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Laptops for Linux
by Mark Rogers 13 Sep '19

13 Sep '19

Before Christmas I bought myself a new Lenovo laptop thinking I'd get Ubuntu running on it fine, but no; graphics issues, touchpad issues, etc and it's been running Windows 10 ever since. So as not to make the same mistake again, on a budget of about £450 what is a good laptop for Linux? Happy to look at 2nd-hand or refurbs, Must haves: It's for my wife so it needs a numeric keypad (she's a bookkeeper). A side effect of that means 15"+. Needs to run virtual machines (Sage only runs on Windows...). Weight is a factor, I think certainly <2kg. It'll end up with SSD either because it came with one or I installed it (happy either way, probably prefer to install it myself). Decent RAM - I'd have thought 16GB (or at least the scope to increase it later). Can claim the VAT back so budget is higher with a VAT invoice than without. 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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Basic image manipulation
by Mark Rogers 09 Sep '19

09 Sep '19

Probably 90% of my image work is taking an image (maybe a screenshot or photo), making some very basic changes like rotate, crop, scale (usually to reduce filesize), and saving it. I seem to have a collection of tools which view only (like EoG) but load instantly on minimal resources, and sophisticated apps like GIMP which will do anything I might ever need but more slowly. What's a good app for every-day image stuff like this? I'd accept - and even quite like - a few extra bells, like highlighting/blurring/annotating, as long as it doesn't become cumbersome to use or slow to load. <rant>Bonus for something which doesn't give me a single "rotate 90deg" option; why does eveyone expect me to do three rotates instead of one?</rant> -- 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] ALUG Norwich Pub Meet Thursday 12th September
by Viperfang 09 Sep '19

09 Sep '19

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Hello Norwich Aluggers, Our monthly ALUG Norwich social meeting will be held this Thursday, 12th September 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 https://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Hardware upgrade?
by Phil Thane 05 Sep '19

05 Sep '19

Hello folks, Looking for hardware advice. My desktop PC hasn't had a hardware upgrade for about 5 years when I bought a MoBo bundle and a secondhand graphics card. It's an AMD Quad core CPU running at 3200MHz with 2G of RAM and Nvidea GE Force 8400. For the most part it's OK, I don't do video editing or gaming so it doesn't work too hard. The graphics card has always been an issue though, it refuses to run 64bit Linux distros. I've tried several in the past, Debian-based and others, and always get the same result, installs OK but on boot just gives a black screen. Annoyingly it will run 64bit distros from DVD so you think it's going to be OK after an install, but it isn't. It hasn't been too much of an issue running 32bit versions until recently but it seems they are being phased out. I'd like to try KDE Neon for example, but there is no 32bit version. So: Any recommendations for a cheapish graphics card that will work? Is it worth getting 4GB or more RAM? -- Phil

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Simple multi-line string manipulation from bash
by Mark Rogers 04 Aug '19

04 Aug '19

I have a simple bash script for locating Raspberry Pis on the network: #!/bin/bash PIMAC=B8:27:EB sudo nmap -sP 192.168.251.0/24 | grep -i " $PIMAC" -A0 -B2 Whilst the output gives me the answer I want I'd like to tidy up the formatting. The current result is: Nmap scan report for 192.168.10.20 Host is up (-0.10s latency). MAC Address: B8:27:EB:22:1C:05 (Raspberry Pi Foundation) -- Nmap scan report for 192.168.10.24 Host is up (-0.10s latency). MAC Address: B8:27:EB:22:1C:05 (Raspberry Pi Foundation) What I want out of it is something more like: MAC Address: B8:27:EB:22:1C:05 (Raspberry Pi Foundation) IP Address: 192.168.10.20 IP Address: 192.168.10.24 What is the best way to do this? Or should I just ditch the bash script for a Python script? -- 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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Re: [ALUG] Getting package name from file path, offline
by Mark Rogers 09 Jul '19

09 Jul '19

On Sun, 7 Jul 2019 at 00:43, <steve-ALUG(a)hst.me.uk> wrote: > > I don't think it helps the current situation, but I think most people doing something like this > would host a git repository to store their scripts & track changes to them. The same idea > can be used to cope with changes to configurations for files in /etc/. I'd think it would be > easier to keep a manual list of top level packages added/removed using apt-get, than to > try and work it out backwards from a file list. I've never found a good way to treat an entire OS as a repository (or just the customisations, given that they can be anywhere in the system). I do maintain a list of changed files which I use to create tar based backups (different files from the subject of this thread), as well as an init script listing all the packages I need installing, but inevitably I sometimes forget to add something to my list. (It would be nice to think that a development workflow is "I need this, so add it to my list and install it". But reality is more like "I wonder if this will work, I'll install it and try" or "Let's install several options and see which works out best". With the best will in the world, being at least able to validate the list afterwards is useful.) > [...] > "apt doesn't remember which reverse dependency caused it to install rsync, but it does log all its actions in /var/log/apt, so you might find the dependency there: > [...] > That may help a bit, but it depends on what period the log-rotated apt log files you have. /var/log/apt/history.log is useful but isn't exhaustive because of the reason you elude to. I have certainly made us of it in the past though. A bigger problem for me here though is that /var/log is excluded from my tarball backups... Regarding dependencies: I would be nice to know why I installed a package, but for now just merging 400+ file differences into one package install is a big step forward. The example I gave some way back was netpbm - I never installed it directly, it turns out that it was because I installed a screenshot package, but given that any report will also list the screenshot package I can likely work that out later. > It seems to me it would be easier to work out using apt/aptitude etc on a live system - (see the search I mentioned earlier - lots and lots of lovely links, methods etc) > It seems to me it would also be easier to keep a manual list of top-level changes. Easier, sure, but where's the fun in that! But actually: By "easier", what this means is restoring a multi-GB backup to an SD card, booting a Pi from it, running some commands to get the package list etc, copying the result back to my desktop, then repeating the entire process with the second backup, before I can diff anything. So easier, but not quicker :-) PS: Perhaps inevitably most of my reply is "yes, but that won't work because..." which obscures the genuinely useful information you gave me, a lot of it new to me. Thank you very much for that, it helps more than the above reply might suggest. -- 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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Getting package name from file path, offline
by Mark Rogers 08 Jul '19

08 Jul '19

If I have a list of filenames (with paths), what's the best way to work out what package most likely provided them? This will be offline, so I can't use dpkg -S etc. The original O/S is Raspbian if that helps. (Background: I'm trying to look at SD card backups and work out what packages were installed without booting them.) -- 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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UPS
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 06 Jul '19

06 Jul '19

Can anyone recomend a linux friendly UPS for a home server. Pref not too expensive working with apcupsd. Same sort of load as a desktop pc, monitor & printer. Currently have a smartups 700 running at 13% load. Ta Steve

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Linux Laptop
by steve-ALUG＠hst.me.uk 06 Jul '19

06 Jul '19

My laptop is vexing me muchly. I think it's time for a new one, possibly brand-spanking new. It doesn't have to have a large screen. I'm currently using only about 50GB disk space of a 500GB disk, so any disk size probably, but probably would want at least 256GB. Ram, I'm struggling with 2GB ( a lot of paging to disk). I'm guessing about 8? I have lots of browser windows open. Running some flavour of xubuntu or lubutu, or perhaps mint. No idea what sort of processor I'd need. Like some sort of optical drive & fair battery life. Extra bonus feature: I hate touchpads, so if it had a mouse "nipple" I'd be made up!! So folks.... What's good? ISTR that Thinkpads were good. Are Dells good with preinstalled ubuntu at the moment? Any recommended suppliers or hardware or any other comments? Thanks in anticipation! Steve

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firewall hardware recommendations
by mick 03 Jul '19

03 Jul '19

This is (slightly) off topic because I am after advice for hardware to run pfsense/opnsense router/firewall software (which is BSD based, not linux) but I hope you will forgive me. I have been running openvpn on a SOHO router for a while now (so that all my internet traffic goes over a VPN tunnel to one of several VMs I have dotted about). That has worked fine and I saw little in the way of speed degradation over my ADSL line (I got around 8-10 Megabits/s over the tunnel when my ADSL speed was around 11-12), But I have recently upgraded my broadband to FTTC and get around 30 Megabits/s over the WAN. However, my openvpn tunnel speed has stayed at the 8-10 mark. Not good. At first I thought that the problem lay with openvpn itself, but of course I then twigged that my router was probably the culprit because it can't hanndle the encryption load. Sure enough, testing connections to my VPN endpoints whilst running openvpn directly from my i7 desktop showed that I could get the full 30 Meg. So I now need to ditch the router and get something a bit beefier. I would also like to run another firewall between my two internal Lans - hence the interest in opnsense or pfsense (though additionally I am open to recommendations for alternative F/W software so long as it includes openvpn capability). I could simply re-purpose an old desktop (I have a couple lying around, including an old i5 with 8 gig of RAM) but that strikes ma as too much of a power hog when something much smalller would probably do. So - does anyone out there have any recommendations? The CPU must have AES-NI to help with the crypto load (that is probably what is killing my current router setup), but I don't need much in the way of storage so some small fanless device would probably do fine. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 https://baldric.net/about-trivia ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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