State of the LUG 2026
Alex Merryman
Hey everyone,
I realize this is long overdue, but I’d like to catch you all up on the current state of the LUG.
First off, most of our active discussion these days happens on Discord. If you want to drop in and see what the current cohort is up to, you can join here: https://sh.lug.umbc.edu/discord
Club Health & Events
The club has been doing great lately. We’ve seen healthy attendance over the past few semesters with a core member base of about a dozen regulars. We’re running several events every semester for outreach; notably, InstallFest returned from its hiatus last fall. We handed out USB drives loaded with Ventoy in the Commons and are looking forward to going even bigger this year.
Infrastructure & The Mirror Project
The biggest development in recent LUG history is the return of our own infrastructure. After digging through the Internet Archive, I saw this isn't the first time the club has hosted its own infra.
Over the summer, our VP (Danielle Esposito) and I worked with DoIT to get a server set up in the Engineering data center. Our primary goal was to launch a public mirror, which is now live!
Check it out: https://lug.umbc.edu/mirror/
New Website: We’ve also done a major rework of https://lug.umbc.edu with more info on our current projects.
The mirror has been operationally stable, and we’re currently working on getting officially recognized on proper mirror lists.
How you can help:
I have two specific "asks" for the alumni community:
Club History: Our History Page was mostly pulled from previous iterations of the site. If you have info on officer history or want to write about the club , we’d love to have it. You can email me directly or submit a PR on GitHub.
Guest Speakers: As we plan next semester, we’d love to invite alumni to present. If you (or someone you know) have a cool project, or a topic you’re passionate about, we’d love to host you at a weekly meeting.
That’s only the surface of what’s been happening, but I’ll leave it there for now. Thank you to everyone who came before us and established the groundwork for this community.
Alex Merryman
Treasurer - SysAdmin & Software Dev Club