Free software mutual help workshops

Context

Free software promotes independence, transparency, Do-it-Together and conviviality for our information and communication technologies. This is an increasing political need in today's context, where IT is associated to private property, obscurantism and surveillance. While many free software and tutorials are available online, we need to have meetings and collegial spaces to discover , support each other and gain confidence. Those free software mutual help workshops are open to all, may you be curious, passionate, shy, not knowing where to begin, or having at heart the sharing of techniques and know-how, from a feminist perspective of collective autonomisation.

Description

The participants come with their computers, mobile tools, their questions and interests. We learn , bit by bit, what is free software, its philosophy and the existing ressources. We asks questions, we expose our problems, we discover new ones, solutions are sought. We install free software, we adjust our tools to our needs, we fix what is broken, we chat, we discover what and who can help us, we socialize.

FemHack will take care of creating a safe and responsive atmosphere for learning and discovery. We favor the participation of women, queer, people of color and of different generations. We will ensure the sensitivity of interpersonal and collective exchanges, in a concern for mutual learning and collective autonomy. No basic knowledge is required. The workshop will also be an opportunity to define future thematic activities, as we may feel. The FemHack will take care of creating a safe and responsive atmosphere for learning and discovery. We favor the participation of women, queer, people of color and of different generations. We will ensure the sensitivity of interpersonal and collective exchanges, in a concern for mutual learning and collective autonomy. No basic knowledge is required. The workshop will also be an opportunity to define future thematic activities, as we may feel.

Notes for Sunday january 25th 1pm-4pm

A few people showed up. It was great to visit the space at "La Passe". We installed Debian on a Thinkpad x240(http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X240 ), changed the CPU fan on a Thinkpad x201 and shared best practices on how to install third party software (namely Firefox on Debian).

Thinkpad X240

The Thinkpad x240 is a 2013 Lenovo laptop that has keyboard backlights and all sorts of nifty things. Here are the specs on thinkwiki.org.

We found a few usability issues with the installer:

  • keyboard selection is really counter-intuitive: how am i supposed to know the difference between "Canada french" and "Canada multilingual"? Why is "American english" on top? Having a diagram of the actual keyboard layout would be really useful here (GUI only, of course, but in text mode there could be a test area...)
  • it's hard to tell what version of Debian we are installing. it's not said in the UI, and we couldn't figure out even in the shell (uname -a doesn't say). It turns out the README.txt file at the root of the install media has some information, but it can really hard for a new user to figure that out.
  • even on a single-user laptop, a user gets prompted for 3 different passwords if Full Disk Encryption is enabled: the disk crypto password, a user password and a root password, which is highly confusing and error prone. configuring sudo by default is a fairly controversial default, but should be available as an option at least during install.

Out of the box, neither the ethernet or wireless were working, but we were using a really old debian-installer (Multi-architecture amd64/i386 NETINST #1 20130214-23:01, a "release candidate"!).

Upgrading to a new CD image (debian-7.8.0-amd64-netinst.iso) made the ethernet connexion work, which allowed us to proceed with a graphical install.

However, the graphical interface (GDM3) would not come up on boot. We found this discussion on superuser.com and forums.debian.net, however neither had the simpler solution (which was added to both forums):

sudo apt-get install -t wheezy-backports linux-image-3.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 firmware-linux i965-va-driver xserver-xorg-video-intel
sudo service gdm3 restart

Wifi was also not working with only free software, so some proprietary firmware was necessary from backports as well:

sudo apt-get install -t wheezy-backports firmware-iwlwifi

The latter was also documented on forums.debian.net.

Thinkpad X201 CPU fan replacement

la machine faisait un bruit horrible. on a téléchargé le hardware maintenance manual et on a entreprit une grosse réparation! ça implique démonter la majeure partie de la machine! il a été difficile de garder le suivi de toutes les vis, et avoir un réceptacle pour les classer aurait été utile. filmer le démontage aurait également permis de retracer certaines étapes plus facilement.

deux vis restaient après le remontage! la machine était fonctionnelle, mais on pense qu'il y a peut-être des problèmes avec le système refroidissement parce qu'on avait pas de "pâte thermique" pour installer le nouveau "heat sink" sur le processeur... ça va demander une nouvelle intervention!

c'était vraiment génial de pouvoir voir l'intérieur d'un laptop et comprendre comment toutes les pièces sont connectées et leur utilité. Par exemple, on a bien pu voir la batterie du BIOS, les petits hauts-parleurs, la carte Wifi (exemple d'une photo d'une autre carte et plein d'autres petites choses.

Software install best practices

Je n'ai pas pris de notes ici...