Utah Open Source Blog

The Utah Open Source Foundation, in its goal to promote Open Source throughout Utah and beyond, is proud to promote the following events.  These events are generally related to Open Source and Technology in Utah.  If your event is not listed below, please contact clint@utos.org to get it added.

Utah Technology Community Announcements

• UTOS-ConMan HackNights happen most every Tuesday night in June, watch http://utos.org for announcements.
• Watch for the UTOSC 2009 ‘Call for Papers’ - http://2009.utosc.com

If you have announcements or events that are happening around open source in Utah which you would like included, please contact clint@utos.org.
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Upcoming Activities for June 2009

Wed, June 10, 11:30pm – 1:00pm
SLLUG: Daytime SIG Meeting
Topic: IPTables Basics
Where: BetaLoft SLC - 357 West 200 S, Suite 201, Salt Lake City
Contact: Clint Savage, herlo1@gmail.com

Wed, June 10, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Provo Linux Users Group
Topic: KVM & QEMU
Link: http://plug.org
Where: Omniture
Contact: Ryan Simpkins, simpkins.ryan @gmail.com

Thu, June 11, 6pm – 9pm
Utah Mobile Developers Group
Where: STG Dev Center, 555 South 300 East, Salt Lake City, Utah
Contact: Glen Lewis, glen @ glenlewis.com

Thu, June 11, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Utah Python User Group Meeting
Link: http://utahpython.org
Topic: GUI Toolkit Extravaganza
Where: University of Utah, Emma Eccles Jones Medical Research Building, Room 1200
Contact: Dave, tonedevf AT gmail.com

Sat, June 13th (All Day)
SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF)
Where: Clemson, South Carolina
Info: http://southeastlinuxfest.org

Sat, June 13th, 12-5pm
Utah CodeAway
Link: http://codeaway.org/
Where: BetaLoft, 357 West 200 South, Suite 201, Salt Lake City
Contact: Laura Moncur, laura @ moncur.biz

Sat, June 13, 6pm – 8pm
Ubuntu-Utah Meeting
Link: http://utah.ubuntu-us.org
Where: University of Utah - Merrill Engineering Building (MEB) Comp-Sci Labs Rm 2555
Contact: Aaron Toponce, aarontoponce@ gmail.com

June 17-19
Open Source Bridge
Where: Portland, Oregon
Info: http://opensourcebridge.org

Wed, June 17, 7:10pm – 8:40pm
Salt Lake Linux User Group (SLLUG)
Link: http://sllug.org
Where: University of Utah, Warnock Engineering Building (WEB) room 101 or 103 (Previously known as EMCB)
Contact: Marc Christensen marc aT mecworks.com

Thu, June 18, 6pm – 9pm
Utah Java User’s Group (ujug.org)
Link: http://ujug.org
Where: SelectHealth (IHC), 4646 West Lake Park Blvd., West Valley City
Contact: Chris Maki, chrismaki AT me.com

Thu, June 18, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Utah PHP User Group (UPHPU)
Topic:  Fundamentals of PHP by Adam Barrett
Link: http://uphpu.org
Where: Bill Good Marketing, Draper, Utah
Contact: Victor Villa, vvilla @ gmail.com

Sat, June 20, 12pm - 2pm
Nerds in the Sun, Provo Linux User Group InterLug Barbecue
(sponsored by Utah Open Source)
Link: http://blog.utos.org/2009/05/27/event-nerds-in-the-sun-plug-summer-bbq/
Where: Scera Park, Orem, Utah (map)

Tue, June 23, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
SLC Ruby (slc.rb)
Link: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/urug
Where: Neumont University Room #300
Contact: Jake Mallory, tinomen @gmail.com

Thu, June 25, 8:00am – 9:30am
CTO Breakfast
Link: http://www.windley.com/cto_forum
Where: Novell Cafeteria
Contact: Phil Windley, phil At windley.org

Thu, June 25, 6pm – 8pm
Logan Dev Group
Where: Room 208 (Faculty Seminar Lounge), Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, UT
Contact: Matthew Reinbold, matthew.reinbold At voxpopdesign.com

Fri, June 26, 12:30pm – 2pm
UTOS/UPHPU Geek Lunch
Link: http://utos.org/geek-lunch
Contact: Victor Villa, vvilla AT gmail.com

Tue, June 30, 7:30pm - 9:00pm
Ogden Area Linux User Group
Link: http://oalug.com
Where: Weber County Main Library, Board Room
Contact: Seth House, whiteinge@ gmail.com

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Each of the events were pulled from the Utah Tech Events calendar, feel free to subscribe by clicking the link below (or adding the following feed to your calendaring program)
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Utah Tech Events Calendar - Google Calendar: http://sn.im/ute-calendar
Utah Tech Events Calendar - iCal Feed: http://sn.im/ute-calendar-ics

Utah Open Source Foundation also regularly records Local User Group (LUG) meetings throughout the state.  Feel free to check out our podcasts and live streaming schedules.

Utah Open Source Podcasts - http://podcast.utos.org

The Utah Open Source Foundation is proud to present video of the December 2008 Provo Linux User Group meeting presentation given by Stuart Jansen on Security-Enhanced Linux, or SELinux. You can view the video at OpenSourceTV.tv.

Stuart Jansen

The traditional Unix security model is simple and beautiful. For decades it has been good enough for most people. However, it is starting to show its age. In the highest security settings, a more fine grained control system is needed. In the past, this meant using expensive, complicated, special purpose versions of Unix: trusted systems. (Trusted Solaris, Trusted AIX, Trusted HP-UX)

SELinux, created by the NSA, is the most mature and complete response to the need for Trusted Linux systems. Unfortunately, because of the difficulty creating and maintaining trusted systems, their success has been limited. This is no longer acceptable.

Today, even desktop systems and cell phones need high quality security. Imagine being able to sandbox your Web browser and e-mail client. The
traditional Unix model makes this difficult and only partially possible. SELinux, on the other hand, makes fine grained security available to everyone.

When it first appeared, SELinux was hard to learn and mysterious to troubleshoot. As a result, many people fear it. However, SELinux and the tools to manage it have come a long way. It’s time to lay fear aside. Stuart will teach what SELinux is, why it is great, basic troubleshooting and maintenance.

The Utah Open Source Foundation is proud to present video of the March 2009 Provo Linux User Group meeting presentation given by Stephen Weeks on creating dynamic language compilers with Parrot and its associated tools. You can view the video at OpenSourceTV.tv.

Stephen Weeks

Over the past few weeks, Utah Open Source (UTOS) has been working hard to provide a new version of the Utah Open Source Planet (UTOSP).  This version is based upon the PlanetPlanet feed aggregator.  The look and feel is modified from templates provided by the Fedora Planet. The Utah Open Source Planet at http://openclue.org, run by Gabe Gunderson, will continue to function for the foreseeable future.

Why the change?

The Utah Open Source Foundation has had in its plans for some time to create a Planet built solely from people providing useful technical experiences.  Many of the blogs on the current UTOSP are political, religious and many other non-technical related topics.

The point here is that many people enjoy blogging about items outside open source and technology. While blogging about whatever you like is a fine thing to do, the new UTOSP will do its best to provide options for those individuals who prefer to just discuss technology. To that end, the new UTOSP will provide multiple options to the choosy reader.  Of course there will be the full planet, with feeds from everyone, as well as a planet just for LUGs and Event announcements.

The Request

We at UTOS will be contacting those on the current planet.  The plan will be to obtain a few feeds from each contributor.  The feeds will be ‘general’ and ‘technology only’ or something along these lines.  The idea is to provide options to our readers by providing them multiple ways to get at the information they’d like to read.  If you are unavailable or unable to provide these alternate feeds, your blog will only appear on the planets for which you do have feeds, currently the ‘general’ planet.

The Future Planet

If the future plans hold, there will be a planet based upon popular categories and tags.  These planets will be static at first, then move to a more dynamic ‘pick & choose’ functionality creating a dynamic page and rss feed associated with an account.

The functional site will, for now, provide simple rss feeds based upon requests made to clints@utos.org. Watch for these changes over the next few weeks and months and feel free to provide feedback as we really would like to hear from you.  Comments here on this post or send an email.  As always, come on by #utos on irc.freenode.net as well.

Cheers,

Clint

Video of Christer Edwards keynote address from UTOSC 2008 is now available at opensourcetv.tv.

Christer Edwards

Christer Edwards, instructor for Guru Labs and Ubuntu-Utah member presented on Saturday, 30 August 2008 on Ubuntu in the Enterprise.

Open source enthusiasts in the Weber and Davis counties have a local user group they may participate in. The Ogden Area Linux User Group, or OALUG, meets in-person the last Tuesday of every month at 7:00pm in the Weber County Main Library. Directions and a map to the meeting location are located on the OALUG website.

OALUG also has an active mailing list which can be used by members seeking answers to questions, suggestions when trying to solve a problem, or just shooting the bull with like-minded geeks.

Seth House, current president of OALUG, said “The Ogden Area Linux Users Group (OALUG) is a group of professionals who share a love and a passion for Linux, regardless of distribution. The group serves Weber, Davis, and Morgan counties. We welcome absolutely anyone who is interested in Linux, or Free and Open Source Software, to participate and help run the group.” If you are interested in being a part of the OALUG, simply subscribe to the mailing list or show up to a meeting!

Update:  We made a couple of errors in this post.  OALUG meets at the Weber County Main Library (not Weber State Library) and we had the link to their website incorrect.  These errors have been fixed.

Its the last day for early bird registration for UTOSC,  <http://2008.utosc.com>.  After today, prices go up to $100 ($50 w/LUG discounts).

Register with eventbrite today!  <http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com>

See you all there!

The party was scheduled from 12-2pm, and while we intended to arrive at around 11:30 to get the grills going for a 12pm start, we didn’t get there until just before noon.  As we arrived, it was discovered that while we had obtained briquets for the bbq, no matches were obtained, so I made a quick call.

<Emily>: Hello?
<Me>: Its Clint, I forgot matches, are you coming over to the bbq soon?
<Emily>: Yeah, we’re just leaving now to go to the store, we’ll be 10 minutes.

Mind you, this is at noon.  Luckily, nobody had arrived as of yet, standard Utah tardiness was a benefit this time.  decided to go get her dog and left me alone at the park to wait.

And wait…. (12:15pm)
And wait…. (12:45pm)
UNTIL … (about 12:50pm)

Finally, in the distance, I could see a couple walking toward me with a couple kids in tow.  And so the party began with the arrival of the Ellis family.

After a good bit of hanging out with them, Emily arrived, along with others shortly thereafter.  The party started to rock and before long, food was cooking, people were eating and geeks were being ignored by their wives.

We saw the results of spinal surgery.

Ben Payne had spinal surgery

We enjoyed a little boy and his creamsicle experience

Little Noah Rasmussen loves his treats

Oh yeah!

People played on their ‘puters

Heartsbane is enjoying the power

And more…

More Photos available at flickr

Fun was had by all and even a little hardware swapping took place.

Hope to see you all next year as Utah Open Source plans to sponsor the PLUG bbq in late June when the weather is a bit cooler.

Cheers,

Clint

So with all of the announcing and craziness of the Utah Open Source Conference, we’ve neglected to share with you all about the PLUG BBQ tomorrow at noon.  It will be lots of fun there will be a the traditional hardware swap.  We’ll also be bringing some boardgames to play, so come and enjoy yourself.

Bring your own meat (BYOM), a side dish for everyone to share and we’ll have the grills going strong at noon so you can throw it on and enjoy a burger, chicken or the almighty Steak you’ve been preparing since the beginning of the summer.

You can sign up for an item to bring from this list if you like.

Date:  Saturday, August 2, 2008
Time:  12pm-2pm (though some will be there at 11am firing up the grills)
Location:  Scera Park, Red Pavilion, look for the Utah Open Source Banner
Map:  http://tinyurl.com/plugbbq

See you all there!

Clint

This is the first of many articles to come introducing our readers to the organizations associated with Utah Open Source. Today, we bring you one of the oldest Linux user groups in existence, let alone in Utah: the Provo Linux User Group (PLUG).

PLUG was first formed in 1994 by two then-students at BYU, Thayne Harbaugh and Mike Handy. Thayne and Mike had wanted to form an on-campus student organization for enthusiasts of Linux, but were unable to find a faculty member willing to sponsor its creation. Undaunted, they created PLUG as an off-campus organization.

This was during the early days of Linux and the Internet. The fact the plug.org domain name was available is one example of how early this was; The Intel Pentium CPU was brand new and most geeks were running 386 and 486 CPUs with less than 1GB of hard drive space; Internet service was still a novelty and most connections were made over serial modems at 9600 bps to 14.4Kbps.

The Linux community was young, still driven mostly by volunteers coordinating through online groups. However, 1994 would be the year Red Hat, SuSE, and Caldera would all release the first versions of their respective distributions, thus kicking off the fast-paced commercial Linux distribution race.

PLUG began holding its meetings the second Wednesday of every month — a tradition that has stood the test of time — at various venues around Utah Valley including the Canyon Park campus, The Palace, and at CEDO.

After the first five years of PLUG, the original founders were either moving out of the area, getting busy with work-related (Linux, of course) tasks, or just feeling it was time to pass the torch. Jason “Jayce^” Hall suddenly found himself holding said torch and carried PLUG through the next several exciting years until 2007 when Jason stepped aside to become more involved with UTOS and Ryan Simpkins took the helm.

Over the years PLUG has hosted several special engagements with impressive speakers such as John Terpstra and Steve French of the Samba project, Perl guru and O’Reilly author Damian Conway, and Miguel de Icaza of the Gnome project. Over the course of several Summers, PLUG has held annual barbecues for members and their families which also included surplus swap meets where members could trade or sell old hardware.

PLUG has a member mailing list which varies in the amount of traffic it gets. Most of the time, the list sees fairly low to moderate traffic, but occasionally will fill its members’ mailboxes with spurts of off-topic discussions. PLUG hosts archives of these highly intellectual discussions at http://plug.org/pipermail/plug.

The PLUG website is firmly located at http://www.plug.org/ and, as mentioned above, meets (with some very, very rare exceptions) the second Wednesday of each month at the Omniture building in the Canyon Park campus.