Still using ssh in a for loop to manage server clusters? Rewriting the entire hard drive of hundreds of workstations just to tweak one setting? Managing your systems by hand? Having trouble keeping up with all the changes to all the systems? Maybe it's time to try something new.

Puppet is a system for automating system administration tasks. Puppet is also a declarative language for expressing system configuration, a client and server for distributing it, and a library for realizing the configuration.

We are proud to announce our upcoming Installfest on Saturday, October 28th at O'Reilly (directions). If you are interested in attending, please pre-register on our Installfest page. If you would like to help out, please send an email to installfest[at]nblug.org. If you'd like to help promote the event, we also have a flyer (see attachment) that you can print it out, copy and plaster all over the place.

Selecting the right Linux file system for your needs is a difficult and treacherous business. Every file system claims to be the best-performing and most robust -- how is a non-expert to cut through the hype? Next comes tuning your file system, requiring knowledge even more arcane.

As a Linux geek who always like to experiment with the latest Linux distributions and tinker around with local servers, my closet looked a lot like a used computer store. Old discarded desktops were perfect platforms to try out Linux. Now that power has gotten more expensive, I've replaced a lot of local machines with virtual ones, and with the introduction of VMware Server, I have all but replaced my physical test platforms for virtual ones.

* Roll Call (Eric)
* Approval of February Minutes (Eric)
* Items carried over from previous meeting:
** Status of General Meeting Videos; Kyle was going to talk to Dan and get the oringal files to make VCDs
** TaxID/non-profit Status (Jake)
** Elections at next meeting
*** Election Procedure
*** Positions
**** President:
***** Kyle Rankin (accepted)
**** Vice-President:
***** Matt Hubert (accepted)
**** Treasurer:
***** Kat Ogaz (accepted)
**** Scribe (secretary):
***** Dave Sisley (accepted)
***** Eric Eisenhart (not yet accepted)
**** Directors at Large:

Kyle will demonstrate how to create your own DVD with menus from a sample video all with Open Source software. No XML editing required!

Linux on the desktop gets more and more buzz as time goes on. In this presentation, a panel composed of NBLUG members will describe and demonstrate some of the major desktop environments/window managers available for Linux including Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, and others.

Sometimes it seems like as a community we take ourselves too seriously. We
run serious applications and our most important economic demographic is
large corporations with men in very expensive suits. Maybe the reason there
aren't many Linux based home computers is that we're all not playing enough
games.

Stephen Cilley and Paul Peterson present gaming in GNU/Linux. They will
discussing several modern (and not so modern) games and bitch about *ahem*
... discuss the difficulty involved in their use. They will present the

Allan will discuss how to mod the XBOX so you can run Linux from it, as well as how to use the newly-modded XBOX as a MythTV front-end.

Slides available at /presentations/linuxonxbox/linuxonxbox.html

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework that's optimized for programmer happiness and sustainable productivity. It lets you write beautiful code by favoring convention over configuration."