UNC Linux Users Group

[Tom Roche <Tom_Roche AT unc.edu>]

Joel J. Adamson Wed, 15 May 2013 10:21:29 -0400
> things I could help present:
> - Getting started with Emacs (half-meeting, followed by someone else
>   doing Getting Started with vi, followed by arm-wrestling)

A subtopic that would also be useful to non-beginners: <your editor
here/> package management. I.e., years of emacs have left me with a
big'n'crufty init.el in which I need to replace copied code with
managed packages. I'm assuming vi* has a similar mechanism, so its
users may face similar issues (though I couldn't care less :-)
Obviously (IIUC, ICBW) beginners now should be using package managers
for extensions.

> - Using Emacs' Org Mode
> - LaTeX

oh yeah, esp as a wordprocessor replacement

> - A tour of desktop environments/window managers (why so many choices?)
> - Scheme programming in a Unix environment
> - Make

> Here are some things that I would be interested in seeing:
> - IPC in C, Python, etc
> - Newer programming languages: D, Vala, Go, etc
> - Options for scheduling backups

... or just backup generally--so many options/variations

> - Features of somebody's favorite distro (perhaps this could be like
>   lightning talks, 5 minutes per distro and people could sign up from a
>   list of options)
> - Source-based distros

Two topics that might interest both the admin crowd and scientific users
among the student population:

- terminal/shell managers/multiplexers, e.g., byobu, GNU Screen. I
  really need to migrate away from gnome-terminal (though it mostly
  "does the job")

- inter-application automation, aka "applescript for linux"

FWIW, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche AT pobox.com>