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QC LUG Meeting Minutes
[Wednesday 4/8/15 6:30 PM]
[Location: Icons - Rock Island, IL]

WELCOME:
The Quad Cities Linux Users Group (QC-LUG) is a group of Linux hobbyists, professionals, and enthusiasts near the Quad Cities (Rock Island and Moline on the Illinois side; Davenport and Bettendorf on the Iowa side) where the Mississippi River runs East to West and Iowa is North of Illiois. Our members share interests in Linux and free or low-cost implementations of Unix, as well as other open software. The group was created to provide support, education, and lively discussions regarding useful applications Linux, alternatives to main-stream operating systems, and technology.

Membership is free and there are various tiers of sponsorship available to perpetuate the cause. To quote the Linux Foundation: "By supporting these... events, your company stands to gain inside knowledge that will help you get the most out of your investment in open source and also gain credibility and mindshare with this opportunity community. Visibility within the open source community is one of the best ways to recruit high level software talent which is essential for competition."

FACEBOOK REQUESTS:
If you'd like something to be posted n Facebook/Twitter please send your request to marketing@qclug.com and it will get posted. 

Brian will be working on enhancing that experience - if you don't see results keep bugging him. 

INTRODUCTIONS:
Let's go around the room and get to know one another – At the very least, we ask that you introduce yourself with a first name so we can avoid the whole stranger danger scenario. If you've been here a while, tell us how long you've been attending and why you keep coming back. If you're new – do what feels natural.

Today we have 11 fellas in attendance of varying experience levels and etiquette / hygiene practices. Some are first timers and others re regulars (to the bar and the meeting). There was some discussion of Aaron's great OpenShift (container based) presentation and his prospects of being hired to promote the topic professionally around the world. There was some general rumblings about life in general. Aaron, Mark, Brad, Travis, Chad, Dan, Ryan, Alex, Chucky, Tom, and Nathan. 

JOBS:
Alex has a contractor position open writing shell scripts - get a hold of him if you are interested.

OLD BUSINESS:
Officer Positions have been filled!
-Web Master - Tom
Officer Positions that are open:
-PR Assistant

IRC Channel - two are actually interested - a couple more perked up their ears. For those not familiar, it is basically a chat session. A possible alternative is Slack. The consensus is that we probably wouldn't use it enough to justify creating it - but we will let it develop organically.

Anyone interested in visiting another LUG? Iowa City? Anywhere else? Aaron will put the next meeting on the list and see if anyone else is interested. We all agreed it better be somewhere with drinking. 

We want Mark to make us a Logo - We voted that there should be a penguin. There is significant discussion on a beer and a library book - but some alternate paths proposed as well. Mark will get some renderings shortly. Seems like a nice fella. 

PRESENTATION:
Brad gave a riveting presentation on KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) Hardware Passthrough:
-Gaming on KVM!
-Block device pass-through to FreeNAS (ZFS)

He discussed some of his challenges and work-arounds, reasons for pursuing this project, and why it is the most awesome thing we could learn about in this establishment between 7:14 PM and 8:19 PM on this particular day. There was discussion of ESXi, XEN, and his interactions with others in forums. You have to find a processor that supports virtualization (VT-D) with direct IO. Gives you the ability to run hardware instructions outside of the privileged ring. We dove into different hardware configurations / layouts and how they differ with IOMMU. He went with a server class motherboard for his project - less sexy, but more functional.

Tom keeps the group from fixating on the gritty details of history with is wit and charm. Others chime in with agreement. Brad has a hell of a text document detailing his trials, errors, and awesomeness. He will share that with us when he gets around to it. He did quite the dance and built up quite the anticipation.


POSSIBLY, MAYBE, PERHAPS OF INTEREST:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/202907-intel-compute-stick-vs-asus-chromebit-should-you-wait-for-chrome-os

Below are the details of basically a USB Stick that turns a monitor into a computer. Talk to us if you want to discuss in more depth - we can align the stars too. 

Intel Compute Stick is a Real PC
The top-level $149 Intel Compute Stick is full Windows 8.1 PC, with a 64-bit quad-core Atom Bay Trail CPU, 2GB RAM, and 32GB of flash storage. You plug the Compute Stick into a free HDMI port on a computer monitor, and you’ve got an entire PC. There’s a microSD slot so you can transfer media or expand the internal storage, as well as a USB 2.0 port for connecting peripherals. It has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. A micro USB port supplies power, although eventually Intel wants to power the entire thing via HDMI; we’ll see what happens with that later on.

If you couldn’t care less about Windows (we are happy to enlighten you) and want to save money, an $89 version will run Ubuntu instead of Windows 8.1. That model steps down to 1GB RAM and 8GB of flash storage. In addition to possible future HDMI-only power, Intel has also hinted it may build additional versions with Core M processors.

Asus Chromebit is an even smaller Chromebox
The Asus Chromebit, meanwhile, won’t be around until this summer, according to Google. But clearly there’s a showdown in the making here. The Chromebit will also cost less than $100, although we don’t know exactly how much yet. Like the Compute Stick, it plugs into an HDMI port, and contains both a USB port and Bluetooth for connecting a keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals.

Like the inexpensive Chromebooks Hisense and Haier just released, the Chromebit contains a quad-core ARM Cortex A17 Rockchip CPU and a quad-core ARM 760 Mali GPU, drawing as little as 3 watts of power, and the Chromebit contains 2GB RAM and 16GB flash storage. 802.11ac and Bluetooth are on board, with the latter meant for connecting a keyboard or mouse; an additional USB 2.0 port is for hooking up a drive or other peripherals. There’s no microSD slot on this one.

On a side note - there's other, less expensive (or free) alternatives as well. Come to a meeting or shoot us a message to learn more!

UPCOMING MEETINGS:
Board Meeting next Wednesday at 5:30 PM at Icons in Rock Island, IL. All are welcome!

The next Presentation will take place at the Bettendorf Library on Wednesday, May 13th, 2015 at 6:30 PM. We rent a room with plenty of seating and a projector.
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