September Meeting: The Reproducible Workstation
When:
Thursday, September 17, 2026 @ 7:00pm
Where:
Wright State University
Russ Engineering Center, Room 302 (or 348)
We will also have an online presence via the Zoom web conferencing service.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87602254357
Meeting ID: 876 0225 4357
The easiest way to join the meeting is to click “Join from browser”. You can also choose “Join from Zoom Workplace app” to open the meeting in an existing Zoom installation or to download and install the app for Windows. For those using Linux, you can download the free (not Free) Zoom client from this page. It’s available for a variety of distributions.
For those attending in person, we will most likely adjourn to Milano’s afterward for food and socializing.
Presentations/Topics:
Rebuilding or replacing a Linux machine often means more than simply reinstalling the operating system. Over time, most of us accumulate our own preferred collection of tools, configuration files, command-line utilities, scripts, and other customizations — all of which need to be recreated when moving to a new system.
For this month’s presentation, Eric Bentley will look at one approach to treating that environment as a reproducible build artifact rather than something that has to be reconstructed by hand. After recently rebuilding several machines at home, Eric developed a process for recreating his preferred Linux workstation environment in a repeatable way, using the same approach to create a live USB system containing his tools and configuration.
This is not a presentation about a particular package or turnkey solution. Instead, it will look at the problem as a development process: deciding what needs to be reproduced, organizing and automating the pieces, and developing a solution that works for the individual user. It should provide plenty of ideas for anyone who has ever set up a new Linux machine and thought, “Now how did I configure all of this last time?”
As always, we’ll also have discussion time for Linux and Open Source news, projects you’re working on, and questions for the rest of the group.