Category: News

The popular YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, better-known as “PewDiePie”, posted a video on April 27th, 2025 with the title “I installed Linux (so should you)”, emphasising it as a replacement for Microsoft Windows and its increasing abuse of user freedom, and having a lot of fun with desktop customisation. With 110 million subscribers, this video has increased the Internet’s interest in switching to GNU/Linux operating systems, especially timely with Windows 10 no longer being supported after October 2025, and onerous modern hardware requirements for Windows 11.

We think it’s a great video, and urge both curious newbies and seasoned pros to give it a watch, even if PewDiePie and YouTube culture are not normally your cup of tea. It’s entertaining and accurate, and does a great job on focussing on some of the most important reasons people might have to replace Windows.

We wanted to mention the video here to let everyone in the Manawatū-Whanganui region know that we’re still out there, and meeting once a month to discuss GNU/Linux and free and open-source software in general. Some of us are professionals, some of us are dabblers, but we’re all enthusiastic about user freedom in one way or another, and we love how GNU/Linux and other free software gives us that freedom. We always welcome new members, and many of the things PewDiePie talks about in his video are our bread and butter.

Whether you’re interested in switching to a GNU/Linux operating system—whether PewDiePie’s choice of Mint, or others like Debian or Fedora—please consider getting to know your local Linux User Group (LUG)! We meet on the second Wednesday of each month, February through November, at 7:00pm, at the Milson Community Centre in Palmerston North. We usually have at least two relaxed and friendly technical talks at various skill levels, and always have a whole lot of good conversation and exchanging ideas. If interest is sufficient, we’re considering hosting an introduction session to the operating system—if this is something you’d like, please let us know!

You can contact the secretary at secretary@plug.org.nz, or comment on this post below. We also have a reasonably active Discord server. More social media links are on the sidebar of the homepage.

Hello PLUG members; Benji Pritchard of ManawaTech invites us all to the Mega Meetup in November.

Tickets are available here: https://events.humanitix.com/mega-meetup-november-2024

Details are:

When: Thu 7th November 2024, 5:30 pm–8:30 pm NZDT
Where: Victory Venue, 20 Rangitikei Street, Palmerston North

Our next Mega Meetup is sponsored by The Factory and will include a guest speaker from the Tech Startup community.

This event includes

• Guest Speaker, from our event sponsor The Factory
• Marketplace stands
• Employment corner: connecting employers and seekers
• Meetup information: meet the leaders
• Networking opportunities
• Drinks and nibbles

This is a mostly social event. Come along to make new connections in the local tech scene, meet old friends, and find out what’s happening around here.

Want a marketplace stand? Please contact info@manawa.tech.

Attendance is free for ManawaTech members. It costs NZD$10 for non-members.

Any questions about the event should go to Benji at info@manawa.tech.

Hello PLUG members; Steve Pavarno of ManawaTech invites us all to the Mega Meetup in May. Details are:

When: Thu 23rd May 2024, 5:30 pm–8:30 pm NZDT
Where: Victory Venue, 20 Rangitikei Street, Palmerston North

Our twice-a-year meetup for all the meetups in the city. Tickets are essential as we are nearing venue capacity.

Daniel Merriott, Managing Director at the Digital Skills Agency will talk about mental health in the tech/digital sector post COVID and some steps each of us can take to look after ourselves and each other. We’ll share this through a short interactive game-style session to give us all a fun Thursday evening energy boost.

The Digital Skills Agency focusses on the people in tech – whilst our work is usually centred around capability and skills development, we have the privilege of having 1-on-1 conversations, and leading workshops with many hundreds of IT and digital professionals every year. It’s clear from our conversations and experience that we all need to improve our skills to not just to survive, but to thrive, in an industry that continues to see burnout, stress, anxiety and other mental health issues.

This event includes

1. Short interactive presentation on mental health in tech
2. Marketplace stands (UCOL, Young Chamber, Network of Skilled Migrants, The Factory, IT Professionals and many more)
3. Employment corner: connecting employers and seekers
4. Meetup information
5. Networking opportunties
6. Drinks and nibbles

This is a mostly social event. Come along to make new connections in the local tech scene, meet old friends, and find out whats happening around here.

Attendance costs NZD$10.

Any questions about the event should go to Steve at info@manawa.tech.

Hello PLUG members; Steve Pavarno of ManawaTech invites us all to the Mega Meetup in October. Details are:

When: Thu 26th Oct 2023, 5:30 pm–8:30 pm NZDT
Where: Victory Venue, 20 Rangitikei Street, Palmerston North

Our regular Mega Meetup returns! This is a mostly social event with food and drink provided by the event sponsors. Come along to make new connections in the local tech scene, meet old friends, and find out whats happening around here. Speakers will be brief but interesting. A number of groups will be in the room for you to talk to. If you are looking for work, bring a 1 page CV ready for the Employment Corner.

Sponsor/speaker to be announced shortly.

Summer of Tech will have 3 minutes to demonstrate their (well designed) internship search tool and talk about how to hire interns from all over the country.

Attendance is free. RSVP is required for catering, so please register here if you plan to come along: https://events.humanitix.com/mega-meetup

Any questions about the event should go to Steve at info@manawa.tech.

PLUG members Richard Barlow and John Eyres co-operated on moving a cabinet for a care client of John’s earlier this year. Thank you to Richard for the assistance, and to John for the photos below!

Rob Elshire writes:

I am a long time (20+ years) Free Software user—desktop, server, cloud, scientific, business, and personal uses. I am based in Palmerston North. I have recently taken on the role of science advisor for a Māori agribusiness collective. At the moment, I am also doing some of the technical work for them. This group is super keen to use free/open source software for their infrastructure as it fits well within Te Ao Māori.

I am looking for someone who is able to provide user support and training for Nextcloud. The administration of the instance is sorted. Perhaps someone at the PLUG would be interested in picking up some work?

Please contact Rob at rob@elshire.org if you’re interested in this opportunity.

The Palmerston North Linux Users Group would like to publicly thank outgoing President Nick Skarott for his efforts and contributions as President of the club for the past two to three years, during what would have been a shaky and uncertain part of the club’s history were it not for his dedication and effort.

It is because of Nick that we are still going strong as a club into 2018. We are all very grateful to him, and glad that he’s staying on to continue as part of our new committee. Thank you, Nick!

The Palmerston North Linux Users Group held their General Meeting last night (the 13th of June 2018). The club’s constitution was confirmed with one minor amendment, and a new committee was elected:

• John Flower: President
• Nick Skarott: Vice President
• Joseph Calkin: Treasurer
• Tom Ryder: Secretary
• Don Esslemont: Committee Member

Thank you to everyone who attended the meeting. The minutes are available for download here: PLUG GM 2018-06-13 Minutes.

PLUG members with a software engineering bent may well be interested in this month’s Palmerston North Software Development Meetup on Thursday June 28th 2018 at 5:30pm at 114 The Square, Palmerston North.

From the announcement link above:

This month we are lucky enough to have Max Dietrich speaking to us about his experiences in building a Fly Buys micro-service platform.

Max was a developer on the Fly Buys redevelopment, moving the platform to a cloud-based micro-service architecture. The platform is based on Alchemy and Advanced Message Queuing Protocol frameworks. Alchemy is a framework for creating highly available systems that are built from micro-services. Alchemy includes service discovery, easy deployment, smart load balancing and is a polyglot, so you can use the best languages to solve all your problems.