Diablo Valley Linux Users Group
Upcoming meetings
- Friday January 27th at 6pm
- Friday February 3rd at 6pm
- Friday February 10th at 6pm
Meetings are once a week on Fridays at 6PM at Caffe La Scala in Walnut Creek.
Introduction
Welcome to the website of the Diablo Valley Linux Users Group! We're a group covering the north-east San Francisco Bay Area — Concord, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Danville, Lamorinda (Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda), Walnut Creek, and nearby areas in Contra Costa County — aiming to advocate and spread Linux, do LUG events in the Diablo Valley area, and have fun while we're at it. Occupy your computer!
Weekly Meetings
Purpose: discuss Linux-related news, have time for users to present or discuss issues, best effort "drop-in" Linux support
Time: every Friday at 6:00 PM. Meetings are informal and generally last from one to three hours, depending on attendance. It's perfectly fine if you can't stay the whole time.
Location: Caffe La Scala (Yelp link, Google Maps) at 1655 N Main St (at Civic Drive), Walnut Creek, CA. It is primarily a coffee shop in downtown Walnut Creek. Free wifi. Good food (soup, pizza, sandwiches; includes vegetarian options) and drinks.
Parking & BART: Free parking is available at metered spaces after 6 PM. It can be tough to find a parking space close by so try to come a few minutes early. The closest paid lot is a block away at the Center for the Arts. Ask us for parking hints at a meeting. Walnut Creek BART is a few blocks away. Walking from BART takes about 10 minutes. There is also a "free ride" Route #4 Broadway Plaza bus/trolley that runs every 15 minutes. Look for the green "Free Ride" trolley. Get off the trolley when it turns right in front of the Center for the Arts, Civic @ Locust. Main St. is one block away.
Have you heard of Linux?
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Colloquially, Linux is a family of operating systems (OS) like different versions of Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Unlike those closed source licensed products Linux is licensed as open source software. If you want to try it out ask us for a bootable CD or bring an empty USB stick that we can make bootable for you. Starting your computer from a bootable device allows you to try an OS without installing it and without touching the information on your computer's hard disk. Understanding computer hardware is not complicated. Just about all computers have four main parts: CPU, disk, network & RAM. Understanding these simple parts allows the understanding of how the disk can be temporarily substituted when you start or boot your computer in a different way like with a CD or USB stick. People sometimes have difficulty understanding this because they more commonly interact directly with the monitor, mouse, keyboard and other peripherals. Different types of Linux are available that can run on almost any hardware you can imagine from mainframes to wrist watches. You can safely try Linux by booting your computer from CD or a USB stick. Another way to try Linux is downloading Virtual Box for Windows, Mac or Linux and for example Ubuntu and installing Linux inside a virtual machine. What types of Linux are there? Well, to people that care about the differences, when newcomers say Linux it is usually assumed that most people approximately intend Unix like GNU/Linux Distribution. There are many different distributions available however some of the UNIX like systems we have discussed at dvlug.org include:
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Interests & Other Groups
Our group member's experiences include offering Android applications on the Google Market, running a Linux From Scratch, Arch Linux and installing OpenWRT on Linksys WRT54GL AP/routers.
Members are also active in other groups such as Ubuntu-US-CA, Fedora Project Ambassadors, Partimus, OLPC San Francisco, GidgetKitchen, CABAL, BayLISA, Bay Area Debian, LinuxPicnic, GeekNic, BerkeleyLUG, BUUG, BALUG, SF-LUG, Noisebridge, NBLUG, PenLUG, SVLUG, Felton LUG, LUGOD, SacLUG, BayPiggies, OpenCanopi.com and Dreamfish. Additional lists of regional and state groups include Bay Area Linux Events and CA state groups. Some of us have experience on other flavors of Unix too like Solaris, HP/UX and AIX.
Special mention should be given to our friends at ZaReason in Berkeley for selling Linux preinstalled on desktops and laptops. They are also community supporters in several of the above groups.
Email List
We announce our weekly Friday meetings here and sometimes have discussions. We also sometimes send news and event notices of Linux- and LUG-related topics. To post a message to all the list members, send email to dvlug@linuxmafia.com. For more information, archives, and to subscribe, visit the list info page. Our list is generously hosted by Rick Moen.
Most Active Members
Looking for someone you saw at a meeting? Wondering who might turn up? Looking for photos so you know who to look for at an event? Here are some of our members' websites. If you'd like to be added, let us know.
- Ian Lynn
- Grant Bowman
- Michael Paric
- Robert Wall
- Courtney Draper, Mark Terranova, and Chris Whitehorn, from Gidget Kitchen
- Jack Deslippe
- Request your name here
Group history
- March 28th, 2009: Initial informal meeting at Todai in Sun Valley Mall in Concord with Phillip Tribble, Robert Wall, Grant Bowman and others.
- April 24th, 2009: Several members attended Ubuntu California's Jaunty release party at Caffe La Scala in Walnut Creek.
- May 15th, 2009: First weekly informal meeting at Caffe La Scala
- Continued weekly meetings at Caffe La Scala ever since
Contact Us
To make suggestions or for more information about the group, contact the mail list or Grant Bowman (grantbow at ubuntu dot com).
