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Mandriva on Toshiba laptop
by Dave Briggs 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

Hi chaps I am playing around with different distros at the moment, and having got Ubuntu working on my Toshiba laptop, I soon got bored and had a go with Mandriva. I'm finding that even more boring, though, because the b*st*rd thing won't work. It either gets as far as the KDE desktop loading up, plays a little tune, then keeps playing the last note of that tune on, and on, and on... Eventually I get bored, and switch the thing off. Then, when I startup again, it only gets as far as the KDE loading screen, it says something like "restoring session" and *then* hangs. Any ideas on what might be wrong, and what I might be able to do to get things going again? Assume I know nothing, because I don't! Cheers Dave

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Re: [ALUG] Talks offered Ted Haegar from Novell and Jono Bacon
by MJ Ray 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

I wrote about the 20th April meeting offer: > Either way, I'll publicise it if I have final details by Tue 4th. Are there confirmed details for this talks meeting yet and do you need any help with it? Best wishes, -- MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask

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Newbie Distros
by Simon Royal 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

Hi I am looking at different distros. I need high hardware compatibility, ease of use for newbies plus reasonable speed out of dated hardware. I have yet to find a laptop, but have been looking at anything from Pentium 2 300Mhz upwards. Ubuntu I have tinkered with Ubuntu 5.10 live cd on a G3 iBook 500Mhz with 386MB ram and an AMD 1.3Ghz desktop with 768MB RAM and both were ok speed wise. I know an install would speed things up anyway. OpenSUSE I have heard good things about OpenSUSE but I don't know how power hungry it is. Vector Linux Finally I was looking at Vector Linux as it is aimed to run comfortably with only 32MB RAM and under a 1gig install space, but I don't know anyone who has used it. If you could help point in the right direction for a low specced distro that runs on a laptop and is usuable on a daily basis without having to delve to much into the Linux underbelly just to get things going. Kind Regards Simon Royal ---- www.simonroyal.co.uk The box said requires Windows 2000 or better, so I bought an Apple Mac

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Cobalt RAQ4
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

I have a Cobalt RAQ4 sat in front of me, which I either need to reinstall with its native OS or stick something else on it. I don;t have any particular purpose in mind for it, although as it has two network ports I'm thinking of using it as a gateway/firewall. Suggestions for an OS/distro? -- Mark Rogers More Solutions Ltd :: 0845 45 89 555

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RE: [ALUG] Re: [Fsfe-uk] Date Stamp
by John Seago 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

There still remains, for me at least the puzzle that unless I set Kmail to display the FULL headers of the digest messages from FSFE, the 'Long Headers' date everything from FSFE UK Thu Jan 1 00:59:59 1970. I have however carried out an experiment 'Standard Headers', 'Brief Headers' and 'Fancy Headers' don't display the date on the email, (the digest version), at all. Having changed the headers there seems to be no alteration to the date displayed in the folder. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Zero-width non-breaking space/Unicode byte-order mark
by John atkinson 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

I have a new computer loaded with SuSe Linux 10.When I attempt to invoke a program I have successfully used in the past for many years I get the response "cannot execute binary file". The file, (written for me years ago) forming the program has "execute" permission. I understand this means that the operating system realises this is a program, but not a standard binary program file containing machine instructions. I was told the operating system looks for an interpreter program to run it. The interpreter, not containing the expected character sequence, uses the default system interpreter and looks at the first line of the file, finds that it contains non-printable byte values and so condemns it as a binary file. My program file, as written, contains only printable characters and starts with the identifying #! /bin/sh It turns out that to the first character in the file there has been added a "Unicode byte-order mark" otherwise known, I am told, as a "zero-width non-breaking space". This by its nature is not a printable character nor a visible one. It is one, however, devilishly difficult to get rid of on a permanent basis. Following directions I tried, starting with the command "locale". The output indeed ended with "UTF8", the initial cause, I understand, of all the trouble. Again following directions I typed "LANG=en_GB" followed by "locale" again and then, using "vi" edited the file. The hated rogue character showed as three components in blue. When, using "x", I got rid of them, I thought I was on top of the problem, but the final stage which I will quote in full defeated me. This is 'Finally, edit the file $HOME /.bash_profile and insert "LANG=en_GB" or "LC_ALL=en_GB" as appropriate to prevent the problem coming back'. The computer crashed. Moreover, I have not succeeded in locating the file. I suspect I have gone about it in the wrong way. I would be grateful for the exact key strokes required to get the file into "vi". It seems strange to me that Linux, without my knowledge or my permission should insert a zero-width non-breaking space that not only prevents a program, very important to me (and, no doubt others), from working, but makes it difficult to handle the file because the first byte is not a printable character. Please forgive my abysmal standard of computer literacy. In mitigation I would point out that I have been in touch with several gurus with, it seems, a total absence of familiarity with the zero-width non-breaking space alias the Unicode byte-order mark. John Atkinson (Ancient John -- and I do not mind being called that because I now am ancient)

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HTML
by John Seago 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

It would appear, despite my signature lines that I have been sending HTML email, I have two installations of Slackware 10.2 and the HTML Toolbar has been turned on on one installation. and that when using that installation I have been sending HTML email's. I did think that it may have been turned on by my wife, however she has only used the browser to look up the likely implications for her chickens should Avian Flu break out. I can only apologise to any to whom this has caused inconvenience. -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Date Stamp
by John Seago 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

On Thursday 06 Apr 2006 12:01,MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> wrote: > Is this the only list with this effect for you? Yes. > Has anyone else on fsfe-uk noticed it? I have raised it once or twice with FSFE, I have no knowledge that others have the same problem, or indeed if it is considered to be a problem. > Can ALUG help us at all? -- John Seago GNU/Linux Registered User No. #219566 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

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Re: [Fsfe-uk] Date Stamp
by MJ Ray 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

John Seago <johnseago(a)two-ravens.org.uk> > I find that once again FSFE-UK has reverted to not timestamping emails > to me at all, and they are again arriving at my machine, allegedly, on > Thu Jan 1 00:59:59 1970 Is this the only list with this effect for you? Has anyone else on fsfe-uk noticed it? Can ALUG help us at all? Hoping, -- MJR/slef Laux nur mia opinio: vidu http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Bv sekvu http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct

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RE: [ALUG] Ubuntu/Win2K Dual Boot
by Keith Watson 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

> From: MJ Ray Sent: 03 April 2006 07:27 > > Simon Royal <s.royal(a)totalise.co.uk> > > I have two hard drives in it at present, one of which is a slave and I > > use to store my stuff on. If I was to replace it as it is only a > > 540MB drive with another bigger drive, say 2-5GB would this be enough > > to run Ubuntu on? > > Surprisingly, Ubuntu recommend 2GB of disk space as a minimum > for their standard desktop install. > > > Also how would this be affect her Windows installation on her primary > > drive? > > Not at all, although you'll need another way to boot. > > > Would installing Ubuntu interfere with booting up as I obviously want > > Windows to be the default boot method and have a boot menu that I > > could select Ubuntu on when I wanted to use it. > > I would hope that Ubuntu's boot manager (Grub, with any luck) > can do this simply, but I've not had Windows installed for > 11 years now. I've done this several times over the past couple of months. The Ubuntu install will allow you to specify where and what you want your partitions to be and will pick up the fact that you already have other OSs installed (i.e. windows) and set up grub to run dual-boot. It will set up Linux to be the default but it's a simple matter to edit the grub menu config "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst" and tweak it to how you want (hint: run "sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.old" first, then you can roll back if you get something wrong - been there, done that, etc - which is where the Ubuntu Live CD is a godsend!!). As for partition sizes; you'll need a swap partition of somewhere between 256 and 512 meg depending on your memory size (I find the size Ubuntu suggests usually works fine) and although a 2Gb partition is good enough for the basic install, if you want to install any significant extra packages or all the multimedia goodies (see http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/03/12/209257 or, imo even better, http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/) then you'll probably want 4Gb. If you have spare disk capacity then 5Gb should keep you happy for some time :o). Regards, Keith ____________ A bend in the road is not the end of the road... - unless you fail to make the turn.

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