The WNYLug will be holding our next meeting on March 11th 2009 from
6:30pm to 9:00pm.

The meeting will take place at 455 Cayuga Rd Suite 200, Buffalo, NY 14225.

Food and drink will be provided (Pizza and Wings)

Meeting Agenda:

• Presentations :
  • “Fedora Desktop” – A brief conclusion of last months presentation focusing on LVM and SELinux – Presented by Brian Powell.
  • “Got Shell??” – The last segment of our 3 month series of installing and using Ubuntu and Fedora with a detailed focus on command line usage.
    • “Command Line Basics” – Overview of common command line utilities. – Presented by Neal Chapman.
    • “Command Line Tips and Tricks” – Presented by Brian Powell.

• Open Floor

Cuba cracks me up:

A Linux operating system variant called Nova, introduced in Cuba at a computer conference on technological sovereignty, is part of an effort to replace the Microsoft software running most of Cuba’s computers. The Cuban government views the use of Microsoft systems as a potential threat because it says U.S. security agencies have access to Microsoft codes.

Read more at: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Cuba-Launches-Own-Linux-Variant-to-Counter-US/?kc=EWKNLLIN02172009STR3

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 released

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed “Lenny”) after 22 months of constant
development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of twelve processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME,
Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. It also features compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Debian GNU/Linux runs on computers ranging from palmtops and handheld systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total
of twelve architectures are supported: Sun SPARC (sparc), HP Alpha (alpha), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Intel IA-32 (i386), IA-64
(ia64), HP PA-RISC (hppa), MIPS (mips, mipsel), ARM (arm, armel), IBM S/390 (s390), and AMD64 and Intel EM64T (amd64).

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” adds support for Marvell’s Orion platform which is used in many storage devices. Supported storage devices include
the QNAP Turbo Station series, HP Media Vault mv2120, and Buffalo Kurobox Pro. Additionally, “Lenny” now supports several Netbooks, in particular
the Eee PC by Asus. “Lenny” also contains the build tools for Emdebian which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit
embedded ARM systems.

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” includes the new ARM EABI port, “armel”. This new port provides a more efficient use of both modern and future ARM
processors. As a result, the old ARM port (arm) has now been deprecated.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop
environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7,
Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6,
MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl
5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11,
and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).

With the integration of X.Org 7.3 the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS
filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support for Adobe(R) Flash(R) format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash
plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced, such as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling. For leisure time
several new games have been added, including puzzle games as well as first-person shooters. Also notable is the introduction of “goplay”, a
graphical games browser offering filters, search, screenshots and descriptions for games in Debian.

The availability and updates of OpenJDK, GNU Java compiler, GNU Java bytecode interpreter, Classpath and other free versions of Sun’s Java
technology, into Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 allow us to ship Java-based applications in Debian’s “main” repository.

Further improvements in system security include the installation of available security updates before the first reboot by the Debian
Installer, the reduction of setuid root binaries and open ports in the standard installation, and the use of GCC hardening features in the
builds of several security-critical packages. Various applications have specific improvements, too. PHP for example is now built with the Suhosin
hardening patch.

For non-native English speaking users the package management systems now support translated package descriptions and will automatically show the
description of a package in the native language of the user, if available.

Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network. GNOME is the
default desktop environment and is contained on the first CD. Other desktop environments – KDE, Xfce, or LXDE – can be installed through two
new alternative CD images. Again available with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 are multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting installation of multiple architectures
from a single disc; and this release adds Blu-ray Discs, allowing the archive for an entire architecture to be shipped on a single BD.

In addition to the regular installation media, Debian GNU/Linux can now also be directly used without prior installation. The special images
used, known as live images, are available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot setups. Initially, these are provided for the amd64 and i386
architectures only.

The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been improved in many ways: among many other improvements, support for installation from
more than one CD or DVD has been restored, firmware required by some devices can be loaded by using removable media, and installations via
Braille display are supported. The installer boot process has also received much attention: a graphical menu can be used to choose
front-ends and desktop environments, and to select expert or rescue mode. The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to
63 languages.

Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see Debian GNU/Linux on CDs [1] for
further information. It will soon be available on DVD, CD-ROM and Blu-ray Disc from numerous vendors [2], too.

Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 from the previous release, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed “Etch”) are automatically handled by the
aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As always,
Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release
notes [3] for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and
translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

1: http://www.debian.org/CD/
2: http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors
3: http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/releasenotes

Dedication
———-

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident.
Thiemo was involved in Debian in many ways. He has maintained several packages and was the main supporter of the Debian port to the MIPS
architectures. He was also a member of our kernel team, as well as a member of the Debian Installer team. His contributions reached far
beyond the Debian project. He also worked on the MIPS port of the Linux kernel, the MIPS emulation of qemu, and far too many smaller projects to
be named here.

Thiemo’s work, commitment, broad technical knowledge and ability to share this with others will be missed. Thiemo’s contributions will not be
forgotten. The high standards of his work make it hard to pick up.

WNYLUG  Meeting, 11 February 2009; 6:30 P.M.

Neal Chapman presented use of the Ubuntu 8.10 desktop.

• Discussion of different available desktops/window managers.
• Description of the items available on the Gnome menus.
• Discussion of the different sound systems available (ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio…) and video drivers, and their improving support under Linux.
• Introduction to print systems (CUPS, etc.), control of services, system log, process display, system information, etc., user administration,
• Extensive coverage of the file browser capabilities, including tree views, tab views, setting defaults …
• Discussion of mounting (mapping or connecting) drives, media such as flash drives, and even remote network drives, and discussion of partitioning (including swap/virtual memory space) use of multiple partitions such as a separate /home for your user data
• Extensive look at software management for adding/removing packages from software repositories available on the Internet, including discussion of the type and content of different repositories, and repository management (use of a local repository, manually adding the address to other repositories, etc.)
  • Graphical interface to Synaptic
  • CLI versions; using apt-get to install dselect; trying aptitude
• USB flash drive install; first install and use a partition manager like gparted; delete all partitions manually on the flash drive; then use System>Administration>Create a USB startup disk
• Boot from flash drive to Ubuntu Live
• Discussion of next meeting – continue with the Fedora desktop (Brian Powell) and then CLI command exploration
• Discussion of future meetings, possible video conferencing with other organizations that are inviting us to host WNYLUG meetings at their location…
• The meeting concluded approximately 9:10 PM