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Slackware vs Mandrake boot times
by IanBell 02 Jul '04

02 Jul '04

There has been some recent discussion about how much faster Slackware seems to boot than other 'mainstream' distros. So I have installed Slack 9.1 alongside my current Mandrake 9.2 and compared boot times. This is on a Dell 2650 laptop with 384M RAM. Boot to Login: Slackware 45 secs Mandrake 52 secs Note Mandrake has more services running e.g. CUPS and kudzu Login to GUI up: Slackware 25 secs Mandrake 40 secs The main difference here is that Mandrake runs the NVidia driver which adds about 10 seconds. Overall I conclude there is very little difference between them. If you subtract the 10 secs for NVidia from the Mandrake figures then the totals are: Slackware 70 secs Mandrake 80 secs Ian

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Spare/Loan Kit
by kpwatson＠pop3.ukfsn.org 01 Jul '04

01 Jul '04

Can I ask anyone who has kit they are willing to loan for the purposes of demos etc. to add it to the "Kit Available" section of the "DemosOfferedDemosWanted" wiki page? <http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?DemosOfferedDemosWanted> (by kit i'd also include cables, multiway mains adaptoers, extension leads, etc) That way anyone who wants to organise something can see what's available. At the moment anything loaned for a demo is implicitly at your own risk but should the group imdemnify people loaning kit in some way? and if so how? (short term insurance?) Also, in addition to H/W, does anyone have any whiteboards, flipcharts, pens, projects, etc. we can borrow for the purpose of running a demo? if so please add them to the list. Cheers :o) Keith

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Suse 9.1 disappointment
by Robert Frusher 01 Jul '04

01 Jul '04

Not really a question, but a little insight. I am an avid Slackware Linux user, but on seeing Suse 9.1 available for download I thought I would give it a go. The install is flawless, with its auto-configuration, although I see nothing wrong with Slackwares curses install. A little while later it was installed. I couldnt get grub boot loader to play nicely with XP so it went in the MBR. I reboot and this is the disappointment... it is REALLY slow, granted nice, but nothing really new. I have a pretty good spec machine and Slack flies compared with Suse. DMA was on but it just seemed to take forever to boot, and sluggish when it gets there. Do you reckon it was the new kernel? I tried 2.6 with Slack and it seemed even faster. SO on seeing 10.0 Slackware out I got rid of Suse, and am back at home. Rob

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Newsforge: gLabels: Ready for prime time
by kpwatson＠pop3.ukfsn.org 30 Jun '04

30 Jun '04

gets a good write up*, any one here used it recently? Particulalry interested in how well it works with CD labels. Keith * http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/06/15/1833205 gLabels, a GNOME program that makes and prints all sorts of labels and business cards, seems to be capable of handling just about any task you throw at it. It's at release 1.93.3, a developer release on the way to a stable 2.0 version, but it's in very good shape.

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RE: [ALUG] dpkg-dist error on installing postgresql
by Jenny Hopkins 30 Jun '04

30 Jun '04

> Any option (4) suggestions? :-)) Someone suggested I try: dpkg --purge postgresql apt-get install postgresql and this worked. Thanks, all. Won't try this one with the live db in a hurry. Jen ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

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dpkg-dist error on installing postgresql
by Jenny Hopkins 30 Jun '04

30 Jun '04

Hi, I'm having problems installing postgresql when it gets to the post-installation script, output is below. ducati:/etc/init.d# apt-get install postgresql Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done postgresql is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 20 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used. Setting up postgresql (7.4.2-4) ... mv: cannot stat `/etc/init.d/postgresql.dpkg-dist': No such file or directory dpkg: error processing postgresql (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: postgresql E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Does anyone know what could be going on here? Thanks, Jen ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________

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UEA Meeting on 27th June.
by Jonathan McDowell 30 Jun '04

30 Jun '04

Not a huge turnout - only 1 person who doesn't normally come to the 2nd Thursday Norwich meets. We wondered if this might be due to it being outside UEA term time, but then there's not usually a large turnout of UEA undergrads at any time, is there? Attendees were: Eli (who kindly organised it), James + Kaz, Ashley, Brett, Adam, Kirsten, me. Discussion topics included MiniITX boards and rackmounts, interrupts on highly pipelined CPUs, change giving algorithms for soft drinks machines, the annoyance factor of people who blindly suggest Cisco for all networking bits, networking problems we have known, Nethack vs Angband, DVB (ie Freeview and the like) and Brett's car. There were a couple of laptops present (that didn't even get turned on), but no other kit - I presume all the people who've been wanting kit meets in Norwich where unable to make it? Those present thought that a nice beer garden would have made a more suitable venue given the lack of kit, at least until it started raining. As UEA term time is over it was thought that we should take the Norwich Internet Cafe up on their very kind offer of a venue for the next Sunday meet. We don't seem to have any more meets organised for the rest of the year though, except the regular social meets? J. -- Game over, boys! This .sig brought to you by the letter O and the number 8 Product of the Republic of HuggieTag

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Linux Laptop
by Wayne Stallwood 30 Jun '04

30 Jun '04

I don't usually post stuff I'm trying to sell to the list, but I remember a few conversations a while ago regarding cheap Linux Laptops I'm selling my dedicated Linux laptop as VMware on my main one does 99.9% of what I need. It's a Dell Latitude C800 currently running SuSE 9.1 with almost everything working, the modem and suspend/resume have issues but only since moving to a 2.6 kernel. Power management, 3D, thermal control and the CPU Throttle (will go down to 700MHZ when under a light load if on batteries) all tested. Feels pretty snappy and comfortable on KDE, the 1400x1024 screen helps, would be even better with a boost to the ram. It's an 850Mhz PIII with 256MB Ram (a slot is free to add more) ATI M4 with 16MB of Dedicated video memory (this is interchangeable with other ATI and Nvidia daughterboards, ones from the Inspiron 8000 also fit) 10GB HDD (cheap to fit a larger one) CDROM and Floppy Fitted with the 1400x1024 display, no dead pixels and nice and bright. Has all the usual ports. USB, Firewire, serial, parallel, VGA, PS2, 100baseT Ethernet, Modem (not working in Linux, but I haven't tried very hard, google says it's possible) and two PCMCIA slots. Comes with the Dell case, Charger and Modem lead, Windows 2000 OEM license (no media) CD-R with the Dell drivers on, CD-R with SuSE 9.1 personal. Good condition overall, couple of small marks here and there. Battery life is quite poor, replacement is available from Dell for £75 plus VAT. £300 As I say I normally don't post thing like this, so sorry if it causes anyone offence.

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Re: Meetings, Talks, Demonstrations and Kit
by Elisabeth 30 Jun '04

30 Jun '04

>From: Kirsten Naylor <wildduck(a)wildduck.org.uk> > >I can just about manage apt-get update and apt-get upgrade but need my >hand held quite a bit. So I want to know how to manage my debian >installation so that if quinophex vanished I would not be stuck. Also >knowing how to build kernels would be fun. AOL (except the bit about quinophex). Plus I'd be interested in audio-editing demos. I might be able to persuade two of the local musogeeks to demo what they've set up. Eli(sabeth)

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Debugging Gnome Problems
by Keith Watson 29 Jun '04

29 Jun '04

After running apt-get update on my Debian install last night (actually I used apt-zip but it's the same thing) I now find that gnome 2.4 won't start (it was working fine before). dmesg (or alt-f9) doesn't seem to show anything untoward except for some gconfd messages saying gnome is shutting down. Does anyone know if/where gnome keeps its own run logs so I can get a clue why it's throwing a wobbler? I tried the www.gnome.org site but it's definitely an information overload situation when looking for clues to this. Google wasn't much help either. Regards, Keith ____________ Live life as life lives itself. Zen Proverb

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