Attended my first ECLUG (Eau Claire Linux User Group) today and it was very enjoyable. ECLUG is a group for people in the Eau Claire area that are into Linux and open source. Check out the website for a little more information on the group.: http://eclug.homelinux.org/ There ended up being 9 people at the meeting tonight all snuggled together into the back room at the Cafe 420 down town Eau Claire. The room worked fine as it has a projector to hook a laptop up for easy display of items that are talked about.
The meeting started off with two minute introductions where you got to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your past week or so. I stated my name and that I was the owner of TCTEKS as well as that my week mostly consists of fixing hundreds of other peoples computers (I love my job). This is a very good way to start off the meeting as in addition to me there was a few other new people attending.
After the introductions it broke down into random chatting about different subject that people brought up such as podcasts, network, and Linux of course. This lasted for a good 10 - 20 minutes and was very interesting as everyone is very into technology and Linux.
Once the chatting slowed down then we got into the meat of the meeting (60 minutes+) which is going over the weekly newsletter which can be found on the website. This was very interesting and had a wide range of targeted topics such as Gnome 2.2 now available, Don’t trust Microsoft, Netbeans, Hulu.com, etc… The discussion was very lively, spirited, and involved everyone.
After the newsletter discussion is over the meeting once again broke down into random chatting about technology subjects, Many based on what we just talked about in the newsletter as well as many others such as Cantenas, dd-wrt, etc… This goes on until one at a time people started leaving with the meeting coming to a close around 9:15pm.
Overall this was a very positive meeting and I will definitely be making this a weekly event on my calendar. Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions as well as feel free to join the meeting next week as its a very welcoming atmosphere.
Want to keep more in touch with TCTEKS as well as myself? I now have a Twitter page and will be posting small tidbits throughout the day. For those of you that do not know what twitter is it is basically a place to post whats happening, whats on your mind, etc within 140 characters.
You can check out my page at: http://twitter.com/TheTodd
Sign up if you like and feel free to follow me as well. Looking forward to sharing a little twitter with you.
I am currently writing this blog on a Windows Vista computer because being a computer store we need to learn the new interface. After a few months of using it I can safely say stay away if you can, as the over all experience for us has not been good.First off lets start with the interface which is the only thing that I think Microsoft partially got right. I have come to really like the new start menu as well as the control panel and other little improvements. The only down falls of the interface that I have found is the lack of the ability to see a thumbnail of your images in the Vista Home Premium which seems to be the most popular to install on new computers. This was a basic feature in Windows XP.
What I do not like about the interface is that if you leave it at its automagically configured settings then it is painfully slow. Unless your computer is running 2GB’s of RAM (ours is running 1GB) then it just seems to slow to a crawl and lets not forget the random lockups. If you turn off all the graphical enhancements then it really speeds up and is mostly usable.
Some other issues are the constant barrage of pop-ups asking are you sure you want to do this? and then after say ok it asks again are you really sure? Just to delete an icon it takes three clicks and two pop-ups which is just crazy. I know this is in the name of security but take a look at Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X if you want to see a good handle on security. Security can be attained while not being completely annoying.
So all that talk brings me to the point of trying to stay away from Vista if at all possible. I know Microsoft is going to be and currently is pushing Vista on people and XP machines are becoming hard to find but I would search high and low for them if you have the time. Currently we have all XP machines (new and used) and are staying away from Vista as long as possible. This is also a good time to try out Ubuntu Linux (which has come a long way and is a very viable option) or give Mac OS X a shot which is a proven alternative to windows.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
We finally have our IPCOP box setup and running as our Firewall / Router. So far it has been working great as it allows us to have a true hardware firewall basically for free.
If your not sure what IPCOP is check out: http://ipcop.org/index.php?module=pnWikka&tag=IPCopMissionStatement
We have also added Update Accelerator to the IPCOP box which allows us to cache Windows Updates locally for future windows updates. Check it out: http://www.advproxy.net/update-accelerator/
So far it has been working great accept for it having an issue with windows genuine advantage. Working on finding a fix for this so hopefully it will be working in the near future.
