[wplug] The Open Pitt, Issue 8

[Vance Kochenderfer]

                              THE OPEN PITT
      What's cooking in Linux and Open Source in Western Pennsylvania

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Issue 8                        January 2005                   www.wplug.org
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In this issue:
  2004: The Year in Review
  December Roundup
  From the Editors: Who's Supporting You?

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                               Coming Events

Jan. 15: General User Meeting, Topic: User Mode Linux.  10am to 2pm, 1507
         Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Feb. 5:  General User Meeting, Topic: Building and Using RPMs.  10am to
         2pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Feb. 19: Tutorial, Topic: System Administration.  10am to 2pm, 1507
         Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Mar. 5:  General User Meeting.  10am to 2pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU
Mar. 12: Installfest.  10am to 5pm, 1507 Newell-Simon Hall, CMU

                    The public is welcome at all events
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2004: The Year in Review
by Beth Lynn Eicher

     [WPLUG's fearless leader looks back on the year that was. -- ed.]

The year 2004 was a very busy one for WPLUG.

Despite construction on the Carnegie Mellon campus, attendance at events
has been better than ever.  The program schedule was packed with a variety
of topics for fans of Linux and Open Source.  Indeed, the penguin waddles
on.  Following are highlights of last year's excitement!

Cutting Edge
On February 7, Frank Tallarico of Novell visited shortly after its
acquisition of SUSE to explain Novell's Linux strategy.

Lights!  Camera!  Action!
The movie _Revolution OS_, a documentary charting the rise of Linux, Free
Software, and Open Source, was screened at WPLUG.  Raisinets and popcorn
included!

Helping Our Neighbors
In order to support Erie's new Linux Users Group, many WPLUG volunteers
traveled to Erie's first installfest at Mercyhurst College on April 24. 
Since then, veteran WPLUG presenters Bill Moran and Mark Dalrymple have
spoken at ErieLUG meetings.  <http://www.erielug.org/>

Writing History
At the June General User Meeting, David Watson and Bryan Mills of Cobind
released a new version of their Linux distribution, Cobind Desktop 0.2
beta.  <http://cobind.com/>

Making the News
The first issue of WPLUG's monthly newsletter, _The Open Pitt_, was
published on June 5.  In fact you are reading the eighth issue right now!

New User Resources
In addition to hosting six installfests, WPLUG held two tutorials to
review Linux basics.  More advanced users were not left out, with
tutorials on security and kernel configuration.

Party Time
The 3rd annual WPLUG picnic took place in August.  Revelers came out to
Snyder Park in the South Hills for food, fun, and balloon animals.

Penguin Hardware
The mail and web server, named penguin, failed in the beginning of
September due to hardware trouble.  We still hope to recover from the
financial loss which is currently $240.

On the Road
Twenty WPLUGers made the trip out to Columbus for the second annual Ohio
LinuxFest.  Four hundred Linux enthusiasts, including Jon "maddog" Hall,
came from all over to attend.  <http://www.ohiolinux.org/>

Structural Changes
A committee was formed after the November General User Meeting to draft
revisions to the 2001 bylaws.  Part of its mandate is to establish a
formal membership structure.  Keep up on the committee's progress at
<http://mail.pghfree.net/mailman/listinfo/wplug-bylaws_pghfree.net>.

To review all past events, or see what is coming up, visit the meeting
page at <http://www.wplug.org/meetings/>.

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December Roundup

Dec. 4 General User Meeting: Mark Dalrymple of Borkware gave a
presentation on using the DocBook markup language to create structured
documents like the book he recently co-authored, _Core Mac OS X and Unix
Programming_.  While it has an initial learning curve, documents created
using DocBook are are highly flexible and can produce output true to your
intent in numerous forms, from HTML web pages to printed books.  An audio
recording of the presentation is available, as well as a PDF version of
Mark's slides.
Borkware - <http://borkware.com/> 
DocBook - <http://www.wplug.org/meetings/one-meeting?wp_meeting_id=3145>

Dec. 11 Tutorial: Rick Farina and Ted Rodgers covered the ins and outs of
configuring and compiling a Linux kernel.  After explaining why you might
want to do such a thing, and what you need to get started, they got into
details like loadable modules and enabling security features in the
kernel.  They then performed a walk-through of a full kernel
configuration.

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 From the Editors: Who's Supporting You?

On a recent Sunday, I got a phone call from a relative.  Several months
back, I had helped him set up his new Sony PC running Windows XP.  When
trying to log in, he was getting an error: "Entry Point Not Found" and the
name of a DLL file, and a screen empty except for the wallpaper image.  He
figured out how to open the Task Manager, but wasn't really sure what to
do next.

My knowledge of XP is limited, but I was willing to try to help.  After
trying some ideas with few results, I wasn't really sure of the best way
to proceed, and it is tough trying to diagnose things remotely.

I suggested that he look for a rescue CD that came with the system.  He
found a card saying that there wasn't a CD; a rescue could be done by
pressing F10 as the system booted.  Trying this got a menu which basically
only gave the option to wipe out the disk and perform a clean factory
reinstall.  I didn't want him to lose all his data and settings, and have
to reinstall all his applications, so we bailed out of that option. 
Fortunately, he had his old PC networked into his cable modem.  I
suggested a Google search to see what came up.

The next call was more upbeat: "It's working again."  He had found a set
of instructions someone posted online.  Seems that the problem was a
particular hotfix that didn't install properly.  After backing it out, his
desktop came back.  But the instructions had a second step; removing
Service Pack 2 and rebooting the PC.  At the same time he was confronted
with a shiny blinking Windows Update notification icon.  My opinion was
don't mess with success--the instructions got him this far, and he should
follow them to the end.  I also have an inherent distrust of blinking
shiny things.  But he felt that Microsoft ought to know what's best for a
Windows system, and wanted to try the update.  I didn't protest too
strongly, figuring at worst he'd have to back out the hotfix again.

Bad idea.  After updating and rebooting, the PC was back at its prior
state: wallpaper with no Start Menu, and the "Entry Point" error.  Even
worse, when trying to repeat the procedure that worked before, the system
seemed to think that the hotfix was still installed, but all attempts to
remove it failed.  At this point, he was considering just shutting the
thing off for two weeks until I'd be back in his area.  I felt that he
could probably download and burn something like SystemRescueCd at work and
save his files off the hard drive.  So even if he had to do a clean
reinstall, it would not be a disaster.  I also suggested that he might
want to call Sony support to see if they had any ideas.

We hung up and I went out for an afternoon hike.  When I returned, there
was a message on my answering machine that didn't sound good.  I got the
full story when I called.  He had spoken with Microsoft support, which
basically tried to walk him through the same set of instructions he had
downloaded before.  When that didn't work, they fobbed him off to Sony
technical support, indicating that Sony could help him do a restore
without losing his files.  The Sony advice was simple: "Do the reinstall. 
No, there is no possible way to save your files and settings.  Have a nice
day."

At this point he was in the process of reloading all his applications onto
his freshly-wiped system, and I helped him enter his e-mail settings into
Netscape.

Afterward, I reflected a bit on the situation.  Sony and Microsoft are two
of the world's largest corporations, both with truckloads of brilliant
programmers.  He gave them over a thousand dollars for this PC.  Why
shouldn't he be able to rely on them more than a relative who's somewhat
handy with computers or some random guy posting instructions on the
Internet?  The sad truth is he can't.  He was lied to twice--first by the
Microsoft notification that tempted him to try to install an update, and
second by the Sony guy who told him that there was no way of recovering
his data before doing a fresh reinstall.

Proprietary software companies try to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt
about support for Open Source software.  But in truth, their support only
has to be just good enough to sell a box of software.  To them, support is
a cost, something to avoid.  Companies selling Open Source (at least the
successful ones) are big on support--they have to be when the competition
has access to the same code.

Most of all, proprietary software can't match the level of user-to-user
support which exists with most Open Source and Free Software.  When it
comes right down to it, *users* are the ones with the most at stake.  A
software package worth only a few hundred dollars in licensing fees to the
publisher can cost the user a thousand times that in lost business and
data if it malfunctions.  Who's going to be more motivated to support it?
                                                      --Vance Kochenderfer

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The Open Pitt is published by the Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group
<http://www.wplug.org/top/>

Editors: Elwin Green, Vance Kochenderfer

Copyright 2005 Western Pennsylvania Linux Users Group.  Any article in
this newsletter may be reprinted elsewhere in any medium, provided it is
not changed and attribution is given to the author and WPLUG.