GTABug
Greater Toronto Area BSD Users Group
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GTABug is a group of folks in the Toronto area that dig the BSD Unix family of computer operating systems. We're loosly knit, and most of the time use nerdy computer language as an excuse to eat pizza and drink beer. The meetings are on the 3rd Wednesday of each month and usually start around 7 o'clock. For the past number of years we've been meeting at Olympic 76 Pizza, 8A Gloucester Street, Toronto. There's a list of proposed meeting dates below but, to be safe, you should sign up for the mailing list as this page may not always be updated in time for the meetings.

  • February 21, 2007
  • March 21, 2007
  • April 18, 2007
  • May 16, 2007
  • June 20, 2007
  • Summer - check back later...

So, what do we do at the meetings? Anything... all get-togethers are very informal; everyone chips in on the pizza and we just let the conversation flow. Have a technical issue? Chances are very good that someone else has tinkered with the same thing and would love to gab about it.

Great, so what the heck is this BSD stuff?

A lot of people around the world use an operating system from Redmond, USA. It costs money, can be a pain in the butt and has a low "geek factor". BSD is a free operating system with a rich history spanning three decades, thousands of free applications ready to run, and a diverse and mature community. BSD (originally: Berkeley Software Distribution) refers to the version of the Unix operating system that was developed at and distributed from the University of California at Berkeley.

And in fact there is more than one BSD out there...

  • FreeBSD - Built to run very well on x86 hardware, possibly the most "user friendly" version of the family. Large support community and an easy install process.
  • NetBSD - NetBSD's focus is to have a clean implementation and to run on as many things as possible from Playstations, to Toasters...
  • OpenBSD - Security is the name of the game for OpenBSD and, with a through audit of every line of code there hasn't been a remote root exploit in "quite some time".
  • DragonFly BSD - A relative newcomer to the BSD family, DragonFly is a derivative of the FreeBSD 4 series.
  • Mac OS X (from that big fruity computer company) is built on top of "Darwin", which is a merger of FreeBSD and something very geeky called Mach, about which the less said the better.
Resources, tips and tricks

Most of our communication goes on thru a mailing list. If you would like to subscribe go to the list manager. Additionally if you would like to explore other BSD resources, see the Resource links at the left.

Familiar Faces

Everyone's got a webpage nowadays, and some of these folks have some pretty interesting things to say, so have a look.