[sf-lug] Notes from the SF-LUG meeting of November 5, 2017

[Bobbie Sellers]

     Hi LUGers,

         Well the November 5, 2017 meeting was pretty good.

         I arrived at 10:40 AM to find and to be greeted by John S.
     and Maestro at the large table and sat down at the inner end
     of that table to start setting up.
         11:00 Ken Shafer and his wife Sunni came in.
         11:02 Michael B., our Slackware user, showed up to join
     us for conversation and elite(his words) companionship.

         I booted up the Dell into Zorin 12.2 and explored a bit.
     Zorin is designed to be used by people coming from Windows
     Metro or Android.  Clicking on Activities in upper left corner
     of the bar brings up a left side vertical bar with about 3 icons but
     the bottom most a grid of large dots when clicked on
     brings up icons for the applications displayed 24 at a time,
     with 5 windows reachable by clicking on a column of 5 icons
     on the right side of the screen.
     The final screen contains less than 24 icons and we figured
     out that we have about 114 applications but it may amount
     to more as one icon for Utilities displays a good number
     of useful tools.  John S has some interest in Zorin as it is
     so far his default Linux distribution.

         One of the disks I had brought along was given
     to Ken to explore and this is MultibootUSB-Live-8.5.0
     which I downloaded and for which the publisher has
     provided no checksum.  I have written to him about this
     and a checksum is to be provided with the next release.
     I had made trials of using it on the Dell but these were
     inconclusive.

         John S. also tried out several of the DVDs and CDs
     I had brought along but the Ubuntu based disks were slow
     to load which they must have inherited from Debian.
     One of those disks is Caine 9.0 which is a forensic distribution
     based on Ubuntu. Others were Lubuntu and Ubuntu 17.10
     Funny thing I noted in passing that the Lubuntu 17.10
     offers the chance to install a lower numbered version of
     the distribution.  The failure of some of the disks to boot
     on John's notebook may be due to DVD misalignment.
     All my disks are made on the HP with the AMD 4-core
     that I use at home and tested on the Dell E6420.
     Caine was a problematic disk and I got Caine to boot
     after submitting it to Kb3 for the second time.

         11:15 Charlie, a younger, new to Linux, user showed
     up and I was able to briefly demonstrate several distros to
     him and showed him several basic and informative commands.
     He got a Knoppix 8.1 bootable DVD and a Debian 9.1 bootable
     DVD. This went on for quite a bit of time but at 12:10
     Charlie was leaving as Jim Stockford showed up.

         12:20 Aaron showed up which made me very happy
     as I had arranged to take the 17" HP notebook off his
     hands.  I have a good friend who wants to learn more
     about computing and this old machine with Lubuntu
     installed seems ideal especially in regard to price.

             Cafe Enchante now requires Sign-in!
         I went around the table and checked what was
     up with Ken and Maestro.  They took this occasion to
     inform me that now Cafe Enchante has a sign-in page
     where you are offered a check box for Agreement to
     Terms of Service and then have access to the net.
     Do not inquire of me where you can read those TOS.
     Then you have to have a browser open as the computer
     tries to connect to the net.
         I had been having trouble with this all during
     the discussion with Charlie and could not demonstrate
     how the updating worked.
         After I had corrected this problem I was able to
     download and install 3 small updates for my PCLinuxOS
     using Trinity Desktop Manager Environment.

         Maestro, by the way, took the occasion to return
     several DVDs and one CD to me hopefully to be re-used
     to get copies of distributions to members or even to
     prospective members like Charlie.

         So Ken and Sunni left about 12:50 PM
         No one seemed particularly interested in any of
     the new disks I had brought along nor in the two
     issues of Linux Pro on the table.  I got one Saturday
     afternoon and only had time to read it on the Muni
     as I ran other errands on Saturday afternoon.  I may
     post a summary of the Table of contents in the next
     reminder of the SF-LUG meeting which should be up
     on Nov. 13 for the evening meeting on
     Monday 20 November from 6-8 PM.

         12:55 PM packed up the Dell and my pounds of
     optical disks.  Aaron stayed behind to work on his
     install of Void Linux on his 32-bit machine.

         Jim gave myself, and Michael B. rides onward.
     After Michael was dropped off I discussed with Jim
     that I had bought new DVDs R/W and CDs R/W at
     Best Buy as Office Depot/Max no longer cares to
     carry the products I prefer.  He said to bring this
     to the attention of others so that they can help
     defray costs so I am using these notes to do
     so.  The cost of 25 CDs and 30 DVDs ran to
     just over $41.00
         Jim shared bad news as well.  An apparent
     attempt at theft of his Catalytic converter may have
     taken away his ability to drive his Honda and that
     damage may have ruined the converter and the
     exhaust manifold.   It will be expensive and the loss
     of use of his vehicle is quite disabling, as beside giving
     me a ride every couple of weeks, or so he will
     have no capacity to move instruments and members
     of his band or to get to work sites.

         I hope the attendees will correct any omissions
     and misapprehensions on my part as soon as they may.

         Wishing you all clean downloads.

         Bobbie Sellers


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