MUUG Monthly Meetings for 1996-97
Please note our new (hopefully permanent) meeting location.
This month, we'll be meeting at IBM Canada's offices in the TD Centre,
at the corner of Portage and Main. We'll gather in the lobby on the main
floor - please try to be there by about 7:15 PM. Steve Moffat will then take
us up to the meeting room just before the meeting starts at 7:30.
Don't be late, or you may not get in.
Parking is available either in the parkade behind the TD building, off
Albert Street, or in the ground level lot just north of the TD building.
Entrance to the lot is from Albert Street, behind the parkade. Either way,
parking is a $1.25 flat rate for the evening. You purchase your ticket from
a dispenser, so make sure you've got exact change - a loonie and a quarter,
or 5 quarters.
A small but enthusiastic group of people showed up for our September meeting,
including a few new faces.
Topics for discussion at the meeting included
tentative plans for future meeting,
an update on the status of the MUUG board,
Linux and distributions status update,
new CD-ROMs
(including SSC's new, very cheap LUG/nut 4 CD, of which we have 10 on order).
The round-table itself included questions about DNS setup,
sendmail configuration, PPP setup between Linux and Windows '95,
and many other technical topics.
The meeting topic for tonight was Wine, a Microsoft Windows emulator for Linux.
Kevin McGregor walked through the installation procedure,
configuration tuning, and ran a few simple demos of Windows applications.
The consensus seems to be that this is a worthwhile project, and could
potentially lead to a very useful product, but that it is still very much
at the experimental stage. Even some of the simple MS Windows applets
did not run correctly. However, if work continues on the Wine project at
the current rate, the end result could be very nice. The project is ambitious
too, in that they will support not only Windows 3.1 emulation, but also
Windows 95 and Windows NT.
Those of you who signed up for a copy of the LUG/nut CD in September were
able to pick up your copy for $11. For those of you who missed out on this,
sorry, but all copies are accounted for. The group did keep a library copy,
which can be loaned out for short-term use. We'll also place another order
if there is sufficient interest.
The meeting began, as usual, with our round table discussion. Topics
covered included DNS configuration, Linux setup, and much more.
After the break, John Cormie and Alex Demko, of Plexxus Interactive,
were on hand to give a live demonstration of the Caldera Desktop for
Linux, and answer questions about it. In addition to the Desktop
software itself, they also talked about some of the nifty system
administration tools for X that come with Red Hat Linux (part of the
Desktop bundle). They also showed the WordPerfect Office software for
Linux, which is available separately from Caldera.
Arne Grimstrup, our newest MUUG board member, demonstrated
Applixware for Red Hat Linux,
an office suite which includes word processing,
presentation graphics, spreadsheet, e-mail software, and a script-based
application builder. Arne's presentation, which included slides made using
presentation graphics program, gave us a good idea of the packages strengths
and weaknesses.
This package was the grand-prize for our members-only draw.
MUUG members were eligible to win the following prizes:
We also had a door-prize draw, where all attendees were eligible,
regardless of membership status, to win the following prizes:
- Yggdrasil's Linux Internet Archives, Winter '97 (an 8 CD set!),
- Yggdrasil's Linux Bible, 3rd edition.
Congratulations to all our winners:
Harry Lakser, Michael Doob, John Schulz, Doug Shewfelt, and Dan Keizer.
Doug Jackson, of The Northwest Company, showed us what's involved
in installing Red Hat 4.0 onto a PC. The installation was done from
a CD included in Yggdrasil's Linux Internet Archives. Some of the main
features of Red Hat 4.0 were discussed and/or demonstrated.
Gilbert Detillieux was also on hand, to discuss his experience with
setting up Red Hat 4.0 in a networked environment, customizing init scripts
and PCMCIA setup, and building a custom kernel with loadable modules.
Peter Graham, of the University of Manitoba's Computer Science department,
and MUUG board member Arne Grimstrup demonstrated various tools and
techniques for locating information, people, or software on the Internet.
This will include Web search engines, DejaNews, Netfind, Archie, Gopher,
Hytelnet, and WAIS. This was followed by a short presentation on tips
for effective searching, from a librarian's perspective, by Oliver Bernuetz.
March 11, 1997: UNIX and Internet Security Round Table
With the current popularity of the Internet, security issues are becoming
increasingly important. This month featured a round table discussion on
security as it applies to UNIX and the Internet. Discussion was lively,
and a lot of the current Internet attacks were mentioned, as well as solutions
and work-arounds for some of these.
A small but enthusiastic group of people braved the weather to come to the
meeting, including a couple new faces.
Topics for discussion at the meeting included
wiring a network at home, how to get a registered network number, differences
between classes of IP addresses, SMB-based file services, Linux on platforms
other than Intel, and many others.
Ben Li, from the Red River Community College, gave a presentation
on Java. This was a brief introduction to the Java language, including
how to create applets and applications, similarities and differences between
the two, and a demonstration of these. Ben also talked about some of the
tools that are available for helping in the creation of Java programs.
Here's a list of Java-related web sites that Ben recommends:
It might also be of interest to some that an excellent
tutorial
is available (in HTML form) from the JavaSoft site.
June 10, 1997: PC Interconnectivity with Linux
Linux networking is not limited to TCP/IP and the common services you find
on most UNIX boxes. It also provides lots of client and server side support
for interconnectivity with PC networks, such as Netware and SMB-based networks
(as used by MS LAN Manager, Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95 and NT).
This month, we took a look at Linux's support for these, and how Linux
can play a role in a predominantly PC network environment.
Kevin McGregor, of the Manitoba Department of Natural Resources, and
Gilbert Detillieux, of the University of Manitoba,
demonstrated connecting Windows to Linux using the Samba file server,
connecting Linux to a NetWare server as a client using ncpfs,
and using Linux as a client and server at the same time.
Kevin also talked about Intranet services with this configuration, and
demonstrated both the Apache web server under Linux,
and the web server that is part of Novell's IntraNetWare package.
We also had a draw for a copy of the new
Applixware 4.3 for Linux,
courtesy of Red Hat Software, and BRU (Backup & Restore Utility), courtesy of
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc.
and SSC, as well as a couple recent copies of
SSC's Linux Journal.
Winners were Tim Lavoie, Arne Grimstrup, Kevin McGregor, and Gilbert Detillieux.
July 1997: No meeting this month
August 1997: No meeting this month
Go to the MUUG Home Page.