LUG Uganda

The LUG event is an event where Linux users meet. I’ve been using a Mac for the past 5 months, but I still cringe at the sight of Linux’s power. I am not scared of the Linux OS in any way; I like the whole idea behind UNIX… it is one of the reasons that forced me into rethinking my usage of my Mac. I also, play with other Linux-based tools like my N900. Its got Maemo installed in it; Maemo is a variant of Linux. But, okay. I think this is all the time I’ve to got to spare talking about my toys.

The LUG, ah, an impressive sounding term. When asked about it, it usually brings many Windows users crying about the disaster that the Windows OS almost always brings upon its users.

A collection of about 15 people gathered at Mountbatten, a web hosting firm in Uganda. It was a meeting we had all probably been waiting for. The LUG event or just the “LUG” is held on a monthly basis. And in this event, a few of the many Linux users offer themselves up. They tend to speak about all sorts of topics; from basic networking, writing software, to more complex features. There was a time we even gamed… Open Arena is a cool game to play over a distributed network.

Isn't the LUG banner cute?

Yesterday’s session was on 3 major subjects of interest

• Using the vi editor
• Pothole mapping
• Regular expressions

Kyle Spencer gave us a quick tutorial on using the vi editor. vi is a very popular editor found mostly on UNIX based systems. There are far more chances that you will find it in almost every UNIX based distro. Other editors are usually “add-on” editors and need to be installed at a later time as need arises.

vi has got two modes of operation

• input mode
• command mode

How do you invoke the vi command.

$vi <file_name>

or

$vi

Type a few lines of sense, then save the file (:w or :wq) and quit.

Kyle... he is almost done playing a game! Damn man, I need that gaming gear for my Euro trip

A few commands to take note of as you use the vi editor are

• :q (to quit the application)
• :w (to write to file)
• :q! (to quit by brute force)
• :wq! (to write and quit by brute force)
• dd (delete a line from a file)
• x  (deletes a character)

If you want to learn more about vi, I’ve attached a cheatsheet here (click the hyperlinked text).

Next on the menu was the Pothole mapping application which was quite interesting, we creating a couple of pothole points on the map; Kyle’s pothole is about 20 meters in diameter. We made jokes about the state of roads in Uganda (which I must say is rather appalling).

Click to get location of pothole lol!

The application is designed using the Drupal, a web application content management system written in PHP. Other features of the application include integration with openlayers, openstreet maps (OSM), and some other feature I kinda forgot.

We also did a direct video conference with MUST (Mbarara University of Science and Technology) and were very surprised by the speed. There’s a chance that we’ll do video conferencing in future LUG events in Uganda. In the photo, are the folks at MUST.

Finally, we ended the day with Moses‘s talk on Regexes (regular expressions)

Moses working on his slides and code on the side

We made it back home in one piece…. it drizzled too.