LEGLUG.org

This meetings was an informal one (and are its minutes). We discussed future places we could meet at (since Hisham is relocating to Canada), future types of meetings (informal, technical, introductions / topics at universities, or specialized ones). Haytham proposed (again) the idea of an all out "IT Day". The idea is still in development and it should be carried out on our mailing list soon. We also talked about some networking specific technical issues ("invisible caching", performance of large caches, load balancing and high availability). Other discussed topics were either of general or social nature, relating or not relating to OSS and Linux.

This session is basically a tutorial on Virtualization. Here's what went down in June's meeting:

• CodeWarrior listed different virtualization tools like VMWare and Xen.
• Working up a virtualization tool scheme on Macs, has anyone done that before?
• What are the benefits of Virtualization? They definitely include using it for testing purposes.
• The tutorial is essentially about installing Ubuntu on VirtualBox on Windows and then installing rails, as per Makram's request. Here are the steps:

1. After the installation is ready, log in with your username and password.
2. Choose the network for the device you created. Create a bridge between the network of your device and the one you’re using.
3. Do the chicken dance.
4. Once the networks are bridged, you either give the device an IP manually, or use your network's DHCP.
5. When you have connectivity, the first thing you need to do is to update.
6. Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment the universe entry, then run apt-get update one more time. (The download is around 40 minutes on a 128k connection)
7. Moo!
8. Once this is done, rails should be installed.

• Tutorial over, some Q&A.
• A discussion on LCD screens, being the geeky people that we are.

Other than my bacteria infestation, here's what went down during May's meeting:

• CodeWarrior poses the question of how to control billing in ISPs.
• There was a mini discussion on scaling issues with regards to firewalls.
• Cisco's router failover protocol: Does it transfer sessions?
• Why are internet rates so high here in Lebanon when the services are usually craptastic?
• Laurent mentioned some pretty interesting spam incidents.
• What's better, NAT'ing or IPV6?
• Programmers have lots of options when it comes to depositing code: cvs, svn, mercurial..etc.
• How is our group composed; the ratio of programmers to administrators.
• Chady's experience with PHP and Perl.
• A comparison between coding languages/tools such as GTK, Mono, Python, and C#.
• Beryl vs. Compiz.
• Mohammed's experience with Ubuntu.
• Updating packages in a few Linux distributions and suggestions on how it could be done efficiently.
• How various distributions handle wireless support.
• Why don't we have a form of "IT Day" at the LAU? Or any form of event, at least once a year.

There you have it. Until next time! Hopefully I won't have any germs this time around.

The meeting this time took a more general form. Here are the points discussed:

• Some issues pertaining to the group's functionality: meetings, leadership, etc...
• How does the LLUG fit into the picture, or does it? The fact that the LLUG and the LEGLUG are two different groups has been finally acknowledged. With regards to the LLUG's website, in particular its domain name, it has been decided to leave this issue until further notice.
• The current LEGLUG website needs some minor adjustments when it comes to the engine. More importantly however, the content needs a major update. Ideas like having a "Contacts" page, RSS, and adding our blogs have been discussed.
• Again, for the millionth time, the issue of the meeting place came up. The group feels there is no need for renting a place or looking for another unless there is some form of public event or lecture.
• Naim proposed a brilliant project which is based on Drupal's concept; a document management system to be applied in e-government. It is obvious there are many obstacles to overcome, yet the project should not be discarded. Good luck Naim!
• Hisham elaborated a bit on the kind of work he's been doing in Bissau, mainly how he's managing to configure the ISP.

See you next time!

Less than one year later, here are the minutes for the last Linux meeting the group held. Why am I doing this you ask? I'm a bad, bad, BAD, secretary.

• The intellectual property conference at the AUB. Funny thing, it was Microsoft-sponsored.
• Netfilter's limitation(s) in handling thousands of concurrent connections.
• Chady's experience with a particular web application. Yes, I have no clue what it is.
• We took a stroll down memory lane and discussed the history of the group (for the 1,000,000th time)
• How come groups don't survive here? How can we adjust our present form? How can we make things more permanent?
• A detailed guide for traffic shaping should be written. Any volunteers?
• How are big companies building profitable businesses from the open source theory?
• Rani's Linux-teaching experience.
• Application streaming and what methods currently exist to centralize it and control it on Linux / Unix.
• Extending the C language to allow reflection and the impact this would have on both speed and memory usage.
• Moving an application from using RAM as its data layer to a memory bound database that allows for fail-over and better data persistence across the application's lifetime.

Cheers!

Without further ado, here are the main points discussed in the meeting:

• Image recognition through neural networks and artificial intelligence, the topic of Hisham's Master's project.
• Content-based image recognition in Longhorn, Microsoft's to-be-released-in-a-hundred-years-from-now operating system.
• Some socializing amongst the members. I also must say that it was very cold that day.
• A discussion on high-performance computing. Examples are: Cluster Knoppix, Rox, MPI.
• Multi-threaded vs. parallel programming.
• A problem with Apache: It basically doesn't display files worth 2 Gigs of storage. Moreover, these kinds of files are not completely downloaded.
• Again, the issue of having a forum came up. And again, the majority agreed that it's pointless. We do have a mailing list.
• MD5 and battle against file sizes and backup recoveries.
• SHA1, a new way of hashing. (Note: SHAI is not a new kind of mind-altering substances)
• A discussion on BSD, its history, the BSD way of doing things, the licensing, and Hisham's experience with it.
• The Debian System, a book highly recommended by Bassam.
• Examples on famous BSD machines: Yahoo!, Amazon, Wallnut Creek, and several credit card companies.
• Embedded systems.
• A mention of the machine that has ten years of uptime. Wow.

Until next time!

Here are the main points discussed in this meeting:

• What are the substitutes for Matlab and Visual Basic on Linux?
• Impulse C.
• WiFi on Linux and Chady's experience regarding that issue. Kernel 2.6.14 helps with making everything work nicely.
• I had a Toffee-Nut Latte, hehe.
• Inter-process communication. It's a shame that the kernel would be perfect, and the interface absolutely gorgeous, yet the layers in between are horribly implemented.
• A discussion on Ubuntu and its founder.
• D language. Everyone more or less agreed that it's a horrible programming language.
• OpenBSD and NetBSD are not C-99 compliant.
• The similarities between C# and Java (not to be confused with the coffee beans).
• Sky OS: It's not open source and you need to pay a fee to be able to have it. Bassam said that it's not worth it, unless you want to fiddle with it.
• More work needs to be done with regards to memory management on Linux.
• A discussion on zombie machines and what they are. No, they're not covered in green slime.
• The art of spoofing, and miscalenous forms of it.
• Is PSP Linux-compatible? Yes indeedy! The Nintendo DS already has a Linux system on it.
• A little talk on the innovative Steve Jobs.

That's all folks!

This meeting was more of a chilling out session than a technical discussion; pleasant and geeky both at the same time. =)

The topics discussed were as follows, in no particular order:

• The neverending quest of finding a good place to meet. This is going to be a topic of discussion for some more time. =P
• SCSI under Linux, which lead to a discussion about sdparm vs. hdparm.
• How do ISPs limit sessions?
• The agreement on not stressing on introductory topics in the case of a lecture or a presentation.
• Some miscellaneous questions regarding Cyberia's services: Does it have a QoS policy? Is traffic shaping applied on uploads? etc..
• Sarge (stable) vs. Debian (unstable).
• Some side conversations. =P
• The awesomeness of Novell desktop.
• Vista being an OS that needs 10 Gigs in order to be installed.
• OS X on x86 machines. There was a short demo on CodeWarrior's laptop. Everything works prefectly for the exception of iTunes, which needs sse3 or a kernel patch.
• How do downloaded PPC applications work in OS X installed on x86 machines?
• How FireFox still does not display Arabic webpages properly.
• Gnome 2.12's anxiously-awaited release. It's using gtk 2.8, all art is vector-based, making the images crisp.
• nVidia have one of, if not the, most Linux-compatible drivers.
• Google's Summer of Code.
• Why XGL died: There was only one developer who's not going to work on it anymore. Tsk tsk.
• X's problem with having a huge chunk of it dedicated to 2D graphics and it's very difficult for it to move into 3D.
• A discussion about evas and cairo.

Better late than never is what they say. So, in that spirit, I'll tell you a bit about our last meeting.

Date: Saturday July 23 2005
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Cafe DePrague, Hamra (right next to the HSBC bank).

We gathered up at the meeting place, and finally managed to find a table to accomodate everyone. It was a large-ish group this time, and since I don't remember everyone, I won't try to list the present members (we don't wan't anyone being missed out do we?).

Topics we discussed include:

• Linux C Toolchains.
• BSD / Linux kernel comparisions.
• Wifi Security Issues.
• Misc.

Today's meeting was more or less an introduction to what the LEGLUG is all about. We've had a couple of newcomers and a good amount of old members.

What we've discussed is listed in the following points:

• Who's who and why each and every one of us joined the LEGLUG.
• What the LEGLUG is, its purpose, its goals, and what is expected of its members.
• What a coordinator is and the importance of having one.
• A quick look over the ByLaws.
• Why subscribe? i.e. Collecting subscription fees from members who wish to receive freebies, CDs, etc...However, it hasn't been implemented yet.
• The idea of sharing problems and experiences (Technical ones of course, this is not group therapy, heh).
• Hosting HOWTOs written by our members.
• A discussion over whether to use the mailing list or a forum as our means of communication.