Central Kentucky Computer Society Open Source Software SIG

Open Source Special Interest Group

2011-01-24T11:08:00.002-05:00

This group is closed and will no longer hold meetings. Thanks for your participation.

Lets think of something new to do in the future.

Open Source Group meeting in January

2010-12-21T20:01:00.002-05:00

The first Wednesday of January will be the 5th. We will meet at 7pm to discuss creating web pages with open source software tools and a few web sites that offer advice and assistance.

December: First Wednesday = Open Source

2010-11-22T08:32:00.002-05:00

The Open Source Special Interest Group will meet Dec 1 at 7pm. The main topic will be "Downloading Videos from Websites."

Of course, YouTube is the king of video websites but there are others. And, there are several open source software tools that help with downloading, managing and editing video files. We will review and demo a few at the meeting.

Bring friends and questions.

2010-10-26T16:55:00.002-04:00

November topic: Electronic book readers and open source software for support and conversions.

The meeting will be the 1st Wednesday (Nov 03) at 7pm.

October meeting

2010-09-21T12:30:00.002-04:00

We are back after a long summer vacation! The 1st Wednesday of October will be the 6th. The Open Source Special Interest Group will meet at 7pm.

The topics will be a couple of recently released Linux distributions and the mind-mapping software product FreePlane.

Bring questions, problems, suggestions, etc.

Summer Shutdown

2010-06-30T20:18:00.001-04:00

The Open Source Special Interest Group will be shutdown for the summer. Next meeting will be October 6.

May meeting

2010-05-03T13:59:00.002-04:00

The May meeting will be Wednesday, the 5th at 7pm.

The meeting will be demonstration and discussion of selected open source software products or Internet sites.

April meeting news

2010-03-30T12:45:00.002-04:00

Next meeting will be April 7th at 7pm. One topic for this meeting will be Zenwalk - a Linux distribution aimed at older, slower computers.

Bring questions, answers and anything you would like to discuss.

March meeting news

2010-03-01T19:36:00.000-05:00

The March meeting will be Wednesday the 3rd at 7PM.

Feb meeting

2010-01-26T14:40:00.002-05:00

The Feb 3rd meeting will cover PDF editing. It seems there are about 50 open source PDF editors claimed on the Internet. We will cover a few of them.

Don't forget - 7PM, Wed, Feb 3.

January meeting

2009-12-16T07:56:00.002-05:00

We will meet Wednesday, Jan 6 at 7PM. The topics will be Google Chrome and GRC Tools.

December meeting

2009-11-22T10:20:00.002-05:00

The meeting time and date is 7PM, Dec 2nd, the first Wednesday of the month.

The topic will Project Management software and tools. There are several free, open source programs for project management that run on Windows, Linux or Macintosh.

November meeting

2009-10-28T08:04:00.002-04:00

The next meeting is Wednesday, November 4 at 7PM.

On the agenda will be an exploration of CrunchBang Linux and a review of Google Chrome.

October meeting

2009-10-04T20:44:00.003-04:00

The Open Source Special Interest Group explores open source software and hardware. Software may be operational on Windows, Linux, or Macintosh.

The group meetings consist of demos and discussions about any open source products of interest to anyone in the group.

The October meeting on the 7th at 7PM will demo a few products related to partitioning and partition management.

Open Source SIG - September meeting

2009-08-29T19:33:00.002-04:00

The next meeting will be September 02 at 7PM.

Topics on the agenda are some security issues and a software product named Basket.

August meeting

2009-07-20T20:19:00.002-04:00

The August meeting previously scheduled for Aug 5th has been cancelled.

June Meeting

2009-06-02T13:42:00.001-04:00

The June meeting will be Wednesday the 3rd. Topics will be Gnumeric and Buglabs and maybe more.

May 06 meeting

2009-05-01T18:57:00.002-04:00

At the May meeting we will review WUBI - a tool which makes it easy to install Ubuntu to co-exist with Windows in a dual boot situation. It uses the newest Ubuntu (release 9.04) which just came out last month.

April 01 Meeting

2009-03-29T15:52:00.002-04:00

We will spotlight two topics at the April meeting: Xandros Presto and the drawing program Dia.

Presto is a new product from Xandros with a free trial period in effect for the next few weeks. It is a fast booting Linux distro targeted at laptops of busy people. It can easily dual-boot with Windows but Presto boots much faster and can support a web browser and a few other applications. Presto is not Open Source but it does appear to be a pioneering product that could change the way people use their computers.

Dia is a free, open source drawing program somewhat comparable to Microsoft Visio and Open Office Draw. We will demo some of its features.

The meeting is at 7PM at the CKCS Resource Center.

March meeting plan

2009-03-01T18:53:00.002-05:00

Plans for the March 04 meeting include installing a replacement computer to replace the older SIG system. The system will have removable disk drives which can be setup for Windows or Linux.

Afterwards, if time is available we will demo Clonezilla and FOG and, maybe, BackTrack.

The meeting will start about 7PM.

Meeting cancelled

2009-02-04T07:23:00.001-05:00

The meeting scheduled for Feb 4 at 7PM has been cancelled. Maybe in March the weather will be better.

Next meeting - Feb 4 at 7PM

2009-02-02T08:22:00.003-05:00

The topic this month will be Virtual Private Networking or VPN. VPN is built into Windows XP and Vista but it can also be implemented with OpenVPN which is an open source product available for Windows and Linux systems.

January Meeting - Bootable CD for System Diagnostics

2008-12-17T21:12:00.002-05:00

How often do you wish you had a toolkit of utility programs so you could run a full checkup of a computer?

At our next meeting on Jan 7th at 7PM, we will review the creation of bootable CDs for troubleshooting or other utility work. There is a world of open source diagnostic and utility software that can be very helpful for system owners and managers.

We will explore such software as bootloaders, partition managers, file erasers, hardware diagnostics, virus scanners and many more. Every serious system owner should have a well-stocked tool kit for analyzing hardware problems, re-purposing older systems or just gaining a general knowledge of whats going on in there.

December 03 meeting - KDE 4

2008-11-19T19:36:00.002-05:00

The topic for December is KDE 4 - the K Development Environment. It now runs on Windows along with many of the K subordinate programs.

At the SIG meeting we will demo a few KDE applications on both Linux and Windows. There is a large flock of applications programs available such as Koffice, Amarok, Kate, K3b and many more.

And there will be time for problem solving, Q&A, etc.

Special Announcement

2008-11-14T08:10:00.002-05:00

There is an opening for an instructor to teach Linux system operations to Computer Networking students at ITT-Tech in Lexington. If you are interested contact Rachel Wilson via email at rlwilson (at) itt-tech.edu.

November 5 - Open Office 3

2008-10-16T20:41:00.002-04:00

It is finally here! Open Office 3 is out and we have it ready to demo at our November 5 meeting. We will review some of the new features, look for any changes from the older version and see how it performs.

The download and install function on Windows XP is a cinch - it is amazingly simple. By meeting time we will have tried out Linux and Windows Vista installs and let you know what we find.

October topic is Firefox 3

2008-09-16T14:28:00.002-04:00

The primary topic for the October 01 meeting will be Firefox 3 - the new release issued a few weeks ago.

We will demo a few of the major features of Firefox and some plug-ins. Firefox has long supported plug-ins or add-on modules but this release carries more support for public or third-party add-ons and there is more publicity about plug-ins.

Of course, there will be time for other things like problem solving, etc.

The meeting will be at 7 PM at the CKCS Resource Center.

Announcing a new SIG for CKCS

2008-08-06T15:47:00.004-04:00

Announcing the creation of a new special interest group to explore Open Source software. The first meeting will September 3, 2008 at the CKCS Resource Center.

The meeting format will evolve over the next few months but two priorities are to keep aware of current events in open source software and to download and demonstrate various open source products.

We encourage all CKCS members to attend and participate in our meetings. Visitors are invited to come to a meeting as an introduction to the many benefits of CKCS membership.