Last month we discussed some cool command line tools. This month Kyle will go to the opposite end of the spectrum and talk about desktop eye candy. Kyle will specifically discuss Compiz Fusion and Gnome Do and go into some of the more advanced configuration options available for Compiz.

A panel of NBLUG members will discuss cool shell tools. We will delve into tools like screen, mutt, vim, and others.

While you might not be able to tell at a cursory glance, a lot has changed behind the scenes on a modern Ubuntu system from what you might be used to if you have used Linux for years. For example, did you know Ubuntu is phasing out System V init? That you can’t loopback-mount the initrd? In this talk I would discuss the current changes Ubuntu is making to what we might consider the traditional Linux system. There’s a little something for everyone on the talk: For Linux newbies who are curious about what’s under the hood I will cover the traditional and modern boot process including how init works and follow up with a guide to where important files are in Ubuntu. For the experienced Linux user I’ll show you how (and why) things have changed and where you can look now when you want to, for instance, change the default runlevel on an Ubuntu system.

In the beginning there were only the mainframes. Administration only required configuration of one system. Users accessed the mainframe from dumb terminals. Everyone had access to the same resources and had the same software, because everyone was on the same system. Then came the personal computer. Users all got their own systems, and system administration became exponentially more difficult. LTSP gives us a way to get the terminal server, singular administration and control we admins want and still give users the warm fuzzy interface, speed and freedom they want. One system, one set of updates, one place to make changes. We’re going to look in to some of the history of LTSP, overview the technology involved, and some of the many potential applications. Finally we’ll look at the best way to implement LTSP, and how its working in production in our corporate environment.

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.

Huh? In other words, you edit files in a nice readable language and magically the right things change in the right order on all the right systems. It’s like your systems configure themselves.

Homepage)

CTL is a new open source project for enterprise management, written in Java, but with bindings to Python, Perl, Ruby, shell, Javascript, and more. CTL is not an acronym; think of what ‘apachectl’ does for the Apache webserver, and imagine what such a tool might do for your entire enterprise and you’ve got CTL.

About the Speaker:

Alex Honor is open source project lead and principle architect at ControlTier. Formerly, he was head of E*trade system engineering, and carried them from dot boom to dot bomb and has been specializing in cradle to grave distributed enterprise software management ever since.

Haiku is an open source operating system inspired by the BeOS that is specifically focused on personal computing. The intent of this presentation is to give a general introduction to both the Haiku project and operating system. The talk will cover among other things the history of the project, some of its most important milestones, recent developments, the code base, as well as the global community that supports it. We will also introduce some of the aspects that make the Haiku operating system unique both from a technical as well as end user perspective. We will wrap up the talk with an interactive live demo/QA session.

General Meeting June 10: NBLUG 10th Anniversary!

That’s right, 10 years ago (almost to the day) NBLUG held its first meeting. Come hear the founders discuss NBLUG, what the group was like then, and how it has changed through the years. We’ll also be providing cake!

Introduction to KDE4

KDE 4 was released on April 2, 2008 and is the newest version of the K Desktop Environment.

Fabio Locati will speak on the history of KDE and Qt(the toolkit behind KDE) and he will also discuss the framework of KDE.

Plans for the upcoming 4.1 release will be revealed and there will be a live KDE demo.

OpenVPN - Adding Trust to Untrusted Networks

Virtual Private Networks allow you to connect two networks securely.

A traveler with a laptop frequently uses a random internet connection but wants to connect securely to a home or office network.

Traditional solutions are not well suited to the random connections of the traveler with a laptop.

OpenVPN is a versatile cross-platform open source solution that’s easy to set up.

This presentation will have an overview of the lingo and components of VPN and a how-to demonstration of an OpenVPN server and laptop client.

Slides

The Asus EeePC and the One Laptop Per Child XO are two small laptops with very little in common. This month we have two presenters, Allan Cecil and Brandon Williams.

Allan will talk about the One Laptop Per Child Project XO laptop, which is technologically very unusual and supports some exciting educational and networking applications. A mesh networking demo of multiple XOs is planned, so if you are one of the lucky ones to already have an XO, bring it along and join in the demo.

Brandon will be discussing the EeePC, its hardware specifications, capabilities, the default operating system, and its great suite of open source software. He’ll discuss some of the niche distros popping up specifically for the EeePC, some of the popular hardware hacks floating around the web, and discuss some available options to the potential buyer. We’ll also hear about upcoming Ultra-Mobile Pc’s, why their popularity will continue to grow, and upcoming technology that are going to keep making them cheaper, smaller, and more portable.