Did You Miss the May Meeting?

Posted on 2 May, 2012 by Dave Harding

Standing-Room Only at The May Meeting

If you did, then you missed out on one of the best attended meetings that we’ve had for some time.

Once again, Mustard provided us with an excellent venue for our monthly meeting. It seems that a word or two in the right ear really brings people out. Not only have we had recent publicity in thanks to Les Pounder, in Linux Format Magazine, but Dan Lynch and Fabian Scherschel also gave us a mention on the Linux Outlaws Podcast.

As you can see from the pictures which we have on G+, after we drove out Marion’s tea-time diners, and took over the the cafe, it eventually became standing room only. Thanks to everyone that came along, and we hope that everything came up to your expectations.

Posted in Meetings | 2 Comments

JUNE MEETING

Posted on 29 April, 2012 by Dave Harding

It appears that the 1st Tuesday of June the 5th, is a public holiday, in recognition of someone’s long service.

As it is a long weekend, and many people are going away, it has been suggested that we postpone our meeting that month until the following Tuesday, the 12th June.

What do you think?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hull LUG in Linux Format Magazine

Posted on 28 April, 2012 by Dave Harding

There’s always a good reason to buy Linux Format magazine, and never more so this month (LXF158 June2012), as once again there’s a little write up about us:

Hull LUG has spent a nomadic winter, wandering between the licensed hostelries of Hull trying to find a home that can offer the elusive combination of good food, good beer and free wifi. Due to an anomaly in the telephone network, finding a location that meets all three criteria in Hull is akin to finding the Holy Grail.

However after many long cold nights of eating, drinking and struggling with internet tethered from mobile phones, a new home has been found: Mustard Café Bar on Princes Avenue. As before, we meet on the 1st Tuesday of each month from 8pm. Now their chatter and techie playing is fueled by Mustard’s extensive selection of home-made pies, and other delicacies. Once the plates have been tidied away, the tech comes out and the geekery goes on till closing time.

A massive thanks to Les Pounder (@biglesp on Twitter) who compiles the Linux User Group page in Linux Format. It’s also worth noting that our friends at Lincoln LUG have also received a mention in the ‘Find and Join a LUG’ column.

Linux Format (LXF158) is on sale now, I picked up my copy this morning from WH Smiths

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Question…

Posted on 27 April, 2012 by Dave Harding

I had this question come through on the LUG email address.  My thoughts are that there are a lot of possible answers, from renting hosting space, to running their own server. But what software would you use – ideally (I guess) that will sync with EBay.

Question….   Dave, do you or any of the others know anyone who use any Linux software to run their eBay businesses.

I have a friends Daughter who I have known since a nipper, she is in her mid twenties and doing very well selling small household stuff on eBay.

She bought a webpage and her Mother uses Ubuntu.   On a recent visit I suggested it would be great if she could have a server at home hosting her website and managing her business inventory?

What would be your solution?  How easy would it be to maintain? My initial thoughts were to run something on WordPress with a shop plugin, else a more technical solution might be to run something like Magento.

Put your solution in the comments box, and perhaps we can discuss solutions on Tuesday at the next LUG meeting.

Posted in Hints Tips & Hacks | Leave a comment

Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS) Released This Week

Posted on 24 April, 2012 by Dave Harding

Ubuntu has done great things for the Linux community.  Indeed, many of us many not be here if it wasn’t for Ubuntu and it’s newbie-friendly ways. However things have gradually changed over recent years. First the brown colour scheme changed to purple, as it seemed that Ubuntu was adopting a ‘Mac look’ (are the window maximise and minimise controls still in the top left hand corner?).  Then last year, the Gnome 2 desktop evironment was dropped and replaced with Unity. Many users struggled with 11.04 as Unity was unstable, and as a result that release was for some (me included) unusable. Hwever it has been reported amongst Hull LUG members that Unity has been improved since its introduction last April, and the stability issues for the most part resolved in the last release in October 2011.

Let’s hope that the improvements have continued, as this week sees the release of Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). This is a important release for Ubuntu, as it is their Long Term Support (LTS) edition. This means that Ubuntu will be providing support for this release (for both desktop and server editions) until 2017. This is especially poignant as previous LTS releases provided only 3 year support for the desktop editions.

Providing a platform over such a long period of time means that Ubuntu has to get this release right, and ensure that previous problems with the stability of this most recent desktop environment, Unity, have to be ironed out.

Early reviews indicate that for the most part this might have been achieved. Bryan Lunduke of the Linux Action Show has reviewed 12.04 on his blog, and reports that Unity appears stable and the GUI quick (although not necessarilly quick to use, due it’s layout).

If you are planning to update Ubuntu, many would advise that you wait a few days, as the servers and mirrors will be very busy. Being a LTS release, there will be LTS users as well as users who update at every release downloading their updated distro.

Will you be updating to 12.04? if so let us know how you get on at our next meeting, which is from 8pm on Tuesday 1st May, at Mustard Cafe Bar, 63 Princes Avenue, Hull HU5 3QX.

Posted in LUG News | 1 Comment