Episode: 468
Title: HPR0468: Quvmoh's UTOS trip
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0468/hpr0468.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 21:10:49

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Hello everyone, this is Koovmo and I wanted to tell you about attending my first open source conference.
After hearing so much about the fun times had by all in the recent months a close to home meetup had to be found.
After finding the Utah open source conference, a scam, 5.5 hours away, plans were laid to attend.
She who must be obeyed was consulted and it was determined that the conference hotel was much more than acceptable and a lodging at half the price was secured.
Google is your friend. Also by joining several local forums a discount code for the conference was found and used to acquire entrance for the whole event at half the price of normal admission.
With prices of scheduling in hand, I proceeded to my local lug and it ties to other Boise lug members, Clint, the blog organizer and Mary and enthusiastic and soon to be converted open source user to join me on my quest.
Clint, a seasoned conference attendee graciously donated the use of a Subaru to speed us on our adventure.
Preparation. I found I was desperately in need of a new battery from my old Inspiron V130 and was able to find one shipped from an online auction
new for under $40. A list was prepared to make sure what may be needed was included in my kit, laptop and charger, phone and charger, camera and USB table, mouse, pens and paper, a printout of the conference schedule, a copy of the hotel confirmation and a binder to hold them all.
Two pairs of pants, three black shirts and enough underuse to clear the weekend. Clint arrived early in the morning on the 8th and I loaded my laptop bag and backpack next to his laptop bag and carry on and proceeded to Mary's where we loaded three steamer trunks and 20 pillows and headed east.
We went straight to the conference as we could not check in until afternoon and after receiving our badges, t-shirts and a really nice novel laptop bag headed our separate ways to explore the sites.
The vendor area was a hoot and I met lots of great people and got lots of cool swag from Fedora, BSD, Ubuntu, O'Reilly and bought a t-shirt and a command line book from the Free Software Foundation.
There were also several non-profit organizations that I hope to work with in the near future and had a great conversation with all of them.
My first talk was networking 101 with Corey Edwards, then on to Linux unit shells, a buff with Aaron Topants, who expounded on the Z-Shell and wanted a discussion on the plus and minus of various shells, but we convinced him to just show us the tricks he had acquired for the Z-Shell.
Then it was off to a buff put on by our very own Clint Tinsley on Linux home servers, specifically Slam, the simple solution for home server.
Clint has been working with the creator, Kenis Unis and Tonius to work out bugs and make the solution even easier to use, expect the 2.0.2 release very soon.
After more greet me, it was time to check in at the hotel and pass out for the night.
Our location was great and we had the choice of at least three unsecured Wi-Fi connections to play with.
Friday the 9th we headed back and my first talk of the day was Life Without a Goody by Jared Bernard.
Jared is not a programmer or hardcore hacker but was introduced to the power of the command line and never went back.
His talk covered most of the tools he uses to get things done and even has a website that covers his adventures.
Links will be in the show notes. His talk was inspirational in life changing as I hate to let go of old hardware and simple changes in perspective will greatly increase the usefulness of that which I currently have.
Then it was off to SSH tips and tricks by Aaron Bergermeister and while I admit that most of it was over my head, I did take lots of notes for additional reading and came out with a better understanding of the basics.
Then to Virtual Private Networking with OpenVPN by Jeremy Wilden, where lots was learned, then to podcasting with open source tools by Tom Allen.
Tom has had quite a few hits in the podcasting world, mostly dealing with music and those scheduled as a buff, no one minding just letting him do an informative presentation.
Saturday was a big day, as that I had discovered they were throwing a busy flag tournament, hence the inclusion of a mouse to my kid.
Brother Mopar would like to thank everyone at Planet Mofo and Lumin's Mystical Valley Magical for kicking my tail so regularly that I was able to win a Linux firewall book at the attorney.
I would also like to thank CR Oldham of HopeKids.org for setting up this bit of fun.
Then it was off to using FFMPEG for everything by Doran Barton, who showed us how any media could be converted to any other media in the command line with FFMPEG.
Then it was HDR photography using open source for beginners by Sean Price.
I have already included this in my list of things to play with now that I'm back in the real world.
We all had a great time, the venue, sponsors and volunteers really made us feel welcome and I'm going to do everything possible to return.
Most of the talks were recorded in one way or another and should be up soon.
Thank you all and have a great week.
Thank you for listening to HACRA Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Pharaoh.net so head on over to C-A-R-O dot N-E-T for all of us in need.
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