Chicago Linux User Group

I used to participate in Chennai LUGs way back in India. We used to have LUG meetings either @ IIT, Chennai or MIT, Chennai.

For quite a few months, I was watching the activities in Chicago Linux User Group (LUG) community http://www.chicagolug.org/. (On to the right is my blacky glossy GNOME desktop in my Zion (my laptop) :D)

A decent number of GNU/Linux fans gather @ Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago every two weeks to discuss about a couple of technical topics based on GNU/Linux. This time, here @ Chicago LUG, it was Gabriel Burt (Novell employee) who gave the speech.

It was about Banshee (http://banshee-project.org/) the music management and play back application for GNOME. He is one of the main developers of it and he has been employed by Novell for that! He was cool, calm and modest. Banshee was even cooler with a plethora of features. The way they have designed is by placing all the core features with Banshee and all the extra features come as modules/plugins. Some of the coolest features worth mentioning are

• Search feature - Fast and Furious! It even supports searching audio files using expressions based on the rating (rating > "2") or played time (played < "2 hours")!!
• Manage ipod WITHOUT iTunes
• Mirage - Music recommendations of new artist, album & genre based on the playing track's artist :)
• Internet Radio
• ShowtrackonChange - Displays a configurable pop-up above all your windows when a new track begins playing. The popup then disappears after a while automatically.

The next seminar was on RockBox which is an open source firmware for a variety of mp3 players including iPod. That presentation was good too.

One thing I noticed in everyone there was - Everyone blamed and yelled on Steve Jobs though the rest of the world praises him for his ipod, itouch, iphone, iTunes and blah blah. I will sooner let you all know (what & how Steve has done) in my forthcoming posts. But, to tell the fact, he is simply a bastard!

I liked the way the Linux meetup happened. Everyone was jovial and everyone was a huge fan of Rock and metal music. Here, I have a question.. What is the relation between GNU/Linux & Rock? I don't know :) But most of the GNU/Linux fans I have met, are rock/metal fans. Everyone had their laptop connected in the nicely designed seminar hall. Wi-Fi too was there. Some took notes, some took videos, some took photos, some were drinking Sam Adams. Totally, the meetup was hi-fi and informative. Also, I happened to meet quite a few US GNU/Linux fans :)

I met a Mallu guy (the only other Indian guy @ Chicago LUG) there. Learnt that he is one of the main developers involved in the translation of GNOME & KDE to Malayalam language project. We both went for a lunch after the LUG meet. The surprising thing he revealed was that he knows well about Anna University KB Chandrasekhar research Center (AU-KBC) @ Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai though he never worked or involved with any of the activities running there. KBC is so much popular :)

Here are a few snaps of the Chicago LUG meet..

1) Rockbox Lecture 2) Complete Seminar hall view 3) Other GNU/Linux Evangelists.