main

main@lists.alug.org.uk

10372 discussions

chromebook for linux - repost from correct address (sorry)
by mick 29 Apr '14

29 Apr '14

Hi guys I currently run mint on a couple of old Acer Aspire One ZG5 netbooks and have been considering getting a chromebook as an upgrade. The use case is travelling light, VPN back home, access to a browser and email, so nothing that will really stretch a laptop (but I /don't/ want an android tab for this). So I need light weight, long battery life, clear (but not necessarily large) screen, decent keyboard. Probably something like the 11.6" Samsung or the Acer C7xx series. But of course I don't want chromeOS so I want to install a linux distro (probably mint) but any distro with XFCE will do fine by me. Any experiences/recommendations out there? Any devices in particular that I should stay away from? Thanks in advance Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

Emulating a parallel printer in Linux
by Mark Rogers 29 Apr '14

29 Apr '14

I have a potential customer with some industrial kit that currently prints to an obsolete parallel port (Centronics) printer. They need to keep the kit but ditch the printer, sending the data to a "black box" instead that logs that data. I'd like to do this on a Linux box, any suggestions? Off the top of my head I am thinking I'll need to do a parallel to serial conversion first, then pull the raw serial data into something that can interpret however the data is being encoded for printing. But it's turned out to be quite a hard thing to Google for (although I have found some bits that might be useful). Alternatively I wonder whether the I/O pins on a Pi or Beaglebone could be used to emulate a printer (although I might be way out of my depth there...) Another approach might be lptcap[1] although that's intended for DOS (FreeDOS??) [1] http://www.qi.fcen.uba.ar/materias/iqi/paralel1/home.clear.net.nz/pages/khe… -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

4 9

How to make a terminal window stay 'on top' automatically?
by Chris Green 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

I want to start a terminal window in "Always on top" mode, is there any way to do this? I can use wmctrl to set the 'above' option but it's a command line utility itself so as this is running from a detached script I'd have to fire up yet another terminal window to run wmctrl to set the option. I need a wmctrl that can run without a terminal! -- Chris Green

2 5

Robolinux
by Chris Walker 28 Apr '14

28 Apr '14

Hello, I've just downloaded and installed a copy of Robolinux on a spare desktop machine. It says that it's a replacement for Windows XP as it will keep the Windows stuff secure without fear of a virus or malware. I paid a few dollars for the basic version as I thought I would be able to configure the XP stuff myself. But it seems they want me to pay for more of it first. But then the thought occurred to me that I might be able to do all this stuff with VirtualBox anyway. This is the link to the info about the secure bit - http://www.robolinux.org/stealth-vm-info/ There's a video on the site showing how a virus attacks the VM. What I find more than a little annoying is that it says I can do this for free and yet there's no way to get past the donation page. The question remains though. Is this special software or simply a cunning bit of configuration of a virtual machine on the part of Robolinux? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

4 4

Syntax problems
by Chris Walker 26 Apr '14

26 Apr '14

Hello, I need more help please. I'm trying to make my machine convert some .ogg files to mp3 using twolame (my distro doesn't have lame, only twolame) and I'm trying to do it like this :- for t in {01..15}*.ogg; do twolame -b 320 $t $t.mp3; done but it's failing with this message 'Usage: twolame [options] <infile> [outfile]' All the filenames are like this '02 - I Close My Eyes And Count To Ten.ogg' with perhaps 15 or so tracks per folder. In order to find my error, I tried this - for t in {01..15}*.ogg;do echo 'found tracks '$t;done and that lists all 15 tracks but despite hacking away for almost an hour, I can't persuade it to convert the files. So what *should* I be typing to make this work? -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:alug_cdw@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

4 9

GIMP and photo editing
by Bev Nicolson 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

This should be simple and usually, if I want to remove a splodge or mark from a photo I'd use Resynthesise. In this case I want to hide/remove a bit of flower but I've tried Resynthesise and cloning and neither really work. The first seems to use the flower next to it to copy its pixels rather than the soil/foliage and the second makes it look rather too obvious where 'surgery' has occurred. Anyone have an answer? Inkscape is not an answer! (In case you're tempted.) Bev.

2 1

whois, howis?
by Anthony Anson 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

Installed whois Terminal: ~ $ whois mcfmarketing3(a)gmail.com No whois server is known for this kind of object Ummm ? -- Tony http://www.girolle.co.uk/

5 7

sqlite printf not found
by mark fernandes 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

I found this forum post (appears to be a version thingie. http://www.mail-archive.com/sqlite-users@sqlite.org/msg83325.html Drat it - you've gotten me interested in using sqlite! Regards, Mark

2 1

Re: [ALUG] How to format numeric output from sqlite3?
by mark fernandes 18 Apr '14

18 Apr '14

YMMV with this as I'm not an sqlite guru... You may need to prefix the printf with a sqlite3_ . Elsewhere for mprintf example gives: char *zSQL = sqlite3_mprintf("INSERT INTO table VALUES('%q')", zText); sqlite3_exec(db, zSQL, 0, 0, 0); sqlite3_free(zSQL); HTH, Mark

1 0

SQL question for the SQL gurus out there
by Chris Green 17 Apr '14

17 Apr '14

I think there should be a way to do this but at the moment I can't see how, I always find SQL difficult to fathom though. I have a table with dates, times and temperatures in it. I want to select the maximum temperature for each year, how do I do that? The table has columns as follows:- ID Date Time Indoor Temperature Outdoor Temperature What I want to get out of it is something like:- 2014 21.23 2013 30.45 2012 25.31 It's a sqlite3 database so there's no procedural language easily available. I guess I could write a Python script to do what I want, that might be the easiest way. -- Chris Green

3 7

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

main