Monthly archives: September 2007


Adriaan de Groot introduces the new KDE 4 release – London 01/11/07

Adriaan de Groot will give a talk about the new KDE 4 release for the BCS Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) on Thursday 1st November 2007 from 1830 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA.

The KDE 4.0 release is one of the most anticipated software events in the Free software desktop world today.

This talk, which in true OSSG style is open to all to attend, will take us on a tour of what KDE 4 will bring to your desktop with technologies such as Plasma, Solid, Phonon, SVG and more as well as take a look at some of the new and updated applications that will be arriving with KDE 4.0 including the Okular universal reader and the groupware Akonadi system.

We will wrap up with an overview of the community behind and around KDE at how you too can get involved in a variety of ways, ranging from software development to documentation to quality assurance to translating to promotion, and help KDE 4 be the best desktop the world has seen in the process.

Adriaan de Groot is a Canadian by birth and a Dutchman by training. He lives in the Netherlands and works in Greece with his German colleagues. As a researcher in (Free) Software Quality, he travels in Europe trying to spread the word on quality checking tools and Free Software.

Adriaan’s first Open Source project started in 1989 when visual editors on serial consoles were all the rage. He contributed bits and pieces to other projects until settling down with the KDE project where he works on synchronizing PalmOS-based handhelds with the desktop; he also works on FreeBSD and OpenSolaris portability. Free Software takes up most of his work day.

Adriaan is a member of the board of directors of KDE e.V. and a member of the board of directors of the NLUUG.

To book a place at this event please email your name to the events coordinator.

Free buffet and refreshments including wine available from around 1800 hours.

For further information please contact Paul Adams at chair@ossg.bcs.org


An Introduction to Installing/using GNU/Linux for beginners – Lincoln 11/10/07

This meeting between the British Computer Society (BCS) Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG), BCS Lincolnshire http://lincolnshire.bcs.org, and Lincolnshire Linux User Group http://www.lincs.lug.org.uk will be held on Thursday 11th October 2007.

The format will be more that of a workshop/tutorial, and will be designed to encourage ‘hands-on’ experience of using several GNU/Linux distros (in particular Ubuntu, Debian, and Knoppix. It will also allow for exchange of information and ideas, and try to answer questions and queries about GNU/Linux, especially for those who have little or no experience. If you have a laptop with a Linux installation, please feel free to bring it along to help demonstrate, or raise questions (although we cannot guarantee to answer all questions).

Light refreshments will be available from 1830 hours before the start time of 1900 hours in the EMMTEC Building at the University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS unless otherwise indicated. For directions click here.

For more information please visit: http://lincolnshire.bcs.org/diary.


“Databases and the Web” – UKUUG Event 16/10/07

MySQL Database for HighAvailability Web Applications – Tushar Joshi

PostgreSQL Web Projects: From Start to Finish – Simon Riggs

Tuning Tips for Linux and AIX to run a Database – Nigel Griffiths

Introducing Oracle Application Express: Database application
development for the web in no time flat – Julian Lane

DB2 on Linux for Web Development – John Pickford

iPlayer Server-Side: The Evolution of an XML Tool-Chain – Matthew Browning

The above is scheduled to take place on the 16th October 2007 starting at 0930 hours with a planned to finish time of 1700 hours. Venue is The Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London WC1B 5BB

For further details please visit: http://www.ukuug.org/events/seminars/databases


Tutorial: Request Tracker – UKUUG Event 16/10/07

RT is an enterprise-grade ticketing system which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users. Book now: online or booking PDF. Tutorial is on 16th October 2007 and starts at 0900 hours and is planned to finish by 1700 hours. Venue is The Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London WC1B 5BB
The RT platform has been under development since 1996, and is used by systems administrators, customer support staffs, IT managers, developers and marketing departments at thousands of sites around the world.

Written in object-oriented Perl, RT is a high-level, portable, platform independent system that eases collaboration within organizations and makes it easy for them to take care of their customers.

RT manages key tasks such as the identification, prioritization, assignment, resolution and notification required by enterprise-critical applications including project management, help desk, NOC ticketing, CRM and software development.

RT is used by Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, educational institutions, and development organisations worldwide.

RT is the leading open-source issue-tracking system. Designed to make it easy for your organisation to track any sort of “task”. Various organisations, ranging in size from large corporations to the smallest non-profit use RT across a wide range of business cases. Frequent uses include the tracking of software defects, customer service inquiries, internal workflow, project management, network operations and even youth counselling. RT is powerful, flexible and built from the ground up to adapt to your organization and needs.

This comprehensive session will cover:

  • RT’s system architecture
  • A guided tour of the RT source code
  • Extension mechanisms you can use to customize RT
  • How to tie RT into your existing authentication infrastructure
  • Bulding your own tools that talk to the RT backend
  • Automating common procedures
  • Customizing RT’s workflow to match your own
  • How to write custom reports based on RT’s data

Jesse Vincent — tutor: (President, Best Practical Solutions LLC)Jesse Vincent is the author of RT and the founder of Best Practical Solutions, LLC, a company dedicated to open source tools to help people and organizations keep track of what needs doing, when it gets done, and who does it. Before founding Best Practical, Vincent worked as the systems lead for a now-defunct dotcom and as a software designer at Microsoft.

Please note UKUUG state that places are limited and early booking is essential. Booking deadline is 8th October 2007.

For further details please visit: http://www.ukuug.org/events/rt/


The Linux Desktop, present and future presented by Michael Meeks – Distinguished Engineer at Novell – UKUUG Event 26/09/07

The Linux Desktop, present and future presented by Michael Meeks – Distinguished Engineer at Novell on 26th September 2007 from 1900 hours.”A light-hearted look at the desktop, from past to present, to Novell’s role, and vision. We will prod some of the new toys coming into the desktop, from promising technologies to curvaceous applications, and meditate on the wonders of our new on-line world.

Finally, Michael will shamelessly plug whatever project is interesting today, and attempt to wildly extrapolate the near future, for people’s amusement – to rob Gascoigne: “I never predict anything, and I never will!”.

Michael is a Christian and enthusiastic believer in Free software. He very much enjoys working for Novell where as a member of the Desktop research team he has worked on desktop infrastructure and applications, particularly the CORBA, Bonobo, Nautilus and accessibility, amongst other interesting things. He now works full time leading the OpenOffice.org team. Prior to this he worked for Quantel gaining expertise in real time AV editing and playback achieved with high performance focused hardware / software solutions.

You do not have to attend the AGM or be a member of UKUUG to attend the talk.

For further details please visit:http://www.ukuug.org/events/agm2007/

Map/Location

The meeting is in Lecture Theatre 2 of University College London’s Cruciform Building, which is on the west side of Gower Street, opposite UCL’s main site (Multimap, Streetmap).