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Re: [ALUG] Puppy Linux
by Sam Tuke 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

I've used Puppy a few times. I'd imagine that there's a good chance that it'll run on your machine. Puppy is *very* much lighter than Xubuntu in my experience. XFCE is really not king of the featherweight class any more. Puppy has been good for hardware on past machines of mine. However, it uses all its own configuration applications with their own quirks and so it can take a little while to get used to them at first. Puppy feels like its made to be used as a desktop distro - attractive intuitive desktop with all key apps pre installed, despite its small install size and minimal requirements. If the puppy desktop feels a bit foreign, I recommend that you try an LXDE based distro, as this has replaced XFCE as the most fully featured low spec DE in my view. You might want to investigate these distros as alternatives: tinyme, crunchbang, knoppix Sam. On Sunday 14 Feb 2010 10:17:42 main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > > Hi > > > > Has anyone used Puppy Linux. Im looking for a small lightweight distro with good hardware support. > > > > Puppy Linux seems to work on very low hardware, has flash support out of the box and good wireless support. > > > > I tried Xubuntu but couldnt get it installed. I tried Fluxbuntu but wasnt impressed. I tried DSLN but it required a lot of tweaking. > > > > I just wondered if any of you Linux lovers had tried Puppy Linux. > > > > Ive got a P2 300mhz with 160mb ram. > > > > Simon

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Puppy Linux
by Simon Royal 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

Hi Has anyone used Puppy Linux. Im looking for a small lightweight distro with good hardware support. Puppy Linux seems to work on very low hardware, has flash support out of the box and good wireless support. I tried Xubuntu but couldnt get it installed. I tried Fluxbuntu but wasnt impressed. I tried DSLN but it required a lot of tweaking. I just wondered if any of you Linux lovers had tried Puppy Linux. Ive got a P2 300mhz with 160mb ram. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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Linux equivalent to .hosts
by Paul Grenyer 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

Hi All I've finally manged to get Ubuntu to connect to my work's fortinet VPN. Yay! However, remote DNS does not work and sticking the company's DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf didn't fix it. What's the Linux equivalent to the windows .hosts file? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Looking for a web mail viewing app - any ideas?
by Chris G 13 Feb '10

13 Feb '10

I'm looking for something that will allow me to view mail as web pages but I'm not after webmail, I'll try and explain.... I want to be able to incorporate sequences of mail (saved as maildir mailboxes) into a web site so that one can quickly look through an E-Mail 'conversation' via the web. As I said the E-Mail is already at in maildir mailboxes on the system where the apache server is running so the files are accessible, all I really want is a vaguely civilised interface that I can link to from other pages. For example the link might look something like:- http://home.isbd.net/email.php&Mail:boating:leBoat where email.php is the clever E-Mail reading bit and "Mail:boating:leBoat" is the path down through the mail hierarchy to the mailbox I want to show. Ideally you'd see a clickable list of E-Mails from the mailbox. Any ideas or places to look for such a thing (or bits to make it) would be most welcome. -- Chris Green

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Really silly monitor setup
by Chris G 12 Feb '10

12 Feb '10

I have just bought a new system to set up for a friend. Quite straightforward Asrock G41MH-GE motherboard with a HANNspree 23" monitor. It's been a right royal pain to get going as much because of the silly monitor and BIOS setups as because of a kernel/Intel incompatibility. The monitor initially seems pretty standard with on screen setup and buttons to move through the menus but the real pain is that if there is no signal input you can't activate the menu. It actually tells you this in the manual, I didn't believe it at first but it really is true. I had set the monitor to VGA input (it's dual VGA and HDMI) but (for various reasons, see below) I had the HDMI lead connected. Hit the 'menu' button and notheing happens because there's no input on the VGA connector, sort of Catch22 really, I had to actually connect something to send it a VGA signal to let me get the menu up to switch it to DVI input. OK, it would *probably* have managed itself if I'd left it at Auto input select but we wanted to specifiy which input was being used. Then onto the BIOS on the Asrock motherboard. The boot options only appear for a very short time, too short to actually read them so you have to look in the manual to find it's F2 to get the BIOS setup. The real oddity though is that the splash screen (with the options) *only* appears after a power on, hitting the reset button doesn't show it so then you are really in the dark. I've never come across a motherboard where hitting reset doesn't produce the same effect as power on. -- Chris Green

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Laptop Needed Urgently
by Simon Royal 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

Hi fellow Linux users. I am still im desperate need for a laptop. After only being in the linux world for a short while my Samsung laptop died. I am now without a laptop and have to grab the odd minute on my wifes Windows machine. Does anyone have an old laptop laying around doing nothing, that I could dust off and make use of? An old P1 or P2 would be fine. I would only be running Xubuntu or DSL-N. I live in Watton but can travel. Simon --- Catch me on Twitter http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal or Skype me: Simon-Royal

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PHP help wanted - arrays and foreach
by Chris G 11 Feb '10

11 Feb '10

I'm trying to understand/debug a bit of PHP, the code is as follows:- if (isset($data['date'])) { if (is_array($data['date'])) { foreach($data['date'] as $key => $date) { $date = $this->_convertDate(trim($date)); if (!$date) unset($data['date'][$key]); else $data['date'][$key] = $date; dbglog($data, "Converted data"); } } else { unset($data['date']); } } What's happening is that it always ends up with nothing in $data (what's reported by that dbglog()). I'm confused by what happens with that foreach as, as far as I can see, $data['date'] is just what I would call a list in python, it's not an array indexed by values it's just a sequential array. So, in the foreach loop $key gets the values from the $date array and $date is empty (confirmed by further dbglog()). Am I understanding this right? If I create an array:- $aa = array('abc', 'def', 'ghi', 'jkl'); Then do:- foreach $aa as $x => $y { // what do I get for $x and $y here? } Sorry this is a bit confused/muddled, I'm definitely not a PHP programmer. -- Chris Green

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IT lessons
by Richard Lewis 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8008.shtml Now *thats* what a proper IT lession should be like. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Blogs and such...
by James Elsey 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

When you come across an interesting article, or figure out how to do something with a new technology your messing around with, do you document it? This is a bit of a generalised question, just trying to find out what you guys do. I've gone for "Blogger", is there anything exciting Wordpress offers that could tempt me over? I'm using the web interface at the moment, its a bit clumsy, are there any good linux desktop applications that make it easier to type up and organise posts? If anyone has a tech blog, feel free to link me up, would be interested to see what others are doing Cheers! James Elsey

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ipv6 (with Virgin Media)
by Jon Dye 10 Feb '10

10 Feb '10

Hi, I would like to try settings up ipv6 at home in preperation for the global meltdown when we run out of ipv4 addresses. I currently have an internet connection with Virgin Media who I don't believe do native ipv6. I therefore would like to set up a tunnel to a provider. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for particular providers (brokers?), software or general tips (or specific tips relating to Virgin Media). I have several PCs (Windows and Linux) on a LAN which then goes through a router that doesn't have ipv6 capability. One of the linux machines on the LAN is a server that's on 24/7 so I was thinking of using that to do the tunnelling. I don't have a static IP on the router but it hardly ever changes (I think it's only changed when I've unplugged the router for more than a few hours). Suggestions? JD

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