[sf-lug] Meeting of 16 September 2013 and some barely related topics,

[Bobbie Sellers]

     Well this was a very small meeting.

     Only Jason and Jim showed up besides myself.
     Jason can listen to his encrypted music using a live CD but
so far was unable to copy the files from or decrypt the encrypted partition
where his entertainment files live.   The OS on his hard disk failed and 
will
not boot due to a related problem.  He tried some things out about copying
the tunes off the encrypted partition and by doing so learned a bit more.

     I brought along my ASUS Android Tablet. I am still working at getting
this device ready to try GNU/Linux.  Managed to find and download a tool
but that was all I did.   I run into the same problem as with other "extra"
computers in that I only have so much time to work with this device. So
before the meeting I had only been able to spend a couple of hours since
the last meeting.  I have spent more time since the meeting with it 
trying out a rooting tool but had no luck.  But slowly getting better 
understanding of the
problem I am attempting to deal with.

     Have also watch a lot of video about beginners or near beginners being
introduced to various operating systems of the past and present.
     Know better about several topics including Arch Linux and CrunchBang
aka #! 11 which is very sparing of system resources handy for older low 
specced
computers.  One of the older systems introduced in this series is Amiga 
OS 1.1
from 1985.   I started with 1.2 and updated immediately to AOS 1.3.
Some of you might want to look at these at the URL below:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9SEc3wnO60o>
I was interested in the ArchLinux because it is one of the Linux distros 
suited for
use on a tablet.   The title of this particular video is "Mum tries out 
CrunchBang Linux 11 (2013)".  She also tries out a lot of other stuff. 
And it might be good
for people who try to set up machines for relatives or paying customers 
to watch
to see how little of a computer some people want when "Mum tries out 
Arch Linux".
Her son is very knowlegeable.

Jim's new Zareason notebook looks very nice but with Ubuntu 12.04 on
it i was lucky to be able to find the Console(Terminal) icon. The only nice
thing I can find to say about Ubuntu is that the color scheme is very 
nice if
you like red.   But the GUI seems to be fairly inflexible with a task 
bar at
the top of the screen and a left side bar that has a iconic menu that 
will let
you attach icons  of the program  you are most interested in using to 
that bar.
No way to by-pass the icon menu for a text menu it seems.
     The specifications on this notebook seem to be low.  It seems to 
have a
2.5 GHz Intel i3 (dual core processor) and while it has 8 GiB of ram it has
what appears at first to be a small hard drive of 120 GiB. However the
hard drive is actually a Solid State drive.  It boots with _great_ speed
something I have not seen since the Commodore 64 which is a another
kettle of fish altogether.
     Congratulations Jim you picked a winner.
     Next meeting at Cafe Enchante will be on October 6.

     Bobbie Sellers