1. Misty Mountain – 1st meeting place – pros: can just buy a coffee, tea, or soft drink. Close to downtown bus station. Has a private room with a big screen t.v. we can hook up to and a door that can be closed for noise. Has outlets for notebooks all over and free wifi. Cons – the room is a bit small if the group gets bigger than 8 and limited food, limited downtown parking, limited accessibility.
2. Cafe Pyrus – 2nd meeting place – pros: variety of food, free wifi, centrally located for bus takers, can just order coffee. Cons – music tends to overpower discussions sometimes, sometimes has live entertainment, limited downtown parking.
3. Egg Roll King – 3rd meeting place – pros: variety of food, on #8 bus line, generally very accommodating. Cons – generally more expensive than cafes, not as close to downtown, limited parking, no wifi, smaller space.
4. Williams Cafe – 4th meeting place – pros: variety of food, can have only coffee, free wireless, ample parking. Cons – out of the way for Waterloo attendees, no outlets (well 1, but this is ridiculous), not really accommodating to groups larger than 4 to 6 people.

What I’ve been hoping for is a place that meets the following critera:

• Is centrally located, preferably downtown Kitchener.
• Has good food and coffee, but isn’t a spot where people have to buy more than a coffee or two.
• Must have and be willing to let us use their power outlets.
• Has enough space to accommodate a group of 6-12 (or more would be better).
• Isn’t overly noisy.
• Has free wireless Internet access.
• Has enough parking.
• Is open when we meet 7-8pm (or 9pm).

Can anyone else think of other places that might be more suitable in Kitchener? Do we need to go to Waterloo?

Virtualbox network setup

You’ve installed virtualbox, installed your host server OS, done updates on the server OS, installed any extra software, but found that the host adapter is not on your local network’s correct subnet.

By default the network adapter in VirtualBox is set to NAT, Network Address Translation. The simple way to fix this is to go into the Settings for your virtual machine instance and change the network settings to “Bridged Adapter.” Because VirtualBox also assigns a MAC address to this bridged adapter you can to go into your router and set a static IP for this virtual device based on the MAC address assigned in VirtualBox.

1. The Linux kernel is newer than previous versions of Clonezilla: 3.8.11-1
2. DRBL is updated to 2.4.4-drbl1 and Clonezilla to 3.3.43-drbl1.
3. Syslinux is updated to 5.0.1
4. lziprecover and nwipe were added to the Clonezilla live CD
5. a lvm2 bug was fixed.

The addition of lziprecover looks interesting because it appears to mean clonezilla might be able to recover itself from compression problems it might have during the cloning process. Nwipe is also interesting because it’s a fork of the DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke project). This means with 1 CD you can clone and wipe your drive(s).

1. Build a rocket with OpenRocket – Link to Linux Journal article.
2. Hunt hurricanes – older Linux Journal article.
3. Build a cluster with PelicanHPC – we’ve actually tried this and it takes less than 20 minutes to set up.
4. Make movies. Linux has lots of great software that can be used to edit and cut movies including: OpenShot, Kdenlive, LIVES, Toonloop, Avidemux, Kino (old) and Cinelerra.
5. Write a blog. If movies aren’t your thing, but you can write, Linux has lots of software that can connect to blogs (Blogilo), check spelling (spell), or just give you a distraction-free slate (pyroom) to write on.
6. Inventory your collection in a database. Linux comes packed with many different types of database tools. For example: You could run a database server with MySQL then use Calligra to connect to it and get a visual overview of your databases.
7. Fully customize your desktop. I know this seems like a lame thing to throw in the middle of a list of cool things to do, but we all love making Linux our own and Linux offers more options for desktop customization than most OS’s. You can even change your window manager.
8. Security and surveillance. You can set up a simple web camera streaming to a website with Camstream or opt for a more professional solution using Zoneminder.
9. Check out the stars with astronomy and space simulation software (Celestia).
10. Build a MAME cabinet and run retro games all from one box. One guy’s blog about building a mame cabinet.
11. Edit, organize and publish photographs to social networking sites with software like F-Spot, Shotwell, Fotoxx, Digikam or Rawtherapee.
12. Create PDFs without expensive software (LibreOffice).
13. Boot Linux from a Live USB key for troubleshooting or just keeping your surfing secure on a different computer.
14. Record a podcast with Audacity, and create the music with different midi software (Rosegarden).
15. Conduct biological sequence analysis. Link to what looks spammish but is actually a large collection of Linux biological sequence analysis software at Bioinformatics.org.
16. Create 3D models and renderings for your movies or games with Blender.
17. Build a custom Personal Video Recorder (PVR) with MythTV. Want to never worry about drive space on your PVR? Put a few 4 terabyte drives in a system and run MythTV.
18. Build a robot using an embedded board and Linux. Linuxpcrobot.
19. Learn to program in python, C, C++, Assembler, Scratch, or another language with the wealth of compilers, debuggers and visual editors in Linux.
20. Test hardware with software like memtest86 or one of the hundreds of tools in the Phoronix Test Suite.
21. Face off against your friends in a friendly 3D game of Alien Arena.
22. Host you own cloud server with OwnCloud.
23. Virtualize other operating systems with virtualization software like Xen, VirtualBox or VMWare.
24. Go Wardriving for access points: wardriving.com has a lot of links to Linux wireless software.
25. DJ a party or just remix music you like with Mixxx.

We’ve been very brief here touching mostly on software and not detailing the software in order to show some of the range of things that can be done with Linux. Books have been written on a number of the programs in this list including Blender, MythTV, Scratch, VMWare, LibreOffice, MySQL, and so on. What’s your favourite Linux project?

Ubuntu header image

Just a reminder to everyone that I’ll be holding the monthly Ubuntu Hour at a different venue this month. Ubuntu hour starts at 7pm tonight, Friday, May 3rd, 2013 at Williams Cafe on Fairway drive near Fairview Mall. Williams has wireless Internet, a couple of varieties of coffee and lots of food. I’m hoping that people from Cambridge and surrounding area who might not normally come out to Ubuntu hour try to attend. The Loco has a reservation system here: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/ubuntu-ca/2387-ubuntu-hour-kitchener/ but you don’t have to reserve a place for this event, just come out. The event is open to anyone interested in Ubuntu or Linux in general. The meeting is an informal get together of friends interested in Linux and freedom. Maria won’t be joining us this month due to a conflicting event, but I may stay a bit longer.

Williams has free wifi, acceptable coffee, and lots of food. Holding meetings at Egg Roll King was great because of the food selection, but holding it at Williams means there’s less of an issue of someone only comes and wants to buy a single coffee. Other than gas it’s also likely you’ll save a bit more in your wallet. The food is decent, and there’s options for vegetarians as well as carnivores.

Raring Ringtail will be out for several days by this time so it should be interesting to discuss what’s new and exciting in the world of Ubuntu Linux.

April 13, 2013 Work desktop

I noticed the past few weeks that Linux (both Ubuntu and Linux Mint) has been misbehaving when I switch between computers using my 2 port iogear KVM switch. When switching back to Linux the desktop display mode gets switched to 640×480, which looks terrible on the screen. I found an easy workaround: hit the “windows” key to activate the Cinnamon menu, type in Display to bring up the Display dialog box. When the Display dialog box loads it automatically switches back to 1920×1080.

Not sure if the problem is that the digital signal can’t get through the KVM to the computer correctly, but this seems to be a recent happening. I’m not sure this happened before. Considering I’m still using DSUB/VGA I’d think this shouldn’t really be an issue. There are a bunch of new elements I’ve introduced that make diagnosis a bit more difficult: new flavour of Linux (though it happened on Ubuntu 12.10 too), different monitor and the mouse connected to the keyboard (USB hub) instead of the switch.

The work-around isn’t a bad solution and the problem doesn’t always happen, so it could be a sleep/hibernation-related issue.

I say these things now knowing that we don’t really currently have a place for this kind of technology. When new and exciting things come in they’re a real time waster and we have to focus on repairs, builds and other projects. Still, sometimes I think one more piece of hardware wouldn’t hurt under my desk at work.