SF-LUG - meeting of Sunday January 4, 2015

[jim]

bobbie: it's "Stockford" not "Stockbridge"


On 01/04/2015 06:27 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>     A bit of a late start for me today.
>
>     John Strazzaino showed up before me and had his Raspberry Pi running.
>     I arrived about 1050 or a little later.
>     Michael Paoli showed up next,
>     Then Alex Kleider and Mike  Rojas
>     Somewhat later than usual Ken Schaeffer and his wife.
>     Finally around 1200 Jim Stockbridge.
>
>     So the Raspberry Pi is very impressive.  A box with CPU and
> memory about the size of a king-sized cigarette box or a traveling
> soap dish for those who have forgotten the king-sized box.  John
> seemed to have Tetris clone running when I got there.
>     John Strazzaino also brought a couple of Dell compact towers
> or desktops hardly heavier than my notebook.  He left them in the
> trunk of his car. John and I moved them to Jim's cargo area.
>     And he was kind enough to buy my decaf soy latte!
>
>     Alex K. bought in his Raspberry Pi configured as an access
> point.   That is interesting to see.
>
>     Michael P. bought in his laptop and a lot of distribution
> disks.
>     Mike Rojas returned my copy of last month's Linux Pro
> magazine with a couple of distribution disks I had loaned him
> to try out.  He believes he encounter problems due to the age
> of the machine he was trying out.
>
>     I made a fresh copy of Knoppix 7.4.2 for Mike R, as no one
> should be without this versatile tool.
>
>     I loaded and played with the Kubuntu 5 alpha beta which
> comes with KDE version 5 which looks better than it is so far.
> I was able to quickly configure the Dolphin file browser to the
> presentation I prefer but the digital clock is not too helpful though
> the numbers of the hours and the date are better balanced in size
> than the current digital clock.  But like KDE version 4.x a few
> years back you cannot copy the time from the clock.  I imagine this
> will be fixed soon enough.
>     Anyway the reason I went to the trouble of downloading the
> iso file on Kubuntu was because of the chance of looking at KDE 5.
> I also got the Magiea 5 beta and sadly it simply seems unable to
> boot on my machine.  This was the status last year with Mageia 4 but
> it was fixed by Mageia 4.1.  I have reported this problem but seen no
> later release.
>
>     My old copy of Levanta business card CD-ROM with Damned
> Small Linux failed to boot.  It has been a decade since I last
> tried it out,  It complained of there not being a Knoppix file system
> though why that would be important is not clear.  It left me with
> a very limited terminal.  This is likely due to the lack of graphic
> support for modern equipment on the old distribution
>
>     Mike R. was busy looking at most of the other attendees'
> computers and chatting.  He is in technical support it seems.
>     Ken and Alex spent a good deal of time chatting.
> Ken was running Ubuntu on his Asus from a USB 3.0 flash drive which
> was very busy.  It has a bright light on the ourside edge of the
> drive which flashes brightly and frequently on access.
>
>     The main part of the meeting broke up about 1 PM.  Jim
> and I went after the cpu boxes then returned to Cafe Enchante where
> Jim principally chatted with Alex K.
>     Michael P. had the usual distribution disks to offer and
> Mike R. spent a lot of time chatting with him.
>
>     And finally I had no real time to mention it at the meeting
> but PC Linux OS promises work on what amount to problem areas
> before it releases 2015.xx in the area of GPT and of UEFI
> installations.  They have plenty of good examples to study
> before they commit to changes.  Mageia 5.x promises greater
> ease of installation as well in the same areas.
>     Jim gave me a ride home.
>
>     Next meeting will be on Monday January 19, 2015 and the
> regular announcement will be out on the 12th or 13th of the month.
>
>     I  will be grateful for any corrections or emendations to
> these rough notes.
>