Recently Microsoft had come out to wish Linux a happy 20th birthday by sending out this video message to all the Linux users throughout the world.

Recently the Linux Foundation have put up a video that briefly sums up the history of Linux during the last 20 years since it's been created. This video is great for any new Linux users who are wondering how Linux got started. The Linux Foundation will be releasing more videos on the stories about Linux, but now we begin with the history of Linux from the beginning. Enjoy and happy 20 years of Linux.

Play from YouTube

And it's officially official. The guys at Linux on iPhone have officially ported Android to the iPhone 3G. Anyone who is interested on porting the system themselves will have to wait for instructions to be written. If you're an iPhone 3GS you'll have to wait as they're still trying to get Android to play friendly with the hardware.

Our next LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, March 20th at the Al Ayam Media Center(for directions see Al Ayam Media Center Directions). the topic will be as follows:

Online Payment Services Using Apache Tomcat and Linux

The presentation will be covering various topics on online payments.  It will review the structure of an online payment solution tailored to the insurance industry.  The project involves the implementation of a multi-tier web services application structure using Java Enterprise Edition, Tomcat application server, Ubuntu Linux, and .net for the front end web site application.  The focus was on security, scalability, and interoperability between legacy banking systems and online payment merchant systems.

The presenter for this topic will be Ezz Hantash my dear classmate from our MBA program. It will be interesting to see a real life implementation of software using open source software in an enterprise setting.
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Our next LUG meeting will be on 3:30PM Saturday, February 13th at the Al Ayam Media Center(for directions see Al Ayam Media Center Directions). the topic will be as follows:

Beowulf Supercomputer

A Beowulf-class supercomputer is a cluster of personal computers connected through a local area network (LAN) used as a cheap alternative to multi-million dollar custom built supercomputers. The Beowulf system is mainly used at universities and research centers running computationally intensive applications. The system is constructed by Commodity Off The Shelf (COTS) components and consists of a number of PCs, called compute nodes, performing the computation job and a single PC acting as a server (system controller) connected via a network switch. The system processing power is determined by the number of compute nodes, increasing with the addition of more nodes. The system currently being install at UoB, funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research, consists of 34 Dell Optiplex 320 running at 3.2 GHz as compute node and Dell PowerEdge SC1430 Dual Core Intel Xeon processor running at 1.6 GHz connected via Dell Power Connect 3448 switch. Linux is used as the operating system with free Fortran, C, and other software available on the system. An example problem for such a system will be presented (so get your physics books ready... you are warned......)

The presenter for this topic will be Dr.Mohamed Alothman. He is a faculty member at the Department of Physics, University of Bahrain and currently the chairman of the department. he holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy and his research area is space physics, specifically, magnetospheric physics and the radiation belts.

Presentation Slides
Presentation slides are attached below to this story
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Play from YouTube

To the people throughout the world who think Linux may be at a stop sign, you should think again. In a recent article on Engadget Google's Android has been ported onto the NOKIA N900. The great thing about this is that Android is being dual-booted. So Maemo 5 is still installed and with Android on there, this phone is no doubt going to have some increases in sales soon. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if NOKIA makes the switch to Android. 

Our next LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, October 10th at the Youth Innovation Center (for directions see Youth Center Directions). Jeremy Bicha will be presenting openSUSE and SUSE Studio.

The first release of openSUSE was in 2005 although the openSUSE name didn't appear until 2006. As Fedora is the free, community-developed distro that provides a testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, improvements in openSUSE are incorporated into SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. openSUSE 11.2 is scheduled for release in mid-November and is one of the few distros where KDE is the default desktop environment.
SUSE Studio is a brand new service from Novell that allows anyone to create their own customized Linux distribution (or appliance as SUSE likes to call it) based on openSUSE or SUSE Linux Enterprise. Pick your favorite software even if it is not in the default repositories. After you've finished customizing your appliance, you can download it in ISO format for burning to a DVD, IMG format for your USB stick, or as a virtual machine image to use in VirtualBox, VMware, or Zen. Even more interesting is that SUSE Studio can boot your appliance so you can Test Drive it inside your web browser without you having to download anything.
Sign up for your free SUSE Studio account today and we look forward to seeing you at this month's meeting!
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Our next LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, August 8th at the Youth Innovation Center (for directions see Youth Center Directions). the topic will be as follows:

Wine and CrossOver

Wine and Crossover are two applications that allow Linux users to run many windows applications in Linux natively. The presentation will cover the following topics:

• installation: the installation of both Wine and Crossover
• IEs4Linux: this application allows user to more easily install Internet Explorer in Linux
• MS Office: installing and running MS Office in Linux
• Adobe Photoshop: installing and running Adobe Photoshop
• Wine Configuration: themes, audio, and a tour of the general settings
• CrossOver Tour: tour of installing applications in CrossOver and a review of it's different features compared to wine

 Marwan Al-Sabbagh will be the presenter. So come and enjoy also please note we won't be serving any wine at this meeting :)

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Our next LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, July 11th at the Youth Innovation Center (for directions see Youth Center Directions). the topic will be as follows:

Video Editing and Recording in Linux

We will be looking at a number of command line and graphical tools that can record video, resize, crop, edit, and re-encode video. We'll demo how to use these different applications and tools to perform all sorts of video editing tasks. Many of these tools I have been using for years and directly using to edit and publish the videos that are posted on the LUG site. Below is a summary of some of the applications that will be covered:

• gtk-recordmydesktop: a graphical front-end to the screen recording tool recordmydesktop, I used this application in the last meeting to record the presentation
• vlc: a versatile video player that can also be used to view a webcam
• avidemux: a very powerful and reliable graphical video editor with a wide array of features
• mencoder: command line tool very handy for video encoding, conversion and scripting/automation
• ffmpeg: another hand command line tool for video encoding, conversion and scripting/automation
• kdenlive:  another graphical application that is an option for video editing

 Marwan Al-Sabbagh will be the presenter, and he very much looks forward to seeing you all again at the next meeting :).

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