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RE: [ALUG] Linux Political Party
by David Briggs 12 Apr '05

12 Apr '05

> Below is a letter I got after asking the library > spends on proprietary software, I did not use the > phrase "Open Source" A pretty disappointing response that you got. Looking at the relevant page of the 2004/5 budget yields little (http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/council/departments/finance/Budget%20Book%202004_ 2005.pdf - page 20 of the pdf). You could always try asking the Education and Cultural Services Scrutiny Review Panel (http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/council/committees/papers/schedules/education_cul tural.htm) to have a look into this for you. It might make a difference if it came from ALUG as an organisation. Both MJ and I know a bit about Scrutiny, though from rather different perspectives ;-). Dave

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New member
by Bob Dove 11 Apr '05

11 Apr '05

Hi, I'm an ungruntled Win user. I'd like to try Linux but it seems I have to go back to the dreaded command line. I did conquer this in CP/M and DOS but having used Win since v.3.0 I have forgotten a lot about command lines! The Linux 'language' is akin to Terry Pratchett and you 'lug' members seem to have a bit of a sense of humour. I must say that installing Win is much MUCH easier than installing Linux!!! Something I haven't managed so far. Then there is the problem that I absolutely need to be able to run QuarkXPress and Photoshop (PS). I understand that 'WINE' can be used to a degree with older versions. GIMP is not in anyway equal to PS as any PS user will confirm, in fact there is no other program equal to PS! I already use OOo v 1.3 (in Win) in preference to MS Office. I like it and looking forward to using v 2.0. I need to know what program to choose as a starter, how to partition my C drive to install Linux into &c. Cheers, BD. -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.1 - Release Date: 01/04/2005

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Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late
by Wayne Stallwood 11 Apr '05

11 Apr '05

I posted this to a newsgroup yesterday, the more I think about it the more I think someone *could* make a go of selling a Apple like solution. Anyone care to comment ? > > When are those people over there ever going to wake up? Jobs could put > Gates on > welfare if he'd port the Mac OS to the PC. I'd buy it in a heartbeat, > even with Apple's usurious profit margins .. Every time I hear this I wince, Do you know what OSX would become if it was ever ported over to the X86 platform... OSX is nice, clean, relatively stable and deserved of the "Just works" title simply because the developer of the OS is in 100% control of the platform. The only machines that (in a legitimate manner) can run OSX are designed and manufactured under licence from Apple themselves. Because of this I would expect random crashes and installation difficulties from an Apple no more than what I'd expect from say an Xbox. Port it over to a platform like x86 where there are a thousand manufacturers competing with their own little tweaks, variations and buggy third party drivers combined with the massive task of support for legacy hardware and applications and you'd either have the unstable mess that is Windows XP or limited manufacturer hardware support as towards Linux. Think about this- (and if anybody forms a business model based on this I thought of it first :-) ) For the sake of argument (and because we are on a SuSE newsgroup here) Lets say Novell came up with their own hardware platform, base it on X86 architecture if you like. Now imagine that they only supported SuSE linux when it was running on that platform, and the only third party hardware and software they supported was that which they had agreed (by arrangement with the manufacturer) was compatible with SuSE linux. Imagine how stable and easy to use that system could be, everything could just plug in and work, there would be almost zero hardware compatability issues because they would have been resolved by Novell/The Hardware manufacturer before you bought the kit....it would be just like an Apple (or a Sun box) Of course some people would shun it, they would say that they can buy a computer cheaper from Dell cheaper than the Novell one and then download a free Linux distribution to go on it, or they'd say that Novell don't sell a computer that meets their particular needs, or they dislike the fact they they are tied into one vendor. But some people want more of an appliance than a computer and that's how I see Mac's, you take them home and plug them in and they just work.

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 11 Apr '05

11 Apr '05

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. 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 tkirc, bitchx, xchat 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://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Asus A8V networking problem
by Dennis Dryden 11 Apr '05

11 Apr '05

Hello, I decided to upgrade my PC a few month's ago and ended up purchasing an Asus A8V motherboard and a AMD 3200 Athlon64 CPU. It's been working just fine after some initial problems(just needed a bios upgrade) but yesterday decided to stop the built in network card from working. I cant think of anything i had changed to messup configurations or make it act any differently so im quite confused as to what the problem is. The onboard NIC uses the sk98lin kernel module and when i try to modprobe it i get the message that the card was not found. In WindowsXP(the 64bit beta) the card shows up but tells me the network cable is unpluged(its not and the cable works fine). So i decided to just get another NIC and got a cheap Realtech pci card, when i try to modprobe its driver i see a similar message telling me that it can't talk to the card, and in windows i get the message again that the network cable is unpluged. Anyone have any ideas what my problem might be? Thanks, Dennis Dryden

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Re: New member
by John Seago 09 Apr '05

09 Apr '05

This whole correspondence on the matter of posting using the conventions applied by the majority of Linux users, must by now have become very embarrassing to the OP. I do hope that it has not reached the point where he is discouraged. If he is finding it difficult to install a complete Linux Distribution, one answer might be to find an email client that he can use on his Microsoft operating system. I didn't use Windows for very long before changing to Linux, and it is now long enough ago for me to have forgotten how it works, but I understand that Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, together with their associated email clients will work on Windows. -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 http://counter.li.org AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/

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Re: main digest, Vol 3 #499 - 4 msgs
by Bob Dove 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

Now Guy's, Apple OS/X - Unix ain't it, similar to Linux??? Don't bother to port Apple/Unix to the 99% of the market that uses a PC, you can get the 'real' Unix O/S. Did I read somewhere a complaint that Bill gates had copied the Apple GUI to make Win? I think Apple cribbed the Digital Research GUI to make the Apple O/S. Cheers, BD. ----- Original Message ----- From: <main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk> To: <main(a)lists.alug.org.uk> Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2005 6:26 AM Subject: main digest, Vol 3 #499 - 4 msgs > Send main mailing list submissions to > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > You can reach the person managing the list at > main-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of main digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late (Wayne Stallwood) > 2. Re: Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late (Adam Bower) > 3. Re: Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late (Wayne Stallwood) > 4. Re: Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late (Adam Bower) > > --__--__-- > > Message: 1 > From: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.plus.com> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:45:50 +0000 > Subject: [ALUG] Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late > > I posted this to a newsgroup yesterday, the more I think about it the more I > think someone *could* make a go of selling a Apple like solution. Anyone care > to comment ? > > > > > When are those people over there ever going to wake up? Jobs could put > > Gates on > > welfare if he'd port the Mac OS to the PC. I'd buy it in a heartbeat, > > even with Apple's usurious profit margins .. > > Every time I hear this I wince, Do you know what OSX would become if it was > ever ported over to the X86 platform... > > OSX is nice, clean, relatively stable and deserved of the "Just works" title > simply because the developer of the OS is in 100% control of the platform. > The only machines that (in a legitimate manner) can run OSX are designed > and manufactured under licence from Apple themselves. Because of this I > would expect random crashes and installation difficulties from an Apple no > more than what I'd expect from say an Xbox. > > Port it over to a platform like x86 where there are a thousand manufacturers > competing with their own little tweaks, variations and buggy third party > drivers combined with the massive task of support for legacy hardware and > applications and you'd either have the unstable mess that is Windows XP or > limited manufacturer hardware support as towards Linux. > > Think about this- (and if anybody forms a business model based on this I > thought of it first :-) ) > > For the sake of argument (and because we are on a SuSE newsgroup here) Lets > say Novell came up with their own hardware platform, base it on X86 > architecture if you like. > > Now imagine that they only supported SuSE linux when it was running on that > platform, and the only third party hardware and software they supported was > that which they had agreed (by arrangement with the manufacturer) was > compatible with SuSE linux. > > Imagine how stable and easy to use that system could be, everything could > just plug in and work, there would be almost zero hardware compatability > issues because they would have been resolved by Novell/The Hardware > manufacturer before you bought the kit....it would be just like an Apple > (or a Sun box) > > Of course some people would shun it, they would say that they can buy a > computer cheaper from Dell cheaper than the Novell one and then download a > free Linux distribution to go on it, or they'd say that Novell don't sell a > computer that meets their particular needs, or they dislike the fact they > they are tied into one vendor. But some people want more of an appliance > than a computer and that's how I see Mac's, you take them home and plug > them in and they just work. > > > --__--__-- > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 19:45:31 +0100 > From: Adam Bower <adam(a)thebowery.co.uk> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late > > On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 05:45:50PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote: > > I posted this to a newsgroup yesterday, the more I think about it the more I > > think someone *could* make a go of selling a Apple like solution. Anyone care > > to comment ? > > > Port it over to a platform like x86 where there are a thousand manufacturers > > competing with their own little tweaks, variations and buggy third party > > drivers combined with the massive task of support for legacy hardware and > > applications and you'd either have the unstable mess that is Windows XP or > > limited manufacturer hardware support as towards Linux. > > Well, Mac OS X is partially a port of BSD Unix and NeXT technology, NeXT > made releases of their software for x86, BSD Unix runs on x86, Darwin > exists for x86 and there are a few bits of other software that are > obviously not ported yet and lots of bits of GPL stuff in OS X. > > Basically, yeah Apple could put everything into a big mixing pot and > come out with a version that runs on x86 and it would probably be very > cool, worrying about some drivers isn't really a huge problem as if you > buy crap hardware then you get crap drivers, if the hardware already has > a Mac OS X driver then why should the x86 version be any crapper? > > The reason that Apple won't release Mac OS X on x86 would be because it > would instantly kill their hardware lineup, who would buy a > super-expensive Mac for twice as much as a cheap x86 box with Mac OS X? > and given that how many people would then buy Mac OS X for x86 when they > could just pirate it? At this point Apple will have managed to kill > their revenue stream, Apple would die as would Mac OS X and a large > company that opposes M$ would crumble into the dust. This would be bad > news and not very good news for Linux as M$ (who are imho far more evil > than Apple will ever be) would now have a larger market share and more > of a stranglehold on that monopoly of theirs, *just* kept it on topic > there with that last line. > > Adam > -- > jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li > AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem > > > --__--__-- > > Message: 3 > From: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.plus.com> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late > Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 21:45:45 +0000 > > On Wednesday 06 April 2005 7:45 pm, Adam Bower wrote: > > > Basically, yeah Apple could put everything into a big mixing pot and > > come out with a version that runs on x86 and it would probably be very > > cool, worrying about some drivers isn't really a huge problem as if you > > buy crap hardware then you get crap drivers, if the hardware already has > > a Mac OS X driver then why should the x86 version be any crapper? > > I remain unconvinced, it's hard to properly QA software or hardware for the= > =20 > X86 platform because there are so many variables and inconsistencies. If yo= > u=20 > say "Supports Mac OSX" then you are really talking about a very limited ran= > ge=20 > of machines that you have to test your product against. > > > > > The reason that Apple won't release Mac OS X on x86 would be because it > > would instantly kill their hardware lineup, who would buy a > > super-expensive Mac for twice as much as a cheap x86 box with Mac OS X? > > Agreed apart from the bit about Mac's being super expensive, that's only tr= > ue=20 > if you ignore things like build quality and sensible design and just compar= > e=20 > clock speeds. > > I struggle to find laptops as well designed as say the iBook or Powerbook's= > =20 > for less money when I start to consider other things that are important to = > me=20 > (portability, battery life, build quality). > > When the Dual G5 was first made available it was very hard to build a X86=20 > based machine with the same real world performance for much less money and= > =20 > that's completely ignoring the fact that they are one of the best designed= > =20 > and built Workstations I have ever had the pleasure of pulling to bits. > > You can beat the Mini Mac on a straight price/performance comparasion, but= > =20 > factor in subjective things like near silent running and the tiny form fact= > or=20 > and you'll struggle to find anything to compare. Just off the top of my hea= > d=20 > a MiniITX board, case, memory, Hard drive, Slimline CDRW and PSU comes to=20 > about =A3250 retail (and that's for less performance and does not include a= > n=20 > operating system or any manufacturer support)=20 > > > > and given that how many people would then buy Mac OS X for x86 when they > > could just pirate it? > > At this point Apple will have managed to kill=20 > > their revenue stream, Apple would die as would Mac OS X and a large > > company that opposes M$ would crumble into the dust. This would be bad > > news and not very good news for Linux as M$ (who are imho far more evil > > than Apple will ever be) would now have a larger market share and more > > of a stranglehold on that monopoly of theirs, *just* kept it on topic > > there with that last line. > > Agreed > > > --__--__-- > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 23:44:01 +0100 > From: Adam Bower <adam(a)thebowery.co.uk> > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Seeing as the list has been a little quiet of late > > On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 09:45:45PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote: > > > Agreed apart from the bit about Mac's being super expensive, that's only true > > if you ignore things like build quality and sensible design and just compare > > clock speeds. > > No, have to disagree on this totally, build quality is something you > can't argue about really as it gets subjective to the actual machine you > do the comparison with. There are crap built x86 machines, but then > there are some fine examples of x86 engineering. Sensible design, I > would/could somewhat agree on in the Macs favour, although there are > flaws (more on that below) and the clock speed comparison isn't really > what I am basing my examples on. Just look how much Apple charge you to > have more Ram, faster/bigger harddisks, or upgraded gfx cards when you > compare like for like Apple seems to be charging at least a 50% premium > over what you can buy for an x86 pc. They usually want 35 quid! just to > add bluetooth support. > > > I struggle to find laptops as well designed as say the iBook or Powerbook's > > for less money when I start to consider other things that are important to me > > (portability, battery life, build quality). > > IBM thinkpads are good, and I given that around 50% of Mac laptop owners > I know have had to send the thing off for repair within the first year > (and quite a few of them more than once) I think Mac laptops suck, > although they do appear to be getting better again so ask me again in > another year. > > > When the Dual G5 was first made available it was very hard to build a X86 > > based machine with the same real world performance for much less money and > > that's completely ignoring the fact that they are one of the best designed > > and built Workstations I have ever had the pleasure of pulling to bits. > > That will be the one that Apple got in trouble for because they lied > about the performance ;) and how do you categorise "real world > performance"? Many of the tasks I want to do on my computer are not > possible on a Mac, that would mean it has a real world performance > rating of 0, on other tasks then it may be slightly faster but then I > could buy 2 (or more) x86 machines for the same price. Also look at how > expensive a Mac that will play Doom III nicely costs compared to an x86 > gaming rig. > > > You can beat the Mini Mac on a straight price/performance comparasion, but > > factor in subjective things like near silent running and the tiny form factor > > and you'll struggle to find anything to compare. Just off the top of my head > > a MiniITX board, case, memory, Hard drive, Slimline CDRW and PSU comes to > > about £250 retail (and that's for less performance and does not include an > > operating system or any manufacturer support) > > There have been many other small form factor PCs in the past, tbh I'm > not too worried about how big my computer is as it sits under my desk. > Also you have to factor in the one of the design flaws of the Mac mini > with its dodgy dvi/vga adaptor which isn't compatible for the vesa spec > which to me suggests a big Apple design flaw (so it isn't *always* > sensible design). > > There are some benefits to having a Mac, but then downsides too. Trying > to take the Mac cult approach of "everything is good" doesn't really > work. I'm not really defending x86 though, as I think the architecture > is a bit crap but then again there aren't many options but I think I > will stay put for now. I also thought of one more point that wasn't > raised and that is the relative upgradability of a PC compared to a Mac. > > The machine I am typing on was originally a 1.4Ghz Athlon with a > Ge-Force 2 card which cost 600 quid, the motherboard died and it cost > 50 quid to replace with a newer better motherboard and around the same > time I upgraded the gfx card to a geforce 4 for 100 quid. At christmas > I upgraded the cpu and gfx card which cost me 200 quid for a 2.mumble > Ghz Athlon and a GeForce 6600GT card and the upgrade required me to buy > some new ram (total 1GB). Every time I have upgraded the machine I have > sold many of the bits on ebay. > > When I add up what it has cost me over 4 years (1050 quid) and what I > got back by selling bits (150 quid, and if I had sold the geforce 2 card > I would have got another 50 quid) It has cost me 850 quid to have a > machine that is more than fast enough (and at the beginning was fairly > high end) for nearly 4 years with no upgrade projected for another 2 > years I would say that works out as a bit of a bargain compared to an > equivalent Mac (in fact, looking at the Apple store online, an > equivalent (but admittedly slightly faster) G5 Mac would cost me about > 1361 quid. God knows what the price would have been if I had stayed with > Mac kit from the beginning. > > Adam > -- > jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li > AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem > > > > --__--__-- > > _______________________________________________ > main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > http://www.anglian.lug.org.uk/ > http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main > > > End of main Digest > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. > Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.1 - Release Date: 01/04/2005 > -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.1 - Release Date: 01/04/2005

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Dgestigest
by John Seago 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

On Friday 08 Apr 2005 15:51,Brett Parker <iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk> wrote: > I didn't know that there was every any blocks, maybe you're dreaming > again, Mr Ray :) If there weren't, there should be, the very first post of the previous digest, quoted, (underneath the reply, so there was also the sin of top-posting), the entire digest. > I would suggest that the list doesn't have enough traffic to make digest > particularly useful, how many people (out of interest) have this option > set? I do, I'm subscribed to a large number of Mailing Lists, all of them, where they have the option, in the digest format. -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 http://counter.li.org AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/

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Re: [ALUG] New member
by John Seago 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

On Friday 08 Apr 2005 12:05, Anthony Anson <tony.anson(a)zetnet.co.uk> wrote: > > http://www.ubuntulinux.com/ There is also http://www.kubuntu.org.uk/ if one would like to try out Ubuntu woith a KDE destop, (thus avioding the commandline). > Knoppix is a good way to start, too. > > Have a browse over www.linuxemporium.co.uk Also go to: http://distrowatch.com/ and have a look at all (?) the various varieties of Linux available. -- John Seago GNU/Linux User #219566 http://counter.li.org AFFS http://www.affs.org.uk/

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Re: main digest, Vol 3 #499 - 4 msgs
by tom potts 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

I think it was Xerox who came up with the first WIMP system in 1981 with the Star Information System. Microsoft first mentioned their vapourware of win1 (text!) in 83 and didnt ship till nove 85 and 90 for 3.0. All the inovation of snail! Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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Re: [ALUG] New member
by Joe Button 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

On Friday 08 April 2005 12:04, Chris Walker wrote: > Windows rewrote the MBR and so I lost Lilo. Can I get it back? Not a > chance! Definitely worth having some kind of rescue CD for such occasions. Personally I tend to use SystemRescueCd, or occasionally Knoppix (the PXE boot server thingy is a life saver). Plus I'd recommend getting to know grub instead of Lilo. It's tempting to stick with what you know but grub really does make things much easier. Tip of the day: Always make sure you have a separate /boot partition, that way it's much easier to manage / not trash your grub config etc.

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Printer not working
by Peter Hunter 08 Apr '05

08 Apr '05

Hi all, I have just connected my Epson Stylus CX 3600 all in one printer to the spare USB port. SUSE 9.2 recognised it straight away, told me what the printer was and configured it. However, When I did a test print, and tried to print an email, everything 'seemed' to work ok, except nothing printed! There are no print jobs waiting in the queue. When I click on print the window opens and shows the Epson Stylus CX 3600 as the selected printer. Under the following headings is shows, Status: Idle (Accepting print jobs). Location: USB printer on //EPSON/Stylus%20CX3600. Comment: Local RAW Printer. And at the bottom it says, Print System Currently Used: CUPS. So, why is it that when I click on print, nothing happens? I know the printer works okay as it is also connected to my Windows PC and Apple Mac, via a printer hub. Yes, the printer is switched on, and the correct port is selected on the hub (I've tried them all just in case). The cable and connections must be okay as the printer was detected as soon as I connected it. Any help would be very much appreciated. I don't know enough about Linux or UNIX yet to trouble shoot via the command line, but I'm willing to follow instructions / directions. Many thanks for reading this, Peter

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autocheck email?
by Peter Hunter 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

Hi all, I know I have asked this before, but I had to re-install Linux (SuSE 9.2) onto a new (old) computer. I'm now using a P3 500MHz machine with a 10GB hard drive, DVD-RW and just 160 MB RAM (for now, anyone got any PC 100 they want to get rid of cheap?). Anyway, I have got all the email connection sorted ok, I just want to get KMail to check for new messages every couple of mins or so. How do I do it? Like I said, I asked before but can't remember what was said. This time I'll print out the reply and keep it in my folder. Thanks in advance. Peter

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Re: apple kit
by phil 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

> Adam > IBM thinkpads are good, and I given that around 50% of Mac laptop > owners > I know have had to send the thing off for repair within the first year > (and quite a few of them more than once) I think Mac laptops suck, > although they do appear to be getting better again so ask me again in > another year. Well - guess they were unlucky - the iBook has had a fair run of dodgy motherboards, but I gather an extra generous replacement program fixed many of those. I'm certainly getting one to replace my G3 Pismo this year which has zero spent on it since I bought it. And it still has a fairly good resale value. > >> When the Dual G5 was first made available it was very hard to build a >> X86 >> based machine with the same real world performance for much less >> money and >> that's completely ignoring the fact that they are one of the best >> designed >> and built Workstations I have ever had the pleasure of pulling to >> bits. > > Also look at how > expensive a Mac that will play Doom III nicely costs compared to an x86 > gaming rig. You're starting to sound like a Winders troll there! > >> You can beat the Mini Mac on a straight price/performance >> comparasion, but >> factor in subjective things like near silent running and the tiny >> form factor >> and you'll struggle to find anything to compare. Just off the top of >> my head >> a MiniITX board, case, memory, Hard drive, Slimline CDRW and PSU >> comes to >> about £250 retail (and that's for less performance and does not >> include an >> operating system or any manufacturer support) > > There have been many other small form factor PCs in the past, tbh I'm > not too worried about how big my computer is as it sits under my desk. > Also you have to factor in the one of the design flaws of the Mac mini > with its dodgy dvi/vga adaptor which isn't compatible for the vesa spec > which to me suggests a big Apple design flaw (so it isn't *always* > sensible design). From what I gather it's a low voltage thing that only shows up on certain monitors? As this is a version one product, guess it'll get resolved in the next revision. Tough on the early adopters I know, but it's not that it won't work with ANY monitors, just SOME. > > The machine I am typing on was originally a 1.4Ghz Athlon with a > Ge-Force 2 card which cost 600 quid, the motherboard died and it cost > 50 quid to replace with a newer better motherboard and around the same > time I upgraded the gfx card to a geforce 4 for 100 quid. At christmas > I upgraded the cpu and gfx card which cost me 200 quid for a 2.mumble > Ghz Athlon and a GeForce 6600GT card and the upgrade required me to buy > some new ram (total 1GB). Every time I have upgraded the machine I have > sold many of the bits on ebay. > > When I add up what it has cost me over 4 years (1050 quid) and what I > got back by selling bits (150 quid, and if I had sold the geforce 2 > card > I would have got another 50 quid) It has cost me 850 quid to have a > machine that is more than fast enough (and at the beginning was fairly > high end) for nearly 4 years with no upgrade projected for another 2 > years I would say that works out as a bit of a bargain compared to an > equivalent Mac (in fact, looking at the Apple store online, an > equivalent (but admittedly slightly faster) G5 Mac would cost me about > 1361 quid. God knows what the price would have been if I had stayed > with > Mac kit from the beginning. Probably 1361 quid... As was stated at the beginning, it's the appliance thing. Many Mac users buy their kit like other people buy stereos or TV's. They use it till they fancy another. I'll use this G4 iMac for about 2 more years and get the latest and greatest to replace it. Obviously they break for some people, - I've a 93 or 4 vintage LC that won't boot, but I've never had a hardware failure in anything else yet. That's about 40 or 50 machines. This that one I've a 1989 Classic upstairs, still runs just fine, never been opened. Logic battery died years ago, but it ticks along. It's a mindset thing. I buy my Mac to do a job. If it earns me enough I buy another.Phil

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Thunderbird help?
by Anthony Anson 07 Apr '05

07 Apr '05

A fiend of mine is having prombles with Thunderbird (1.0 ISTR) I offered to ask for a howto? from the Shed, but I gooved I'd ask in zetnet.support while I was about it. Not having got a lot to pass on, I bethought me of the ALUG list... <Q> Yes please would you ask how to make the Junk empty to Trash automatically. I have ticked the box but it doesn't work :( Anna </Q> -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ The only way to tell when a Finn is in love with you is that they look at your feet instead of their own.

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External SATA drives
by Wayne Stallwood 04 Apr '05

04 Apr '05

At the kit meet I was talking to someone about the availability of external SATA enclosures and how we were frustrated that external SATA sockets are available but seemingly there is nothing to plug into them. I think it could have been Noodles but I am not sure Anyway such a device does exist and they are available from Scan (right device, wrong picture on their site) It's the Highpoint Rocketmate 1000, strangely it only supports traditional IDE ATA drives internally and price is not available on the Scan site but I have the product PDF's if whoever it was is interested.

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Setting windows workgroups from DHCP on Linux
by Stuart Bailey 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

Hi, Does anyone know if it is possible to configure a DHCP server to automatically assign workgroups to windows clients? Many thanks, -- --------------------------------------- Stuart Bailey BSc (hons) CEng CITP MBCS LinuSoft (Proprietor) (01953) 601294 (07778) 383739 http://www.linusoft.co.uk ---------------------------------------- ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please email postmaster(a)linusoft.co.uk immediately. You should not copy or use this email or attachments for any purpose nor disclose their contents to any other person. NO BINDING CONTRACT WILL RESULT FROM THIS E-MAIL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS A WRITTEN DOCUMENT IS SIGNED ON BEHALF OF LinuSoft. LinuSoft cannot accept any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of this message as it has been transmitted over public networks. *************************************************************************

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nfs mounted directory ownerships
by Jenny Hopkins 25 Mar '05

25 Mar '05

Hi all, I have a central directory owned by user 'balloon' on my server. This can be nfs mounted onto serveral other computers, each with a user 'balloon'. However, the server UID for balloon is different from that of the clients. I'm reluctant to start changing things in /etc/passwd. Is there an elegant way to state the nfs mount with username permissions rather than number? Thanks, Jenny

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Max partition size
by beb 25 Mar '05

25 Mar '05

I've just put in a second harddrive (40GB) in my box (running Sarge on a (badly) customised 2.6.10 kernel). I deleted all the old partitions using fdisk and created a single new 40GB one (actually 39.something according to the partition table), but when mounted 'df' reports it as only 17GB. If I create two partitions of roughly 20GB each then 'df' reports the disk size correctly. Can anyone suggest what the problem is please? Also, during my googles about this I kept seeing pages stating that the maximum drive size in linux is 138GB. Was I just looking at old webpages or is that still the case in the latest kernels? Thanks, beb -- <Insert Bill Hicks quote here>

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Caption Competition
by Peter Onion 24 Mar '05

24 Mar '05

I think we need to put some words to this picture.... http://www.btinternet.com/~Peter.Onion/ALUG/caption.jpg >From sunflowerinrain's decription of the day.... "Mike's crimson machine which has refused installs of Redhat, Mandrake, etc. suffered various attempts to install Debian unstable which resulted in it booting into Win98. Brett re-partitioned and de-bootstrapped it and got almost all the way through the process of getting a working Debian before running out of time. " PeterO

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DemosOfferedDemosWanted page on web site
by Peter Onion 23 Mar '05

23 Mar '05

I just found the "DemosOfferedDemosWanted" page on the web site. http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?DemosOfferedDemosWanted How "current" are those lists ? Without dates it's impossible to tell when the requests & offers were made. PeterO

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OT: SGI Access
by Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. 23 Mar '05

23 Mar '05

Hi all, First, apologies for being off-topic, but I'm exploring all opportunities. When I complete my Ph.D. research a few years ago, I done all my work on an SGI. On reviewing my work recently, I discovered that most of animations I created are in SGIs movie format. I've tried some options including xanim to view them in linux, but because I created the movies with compression on each frame, I can't get them to play. Rather than recreating the original files, what I really want to do is convert these files from SGI format to quicktime, or extract the original frames. In fact, there is a command to do this on the SGI - dmconvert. Before I go ahead and buy an SGI via eBay or similar (which may or may not work), I was wondering whether anyone here has, or has access to an SGI which could do the movie conversion. I could supply the original movies on CD for you to convert, or we could work together to do this. I know this is a long shot, but can anyone help me? -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com "May your spirit be renewed in earth's solitary places." - Native American Indian Blessing

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Re: [ALUG] Multi-card reader
by Chris Glover 23 Mar '05

23 Mar '05

On Wed, 2005-03-23 at 11:49 +0000, Chris Walker wrote: > On Wed 23 Mar, Chris Glover wrote: > > > > On Wed, 2005-03-23 at 11:15 +0000, Chris Walker wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > > > I've just removed a USB card reader from my Mandrake 10 system and added > > > a USB 2.0 card and connected up a new multi-card reader to it. But I > > > can't get the system to recognise the new hardware. Where am I going > > > wrong? > > > > > > I've tried googling for multi-card reader but nothing useful comes up. > > > > > > > Hi Chris, > > > > Have you loaded the ehci-hcd module? You need this for USB 2 to work. > > You'll have to talk me through that one. I don't know how to do that. > It's exactly as Brett said. You could try typing /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd /sbin/modprobe usb-storage You need to be logged in as root. > > Have you tried other devices on this card? Does lsusb show it is there? > > I get 'command not found' for that as I do for modprobe - suggested by Breet > Parker in the list. > What does the output of dmesg show you? To install lsusb on Gentoo, type emerge usbutils It's available on other distros as well, but it's been so long since I used Redhat I've forgotten what th epackage is called. -- Chris ---------------------------------- E Mail: chris(a)glovercc.clara.co.uk SIP: 84411389(a)voiptalk.org IAXTEL: 17003366726

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Re: [ALUG] New Member Intro
by Gareth 23 Mar '05

23 Mar '05

Hey Ben, sorry for the late post, yeah I've had a look at ubuntu but havn't tried the live cd yet. It's an old-world G3 thats been sucking most of my time, so i'm not sure it would work. I've got debian installed and working with a 2.4 kernel, but main problem now is getting X to work wiv an old fixed refresh rate monitor. Got the ati drivers going the other day, but still no joy. I had the machine working with an old copy of Yellowdog (RedHat) and tried just copying the xfree86.config file.. - If anyone thinks they can help lemme know and il'll send in specs. Gonna give debian/ubuntu a go on my powerbook once i have the money to hookup a new harddrive, i 'll need to dual boot as I need a mac partition for my work. As for airport extream, is it that the drivers are still closed source? I've been looking into getting an original airport card but the prices on ebay are mad!! Cheers -Gareth -- "All our knowledge past, present and future is nothing compared to what we will never know." >>Gareth Porteous wrote: >>I've been spending most of my time jostling with Debain getting it >>installed and working on some old world machines to give me something new >>to play with. >> >> >Welcome! >Have you seen the Ubuntu Linux Live CD for powerpc? >http://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/releases/hoary/current/ >I tried it on my iBook at work and it looked very good, I've installed >Ubuntu on an iBook before with the "Warty Warthog" release. >Unfortunately the new wireless cards aren't supported because the specs >haven't been released but pretty much everything else works. I'd be >interested to hear how it copes on older kit but you might be right >sticking to Debian for those. > >-- >Ben "tola" Francis http://hippygeek.co.uk >---------------------------------------------------- >COMPUTER SUPPORT for small businesses and home users >http://tolatech.co.uk >----------------------------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Multi-card reader
by Brett Parker 23 Mar '05

23 Mar '05

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Chris Walker <chris_linux(a)wymondham.demon.co.uk> wrote: > Hello, > > I've just removed a USB card reader from my Mandrake 10 system and added a > USB 2.0 card and connected up a new multi-card reader to it. But I can't get > the system to recognise the new hardware. Where am I going wrong? > > I've tried googling for multi-card reader but nothing useful comes up. Right, assuming kernel 2.6.x... $ modprobe ehci-hcd $ modprobe usb-storage I can't remember if that's the same for 2.4.x, I know it got changed at some point, but I can't remember the exact point. And marvel as you get SCSI disks ;) Basically, USB multicard readers present themselves as 1 (or more) usb mass storage devices, that are then treated as SCSI devices. My 6 in 1 presents itself as 4 devices, for example, one for each different shaped hole. Hope that helps - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno(a)sommitrealweird.co.uk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCQVGAEh8oWxevnjQRAsQjAKCfv2R/ooN3Io8RlmUhGKloBaj2jgCfdQck Hbwek0l2MpYm4FFZ4amfFxU= =Nj8h -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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