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I have a Canon S2 IS camera. It is a mid-level camera which I am happy with. In my resent family migration to full throttle Linux this past month; I have been the only one to have fired up XP one time to access pictures from this camera. Back in Fedora Core 6 and I think even up to resent kernel updates, I was able to mount my camera. The PowerShot S2 is not a mass storage device so you can't just mount it to get the pictures. Instead it uses the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP).

Last summer I had it with HP support. My first dealings with them proved to be successful back in 2006, but something terrible has happened since. My brother who lives in Oregon needed help with getting his HP PC up and running after it had been infested with "Internets". I felt bad that I instructed him to to re-partition his box without checking with him first if he had his OEM cd's. Okay... secretly I wanted to get him to use those LiveCD's I sent him the year prior; just kidding, but that was what was left for him at that time.

Moving along to something completely different, what browser(s) do you use. I have read about the tremendous demands that Firefox makes on the system, and I believe that is why my Linux box seems to bog down when I am browsing about. What are you using? What are your experiences with the various browsers out there.

Thanks,

Chuck McGuire

Beagán a rá agus é a rá go maith.
Say little but say it well.

Training materials for new users has been a topic of discussion lately... especially with the renewed claim that, "2008 will be the year of the Linux desktop" and the seeming rise of Ubuntu as a distribution for new users.

Judy recently wrote to us:

Learning Linux

I just wanted to thank, I believe it was Scott and Warren for turning me to Chess Griffin's Podacsts. I have listened to the first 12 so far and am understanding more with each one. Sometimes I have to listen to a podcast twice to get it. I am very computer illiterate, however I am beginning to understand some of the jibberish Ken used to talk about. Bodhi is doing an adult education class in January as well. With what I am learning from Chess will help me with that class.

Thanks again for you help and patience,
Judy

You are welcome Judy. Thanks to Charles Griffin for the Linux Reality podcasts. The rest of this posting deals with what training materials are out there and discusses an opportunity for us to give back to the Linux community.

The meeting is tonight. I got a few replies back from people who just wanted to meet at the MSU CS lab rather than the traditional meeting place and driving over.

For anyone who isn't familiar with the MSU CS lab location... and where to park, here's some basic instructions:

The Engineering and Physical Science (EPS) building is located at the corner of W. Grant St. and S. 7th Ave. The building is on the NE corner of the intersection. The place to park is on the SW corner of the intersection. There are several parking lots on S. 7th Ave. but the "Pay lot" is the north most one. That's where you want to park. At the time of the start of the meeting, you'll probably need to pull a ticket when entering the lot (or the arm won't come up to let you in)... but by the end of the meeting, the pay lot is closed and the arm is up so you can exit the lot freely.

The meeting room in the EPS building is on the second floor... room 259. I try to make sure the building is unlocked so no one has any trouble entering.

The topics for tonight's meeting are:

1) Howto record screencasts in Linux

and if anyone is interested

2) Creating and using desktop environments within OpenVZ virtual machines

The method used for remotely using the desktop environments also applies to non-virtualized use so if you'd like to know how to run KDE on a remote machine over ssh with the display coming up on your local machine... without using VNC, I'll show you how. VNC is also usable in both scenerios too.

Despite the poor weather, I hope to see you at the meeting.

Update from the day after the meeting: We had approximately 9 people attend the meeting so it went rather well... although I wasn't as prepared for my two presentations as I would have liked to have been. We also talked a lot about GNOME vs. KDE... did a little Ubuntu and Fedora bashing... talked about the HDHomeRun HD/Digital tuner box with Network output (which we hope to have demoed in Feb 2008)... and Linux in general.

Big Screen LinuxOn November 30 and December 1, several groups are working together to help introduce students and the Bozeman community to Linux. Linux is an open-source, community-developed operating system which is an excellent alternative to Windows. With the recent release of Windows Vista, there is significant interest in alternatives, especially Linux.

On November 30 we'll be demonstrating a flexible user environment in Linux called Compiz-Fusion, along with other graphics tools. We're going to be in the new EPS atrium on the MSU campus from 10AM-3PM, showing off Linux on the new plasma monitors.

On December 1, we'll be having several informational presentations in the morning starting at 10AM, showing how Linux can meet the needs of everyday users, such as writing term papers, normal web browsing, and more. That afternoon, we're inviting anyone to bring in their laptop or desktop computers, where a team will help them get started with Linux on their own computer. We're meeting on campus in EPS 108 for the morning, then moving to a computer lab on the second floor in the afternoon.

Following the usual 'make uninstall' prior to upgrading my clamav doesn't always ensure I will have no further problems. Generally the next step after you 'make install' your new clamav. Then you want to run a 'freshclam'. But here is where I constantly forget and am now documenting how I fix this LibClamAV Error:

[root@soyo clamav]# freshclam
ClamAV update process started at Wed Nov 14 09:14:50 2007
main.inc is up to date (version: 44, sigs: 133163, f-level: 20, builder: sven)
daily.inc is up to date (version: 4783, sigs: 35144, f-level: 21, builder: ccordes)

Day one cleared up all the FUD! Kids are happy, wife is happy, I'm happy. I really didn't doubt the outcome. Am glad for it to have been received so well. It is key to get them to sit down and just use it.

My family computer is the second Dell we have had with XP Home for the kids gaming entertainment and dual booting Linux mainly for my doing the books. Under XP we have used open source applications for the most part: Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org. So off to a great start for migration.

Prior to allowing kids to play on the computer my wife had been using Linux with our first Dell. Then she just stuck with XP instead of having to keep rebooting for the kids. They had acquired many educational and gaming CD's over the years.

Ken had ownership of both the BozemanLUG.org and HelenaLUG.org domains and controlled the websites and mailing lists. Oddly enough, the company that was doing the DNS and hosting of the BozemanLUG seems to be having some problems. Their DNS servers were unreachable this weekend but they appear to be back up now... but the hosting services have not come back online yet.

Ken was hosting the HelenaLUG stuff on a machine in his basement and that has gone away... but I did rsync it before it went offline.

Assuming the hosting service for BozemanLUG comes back to life in the near future, I'm going to try and gain access to the web DocumentRoot and rsync it, as well as get the list of email addresses that was on the mailing list and start a new list. If the hosting company doesn't come back online with the content and/or I can't gain access to the data, I'll just scrub a copy of the BozemanLUG site from the wayback-machine and manually use the email addresses I've collected over the years from various BozemanLUG members and start a new list.

Assuming we can get control of the HelenaLUG.org domain, that should be passed to Bodhi Zazen who appears to be the most active Linux user in Helena... who it appears will take over leadership of the HelenaLUG for the near future.