Annapolis Linux Users Group

We had about 6 people this meeting.

There were a number of people that we have not seen in a while.

Tim brought in a bunch of PC build questions. He had purchased a gigabyte mohterboard and was asking about cases. Additionally, he asked about sound cards and other components. He said he had only invested around $500 in his new machine.

Additionally, Tim notified us that the start time of 7PM was not clearly on the website. I made sure most of links now have it. I made sure the 7PM was added to the footer. This way it will be attached to every page.

Nick explained how evolution was one of the only Linux clients that wrote plug ins to work with Exchange Server. This is a nice if you are trapped with an Exchange mail server. Ted mentioned that Lotus notes also has a Linux client now. Lotus notes 8.x and above have Linux clients.

Dave B. had some questions about creating DVDs. He wanted to make some slide shows and attach some music on it. We recommenced that he looked at QDVDauthor. We also recommended that he look at OpenOffice.

Dave D. notified us that Googlemaps had Street View in Annapolis.

Tim talked about PopCorn a cheap media solution for porting video to digital formats.

Dave D. also talked about the history of X10 and how now it is called INSTEON and sold at smarthome.com.

About 4 people showed up for this meeting.

Topics:
1. Mac user interface gripes. Oh, how I wish Patrick, our resident mac nerd, was here. Dave and Bob complained as how the mouse acceleration does not work right. Dave said that Macs work great in the single screen user mode. But for the multi-screen-users, the Mac does not satisfy. Accordingly he said that Apple’s answer to the display is to make it larger and larger. Dave also mentioned that is really hard to target stuff with a mouse on a mac. Others chimed in about the button.

2. Ubuntu upgrades.
Dave mentioned that he finally upgraded his Ubuntu box to find everything broken after the upgrade. For example, he said the OS would only detect one of his CPUs. His video card was not working. X was crashing. Screens were locking-up. His desktop environment for the multi-screens has is quirky. Each screen now has different menus. Additionally, accelerated GLX graphics broke. He reported that he fixed all the problems besides the last two display issues.

3. Tablet reviews
Bob said all the tablets that came and were demonstrated to him were hard to use. Bob said he asked the sales people to do their presentation on the tablet pc. None of the sales people could, which makes you thing do you really you want to get a tablet if the sales guys can’t do their sales presentation on it ?

4. Informix and database Acid Compliance.
Bob and I talked about Informix and ACID compliance in databases. ACID compliance. I said that Informix is ACID compliance while mysql, his only database, is not by default. More specifically, mysql normally uses InnoBASE mode for speed. While databases like Postgresql use an ACID compliance standard. Postfix uses Postgres Storage System, which is much slower. So, with MYSQL. you get speed with a risk. Although I do not run Postgresql, I have always wanted to as replacement of the MYSQL uses. More information on the comparison between Postgresql an opensource ACID compliant database and mysql can be found here.

5. Gnome desktop seems to have made the blinking cursor non-configurable.
Dave said it now an all or nothing configuration parameter that is changed in the keyboard config area.
But, gnome took it out of their configuration area. For more information on it, read this. Now, according to Dave, if you turn off the blinking cursor, you break some applications that require it. In the past, you were able to configure the speed and a number of other options in various gnome-applications. Now the configuration item is a troublesome. Dave mentioned there is much flame on the forums and lists in regards to this blinking issue.

I lost the notes for this meeting. But, we did have a meeting.

About 6 people showed up for this meeting.

Topics discussed:

NIS/and NFS
SCO Linux and who uses it.
Games:
1. Phun
2. Jrisk
A new meeting place. Panera might be a good place to meet.

Labor day is the first week of September so we will meet on Sept 8th 2008.