The NBLUG panel is back and this time they will follow up their discussion of cool Linux desktop environments with cool Linux multimedia applications. Apps covered include mplayer, amarok and others.

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.

These days most modern computers support PXE (Preboot eXecution Environment) booting—booting from the network. Booting from the network allows you to do all sorts of interesting things including setting up thin clients, automate kickstart environments and more. In this talk Kyle Rankin will discuss how to set up a PXE boot server and will cover thin clients, kickstarting computers completely over the network, PXE booting rescue discs, and how to throw it all in a menu system that lets you choose what to boot.

Presentation materials are available at http://greenfly.org/talks/pxe/pxe-magic.html

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 modern alternatives in video cards, processors, and do their best to avoid the holy war while discussing distribution and windows managers. They will demonstrate the use and futility of win32 API implementations in Linux along with native free games and native non-free games.

You might learn something, you might not, but you will have fun.

http://www.splunk.com/

Splunk is search software that indexes and links together ALL the IT data generated by ANY system, application or device making it possible to search and navigate your running IT infrastructure.

From one place, make sense of logs, configuration files, message queues, JMX notifications, SNMP and database transactions from any system, application or device:

• Gain secure access to all your IT data
• Perform ad-hoc investigations
• Alert on problems spanning multiple tiers
• Report on activities across the data center
• Tap into a global community of IT experts

The speaker, Patrick McGovern is an expert in building thriving online communities. Prior to joining Splunk, he oversaw SourceForge.net, the world’s largest Open Source development website, for five years. Patrick grew the site from a few thousand users to over a million registered Open Source developers and 97,000 Open Source software projects. SourceForge.net is now the de facto repository for Open Source software. Splunk is leveraging his experience to build a vibrant community around key Splunk technologies and services. Patrick is a frequent speaker and panelist at key industry conferences. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of San Francisco.

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 are available here.

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

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.”

Rob will demonstrate the creation of a simple database driven web application using the Rails framework. He’ll also talk about some of the best practices that Rails brings to the web programming table and how it, and projects like it, are making programming more fun.

Speakers TBD, but the presentation will be a round table discussion of some of the current popular Linux distributions.

If you’re interested in talking about your favorite distribution for a few minutes, please contact speakers@nblug.org.

Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. I will discuss how it works (the onion router and Tor), how to install and run it(its easy!), and how it’s a very secure system. I’ll also look at the common criticisms, who needs this kind of technology and why, compare the Tor network to other anonymous systems, such as anonymizer, and contrast Tor with traditional proxies. I’ll finish up with talking about hidden services Tor can provide, and allow for questions and comments of course.

Description:

Please note that this InstallFest is at O’Reilly in Sebastopol. Please see below for information on the exact location and directions.

WHEN: Saturday, September 17th - 10:30AM - 4:30PM PDT
WHERE: O’Reilly in Sebastopol; https://nblug.org/genloc
WHO: Anyone wanting help in installing Linux onto their computer
URL: https://nblug.org/installfest/
WHAT DO I DO: Go to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/ to signup!!!!

What is an InstallFest and who can come?

Instead of putting all of the usual “what is an InstallFest” info in this and future announcements, we have a link up on our website as to what a NBLUG InstallFest entails and how to participate. If you point your browser of choice to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/ , you’ll be presented with all the info you ever wanted to know about what goes on at an InstallFest, and how you can get the most out of attending one.

Anyone is more than welcome to attend. If you need help or just want to hang out and talk, you are more than welcome to show up. They are always totally free; you might want to bring a few dollars for pizza, however.

How do I sign up?

We will again be taking signups for this InstallFest, so please be sure to visit that URL if you plan on attending. Those who signup and reserve a time slot, are first in line. We’ve found that by taking signups, we can help more people in a timely fashion. We can also make sure that enough helpers are available for those wanting help. If you need help at the last minute, you can still just show up and we’ll probably be able to help you, but it really helps us if you register first, preferably a week or more in advance so we have a chance to beg for more helpers if we need them.

What if I want to offer help?

If you’re interested in helping out, please contact installfest@nblug.org; if you’ve successfully installed Fedora (or RedHat or Mandrake or SuSE or Debian or FreeBSD or OpenBSD or YellowDog or …) before, you can probably help out. We can even use a bit of help from somebody helping people bring their heavy equipment in. Besides, it’s fun to come hang out with all the geeks. ;)

For helpers, the schedule is a little different:

8:30AM - Breakfast (optional) at an undecided location.
10:00AM - Room open to helpers for setup
10:30AM - Installs begin (event start)
4:00PM - Installs should be done by now.
4:30PM - Installs must be done by now.
5:00PM - Room closed; alarms go off, doors lock, police show up.

We always need helpers, and we can usually use more helpers than we get. It’s a good way to “give back” to NBLUG and it’s a geeky good time. (If you’re interested in helping out but can’t do an InstallFest, please consider giving a presentation, contact speakers@nblug.org )

NBLUG’s own Dustin Mollo will be covering the highlights of moding a Linksys WRT54G. He’ll cover OpenWRT and some of the other options out there including some of other hackable routers that run linux.