Episode: 1639
Title: HPR1639: Ken Starks at Ohio Linux Fest 2014
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1639/hpr1639.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 06:12:44

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It's Thursday 13th of November 2014, this in HBR episode 1,639 titled, Ken Tarks at Ohio
Linux Fest 2014, it is hosted by a huker and is about 40 minutes long.
Feedback can be sent to Wilnik at Wilnik.com or by leaving a comment on this episode.
The summary is, Ken Tarks builds computers for kids who need a hand.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Anybody here?
Test, user test, back broke, can you hear me?
I'm sorry, I thought a few of you would have stayed, but never mind, here we go.
Yep, that's right.
Wait, why don't we go ahead and do it?
Here we go, for me.
I'm here.
I'm here to use the gentleman.
Sure.
This was going to be a surprise for him.
All right, thanks everybody.
To introduce our closing speaker, I want to bring an Ohioan up to the stage here
who has a lot of history and background with Ken.
Mark McGrew.
The closing keynote speaker for Ohioan Express 2014 is Ken Tarks.
By day, a modest tech support guy and by night someone who takes cast-off computers
and puts them together for the cast-off kids in his community.
Online he goes by helios, the day sun who brings light even to those in the shadows.
To those who observe more mundane matters, he is someone who fixes things.
In some quarters a fixer is someone who changes the odds in favor of some person or party.
For Ken Tarks being a fixer means fixing the imbalance that someone else created
so that any person or party can be a winner.
To the fixer's only one can be a winner.
In the world of helios, any and all can be winners because being a winner doesn't mean being the only winner.
Ken Tarks brings winning to everyone not just to the favor.
For myself, he is a hero.
I know from experience what the title hero means.
A hero is someone who shows up at the right time bringing the right solution to a situation.
Maybe it involves incredible powers and maybe not.
Sometimes a hero is someone who demonstrates by example.
We all have our personal heroes like this.
Ken Tarks is such a hero to me.
And sometimes a hero is someone who actually brings real results to real people who need a hero's help.
Ken and the regular team have done so much for so many.
Like good teachers, they have also learned from their students.
With little to no regular experience using a computer, many of these students are essentially blank slates.
Free to learn their own ways of using the computers they get from RIGLU.
This frontline experience, observing how the students learn.
Next, Ken Tarks and the RIGLU team particularly qualify to talk about Linux and free software on the desktop.
Please welcome the fixer, the hero, the man who has brought to so many the freedom that free software is all about.
Mr. Ken Tarks.
Okay, I guess just got to be smarter than the button, right?
Here we go.
My name is Ken Tarks and I do run an organization called RIGLU.
It was started in 2005.
After I had been injured and I was born to death and we took a computer apart.
And I saw that it was an electronic tenter toy.
I couldn't even screw it up.
So from a couple of guys helping me in my house to where we are now getting ready in December to install our 1,070th other computer.
I come before you today and want to make sure that each and every one of you actually know that without you, we would not exist.
And I mean, we wouldn't do it now.
I ask your indulgence for just a minute because I want to do a little house key.
And where's Vance? Vance for you.
Vance?
Yeah, no, I just wanted to know you're okay.
There's a lot of people here and I just wanted to make sure that you did not tell them I had arrows to the dance.
I'd like to do a little house key if I could take two minutes of your time.
We always use this time of year to announce our RIGLU volunteer of the year.
Now that's kind of a big deal because we have a pool of 166 volunteers that were, of course, at their own pleasure.
But they do everything that we need them to do to let us do our job.
Unfortunately, we're in Ohio and our volunteers are in Texas.
So what am I doing announcing here?
Because the esteemed position of volunteer of the year is now in the audience, Mr. Randy Norseworth.
You have no idea what I had to go through to get him in that seat today for him to be here.
When I was first approached, I asked him, I asked him speaking issues.
That's fine, but I was asked to give a keynote and I was more than happy to do so I thought, well, I'll go next.
That's a nice thing.
So it wasn't too long before Vance sent me the little worm on the website showing that I was going to keynote in a really nice little paragraph underneath.
And I do want to thank him at this time for using the only picture in existence.
It will not make me look positive.
So here I am scrolling down the, you know, and I'm sitting in that picture.
I'm seeing all the nice things they say.
But at the very bottom of that screen, there was something else.
So I rolled past that.
And holy freaking cow, John Madduff Hall is presenting keynote here.
Now, I've never been to one aisle, but it's just, I don't know how it works.
So in my mind, I had to follow Madduff on the podium.
How do you even frame that in your mind?
I mean, I'm like, oh, you know, scared of that.
So anyway, I talked to a friend of mine, a good friend of mine in California, Larry Cafiero, who also was known as the Freestyle Opera guy.
Yeah, of course, Linda.
And he even said, I can't help you, pal.
I don't know what you're going to do.
So I'm one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.
Like I couldn't frame the words, but I was pretty much able to put it together in graphics.
Pretty much.
Pretty much.
Okay.
So let me just hand its challenges on the desktop.
There are a lot of us working the server rooms.
We work at the out desk.
We work in positions where Linux as a desktop is not even an issue.
We don't know what's going on.
But it told that it can price us one percent of computers.
Now we're up to five and probably 15.
That doesn't make any difference.
Because I can show you almost 1,700 kids that use Linux on a day by day basis.
And are even in graduate school now.
And we're going to talk about that.
Well, I started to research where is all this Linux stuff on the desktop.
Me and me are going to introduce you to Dr. Evil.
Only on Celeste.
And I'm going to avoid 30 seconds of awkward silence.
And I'm going to read along with it.
The meat of it is I never recommend Linux systems as a desktop environment.
Anyone who is in a programmer, even then they'd be better off on macOS or virtual machines.
To launch Windows or Linux.
You've got to be kidding me, right?
I mean, there are, by the way, Dr. Evil is not.
Nobody in here on sliced up with that last name is there.
Okay, because I want to fix the nervous feeling.
So, I got to thinking about that.
And it's not really a matter of somebody reading that on sliced up.
There's an extremely focused group of people that read that.
But when that gets hard into the wild where mom and dad, sister and brother, cousin and niece can read that.
It's said in such an authoritarian way.
It must be true.
So, that's one of the things that we've banged our head against.
Well, I think Dr. Evil really should have before.
He said that.
Dr. Richard and Randy Melvinado and their mom rose.
I don't know if you could see it on there.
I met these kids and their mother in 2008.
Actually, a next-door neighbor who knew a friend of mine talked to him and got a little means to look.
There's this mom working two jobs.
No father in the picture.
These are brilliant children and they really need some help.
So, that's what we do.
So, I got my car loaded up and I made the trip to Kyle Texas.
It's a room that's as big as a town by the Biggest Room.
And I made the visit.
And what I found was two amazing children.
Now, one of them is a junior in high school at the time.
That would be Richard.
Randy was just getting ready to enter her senior year in high school.
Fast forward to today.
Richard has completed college.
He has his bachelor degree in justice.
And is now a probation officer in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
What makes Richard a little unique, even as a probation officer,
is that he is set up a small clinic on his own money
to bring in six at-risk children twice a week
to a little facility that he's built.
He's built it using Linux.
I know he did because I went and said to computer that's a long time.
But I actually, I was so proud to know this guy.
That the only thing that could really be clear is what he's done.
He was actually outdone by his sister.
Randy were the Y.
She wanted me to make sure you knew it was the Y.
It's now in our second year of her graduate studies
at Johns Hopkins University.
She got a free ride.
She has to be very little.
I know we made sure that Randy had a brand new computer
that we bought from System 76 for her to go to college.
We had a lot of good and nice stuff that I wanted her to go to
graduate school with something that handled the horsepower
because Randy is studying.
I want to get it right.
My own medical engineering is that there's a reason for that
and I'm going to tell you.
The closest thing to a father that Randy ever had was an uncle.
And he came home from...
at Namaste, Michigan, on.
This is kind of hard for me to get through, apparently.
Randy told me,
a heart,
I'm going to build the on that you use for the rest of your life.
And I'll be done if she isn't doing just that.
What an amazing young lady.
Randy will graduate in a couple years
and hopefully she'll go on to get her doctorate.
But Randy Malvinado is the epitome.
What we try to produce when we're giving these kids
regular computers.
Now, her mom is an amazing woman.
She's worked two jobs,
so he needs to get them to go to school.
But the one thing that Randy wanted to make sure that I told you
is thank you,
because without you,
there would be them.
And I want to applaud you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay, but we've been asked,
can't handle all this,
all enough to get a regular computer.
We don't have anything set in stone.
We don't even have a matrix to pay,
she makes it up money.
And it does,
we all do this for various reasons on a gut level,
because that's where you're going to get to make those decisions now.
Joe Patrono is a hard-working man.
He works two jobs,
so his wife can stay home with all the children.
We gave him that time,
but it was considered to be a model line,
pretty much stadium stuff for our donations.
And it was a nice tool for him,
the four kids ran,
and the only problem we had was a CRT marker,
and those,
I don't even give you a start.
He called me out,
and I get a call from
Eloisa.
And she said,
you told me
that when our computer got old
and wasn't working anymore to call you,
I said, okay.
Now, the matrix is a little bit
to let you know how important this is.
Once a regal kid,
always a regal kid.
I don't care,
I don't have much money you make.
I don't care what your situation is.
We're going to see that one child
all the way through school,
even in graduate school.
So,
I went to Joe's team the first time in 2010,
and he very modest
government housing, if you would.
And
that was very clean,
two room apartment bedroom,
one bedroom,
and one kitchen that acted as a dining room,
and all of these people
fit into there.
So, Joe sent me down on the couch
and said,
ask me what the prerequisites were on,
I said, well,
to be honest with you, Joe,
I think your kids are a little too young right now
to really benefit
from what we had to offer,
and he looked down at the coffee table
and he nodded me,
chewed his lip for a minute,
which sent me the magazine
and he handed me a piece of paper.
What that piece of paper stated was
that his oldest boy
in the top picture,
all the way to the left,
is a mathematical prodigy.
And that he had been accepted
for the prometious learning project
at the University of Texas,
where the kids spent half the day
at school,
and then half the day, you know,
pardon me for my voice treatment.
So, I could not tell Joe no,
because the last thing he said to me
before I made my decision was,
I don't want my boy to grow
up as stupid as me.
And,
I don't know how stupid Joe is
because it worked,
I gave the kids a bit.
So, we've got a child,
oh yeah, actually,
his name is Armando,
but he's called Tony,
and I couldn't say no.
To them, I couldn't say no again,
when I came to see him,
in the bottom picture.
I mean, the kids,
I haven't obvious to the left
that they all grew,
and that's a family picture
before and after,
and they're living,
they've actually had enough
money to buy their own home.
I don't care about that,
once the regal kid always
a regal kid.
So, we get wrapped up,
and you should've seen this computer,
yeah, I couldn't get a sweater
from the stuff that was inside of it.
I mean, Joe,
get a can of air or something
all we can.
So anyway,
we wrap up,
I get the new computer set up,
we got a nice 22-inch
remote armando's already
kicking tough mass butt,
and the other two are fighting
one, you get on it,
and Alyssa,
pulled on my shirt
as I was leaving the house,
she said it looks
to a sandwich for all the way home.
You know, I don't want to
keep your tupperware,
she said,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
mail it back to me
if you feel like that,
eat it on me
on the way home, I know.
Okay.
Morning,
she said,
which I'll take good
any day,
so I'm driving home,
and I'm on I-35
and in the Round Rock,
and I heard a morning
and she said,
what's calling my name?
And so,
I got the password
by the app,
and I looked,
there's a bread cutting out.
I picked a piece up,
and it's two pieces of bread.
You know,
a sandwich in there.
There was three
one hundred dollar bills,
and she had paid for us,
to do that,
and I emailed her later,
and I said,
you didn't have to do that,
and she was,
put a computer
or two in another kid's home.
It's an absolutely amazing way
to spend my time,
by the way,
I don't make any money,
I'm disabled,
retired,
and I'm just the figure
had more,
and thing else,
people like,
Randy,
people like,
Alan Daycy,
you'll see him join.
It's the,
over one hundred people,
that let us do what we do,
because without them,
it will not be possible.
So,
in everything that we do,
we always try to,
include the,
community.
Does anybody recognize the name,
Bruno Nappin?
Bruno is my hero.
When I first picked up,
Linux in 2004,
Bruno was the,
lead guy on Scott's newsletter,
which did nothing but Linux.
Bruno Nappin answered
forty thousand questions
in his time,
within that website.
Now,
aside from that,
he drew to me
and,
and programming started
with my thought.
I mean,
I know what an idea he is now,
you know,
but he took his time
living in,
in,
Alan.
And teach me
about Linux.
Not only did he do that
with me,
he did it with hundreds
of other people.
Bruno passed
from,
right,
cancer,
a few years ago,
and
before he died,
we set up a 25
computer learning lab
in East Austin,
where all the kids
can go and use
a computer a couple of hours
a day under adult supervision.
And I was so happy
to be able to
email Bruno
before he died and say,
here's your legacy found.
And I've never been happier
in my life
than to do that.
Now I said,
volunteers,
wow,
who is this guy?
The amazing Christian.
Now, this is,
this is the patient
I'm,
a patient I pulled off the
lip.
The man's name is
Alan Dacey Jr.
Who is he?
Nobody more important
than you and I.
Why he's here
is important.
We have a distribution
that we use
based on A to E.
One of the pages
that we have
is called World of Goo.
Now World of Goo
only works
if I can get a two install.
All of a sudden,
the dead file
I was pulling
dependency errors
left and right.
So I get old,
Kyle Gagler,
who is one of the two
members that make up
2D boy.
In fact, I'm proud
to say that I broke
the story
about them releasing their
game under Linux.
So I said,
Kyle,
who's your biggest guy?
He goes,
I don't know how you are
and I'm not
good at it.
Freaking great.
So I'm active on
G+.
Google+.
And that's what I call
Facebook for nerds.
And I go to
it out there that I was
having these problems
because I can go like
10,000 people
that could probably fix this
within an hour.
And he had not
only contacted me back.
He had fixed the
problem.
He wrote a script
that automatically
went out and found
those dependencies.
Fixed it and then,
as long as the
folder was in the same
directory,
it would go ahead and
phone home and install
the world of Google.
Anybody
here know the world of
Google?
Have you ever played it?
Oh, I tell it's
amazing.
I know very easy.
I don't know the
mind.
Well,
I have hair
just looking
like my luck.
I don't do anything on
that special.
You guys don't care if
you just answer a question
in the forum.
If you provide
to the colonel. Everything you do, every person in here. All that funnels down into my
pool and I call that the sea of Linux. And I use that to make a kid's life just a little
richer and allow them to compete for grades and say these words and ultimately in college
and life now. I want to make sure that you all know Linux does not have a problem with
these kids. When I go in and I'm setting up a computer, I got kids trying to elbow me
out of the way. They got this. I got this. You know, to see if I can click and I can't
stuff happens. Right? I mean, it's just that easy. These kids don't care about the next
day of people. When this is met, they care about I have a computer. I'm going to make
this work for me. So all the religious wars, they get through them to the side because
these kids have a few other parents. Now, that's not the same story all the time. Sometimes
we get a live-in boyfriend, sit around the computer all day, it plays World of Warcraft.
Until he finds out that World of Warcraft doesn't work a little. Susie's computer. So God
tax a friend. Friend brings over a crap copy. It would do seven. Susie comes home and says,
where is Doc's math? Where is my algebra app? Sorry, kid. You know, so now they have to
sign a research saying that if you put Windows on this, it's going to be a little longer
to support. And as though that sounds a little cruel, it stopped that problem almost completely.
So my time is over because my voice is almost not existing. I want to thank you for making
me feel so well in the home because I want to thank each and every one of you because a
lot of you have come up to me and talked on my sleep because I know you've been to the
most office. So I am more than willing to answer questions or leave, just depending
on how much you all want to do. So, who's there any questions for me? Yes. No, you.
You mentioned that you were, you put your own distribution on, like that distribution available
to download or something you rolled yourself or? No, it will be. Randy's got it on mega.
And so Randy knows where he created those resquins of KDE mint that has our programs on
and yes, I'll try to get you that link or join G-Post and look me up. But I don't have
that with me right now. Is it more geared towards, like, in probably like ages? In most
different ways. Right. We haven't pulled anything out of it. We've just added to it. From
child's play all the way up to hologramatic equation software, you know, the software,
you know, the software should help that child all the way through school.
Yeah, Randy does all our weeks in work and that's why he's came to it all right now.
Because he's amazing. Anybody else? Yeah, you can't miss the news, sir.
Excuse me, can we have a city of privilege to use in this program? Is that all on the
level? Yes, it is. And we can do that all right. That's, and I will try to get a link up
full of that and buy us some on Brickloo Dollar. But yeah, you can go to Brickloo Dollar
and find out just about anything you want to know.
Brickloo Dollar.
Sorry, sir.
Do you ever plan on having chapters in different states?
Sorry? Do you ever plan on expanding out from Texas?
Oh my gosh, no. I am exhausted.
Many of you may know that I'm recovering from cancer therapy. My cancer, we killed the cancer.
It's the treatment that kicked my butt. That's why my voice sounds like the cross between
a chainsaw cutting through a block of sandpaper. But I want to thank you for your concern.
I just want to add that if you take a look around, you're going to find similar programs.
I just the other day called up a guy I know who does the same, he builds computers out of old
parts to give the kids. And I cleaned out my office. I didn't know about like five boxes
and stuff. Maybe half of it's crap. I don't know if he can use all of it.
Oh cool, awesome. Take it away.
It's very easy if we've had a lot of, I'm tired by the amount of people that have asked me
how to start this up on their own. So yeah, it's been rewarding.
Anybody else? Oh, funning. Yeah, somebody asked me about that.
Oh, we're funded by you. I didn't come up here as money. But we're funded by everybody here.
The grants they're available now, they're not discretionary spending grants.
They want me to promise and approve that I bought certain things with them.
But what's good is a car if I can't put fuel in it, right?
So yeah, we're funded by you guys. If you visit www.weglue.org, they'll explain it all.
Have I stayed with www.weglue.org enough?
Yeah. Any more questions?
Good.
How much do I owe you for that?
One charge.
Hello, I'm Michael Shultice. I'm the registration chair infrastructure lead
and nearly appointed volunteer coordinator for Ohio Linux Fest.
In addition to helping organize Ohio Linux Fest, another way I get back
to the free and open source software community serving as a treasure of software
in the public interest, a 501c3 non-profit organization which was founded to help organizations develop
and distribute open hardware and software.
And Starks is project liaison for the Helios Project, an SBI-associated project
that provides Linux computers to underprivileged juice in the Austin, Texas area,
who otherwise wouldn't have access to a computer.
The Helios Project is a previous version of the current www.weglue.org,
but the Helios Project, before we glue existed, used SBI as a fiscal sponsor,
so people could make tax-aductable donations to SBI that were earmarked for the Helios Project.
So they didn't have to set up their own or go through the considerable time, effort,
and expense to obtain their own 501c3 status.
And we're able to focus on their mission of providing computing to Austin's underprivileged children.
It's been a great pleasure working with Canada over the past several years.
And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to one or more our 2014 conference chair
that it closed out the conference.
Thanks, Micah. That was great stuff. Thanks so much to our keynotes.
Last year, at the end of 2013, we sent out surveys to you asking for your feedback
about how we could improve Linux faster in the future.
And this year, we acted on that feedback between reintroducing the badges.
Oh, shoot. I have to go to my list here.
More developer and pro-content, professional content, we had presentations about Android
and developing for hardware.
We changed the Expo. We brought back. I think we've had it once or twice before.
We brought back a pre-party.
Lightning talks. Thanks to Skippy. That was the first grass this year.
And I think that was a great success. I hope you had as much fun as I did.
Do we have sponsors in the room here? Any sponsors? Could you stand up, please?
Speakers. Speakers in the room. Could you stand up, please?
So thanks, everyone. Linux Fest is about you. It's about our community.
Without you, we wouldn't have Linux Fest. So thank you.
So this is really among my favorite OLF.
We've had so many successful Linux Fests in the past, and I look forward to many in the future.
And this is all thanks to our hard-working team of volunteers.
We have a team of eight, nine who have barely slept for the past month.
And before that, they've been working on this conference the year before,
ever since the last year working to bring this to you today.
So Linux Fest staff and volunteers, could you come up to the stage, please?
You guys are awesome. This is great. The team right here, and unfortunately a few others who aren't here,
right now, but look for them later. Either a green ribbon for volunteer or staff,
some of them have this name badge right here, shake their hand.
So this is almost the end of our official project.
I'm going to show you a little bit of what we're going to do today.
I'm going to show you a little bit of what we're going to do today.
Shake their hand. So this is almost the end of our official presentation content.
We're going to Kirk here who's going to be doing our final raffle drives,
and then our actor party at 9 p.m. So I hope you can join us all there later.
Thank you so much.
All right, can it burn air me?
All right, so my name is Kirk, and I'm going to give still away.
So it's actually changed. So now with each lot,
you're also getting a free HP laptop bag.
Cooler, excuse me, it's a laptop bag.
It's really cool because it just folds out in pockets and everything.
So it's just a nice little hat.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So the first thing is for...
This is a lot raffle hole number three.
Cooler and this wonderful Nerf Gun.
You might have seen the other little Nerf Guns that Silicon Mechanics has been giving out.
They just got up their game to the super mega size.
So that's what Nerf Guns do.
What do you put your phone number on?
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