- WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Retro-puters
by Mike Peckar 11 Feb '20

11 Feb '20

Some fun reads on retro projects in links to hackaday. I wasn't aware of the book mentioned... https://boingboing.net/2020/02/04/766826.html

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sorry about the spam
by Chuck Anderson 10 Feb '20

10 Feb '20

Sorry about the spam. I'm cleaning up spam from the moderator's queue and accidently accepted a 8 or 12 messages.

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Reminder: WLUG Meeting Next Week! Topic: Modernizing the Linux Desktop
by Tim Keller 09 Feb '20

09 Feb '20

Hey Gang, This is my usual reminder that we've got a meeting next week. Here's the details... Date & Time: February 13th, 2020 @ 7PM Location: WPI Campus Center Room 304 (Peterson Conference Room) Presenter: Joshua Stone Topic: Modernizing the Linux Desktop with Silver/Blue, Toolbox and Flatpak Our speaker this month is Joshua Stone. He's going to giving a talk about a couple of cool technologies in Fedora! Josh provided me some details about these innovations so I've mashed them up and included them below. Silverblue: https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/ Toolbox: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/toolbox/ Flatpaks: https://flatpak.org/ *Silverblue* s a Fedora variant designed around immutability where a new system image is committed as the new /sysroot without affecting the state of the running system. This is reminiscent of Android A/B updates, although the update backend -- ostree -- has elements of a version control system like git. *Toolbox* is also interesting as it lets you switch into an unprivileged development environment that can be built up and torn down without affecting the host as tools are installed inside a container. *Flatpak* uses the same file storage backend as Silverblue to manage apps and shared runtimes. This app distribution technology allows you to decouple apps and operating systems as everything is built and run inside a sandbox, making upgrades easier. Compare needing only one version of an app to package as a flatpak, versus packaging for different versions. As usual, snacks and refreshments will be provided and afterwards we'll head off for dinner to continue the conversation. Thanks, Tim Keller WLUG President -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Favorite email client for Linux these days?
by Tim Keller 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

Per the conversation regarding pgp, it got me thinking about my "email flow" Currently I'm using gmail in a browser, but I realize that unless I want to install a 3rd party add-on for chrome I can't really do PGP. What are people using for mail clients on linux? Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Future Meeting idea...Zombie Load Attack
by Tim Keller 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

I saw that one of the researchers for the https://zombieloadattack.com/ Zombie Load attack is working on a Ph.d at WPI! Would this be something that people might be interested in? If so I'll reach out and see if he'd like to give a talk at WLUG. Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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It never ends...
by Tim Keller 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

https://zombieloadattack.com/ -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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Keysigning party?
by Gelman, Ian S. 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

Hi everyone, I keep noticing several encrypted emails flying back and forth on the WLUG listserv. It occurred to me that we haven't done a PGP keysigning party in a couple of years - maybe we're due for another? It could also be a way to introduce some new student members to the group. Ian (from mobile device)

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Different topic... Embroidered T-shirts!
by Tim Keller 27 Jan '20

27 Jan '20

I've come into possession of a brother embroidery machine! I'd like to get it working with linux, but I'll just be happy to start putting WLUG and the tux penguin on a polo shirt! Hopefully for the Feb. meeting I'll have something! Later, Tim. -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

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CAD /3D printing
by Richard Klein 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

Somewhat off-topic for this list, but we often discuss 3D printing... I'm sitting in a SolidWorks user group meeting. The presenter mentioned that Windows 10 includes a 3D paint program (or maybe it's a 3D mode in the regular paint program). You can paint in there and import the files into SolidWorks for further editing. He also mentioned that he thinks 3MF files will replace STL because they carry more data.

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The future of WLUG
by Joshua Stone 16 Jan '20

16 Jan '20

Hey all, Last night's meeting was excellent, and I'd like say thanks again to Tim for giving me a ride home! Last night's discussion gave me ideas of ways we could improve general activity, increase attendence, and improve outreach efforts. Hosting a meetup.com group would be certainly improve discoverability, and getting in touch with WPI's computer science group would be great too. I think what a lot communities are doing nowadays is having a text chat format for users who want to communicate more easily over the internet, especially with mobile devices. As an example, there are Discord servers for Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, etc, and they have room sizes generally in the hundreds or even well over a thousand. Even before Discord they'd use IRC for providing support, posting updates, etc. Having a text chat of our own would certainly help improve participation -- I think Matrix would be a good option here because it has many nice features and has a fairly polished user experience: - Numerous clients available on desktop, mobile, and web ( https://matrix.org/clients/) - Persistent chat history - Link previews - Various bots to choose from for adding functionality ( https://matrix.org/docs/projects/bots/) - User moderation - Server federation - Self-hosting available, both client and server are completely FOSS - File sharing - Voice/video calls I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see what a Matrix chat room would look like: https://i.imgur.com/aVILcWB.png Or you can join the room I made: https://matrix.to/#/!EiTljkvagZDFKfQfFu:matrix.org?via=matrix.org Alteratively, if you have a Matrix client already: #wlug:matrix.org Any thoughts? -Josh

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