[sf-lug] The meeting of Sunday August 2, 2015 at Cafe Enchante!

[Bobbie Sellers]

Hi LUGers.

      I arrived about 10:40 AM and Michael Paoli had
  already arrived but I grabbed a table in the
usual area and setup my notebook, the recent
Linux Pro magazines, the external drives and
Tux.

      My  network needed to be reset  but then worked fine.
The situation was that it connects but cannot find anything.
      The reset network command which Maestro taught me a
few weeks ago resolved this problem.  This command requires
  requires root access in a Terminal window, it is from the
  prompt "/etc/init.d/network restart".
      Then it takes the network down and then restarts it.
After the restart the computer had no problems finding
anything on line.

      The adjacent diners left pretty soon and MP moved
over to my appropriated space asap.

   Shortly after 1100  Ken Schaeffer came in without his
wife who is looking after her mother who is hospitalized
with a broken arm.
   Maestro showed up a moment later.
   Jim Stockford came in about 1130 returning a mass of
magazines most of which will be left at the site for purposes
of GNU/Linux evangelism.

     Jim and Michael with some input from Maestro discussed
relocating a machine which has been reported as being on
the verge of shutting our previously donated colocation on
the mailing list.  Jim is considering having a machine at
his place.

   I told the group about my new keyboard, an Azio Prism.
nearly all the group had some problems understanding
what I was talking about when I mentioned it especially
the ability to switch colors of LED light.  This is a lot
like an expensive mechanical gaming keyboard but the
action is sort of dead which many would find unpleasant.
With my tired hands and arms this keeps me from
bouncing keys and getting repeat characters where
I do not want repeats.  The LED keyboard was desired
to help keep the room-mate from being disturbed by
other lamps when I am typing after she is asleep.

     I also mentioned some Linux machine assembler who have
removed most of the non-free from in one instance older
Lenovo machine and in the other a good 13 and 15 inch
machines.  One is in UK and I am not certain of the others
location.  We have discussions of the libreboot machines
from the UK but the Purism machines are more modern
with some great conveniences like physical switches to
shut off the webcam, WiFi and BlueTooth.   Neither machine
is cheap or easy to get ahold of yet.
     You can read a review here of the smaller machine.
<http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/purism-librem-13-review>
     Loaded with FOSS from Coreboot: an Open Source BIOS
replacement to all those FOSS packages with physical switches to turn
off the WebCam, WiFi and Bluetooth.

     For me this would be a bit spendy but doable the big one has
an i7 but only 2 cores and option for quad-density display.  These are
machines with few compromises in hardware or software.
<https://puri.sm/> is the site of the builders

   Ken and I had some exchanges about various matters.

Jason did not show up but Jim will drop off the Ubuntu 14.10  for
his use.  Jason is busy with cleaning.

      At 1 PM we abandoned the meeting and Jim gave me a ride home
on his way over to Jason's place with the Ubuntu 14.10 AMD64 LTS.

     The next meeting at Cafe Enchante will be on August 17 from
6-8 PM and my regular announcement will be out on August 10 or
11th.

         Bobbie Sellers