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[Alug]Apropos of absolutely nothing!
by Keith Watson 24 Sep '03

24 Sep '03

http://www.jotajota.org/ficheros/answer%5b1%5d.gif Regards, Keith ____________ 'If there is a better solution...find it.' - Thomas Edison --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com) Version: 6.0.516 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 01/09/2003

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[Alug]Announce digest, Vol 2 #16 - 2 msgs
by announce-request＠lists.alug.org.uk 24 Sep '03

24 Sep '03

Send Announce mailing list submissions to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announce-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk You can reach the person managing the list at announce-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announce digest..." --------------.--------------------------------------------.------------ alug-announce | Newsletter of the Anglian Linux User Group | Weekly(ish) --------------'--------------------------------------------'------------ ** Please send articles for this letter to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk ** *** Please send replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk, not announce... *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's Topics: 1. Call for Nominations for the 2004 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software (fwd) (MJ Ray) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 23:27:25 +0100 From: MJ Ray <markj(a)cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> To: fsfe-uk(a)gnu.org, lugmaster(a)lug.org.uk, announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Organization: My own Subject: [Alug Announce]Call for Nominations for the 2004 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 2003-09-21 23:34:20 +0100 From: Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org> Subject: Call for Nominations for the 2004 FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software [Please redistribute widely where appropriate] The GNU project is asking for nominations for the 2003 Free Software Award. We want to give this award to a person who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software (free as in freedom; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html for the definition), through activities that accord with the spirit of free software. Any kind of activity could be eligible--writing software, writing documentation, publishing CDs, even journalism--but whatever the activity, we want to recognize long-term central contributions to the development of the world of free software. "Accord with the spirit" means, for example, that software, manuals or collections of them (on tape or CD) must be entirely Free. (Once again, that's free as in freedom; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html.) Work done commercially is eligible, but we want to give awards to individuals, not companies. People such as Miguel de Icaza, Donald Knuth, Larry Lessig, Brian Paul, Guido van Rossum, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Larry Wall who have already received this or other awards for their contributions, are not eligible for the Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Please send your nominations to award-nominations(a)gnu.org on or before Friday 31 October 2003. Please submit nominations in the following format: * Put the name of the person you are nominating in the email message subject line. * Please include, in the body of your message, an explanation (40 lines or less) of the work the person has done and why you think it is especially important to software freedom. Please state, in the body of your message, where to find the materials (e.g., software, manuals, or writing) which your nomination is based on. Information about the previous awards can be found in http://www.gnu.org/award/. _______________________________________________ GNU Announcement mailing list <info-gnu(a)gnu.org> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announce mailing list Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce End of Announce Digest

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[Alug]Confusing MSEC E-mails
by Matt Parker 23 Sep '03

23 Sep '03

Hi All, I'm running Mandrake 9.0 on my web server/e-mail server/firewall and MSEC is sending me reports every night telling me what's going on. The thing I find confusing is that I keep getting reports like this:- Security Warning: These files belonging to packages have changed of status on the system : - No longer modified : /usr/include/c++/3.2/bits/istream.tcc The thing is, this file has never been modified and it hasn't been modified back. What does it mean by "no longer modified"? It'll tell me one night that a file has been modified and then the next night it'll tell me that it is no longer modified. With all this "crying wolf" how do I, as a sysadmin, tell when something has really been modified? Matt

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[Alug]networking problems
by Ben Francis 23 Sep '03

23 Sep '03

I've got an unusual network problem with some Linux boxes at school. Mozilla Browser can view web pages fine via the proxy on port 80 and ftp works OK. I can ping the router but if I try pinging any web sites it just times out - it does seem to find the IP of the web site I'm pinging, but no data pongs back. So I can use google in a web browser, but ping google.co.uk just times out - I didn't know that was possible! I'm also having trouble allocating static IPs to the boxes. I've made "reservations" on the Windows NT DHCP server of the IP addresses I want in the range 10.25.20.101 - 10.25.20.108 but I'm having trouble getting /etc/network/interfaces set up correctly to connect to the network using them. This is the current contents of /etc/network/interfaces: =================================== auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 10.25.20.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 10.25.16.1 #network 10.25.16.0 #broadcast 10.25.16.255 =================================== After I make changes I do ifdown eth0 and then ifup eth0, which usually results in a "network unreachable" message. Is there a way of being able to address a computer by its name as opposed to it's IP if a dynamic IP is being used, allocated by the DHCP server? I'd like to be able to do ssh user@hostname instead of ssh user(a)000.000.000.000 for example which is my reason for wanting static IPs in the first place. One other simple question, how can I find out the IP of the computer I'm working on? I thought it was hostname -i but this just returns 127.0.0.1 instead of the computer's IP on the network. One other unrelated problem. I've been having trouble changing the keyboard language setting for X from the default US to UK. I've changed the relevent values in /etc/X11/XF86Config and /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and restarted X, but for some reason it keeps reverting to US. The KDE keyboard setting is fine, but in fluxbox it uses a US layout. The funny thing is I've been able to change the language on my home PC using fluxbox, perhaps I'm missing something obvious. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm not very experienced with any of these problems! -- Ben "tola" Francis http://www.bourne-grammar.lincs.sch.uk/bgstux

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[Alug]Linux powered DVD player
by Jonathan McDowell 22 Sep '03

22 Sep '03

I mentioned this at the Forum on Thursday and people asked for more info. The new crop of EM8500 DVD players (the ones that are fairly cheap and support DivX) seem to be powered by Linux. You can get these for aruond £120, for example at: http://www.blankdiscshop.co.uk/acatalog/Hardware_Section__.html (the LiteOn LVD-2001 about half way down). LiteOn's page for the player: http://www.liteonit.com/DC/english/lvd_2001.htm Sigma's development kit is Linux based: http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/em8500.htm Some info about other EM8500 players: http://www.duke.edu/~java32/bravo/bravohacking.html If I didn't have a DVD player already I think I'd be buying one of these to play with. J. -- I'm an a**h**e, I'm an a**h**e, | .''`. Debian GNU/Linux Developer I'm a real f**king a**h**e. | : :' : Happy to accept PGP signed | `. `' or encrypted mail - RSA + | `- DSA keys on the keyservers.

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[Alug]Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 22 Sep '03

22 Sep '03

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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[Alug]Kernels.
by Craig 19 Sep '03

19 Sep '03

Just thought of something to discuss on a friday ;) What kernels are you running at work/home? And what patches did you apply to it? At work, I'm running Con Kolivas patchset to 2.4 (http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/ ) as well on my mini itx at home. I was running 2.5/6 for a while with andrew morton's patchset and felt that I was being too far on the bleedin' edge ;) C

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[Alug]USB Hard Drives
by Richard Lewis (MUS) 19 Sep '03

19 Sep '03

Dear ALUG, I am looking to buying a USB hard drive and wondering if anyone knows anything about using them with Linux. Presumably I would have to set up a new block device connected to one of the USB ports. I could then mount it at somewhere like /mnt/usbhd. The ones I've looked at say that you have to write your own partition table and format the partitions yourself; how would I do this? (The details of the one I'm thinking of are here: http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-info3-info.asp?&m=y&quicklinx=2BDV.) Cheers in advance. Richard

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[Alug]A review: GoboLinux 007alpha
by MJ Ray 19 Sep '03

19 Sep '03

As some of you know, my desktop machine was running Gentoo for a while. It was an island in a see of Debian. However, a few things prompted me to move away: first, I found it a pain to write ebuilds; second, I hate having to jump through hoops to block "free for non-commercial use" software from being installed automatically; third, I found it was taking more and more time to update the system. There are things that Debian could learn, like firing up a merge tool when there's a new version of an edited config file, but apart from being source-compiled, it was similar to Debian but lacking the licence division. Gentoo's official line seems to be that their ebuilds are free software: they just happen to download things that aren't. Grrr. But this isn't a review of Gentoo. It's a review of GoboLinux. You can find their homepage at http://www.gobolinux.org/ but the big idea is to restructure the filesystem into /Depot (shared space), /Files (add-ons that don't belong to a particular program), /Programs (one subdir per program like the old /opt idea), /System (replacement for /etc, /usr and /var) and /Users (replacement for /home). Why do this? Well, they take the line that all package managers are doing it the hard way, throwing everything in together and trying to keep track of it. The depot or stow idea is basically right, but tries to accommodate throwing everything in together as well. Not everything in a package needs to be linked into a common area and there are some tricky question: do you tell a program it's going to run under /usr or /usr/stow/program? Gobo was first developed as a take on the stow idea for use in $HOME on a system that the developers didn't have root access to. Soon, an entire system was built up around the idea and has been put onto CD. Packages are basically a tarball of a subdirectory in /Programs and you install them with InstallPackage packagefile.tar.bz2, which will go off and try to satisfy declared dependencies. Building from source is normally quite easy too, using the sandboxing tool CompileProgram to build it all from a source tarball. Generally the developers have tried to avoid customising the sources too much, so if they didn't enable an option that you need, recompiling from plain sources with CompileProgram should work without trouble. Both these tools make the symlinks from /Programs/Whatever/Current/bin/* to /System/Links/Executables and so on, so the shell and other tools can find them. When you're sick of a program, you just rm -r /Programs/Whatever and run FixBrokenLinks. If you want to change the default version of a package, you change where the /Programs/Whatever/Current symlink points and rerun SymlinkProgram. It works surprisingly well. I installed from a CD image of 007alpha, which had some amusing bugs which should be squashed before 007 final ("Bond") is released. Although InstallPackage can download packages to fulfil dependencies, one that was missing from the base install was wget, which is used for the downloading. Development cycle is short enough at the moment that you can use a package from 006 ("Trevelyan") most of the time and sometimes even from 005 ("Thomas"). The developers are now getting to grips with things like that and supporting a variety of shells instead of just their favourite zsh. It's an interesting distribution and if they can solve the normal growing pains of a distribution, such as security, distributed development and trickier packages, it could be the base for a good multipurpose distribution in a year or so. Questions? Comments? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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[Alug]Re: script help request
by Jenny Hopkins 18 Sep '03

18 Sep '03

On Thursday 18 September 2003 2:32 pm, MJ Ray wrote: > > I'm looping through a list of words in a file, passed in as > > variables, and > > performing an action on it, but first I need to strip the ".ipk" > > from the > > word. > > That's a different problem to the one you asked. If the word is > stored in the variable $word, then ${word/%.ipk/} will contain what > you need in bash. If you're using another shell, let me know. That's exactly what I was after - many thanks. I later realised the filename also had to have a version number stripped from it, but the above syntax took care of that as well, with a small amount of twiddling. Jen

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[Alug]Adrian Kiddle rejoining ALUG
by Dan Beimborn 18 Sep '03

18 Sep '03

Adrian, check out rdesktop: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rdesktop/ DB

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[Alug]Trouble with foreign character input
by MJ Ray 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

I want to type characters like c-cedilla (French) and c-circumflex (Slavic) easily. I cannot get the compose key or the dead_circumflex character in xmodmap to work for anything other than combining a circumflex with a space to produce ^. Redefining keys with xmodmap, eg: keycode 54 = c C ccircumflex Ccircumflex doesn't work either (output of xmodmap -pm gives: shift Shift_L (0x32), Shift_R (0x3e) lock Caps_Lock (0x42) control Control_L (0x25), Control_R (0x6d) mod1 Alt_L (0x40) mod2 Num_Lock (0x4d) mod3 mod4 Super_L (0x73), Super_R (0x74) mod5 ISO_Level3_Shift (0x71) in case I've got a modifier wrong.) That used to work with XFree86 3.3.1, using AltGr-c to give c-circumflex. Indeed, it's the same xmodmap file and the same pc105 gb keyboard settings in the config file (but a different place), but I am now using XFree86 version 4.3.0. If someone knows what is wrong, please tell me. If I can give more helpful info, please tell me what you want. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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RE: [Alug]Adrian Kiddle rejoining ALUG
by Adrian Kiddle 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

Thanks Dan, I tried it out yesterday with some kind assistance from Simon Jude and it works very well. -----Original Message----- From: Dan Beimborn [mailto:Dan@celticmusic.com] Sent: 17 September 2003 11:15 To: Adrian Kiddle Cc: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [Alug]Adrian Kiddle rejoining ALUG Adrian, check out rdesktop: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rdesktop/ DB

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RE: [Alug]Fax Server?
by Jonathan Dye 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

nickheppleston(a)gmx.co.uk wrote: > I'm looking for suggestions for a fax server. At my last compay, we > used RightFax - a Win NT4 application - that allowed users to 'print' > to a fax spooler which would then be sent via a dial-up modem. Is > there anything similar out there in the open-source world? > > Any help would be greatly appreciated. have a look at hylafax. You can set it up so you can print to it or send files to it with various (unix) command line tools. There are also some windows drivers/plugins according to the homepage. JD _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service

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[Alug]Norwich meeting schedule.
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

I would like to have regular sunday meetings in Norwich every two months, held regularly on the last weekend of the month (i.e. roughly mid-way between the mid-monthly evening meetings). 1. Syleham is planned for every third month so every six months there would be a possible overlap. But, provided we don't choose the same date, I suggest that it is worth trying out since the extra mileage means that for some people Syleham is just that bit too far south of Norwich and for others Norwich is a little too far north compared to Syleham. 2. Use of UEA facilities with bandwidth would be great if it could be arranged regularly and reliably. If not then a reasonable venue that happens is better than a great venue that doesn't. **If there is anyone on the list who is able to book a room at UEA please contact me.** Can people who work at UEA book rooms? As has been said before, you don't need to do anything except make the booking. No organising, no responsibility to take, nothing... unless you want to do more of course :-) Any comments on these suggestions? Syd

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[Alug]isdn card
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

I've bought an ISDN pcmcia card (may be cardbus, not sure) to use with a Thinkpad T23 running mandrake 9.1. It is made by IBM and has the name "International ISDN PC card" printed on it. P/N is 09N3606 I (perhaps naively) assumed that it would be recognised as a serial port just like my pc-card analogue modem but it isn't. If I'm logged in to a console as root when I insert it then I get a message to the effect that it is an unsupported card, product info "ISDN", "CARD" followed by function: 6 (network) I've spent some time with google but am still not sure whether it is possible to use it with linux. Any and all help, advice or explanations suitable for a puzzled novice will be very welcome. TIA Syd

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[Alug]Bourne Grammar Open Day
by Ben Francis 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

Bourne Grammar School in Lincolnshire will be holding a general 'Open Day' on 2nd October after school finishes for the day (I *really* hope that date is right ). I'm in the sixth form there and hopefully will be showing off my 'GNU/Linux Lab' on the day. Any luggers are more than welcome to attend to have a peep and make suggestions for future improvements. Please don't expect anything special as I'm new to Linux myself, it's basically 6 workstations running a hard disk install of Knoppix (main reason being ease of re-installing if someone breaks something) and a Debian web server, all low spec machines that are surpless to requirements elsewhere in the school. They're wired into the school's windows NT/2000 network and the 2 meg ADSL line. The workstations currently don't *do* much either as they've only been there since the beginning of term! It's nothing like the established system I've heard about at Skegness and *still* haven't been to see ;) I'd really appreciate the support, and if you do come up to the IT rooms and I start to try and explain Linux to you *please* stop me before I embarrass myself completely! I could do with some help convincing the Director of ICT that Linux in school is a good idea if I'm going to have a lasting effect before I leave :) Confirmation of date and a more specific time to follow. Many Thanks -- Ben "tola" Francis

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[Alug]ADSL and security
by Dan Beimborn 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > From: bsamuels(a)beenthere-donethat.org.uk (Barry Samuels) > Subject: [Alug]ADSL and security > > My local telephone exchange is becoming broadband enabled at the end > of September and I am working on the assumption that I will be able to > use it (BT's site says I MAY). > > I have a firewall running (Endoshield - very easy to set up) and have > just changed it to Bastille which seems to be working (grc.com) > > Bastille recommends 'psad' which is also now installed. I had Snort > and Samhain installed but do I need these? > > Do I need Packet Mangling enabled in the Kernel which it isn't at > present? Oo, lucky you. There are a couple ways to manage it. Are you planning a separate firewall machine eg adsl -- firwall -- desktops, servers ? If so, the short version of your design goal is to turn off everything on the firewall except reply packets, then forward ports from the outside to the inside only for what you need. Example: firewall has a "real" IP of 1.1.1.1, and an "inside" IP of 10.1.1.1 You sould make your gateway 10.1.1.1 on the machines inside the firewall, and set the firewall up to NAT packets from the lan to the outside. if you have a web server that you want to host at 1.1.1.1 port 80, you would port forward 1.1.1.1 port 80 to 10.1.1.2 port 80, for example. If you are just surfing the web, reading email, and not running any servers, that's dead easy. You can even just ensure that a single desktop machine isn't running any unwanted services and run without a firewall. The best ways to check what ports you have open are the following: nmap localhost (this portscans yourself) lsof -i (this lists any open TCP/IP ports) chkconfig --list | grep :on (this shows what daemons are running on many linux distros) you can also man iptables to see the built-in firewall commands.. iptables -nvL will list any firewall rules in place packet mangling is really only necessary if you want to create some fancy custom rules to allow stateful protocols through, to do complex packet tracking, or other stuff outside the realm of a normal home firewall. If you would like more detail on any of those options, or some sample iptables rule pop up another message and I'm sure that many of us will be able to help! DB

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[Alug]Ford switches to Linux
by Nick Daniels 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

FORD is joining the ranks of governments and local authorities across the world that have switched from Microsoft software to the free open-source alternative Linux. The car giant will run its sales operations, human resources, customer relations management and the rest of its infrastructure operations on the upstart technology. Until now, defectors to Linux have largely been national governments such as China and local authorities in countries like Germany concerned that Microsoft’s Windows operating systems represented a security risk by not allowing them to inspect the source code, the systems’ software foundations, for weaknesses. * Business software applications can now run as easily on Linux as on Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.* Maybe this should be sent to Norwich Council? Regards Nick

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[Alug]RE: EDP
by Ben Norcutt 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

With reference to the story I can throw some light being a network manager in a high school. I too wondered why they said the BB connected schools weren't affected as that is where it hit first and some are still infected. Let me just take a look at my ids logs hmm at least 22 still trying to attack me. Cheers, Ben

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[Alug]Alug evening meet last thursday
by Syd Hancock 16 Sep '03

16 Sep '03

Six people met at the Forum - Graham, Mark, Jonathan, Tarquin, Syd and a new comer Robert who heard about the meet via the website. We talked a lot about wi-fi, mini-itx, driveless servers based on compact flash - and various pssible combinations of these technologies - and probably lots of other things that I've now forgotten. An enjoyable evening. Next evening meet will be on the second thursday in October - i.e. the 9th Syd

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Re: [Alug]EDP..
by Craig 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

On Monday, Sep 15, 2003, at 18:25 Europe/London, Ian Bell wrote: > On Monday 15 Sep 2003 9:45 am, Craig wrote: >> Anyone checked out the EDP front page news this morning? >> >> How.. er.. amusing. >> > Two bits particularly caught my attention. First that despite their > best > efforts they could not get rid of it, and second that their broadband > connections seemd unaffected (why??). Why they failed to get rid of it is a mystery. Seems that they don't employ active directory? I don't like it when they say 'computer expert'... just really annoying... C

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[Alug]EDP..
by Craig 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

Anyone checked out the EDP front page news this morning? How.. er.. amusing. C

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[Alug]Norfolk County Council response (fwd)
by Tarquin Mills 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

---------- Begin forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 17:56:38 +0100 Subject: Norfolk County Council response Briefing note in response to questions raised by Mr. Tarquin Mills on NCC use of free operating system software. How much do we spend on Microsoft Software? As NCC has over 6,000 PC's and a wide range of servers we would need to undertake some further research into the number of MSOffice, Project, Publisher, Visio and Windows Server licences we currently have in order to give a comprehensive answer. As there has not been any significant growth in the number of PC's and servers then the number of new licences would not be great but there would be the costs of upgrades to existing licences as well as the annual maintenance costs to consider. All our new PCs come with Windows installed and therefore it is difficult to identify the actual cost for the operating system software element. Initial discussions with PC suppliers indicate there is unlikely to be any discount in buying PCs without the Windows operating system. Quantifying these costs will therefore be difficult. NCC in conjunction with other local authorities has negotiated various commercial arrangements with suppliers in order to ensure that its procurement of software achieves value for money. Some of these arrangements may be confidential and therefore it may be difficult to provide more than summary information. Is the Authority trailing free Operating Systems? Whilst 'Linux' is an excellent operating system and would be a cost-effective choice for many organisations, there are significant reasons why Norfolk County Council is not considering its use at the moment: We have a huge range of applications, many of which are specifically designed to run on Windows desktops or servers. Many of our applications will simply not run on Linux so it's not just a question of replacing the operating system. We would have to evaluate all of our systems to identify which are and aren't compatible with Linux. Those that aren't will have to be rewritten or replaced. This will be a very time consuming and costly process and it would probably take many years to get a return on our investment. It will also divert resources away from other projects and impact on the day-to-day running of services as both users and support staff are trained and have to become familiar with the new systems. The risks associated with such a migration will be very high. Many of our applications help meet statutory obligations or support critical services. Since the change of operating system will impact on a large number of applications, it follows that many of the Authority's key services could also be affected. Although the Linux user-base is growing, there are a limited number of companies doing application development for the operating system. Moving to Linux now will reduce the number of software suppliers available when procuring new system. This would be particularly acute in the already specialised Local Government area. Gartner (an independent ICT research company) have recently (June 2003) conducted some research into the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the Windows v Linux desktop. These vary from a saving of £400 per user/year to an increase of £100 per user/year depending on the version of windows and the application software. These calculations did not include any of the migration costs which for a enterprise like NCC would be considerable nor the cost of dealing with document compatibility issues when trying to share documents with other users running Microsoft Office. Supported versions of Linux are not free and it would not be feasible for NCC to rely on the open-source community for support in the delivery of its business critical systems. NCC is continually looking at ways of reducing its costs and believes that bigger gains can be had from deploying desktop management tools more effectively and implementing new processes rather than migrating to a new operating system. NCC has recently worked with Gartner on developing its Technical Architecture Strategy and this included a review of its operating system and software standards. The outcome of this review was a recommendation that our strategic direction should be Microsoft. Ann Carey e-service directorate =============================== One of the reasons give above points to illegal activities by M$. -- Tarquin Mills RUNG (RISC OS Users, Norfolk Group)

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[Alug]Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 15 Sep '03

15 Sep '03

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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