[GLLUG] GLLUG Meeting Minutes for June 2, 2005

[Charles Ulrich]

Project Status

MythTV: 

There was one person (sorry, don't recall the name; pipe up if it's you!) 
attempting to get the KnoppMyth box to retrieve TV listings from an Internet 
source. Unfortunately, the machine won the battle that night.

Penguicon Computer Lounge:

There was a lot of discussion regarding what we can do for the Penguicon 
computer lounge next year. As stated before, the goal of this project is to 
turn next year's lounge into a kind of showcase for open source software. The 
first thing that we know we want: a terminal server. For those not familiar 
with terminal servers, applications typically run on the server, and accept 
input and display their output on many thin client displays.

Jeff Lawton, President of GLLUG, has offered to provide hardware for the 
server and possibly some terminals as well. The rest of the terminals (we're 
planning for up to 20 total) and peripherals will be acquired by soliciting 
pseudo-donations of hardware.

Pseudo-donations resemble regular donations, except the donator gets their 
hardware back after Penguicon is over. Starting around January, myself along 
with possibly a few others will be campaigning for hardware pseudo-donations. 
We'll be aiming primarily at those actually attending Penguicon so that they 
can just drop the hardware off at the lounge when they get there and check in 
on it as often as they like. Those who won't be attending the con but would 
still like to donate the use of some stuff can arrange for a drop-off or 
pick-up in the Lansing area.

We suspect that the biggest thing we'll need is decent-quality monitors. At 
first we'll be asking for the use of at least 17-inch CRT monitors or any 
size LCDs. (Laptops are good too.) We'd like to be able to show off the shiny 
modern Linux desktop the best that we can. Let's face it: *nothing* looks 
good on a fuzzy Packard Bell 14-inch CRT with a failing blue electron gun and 
a big "Free Kevin" bumper sticker pasted to the side. If we're getting too 
close to the deadline and not enough good monitors have turned up, THEN we'll 
break down and take what we can get. But there's a good chance that it won't 
have to come to that.

Another part of the project that will officially be in the works is a Linux 
distribution burning station (catchy name needed). The idea is that a user 
can walk up to the machine, put a disc (or multiple discs) into a drive (or 
multiple drives), select their distro, and burn it straight to the CD(s). 
These was discussion on ways to isolate the drives from the user via some 
sort of auto-loading system, but it was decided that this would probably 
prove too complex and failure-prone.

The station itself shouldn't be terribly difficult to set up. The hardest part 
will be writing a simple user interface for selecting and burning the 
distributions or adapting some existing tool for the job. Matt Graham has 
volunteered for this task. I will be aiding him with this, but anyone else 
who is interested is welcome to help out as well.

There are lots of other things we can do in the lounge as well. At Penguicon 
3.0, the computer lounge was the one area of the whole con where space wasn't 
exactly at a premium. Other ideas for demonstrating the power of open source 
are:
 * A small selection of pre-burned live CDs for people who haven't yet gotten 
around to trying Linux
 * A MythTV demo
 * An Asterisk demo
 * An Installfest panel. I think the Metro Detroit LUG has sponsored these in 
previous years... we'll have to get with them to see if they plan to do the 
same for next year and if they want our help and/or use of the lounge.
 * Propaganda. Signs and pamphlets describing the technology that we're 
showing off so that the lounge doesn't just look like an assortment of 
computers thrown together for our own amusement. (Which, to a degree, it will 
be. :P)

Finally, we'll need some staffing. Ideally, we'll want at least two people on 
duty in the lounge at all times. One person to administer to the needs of the 
technology and its users, and another with the sole responsibility of keeping 
an eye on everything to make sure none of the hardware walks away. We may be 
able to offer some compensation for this. Previous Penguicon policy has held 
that people who volunteer for X number of hours (I think six?) were eligible 
for a refund of their Penguicon registration. We'll get more details on this.

Whew. I may have set a record for longest meeting minutes ever. The following 
weeks' minutes will hopefully not be this verbose and will concentrate on 
status updates instead. Part of the reason that they're this lengthy is 
because I won't be able to make it to the next two meetings due to 
short-notice scheduling conflicts and I wanted to get a brain-dump of 
everything in my head out to the list. This is a bummer, since I really 
wanted to be there for this. Maybe someone can use these notes to be an 
acting project lead. Also, we can hopefully schedule a few meetings early 
next year to work on the project and/or form some kind of subcommittee for 
it.

Oh, and there was pizza.

Charles
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