Ubuntu enthusiasts in the beautiful Kootenay region of BC are proud to announce the formation of Ubuntu Kootenay. Our group offers help and support to Ubuntu users in the region. The towns of Nelson and Caselgar, Trail, and the greater Kootenay region are included in its coverage. Nelson and Caselgar are quickly becoming hot spots of Ubuntu activity with many recent installs. Ubuntu Kootenay is affiliated with the Ubuntu Vancouver team, adding strength in installation and support activities to Vancouver's marketing muscle.

The Linux Fredericton group will be meeting again! We'll be meeting on Friday, May 15th, at 8:00pm. Location will be downtown Fredericton at Reids Newsstand, across from Kings Place. If you're in the area, come join us!

The largest Jaunty Release party in Canada, the Vancouver party, was held
last night. It was a huge success! We're growing exponentially and have
more than quadrupled the size of the group in the past month. We've posted
our group picture on Flickr if you'd like to see some of those responsible
for spreading the word on the west coast.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubuntuvancouver/3473385017/in/pool-ubuntuva...

[Courtesy of Randall Ross]

I got an e-mail today giving an update on the activity of the members of Ubuntu Canada in the Vancouver area, and wanted to give everyone a heads-up. The Vancouver group is now holding regular monthly meetings that anyone is welcome to attend and doing various tutorials and installfests, and otherwise rocking! For more information check out their sub-page on the wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CanadianTeam/Vancouver.

There's a meeting of the Fredericton Linux Users Group on February 16th from 7pm to 8pm at 370 Maple St, Apt. B. Facebook event is at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122762395573 and Facebook group page is at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2326929179.

Ubuntu Fredericton will be meeting Monday, March 10, at Reids Newsstand from 7-9pm. Please reply to the thread started on the ubuntu-ca list if you intend to come.

Via our mailing list, Ralph says,

If you aren't thrilled by tons of electronic waste heading for
landfills or unsafe disposal overseas you might want to get involved
in this Toronto area happening later this month.

And what could be better at braving the cold than a penguin?

Ubuntu Fredericton will open the new year by holding a key signing meeting. We will meet at Reids Newsstand, across from Kings Place on King Street, at 7:00pm. Please ensure that you bring a government-issued photo ID and a piece of paper containing your name, your GPG key ID, and your GPG key fingerprint (found with gpg --fingerprint KEYID).

Before coming, be sure to send your key to the Ubuntu keyserver with the command gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --send-keys KEYID

Replace KEYID with the ID of your GPG key. You can find it by running gpg --list-secret-keys | grep sec in a Terminal window, it's the part after "1024D/". Alternatively, this command will print out only the key ID: gpg --list-secret-keys | grep sec | tail -n 1 | cut -d"/" -f2 | cut -d" " -f1

This key ID is also the one you should use when getting your fingerprint to bring with you.

To sign a GPG key from the command line, follow these steps (KEYID is the ID of the key you're signing):

• Add the key to your keyring with the command gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys KEYID
• Verify the fingerprint of the key (found with gpg --fingerprint KEYID) with the fingerprint on paper. If it's different, DON'T SIGN THE KEY!
• Begin the signing process with the command gpg --sign-key KEYID
  • If there are multiple email addresses on the key, you will be asked if you are ready to sign them all.
• Confirm that you want to sign the key.
• Choose the option that corresponds to how confident you are in the key's authenticity.
  • If you can't answer with "I have done very careful checking" at this point, you should consider why you are signing the key in the first place. By now, you should have carefully verified the identity of the user.
• Finally, send the key back to the key server with the command gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --send-keys KEYID

Confused yet? No? Good. Hope to see all the Fredericton-area Ubuntu users there.

Seasons greetings everyone!

I would like to announce that the Fredericton New Brunswick group will be meeting this Thursday December 13th at 7pm at "Crumbs" (corner of Regent and King). They have some good coffee so you might want to bring a dollar or two...

If there are any problems with the date and time please post a message on the Ubuntu-ca mailing list

Thanks!

Richard Seguin