DEVON, CORNWALL & SOUTH WEST LINUX USER GROUP
A group of GNU/Linux and Free software enthusiasts based in Devon and Cornwall. We hold some monthly meetings and have an e-mail discussion list, Matrix & IRC Channels. Feel free to post questions and connect with others interested in Free software.
The next Tinkerers meeting will be on Saturday 26th July 2025. We will meet at the STEAM café at first for drinks / catch up then at some point move over to what was the Tea Shed which is 2 minutes walk away to have a look at the Lego Robots as part of the venue’s STEAM Bots project.
If you are not sure what this is, then Mike who runs both the Tea Shed and STEAM Café has obtained various Lego Robot and the arena, which were used as part of Warrior bots.
The idea us to run something similar but also give people an opportunity to build their own, maybe not on the same scale as these robots, but smaller, with the Lego remote controls we can still build some cool stuff.
If you want more information on this, please contact STEAM Directly
STEAM CAFE & DISCOVERY CENTRE
13 TORBAY ROAD
PAIGNTON
At present, they only have a facebook page. I can’t do much about that. I can be contacted via the mailing list or via the Lug matrix channel.
Tinkerers Meeting – June 2025
The next meeting of the [Tor bay Tinkerers](http://www.tinkerers.uk/) group will be on **Saturday 28th June 2025** from 9:30am
We meet at:-
[STEAM Café & Discovery Centre](https://www.facebook.com/people/STEAM-Paignton/61564393025280/)
13 Torbay Road, Paignton.
We usually start off in the café, then move in to the back room, where the discovery centre is. However, we may also visit the Tea Shed which is in the Hyperspace café, this is located a short distance away in Victoria Square.
We will let the staff at the café know where we are, please ask.
**Possible topics**
* Dragster Race Car update
* Obstacle Robot update
* Update : Arduino CNC Control updates
* Arduino LCD
* Lego Robots
* What ever else comes up
If you would like to ask any questions, please message Helen via our [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554348046709)
Or message Paul via the [DCGLUG Matrix Room](https://matrix.to/#/#dcglug:matrix.org)
**Related Links**
* [UK Micromouse and Robotics Society](https://ukmars.org/)
* Invite open to:
* [Open Street mappers](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/50.436526/-3.564886)
* Members of the [Devon, Cornwall & SW Linux user group](https://www.dcglug.org.uk/)
**Tags**
#Torbay,#Tinkerers
MEETINGS
The group hold regular meetings
69A New George Street, Plymouth, GB PL1 1RJ
Wider Community
There is NO Exeter Pi jam in June.
Torbay Tinkerers – 4th Saturday of the month at Paignton, 09:30 to 12:00ish, STEAM Café and Discovery Centre, 13 Torbay Road, Paignton. Please see the [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554348046709) for details.
Please ask on the mailing list for details on lug meets, so those who are attending can keep an eye out for you.
With support for MS Windows 10 ending, on October 14th. There may be many reasons you don’t want to, or are unable to upgrade to Windows 11. There is now a campaign growing to get people together to help upgrade computers to a Linux distro.
Has all the details and links to various groups, the UK is very underrepresented on here but if there is anyone in the South West who can maybe help then maybe we can make a difference to a few users out there.
LibreOffice 24.8.7 is available for download – The Document Foundation Blog
Berlin, 8 May 2025 – LibreOffice 24.8.7, the seventh and last minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family of the free open source, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux, is available at www.libreoffice.org/download. LibreOffice is the only office suite that respects the privacy of the user, ensuring that the user is able to decide if and with whom to share the content they create. It even allows deleting user related info from documents. In addition, it has a feature set comparable to the leading product on the market.
This is apparently the last of the 24.x release. If you want the latest LibreOffice, then you can download 24.2
Posted to the register, so just linking here. It may be of interest to lug members and the wider community.
Mission Libre
Mission:Libre is a new, independent project for teens all over the world who love free software. We aim to help teens learn about software freedom and develop the skills they’ll need as they become tomorrow’s contributors and activists. Mission:Libre will help spread the word about free software.
<a href=”https://missionlibre.org/”>Mission Libre</a>
Early days with this yet, but the idea is ambitious and innovative. Hopefully this will be successful.
There are lots of projects, resources and tutorials out there and any inititive to help bring people together under a common cause is always welcome.
Lets see what happens and if there will hhe a few people from the South west getting involved with this.
Gopher 2
I have set up an account at vern.cc, as they host gopher as well as other services such gemini and you can also host your own html pages.
As part of the sign-up process you need to provide a public key, this is generated as part of a public / private key pair, generated by ssh-keygen.
Once you are set up, they will let you know and you can log in. If you set up a local **gophermap** you can upload this and get started.
One important note is that gopher uses tabs not spaces, so it is important to configure your text editor so that it treats a tab as a tab, not as spaces, or you get problems with links and content on your gopher site. How you do this depends, of course, on the editor you are using.
Once set up you can host text, upload files and link to them so they can be downloaded, and have your own little space. You can also link to other gopher users. See links list to one of the tutorials I used.
If new to gopher you may want to read up first, I would also suggest hangout on the vern matrix channel so you can ask for help. I am on here, as well as the DCLUG matrix channel.
While gopher may be old and retro, it can be a good project or distraction and still fun to play around with. It also has the advantage of no cookies, no tracking, advertising or other bloat you get with modern websites.
Have fun
Paul
Assembler programming
Added to here from my blog,
I am gathering some resources here on programming using ARM processors. Also provided some resource links for x86 based architecture too.
ARM
RISC V
iA86
Other
Game development in Rust with Macroquad
This should be available by the time this post is published book on rust game programming/