[sf-lug] Report of SF-LUG meeting of May 1, 2016

[Bobbie Sellers]

Hi LUGers,

Well Maestro and I came to 25th Avenue on the same #38R bus.

   I was sitting at the front of the bus and had no idea that he was
on the same bus, meeting him only when I had gotten off the #38R.
Maestro walked in with me from the bus stop.
   10:40 walked into the Cafe Enchante and started setting up my
notebook.
   I am currently using PCLinux OS 2016.03 which is a rolling release.
I have kept the updates up so it could be a different version now.
The only problem I had was to type in the pre-shared key for
access to the local WiFi.  I went to the pclos site and found one
of the versions had been updated to a 2016.04.
  I have tried out a KDE Plasma 5 preview version of 2016.04.15.
Plasma 5 is still  behind Plasma 4.14.18 in usability but surely this
cannot be the case much longer,  Oh and the above is a PCLinux
preview.

   Maestro brought his 32 bit machine and I believe that during
the course of the meeting he installed a copy of Ubuntu Mate
16.04 in the i386 version which he had from me by request.

   A bit later while I was getting a decaf drink from the counter
Joseph P. showed up returning the magazines he had borrowed
at the last meeting.  Joseph is getting tired of meeting at Noisebridge
due to the way the other occupants are dealing with him and the fact
that the meetings frequently consist of him waiting for someone
besides the mouse(rodentia) to show up.  I think that if these meetings
are to continue it is time to find another place to have them. The few
blocks around Noisebridge are subject to criminal behavior of
various sorts and even going there bothers Joseph.
     It would bother me too for that matter if I had the
energy to go to another meeting.

   Tom showed up with his Dell lightweight but powerful machine
with no internal optical disk drive on which he had installed Debian 8.
   The machine seems to be working very well but I find the
small screen size a bit hard on my eyes.

   Ken Shaffer and his lovely wife came in a few minutes later.
   He was showing off his Blue Tooth mouse again.  He offered
me a Blue Tooth USB adapter but i think no one took him up on
his offer which was that if anyone had a use for such he would
donate it to that individual.

   1204 Jim S.  showed up and there was a lot of conversation
which moved up a level from what was being said before.

   1205 Aaron came in with his small laptop computer on which he
will be using a beta version of Devuan.  He is devoted to pursuit of
some startup that does not use systemd.  I gave him a copy of
GParted 0.26.0-1 which I downloaded, check-summed and wrote to
disk late last night.

   I tried to demo Xerus64-8.0 which is a Quirky Puppy release. Had
some problem most likely relating to configuration.  Xerus64 as you
might guess uses Deb packages software from Ubuntu repositories,
   It is a very compact distribution but has usable programs for nearly
every use.. The big problem was a jittery mouse pointer which
made it difficult to do anything with.Zerus64.  It shows icons
by the way for every disk partition which if you have a large
disk and multiple OSes(as I have) resulting in a very cluttered screen.

   I had brought along a set of copies of the latest 'buntu 16.04LTS
versions but aside from Maestro no one seemed to be interested.

   1245 i started packing up my equipment.
   1300 the meeting concluded.
   Jim gave Aaron, Joseph and myself rides to home or to our
next connection.

     If anyone has any corrections of the remarks above please
submit them as soon as may be possible so that my inaccurate
notion of what went in can be corrected before it becomes
ineradicably impressed on our collective memory.

   Next meeting will be on Monday 16 May 2016.

   I intend to have at least copies of the latest 4MLinux which is #17
at this time as well as more versions of GParted for 64 and 32 bit
machines and TAILS 2.3 i386. Maybe the next issue of Linux Pro magazine.

   Expect an announcement on the mailing list of the meeting around
the 9th of the month.

   Hope all those folks who did not come out on Mayday will be well.
   Thanks for your attention!

   Bobbie Sellers