[sf-lug] Notes for the SF-LUG meeting of Monday 15 July 2019

[Bobbie Sellers]

Hi LUGers,

     Hope you are all well and enjoyed the good weather.

     I got to the Cafe Enchante about 5:30 PM.
     Aaron was there first.
         He had his multi-OS laptop with him and donated two more USB drives
     with Debian Buster 10 network installs on them.  He has 4 installed OS
of some difficulty to install and use.  He intends to add a 5th OS working
Linux From Scratch documents.

         I had limited success with my E6520 with Virtual Box installed but
I finally got NixOS running from the .ova file I spent an hour 
downloading this
afternoon.  Mageia and Whonix ran fine.   I had spent an unconscionable 
amount
of time Sunday and Monday afternoons attempting to get NixOS installed from
an iso file to the Virtual Box.
     Whonix uses XFCE and you must run the Whonix gateway file along 
with the
regular(?) Whonix.  Both have plenty of tools.

     Mageia is a descendant of Mandriva ,on which I cut my teeth and 
made lots
of creative mistakesm and it has the Mageia Computer Control tools 
providing a
gui interface for many configuration tasks.   I have a similar tool on 
PCLinux
and used the tool  on Mandriva.  I installed to Whonix from the 4.1 GB 
install
file which in actual use features KDE's Plasma 5, , Gnome, and the 
ubiquitous XFCE.
A bit harder to use in the Virtual Box.

     I had skimped on my /home partition and with those two Mageia 
install isos,
one for i586 and the other for amd64 each of 4.1 GB, and was not able to 
install
the NixOS until I moved them to an extra partition I created on the fly 
for that
  purpose.

     The NixOs surprised me with a KDE's Plasma 5 Desktop Environment.
     The file is only about 1 GB in size so the tools are rather 
limited. But the
tools are there to add whatever you want.   NixOS does not offer a chance
to configure much on this version.  But the password files are given in
a file included.

     The real problem was that for some as yet unknown reason I could not
connect this evening to the WiFi.  The E6520 was of course running
  PCLinuxOS64.
     I made repeated attempts but something was awry and it could not 
finalize
a connection which it had easily made 8 days earlier.  The WiFi card in the
computer was working as it could detect the Cafe Enchante Guest and
remember the password is now "notredame".  That was changed right
after the fire at the famous Parisian church.

     After 7:30 pm I started packing up my bag.  We left a bit after 8 PM.
     Aaron and I caught the same bus back downtown.

     The next meeting at the Cafe Enchante will be on Sunday August 4, 2019.
     I have not the faintest idea yet what I may have to demonstrate or give
away.  We have the very nice Knoppix on 16 GB drives with persistence
and the a fore mentioned  Debian 10 Network installation USB drives donated
by Aaron.  If I figure out the instructions I may have a PCLinuxOS64 on a
USB drive with persistence to demonstrate or maybe I will run it on top
of the Virtual Box.  Maybe run RoboLinux in the Virtual Box.

     Well enjoy the summer while it lasts.

     Bobbie Sellers