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Wisdom (or otherwise) of using software RAID5 across 4 USB drives
by Mark Rogers 30 Nov '12

30 Nov '12

I have a USB caddy that takes 4 drives, on USB3. I have four 2TB SATA disks in it and have just set up a RAID5 array across the four disks, formatted to ext4. cat /proc/mdstat currently reports: md1 : active raid5 sdi1[4] sdh1[2] sdg1[1] sdf1[0] 5860145664 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/3] [UUU_] [>....................] recovery = 1.2% (24142492/1953381888) finish=1134.2min speed=28348K/sec That's about 20hrs to complete the build, running at max speed (/proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max is 500000 so I'm not hitting the upper limit there). To be honest, rebuilding an array comprising 4x2TB disks over USB in 20hrs seems pretty good to me, so I'm not overly concerned. But should I be? Is running this configuration likely to cause me grief in future? The purpose of the array is to store backups, so read/write speed is relatively unimportant. At this point the array is empty so wiping and starting again isn't a big deal if someone has better ideas. (As an aside, does the above look right for USB3 speeds? It's my first experience of USB3 and I'm using a cheap PCI-E USB3 card so I have no idea how well it's performing.) Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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XtreemFS
by Mark Rogers 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

Anyone here have any experience of Xtreemfs? http://www.xtreemfs.org/ Distributed replicated file system for Linux (and Mac/Win). Looks like an interesting package to experiment with but as it's not in my distro repositories (Ubuntu) I figured it can't be all that well established yet? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER`

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"Signal out of range" when booting from Ubuntu 12.10 LiveCD
by Mark Rogers 29 Nov '12

29 Nov '12

I'm trying to reinstall an old server with Ubuntu 12.10 (it was previously on 12.04 I think, but had accumulated a lot of rubbish and a fresh install was the way to go). When I boot the LiveCD, at the point that (I believe) lightdm starts, I get "Signal out of range" on my monitor and can't get any further. I have tried various boot options (nomodeset, fb=false) without luck. I've also tried creating an xorg.conf file manually from the terminal and restarting lightdm - that has got me closer but I don't know my way around xorg.conf well enough to get this to work. (I copied xorg.conf.fallback to xorg.conf and added VertRefresh and HorizSync parameters, which got me a low resolution (800x600?) display but the mouse was all over the place and I managed to break it in the end so had to (hard) reset, losing my changes). What is the "correct" way to fix this? Is there a way to tell Xorg to dump its current settings to an xorg.conf file so that I can tweak it? What's a good "default" xorg.conf file that should work? Or a minimal one that might get me 1280x1024@75Hz (fglrx as the driver from memory). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Reassembling a RAID array
by Mark Rogers 28 Nov '12

28 Nov '12

I have four drives containing mdadm RAID partitions: /dev/sda1 through /dev/sdd1 I believe they were previously set up as RAID5, although it might have been two separate RAID1 arrays or one RAID10 array. How do I work out what they were, which drive is which, and configure the array on a new PC to access the data? (Obviously I need to do that without losing the data on them!) Mark Rogers -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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Why am I seeing "Waiting for Network Configuration" when I have configured a static address?
by Chris Green 24 Nov '12

24 Nov '12

I used to use another (small) machine as my LAN DHCP/DNS server (using dnsmasq) but that machine's other uses disappeared so I decided to move the dnsmasq configuration to my desktop machine. My desktop machine is on all the time because it's also a web server and I access it to read my E-Mail when I'm away from home. So, I have configured my desktop to have a static IP on the LAN with /etc/network/interfaces containing:- auto lo iface lo inet loopback iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.1.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.1.1 dns-domain zbmc.eu dns-search zbmc.eu dns-nameservers 127.0.0.1 195.74.113.58 194.72.0.114 auto eth0 That 127.0.0.1 in the dns-nameservers is (I believe) correct, it makes dnsmasq act as a local caching nameserver. Everything seems to work OK once booted but I'm getting a message on the xubuntu boot screen saying "Waiting for network configuration", that seems odd to me as it indicates that Network Manager is waiting for a DHCP response from somewhere and it doesn't need it. I have removed the "dns=dnsmasq" line from NetworkManager.conf so that Network Manager isn't trying to run its own copy of dnsmasq. -- Chris Green

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Console editor with 'linebreak'
by James Freer 21 Nov '12

21 Nov '12

Who know's the editors! Is there an editor apart from Emacs and Vim that does 'softwrap' or 'linebreak' (as vim calls it). I want to use a console editor for editing text words (as opposed to programmer's code). Despite hundreds available it seems that emacs and vim are the only two that offer this. My preference would be for wordstar bindings (yes i'm that old! and i still think they are the most efficient keybindings like a lot of writers). Joe does all i want other than coping with long lines. [I seem to recall a discussion about editors a few years ago and someone on here uses Joe]. Point is i want to save in long line form but view and edit in wrapped form - just like one does in gedit or leafpad. Using nano/pico ^W^J justifies the entire file and saves it in that form... like Joe's ^B - which isn't what i want. I don't really want to have to learn either vim or emacs as they are too complex for my more basic uses but it seems i don't have much choice. So who's experimented and can advise on the many editors available. Nano has an option --softwrap or $ - it truncates but doesn't wrap like vim's linebreak. It seems surprising that no one's done a console editor with CUA bindings. thanks james

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Re: [ALUG] Uninstalling Ubuntu and installing another Linux OS
by Bev Nicolson 17 Nov '12

17 Nov '12

By the way, I've just had a shufti through Synaptic and xorg is still included, so, given that, would configuring the graphics card be a sensible option? (Choosing i915 as the driver, since it is.) The instructions I've got are for Breezy Badger so I guess some things have changed a bit since then. Bev.

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"singing" generation software?
by Ted.Harding＠wlandres.net 17 Nov '12

17 Nov '12

Greetings all! Some of you probably know the versatile specch-generation program "espeak", which from textual input can generate audio speech, with variations in pitch and duration (and with an impressive choice of dialect accents too ... ). Whaty I'm looking for is a program which can generate a audio song along similar lines, i.e. from suitable input the output will sound like someone singing the words (tune, tempo, voice, timbre, etc., under the control of the user's input). Any suggestions? (For Linux, of course). Motivation: Following a very humorous conversation, in the polling booth on Thursday, with the six electoral registrars at the desks, where I was the only other person present, and we discussed how to liven up the proceedings, we concluded that we needed music, song, and dance. So I would like to create a song, which sets to the tune of "We're all going on a Summer holiday", the words "We're all voting for our Police and Crime Commissioner ..... ". With thanks, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)wlandres.net> Date: 17-Nov-2012 Time: 19:05:34 This message was sent by XFMail -------------------------------------------------

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Determining what memory I have
by Mark Rogers 17 Nov '12

17 Nov '12

Is it possible from a Linux command line to find out what memory I have? By which I mean how many slots I have, how many are filled, and what by? I've used tools like Crucial's memory scanner (on Windows) in the past to determine what is in a system and from there to decide what best to upgrade with, and I'm looking to do something similar on Linux. The fact that Crucial can do it suggests the info is there somewhere. If not at the commandline, then GUI-based would suffice for now (but would limit usefulness). Initially I'm looking for something that works on Ubuntu 12.10 (64-bit). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : The Mulberry Tree
by samwise 16 Nov '12

16 Nov '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back on Monday, 19th November, at 20:00: The Mulberry Tree 5 Woodbridge Road IPSWICH IP4 2EA Tel: 01473 225776 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP4+2EA WWW: https://www.facebook.com/MULBERRYHOSPITALITY The Mulberry Tree, previously known as The Milestone Beer House, is a grade 2 listed building in the centre of Ipswich. It is located at the intersection between Woodbridge Road and the A1156, across the road from the old Odeon cinema and not far from the Regent Theatre. It re-opened on Thursday March 29th 2012 after a major refurbishment, under its original name of The Mulberry House and has already begun to regain a good reputation for its selection of beers and ales. It has a sizeable car park to the rear of the building. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. No idea what we'll be discussing this month. Will be hard to top last month's gathering with our surprise Norwich brethren! We can almost certainly ask the question about whether we want an Ipswich ALUG Christmas Meal, I guess. :) If anyone's going to stop by later, do drop me a message so I know to stick around if it's quiet. Cheers, Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Uninstalling Ubuntu and installing another Linux OS
by Bev Nicolson 15 Nov '12

15 Nov '12

I think the time has come. Yesterday 11.10 'uninstalled' Libre Office off its own bat. Nul points and a bit worrying. So, without wishing to turn this thread into a discussion over which distro to go for, and without installing it over Ubuntu which I'd rather not do, how do I swap? I've used Ubuntu for ages now so I've no idea who to go about this. Bev.

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Re: [ALUG] Uninstalling Ubuntu and installing another Linux OS
by Bev Nicolson 14 Nov '12

14 Nov '12

On 14 November 2012 09:19, Bev Nicolson <lumos60(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On 13/11/12 20:50, Bev Nicolson wrote: >>> >>> What I decided to do was upgrade to 12.04 LTS following Steve's >>> advice. I thought for a while that it had gone horribly wrong (screen >>> went awol) but lots of switching off and on again have calmed and >>> sorted it. Hoping it stays that way... >> >> >> Hope it goes OK :-) >> >> >>> Suspect if I upgrade in 5 years (or less?) I will definitely need a >>> new monitor. (New new not just new to me.) >>> >> I would think people are practically giving away traditional-style monitors >> as everyone wants flat screen, that said, I love flat screen! You might >> find someone giving one away on Freegle, or Freecycle. >> >> Good luck! :-) >> Steve My current one, a fine (imo) LCD monitor, was £20. (Hansol 700Fs - we have a great second hand computer here!) Thing is, I worry that 5 years down the line, the latest Ubuntu won't recognise it. Bev.

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Looking for a javascript guru
by Steve Engledow 12 Nov '12

12 Nov '12

Hi all, Sorry for the advertising tone of this post but ALUG is too good a source of technically adept people to not ask... My company (http://proxama.com) are looking for a javascript guru. We've got a /lot/ of javascript both front- and back-end. Node.js at the back and plenty of ember, jQuery etc on the front. If you are one or know of one, please get in touch! I'm finding it very hard to get agencies to understand what I mean as they keep sending me CVs for 10-a-penny web developers when what I'm really looking for is A PROGRAMMER :) Cheers, Steve

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I want Gnome back
by Bev Nicolson 12 Nov '12

12 Nov '12

About this time last year, nev was aghast at Unity being foisted on him because of his upgrade to 11.10. I'm on 11.10 having just done the same thing and Unity is still utterly hideous but I seem to have a problem. Apart from not being able to choose what I get when I log in, Gnome fallback session appears to have been deleted (though googling still refers to it) so whenever I try to find it in Ubuntu's software manager, I can't. Help. Bev.

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Ubuntu 12.04 - toolbar and evolution two-in-one question
by Jenny Hopkins 08 Nov '12

08 Nov '12

Hi ALUG, I'm running ubuntu 12.04 in a virtualbox, with gnome-shell, to help a client who has just upgraded and am stuck on a few things: Evolution mail client (re-installed after uphgrade removed it): I'm trying to see if font size in the evolution composer window can be increased - the option to alter font-size is greyed out unless html mail is selected. Have googled to no avail. Also - the toolbar at the top seems to be able to have things added, eg a terminal launcher icon, by way of dragging a launcher icon up there, but I can't find a way of then removing them or the default icons that ubuntu supplies. It used to be a simple RH click and 'remove' but now is it all done by removing and installing app-indicator thingies? Thanks, Jenny

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How do people arrange code management with git for bash, python, etc.?
by Chris Green 08 Nov '12

08 Nov '12

I've been using git for a while to manage various bits of code, it's a mixture of C/C++, Python, Bash and other bits and pieces. For the C/C++ (and PHP now I think of it) it's fairly straightforward as the code is in a 'programming' sub-directory of my home directory and I just do a 'git init' in the root directory of the code hierarchy and off you go. Do a build, install, test and (if happy) commit the code to git. However it gets decidedly messier for scripts where there isn't any intermediate step between writing the code and testing it or making it 'live'. Until now I had simply done a 'git init' in ~/bin and committed the code after testing. This is OK[ish] for bash scripts and some simple Python stuff but doesn't really work too well for more complex Python stuff with imported code and/or which is run by cron or other indirect means. So, what do others here do with this sort of stuff? Do you move all the 'source' (i.e. not yet installed) code off to the 'programming' sub-directory and edit it there plus add some sort of installation script which copies all the bits to the right places for testing, or what? .... or am I making life too complicated for myself? :-) -- Chris Green

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Is there something like "arp-scan -l" which returns names rather than IP addresses?
by Chris Green 06 Nov '12

06 Nov '12

I know I *could* write a script to call "arp-scan -l" and process the output to show me the names of hosts on my LAN but it feels as if there should be an easier way. So, is there a command that scans for and lists hosts by *name* on a LAN? -- Chris Green

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Plugins
by Michael Goddard 05 Nov '12

05 Nov '12

Hi: Using Centos 6.3 I'm having difficulty in getting its movie player - Totem - to play DVDs. I've installed all Gnome plugins from base, good, bad and ugly etc, but still get error msg that I "need plugin for DVD source". Any pointers in the correct direction would be welcome - tia. Michael

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[ALUG Announce] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 8th November
by Viperfang 05 Nov '12

05 Nov '12

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 8th November at The Coach and Horses (82 Thorpe Road, Norwich, NR1 1BA). The meeting officially starts at 8pm, although some people may arrive earlier. More information on those people can be found on the list and the IRC channel. If you are unsure if you will recognise us then make yourself and your intent to attend known by either posting on list or visiting us on IRC so we can look out for you rather than hiding in the corner. Optionally you could ask at the bar if they know where the geeky computer weirdos are and they'll point you in the right direction (seriously!). Another possibility is look for heaps of electronics on a table that may possibly look like movie props that would used for detonating explosives. Feel free to bring electronics/laptops/gadgets to the meet, you will by no means be alone. Ben Bewick aka Viperfang NB: This mail is automated, please refer to the usual sources for more information. ALUG Contact Details: Website : http://www.alug.org.uk/ IRC : #alug on irc.alug.org.uk List : http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo Twitter : http://twitter.com/anglianlug Identica: TBA Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2381613902 ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Understanding ping delays
by Mark Rogers 03 Nov '12

03 Nov '12

Consider: ... 64 bytes from 192.168.251.7: icmp_req=458 ttl=64 time=0.189 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.251.7: icmp_req=459 ttl=64 time=0.123 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.251.7: icmp_req=460 ttl=64 time=0.120 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.251.7: icmp_req=461 ttl=64 time=0.126 ms ... The blank line indicates where there was a delay of a couple of seconds between ping responses. However there were no missed responses (icmp_req goes from 459 to 460) and the time is shown as only 0.120ms. So why was there a delay of a couple of seconds at this point? Mark -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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bookmark editors
by mick 02 Nov '12

02 Nov '12

Advice please chaps. I have a really large bookmark collection and I really need to sort it out but have been putting it off because I can't find a decent editor. What I am looking for is something akin to a GUI filemanager which allows me to have two panes open so that I can cut and paste beween them. I'm sure that a very early version of FF used to have this capability, but maybe my memory is faulty. The mozilla addons site doesn't seem to have anything useful. Any suggestions anyone? Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] bookmark editors
by mick 01 Nov '12

01 Nov '12

On Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:54:57 +0000 Ricky Bruce <rickybruce(a)gmail.com> allegedly wrote: > > In Opera using the bookmark side panel(F4 and hit the star icon), > along with the 'manage bookmark' option in the bookmark tool bar > gives you two views of your bookmarks, these can be cut and paste > between them and into different folders to allow easyish > reorganisation. It works well enough for my needs > > Opera also offers the option to import bookmarks in from other > browsers. Ricky Thanks for this. It's close, but not quite what I had in mind, and having tried it, it looks to be /very/ time consuming. The problem here is that the left hand pane is linked to the right. So when I click on the left to open a folder, the right pane shpws the contents of that folder and will not show another open folder. This makes comparisons difficult. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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IMAP (GMail) "cache"
by Mark Rogers 01 Nov '12

01 Nov '12

I have several GMail accounts. Currently I run Thunderbird (IMAP) on my (Ubuntu 12.10) desktop to make sure I have a copy of all of them locally (for local searching, archiving, etc), as well as accessing the IMAP accounts from other devices (phones etc) and via the Gmail web interface. The problem I have is that TB seems to have "issues" that cause it to repeatedly download the same email. This means that on a few occasions recently I have exceeded the Gmail bandwidth allowances (I didn't even know they existed!), and my ADSL usage is sky high - something around 1-2GB per day is being used to synchronise a mailbox that only has about 4GB in it. Therefore I'd like to look at other ways to achieve the same goal. One thought is to use "something else" to create a local copy, which then makes it available to Thunderbird via IMAP (so if TB wants to download the same email hundreds of times at least it's just traffic on localhost). Albeit I'd end up with two copies of the mailstore but that's not a huge issue. So I'm after suggestions as to what the "something else" should be. It's important to me that delays are kept to a minimum, ie incoming email should appear pretty quickly through the cache. That shouldn't be a problem as long as IDLE is supported at each point. Alternatively, suggestions as to "better" methods would be fine too! (I don't really want to change mail client if I can avoid it, old habits and all that.) As an aside, I also have a Windows desktop, which also has TB installed, monitoring some of the same accounts but without having the same bandwidth problem. But even so it would make sense that the Windows TB should also be able to collect from the IMAP store on my Linux desktop and thus save more bandwidth. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER

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how to decode this?
by Peter Alcibiades 01 Nov '12

01 Nov '12

I have an email with an attachment which will not open in OO. When the email is opened in a text editor I get this after the body of the message. Is there any way to open and read this? Trying to open the attachment in OO just gives an error. Al ------=_NextPart_001_0041_01CC115D.F6E27A10-- ------=_NextPart_000_0040_01CC115D.F6E27A10 Content-Type: application/msword; name="xxxx.doc" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="xxxx.doc" 0M8R4KGxGuEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPgADAP7/CQAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAPgAAAAAAAAAA EAAAQAAAAAEAAAD+////AAAAAD0AAAD///////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////????//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////s pcEAA4AJBAAA8BK/AAAAAAAAEAAAAAAACAAAFg0AAA4AYmpiarRWtFYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAJBBYANSoAANY8AQDWPAEAFgUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD//w8AAAAA AAAAAAD//w8AAAAAAAAAAAD//w8AAAAAAAAAAAAA????AAAAALcAAAAAAIAFAAAAAAAAgAUAAMMS AAAAAAAAwxIAAAAAAADDEgAAAAAAAMMSAAAAAAAAwxIAABQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP////8AAAAA1xIA AAAAAADXEgAAAAAAANcSAAAAAAAA1xIAAAwAAADjEgAAbAAAANcSAAAAAAAAYBgAAHQBAABPEwAA AAAAAE8TAAAAAAAATxMAAAAAAABPEwAAAAAAAE8TAAAAAAAAKhQAAAAAAAAqFAAAAAAAACoUAAAA

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Linux Repositories
by Michael Goddard 31 Oct '12

31 Oct '12

New to Linux, my distro while excellent for my requirements is somewhat thin on choice of apps to d/l. Are there any non-commercial Linux repositories where such apps are available? Tia.

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