BLUG was started in 1998 by a small group of computer geeks in Bellingham, Washington who wanted to get off Windows and learn from local Unix gurus. Our focus is on Linux and all Open Source software.
We hold a presentation meeting the first Thursday of the month at Bellingham Technical College in Campus Center room 201 (CC201). On the third Wednesday, we hold an informal organization meeting with the time and location being Bellingham Makerspace (located in the Bellisfair Mall, next to Dicks Sporting Goods). We also put on special events including the regional LinuxFest Northwest in the Spring.
Next Meeting
Choosing a linux “distro”
01/21/2026 at 05:30 PM
There isn’t just one “Linux” operating system; the core Linux system and various bundles of user environments and applications are packaged as “distributions” (commonly called “distros”) by several different groups, companies, and non-profit organizations, each with different goals in mind. Depending on how you plan to use Linux (or your level of familiarity), one or another distro might be a good fit for you. Join us as we share some of the different things to think about when choosing a distro.
Past Meetings
Corel Officer / Halflife Server
05/04/2000 at 12:00 AM
A demonstration of the Corel Office Suite running on Linux (of course!). Word processing, spreadsheeting, and presentation graphics that rival MS Office!
Also a demonstration of setting up a Halflife server (that’s a game running on Linux, for you non-gamers).
Linuxfest 2000!
04/15/2000 at 12:00 AM
Linux demonstrations, advice, and Linux software give-aways! Open to the community; drop by and see what all the talk is about!
Topics and demonstrations:
– Home Networking and Firewalls
– Linux on the Desktop
– Installing and Upgrading Linux
– Linux Applications
– E-business on Linux
– Linux Games and Online Play
– Linux/Apache (Web Serving)
Linux Fest 2000 Press Release in simple HTML
Linux Fest 2000 Press Release in plain text
Linuxfest 2000 Last Call!
03/02/2000 at 12:00 AM
A final organizational meeting before Linux Fest.
The magic of PHP
02/03/2000 at 12:00 AM
This meeting should be a great follow-up to last month’s meeting where Greg demonstrated the Apache Web server. PHP is a server-side scripting language for creating dynamic Web pages. PHP integrates with Apache and HTML. When a visitor opens a page, the server processes the PHP commands and then sends the results to the visitor’s browser. Very cool. For a more thorough introduction, see:
http://www.builder.com/Programming/PHPIntro/index.html
Resources:
PHP Web Site: http://www.php.net
PHP Base Library Site: http://phplib.netuse.de
MySQL Web Site: http://www.mysql.com
Thanks to Kris Dahl for sinding in these links!
Apache for the Beginner
01/06/2000 at 12:00 AM
An introduction to Apache setup and administration under Red Hat Linux. Greg is a networking instructor at Bellingham Technical College. This is sure to be a popular night!
https://blug.org/photos/greg.jpg – Pic of Greg (please excuse low-light grainyness)
BLUG Y2K Party at Boundary Bay!
12/02/1999 at 12:00 AM
Can nerds really have fun? BLUG’s first annual year-end party, where BLUGers can meet in a relaxed atmosphere, have a beer, and talk about their favorite subject–Linux!
VMware, Tripwire
11/04/1999 at 12:00 AM
VMware is software that runs multiple virtual computers on a single PC–at the same time–without partitioning or rebooting. Really.
Tripwire is a security tool that allows you to monitor the files on your system, and detect any unauthorized changes. It is used as an intrusion detection method, and as a way to clean up a system that has been hacked.
Setting Up a PPP Connection
10/07/1999 at 12:00 AM
This somewhat impromptu demonstration involved installing Linux on a box and simulating a connection to another Linux box over a dedicated telephone line using PPP. (Well, with a little help from the audience we got through most of this!)
Getting Hip to Qmail
09/02/1999 at 12:00 AM
Qmail is a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent. It is meant as a replacement for the entire sendmail-binmail system on typical Internet-connected UNIX hosts.
Secure: Security isn’t just a goal, but an absolute requirement.
Reliable: qmail’s straight-paper-path philosophy guarantees that a message, once accepted into the system, will never be lost.
Replacement for sendmail: qmail supports host and user masquerading, full host hiding, virtual domains, null clients, list-owner rewriting, relay control, double-bounce recording, arbitrary RFC 822 address lists, cross-host mailing list loop detection, per-recipient checkpointing, downed host backoffs, independent message retry schedules, etc. In short, it’s up to speed on modern MTA features. qmail also includes a drop-in “sendmail” wrapper so that it will be used transparently by your current UAs.
Overall performance: What really matters is how well qmail performs with your mail load. Red Hat Software found one day that their mail hub, a 48MB Pentium running sendmail 8.7, was running out of steam at 70000 messages a day. They shifted the load to qmail—on a smaller machine, a 16MB 486/66—and now they’re doing fine.
In my presentation I hope to cover:
* Introduction and explanation of Qmail
* Why use Qmail? (why sendmail is not the best thing to use)
* How to install Qmail
* Installing a mailing list manager to go along with Qmail
* Configuring your POP3 and IMAP services to understand Qmail
What is Coda?
08/05/1999 at 12:00 AM
In a situation where a single computer is used, all files are often stored on the local disk. When the computer is part of a network of workstations, it is often advantageous to have the workstations share files across the network. This talk will explore network-based file systems and give an introduction to the distributed file system called Coda. Coda will be demonstrated using several networked PCs.