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Moving To Linux
by Simon Royal 12 Nov '09

12 Nov '09

Hi. I am thinking of moving to Linux. I have been into computing for about 17 years. In 2000 I switched from Windows to Mac. For the past few years I have followed the Ubuntu development. Just lately I have lost my enthusiasm for the Mac platform and have been thinking of switching permanently to Linux. I currently have a PowerBook G4 15" and love portable computing. I was thinking of downsizing to a small netbook running Linux. I have played around with DSL, DSL-N, Vector Linux, Corel Linux and played quite a bit with Ubuntu. I dual booted it with OSX for a while and quite liked it. My only requirements are built in wifi, built in bluetooth, built in webcam and USB 2. My current Mac is only 867Mhz and maxxed at 1GB of RAM, so most of the netbooks should run a bit faster than my current machine and I would like a higher limit that 1GB of RAM. I don't want a silly size screen like 7", as this will be my everyday machine. I also don't want a cut down Linux distro as I would still need a machine capable of web, email, writing web pages, ftp uploading, editing pictures and Skype. I would also like to be able to hook up flash drives and external drives, my mp3 player and printer as well as possibly convert videos and music files between formats. Any suggestions or help would be gratefully appreciated. I might be very experienced in computing, but too much in Linux. Regards Simon Royal --- Site: http://www.simonroyal.co.uk. Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal . Skype: Simon-Royal. (PowerBook G4 867Mhz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, SuperDrive, Mac OSX 10.5)

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Edimax NS-2502 NAS Server
by Chris Walker 11 Nov '09

11 Nov '09

I've just bought one of the above boxes and have stuffed a couple of 1TB drives in it to use as a backup device for this 'ere Linux machine and it's other half - Windows XP (it's dual-boot). I've formatted the 2 drives as a RAID 1 array so it now shows 931GB available. Can I mount the thing as an attached device so that I can simply copy stuff to it, or can I only FTP to it? My problem here is that I don't know how to attach it. I've tried issuing a mount command to /mnt/Edimax but the machine complains at that and I don't know what to do next. I have added a user to the Edimax as Mandriva but I'm not sure about groups. Is there anywhere I can learn a bit more about this stuff? Any help appreciated.

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Does this page look blank for you too?
by Chris G 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

The picture/menus at the top of this page are blank in my Firefox on Ubuntu 9.04. Why? Is it Flash (but I have Flash 10.0 installed) or is it something else even less compatible? It shows up alright (if slowly) in IE. -- Chris Green

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Re - a weird network configuration, does this make any sense at all?
by Peter Alcibiades 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Yes, you are probably right, after getting a bit more on the history, the explanation is probably that the printer suppliers set up the IP addresses, the computer shop did not dare to change them, or did not know they could. They then didn't understand why they could not access them from the 192.168 address which the router was handing out to the computer. They then started to try all kinds of things to make the installation work somehow, and came on the remedy of installing multiple network cards. And it did work, its just that when you come to change out the computer its a weird configuration. Windows and the wizards are at fault, they give you the impression that you know what you are doing, but they're an obstacle to any real understanding outside that narrow world. Not that I'm any kind of expert on any of this. Partially sighted would be a fair description! Anyway, we'll swap it all out when the new stuff arrives next week so we'll see. Thanks a lot for the helpful comments. Its interesting to know that its not an unfamiliar sight, this sort of stuff. Al

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Laser colour compatible cartridges
by Chris & Barry 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Hi Just a couple of quick questions Has anyone used compatible laser printer cartridges ? and if so what is the verdict on them? The reason for this is that the Samsung colour laser cartridges for my Clx 2160 printer now cost nearly £130 for the set of 5 and compatibles cost less than half that. which is ok if they work as good as originals. Also has anyone been able to get the firestarter firewall to start automatically on system start up, as i have yet to get this to work. I am using the easypeasy version of Ubuntu Linux. ThanX

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a weird network configuration, does this make any sense at all?
by Peter Alcibiades 10 Nov '09

10 Nov '09

Its funny, I read the list faithfully, but go months without having anything to say or ask. And then come three things in a row! A friend asked for help, and when I looked at his (business) setup I found the following. One moderate spec machine, now a few years old and in need of renewal, with two network cards. One card is DHCP to the one-port router, which goes to the ADSL connexion, which is fairly lightly used. This is getting an address in the range 192.168.0.x, as usual. the other card is set up for static addressing, runs off an independent hub, and its using the range 172.16.0.1, with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. I was all set to find that there was some huge network behind this, but in fact all there is is two printers. Yes, this network has one computer and two printers and appears to be using an internal Class B address for it, if I understand the situation correctly. This was set up by a local computer store after apparently a great deal of head scratching. Well, I too am scratching my head and trying to figure out could anyone have a legitimate reason (ie not simply they failed to understand networking) for doing this. Like, if I really wanted to have the two printers on a separate net, why not just use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.128 and get two subnets that way? But in any case, why make life complicated with subnets, why would I not just assign them addresses in the 192.168.0.x range. What I usually have done in these situations (but I'm an amateur at this stuff nowadays) is put the printer on a static address of 192.168.0.100, have the router assign addresses to the computers in the low numbers, and everyone seems to print just fine. There are only two printers and one computer here, so what could the problem be? It seems that the simplest thing to do is take all this stuff out and use a 5 port router/modem, and just make the two printers 101 and 102, why would this not work? Is this missing something obvious? Cheers Al

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Face Recognition
by Mark Rogers 09 Nov '09

09 Nov '09

On the back of a bus I saw an advert for the Apple Mac talking about its ability to use face recognition when processing photos. Is there anything like this in Linux? It looks like Google had it planned for Picasa back in 2006: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/better-way-to-organize-photos.html .. but as far as I know it's not there yet? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0845 45 89 555 Registered in England (0456 0902) at 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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novatech i5 barebones, antec 900 II case
by Peter Alcibiades 08 Nov '09

08 Nov '09

A friend of mine is thinking of buying one of these. It seems pretty decently equipped for the price. My only worry is the case - it has lots of large fans. Has anyone heard one of these things in action? Is it going to be too noisy for a desktop? The nice thing is, you can turn them all down to low speed, and they should still move lots of air, being so huge and many. http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?BB-I5754G Its going to be a dual boot with winxp, and I'm assuming that on both that and Debian it will scream along. Peter

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Help with YouTube videos
by Chris Walker 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

I've just visited my son and installed Mandriva for him, the same version I have here. As he's of a different generation to me, he likes watching videos. The problem is sound. He is being prompted to pay 28 euros for a codec pack whereas when I play them (both of us are using Firefox 3.0.15), they work fine and I didn't cough up any dosh. An example is this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQcNiD0Z3MU Any ideas anybody please?

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touch screens
by Peter Alcibiades 07 Nov '09

07 Nov '09

Thanks everyone, for the comments on this. Bottom line seems to be that it will most likely work, maybe not plug and play, but with a bit of tweaking, so maybe the thing to do is buy one and make quite sure, before committing to a bunch. They are getting quite reasonably priced now - ebuyer has the Ilyama 19 inch one for under 400, which is just about affordable. Thanks for the comments about kiosks also. The security issues are not too bothersome. We will not allow outside net access at all, we'll put these machines on a separate subnet, and if there is no keyboard and it boots from read only media....? Well, famous last words! Never underestimate the ingenuity of a bored 12 year old. Peter

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