Helping Bridge the Gap for New Linux Users!

Ubuntu Advocacy and Open Source Software, and my adventures pursuing both!

At the tail end of 2009 I was speaking with Zoopster, and decided it was time to start a Space Coast Meet-up similar to his Tampa Linux & OSS  Meet-up that he established. The main goals for this group are to advocate the use of Free Linux & Open Source Software and to help other newcomers with struggles they experience while learning to use, and potentially switch over to using Linux. I noticed several people seeking to find other Linux and Open Source Software users in nearby towns and figured that it only made sense to try and broaden the scope a bit to include those users. So far 17 members have joined (it’s 20 total, but I am excluding myself and the other organisers). we had a first meet-up, Lupine was gracious enough to host it.

I am hoping to get everyone involved more with contributing whenever possible to their favourite projects, and hope to to do some social events, and genuinely have fun with it! Wish us luck!

Easy way from the beginning:

Open synaptic: System –> Administration –> Synaptic Package Manager. Search for hp, locate “hplip-cups” right click, and “Mark for Installation”. Hit apply. Once finished, In synaptic find the hplip-gui, again “Mark for Installation”. Once completed you should be able to go to System –> Preferences –> and you should see HP Toolbox.

If  you had only installed the hplip-gui, you may have received this message after opening the HP Toolbox and attempting to add your printer:

It will stll add your printer, but you will be missing the scan/fax ability as seen below:

If this is the case, re-open Synaptic, search for hp, and install hplip-cups (there is nothing in the package description about this package having anything to do with faxing or the HP-Fax-hpcups.ppd.gz). This will add the necessary driver. If HP Toolbox is running  you will notice a blue HP button on your upper-right gnome-panel see image below:

Right click on it, and Open Device Manager. Select Device –> Setup Device, and go through re-discovering your same printer device. You should now be able to see the HP your model (Fax), it will look like below:

Yesterday, inspired by Lupine, I decided to upgrade my Dell XPS 1730 to 64-bit Ubuntu Desktop. Even though I have heard a couple of people try to say that it wouldn’t be a great move. I am happy to report that I haven’t had any major issues at all, that I have been able to notice. Only truly minor things. I have added everything that I usually add on a 32-bit desktop and everything seems to just work. I have added most of Lupine’s Suggested PPA’s and have had great results. Performance to me seems to have improved. I will add more info on the good things that I find under 64-bit.

This is a test of a pretty cool plugin, not sure if it will work with the latest version of Wordpress.

Day one was great! It began with the 1st Morning plenary session, where Jono kicked off with his Welcome Session where he showed some slides that help set the mood for the week. Pictures are shown of LoCo’s as wells as past UDS events, and I really think that the presentation helps get those contributors that are attending UDS for the first time up to speed. Mark Shuttleworth was asked to come up and give his vision heading towards Lucid Lynx.

Mark basically shared that there are 2 main things we need to focus on moving towards Lucid, Maintainability and Upgrades.

There are two main promises for Long Term Supported Releases: They will be maintained for 5 years Server, 3 years on the Desktop, and Upgrades will be successful from Past LTS as well as from Karmic. So this is very important to keep in mind when doing all of the testing and developing for Lucid Lynx.

For the rest of the day, here is pretty much the tracks that I attended. There were some really good simultaneous tracks, and for those I planned to just check out the Gobby documents or Videos if the were recorded.

• LoCo Directory Development
• Enable geoclue where available in GNOME
• LoCo Council Lucid Plans
• Lunch Plenary Sessions: How to Run a Good Session Software Center Roadmap The Opportunistic Programmer Part I The Opportunistic Programmer Part II
• Efficient bug handling workflow/management
• Reviving and Improving Community Marketing
• LoCo Directory Development (Events)

The sessions were great, and many good ideas were brought out of the diverse contributors present.

Any comments or suggestions??

The Florida Team held a family friendly cook-out in honor of both the Florida Teams 2nd Anniversary (as an approved LoCo), and the recent Release of Karmic Koala 9.10. We had an excellent turn-out. A lot of great ideas for future events, and advocacy were discussed. Families also got a chance to get to know each other, and some new friendships have been formed. Michelle and Michael Hall, were gracious hosts, and people travelled from as far as Miami and Tallahassee to join in this awesome event. I would personally like to thank everyone for coming, all of you are the reason that we have a great LoCo!!! Click the photo below to visit the Picasa Online Album for this event.

The long anticipated Orlando Florida Linux Show finally arrived on October 24th at the Radisson Resort Orlando-Celebration. I would have to say that this was the best Florida Linux Show ever! I would wager there were close to 500- 600 attendees and the speaker sessions were incredible.

There were some really unique things that occurred that I feel really helped out in attendance, for example:

• The other Florida Linux Show’s were held in Jacksonville, and both of them were on a Monday. This show was on a Saturday, which to me was a great plus!
• This show was held in Orlando which is central to the state (this permitted many to travel to the venue within 3 – 4 hours tops). That combined with modest room rates was a win!
• Awesome Staff including the addition of 4 Tux Masters, which was a very necessary role.
• Very good prizes and nice awards. 62 books, 8 USB thumb drives, 2 us100s, one Sheevaplug, and two netbooks were given away in a free drawing.
  

The only drawback that I have heard mentioned was the venue was a little too small for four sessions and the amount of people that were present.

Cloud Computing

Thanks to everyone that attended Florida Linux Show, and we look forward to next year! For more pictures of the show click here!

On Friday October 15th, approximately 10 Florida Team Members arrived up at Tu Tu Tangos in Orlando to meet up with Nicolas Valcarel Scerpella for some eatz and libations. Nicolas was up vacation in Orlando with his family and was hitting all of the theme parks. He shared with us that his family was having a dynamite time. The food was really good and the atmosphere was great. The prices were a bit steep, but this location was directly on International Dr., which should be expected.

Nicolas and the Florida Local Team

A couple of more pictures can be found here! Thanks for coming out Nicolas and see you in Dallas!

Last night, crashsystems and I played around with Empathy and it’s sharing desktop capabilities. I really thought that it was a great step towards easily being able to help newer users when they are stuck. There was a slight lag over the Web, but it was deinitely usable! Performance should be awesome within a LAN. I was running Karmic Beta.