Welcome to the

Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts

Promoting Linux and Open Source Software Freedom in Atlanta Since 1994
Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts (ALE) is a diverse group of friendly people who enjoy the freedoms and benefits of GNU Linux Computing and Free Liberating Open Source Software technologies. From novices to network administrators, from smart phones to data centers, we strive to empower every information technology user with freely distributable software and to improve every computing environment with the superior security, functionality and flexibility of Open Source Operating System solutions. -- more about ALE --

ALE CENTRAL MTG. for Thurs., May 17th, 2012

Filed at 2:11 am under by Ruscetta


The feature presentation for our ALE Central Meeting
at 7:30pm on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 will be:

“GRUB 2: Bootloader Magic Demystified”
with Michael Trausch

Synopsis:
- The GRUB 2 bootloader will be presented, with a discussion of
its architecture. There will be emphasis on upstream functionality
in comparison with (some of) the ways that bootstrapping tasks
could be accomplished with GRUB Legacy.
- For those who are unfamiliar with bootloaders, there will be a quick
introduction to what a bootloader does and where its role exists in the
system boot process for the most predominant architecture of common
desktops and laptops, a BIOS-based x86/x86-64 system.
- If there are any particular questions that you have and would like
answered, or _particular_ functionality that you would like shown,
please let me know directly at [mike@trausch.us]. I’ll incorporate
anything I can, and anything that I can’t incorporate I’ll move to the
list for after the meeting.

Reference:
From the GNU GRUB Web site http://www.gnu.org/s/grub/:
– GNU GRUB is a Multiboot boot loader. It was derived from GRUB,
the GRand Unified Bootloader, which was originally designed and
implemented by Erich Stefan Boleyn.
- Briefly, a boot loader is the first software program that runs
when a computer starts. It is responsible for loading and
transferring control to the operating system kernel software
(such as the Hurd or Linux). The kernel, in turn, initializes the
rest of the operating system (e.g. GNU).

Bio:
Michael B. Trausch is an independent consultant and developer
performing all manner of IT services using free software, including
network systems administration and programming (in many different
and often disliked languages). He works from home (when everything
is going well) and devotes much of his time to parenting his six year
old son, Benjamin. He is an advocate for free software, public
education, and freedom in general, accepting the responsibilities that
come with it. He is also obsessed with typography and Unicode, and
drinks way too much coffee. ;-)

=============
The meeting will be held at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Our meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found at
http://ale.org/?page_id=2

ALE CENTRAL MTG. for Thurs., April 19th, 2012

Filed at 7:52 pm under by Ruscetta

Our highlight presentation at the ALE Central Meeting
for 7:30pm on Thursday, April 19th, 2012 will be:

CMake
or
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and
Love Automated Build Systems

with Ryan Curtin


Synopsis:

– Maybe you’ve heard of CMake before. If you haven’t, maybe you’ve
heard of autotools. And if you have worked with autotools, well, I am
sure your friends have heard your sighs of sorrow. If you have worked
with CMake, you probably have your own sighs of sorrow too.
Build systems, or “makefile generators”, as CMake calls itself, are
never pretty. But it’s better than that festering mess you call a Makefile.
I mean, come on! You don’t even know how it works anymore. Nobody
does. It’s this horrifying black box that executables magically come out
of. Oh, and it’s not portable… don’t even think about running that on
HP-UX or whatever. And if it is portable… well, I can only imagine
the nightmare _that_ Makefile must be.
– CMake provides most of a solution to your building and compilation
problems. It has a nice language which lets you define how to build
your projects, and on top of that, it’s portable, even to Windows.
Unfortunately, there is some voodoo required when dealing with CMake.
My aim in this presentation is to shed light on some of this voodoo and
give you enough knowledge to (a) start building your simple (or
advanced) projects with CMake and (b) know how to find solutions to your
more complex problems (and unfortunately with CMake, Google-fu isn’t
always enough).

Bio:

– Ryan Curtin is a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech studying machine
learning. He [denies having any] interesting biographical trivia [despite
being an extraordinarily complex biological machine which is constantly
learning through the generation of trivial biographical data ].

=============
We will be meeting at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found
[here]

ALE-NW@SPSU MTG. for Thurs., April 12th, 7:30pm

Filed at 5:54 pm under by Ruscetta


The highlight presentation at the ALE-NW@SPSU meeting
being held Thursday, April 12th, 2012 at 7:30pm in room
J131 of the Atrium (J) building on the SPSU campus will be:

LexisNexis® :

Solving Big Data Problems with the
Opensource HPCC Systems™ Platform

presented by Dr. Flavio Villanustre & Arjuna Chala,
and featuring a Door Prize giveaway of
a Nook (Android) E-Reader!


Synopsis:

– HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) is an open source
massive parallel-processing computing platform that solves
Big Data problems. An overview of the HPCC Systems architecture
and its major components including Thor, Roxie and ECL will be
presented along with how this platform compares to other big data
technologies like Hadoop. System requirements covering the
supported Linux distributions will be reviewed. Also included will
be a demo of how this platform can integrate with Pentaho
Spoon/Kettle for powerful data ETL capabilities.

Speaker Bios:

– Dr Flavio Villanustre –

- VP Infrastructure & Products, HPCC Systems and LexisNexis -
Flavio is the Vice President of Infrastructure and Products. In this
position, Flavio is responsible for Information and Physical Security,
overall infrastructure strategy and new product development.
Previously, Flavio was Director of Infrastructure for Seisint. Prior to
2001, Flavio served in a variety of roles at different companies
including Infrastructure, Information Security and Information
Technology. In addition to this, Villanustre has been involved with
the Opensource community for over 15 years through multiple
initiatives. Some of these include founding the first Linux User Group
in Buenos Aires (BALUG) in 1994, releasing several pieces of software
under different Opensource licenses, and evangelizing Opensource
to different audiences through conferences, training and education.
– Arjuna Chala —

- Architect Integrations, HPCC Systems and LexisNexis -
Arjuna is responsible for providing strategic and technology direction
for the analytics and business intelligence components of the
HPCC platform.

About HPCC Systems™:
HPCC Systems™ from LexisNexis® Risk Solutions offers a proven,
data-intensive supercomputing platform designed for the enterprise
to process and solve Big Data analytical problems. As a superior
alternative to Hadoop and legacy technology, HPCC Systems offers
a consistent data-centric programming language, two processing
platforms and a single, complete end-to-end architecture for
efficient processing. For more information, visit HPCC Systems
at http://hpccsystems.com.

=======
For a campus map and a link to directions please see
http ://www.spsu.edu/visitspsu/campusmaps/index.htm
Parking in non reserved spaces in the P60 deck is best.
building J, the Atrium building, is a short distance east
of the parking deck.
======
ALE-NW@SPSU meetings are open events and we hope
you will join us! Also remember that topic suggestions
and presentation offers the meetings can be emailed to
[ jdp (at) algoloma ]

ALE CENTRAL MTG. for Thurs., March 15th, 2012

Filed at 4:08 pm under by Ruscetta


Our highlight presentation at the ALE Central Meeting
for 7:30pm on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 (with a
reprise at the NW-SPSU mtg. on April 12th) will be:

LexisNexis® :
Solving Big Data Problems with the
Opensource HPCC Systems™ Platform

presented by Dr. Flavio Villanustre & Arjuna Chala,
and featuring a Door Prize giveaway of
a Nook (Android) E-Reader!


Synopsis:

– HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) is an open source
massive parallel-processing computing platform that solves
Big Data problems. An overview of the HPCC Systems architecture
and its major components including Thor, Roxie and ECL will be
presented along with how this platform compares to other big data
technologies like Hadoop. System requirements covering the
supported Linux distributions will be reviewed. Also included will
be a demo of how this platform can integrate with Pentaho
Spoon/Kettle for powerful data ETL capabilities.

Speaker Bios:

– Dr Flavio Villanustre –

- VP Infrastructure & Products, HPCC Systems and LexisNexis -
Flavio is the Vice President of Infrastructure and Products. In this
position, Flavio is responsible for Information and Physical Security,
overall infrastructure strategy and new product development.
Previously, Flavio was Director of Infrastructure for Seisint. Prior to
2001, Flavio served in a variety of roles at different companies
including Infrastructure, Information Security and Information
Technology. In addition to this, Villanustre has been involved with
the Opensource community for over 15 years through multiple
initiatives. Some of these include founding the first Linux User Group
in Buenos Aires (BALUG) in 1994, releasing several pieces of software
under different Opensource licenses, and evangelizing Opensource
to different audiences through conferences, training and education.
– Arjuna Chala —

- Architect Integrations, HPCC Systems and LexisNexis -
Arjuna is responsible for providing strategic and technology direction
for the analytics and business intelligence components of the
HPCC platform.

About HPCC Systems™:
HPCC Systems™ from LexisNexis® Risk Solutions offers a proven,
data-intensive supercomputing platform designed for the enterprise
to process and solve Big Data analytical problems. As a superior
alternative to Hadoop and legacy technology, HPCC Systems offers
a consistent data-centric programming language, two processing
platforms and a single, complete end-to-end architecture for
efficient processing. For more information, visit HPCC Systems
at http://hpccsystems.com.

=============
We will be meeting at Emory Law School in our
usual Gambrel Hall, room 1C venue.
Meeting time frame is 7:30pm to ~9:30pm
Directions to Emory Law School can be found
[here]

ALE-NW@SPSU MTG. for Thurs., March 8th, 7:30pm

Filed at 3:05 am under by Ruscetta


The next ALE-NW@SPSU meeting is being held
Thursday, March. 8th, 2012 at 7:30pm in room J131
of the Atrium (J) building on the SPSU campus.

The feature presentation will be
The Cloud and Openstack:

Is Timesharing Back In?

with Ron Baker

Abstract:
* What is the cloud? What are the driving forces behind the cloud?
* The 4 – aas’s with focus on IaaS and what it brings or doesn’t to the table
* Now Openstack: What is it // Who, what, when, and why (History) //
Openstack core components // Software // Typical hardware configurations
// Network // Component interaction // Monitoring tools
* Typical architectures: Proof of concept (in use today) // Large scalable
* Lessons Learned or what should I do and not do
* Types of cloud implementations (Private, hybrid, public)
* Where can I get more information?
* Is “man” really your friend?

———
Bio:
- Ron is a Principal Technical Architect at at&t, where he is responsible for IT
Infrastructure design for emerging services and network enablers. Prior to his
current position, Ron was an architect in the ITO organization. He has held
various positions in telecommunications, including IT Director at BellSouth
Advertising and Publishing, IT architect for video services and mobility,
Product Selection Manager, Product Manager, and various sales and sales
support management positions.
- Ron has extensive experience in mid-range servers (HP, Sun, IBM), Intel
based hardware (both Windows and Linux), as well as broad network
knowledge including TCP/IP and WAN transport (MPLS).
- Previous to his career in telecommunications, Ron was a programmer at
Burlington Industries. He is a graduate of N. C. State University with a
degree in Applied Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science.

=======
For a campus map and a link to directions please see
http ://www.spsu.edu/visitspsu/campusmaps/index.htm
Parking in non reserved spaces in the P60 deck is best.
building J, the Atrium building, is a short distance east
of the parking deck.
======
ALE-NW@SPSU meetings are open events and we hope
you will join us! Also remember that topic suggestions
and presentation offers the meetings can be emailed to
[ jdp (at) algoloma ]

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