It must be the warmer weather. Ubuntu happenings are springing up everywhere in Boston. Just five days after Boston fans gathered at an upscale downtown nightspot to celebrate the release of Hardy Heron, Ubuntu’s latest operating system, a local school technologist kicked off a new organization to promote open source software in education.

Michael Selva, who works at Saint Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School in Watertown, Mass., attracted some 25 teachers and technologists to the kickoff event for a new group called Moving to Open Source Software in Schools, or MOSSIG, drawing attendees from many nearby communities and as far away as New Hampshire and Maine.

An offshoot of Massachusetts Computer Using Educators (MassCUE), the new group aims to wean educators from proprietary software. In November 2006, Selva himself became an advocate of open source after finding Saint Stephens’ computer hardware and software out of date and too expensive to replace. Converting a Dell server and 11 workstations to Kubuntu, a version of Ubuntu, and obtaining open source software for work and education proved just the ticket, he said.

Selva plans to follow up with working meetings on the first Tuesday of every month during the school year, starting at 7 p.m. May 6, at the school. He also plans an adult education program in open source for teachers and a hotline at mossig@googlegroups.com. He can be reached at (617) 605-7429 or atms@saes.org.

One of our SearchEnterpriseLinux.com experts, Ken Milberg, will be speaking at the following event. If you live in the metro area, drop by and say hello (but remember to pre-register, or else you won’t get in!)

Please mark your calender for the first ever Manhattan meeting of the NY Metro Power-AIX/Linux Users Group (at IBM headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue); Thursday Oct. 25, at 6 p.m. EDT. Registration is free, but it is required. You can register at this link.

Summary, Presentations

1. Presentation #1: Bharvi Parikh — System p Specialist (IBM)

System p Overview and virtualization (AIX and Linux on Power)

2. Presentation #2: John Tesch, Ph.D., Certified Consulting IT Specialist (IBM)

AIX Deep Dive 6.1 New features and enhancements

3. Presentation #3: Ken Milberg, PMP® — IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert - System p (Future Tech)

Introduction and Demonstration of the IBM System p Application Virtual Environment for x86 Linux (System p AVE) using the Virtual Loan Program (VLP).

There will be a raffle for an exciting grand prize! (to be announced)
Door prizes include the following:

1) IBM system magazines
2) IBM USB thumb drives and other memorabilia
3) Power-AIX pens
4) Future Tech (IBM BP) T-shirts
5) Linux CDs

Directions:

Located on the corner of 57th and Madison with easy access to mass transportation in and around Metro New York.

Agenda

1. Food/refreshments ~ 6:00 pm to 6:15 pm

2. Introduction of NY Metro Power-AIX/Linux group, goals ~ 6:15 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

3. System p, the new Power6, Virtualization (AIX and Linux) ~ 6:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m.

4. AIX 6.1 Deep Dive ~ New features and enhancements 7:15 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.

5. IBM System p AVE (Application Virtual Environment for x86 ) ~ Bringing Linux on Power (LoP) to the masses, including a live demo ; using IBM’s Virtual Loaner Program (VLP) 7:45 pm – 8:15 pm

6. Q/A 8:15 p.m. - ……

Please also extend a warm welcome to our friends at Unigroup of New York, the oldest and greatest Unix Users group in the world, which will bring its members to the meeting.

UNIGROUP Announcement

Unigroup’s October 2007 meeting will be a field trip to IBM headquarters located at 590 Madison Ave. NYC, Conference Room 1219 on Thursday, Oct. 25 (** SPECIAL 4th Thursday **) at 6:00 p.m. (** SPECIAL TIME **). Our presentation topic is: Power6 and AIX 6.1 and our speaker is Bharvi Parikh from IBM. Note: This will be a joint meeting with the new IBM PowerAIX User Group!

Please see the following announcement from the folks at unigroup. There will be visit to Sun offices, tomorrow evening at 6:00 pm. Seems like a worthwhile trip for those of you in the NY metro area.

UNIGROUP OF NEW YORK - UNIX USERS GROUP - JULY 2007 ANNOUNCEMENTS

=================================================================

————————————————-
1. UNIGROUP’S JULY 2007 GENERAL MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
————————————————-

When: TUESDAY, July 17th, 2007 (** SPECIAL 2rd Tuesday **)

Where: <<<< FIELD TRIP LOCATION >>>>
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
101 Park Avenue, 4th Floor (at 40th Street)
Midtown, New York, NY 10178
** RSVP Mandatory **

Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Joint meeting with NYC OpenSolaris Group
8:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Unigroup may continue with additional topics)

——————————————————-
Topic: Field Trip to Sun Microsystems:
- Joint Meeting with the NYC OpenSolaris User Group
- OpenSolaris Update, New Additions (Solaris Futures)
- Nexenta
- Project Indiana
——————————————————-

Speakers: Ian Murdock,
Brian Gupta,
Isaac R.,
Sun Microsystems <http://www.sun.com>

INTRODUCTION:
————-

As promised, our next field trip to Sun Microsystems is happening on July 17th… a special SECOND TUESDAY Field Trip meeting.

Our friends at Sun have invited Unigroup to participate in the second meeting of the new NYC OpenSolaris User Group, so we are calling this a No-Charge Joint Meeting, and we are looking forward to learning about the newly formed NYC OpenSolaris User Group.

The NYC OpenSolaris group has scheduled Ian Murdock of Sun Microsystems to talk on OpenSolaris and Project Indiana. It seems that we all know Ian… as least as the “IAN” in DEBIAN Linux (”DEB” is his wife). See his bio below for more interesting information.

From the information I found on the web, it looks like Project Indiana will be an OpenSolaris Binary Distribution whose goal is to improve the usability and installation of OpenSolaris, and perhaps make it more easier/friendlier/recognizable to Linux and Windows users. Sounds like a interesting project!

Unigroup will be working on the OpenSolaris Group’s schedule, so we’ll be starting earlier than usual (and we don’t have details beyond the meeting’s start time). Visit the OpenSolaris Group’s web page (below) for further information.