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Saturday, July 5, 2008 7:45 PM CST

The malu mailing list is back up and working! Happy Independence Day everyone!

April ’06 Meeting Notes

Monday, April 17, 2006 7:47 PM CST

Following people attended the April Meeting:

Douglas Stanley Jr., Wes Wilkerson (AUB), Peyton Mars, Mike Liang, Derek Anderson, Henry McBride (BALU), Jason Chuang, Timothy Waters, and "Col." Keith Corum

Roll was taken, with 9 people in attendance, including visitors from Auburn (Wes Wilkerson) and Birmingham (Henry McBride). Henry is a member of BALU, and came to the meeting to discuss the future of the Alabama Linux Fest.

Derek opened the meeting with a brief description of the topic. Henry McBride introduced himself and his purpose for visiting (ALF).

A brief discussion of operating system trends began, concluding with the benefits of the OSS model vs. proprietary models.

Derek began the presentation on next generation graphics for Linux. He noted the presentation will be made available on line via Malu's website. Some highlights:

• Background of X graphics capabilities, and advances in X
• A description of some of the terminology and technologies involved with graphics rendering, including alpha compositing, anti-aliasing, and X Render.
• Cairo and the libraries was discussed; 2D drawing, vector based graphics, and the GTK based API were discussed.
• A brief history of graphics in computing is given, starting with the postscript language and the impact on computer printing in the 80s.
• Glitz and it's libraries were discussed, and the relationship to Cairo and OpenGL.
• XGL was briefly discussed.
• Brief descriptions of how advanced graphics in other OS's, namely Apple's and Microsoft's, are handled.

This concluded the graphics presentation.

Discussions on the future of ALF were led by Doug and Henry McBride

• Where is the event to be held? Who will have a say in it?
• How will those involved communicate?
• What about a website?

It was decided that a steering committee would be serve the purpose of governance and management of ALF. Volunteers from all Lugs in the state are invited to volunteer. Furthermore, it was determined that a mailing list is the best way to go for initial communication between interested parties, with an IRC channel soon to follow.

After determining that the ALF website was in limbo, Derek volunteered to register the domain. While most communication will take place in a collaborative manner online, quarterly in-person meetings will also take place to better organize the event. Some brief discussion on who to invite took place, with a resolution to further discuss the fine points of ALF management in the new online framework.

Lastly, a request was made for Malu to tape meetings and make them available online. Utilizing Peyton's media expertise, Malu has resolved to do this in the future.

February ’06 Meeting Notes

Tuesday, February 28, 2006 4:58 PM CST

18th February meeting began with a sign-in, with the following attendees:

Doug Stanley, Tim Brucke, Jason Wohlford, Keith Corum, Mark Redden, Derek Anderson, Peyton Mars, Mark Vieira, John Gaughn, and Kevin Gruan.

Elections were held; Doug Stanley was nominated and elected President. Doug debated the need for a Vice President's position. Derek Anderson argued on the usefulness of the position and was nominated for, and elected to, the VP position. The position of Event Coordinator and Public Relations Officer was combined into a single office. Peyton Mars was nominated and elected to the position. Jason Wohlford volunteered for treasury duties, in addition to his ongoing webmaster duties.

The status of the MALU domain and website was discussed. Jason informed the group that hosting was at the current time of no cost, hosted at a third party business he's affiliated with. Doug donated 5 dollars for registration expenses, as Jason paid for those costs out of pocket.

The Alabama LUGfest was the next topic. It was acknowledged that the other participating state lugs wished for Montgomery to be the permanent host. The significant workload this entails was discussed at length. It was agreed that rather than let the LUGfest expire into history, that MALU would permanently take up hosting duties. As the traditional date for the event has passed this year, it was decided to concentrate on the 2007 event, with the express desire that all future events live up to the quality of past events. It was decided that proper preparation for such an event would take time and money. Possible speakers and topics were discussed. A movement was made to invite Mark Spencer, a speaker at the first LUGfest. At Doug's suggestion of inviting a military speaker on issues of interest to lugs, skepticism was raised that a proper speaker could be found in the Maxwell Gunter chain of command. It was suggested that some speakers left during the FBI speaker's turn at last years event. It was resolved to continue to look for possible speakers. A Mr. Carlysle at Huntingdon College was suggested. It was also resolved that the event be kept at it's traditional date, in late January or early February.

The next topic was on future MALU meetings topics. Initially, no ideas were presented, until Derek Anderson volunteered to speak at the next meeting. Future topics still must be determined. Doug brought up the issue of gaming on Linux, specifically with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The suggestion was made that Doug do a topic on Linux gaming in the future.

The issue of a MALU-branded live CD was briefly discussed, though not at length, as Mike Liang has expressed interest in being the primary author of the work, and was not present at the meeting.

A "get to know you" discussion was began, asking what distros members currently used, and what they did in their professional lives (and where).

January ’06 Meeting Notes

Wednesday, February 8, 2006 7:57 PM CST

Meeting notes originally posted by Peyton Mars on the malu list.

Jason Wohlford has been made Treasurer. I've managed to come up with about $7 to contribute to the cause. To date, MALU funds total: $7

Mike Liang has been tasked with creating MALU's Official Linux Distro. We're pretty sure it will be Knoppix-related. More to come...

The suggestion made in the past to move from a Linux-Only User Group to a more universal Open-Source User Group was made official. MALU: Same name, greater flexibility...

We attempted to hold MALU Officer Elections. The hold was resisted (no president, but possibly three Vice-Presidents). Elections will continue next meeting.

The attending group determined that the Internet Explorer icon should be removed from the desktop of the presentation machine in the meeting room. The icon was replaced with one for Firefox and the operation deemed a success.

ALF 2006 was mentioned, twice, I believe. Everyone commented that last year's LUGfest will be a tough act to follow.

Timmy handed out copies of Ubuntu to those who wanted one. I managed to forget to ask for one. He then gave a brief demonstration of Metisse on his notebook.

That's about it. Several of us went to IHOP to discuss the meeting over all-you-can-eat pancakes.

For interested parties, the February 18th meeting will be held in the same place, Room 218 in the AUM School of Business.

2006 Meeting

Wednesday, January 24, 2006 5:24 PM CST

We're holding our first meeting of the year on Saturday, January 28th, 1 p.m. at the AUM School of Business in Room 218. This is on the second floor in the southeast corner. Please come and bring a friend. Thanks to Peyton Mars for hosting us at AUM and to Mike Liang for rattling the cages.

Topic: What topic!

website changes

Thursday, September 14, 2005 6:55 PM CST

The new version of the website is now up and running. The website is released under the GNU GPL, so feel free to use the source.

organizational meeting

Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:39 PM CST

For the April meeting, we pretty much turned the whole thing into an organizational meeting so that we could map out what we want to do for the next few months. Overall, it was a great success and we came up with some good ideas and even a few new projects to work on. To summarize:

1. Coffee Shop meetings: We want to keep them, but not everybody can make it on Wednesday nights. The solution is to start rotating them between Tuesday and Wednesday nights every other week. We will start this next week, when we have our first Tuesday night CSM.
2. Monthly meeting topics for the next 3 months: May will be Game Cube Linux by Peyton Mars, June will be Embedded Linux by John Gaughan, and July will be the first "Mongomery Linux Showcase". The idea is pretty much an installfest on crack. More on this later.
3. The new monthly meeting place has been narrowed down to either AUM or TSUM facilities. We have multiple members that have contacts at both, since that is a requirement. We are very close to confirming the TSUM facility at the Rosa Parks museum.
4. We'll be doing a membership drive leading up to the MLS event. Volunteers to make and hand out flyers are needed.
5. We're going to be creating a Malu Live CD. This will contain a nice desktop distro like Knoppix, user documentation, vital stats for the group, and plenty of Malu pimpage.
6. The Malu Gamer's League has been created. Doug Stanley will be standing in as our interim Game Master. We'll be setting up a dedicated game server for Malu only matches, or possibly create a Malu team or "clan" to compete against others. The Game master will also organize LAN parties. Stay tuned for the games and times to be announced in this space.

coffee shop meetings

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 8:52 AM CST

Coffee shop meetings are a new type of meeting that we're trying out. There's no set agenda, and it's intended to be an open forum type of meeting. People are welcome to ask questions about things they're having issues with, break off into subgroups with common interests, or just sit and drink coffee and surf on the free wifi (and perhaps chime in from time to time).

The meetings will alternate between Tuesday and Wednesday, starting at around 5 or 6pm. The idea is just to show up after you get off work (for those of us that are desk slaves). The location is Panera bread on the eastern blvd. and our backup location is Cafe Louisa in Old Cloverdale.