GNU Lilypond

In this talk, Boris will present his work on GNU Lilypond -- an open-source music engraving system -- in a publisher-grade context. For the first time, Lilypond is used to typeset a top-quality, definitive academic critical edition, to be printed by a world's leading classical music publishing house. Boris will talk about:

• A brief introduction to GNU Lilypond;
• Comparison to proprietary music typesetting systems;
• Specific needs of top-quality academic editions;
• Difficulties in using Lilypond for serious publication work (what was making Lilypond not publisher-grade);
• Dynamics of relationship between the open-source development community and real-life users: what makes it difficult for a real user to get what they need for their work, from the community; the role of a solution vendor; factors impeding contributions upstream to the community;
• Lessons learned;
• Future work.

GPS in Linux

Accessing GPS information using tools such as tangoGPS.

Eric hopes to start a lively and informative discussion on the current state of Linux GPS applications.

If you have information, gadgets, and general knowledge, bring them along for the round table.

Remember to start with the basics so everyone can benefit from the discussion.

Disk Partitioning

Disk partitioning allows having a hard limit on the size of a given filesystem and allows having multiple operating systems reside on the same disk. The speaker will describe disk partitioning and demonstrate the use of some disk partitioning tools.

Ubuntu 10.04 - what's new?

A new LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu will soon be released. The speaker will describe some of the features planned for Ubuntu version 10.04.

10 - 20 minutes

Understanding Net Neutrality, and "Throttling"

Phone and cable companies have started practicing illegal search (and seizure) of data flowing across their network ("throttling"), claiming it is to protect their networks. In reality, the problems on their networks are due to mis-design, and fundamental misunderstanding on their part about how the Internet works. We used to use highway metaphors to explain the Internet. This talk will re-adjust the metaphor to explain what was actually built, and why the results are so hostile to citizens and grassroots democracy.

Approx 1 hour.

OCLUG Annual General Meeting

We will be electing a new board for 2010.
See the Board Election 2010 Wiki Page for more information.

For more information, or to add your name to this list, send mail to board-members at oclug dot on.ca by March 31 at the latest.

How to make a bootable Linux USB key

The speaker will give a demonstration of how to create a USB key that allows running Linux without altering the machine.

The presentation will also cover some advantages for running this configuration.

Discussion: Diskless Linux

The original netbooks didn't contain a hard disk and ran Linux from solid state memory ("flash drive") such as found in USB memory keys.

Flash memory allows data to be quickly accessed due to the absence of seek or latency delays associated with a rotating disk, but writes are slow.

Applications such as web browsers that frequently cache disk information can perform poorly and software that thinks it's updating blocks on a disk drive can "wear out" some memory locations.

This discussion will cover some of the topics such as:

• disabling swap partitions
• load levelling file systems to avoid flash memory wear out
• Small Linux distros designed for fast operation and a small memory footprint

The speaker will introduce the topic and moderate the discussion.

Introduction to Digital Photography with Linux

This presentation and demonstration will show some basic digital photography operations and some Linux tools that can be used for them.

Intermediate Digital Photography with Linux

Some intermediate digital photography will be covered such as basic and advanced topics in the GIMP, followed by discussion and questions.