The
start of our winter 2005 session got off to a start on the day that the
final test match against Australia was drawing to a close. We had
a great summer season of meetings out at the Country Bookshop once
again. We now look forward to our winter meetings in the hope
that we can once again have some good sessions and some good topics of
conversation for the meetings.
Ten people turned up for our meeting at Sheffield Hallam University on the 10th of September in room 7134 at the Stoddart building. Discussion started with the rather strange happenings with Bulldog and BT broadband. For example, how can any organisation be that bad ? And so forth. We passed on to more sensible things such as a discussion about a possible OpenOffice or Star Office evening presentation. Apparently Sheffield College have decided to take open source software seriously and they will start to teach how to use OpenOffice or Star Office. We will probably give a date about this event at a later date. First hour of the meeting seemed to revolve around the theory and practice of project management in Governments and businesses and communities and how all of this relates to technical projects in practical engineering and science. Too complex to report here but it was not unlike other meetings and discussions that we have had in the past. Not to be missed if you are serious about GNU/Linux or BSD software. Kind of thing that most of us have had to deal with at one time or another.
Two of the fellas who came along were Gentoo people. This particular distribution has moved a long way from the days when I was first introduced to it back in 2002 at a Fosdem meeting over in Brussels. At that time it was a sort of interesting CD or two and not much more. You had to wear a trendy t-shirt to get to know anything about it. In late 2005 it is now very much a mainstream Linux distro which is taken very seriously. Although, you might find that some of the Debian people still use Debian and nothing else :) Since the release of Debian Sarge the Debian distribution has improved enormously. What used to be a Gnome only version of Linux with some very clunky ideas and tools built into it has been transformed with the inclusion of the KDE 3.3 desktop and an installation system which doesn't require a second degree in computing science to understand how to install it. Still some interest in the SuSE software in spite of the Novell take over. The latest SuSE 10.0 offering is about to be released as this page is being written. SuSE are to show off their new release at the Linux Expo in London in October. One or two RedHat people were wandering around at the meeting. It's still out there in spite of the lunatic cost of the enterprise version. Presumably a starship will soon be built to go with it ? Slackware, like most times, is talked about a lot but not seen too much at LUG meetings. Still an excellent distribution and much used and loved. As we move towards the back end of 2005 the 2.6 kernel is being used more and the later versions are starting to appear at the kernel.org site which is where everyone goes to get theirs.
Some of us are looking forward to the Linux Expo in London next month. Not many of the Linux programmers and related persons can understand why Microsoft would like to be shouted and laughed at in public but that's up to them we suppose. Microsoft will be at the show. I'm sure that most of us will have a good time and much fun will be had by all. In Sheffield we look forward to our next ShefLUG meeting and the rest of the winter season. We have one or two events planned as well as the monthly meetings. We shall make these public as and when we have some fixed times and dates available.
Richard
www.sheflug.co.uk
Ten people turned up for our meeting at Sheffield Hallam University on the 10th of September in room 7134 at the Stoddart building. Discussion started with the rather strange happenings with Bulldog and BT broadband. For example, how can any organisation be that bad ? And so forth. We passed on to more sensible things such as a discussion about a possible OpenOffice or Star Office evening presentation. Apparently Sheffield College have decided to take open source software seriously and they will start to teach how to use OpenOffice or Star Office. We will probably give a date about this event at a later date. First hour of the meeting seemed to revolve around the theory and practice of project management in Governments and businesses and communities and how all of this relates to technical projects in practical engineering and science. Too complex to report here but it was not unlike other meetings and discussions that we have had in the past. Not to be missed if you are serious about GNU/Linux or BSD software. Kind of thing that most of us have had to deal with at one time or another.
Two of the fellas who came along were Gentoo people. This particular distribution has moved a long way from the days when I was first introduced to it back in 2002 at a Fosdem meeting over in Brussels. At that time it was a sort of interesting CD or two and not much more. You had to wear a trendy t-shirt to get to know anything about it. In late 2005 it is now very much a mainstream Linux distro which is taken very seriously. Although, you might find that some of the Debian people still use Debian and nothing else :) Since the release of Debian Sarge the Debian distribution has improved enormously. What used to be a Gnome only version of Linux with some very clunky ideas and tools built into it has been transformed with the inclusion of the KDE 3.3 desktop and an installation system which doesn't require a second degree in computing science to understand how to install it. Still some interest in the SuSE software in spite of the Novell take over. The latest SuSE 10.0 offering is about to be released as this page is being written. SuSE are to show off their new release at the Linux Expo in London in October. One or two RedHat people were wandering around at the meeting. It's still out there in spite of the lunatic cost of the enterprise version. Presumably a starship will soon be built to go with it ? Slackware, like most times, is talked about a lot but not seen too much at LUG meetings. Still an excellent distribution and much used and loved. As we move towards the back end of 2005 the 2.6 kernel is being used more and the later versions are starting to appear at the kernel.org site which is where everyone goes to get theirs.
Some of us are looking forward to the Linux Expo in London next month. Not many of the Linux programmers and related persons can understand why Microsoft would like to be shouted and laughed at in public but that's up to them we suppose. Microsoft will be at the show. I'm sure that most of us will have a good time and much fun will be had by all. In Sheffield we look forward to our next ShefLUG meeting and the rest of the winter season. We have one or two events planned as well as the monthly meetings. We shall make these public as and when we have some fixed times and dates available.
Richard
www.sheflug.co.uk