[KLUG Members] KLUG Meeting Notes for 03/25/2003
magoo
members@kalamazoolinux.org
27 Mar 2003 17:56:58 -0500
KLUG Meeting Notes: Tuesday - March 25, 2003 7:00PM
I. PRESENTATION RECAP
II. NEXT WEEK'S MEETING INFO <=== Beginner's Meeting!!!
III. KLUG MAILING LISTS
IV. KLUG & LINUX NEWS FLASHES
V. KLUG CONTACT & MEETING INFO
Tonight's Meeting Moderator: KLUG Chairperson Todd Pillars
Peter Buxton acted as the KLUG meeting 'firewall' tonight!
THANKS PETER!!! The 'firewall' makes sure the Chamber's
assets on the main floor are protected, that the entrance
is locked, and allows people in when they press the buzzer.
I. PRESENTATION RECAP
THIS WEEK'S KLUG PRESENTATION: ( 23 active KLUG participants)
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Script-O-Mania: TCL/TK
by Bruce Smith
This evening Bruce kicks off the Script-O-Mania series with an
introduction to TCL/TK. A cross platform scripting language,
which includes and extensive set of GUI functionality, TCL/TK
is ideal for constructing simple application that will run on
almost any platform. However, Bruce refuses to pronounce TCL as
"tickle"; possible evidence of some childhood trauma. For more
information on TCL/TK see http://www.tcl.tk/.
TCL = Tool Command Language
TK = A GUI library, generally used with TCL
PRESENTATION SUMMARY:
***********************
If you were not at this meeting, you missed out on learning a
really simple and handy programming tool. This content will
probably not be posted on the KLUG past presentation page.
Bruce used a laptop running Red Hat Linux v8.0 and the KLUG
SVGA projector to display his presentation for those that
were in attendance. His presentation application was the
good old reliable 'vi' editor. True to the content description
above Bruce REFUSED to refer to TCL as "TICKLE!"
Bruce gave us the background about TCL/TK (current version
is 8.4) which is Open Source and free under the GPL. TCL
stands for Tool Command Language. It was created in the early
1980's by John K. Ousterhout.
History of Tcl
http://www.tcl.tk/advocacy/tclHistory.html
It is a cross-platform tool that includes the Windows, Mac,
and Linux OS's. Bruce stated the reason he likes and uses it
very pragmatically. "It is the easiest way to produce a GUI
program." Bruce gave us a list of recommended uses for TCL/TK.
Where to learn more about TCL/TK
http://resource.tcl.tk/resource/doc/
In addition to the technical information about TCL/TK, Bruce
showed us a bunch of programs that he wrote in TCL. He
started with a simple one and progressed with more and more
features until we were awe struck with the potential in this
GUI construction language. It even empowers the programmer
with the ability to add in error checking and other tricks.
In Bruce's usual open Q & A format, he responded to many of
the attendee's specific questions. He did an excellent job
of covering the material and showing us why he thinks people
should learn this language. He even through in some humor,
saying he wished that our major PERL guru (a well known KLUG
member who works for Slashdot and Sourceforge) would have been
in attendance for this review of the 10 reasons why TCL/TK is
better than PERL. Almost as bad as the debate between fans of
KDE and GNOME, MySQL and PostgreSQL, Grub and Lilo, and others!
Linux users are so lucky. You have real choices and great
competition with the Open Source software model. Bruce loves
GNU Linux and Open Source software simply because it works!
10 Reasons Why Tcl is better than Perl
http://www.tcl.tk/advocacy/perl.html
Bruce Smith is a Systems Administrator and Software Developer
for Armstrong International Inc. where he is responsible for
a HP-UX network of Servers, Workstations, printers and X-Terminals
spanning five buildings in Three Rivers. Bruce has a degree in
Computer Science and Mathematics from Central Michigan University.
(go Chips! :) Bruce runs Linux, almost exclusively, on all his
PC's at work and home, and runs a lot of Armstrong's networking
services on Linux!
II. NEXT KLUG MEETING - TUESDAY 04/01/2003
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Linux for Beginners
by Todd Pillars
THE BEGINNER'S MEETINGS ARE HELD the first Tuesday of each
month. Linux basics and distribution installs are the
lessons of these evenings. If you do want KLUG's FREE help
installing Linux on your computer at one of these meetings,
http://kalamazoolinux.org/meetings/installform.html
Contact the KLUG Installmasters for more information:
installmaster@kalamazoolinux.org
- and -
ORDER YOUR SOFTWARE HERE: http://kalamazoolinux.org/bsware
Now is the time to get started! Linux is becoming a mainstay
of free software, free choice, dependability and power.
===============================================================
THE STANDARD KLUG BEGINNER'S PRESENTATION - LINUX BOOT CAMP!!!
http://kalamazoolinux.org/presentations/beginner01.html
===============================================================
There may be an introductory demonstration of Gnome and KDE!
Note:
As Linux matures as an OS, the educational needs are evolving.
The Beginner's Meeting format is changing with those needs.
It is difficult to cover all the basics in one meeting. Linux
is not just for CS experts and IT professionals. The "BASICS"
meetings are intended for those with limited experience with
Operating System's or even Personal Computer's. Your comments
and questions are welcomed!
Todd Pillars is the Chairperson of KLUG! His first PC
was a 1981 TRS-80 Model 3 2.03Mhz, 16K ram, 5 1/4 floppy
running TRS-DOS and QBASIC. In 1997 he started running
a web development company that hosted web sites with Red
Hat 5.2. He was named the Executive Director of Southwest
Michigan Information Technology Institute in 2003. SMITI
provides education and alternatives to proprietary OS's and
software. They supply technology to small startup companies.
He has memberships in KLUG, Chamber of Commerce, and GLIMA.
Admittedly a HUGE Detroit Red Wings fan who loves NASCAR too.
III. K L U G M A I L I N G L I S T S
*************************************************************
Diversified mailing lists can be found on the KLUG web site.
http://kalamazoolinux.org/listserv/
Facilitated by - John Bridleman listmaster@kalamazoolinux.org
Sign up and participate to serve the Open Source community!!!
IV. K L U G & L I N U X N E W S F L A S H E S ! ! !
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*>*>* [LOUDEST LINUX NEWS OF THE WEEK] *<*<*
RED HAT ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF RED HAT LINUX V9.0
Beginning March 31, 2003, paid subscribers to Red Hat Network will
have access to Red Hat Linux 9 ISOs - a full week before retail store
and Red Hat FTP availability. Also, Red Hat Network subscribers will
receive dedicated Red Hat Network Technical Support.
http://www.redhat.com/mktg/rh9iso/
=====================================================================
HP AND RED HAT TIGHTEN LINUX ALLIANCE
Hewlett-Packard and Red Hat announced a tighter alliance Wednesday
that both companies hope will boost sales of servers running the
Linux operating system.
http://news.com.com/2100-1010-993157.html
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BETTING ON LINUX FOR BUSINESS
Lured by promises of increased security, lower costs or simply the
chance to align themselves with a company other than Microsoft
(Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft, many enterprises are
turning to Linux systems. More often than not, that means tapping
Linux vendor Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) Latest News about Red Hat, which
has come to dominate the market and has made its name synonymous with
the open source Latest News about open source OS alternative.
"There is a comfort level with Red Hat, particularly with companies
that aren't deeply saturated in technology Relevant Products/Services
from IBM knowledge," Gartner vice president George Weiss told the
E-Commerce Times. However, he added, "It has a wide lead over its
nearest competitor but still faces a lot of challenges to get more
profitable and keep growing."
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21061.html
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WHAT IF MICROSOFT WENT OPEN SOURCE? <submitted by TAZ>
"This article on Newsforge takes a speculative look at what would
have to happen if Microsoft decided to jump on the Open Source
bandwagon (using Microsoft Project as the source of speculation).
Amusing to think about, unlikely to happen."
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/22/1454204.shtml?tid=109
=====================================================================
KNOPPIX 3.2 NOW AVAILABLE (submitted by Bruce Smith)
KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software,
automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards,
sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX
can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or
adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product
demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk.
Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of
executable software installed on it. Peter Buxton recently gave
a KLUG presentation that demonstrated the power and value of
Knoppix. http://www.knoppix.org/
Available from BSware http://kalamazoolinux.org/bsware
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MANDRAKE RELEASES VERSION 9.1 (submitted by Bruce Smith)
As of March 25th, 2003 - Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) is available!
They are very proud to bring you this exceptional release of Mandrake
Linux. It's beautiful, fast, more powerful than ever. They hope
you're going to love it
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/9.1/91PR.php3
Available from BSware http://kalamazoolinux.org/bsware
=====================================================================
TERRASOFT RELEASES YELLOWDOG LINUX V3.0
Yellow Dog Linux is a complete, Red Hat and RPM-based operating
system for PowerPC computers. Yellow Dog Linux version 3.0 is
Terra Soft's most recent release which offers a completely rebuilt
Installer, 1300 packages on 6 CDs (3 Install, 3 Source), a unified
KDE and GNOME desktop environment featuring shared menus,
applications, and user interface.
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/ydl.shtml
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TWO ON THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY IN LINUX
BioWare: Neverwinter Nights Public Beta for Linux Announced
O'Reilly: Egoboo: The Cute Way to Dungeon Role Play
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2003032200226RVGMSW
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THE XFREE86 FORK() SAGA CONTINUES
"An article up on OSNews about the XFree story mentioned earlier.
Included is: replacing fontconfig with Sun's stsf; XFree86
co-founder David Wexelblat saying that XFree is today obsolete
and should be changed; Keith Packard replying, and more."
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/03/21/2225212.shtml?tid=104
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XFREE86 LOSES CORE TEAM MEMBER [MARCH 19,2003]
It is with regret that the XFree86 BOD announces that Keith Packard
has been removed from the XFree86 Core Team for conduct that is not
in the interests of the XFree86 Project. Specifically he has been
privately seeking out support for a fork of XFree86 that he would
lead, and has been privately working to form a closed committee of
invited "vested interests" to address the concerns he has with
XFree86. Unfortunately he has been consistently unwilling to discuss
his concerns with his fellow Core Team members or with the XFree86
BOD. This renders his continued membership of the XFree86 Core Team
unviable. http://www.xfree86.org/#news
=====================================================================
SLACKWARE V9.0 HAS BEEN RELEASED
The first major Slackware release based on the GCC 3.2.2 compiler,
Slackware Linux 9.0 continues the ten-year Slackware tradition of
simplicity, stability, and security. Among the many program updates
and distribution enhancements, you'll find two of the most advanced
desktop environments available today: GNOME 2.2 (with a large
collection of pre-compiled GNOME applications), and KDE 3.1, the
latest version of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Slackware
now uses the 2.4.20 kernel bringing you advanced performance features
such as the ReiserFS journaling filesystem, SCSI and ATA RAID volume
support, and kernel support for XFree86's DRI (the Direct Rendering
Interface) that brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphics to
Linux. Additional kernels allow installing Slackware using any of
the journaling filesystems available for Linux, including ext3,
ReiserFS, IBM's JFS, and SGI's XFS. http://www.slackware.com/
=====================================================================
RED HAT LINUX ADVISORY: EVOLUTION VULNERABLE
Multiple vulnerabilities have been found in the Ximian Evolution email
client. These vulnerabilities make it possible for a carefully crafted
e-mail to crash the program, cause general system instability through
resource starvation and get around security measures implemented within
the program. Users of Evolution are advised to upgrade.
http://linuxtoday.com/security/2003032102126SCRHSW
=====================================================================
AL GORE JOINS APPLE COMPUTER'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Al Gore has been chosen to be on Apple's board of directors. Apple has
a press release with more information. According to the press release,
'Al brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and wisdom to Apple from
having helped"Many CIOs may like the idea of open source software but
may not feel ready to c run the largest organization in the world--the
United States government' and 'He has remained an active leader in
technology—launching a public/private effort to wire every classroom
and library in America to the Internet.' The inventor of the internet
should be a valuable asset to Apple."
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/19/
2246212&mode=thread&tid=98&tid=107
http://news.com.com/2100-1042-993332.html?tag=fd_top
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2003/mar/19gore.html
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PLETHORA OF LINUX PRODUCTS ANGLE FOR THE ENTERPRISE
Major Linux vendors are aggressively reshaping their enterprise
product offerings in the name of differentiation as the battle for
corporate customers heats up.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,936077,00.asp
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SURVEY: LINUX DRAWS MORE WINDOWS THAN UNIX DEVELOPERS
More Linux developers are coming from Windows backgrounds than from
Unix, according to a recent study. Evans Data Corp., of Santa Cruz,
Calif., said the results of a recent survey the company conducted show
that more than half of the new Linux developers surveyed said they
used to be primarily Windows developers—to the tune of 52 percent,
while only 30 percent said they came from a Unix background.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,938030,00.asp
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TIME FOR USERS TO START TESTING THE 2.5 LINUX KERNEL
The only way kernel developers will know that the 2.5 kernel is working
well enough to declare it a stable 2.6 kernel, is for people to actually
run it on their machines. And for that we need you to actually run the
kernel. Remember, any bugs you might find can be filed in the new kernel
Bugzilla, where it will be filed to the proper developer.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6740&mode=thread&order=0
=====================================================================
NEWSFACTOR - WINDOWS AND OPEN SOURCE: PERFECT TOGETHER?
Often, when people think of Perl, they think of Unix. But Perl runs on
just about any modern operating system, including Windows... "Many
CIOs may like the idea of open source software but may not feel
ready to champion a switch to Linux or one of the BSD operating
systems. Fortunately, plenty of open source and free software
applications run on Windows, which is ubiquitous in nearly every IT
department." http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2003032200526OSMSDV
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TWO OCR PACKAGES FOR LINUX COMPARED
Now that Linux boasts full-featured office suites, there's no reason it
can't become a boon for small- and home-offices. LinuxWorld compares two
Optical Character Recognition packages -- Kooka & Gocr (free software)
and OCR Shop (proprietary) -- that may be of special value in the legal
and medical fields. http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0303.barr.html
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KLUG NEEDS VOLUNTEERS TO FILL SEVERAL VACANT POSITIONS
Nutrimaster and Education Director volunteer slots are still
vacant. We need additional volunteers to act as the "Meeting
Firewall" to handle Chamber access control and security issues.
The Chamber has asked us to safeguard their assets as KLUG
members come and go from the meeting room each Tuesday night.
Bob and Zac need help with this function which requires that
you get to the meetings early and see that the everything is
locked up as the last person leaves. This means being at the
Chamber at 6:30pm and hanging around until 10:00pm. We have
other volunteer positions available and many of these duties
could be shared if you have an interest. GET INVOLVED IN KLUG!
Volunteers are needed for Beginner's Nights and Installfests.
Please contact installmaster@kalamazoolinux.org for more details.
See http://kalamazoolinux.org/organize for position descriptions.
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********* - ********* - ********* - ********* - ********* - *********
KLUG NEEDS SPEAKERS FOR THE WEEKLY LINUX RELATED PRESENTATIONS!
********* - ********* - ********* - ********* - ********* - *********
Contact Adam if you can give a presentation on any area of Linux
related subject or application. He would also like to hear your
suggestions for topics and possible speaker referrals. Do you
know anyone who is using Linux in Southwest Michigan and might
be willing to share their Linux expertise by making a technical
presentation? Professional, individual, or commercial speakers
on Linux accepted. Contact programdirector@kalamazoolinux.org
with your referrals and ideas. See the meeting schedule for open
dates. http://www.kalamazoolinux.org/meetings/schedule.php3
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V. K L U G C O N T A C T & M E E T I N G I N F O
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KLUG WEB SITE http://kalamazoolinux.org
MEMBERS AND GUESTS - COME JOIN US FOR A MEETING!!!
http://kalamazoolinux.org/meetings
WE MEET WEEKLY, EACH TUESDAY AT 7:00PM.
Our meeting site is the Kalamazoo Chamber
of Commerce office building downtown.
346 W. Michigan Ave. - Kalamazoo, MI 49007
http://kazoolug.org/meetings/maps.php3 <=== MAP!
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Kalamazoo Linux Users Group, Inc.
6749 South Westnedge Avenue
Suite K-288
Portage MI 49002
e-mail address: chair@kalamazoolinux.org
Copyright 2003
Kalamazoo Linux Users Group, Inc.
>><< send corrections, additions, flames to the KLUG scribe >><<
Ralph Worick
recordingsecretary@kalamazoolinux.org
= or =
KLUG Meeting Notes Assistant Editor
Bruce Atherton
Taz <htgage3@chartermi.net>