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Re: Meeting THIS WEEK, July 10th, 2025! Topic: ?TrueNAS? Pi Kiosk displays?

by Kevin Harrington

I would like to do a proper introduction to CaDoodle now that it's released as beta! On Tue, Jul 8, 2025, 1:31 PM Tim Keller via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> wrote: > Hey Everybody! > > We've got a meeting this week! > Date: July 10th, 2025 @ 7PM > Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland St. Worcester MA > <https://www.google.com/maps/search/44+Portland+St.+Worcester+MA?entry=gmail…> > . > Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA > > Topic: I could talk about TrueNAS if people were interested in that, > otherwise, this might be a bit of a freeform meeting. The other thing that > I've been doing lately is turning Pi's into kiosk displays.. but that's > going to take about 10 minutes to explain.. > If someone has something they really want to talk about let me know! > > As usual we'll head off to dinner afterwards and keep talking. > > See you there! > Tim. > > -- > I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their > constituents as "consumers". > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: > https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/XQUZT… >

July 8, 2025

Meeting THIS WEEK, July 10th, 2025! Topic: ?TrueNAS? Pi Kiosk displays?

by Tim Keller

Hey Everybody! We've got a meeting this week! Date: July 10th, 2025 @ 7PM Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland St. Worcester MA. Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Topic: I could talk about TrueNAS if people were interested in that, otherwise, this might be a bit of a freeform meeting. The other thing that I've been doing lately is turning Pi's into kiosk displays.. but that's going to take about 10 minutes to explain.. If someone has something they really want to talk about let me know! As usual we'll head off to dinner afterwards and keep talking. See you there! Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

July 8, 2025

Re: Reminder!!! *NO* Meeting tomorrow

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Wright <kwright(a)keithdiane.us> writes: > John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: > At a previous meeting you showed a black box about the size of a thick > book and called it a "desktop computer". I thought a desktop computer > was one too big to be a "laptop", but your black box is smaller than > my laptop. > I forgot the name of that black box. What is it? It's a beelink Mini PC AMD Ryzen 7 5825U system. Here's a link to the Amazon site I got it from. It looks like it's $298 right now, and it comes with 32gb of RAM (expandable to 64gb) and a 500mb NVME disk. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C2P486GQ?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title > I suppose it is a "desktop" because it needs a separate screen and > keyboard, but what connectors are there? Yes, it's a desktop. But I think you can even mount it on the back of some monitors if they support the VESA mounting standard. It's damn small. > I have several big flat screens that are attached to former > computers by odd plugs, and PS/2 keyboards, RJ-45 ethernet plugs. So this unit has Display Port, HDMI and I think it will also do display over USB-C port at 10gb/s. It's pretty damn impressive for the cost. > I got the ethernet working with Spectrum internet, but am > running out of working computers that plug into it. This is a cheap way to get a nice fast, quiet, low power unit. It won't do for long sustained tasks, but for browsing, editing, compiling, etc it 's great. Also comes with ethernet.

July 8, 2025

Re: Reminder!!! *NO* Meeting tomorrow

by Keith Wright

John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: > Keith, > I hope you're staying cool! >> I feel lumpy; like a cucumber. Lumpy and cool as a cucumber. At a previous meeting you showed a black box about the size of a thick book and called it a "desktop computer". I thought a desktop computer was one too big to be a "laptop", but your black box is smaller than my laptop. I forgot the name of that black box. What is it? I suppose it is a "desktop" because it needs a separate screen and keyboard, but what connectors are there? I have several big flat screens that are attached to former computers by odd plugs, and PS/2 keyboards, RJ-45 ethernet plugs. I got the ethernet working with Spectrum internet, but am running out of working computers that plug into it. -- Keith

July 7, 2025

Sox question

by gmcaplan＠gmcaplan.org

Hi Folks, I have tried to get an answer to this question thru Stackexachange, but they give me bureaucratic reasons why this question does not qualify for an answer. Maybe one of you can give me some guidance. Here is the question: I am running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I use this command line to record from either Line In or microphone: sox -t alsa default \Desktop/FTC/RecdMsg$(date +"%Yx%mx%dx%Ix%Mx%Sx%p")x1.mp3 A cable is always plugged into Line In. If I plug a microphone into the Front Microphone connector, this command line records from the mic. If I physically unplug the mic, I can record from Line In. I hope someone can help me: a. Create a similar command that always records from Line In b. Create a similar command that always records from Front Microphone c. Create a command that asks me which input I want to use Thank you. George Caplan email: gmcaplan(a)gmcaplan.org

July 2, 2025

Re: Reminder!!! *NO* Meeting tomorrow

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Wright via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: Keith, I hope you're staying cool! > John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: >> What a great meeting last week! A big shout out to Xavier for doing >> his presentation on NixOS! Hopefully Tim will be able to share the >> links to the slides and other info. > Yes, thank you. I would like to review the slides. >> We talked about: >> >> NixOS >> >> - A tool and environment for building systems in a deterministic >> manner. Sorta like Ansible, or Puppet, or Chef, or Salt or >> cfengine (old school!) or Terraform. > I don't know what any of those are. I was comparing it to apt-get, rpm, > yumm and, of course guix. I think I heard Xavier say something about > teamwork between Nix and guix, which would be good because I don't think > we need $2^n$ incompatible package managers. So think of those tools listed above as the next step up in abstraction to managing groups of packages and entire system level configuration. So I use Ansible and I tell it to install a bunch of packages, and then ansible uses apt or dpkg to do the actual install. Ansible (or terraform, salt, chef, puppet, etc) are all tools for bringing systems into alignment with your specifications. They add/remove packages, make updates to configurations, etc. NixOS is more like apt and rpm, with the idea that (as I understand it) you have a much more reproducable set of packages that are cryptographically proveable to be the same. Not so much from a signed with a key, but more in the form of hashes that track state all the way back to the source package. > I looked up NixOS, expecting to see a lot of cartoons. Where did those > cartoons come from and are they "official"? I don't know. Maybe Xavier or somethinh with the slides can chime in here? >> And what are the feelings of those who are remote? > I feel lumpy; like a cucumber. LOL! >> Were you able to follow along and enjoy the talk? > The first half-hour or so was near intolerable, but then the noise > stopped and the camera stopped bouncing and all was good. Yeah, the noise in the usual conference room was crazy. And I just found another tool which I think Xavier was using in his shell. Take a look at 'starship': https://starship.rs/ which I find funky because it requires you to have Nerdfonts (https://www.nerdfonts.com/) installed. Which honestly seems like a step backwards, just like Emojis are a step backward. Yes, it's fun to have and know the meaning (or supposed meaning!) of a special graphical image, but it really feels like we're going back to Egyptian Heiroglyphics. Which means you have to memorize hundreds or thousands of individual characters to make words. And then you still have to join them together into bigger chunks. The power of the Roman (or other smaller alphabets) to me is that you have a smaller number of pictographs or letters to know, which you can string together into larger concepts more easily. This is ignoring language and pronounciation issues of course. Ah well, enough ranting, it's gonna be another scorcher today, so stay cool everybody! John

June 25, 2025

Re: Reminder!!! *NO* Meeting tomorrow

by Keith Wright

John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: > What a great meeting last week! A big shout out to Xavier for doing > his presentation on NixOS! Hopefully Tim will be able to share the > links to the slides and other info. Yes, thank you. I would like to review the slides. > We talked about: > > NixOS > > - A tool and environment for building systems in a deterministic > manner. Sorta like Ansible, or Puppet, or Chef, or Salt or > cfengine (old school!) or Terraform. I don't know what any of those are. I was comparing it to apt-get, rpm, yumm and, of course guix. I think I heard Xavier say something about teamwork between Nix and guix, which would be good because I don't think we need $2^n$ incompatible package managers. I looked up NixOS, expecting to see a lot of cartoons. Where did those cartoons come from and are they "official"? > And what are the feelings of those who are remote? I feel lumpy; like a cucumber. > Were you able to follow along and enjoy the talk? The first half-hour or so was near intolerable, but then the noise stopped and the camera stopped bouncing and all was good. -- Keith

June 20, 2025

Re: Reminder!!! Meeting tomorrow night! Topic: Nix

by John Stoffel

Hey guys, What a great meeting last week! A big shout out to Xavier for doing his presentation on NixOS! Hopefully Tim will be able to share the links to the slides and other info. We talked about: NixOS - A tool and environment for building systems in a deterministic manner. Sorta like Ansible, or Puppet, or Chef, or Salt or cfengine (old school!) or Terraform. But with it's own twist on how it keeps a hash pointing at the version you have, so you can mix-n-match tools versions easily. nushell (https://www.nushell.sh/) - a new shell for Linux and MacOS which includes some PowerShell like features. It looks interesting for sure. But maybe this old dog is too stuck in his ways to change direnv (https://direnv.net/) - A way to have your shell environment updated when you 'cd' into a directory, so that you don't have to remember what environment settings your need when you're moving around and doing work. I wish I had this for my engineers back when I was supporting an ASIC design team, they would have loved this. So who's going to present next month? And what are the feelings of those who are remote? Were you able to follow along and enjoy the talk? Doing both in-person and streamed stuff is tough at times, and I feel like we're not paying enough attention to those who try to comment from remote connections. Cheers, John

June 17, 2025

Re: Reminder!!! Meeting tomorrow night! Topic: Nix

by John Stoffel

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Keller via WLUG <wlug(a)lists.wlug.org> writes: See you all there! > Just a reminder that we've got a meeting tomorrow night! > Date: June 12th, 2025 > Time: 7pm > Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland st. Worcester MA > Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA > Topic: Nix Package Manager > Presenter: Xavier Ruis > Fellow WLUG member Evan White has asked his friend Xavier to speak at WLUG and he's graciously > agreed. > Xavier Ruis is one of the organizers of the Boston Typescript club and will be giving a talk about > the Nix Package manager! https://nixos.org/ > Nix is a packaging system that allows for the creation of "declarative builds and deployments" It > works on all the distros as well as the NixOS linux distribution. > Afterwards we'll head off to dinner to continue the conversation! > I hope to see you there! > Tim. > _______________________________________________ > WLUG mailing list -- wlug(a)lists.wlug.org > To unsubscribe send an email to wlug-leave(a)lists.wlug.org > Create Account: https://wlug.mailman3.com/accounts/signup/ > Change Settings: https://wlug.mailman3.com/postorius/lists/wlug.lists.wlug.org/ > Web Forum/Archive: https://wlug.mailman3.com/hyperkitty/list/wlug@lists.wlug.org/message/44PZQ…

June 12, 2025

Reminder!!! Meeting tomorrow night! Topic: Nix

by Tim Keller

Just a reminder that we've got a meeting tomorrow night! Date: June 12th, 2025 Time: 7pm Location: Technocopia, 44 Portland st. Worcester MA Virtual Location: https://meet.jit.si/WlugMA Topic: Nix Package Manager Presenter: Xavier Ruis Fellow WLUG member Evan White has asked his friend Xavier to speak at WLUG and he's graciously agreed. Xavier Ruis is one of the organizers of the Boston Typescript club and will be giving a talk about the Nix Package manager! https://nixos.org/ Nix is a packaging system that allows for the creation of "declarative builds and deployments" It works on all the distros as well as the NixOS linux distribution. Afterwards we'll head off to dinner to continue the conversation! I hope to see you there! Tim.

June 11, 2025