February 24, 2004

An overview of the current state of Linux as it could be applied to business users and systems. Various distributions, tools and applications will be presented by OCCA members.

Moderator for the discussion will be Tim Chalmers, owner of Your Computer Guy. Tim has been supporting clients with Microsoft operating systems and networks, but has had a growing interest in using Linux wherever possible.

Tom Rich will bring a workstation based upon the Gentoo distribution. He will discuss the pros and cons of this particular distribution and whether Gentoo Linux is ready for prime time. He will research tech support and customer support issues and availability of software and ease of loading new software. Gentoo has a unique method for distributing applications that may be of interest.

Don Cummings from TTJ computers will discuss Novell's acquisition of Suse Linux and Ximian desktop, what it means for Novell's customers and its application in the business environment.

Gordon Ruby will give a demonstration of Mandrake Linux and Windows emulators and discuss the journaling file system.

David Cornelius will give a demo of two mature RAD (Rapid Application Development) environments for Linux. One, a commercial product by Borland Software called, Kylix (Delphi's Linux counterpart),compiles C++ and Pascal code natively for X Windows applications. The other is an open source web development tool called, Quanta. The goal will be to show consultants that if businesses need custom software,the feature-rich GUI tools we've come to expect on Windows platforms are here today in Linux.

Dave Kezziah will be showing a laptop with Redhat 9 installed and call also talk about the installation and the uses of it.

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