Kicking off the Tech of the Month series

Travis W · 2009-03-25T10:25:23-05:00 (Wednesday)

We are starting our new Tech of the Month Series Wed April 8th at 4PM in EB 1012.

The first topic is Linux / Ubuntu 101.
This is not an installfest we will just be showing you how to install Ubuntu and this includes how to dual boot your computer.

The topics that will be covered are:
*Installation (including dual booting)
*Configuration and Drivers
*How to install software
*Common / Popular Applications
*Linux Tools
* Q and A

The presenters are Brian Pritchett and Scott Miller.

If you have any questions or comments please post them here.
Hope to see everyone there.
Travis

William Grim · 2009-03-25T19:09:10-05:00 (Wednesday)

You going to cover installation in a virtual machine? I think people would find that more useful in general from a beginner's perspective. They could demo it without interrupting their work flow. Then they can take the plunge to a dual-boot or single-boot linux system later (at least until practicality sets in and they decide they want an OS X desktop :)).

raptor · 2009-03-25T19:41:43-05:00 (Wednesday)

No need to virtual machine when you can run live versions :)

William Grim · 2009-03-25T20:00:24-05:00 (Wednesday)

Quote from: raptor on 2009-03-25T19:41:43-05:00 (Wednesday)
No need to virtual machine when you can run live versions :)

Oh, yeah, that could work as well, but it doesn't leave you with the satisfaction that you know it's installed in the state you last left it. Anyway, I'm sure that'll also do fine to get people used to it.

Robert Kennedy · 2009-03-26T00:20:09-05:00 (Thursday)

As a newly converted Ubuntu user I'll be there. Hopefully I'll pick something up that I haven't been able to get from the plethora of community resources available for Ubuntu.

Anyone that has an older computer that is running Windows XP or Vista should at least attend to learn a bit. Its hard to believe how fast a computer will run when the OS resource usage gets cut in half. Do like I did and try it out on an older computer for a little while. Within a month or so you will find yourself deleting Windows from your system altogether (or at least setting up a dual boot).

Travis W · 2009-03-28T14:36:52-05:00 (Saturday)

reminder bump :D

Travis W · 2009-04-03T17:46:15-05:00 (Friday)

Just a reminder this is next Wednesday. :D

Adam C · 2009-04-06T11:52:02-05:00 (Monday)

This should be very cool! I feel like when I switched to a *nix based system, my skill and productivity as a programmer grew immensely. I used ubuntu for about a year before switching to mac and it was in that time that I learned the terminal, vim, and all those other goodies that really make you more productive.

raptor · 2009-04-07T01:27:14-05:00 (Tuesday)

Almost done making the presentation. I think for the installation portion of the presentation I will go through an online tutorial. It has all the details everyone will need. I don't think there is must point in taking everything off of the site and putting it onto slides if the website has more information. Should be a good intro to linux/ubuntu. Remember this is a primer presentation for getting start/basics, but I will have Brian (linux genius) with me for questions I can't answer.

Scott

Bryan · 2009-04-07T18:54:14-05:00 (Tuesday)

This is a very cool idea. There are so many systems out there that are integrated into businesses that you WILL have to learn to use. Even if you're looking for a Java postion, or a C++ postion, or any other kind of position. There will be third party systems, there will be stuff you will be using, it's a fact of life. There simply isn't enough time in the known universe to get it in your college education.

Might I suggest SAP? It's out there, and it's out there big time.

raptor · 2009-04-07T19:33:53-05:00 (Tuesday)

Thought about it, but I'm not sure if we have anyone that is familiar enough to teach it. I only had to dable with it.

William Grim · 2009-04-07T21:29:51-05:00 (Tuesday)

This may be a little off topic, but adding to what Bryan said, one suggestion for anyone getting ready to go into the development space: forget about reading documentation. Pretty much, just skip reading any of the comments in the code and just understand what the code itself says. I've found that big development environments don't have time to keep up with documentation, for better or worse. The documents are typically incorrect or incomplete, and they can cause pain.

In the end, you'll find yourself getting used to new code a lot faster because you can read and understand the code very quickly. You might be surprised how useful a skill that is when you often don't have a lot of time to work on projects.

raptor · 2009-04-07T21:39:31-05:00 (Tuesday)

Grim!

How dare you tell us we should learn how to read code.

Fore Shame

William Grim · 2009-04-07T23:56:47-05:00 (Tuesday)

Yeah, I know you all know how. I'm just saying that proper documentation doesn't really seem to matter, except in the cases where you're developing a black-box API, which is pretty rare for most jobs. Just accepting it now will save you a lot of trouble, regardless of what professors tell you :-)

Mark Sands · 2009-04-08T14:29:36-05:00 (Wednesday)

Bumping. This is TODAY at 4 pm, in an hour an a half. BE THERE!

Mark Sands · 2009-04-08T17:08:49-05:00 (Wednesday)

Great talk guys

Travis W · 2009-04-08T19:08:30-05:00 (Wednesday)

Yeah i felt like it was a very personal presentation. :-D
Also it was an excellent presentation i can't wait for the next one.

Travis

Robert Kennedy · 2009-04-08T21:47:48-05:00 (Wednesday)

Indeed. Well done presentation.

After seeing Brian's desktop I had to come home and install the main KDE packages . Its really amazing to see the amount of customization options that users have with Ubuntu. I really didn't have a clue.

rdurham285 · 2009-04-08T22:57:08-05:00 (Wednesday)

nice meetin you guys today. Wish I had saw this before I did my install. Was not sure at all how it would work out.

cool presentation.

-Ryan

Jarod Luebbert · 2009-04-09T11:09:03-05:00 (Thursday)

Great presentation. Big thanks to Scott and Brian for taking time out of their busy schedule to do that. Those who didn't go missed out!

raptor · 2009-04-09T11:46:29-05:00 (Thursday)

Ryan, Robert:

Welcome! Glad to see you on the forums after the presentation. One of the things I didn't show but is REALLY neat are some of the cool visual affects you can setup with either Gnome or KDE. It makes the fancy stuff OS X and Vista do look like childs play. As long as your video driver supports it you can have some real fun.

Look at this article. If you still have questions afterwords do some more googling, or post on the forum. http://www.seoras.com/2008/07/27/eye-candy-in-ubuntu-804-hardy-heron/

richbria90 · 2009-04-10T01:42:16-05:00 (Friday)

I was there and I would like a copy of the slides or to know what happened to the video... i couldnt find any of it anywhere brricha@siue.edu
thanks,
Brian

raptor · 2009-04-10T10:57:52-05:00 (Friday)

We will have it on the new site Mark is making. (How soon mark?)

Mark Sands · 2009-04-10T11:58:21-05:00 (Friday)

I'm thinking today. Let's see if that happens. If not, everyone expect Monday..

richbria90 · 2009-04-13T18:29:43-05:00 (Monday)

??? lol mark you fail tis monday night!!! j/p but really i didnt take notes so i want to check out that page about the things you can do in ubuntu btw this presentation caused me to partition the hard drive and put ubuntu on it so congrats it was very good

Mark Sands · 2009-04-14T00:10:42-05:00 (Tuesday)

Well the site is in the clouds if you can find it.. it's just not pushed yet because the video's are a bit of a problem. I'm currently editing them, and tbh the linux presentation might not go up for a while... However, the java presentation is done and will be up soon, followed by processing. And I think the ruby presentation is on youtube, oh and C# is also done.

Robert Kennedy · 2009-04-15T11:13:50-05:00 (Wednesday)

Related to the Tech of the month...<a href="http://www.linuxmint.com>Linux Mint</a> is a Linux distro based on Ubuntu.

I've been trying it out for a couple days now and from a beginners standpoint, its probably even more newbie friendly than Ubuntu is. It comes packaged with a lot of things that Ubuntu doesn't that almost seem like a necessity to me (Thunderbird and JDK for instance) so there should be slightly less downloads to make on a fresh install. However, to keep the distro light, they've left out all the programming tools and games, so you'll have to DL what you want. This isn't too much of an issue to me though since Ubuntu doesn't come prepackaged with Eric or Netbeans anyway.

Also, programs like Opera, Google Earth, and Wine will show up by default in the Mint repository, so there's no need to add a bunch of software sources like I had to do in Ubuntu.

Finally, its based on Ubuntu 8.10, so any updates to Ubuntu are also updates for Linux Mint.

Brian Pritchett · 2009-04-16T12:10:30-05:00 (Thursday)

Quote from: Robert Kennedy on 2009-04-08T21:47:48-05:00 (Wednesday)
Indeed. Well done presentation.

After seeing Brian's desktop I had to come home and install the main KDE packages . Its really amazing to see the amount of customization options that users have with Ubuntu. I really didn't have a clue.

I'm glad I could show you something you didn't know, but liked! Ask me any questions you would like.