[NBLUG/talk] June NBLUG meeting summary

[Brad Morrison]

Hi all,

Well, the June NBLUG meeting has come and gone. For those who didn't 
make it or for those who want to rehash the glorious conversations, here 
is my best recollection of events. I really need to take notes next time 
as waiting this long after the meeting to send out notes is like 
searching through a file cabinet trying to find a document that you 
can't quite remember the name to...

LineageOS install: I gave an update on my progress and struggles with 
the installation of LineageOS (https://lineageos.org/) on my OnePlus 6T 
(https://www.oneplus.com/6t?from=buy). I was able to get it up and 
running after a few delays due to the fcat that I had the 
T-Mobile/vendor firmware on the phone instead of the 
OnePlus/manufacturer firmware, which presented some installation 
problems. So I had to use payload-dumper-go to do something to the 
OnePlus OxygenOS software 
(https://www.oneplus.com/global/support/softwareupgrade/details?code=PM1574156215016) 
and then install that before I could move on. My experience with asking 
for help on the LineageOS Libera.chat IRC service was OK - I got answers 
to my issues, but the only person in the chat that responded definitely 
made me feel like my questions were below him (not that anyone else was 
asking questions at the same times that I was) and wasn't hesitant about 
sharing his distaste for stupid/newbie questions. On the larger scale, 
experiences like that are a big part of why people that are not super 
knowledgeable tend to stick with corporate software. I've literally 
never had any paid customer service rep say/type anything like "I saw it 
and I ignored it" in response to my asking if he wanted me to repost my 
original question/situation. I was able to find and install the Signal 
APK (https://www.signal.org/) and F-Droid will be my next task. 
Surprisingly, it looked like Signal was not on F-Droid, when I did an 
app search for it (https://search.f-droid.org/?q=signal&lang=en 
<https://search.f-droid.org/?q=signal&lang=en>).

I briefly displayed the Turris Omnia open source router 
(https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/) that I bought a few years 
ago and have barely used since I got it, as most of the places I've 
lived in since have already had internet setups and the various 
roommates didn't want me messing with the established system. Turris 
(https://www.turris.com/en/) is a company out of the Czech Republic that 
produces open source networking products that are geared towards 
security minded folks - I just thought that they were cool and wanted to 
support their work. Turris is developed by the Czech Domain Registry 
(https://www.nic.cz/page/357/kontakt/). I've been surprised at how many 
open source products I have seen come out of the Czech Republic - which 
is impressive for a relatively small country.

During the meeting, Brian was struggling with some installation 
difficulties with Fedora 35/36 (?), but a few people seemed to be able 
to help out with that.

There was a small debate over whether Google was more evil than Amazon 
(that was brought up by a conversation about various app stores).

I was surprised to be nominated and then elected to the NBLUG Board. I 
was sure I would have failed any kind of basic computer science exam, 
but thankfully there are no such requirements to be on the Board. The 
success of this campaign has already gone to my head and I'm thinking 
about parlaying my recent success and running for higher office. POTUS 
pays much better and 2024 might be my time - I'm over 35 and I was born 
in the USA!

Finally, my interest in more Linux adoption didn't seem to get my 
traction, as one person pointed out that something like 90% of 
supercomputers use Linux, 70% of all websites use Linux 
(https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux), and most mobile 
phones run Linux. The desktop market is another story though, but other 
people reiterated how many people are using their phones for all/almost 
all of their computing. At least in my current work world (accounting), 
Linux isn't even an option as no good open source accounting software 
exists. And with almost every business doing at least some of their own 
bookkeeping, it locks lots of users into Microsoft's platform. Someone 
made the point that accountants love Excel and while I didn't really 
think about that before, I've definitely seen that at my workplace. We 
are in the process of transitioning CRM software from RedTail 
(https://corporate.redtailtechnology.com/crm/) to Salesforce 
(https://www.salesforce.com/) and so a lot of time lately has been 
devoted to pulling reports/data from RedTail and into Excel to be 
formatted/modified so that we can prep it for the move to Salesforce. 
The behemoth in financial/accounting software that we interact the most 
with is Intuit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit) and we use both 
Lacerte and Quickbooks a lot.

I have a friend that lives in Weaverville (in Trinity County, CA) and 
when I visited him several years ago, I was surprised to learn that the 
Trinity County public library in Weaverville uses a version of Linux on 
all of their public use library computers (although it was way out of 
date at the time - 2018). That got me thinking about approaching the IT 
manager of the Sonoma County Library system and I had met Nancy Trbovich 
(?) years before at some Access Sonoma Broadband 
(https://sonomaedb.org/current-initiatives/broadband) meeting. Nancy 
seems to have retired or moved on and now the IT manager for the Sonoma 
County library is Mike Dawe (https://sonomalibrary.org/person/mike-dawe) 
- does anyone know him?

OK, that's all I can recall - feel free to add to this list or continue 
any of these conversations if you're so inclined.

Thanks!

Brad
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://nblug.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20220620/3052e25c/attachment.html>