Linux Users of Victoria ("LUV") is a Linux User Group ("LUG") based in the state of

Victoria, Australia Victoria, commonly abbreviated as Vic, is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state (after Tasmania), with a land area of ; the second-most-populated state (after New South Wales), with a population of over 7 million; ...

. It was incorporated in 1993 as a

not for profit A not-for-profit or non-for-profit organization (NFPO) is a legal entity that does not distribute surplus funds to its members and is formed to fulfill specific objectives. While not-for-profit organizations and non-profit organizations (NP ...

group, making it one of the largest and oldest Linux User Groups in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. It now has close to fifteen hundred members. It used to have regional SIGs but they are currently inactive. Meetings are held on the first Tuesday of the month via

Jitsi Jitsi (from — "wires") is a collection of free and open-source software, free and open-source multiplatform Voice over IP, voice (VoIP), Video conference, video conferencing and instant messaging applications for the Web platform, Windows, Li ...

or BBB.

Organization

The committee is democratically elected each year in advance of the Annual General Meeting using free election software called MemberDB. The positions are President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer, as well as four ordinary committee members - the current committee members are listed on the website.

Events

On November 29, 2003, according to

Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in ...

, LUV is one of the two Linux user groups based in Melbourne, and they held an installfest—a group meeting where new users are given assistance how to install Linux on their PC. In 2008, the then-president of LUV, Andrew Chalmers, co-signed a letter to

Julia Gillard Julia Eileen Gillard (born 29 September 1961) is an Australian former politician who served as the 27th prime minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013. She held office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as the ...

, MP Deputy

Prime Minister of Australia The prime minister of Australia is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Australia. The prime minister is the chair of the Cabinet of Australia and thus the head of the Australian Government, federal executive government. Under the pr ...

and

Minister for Education An education minister (sometimes minister of education) is a position in the governments of some countries responsible for dealing with educational matters. Where known, the government department, ministry, or agency that develops policy and deli ...

, requesting that the government advocates the use of free and open source software in schools, so that the $1000 of government funding aimed at buying a computer for each secondary school student will be spent more effectively. In 2008, LUV also participated in the

software freedom day Software Freedom Day (SFD) is an annual list of minor secular observances#September, worldwide celebration of Free Software organized by the Digital Freedom Foundation (DFF). SFD is a public education effort with the aim of awareness raising, i ...

and held local events; one of the local event organizers, Donna Benjamin, commented the event is a "Think Global, Act Local" celebration. In April 2021, Russell Coker, a participant at LUV's mailing list, commented that the

Bureau of Meteorology The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Government of Australia, Australian Government that is responsible for providing Weather forecasting, weather forecasts and Meteorology, meteorological services to Australia a ...

blocking text based

web browsers A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scree ...

, such as

lynx A lynx ( ; : lynx or lynxes) is any of the four wikt:extant, extant species (the Canada lynx, Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx and the bobcat) within the medium-sized wild Felidae, cat genus ''Lynx''. The name originated in Middle Engl ...

and

w3m w3m is a free and open source text-based web browser licensed under the MIT license. It differs from other text-based browsers by supporting elements such as tables, frames, and images. History The name "w3m" stands for "", which is Japanese ...

, unnecessarily made it difficult for about half the people using braille readers to access the site. These text browsers would allow them to use text to speech engines to retrieve the site content, such as climate information and weather forecasts. LUV have been called "Australia's best known and most active open source community".

References

External links

*{{official, https://linuxvictoria.org/ Linux user groups Non-profit organisations based in Australia