Thanks, Ted, for the reminder. Good news: tax season is over ... for the moment. We resume in late July for those who filed an extension ( or knew they would get a refund but couldn't file in time. ) What was rewarding for me is that I was able to do every return on a Chromebook from the Maricopa County Public Library ( a Dell 3100 2-in-1 ). The main challenge was moving data: from printed forms into applications and then between applications. That provided a chance to create a few Python scripts that I ran in a Docker container in the Linux Dev Env. For instance, I have scripts that parse PDF form files to extract key-value data into a YAML file. There is also a script that, given a blank PDF form and a YAML file, merges the two into a filled-in PDF form. Then there's a script to parse scanned state IDs ( e.g. Drivers Licenses ) to generate a YAML file. The Bluetooth scanner I have connects to the Chromebook just fine. In the queue to do: web scraping the data, probably BS4 or Selenium. It'll be interesting to see what this Chromebook can do. In other news, I checked out a laptop from the Santa Fe Public Library. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as useful as the Chromebook and quite a beast: a Dell Latitude 5420 Rugged. It runs a very locked down Windows 10. That means no installing software or enabling features that aren't already installed or enabled, e.g. no WSL. Every time you log out, all your preferences, data, and settings are wiped clean and reset. None of it is automatically saved nor restored from the cloud. That includes wifi passwords. It's a clean slate each time you log in: la tabula rasa. In contrast, you only get a clean slate on the Chromebook if you PowerWash. Last hardware item: the Lenovo 10e Chromebook is merely ok to work on, even with the folio keyboard attached. The ARM processor is definitely lacking power. And the OS has a few warts. For example, many times when rsyncing from the internal filesystem to the USB stick, the process simply hangs. The same process using a regular copy/paste from the Files app works just fine. However, knowing those limitations and being able to work around them makes the 10e a decent Linux-based tablet. What are other folks up to? Regards, - Robert On Tue, Apr 26, 2022 at 2:02 PM Ted Pomeroy <ted.pome@gmail.com> wrote:
NMGLUGers, We do have a meeting this week, still virtual till we plan otherwise. See https://nmglug.org/meetings/ for the link to the 'virtual meeting place'. Schedule: Thurs. April 28th at 5:30pm, MDT, till about 7pm. We recently exploded my ignorance of the politics at the Free Software Foundation. I did re-view the video on the "State of Free Software" and found the overall tone to be negative. There were several "Thou shalt not ..." recommendations, not commandments, but mainly what not to do. I can see this as an impediment to progress, and fun, at this point in time with the multitude of hardware and software combinations out there.
On the other hand The Linux Foundation is also moving ahead: The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the first round of keynote speakers taking the stage at Open Source Summit North America, June 21-24, in Austin, TX and virtually. To Register: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-summit-north-america/register... The preliminaries are posted and the actual event is very nearby, so maybe some of our locals will be interested. Much of this is specialized, but it all seems more creative and positive, at least in the announcement blurbs.
I have been working on a 2010 Mac Pro Tower, proprietary hardware, highly tweaked in manufacture, but running Xubuntu tolerably. It is like a modification of a Mac Truck to do family driving: over elaborate and over powered. I note that newer machines are lighter and faster. The absence of hyper-threading is compensated by over-clocking the multiple cores. They are kept cool by one or two of the six fans in the box. It works, but is it efficient or necessary? Perhaps you are making progress on more interesting combinations of hardware and software.
Thank you, Ted P _______________________________________________ nmglug mailing list nmglug@lists.nmglug.org http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org