[sf-lug] Meeting notes of March 5 2023 and lately at Distrowatch

Sun Mar 5 18:04:37 PST 2023

Hi LUGers,

	Well I wrote a note to myself about the meeting on Sunday
very early Sunday morning but I did not have to refer to it.

	I logged on a few minutes early and Ron of BC was waiting.

Ken - is still using Unity, but has not tried the new version from
Canonical.  Has tried the Windows version of  Ubuntu 22.04  and the X
programs work pretty well.Ken left about 12:30.

Johnathan Drew - reminds us of the Emily Haskell talk on March 21.
and contributes the URL below about ChatBot.  The talk will be about
Haskell, During the ChatGTP Discussion he contributed the following
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

Michael Paoli  - has solved KDE having problems with phone connection
to computer by creating a new user and back-linking to his original 
profiles.
	Also he has discovered a problem with Search in Thunderbird,
where only the first 3 letters of the word searched for are
considered.  He was searching on wedding but it turned up Wednesdays.
He has, as do I, many thousands of Wednesday messages.  So he went
to the bug reporting site and found out that there have been no
changes made to that module since Thunderbird began publishing.  No one
there may be capable of the coding required any longer.  But they are
not spending time to try to fix it.
  Ron BC says:https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=752844
which has as thread of comments about this problem.

John S.  has a bunch of Chrome books which need to be reconfigured.
   They are setup to log on to a school network and that is quite a
pain.  I am presently searching for more information but perhaps
he has a useful contact that will make it easier to get these
lightweight computers unenrolled from their previous School network
for people who are happy to get any computer.

Victor showed up around Noon. He was discussing the options of "ls",
when he had time to talk to us.  I think Michael may have helped
explicate the matter.  Possibly Ken put his valuable advice as
well.

Tom Lopes showed up.  From the Cafe Enchante.  Eventually he turned
on his microphone.  He was still there when i left about 1304 to cook
my lunch and do other food preparation.

1211 Aaron came by but not to be seen.  He did post some notes but
I could not copy them from the screen for some reason.

	We had a large group discussion of ChatGTP which is also the
subject of widespread discussion on the 'net. One person asked ChatGTP
to act as though it was a Linux computer in response to terminal
commands and it did so.  It also debugged a non-functioning bash script.
  I suggested that it might be possible to fix the Search function on
Thunderbird by using the ChatGTP to rewrite the module, if it can be
  come by, that is plugged into the Thunderbird Search function so
that it can deal with longer sequences than 3 letters.

  Michael said it was not to smart as it could not figure out
the sequence presented "1,4,9,16,25,35" but the answer is online.
https://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C4%2C9%2C16%2C25%2C35&language=english&go=Search

	It was quite a good meeting, very lively.

Some additional information was offered to all.

WHAT: Fixit Clinic DCCCXXXIV (834) Millbrae Library USA-CA-Millbrae
WHEN: Sat, Mar 11, 2023 11AM to 2PM
WHERE: Millbrae Library 1 Library Ave, Millbrae, CA 94030
https://smcl.bibliocommons.com/events/63a2ba230470e64100b4591c
fixitclinic at gmail.com

	So i left to fix and eat my lunch about 1:04 PM.
	Discussion I hope ensued after my departure
and I hope that if I misunderstood something that you will
rapidly correct my misapprehensions. Not for my sake but for
other readers.
	Bobbie Sellers

                    ==================================
                         Lately at Distrowatch.com
                    ==================================

     2023-03-02 	NEW • Distribution Release: Armbian 23.02
  	Armbian 23.02 is the latest release from a project providing
a lightweight Linux distribution optimised for custom ARM, RISC-V or
Intel hardware, with fully-featured Xfce, GNOME or Cinnamon-based
desktop. This version upgrades the Linux kernel to the long-term
supported version 6.1: "Armbian 23.02 'Quoll' is now available.
<https://www.armbian.com/download/> and
<https://www.armbian.com/newsflash/armbian-23-02/>
           Distrowatch has no downloads for this system.

                  ==================================

   2023-03-01 	NEW • Distribution Release: NuTyX 23.02.1
      NuTyX is a lightweight distribution based on Linux From Scratch
which features a custom package manager called cards. The project
   has published a new version,  NuTyX 23.02.1, which updates several
of its supported desktop environments and key applications.
<https://nutyx.org/en/news> <https://nutyx.org/en/downloads>
    Systemd and sysvinit are provided and sysvinit is the default one
but you can change that if you read the documents.
     Best to read the comments in the section devoted to this on 
Distrowatch.
<https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=nutyx&pkglist=true&version=23.02.1#pkglist>
     The commenter/reviewer had some problems that you should learn
about.  The iso files are moderate in size up to about 1.6 GB

                      ==================================

   2023-03-01 	NEW • Distribution Release: Linux From Scratch 11.3
   	Linux From Scratch (LFS) version 11.3 has been released.
Linux From Scratch  is a free book containing step-by-step instructions
to build a custom Linux system from scratch.
	A separate book called "Beyond Linux From Scratch" enables
installing  and configuring further software on top of a base LFS
system.  These are relatively small PDF files.
There are versions specific to systemd and otherwise.
<https://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/sympa/arc/lfs-announce/2023-03/msg00000.html>

                      ==================================

   2023-03-01 	NEW • Development Release: Mageia 9 Beta 1
	Filip Komar has announced the availability of the first beta
build of the upcoming Mageia 9, a distribution that was resurrected
  from Mandriva in 2015. This release  brings many updated packages,
although the including Plasma desktop is only a beta of the 5.27
version.  Uses systemd, has 586 and x86_64 versions in a variety
of Desktop environments.
	I would wait for the final release of this system as
  the Usenet newsgroup about Mageia is full of people who are
having trouble  with the Beta.  The iso files are fairly large
  pushing 5 GB for the largest.
<https://blog.mageia.org/en/2023/02/28/mageia-9-beta1-is-already-here/>

                      ==================================

       2023-02-27 	NEW • Distribution Release: Emmabuntus DE4-1.03
           	Emmabuntus is a light, Debian-based distribution
  intended for less experienced users. The project's latest release
includes content filtering controls for screening on-line content.
AKA Parental controls.  Not to control the parents but the for the
  Parents to control the children's viewing.
  The Release announcement covers that in detail at:
<https://emmabuntus.org/on-february-27-2023-emmade4-1-03-focused-on-parental-control/> 

I am not sure what is going on with the startup because examining
the package list I find  systemd 247.3-7+deb11u1 and
   systemd-sysv 247.3-7+deb11u1.
It is a complete distribution at 3.6 GB.

                   ==================================

2023-02-27 	NEW • Distribution Release: IPFire 2.27 Core 173
  	IPFire is a small Linux distribution for firewalls and other
networking devices.
The distribution has published a new release which upgrades the kernel
  to version 6.1 and includes support for accessing 4G and 5G networks.
<https://blog.ipfire.org/post/ipfire-2-27-core-update-173-released>
It is very small, only 379 MB and does not yet use systemd though that
is planned [see comments following package list].

                     ==================================

Don't forget to Spring forward one hour on you clocks on March 12.
Maybe that was why Ron of BC was early because Canada started it today.

bliss - on the ever-faithful Dell Latitude E7450, PCLinuxOS 2022
KDE Plasma 5.27.2   Kernel Version: 6.1.15-pclos1 (64-bit)
KDE Frameworks  5.103.0 - Qt Version: 5.15.6
Graphics : X11 - Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 5500
15.5 GiB of RAM CPU 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz
Actually 2 real cores and 2 virtual cores.