[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting notes for Sunday August 6, 2017

[Bobbie Sellers]

Hi LUGers,

     Arrived at the Cafe Enchante about 10:35 AM.  The large
table was occupied so I set up on two tables; one round for the
magazines and disks, one square for the Dell. Later another
square table  would be added by Ken Schaffer.

     So I got my usual drink and had to growl at a couple of very
young kids who were going to use our Tux as an action figure.

     No real problems with setting up but for the new distribution
I am running which had to be configured for the WiFi.  I am
trying to get Community-PCLinuxOS64-tde-2017.06 running nicely.
The "tde" stands for the Trinity Desktop Environment.  Trinity forked
from KDE several years back when KDE introduced an incomplete
version of Plasma 4.   It is a work in progress but Trinity is
more complete than KDE's Plasma 5.10.5(in mnsho).
     So why am I playing with this version? Because all support for
my 2016.03 using beautiful KDE Plasma 4.14.18 has been dropped.
I cannot even re-install a program that needs it.  I guess I could
still update my Virtual Box and my LibreOffice but that won't be
of much help if something gets sideways.   Trinity, if I can learn
to control it properly will replace my 2016.03 on this machine.

     11:00 AM Ken and his wife showed up.  Ken got an unusual
but useful advertising device in the mail.  It was a small video
player with a cardboard paper case.  Charged via mini-USB so
Ken replaced the advertisement with a Buster Bunny animation.

     11:05 Tom T. came in and set up at the large table.
He got a copy of the latest iteration of System Rescue, 5.03.
He has no internet access at home.

     11:06 John S. made it in and sat down opposite me at the
small table with a laptop and tried out some of the disks I had
brought in.  He ended up showing pictures of his cute grand-
children on his tablet.

     11:30 Joseph P. came in and enjoyed reading the magazines.
Later he chatted with Tom.

     11:35 Michael came in to share with the group whatever
came to mind.  Led to lots of political talk. He treated himself
to a nice grilled cheese sandwich of some sort.

     11:35 Daniel G. came in and I thanked him for assisting
Mikki with the problems she was having with her little netbook
with Ubuntu.  He brought along a phablet with several bootable
iso files which could be loaded to a computer from it.

     11:50 approximately Arron C. showed up and got the disk.
filled with Lubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome iso files he had requested.
He was attracted by the iso files on Daniel's phablet and he loaded
up a couple of them and was installing when we left.

     So we left close to 1 PM and i was getting my bag out
of the building when Jim S, showed up and gave me a ride
home.  Micheal came along to 6th Avenue to catch a bus
home.

     So we set a record for the year with 8 attendees and
if Jim could have woken earlier we would have had 9

     Daniel, Aaron, and Tom stayed behind at the Cafe
Enchante, Daniel helping and the others working at their
notebook and netbooks.

    As usual any additions by the attendees or corrections
will be totally welcome.

     The next meeting will be on Monday August 21 from
6-8 PM at the Cafe Enchante.     You should be reading my
regular announcement of the next meeting on August 14.

     Oh and a clerk at the Fog City News asked me about
Linux and if it was really better than the MS product.
I am writing her up a little note about that, calling it
"So You Want To Use Linux?"  Jim has agreed to look
at it for me.  If someone does not want to learn about
computers in order to use them it seems a bad investment
to put hours into an installation then be faced with the
fact that the user is no happier without lots of input
from a more skilled user.  When PCLinuxOS64 pulled
its support from the older systems it took me about
13 hours of work with & without the client to insure
that he would be able to use his computer.  Ideally
a inexperienced user should join a LUG and attend
meetings as your correspondent did back in 2006.

     Enjoy the Summer!

     Bobbie Sellers