As we are all aware, the Council has closed the meeting rooms until furthur notice. Thanks to the initiative of Chris we have discovered the video conference app "Zoom". This enables us to all join a meeting online each week and discuss the virtues of Linux. It is necessary for the meeting "host" to initiate the meeting and Zoom shows a login-id which the host can then email to the other CLF members allowing them to join the meeting.

We can use our Laptops as they all come with  a built in Camera and Microphone but I prefer to use my Desktop PC as I have a 27" monitor, so I bought a " Logitech C270 HD Webcam" and it has the driver in the Linux Kernel and works out of the box in Linux. Zoom installed ok on Windows 10, Mint and I was able to install it on Mageia 7 using the Red Hat rpm.

Normally a meeting is allocated 40 minutes by Zoom but a message appeared on our screens that we were allowed an indefinite time, maybe zoom was not experiencing a lot of web traffic. However we decided to end at 10:30 and when Chris (the Host) closed the meeting we all lost connection. I did manage to record 65 minutes of the meeting after the host gave his permission but the mp4 file is 211Mb, too big to email. There are plenty of videos on "YouTube" showing the finer points of the program.

We meet each Friday on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia to discuss our common interest; the computer Operating System - Linux.

We have been meeting since March 2005 and with each of us contributing our knowledge, we have reached a high level in understanding Linux. There are many distributions of Linux and we have tried most of the well known flavours, but for ease of learning, stability and realiability we have mostly settled on these favourites.

They include Mageia, Ubuntu, PCLos, and Mint on both our Desktop PC's and Notebooks and all exist happily alongside Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or the latest Windows 10 which came with our computers when new.

When one version of Linux won't install on a certain computer because of missing drivers that are not supplied by the hardware vendors, one of the other Linux OS that has the necessary drivers will usually install and perform well.

All of us now use Linux as our main OS as it is completely free of Virus and all the other modern day malware which plague the Windows OS. We would never consider doing our daily banking or other financial transactions on other than our Linux. Fragmented files are a thing of the past as the superior file system ensures the contiguity of files making defrag unnecessary.

Rootkits are the latest problem for any computer and these are spreading rapidly. They are not a concern for us as we can lock our system down and prevent any penetration of our computers. A secure administrator password is our best protection, also a well configured Firewall is essential to any OS.

We can set our system security to a high level which will refuse a connection as administrator even if a hacker knows our secure password.

As well as this virus free computing and total security, the OS and all the included software are completely free. There are many Linux distributions available but we have settled on those mentioned above for ease of learning, stability and security.

Thanks to the dedicated programmers, testers and others who contribute their time to build a very secure system, it is available for download from thousands of Servers worldwide. It can be installed on multiple computers and you are free to make copies and distribute it to your friends.

We have been impressed with the new Raspberry Pi mini computer that is sold as just a circuit board, not much larger than a credit card for around $35. Many accessories are available including a clip together see through plastic case. It has all the functions expected of a mini computer and can browse the Internet, play music and videos , act as a controller for various peripherals and stream full high definition video. These mini computers run a variation of Linux but as the processor is different to a normal Desktop or Laptop, a different version of Linux is needed and this is also freely available.