietary and requires a call into the phone company to change anything. I have very little knowledge in this area, so i’m wondering if anyone here has had experience in this area. Thanks! - brad

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Reminder! Meeting tonight! Topic: min.io demo and then general discussion at 7PM!
by Tim Keller July 9, 2020

July 9, 2020

Hey Gang, We've got a meeting tonight at 7PM! It's still virtual because you know, the pandemic. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to stand 6' apart from each other and hang out! But until then, there's Jitsi! We'll be meeting here: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA at 7PM! We'll likely jibber jab until it's late.. My neighbors house may or may not catch on fire again! I'm going to show off Min.IO running in a docker container. I can show the web interface and then we'll stick some objects in the container. I know that several other WLUG members are also using it in production so it'll be interesting to get their take on it as well. Then I suspect we'll end up talking about all things nerdy! See you! Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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recommended printer/3-in-1 laser B+W for general (Linux and Windows clients)
by Doug Mildram July 9, 2020

July 9, 2020

Hi! Hope this doesnt start a HUGE preference debate, but I'm taking feedback on what some of you already know to be a "solid" not too big laser black+white, flatbed/top scanner+copier (no top sheet feeder please, adds too much space/width) BUT THE PAIN is always in the PRINTER drivers/software, win or linux, in my experience. Honestly, been battling w/PDF's too long, to an old-ish Brother HL-L2395DW 3-in-1 --I'm working mostly on Linux Mint 19 (a deviant ubuntu I highly recommend for ex-win users) --Printing most things OK. IIRC, didnt have to find Linux drivers the hard way. --Printing PDF's gets iffy. LibreOffice sometimes cures my blues; DocumentViewer is probably the worst, "evince" also iffy, etc. Sometimes "Data received"....ends with a silent chirp, sometimes printer panel indicates a quick reject (nothing printed) saying "Out of Memory", BUT REALLY it's not the job == big, I think it must be a nasty runaway/leaky PDF->driver thing, but if I -- copy/email/send the nasty job to a win7 laptop and use AcroRead, USUALLY gets it done. Until today when ALL seemed to fail, I'm ready to cough up a few $hundred for a better beast, with wired ethernet+USB though I suppose it's pointless to avoid wireLESS interface as long as it does wired ethernet. Oh look! Today's impossible job just came out, from where! Losing my mind. Budget: since not color, I could go over $300 or so, where most of the decent ones sit. Been an HP fan for a long time, but things change, and I'm open to other solid models. Thx!

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Reminder, we've got a meeting next week!
by Tim Keller July 4, 2020

July 4, 2020

Hey Gang, I hope you're having a happy and healthy safe 4th of July!! We've got a meeting next week! I'm going to give a quick demo on Min.io, we'll do a round table and I'm sure general tom foolery will occur! Our usual Jitsi haunt will be where we'll meet until things improve, though it's looking better for New England and worse for everybody else.. My hope is soon we'll be meeting at Technopia, but until then, we'll keep the candle burning anyway we can! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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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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