Linux

Our group is for the beginner, a regular user or an advanced user of Linux. Our topics are usually short and wide-ranging leaving lots of time for discussion and/or practice. We deal with installing and maintaining the Linux operating system along with its related software. Our topics also may be of interest to Apple or Windows computer users.

Contact: Dave Mawdsley. The Linux SIG meets on the 3rd Wednesday of the month at 7:30pm at the DACS Resource Center.

Yahoo! Group: linux_dacs

DACS Community Forum: http://forum.dacs.org/

News and Notes

Jim Ritterbusch, Drew Kwashnak and I made presentations at this session.  Since we all had computers at the meeting, the topics allowed for active learning and practice with some of the items discussed.  (A loaner laptop supporting Ubuntu was available for this meeting and was used.)

Jim demonstrated the uses and abuses of Bash history at the command-line interface.  Methods of returning to earlier commands, searching for strings in previous commands and special execution strategies were shown.  Cautions were indicated particularly when commands affect installed software or the contents of folders in superuser mode as “Undo” isn’t available if mistakes are made.

Drew demonstrated the GNOME Shell 3.x user experience in the distribution Ubuntu 11.10--at this point in its on-going development. GNOME Shell provides basic functions such as switching to windows and launching applications.  The Shell looks and behaves the same across differing Linux distributions such as Fedora and Ubuntu and has already advanced to a very useful working stage.  (Hopefully the developers will continue to improve the features and remove the remaining problems.)

My presentation centered on understanding how layers work using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).  Layers in this sense are like sheets of glass with images on each.  Practice centered on manipulating the layer order and selecting a layer to be the default.  Those practicing the image procedures managed to properly fit an oversized hat onto a smaller Tux penguin.  The concept of Alpha Channels was briefly introduced and used.

We invite new members to our sessions which are geared for the beginner, intermediate or advanced user.  Topics and discussions are motivated by those attending and also cover hardware and software problems that members may have with their computers.

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Most of our regular attendees bring their own laptop or netbook so we plan starting in February, 2012 to have one laptop or tower available for a person without a computer who would like to try using one already configured with Linux.

Dave Mawdsley
DACS Linux SIG Leader