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Thinkpads
by Syd Hancock 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Just a note to agree with the recommendation for the T23 Thinkpad. Got one from a seller in Ipswich via ebay a couple of years ago and it still serves me very well - very good value for money. Just about everything works in linux including sound and ethernet - out of the box on a stock mandriva 2006 install and no doubt just as easy on other distros. All those handy function keys for volume, screen brightness, switching to external monitor, suspend to ram etc all work although 'hibernate' to disk using acpi doesn't work for me yet. I use a wireless card in the card-bus slot and it switches cleanly and automatically from ethernet to wireless and back again. Using the GUI tools to setup ethernet and wireless networking was very simple - has to be as I'm no techie. Not a 'desktop-replacement' and no 3D graphics in the X driver but in general it does everything that you need from a laptop on a day-to-day basis. Handles KDE, OpenOffice.org, Firefox etc with no problems. I added a DVD-ROM/CD-writer and K3b works fine. I take it to school sometimes and connect to the overhead projector and sound system to play music DVDs to the kids as a special treat - helps me to enjoy work more too :-) Syd

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php-xml, mandriva etc - long
by Syd Hancock 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Hi Dave Briggs Apologies for not threading - just read the posts on the archive. First - hopefully you are using MDV2006 and not an earlier version and especially not one of the magazine cover disks that appear from time to time. Because of the lead-in time before publication they are always outdated and in some cases have had various packages added and removed randomly. If you cannot d/l a recent version then email me. 1. Internet connectivity on your linux box - you really do need this for any distro in order to install updates as well as new packages. Can you use ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) on the windows computer and connect your mandriva box to it with ethernet? I've done this in the past with no problem - that was pre-XP though so things may have changed e.g. not sure if XP-home has ICS - it seems to lack most things that are useful. 2. easyurpmi - hopefully you have googled for this by now but if not, here is a brief intro. urpmi is the mandriva command-line utility for installing rpm packages. It has the major advantage of handling dependencies unlike classic 'rpm' as well as several others. The Software Installer in MCC (Mandriva Control Center) is a GUI front-end to this and other utilities - generally slower than command-line (of course) but has many useful sorting functions, information about all files and file-locations to be installed etc etc. easyurpmi is a website (group of mirrored websites) that make setting-up the sources for apps very easy. You just put in your system details (processor, distro version, repository types required etc) and then copy/paste the output into a root command line terminal. Try 'man urpmi' for more info. http://easyurpmi.zarb.org is the place to go. You need as a basic minimum update-source, main, contrib, plf-free and plf-nonfree. You can then disable the CD/DVD installation media (in MCC) if you wish as main contains more packages than fit onto the DVD/CDs. php-xml may be an example of this. I would suggest installins update-source first and installing all the updates. Even on dial-up it can be done overnight. plf will let you install stuff that enables encrypted-dvd reading and many other non-free multi-media formats that make the jolly old inter-web such a joy to use (heh...). plf are now hosting repositories for ubuntu as well. 3. php-xml is on the devel (aka 'community') mirrors in 'main' and may well be on the 'official' branch of the main tree. In fact many people, myself included, use the devel (aka 'community' in MDV2006 although not in earlier versions) repositories instead of the so-called 'official' sources (hopelessly confusing naming conventions BTW). Despite its name, devel contains the most recent and (generally) stable versions. If you do this then you do not need a seaparate 'update-source' and you will need rregularly to update all sources and install updates from the command line as root: urpmi.update -a; urpmi --auto-select 4. Then there is 'cooker' which is the stuff actually in the process of being developed - not for general use. It's the same structure that debian uses of course. 5. There are many other repositories of rpms built for mandriva although reports of how stable they are vary widely. 'Seer of Souls' (yeah, really) has a good reputation at present although I don't use it myself but does offer things like KDE3.5 etc that mandriva has not yet incorporated. google will find it for you if you want to give it a whirl - and selecting/deselecting repository sources in MCC is very quick and easy. 6. Look in the boot section of MCC - you should be able to set the options to login your user and start X from there if they were reset when you changed the graphics driver. Hope this helps. Feel free to email me off-list if you prefer. Syd

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Re: ThinkPad & Wireless
by Robert Grant (DEV) 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

>> from work... if only shockwave and some decent qualitative >> research software were available for linux things would be >> perfect. > >Not sure what you mean by "qualitative research software" >(let alone "decent") -- if you were more explicit we might >make some good suggestions! I've been doing quantitative >research with Linux for the last 23 years, and by now there's >a lot of good stuff about. But "qualitative" -- what do you >need for this? > 'Qualitative' analysis software is designed for research based on sources such as interviews, observational notes or transcribed media. The core functionality is to allow some kind of 'coding' of text files. For example, when reading through my interviews with Tanzanian businessmen I mark any section of text that deals with 'source of start-up capital'. Then whenever I want the software will show me on a single page all the passages relating to this concept. Obviously, there are lots of other such concepts like 'gaining a good reputation', 'doing business with kin' and so on. The software allows me to organise these in various ways, do boolean searches for passages relating to combinations of concepts, incorporate quantitative data on respondents and much else besides. People used to use boxes of index cards to do this kind of work. I use QSR's package Nvivo, which is not available for Linux. Neither, I believe are the other half-dozen widely used programs. I apologise however, that this remark was rather lazy in that I have not investigated this very thoroughly yet. I was carried away at both the fact that I've got a few things working well in Kubuntu recently (remember I am a strugluger) and that for once perhaps I could offer something relevant here (the 3Com Xjack card info). Best wishes, Rob

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php-xml
by Dave Briggs 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Hi guys Managed to get Mandriva to work in the end - set the graphics driver to be a generic ATI one and it seems to work - though I have to log in and load KDE by hand now. I want to install MediaWiki to have a play with it, and have created the database, put everything in place but the installation php script is moaning that I don't have the php-xml package installed. A quick google has proved pretty inconclusive, and there is no sign of this on Rpmdrake. Any clues on where I can get this from? One complication is that I don't have internet access on this machine, so I have to download it on my Windows box and transfer it across. Cheers Dave

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include xchat, irssi and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Re: ThinkPad & Wireless (Rob Grant)
by R.Grant＠uea.ac.uk 09 Apr '06

09 Apr '06

[Simon Royal wrote] > Hi > > I have decided to buy a cheap PC laptop and run Linux on it. I was > going to buy a Mac laptop - being a Mac fan, but I can get a second > hand PC laptop with higher specs cheaper than a Mac one. And as it is > going to run Linux it doesn't matter. > > I have been told IBM Thinkpads are good for Linux can anyone recommend > anything in particular? > > Also I want to buy a wireless PCMCIA card that will work on a laptop > and under Linux, any suggestions? I agree that Thinkpads are an excellent choice, both in general and for Linux in particular. For wireless, some web research told me that any card with an Atheros chipset should be supported by my distro- Kubuntu Breezy- so I ordered a 3Com Office Connect Xjack 3CRXJK10075 11g card from Amazon for just under £40. This worked out of the box beautifully. It has a retractable arial, so no awkward protrusion when not in use. Pushing the arial in also turns off power to the card. The only downside is a flashing green LED that you could use to guide in an aircraft- but a small piece of black insulation tape cures this. The card is actually easier to use in Ubuntu than in XP, which I have on the same machine as a dual boot. I think that maybe this is because installing the 3Com software was a mistake. Anyway, just getting it to connect is rather clunky. Opting for Thinkpad also means that you can take advantage of a lot of helpful stuff that others have written on the web about their experiences with linux. There are also packages written specifically for the machine to get features such as volume on-sreen display and trackpoint configuration working. The first of these is easily accessible from the Ubuntu repositories. The other requires a little fiddling with kernel patches. Trackpoint is so splendid imho, that I wouldn't buy another laptop without it. The relative 'stickyness' of its functioning in Ubuntu is one of the very few downsides compared to Windows. So even though I am probably the least technically able person on this list by a long way I'm going to try and do the kernel patching. Or at least I would if I didn't suspect that the patch will be included in the kernel that ships with Dapper. On the downside this will mean compiling driver modules for the built in winmodem again- but if I can do it anyone can. The Thinkpad I have by the way is a T22, PIII 900MHz 256MB purchased from ebay second hand for about £305 including shipping in 2004. The only upgrade I've done is to replace the 20G HD with a 60G one when it burnt out. A lovely keyboard for typing and a nice sharp display. Case has cracked near the DVD/floppy drive bay: my holding it by the front edge probably contributed to this. Now the thing is working pretty beautifully with Kubuntu. Plays most DVDs (mission-critical as I have no TV) using Mplayer, which also records audio streams like BBC, all my mp3s with Amarok, opens Word, Excel and Powerpoint files from work... if only shockwave and some decent qualitative research software were available for linux things would be perfect. By the way, if you do decide to give the 3Com card a try, make sure that you check that the precise model you go for has actually got a supported chipset like Atheros- that is why I gave the full part spec above. Best wishes, Rob

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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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