Hello Again And Welcome

Last Saturday's presentation on Subversion, the ubiquitous version control system, consisted in large part of a history of the entire issue of such systems' necessity. How does one organize a project to write a multi-thousand-line program using more than one programmer? As long as one person's writing the program, the problem never comes up. But hand the job to a department of two or more programmers and one needs a way to synchronize the effort.

It occurs to me that the two systems we've examined in detail so far typify the two large conceptual categories of the vast enterprise of software development. Whereas the open source model (illustrated by the development of Linux, for instance) might logically benefit from a decentralized system (like Bazaar), the closed source or corporate model might logically benefit from a centralized system (like Subversion). Ed suggested that the differences between the two categories of systems were less serious than many supposed, and that the considerable configuration options in both were sufficient to accommodate most situations. Furthermore, the claim that one system ate up storage space at a greater rate than the other was shown to be possible in both types, depending upon configuration and one's perspective regarding client or server.

Oops. My tendency to oversimplification is making Ed sound like the fence-sitter that I am, rather than the advocate he may prefer to be... but I'm in a hurry.

Coming up two weeks from last Saturday (August 8th, second Sat. of the month) will be my presentation on an animation program that runs under Linux. Which one? Ah, that would be telling. Stay tuned.

Again, Version Control! (anybody get the Harlan Ellison reference?)

I'm well aware that in the world of version control systems, there's a decentralized model, of which Bazaar is a worthy example. We had a good presentation (click on "presentations" at left) from Russell Adams not long ago regarding the broad version control picture and that particular application. There is another perspective, though, being the centralized organizational approach, of which Subversion is a worthy example, and we'll have a show on that program at our next meeting (July 25th).

One reason for doing a Subversion show (in addition to having competent personnel to deliver it) is that nothing succeeds like success. Subversion is one of the leading version control schemes in IT today, and probably the most popular one in the open source movement right now. So we'll give it its due.

THIS SATURDAY rocked.

Although the show on the 11th may not have been quite tight, the show checked off several subjects I've been keen upon. First of all, I got the core 2 duo running and showed off several nice things:

FEDORA 11: My over-the-wire upgrade from 10.3 to 11.x actually happened. I'd tried that twice before (in Mandriva/Mandrake and in Ubuntu 7.something) and blew away the MBR, the file system, everything. But going to Fedora 11 live ACTUALLY WORKED. The download and reboot/rebuild took about 8.5 hours, but what the heck.

BACK TRACK 4 pre-final release: The live DVD running KDE 4.whateversthelatestversion showed off its newfound stability, as well as the formidable arsenal of tools to do everything from network enumeration to penetration testing to password recovery to cisco-specific analysis and so on.

URBAN TERROR 4: A game based on the open-sourced Quake 3 engine and FREE, I showed off (and on Fedora this time, as opposed to Linux Mint, which I usually run in mixed company) to the small but teeming crowd how fast I could get my posterior handed to me.

There was more, but you had to be there.

UP NEXT: ED ON SUBVERSION (another perspective on version control)!

Developments

First of all, the next presentation will give Russell a rest, consisting as it will of myself delivering the long-rumored ripoff of Linux Journal articles (one featuring references to BackTrack, as seen at HLUG presentations recently, and which we'll revisit a bit). We'll also snatch one or two looks at the way they do the "Linux Minute" on their website. This will happen on Saturday, July 11th at 2pm, at the Hal-PC HQ.

Second of all, Russell has uploaded the .pdf of his presentation slides from last Saturday's Linux accounting show, findable at the most recent entry under "presentations" at adamsinfoserv.com.

Third of all, some things being discussed for upcoming shows include a regex review and whatever we can talk Katrina into showing us before she's on assignment again. Mr. Spotswood also is continuing to test various open-source programs and he should have some comment on them before too long.

For Your Information

HLUG member Robert Spotswood's article on antivirus programs has been updated with more results info HERE.

Confirmation

Russell Adams has confirmed the Linux accounting show (specifically, his approach to it) for the 27th of this month!

News

My thanks for the votes last meeting, regarding which something like this happened:

ME: "Since it's June, shouldn't there be a..."
RICK: "Nominate chair."
LIGHTSEY: "Second."
CARLILE: "Vote carries."
ME: "... election?"

And that's about the way it went. Moving right along to my continuing conspiracy to get people other than myself to do presentations...

We still have access to Russell Adams, not yet back up East on assignment (report on his Version Control show below) and it looks like we can have him do something on accounting in Linux (which he does, via a text-based scheme). How many times have you suggested Linux only to hear "I'm tied to Microsoft because of Quick Books"? I realize we aren't all accountants or consultants, but such a presentation would break new ground, plus viewers of the video file could benefit.

This would occur on the upcoming fourth Saturday the 27th at the usual 2pm, at the Hal-PC headquarters. I'm 95% sure that a consulting gig has not grabbed him yet for this date.