Talks

Spring 2024 Week 4 - The Linux Graphics Stack

09 February 2024

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Spring 2023 Week 12 - XDP Programs and Low Level Networking

07 April 2023

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Spring 2023 Week 10 - Intro to Programming Paradigms

24 March 2023

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Fall 2022 Week 10 (Lightning Talks) - Secure Boot done right

28 October 2022

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Fall 2022 Week 10 (Lightning Talks) - The Study of Anime Production

28 October 2022

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Fall 2022 Week 4 - Bash Scripting & Shortcuts

16 September 2022

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Fall 2021 - Open@RIT Reseach

08 October 2021

Olivia Gallucci talks about her research on security in FOSS.

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Fall 2021 - Hacktoberfest

01 October 2021

Jake introduces Hacktoberfest!

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Fall 2021 - Mobile & Wearable Linux

10 September 2021

This talk went over different kinds of mobile & wearable Linux & FOSS Projects

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Fall 2021 - CLI & SSH Basics

03 September 2021

This talk went over basic & advance cli tools and ssh.

A lot of the slides were taken from an earlier talk given by Jeffery Russell.

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Fall 2020 - Intro to the Linux Terminal

16 October 2020

This talk went over the basics of how to use the Linux Terminal.

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Fall 2020 - Personal Infrastructure

11 September 2020

This week several eboard members presented on personal infrastructure. Jeffery went over a medley of services he runs using reverse nginx proxies, and let’s encrypt. Henry went over how to manage your dotfiles. Tim went over the thrills of using Systemd timers to run scripts on a schedule.

Resources

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Fall 2020 - Intro to the Shell

28 August 2020

In this talk, we did a deep shallow dive into the lovely Linux terminal. We went over some terminal 101 commands and then dove a little deeper into commands like Git. Additionally, this talk briefly discussed configuring your terminal with ZSH.

After the presentation, there was a CTF-esk (capture the flag) challenge. Although the CTF is no longer live, you can find the write-up and code for it on github.

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Spring 2020 - Desktop Environments

31 January 2020

In this presentation Tim and Jeffery went over everything you need to know about Linux Window Managers and Desktop Environments!

Resources

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Spring 2020 Dead Distros

24 January 2020

Henry gave a fun talk on dead and esoteric Linux distributions. Get ready to learn about everything that you are missing out on in your “normal” Linux distro.

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Fall 2019 - Gaming in Linux

01 November 2019

This week we talked about gaming on Linux, and all of the ways that you can enjoy modern video games on you Linux machine. We discussed how gaming on Linux works, as well as the technology behind it.

Resources

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Fall 2019 - Shells

30 September 2019

This week we discussed all your favorite shells! Each eboard member presented on a different shell. At the end of the meeting, we had a fun shell customization workshop.

Resources

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Fall 2019 - Linux Distributions

20 September 2019

This talk was given by Neal Gompa, a DevOps Engineer at Datto. Neal is a prominent member of many different communities. These include Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, and more!

The focus of this presentation is on Linux distributions: what they are, how they’re built, and why there are so many of them.

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Fall 2019 - Everything SSH!

06 September 2019

In this talk, we did a deep dive into SSH. This talk covers everything from basic SSH connections and keys to port forwarding over SSH.

After the presentation, there was a CTF-esk (capture the flag) challenge. Although the CTF is no longer live, you can find the write-up and code for it on github.

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Fall 2019 - Welcome to RITlug!

30 August 2019

Welcome to another year of the RIT Linux Users Group, fall 2019 edition!

This year started off with an informal meeting during the first week of classes. This presentation provides a quick overview of the club, who’s running the show, some of the things RITlug has done in the past, and involvement opportunities. At the end of the presentation, each eboard member introduced themselves and gave a lightning talk on their journey with Linux.

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ZFS

07 March 2019

This talk goes over ZFS history, terminology, and basics.

It covers the features ZFS provides, the copy-on-write model, snapshotting, and the shortcomings of the filesystem. Complete with demo commands to get started!

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Advanced Ansible: better infrastructure

22 February 2019

Maybe you heard of Ansible before or maybe you already use it. Once you get the basics of writing a playbook, what else can you do? This talk covers two use cases of Ansible:

  • For personal use: Configuring personal Linux workstations
  • For professional use: Managing configurations for different applications

Learn more about how to supercharge your Ansible skills in practice. How do you begin to scale an Ansible project with more than one person? How can you easily reuse code so you don’t repeat yourself? This talk explained how to do these things based on personal experience of managing infrastructure over six months.

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Intro to Kubernetes

08 February 2019

Kubernetes is a platform for managing containerized workloads. Here, Tim Zabel is doing an overview of what Kubernetes is, and why/when you should use it.

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Intro to The Cloud & Cloud Security

01 February 2019

Come learn about the basic layers that make up “The Cloud” & the security concerns at each of those layers.

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systemd

25 January 2019

systemd is a basic building block of modern Linux distributions. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system. In this presentation, Prof. Garret Arcoraci introduces systemd, where it fits into the distribution, and how it works. He explains common concepts such as unit files, targets, dependencies, run levels, and more.

Slides provided online at ritlug.com with permission. For reusing, redistribution, or remixing, please contact the author for permission.

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Cross-Distro Packages

30 November 2018

There’s a lot of new ways packages can be released without distribution-specific package managers. Jason Carr will explain why current package managers are difficult, and compare a few alternatives.

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Stay Calm and Carry On

11 September 2018

After the news broke that IBM was purchasing Red Hat r/linux exploded with predictions about the end of Fedora and CentOS. Charles Profitt will explain why, based on history, you should Stay Calm and Carry On.

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Intro to Arch Linux

23 February 2018

Learn about the Arch Linux community and installation process! Kyle Suero guides RITlug through a basic Arch installation.

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FOSS and an open internet

16 February 2018

As technologists involved with FOSS, we have a responsibility to the Internet. Nate Levesque visits RITlug to talk about net neutrality: from the way we got to where we are today and how you can take action.

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Freedom From State - An Intro to Haskell

10 November 2017

Haskell is a purely functional programming language, much different than C or Java. But what is purity, and why does it matter? What does Haskell actually offer for building software? And what in the world is a monad? Learn how Haskell can change the way you think about programming. We’ll cover some syntax, a handful of demos, and discuss how Haskell’s concepts apply to software development!

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Overview of Distributed Computing

03 November 2017

Get an overview of distributed computing, such as virtualization and containers, how we use them, and why.

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Women in Open Source and Computer Technology

20 October 2017

Last May, Red Hat and the open source community honored two exceptional women, Avni Khatri and Jigyasa Grover for the “Women in Open Source” award. This week, the RIT Linux User’s Group (RITlug) looks into the history behind the role of women in open source and tech communities. We examine the invaluable and extraordinary accomplishments of pioneering women that changed the foundations of open source and are paving the way for future generations of women to do the same.

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Run a Minecraft server using Spigot

15 October 2017

Creepers and skeletons got you down this October? Or maybe you’re anticipating the endless Minecraft costumes by the kids of the world on Halloween? What about how the official RIT Minecraft server is managed? Learn more about SpigotMC, the open source Minecraft server software that lets you build your own Minecraft server and extend it beyond what the developers ever imagined. We’ll create a server and how to customize it your liking.

If you’ve ever wanted to host a Minecraft server with your friends or try building a community, these slides show you how Linux enables you to easily deploy a Minecraft server or network of servers.

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Save the world with LetsEncrypt and free encryption

29 September 2017

Are your dreams haunted by a world without encryption? Do you envision a world of madness without HTTPS? RITlug has the answer to put away your nightmares.

Join us today, Friday, Sept. 29th, from 4pm to 6pm to encrypt ALL the things with free SSL/TLS certificates from LetsEncrypt! Learn what LetsEncrypt is all about and how you can use it to generate your own certificates for free.

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Spring 2017- Ansible and YADM

22 April 2017

Automation is awesome, especially when it can be done locally. Here is mine for setting up a freshly installed system.

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The RITLUG Cloud Infrastructure

22 March 2017

RITLUG has a cloud! Here is what it is, what it can do, and how you can use it.

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Windows Subsystem for Linux

17 February 2017

Windows 10 has a bash shell!? What is this witchcraft black magic and why should we care? Here is an explanation.

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Spring 2017- Backups

01 February 2017

In light of the recent failure of git hosting service GitLab’s backups here is why backups are important and how you can do them effectively.

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Fall 2016 - Open Source 101

02 December 2016

RITlug is proud to present our final presentation for the Fall 2016 semester: Open Source 101! This meeting covered various aspects of open source, including a brief introduction, coverage of common tools and development practices, and how to engage in open source software. This meeting also had guest speakers Dan Schneiderman from the RIT MAGIC Center and Professor Stephen Jacobs from IGM talk about open source beyond code, the role of patents and licensing, and more.

This is a great introduction to open source and contains some helpful tips before starting your own open source journey.

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Fall 2016 - Introducing a LAMP stack

28 October 2016

RITlug is proud to present our keynote on everything you ever wanted to know about lamps. From picking the right type of stand, a light bulb of the right wattage, and interior decorating design, we cover all angles.

Okay, not that kind of lamp. LAMP stands for “Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP”. A LAMP stack is a common web server configuration used in the world of web infrastructure. This talk walks you through what exactly all the different pieces of LAMP are, what you can do with them, and how you can get to work on building a stack of your very own. This talk also includes a variety of alternates too, including nginx and PostgreSQL. Learn how and then some in our LAMP presentation!

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Fall 2016 - Security-Enhanced Linux

14 October 2016

This presentation provides a quick overview of Security-Enhanced Linux (or SELinux.) It explains contexts, roles, and domains and where SELinux is commonly used in a Linux environment.

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Fall 2016 - Introduction to Linux

30 September 2016

This presentation provides a quick overview of the history of Linux, what exactly Linux even is, and what all the hype is. It also provides a light introduction to the concept of distributions and desktop environments, and also explains how you can get your first experience working with Linux. May or may not also contain a rare exclusive by Hannah Montana. And perhaps Pokémon gym badges.

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Fall 2016 - Welcome to RITlug!

02 September 2016

Welcome to another year of the RIT Linux Users Group, fall 2016 edition!

This presentation provides a quick overview of the club, who’s running the show, some of the things RITlug has done in the past, and involvement opportunities.

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Encrypt ALL the things with LetsEncrypt

06 May 2016

This talk covers a hot topic in the system administration world (and even more than just sysadmin): LetsEncrypt! If you haven’t heard about LetsEncrypt, it is free and open source software that runs as a free Certificate Authority. What does that mean in English? It lets anyone get free SSL certificates for your domains. In our talk, we’re going to introduce it, how it works, and most importantly, how to get your own certificate!

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GPG (GNU Privacy Guard)

29 April 2016

This presentation looks at what GPG (a.k.a. PGP) is and why it’s useful, walks you through creating your own GPG key, and the keysigning process.

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Run a Minecraft server using Spigot

22 April 2016

This talk goes over creating a Minecraft server using the open source Spigot server software. It shows how to compile Spigot, set up an environment on a remote server, and configuring and setting up the basics.

If you’ve ever wanted to host a Minecraft server with your friends or try building a community, these slides show you how Linux enables you to easily deploy a Minecraft server or network of servers.

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Cool Linux Services

08 April 2016

A quick rundown of some of the cool and useful services available in Linux and where you can get them (if not your package manager).

This includes media server software such as:

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Linux April Fools Pranks

01 April 2016

In line with RITlug meeting on April Fools Day, this presentation discusses a collection of fun programs, creative shell settings, and other system mischief.

RITlug recommends exercising good judgement before putting these pranks live in any environment. Some of these pranks can crash or damage systems and should never, ever be done in a system with uptime requirements.

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How Linux is Organized

18 March 2016

A breakdown of how the Linux filesystem is organized. What’s in “/” and how to find your way around it.

Additionally, some of the more interesting things about /dev, /proc, and how to do some basic tasks with the filesystem.

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Tmux and Screen

11 March 2016

Multitask with a single command line using Tmux and Screen!

Basic Tmux and Screen usage including:

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Scripting and Automation

04 March 2016

An overview of scripting and automation in Linux, including:

  • Brief intro to the terminal
  • Quick intro to shell scripting
  • Breakdown of a real-world shell script
  • Cron
  • Systemd Timers and Services
  • At and Batch

For meeting minutes and more, check out:

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Setting up a LAMP Server

26 February 2016

An overview of what a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) server is and the basics of setting one up. Additional touches on alternate technology options such as NGINX and PostgreSQL and a summary of some of the settings to make a basic working setup.

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Package Managers

19 February 2016

An overview of what package managers are and some of the problems they solve, as well as quick overviews of some of the available package managers and related tools (e.g. apt and dpkg).

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Virtualization and Containerization

12 February 2016

An overview of virtualization and containerization technologies in Linux.

  • What containerization and virtualization are
  • Terminology
  • More details on VirtualBox, Docker, and Systemd-nspawn

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Never leave IRC again with ZNC

05 February 2016

Learn how to use ZNC, an open source IRC bouncer (i.e. proxy) to stay connected to IRC networks

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Spring 2016 Welcome to RITlug

29 January 2016

Welcome to RITlug spring semester 2016!

This presentation provides a quick overview of the club, some of the things RITlug has done in the past, and involvement opportunities.

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Overview of Desktop Environments

29 January 2016

A brief overview of what a desktop environment is, some of the options for desktop environments in Linux, and some general information about the benefits of Linux.

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LiveCD Customization

20 November 2015

  • Do you think that the Ubuntu/Arch/Debian/Fedora default programs and settings are wrong? You can take a base system and customize it to your liking!
  • Create your own Ubuntu spin based on your preferences (though the process is similar for other distros).

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ReactJS and Flux, NodeJS

06 November 2015

Web Application Development with ReactJS and Flux

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Filesystems

30 October 2015

Brief introduction to Linux filesystems.

Covers the basics of filesystems and some high level features of

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Pimp Your Shell

23 October 2015

Customizing your Linux shell.

  • Why people customize their shell
  • Basics
  • Aliasing commands
  • Writing your own functions
  • Customizing your prompt
  • Examples of customized prompts
  • Bad ideas
  • Powerline
  • Oh-My-Zsh

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Pimp Your Linux

16 October 2015

Customizing your Linux desktop.

  • What on your desktop can be customized
  • Sample desktop customizations
  • Conky
  • Compton
  • LXAppearance
  • Additional tools

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Contributing to Github Projects

09 October 2015

  • Hacktoberfest 2015
  • What is Open Source
  • Where to find projects
  • What is Github
  • Typical Github Workflow
  • How to contribute to a project on Github

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Packaging Applications for ArchLinux

25 September 2015

Packaging Applications for ArchLinux

  • How to install a simple application manually
  • What packages are
  • How to package for ArchLinux (writing the PKGBUILD)
  • Submitting a package to the AUR

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Editing with Ed

25 September 2015

An introductory guide to the standard text editor.

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Gentoo

20 February 2015

Gentoo slides, covering the basics of:

  • What is Gentoo?
  • What is different about it?
  • Who uses it?
  • But why?

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i3 Tiling Window Manager

13 February 2015

Presentation covering the i3 tiling window manager, including:

  • What is a Window Manager?
  • Desktop Environments
  • Types of Window Managers
  • Why should we care?
  • Getting i3 Installed
  • Practical examples
    • a. Config Files
    • Usage and more!

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