September: Radio waves and self-respect

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 9 September 2026

Topic 1/2: GNU Radio

Speaker: Robbie Mckennie

GNU Radio is a modular, custom software-defined radio development suite. This talk will include demonstrations of: broadcast FM, two-way radios, and analogue television.

Topic 2/2: Software ethics and self-respect

Speaker: Tom Ryder

The primary reason Tom has always been drawn to free and open source software is the ethics of it: software is so fundamental and important to our way of life that the user having full control over it should not be mere luck or luxury, but a fundamental, non-negotiable requirement. For him, this isn’t merely an ethical argument about right or wrong; it’s just as much a matter of self-respect. As technical people, how much abuse are we willing to tolerate from developers? When we have workable alternatives, and the skills to use them, what does continuing to tolerate that abuse say about us?

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August: Open-source future and install race

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 12 August 2026

Richard O’Donoghue’s talk “I’m worried about open source and so should you” has been cancelled, due to the speaker’s being unwell. Get well soon, Richard!

The first ever non-annual 1v1 secret install grand prix

Contestants: Brendon Green, Robbie Mckennie
Referee: Nick Skarott

Two of our members have agreed to a race. Only thing is, they don’t know what they will have to install, or what the goal is until the race itself. It’s 100% fair, unbiased, totally-rigged-in-favour-of-audience-enjoyment Linux fun. The referee also has an extra challenge up his sleeve, should the first one prove too easy…

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July: PPPoE hacks and Hannah Montana

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 8 July 2026

Topic 1/2: PPPoE hacks on wireless hardware

Speaker: Robbie Mckennie

Using open-source tools to build custom software for embedded devices.

Topic 2/2: Installing Hannah Montana Linux

Speaker: Brendon Green

PLUG has a running feature where Brendon tries to do something with a computer while the club heckles him. This time, he’ll be attempting to install Hannah Montana Linux, as he fears neither technology nor God.

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June: Modem firmware and Linux programming

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 10 June 2026

Topic 1/2: Linux on the Go: The only cellular modem with (nearly) open firmware

Speaker: Camden Bruce

Download slides with speaker notes (application/pdf, 140 KiB)

The second talk in Camden’s “Linux on the Go” series. This talk is centered on cellular modems and how they work on Linux. The demo modem is a Quectel EG25-G which is the only modem with (nearly) open firmware. This is a rare case, as it is not legal to have access to the firmware of the modem; it opens up the possibility of malicious hijinks…

Topic 2/2: Why it’s still a good time to get into programming and Linux

Speaker: Tim-Hinnerk Heuer

Tim will talk to us about the impact of AI and the current job market on future roles in IT, and why learning programming and Linux is still a good idea despite that.

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May: Unix domain sockets and Pop!_OS

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 13 May 2026

Topic 1/2: Unix domain sockets

Speaker: Tom Ryder

Tom will froth a little about Unix domain sockets, and try to talk you into using them a bit more for inter-process communication on the same host, affording greater control, security, and performance, and avoiding the bourgeoning problem of local HTTP listeners on random high ports.

Download slides (application/pdf, 168 KiB)

Topic 2/2: The LTT Test: How to install Pop!_OS like a complete noob update Fedora

Speaker: Brendon Green

It’s high time I subjected my poor unsuspecting hardware to more OS abuse for our amusement. So, let’s find out, once and for all, what happens when a complete newbie:

  • tries to install Pop!_OS
  • with no prep or prior knowledge
  • in a high-stress situation
  • following whatever instructions they can find, completely blindly
  • and tries to run a game from their Steam library.

EDIT: Brendon has changed his mind and will now be demonstrating a Fedora update instead. We’re as confused as you.

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Welcome to Richard O’Donoghue

Longtime PLUG member and regular speaker Richard O’Donoghue was nominated and confirmed as the new Vice President of the club at our meeting tonight, running uncontested, replacing outgoing VP John Flower. Richard had already contributed a great deal to the club at the time of his nomination, including running one of the monthly meetings when the committee at the time were indisposed. The committee is grateful to Richard for stepping up, and we’re confident he’ll do a great job helping to keep the club interesting and fun for all our members.

April: Ardour and Dokploy

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 8 April 2026

Topic 1/2: Ardour

Speaker: Nick Skarott

Ardour is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that is immensely powerful; so powerful, it proclaims its only limits are your system, not a license key.

Topic 2/2: Dokploy: Self-hosting made easy…yet again!

Speaker: Richard O’Donoghue

In my last talk I spoke about a PaaS called Coolify for self hosting. Yeah that didn’t work out so great so I found a better alternative.

Download slides (application/pdf, 4 MiB)

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Thank you to John Flower

The PLUG committee would like to publicly thank outgoing Vice President John Flower, who has resigned due to relocating to Whanganui and no longer being able to attend meetings regularly. John took a very active role in stepping up to keep the group moving during our “time in the desert” and then adjusting to our new venue, and setting new standards and procedures for our meeting posts and mailouts that we still follow to this day. We’re also unlikely to have so knowledgeable a speaker on Blender and other design tools again, so his presence at meetings will be very much missed in many ways. Thank you John, and all the best to you!

Nominations for the new VP will be made at next month’s meeting.

March: Namespaces and lazy NeoVim

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 11 March 2025

Topic 1/2: What’s in a name(space)?

Speaker: Robbie McKennie

If you’ve used GNU/Linux a bit, you’ll be used to thinking of the mount table, the network interface list, the file hierarchy… just one of each, all visible to all processes. The kernel in fact supports having multiple instances of each of these, so that you can arrange for different processes to see different resources on the same system: a feature called namespaces. Robbie will go through some of the practical applications of this feature, focusing in particular on building and managing networks.

Download slides with speaker notes (application/pdf, 680 KiB)

Topic 2/2: Lazy coding with NeoVim

Speaker: Tim-Hinnerk Heuer

Tim-Hinnerk Heuer will take a break from his beloved competitive coding long enough to show us a demo of how he programs using NeoVim, the modern Vim rewrite, in as lazy but still lightning-fast a way as he can. With a bit of luck, this will include some LLM assistance, possibly even with an open-source model…

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February: Mobile Linux and home automation

Date

7pm, Wednesday, 11 February 2025

Topic 1/2: Linux on the Go

Speaker: Camden Bruce

From the far-flung lands of Hawkes Bay, PINE64 community manager Camden Bruce will visit to speak to us about Linux working on phones…and how much easier it has become with both libhybris and mainline Linux. He’ll demonstrate using Linux on a PinePhone Pro and a Pixel 3A, including a breakdown of the history and hard work that got the community this far. If we’re lucky, we might get a quick recap of his attendance at FOSDEM 2026.

Download slides with speaker notes (application/pdf, 1.9 MiB)

Topic 2/2: A Passage Lamp With Home Assistant

Speaker: Stephen Worthington

Stephen will apply Home Assistant to put together a small lamp, a smart socket, PIR detectors, and a luminance sensor to provide an automated lamp that comes on as one walks by.

Download slides (application/pdf, 55 KiB)

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