LUG August Meeting

August's LUG (Linux Users Group) meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, August 9th at the Belle View Apartments (for directions see

LUG Location). This time they will discuss this:

Virtualbox: Run Anything Anywhere
Presenter: Marwan Al-Sabbagh
Presentation Type: Technical Presentation
Summary: Virtualbox is open source software that let's you run Linux in Windows or Mac, and Windows in Linux. It's very mature and easy to use.
Installation: Overview of Windows and Linux installation
Virtual OS Setup: Basic installation steps
Virtual Disk Manager: Creating Hard disk, CD Images
Clipboard Setup: Bi-directional clipboard setup
Network Setup: Basic NAT, and more advanced host interface
Shared Folders Setup and accessing them
Advanced Discussion: Portable virtual machines, using existing partitions, snapshots, USB Support

Support the open source community. Let's see you there!

Linux Users Group (LUG) March Meeting

The next LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, March 8th at the Belle View Apartments (for directions see LUG Location). the topic will be as follows. Please confirm if you can attend. Look forward to seeing you there.

LTSP Term 1000 PXE: Thin Client Madness

• Presenter: Hasan Al-Eid

• Presentation Type: Technical Presentation

• Summary: The LTSP Term 1000 PXE is an amazing 50BD PC. It's ideally suited as a thin client that boots it's OS off the network. Some of the machines specs are as follows:

  • CPU: Vortex86 SoC-200MHz (Fanless, x86 compatable)

  • Memory: 128MB SDRAM onboard

  • Display: 1280 x 1024 / up to 85 Hz/ 32 Bit

  • for more detailed specs

I'm inviting you to join in. If your new to Linux, want to know more about it or been using it for years, please come on in.

LUG: The ASUS eee PC notebook

I posted before about the February Linux Users Group (LUG) gathering in February the 9th. The discussion was about the Asus eee PC.
for those who do not know, the eee PC is an amazing sub-notebook. It has a screen of 7 inches only, is under a kilo (900 grams) and costs BD 150, only! I'm not kidding!
No, this is not like Windows mobile or some limited OS. It has a fully functioning Linux Distro (Xandros). I mean fully working because you can browse the net, check email, write letters, watch movies and everything else just like a home PC. Marwan, the presenter and proud owner, did an amazing job familirizing everyone with the machine. The eee PC is damn sexy for sure. It's perfect as a cafe laptop, for watching movies, travel PC, presentation (can be hooked to a projector) a cheap student laptop for lectures (instead of an actual notebook) or even a kids first laptop.
It has an easy interface which is neat and an advanced interface that looks like a normal Linux distro.
I took tones of pictures and videos and wanted to make my own video, then I found this video online which did a great job summerizing it.
You can find it on Amazon, click the banner on the right. I expect someone to buy it for me on my birthday (cough, 30th April, cough).

Linux Users Group (LUG) Feb. Meeting

The Bahraini LUG is meeting up on Saturday, 9th of February at 3:30 PM. Some bloggers expressed interest in learning this new "Linux" thing. I urge you all to come, if only to blog about it.

In each meeting, a certain topic is discussed. For February, they'll speak about this:

Colinux: Run Linux on Windows

• Presenter: Marwan Al-Sabbagh
  
• Presentation Type: Technical Presentation
  
• Summary: coLinux, is software which allows Microsoft Windows and the Linux kernel to run simultaneously in parallel on the same machine.

The meeting will be at the Bell view apartments in Exhibition avenues. Look at the map or visit the LUG's page here for directions.
Laptops are most welcome!

I Installed Ubuntu 7.04

I just installed Ubuntu 7.04 on my desktop

My PC will not handle Vista, I tried. It takes minutes to get "my documents" to open.

But this?

It simply rocks!

My PC is lighter and faster (boot up, opening files, starting programs). It even performs better than XP which I was using!
The new desktop effects are amazing, think vista's aero style. Just look at this:


Open office is lighter than MS office, produces smaller files than the latter and can read / write ms office files.

Installing programs is easier now. You have synoptic which is like add / remove programmes. Tick on the ones you want and it will install (a list of all Linux programmes are downloadable and refreshed every time)

Wine will enable you to run win exe's (including games)

you will mostly need no drivers as Ubuntu will take care of it, in the off chance, use ndiswrapper to use the windows driver.

It even migrated my windows account (I have a dual boot) and I don't feel like I'm missing anything at all!

I am really impressed with this release. I strongly suggest that you download the cd, it has a live cd session, just boot from cd and you have a full working Ubuntu (great as a rescue CD BTW) and if you like it you can click the (install) button.

Seriously, try it out and tell me what you think.