May 2006 - main - earth.li

Anything like Picasa for Linux?
by chrisisbd＠leary2.csoft.net 12 May '06

12 May '06

Are there any programs like Picasa which run on Linux? I'm after something for organising my digital and scanned photographs. I don't want anything very clever, Picasa is actually pretty close to what I want except that I'd prefer to be able to manipulate the *real* folder hierarchy rather than a pseudo-hierarchy. -- Chris Green (chrisisbd(a)leary.csoft.net)

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Greetings
by Tracy Dickerson 12 May '06

12 May '06

Hey, My Names Tracy and I have just found you guys. I have always been interested in alternatives to Windows OS and it wasn't until I bought a PC of my own and a close friend of mine suggested I ran Linux on it that I moved in this direction. I had seen more than enough of his computer and the way it looked and felt to know that this move was for me. At this point we installed Red Hat 9. Loved this. Was fab. Then came along Fedora and we swapped to that. Again loved the way it worked and felt so all was good. Time went on... My Sys-Admin (as I refer to him now) moved to Worcester and got involved with the Malvern LUG group and I have been a silent member of their mailing list for just over a year I think. I am now at the stage (ok have been for a while) where I would like to run Fedora from the Terminal window but am finding the commands difficult to structure. Add to this that my pc is at the moment dead (Motherboard failure) and I am waiting for a friend of mine to dig out an old one of his so I can get up and running again. I have Fedora 5 waiting to be installed and am looking forward to this very much. Sorry this has been a long post; promise to keep them short in future. I hope to be at the next meeting (but not tonight I am afraid) and hope that you guys will welcome a Fedora lass into the fold. Regards, Tracy x _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Beginning of the end for SGI
by Wayne Stallwood 12 May '06

12 May '06

I was talking to someone about this at the kit meet (sorry I forget who) Whoever it was, Your prediction was pretty much spot on. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060508/sfm098.html?.v=45 Tis a sad day even if you didn't like SGI kit, If they weren't so broken as a company then they would be a good example of how a company in the Unix world embraced Open Source rather than being threatened by it. I don't know how much input SGI has on OpenGL and XFS now..I presume these projects will continue without them should they vanish or be bought up ? I wish I still had my Indy so I could give it a hug.

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64 bit Operating Systems
by Nick Daniels 11 May '06

11 May '06

Hi I have been attempting to install Linux on my AMD 3.4 GHz 64, on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 64, the X server fails to start/crashes, likewise on Debian 64, with Fedora 64 screen starts O.K. but mouse pointer disappears at logon. Suse 10.0 installs O.K. in i386 mode, but fails to find sound (Intel ICH with ALC 655) Kubuntu installs O.K. in i386 mode and finds everything. likewise Debian i386 Kororaa (gentoo) i386 installs O.K. and gives correct Nvidia driver and even 1600x screen System has onboard Nvidia 6100, and 1GB ram. Has anybody any suggestions for a 64 bit system, or ideas how to get a working 64 bit system or any other (Linux) operating system to try please. Kind Regards - Nick Daniels

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Given In To Pressure... Sorry
by Simon Royal 10 May '06

10 May '06

Before I start I would like to state I am a devout anti-Microsoft user and this pains me. My main machine is a Mac of which I am very pleased with. In all the years I have owned a Mac they never let me down, they just work and very well. My venture into Linux has come to a halt. My ThinkPad 380ED has been stripped of Damn Small Linux and replaced with Windows 98 Second Edition. There was no speed increase over Windows and the age of the machine limited me to the distro's I could use. With Damn Small Linux being the best option, I was annoyed by the limited amount of software and support for it. I know Microsoft are switching off support for 98 & ME in July but the wealth of knowledge and software and supported hardware under these operating systems was a drawing point for me. My wife also wants to use the laptop and Linux is no place for someone with little computing knowledge. So apologies as I seem to bail out on Linux. When I eventually purchase a new Mac I intend to dual boot with Ubuntu or something similar as I will have a better choice of full blown distros rather than cut down one aimed at low end machines. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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Ethernet conundrum
by Peter 10 May '06

10 May '06

Well, it gets more and more baffling. Checked the bios. Identical on both machines. Checked the switch settings. Identical. Checked the WOL header. Nothing on either of them. Swapped hard drives. The condition stays with the hardware, doesn't follow the drive. Reset bios to defaults. Nothing changes. As it shouldn't, since I had previously reset it by removing the battery. Gave up, and furiously put in another card, thinking, this should not be possible, I should be able to figure this out! Works fine on eth1. Peter

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XML & XSL
by jt＠imen.org.uk 09 May '06

09 May '06

Yeah I know this isnt a strict linux question but you guys are leet so... My dad has a slight problem with his coursework. He's been given a peice of XML which is terribly formatted - there is a lot of duplication of data. The XML in question is sitting at http://www.imen.org.uk/pd.php?id=24 The first stage of the problem was to break it down per invoice - instead of having four lines containing shipping data etc, he wants only one set of that per invoice,and the rest of the information to be sub that. Thats relativly easy using a key: http://www.imen.org.uk/pd.php?id=25 Now this leads onto stage two... Each invoice contains information about individual suppliers. This information again contains information which isunique per line (prodCode) but also information which isnt (supplierName). Again, the problem is to only show suppliername once for each line, so that the first output would show three sets of lines, the first one containing two products, the second and third containing one. (as opposed to the output that that gives you which is four lines of one output line each). Now I've tried lots of things - I cant generate a composite key based on the parent id because they all have the same parent - if file was structured better it could be sorted better. Any ideas? (I worked on this for about four hours lastnight, plus whatever my dad did on it and still no closer to a solution... is it indeed possible?) Thanks JT

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 08 May '06

08 May '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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A Few DSL Questions
by Peter 07 May '06

07 May '06

How to stop Dillo loading at startup? Yes, this drives you crazy if you don't stop it. Go to /home/dsl/.xinitrc. You need to comment out the dillo line by putting a # sign in front of it. I think this was covered in the DSL FAQ. Don't know about radio. Someone said DSL is Debian, and yes it evidently is, but I found that some packages didn't seem to be installable with apt-get, when they were installable with Debian. I never did figure out why. It must be modified in some way so dependencies don't always work quite correctly? Are you using jwm or fluxbox? DSL-not (the slightly bigger one) is worth trying too, but the version I tried didn't have some features that are in the little one. But it did have better applications. Didn't try apt-get. Peter

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A Few DSL Questions
by Simon Royal 07 May '06

07 May '06

Hi Yet another few Damn Small Linux questions from a newbie. Fingers crossed everything is going fine including wireless surfing. 1. I have my wireless network set up via Prism 2, only I have to set it up each time I restart the machine. Is there anyway I can have it auto configured each time I switch it on? 2. Everytime I boot up I am faced with a Dillo 'intro to DSL' screen. How can I stop this appearing? 3. I also have downloaded and installed a small util to show the wireless strength, but that too doesn't load on start up - how do I do this? Regards Simon

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