- main - earth.li

laptop recommendations
by adam＠thebowery.co.uk 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

Hi all, I am looking for a new laptop and need a few suggestions... What I want is something that doesn't have to be insanely fast, but works with Linux really nicely (and without resorting to non-free drivers). Has perhaps 512MB of ram, 40GB+ disk, half decent gfx that don't use system ram as video ram, 3 year warranty, linux friendly modem, ethernet. Built in working wireless would be nice, but I can always resort to a pcmcia wireless card. Extra points would be awarded for having a long battery life, and either a small form factor with a screen 1024x768 or a large form factor but with an amazing hires screen, keeping the weight down would also be good, and having a nipple and a trackpad would be exemplary. I would also like to avoid having to pay any M$ tax if at all possible but if the supplier doesn't support linux I am not so sure about ditching the windows license entirely for when the thing goes wrong and they won't take it back as "that must be a linux problem". Anyhow, so far I have been looking at Dells factory outlet, as they have 3 year warranty and are unlikely to go bankrupt tomorrow, so at least the warranty is worth something unlike some of the taiwanese OEM crap. I have also looked at Thinkpads on ebay, but they are all either far to expensive or very dodgy looking. Any suggestions? Thanks Adam PS I would like to spend less than a grand, just to make this mission impossible ;) and I did look at Apple laptops and they are either too expensive (powerbooks) or don't have pcmcia slots (iBook) which means they are not linux friendly :( -- jabberid = quinophex(a)jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem

9 19

Announce digest, Vol 2 #28 - 2 msgs
by announce-request＠lists.alug.org.uk 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

Send Announce mailing list submissions to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announce-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk You can reach the person managing the list at announce-admin(a)lists.alug.org.uk When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announce digest..." --------------.--------------------------------------------.------------ alug-announce | Newsletter of the Anglian Linux User Group | Weekly(ish) --------------'--------------------------------------------'------------ ** Please send articles for this letter to announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk ** *** Please send replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk, not announce... *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's Topics: 1. [Fsfe-uk] "Software Patents in Europe" IRC meet 6pm Monday (James Heald) 2. LOCAL: GNU/Linux/East Anglia: 17 Dec, 25 Jan, 29 Feb+more tbc (MJ Ray) --__--__-- Message: 1 From: James Heald <j.heald(a)ucl.ac.uk> To: fsfe-uk <fsfe-uk(a)gnu.org> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 21:06:21 -0000 Subject: [Alug Announce][Fsfe-uk] "Software Patents in Europe" IRC meet 6pm Monday There's going to be an IRC discussion on "Software Patents in Europe" this Monday at 6pm, to kick off a week of free online events organised by Uninet as part of its 4th international virtual conference on unix: http://umeet.uninet.edu/umeet2003/english/prog.html All welcome to #linux on the Uninet IRC network, http://www.uninet.edu/uninet/servers.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Guy Brand" Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 9:34 AM Subject: Umeet conference on swpats > Hello, > > Uninet Project (http://www.uninet.edu) is announcing its 2003 edition of > the Umeet Conference (http://umeet.uninet.edu/umeet2003/english/pres.html) > This year, the organizing comittee wants to start the event by a bof session > dedicated to Software Patents in EU. Feel free to join this bof session, > which will take place on Monday, December 15th at 18:00 UTC. Umeet > conferences are given online through the IRC network of Uninet > (http://www.uninet.edu/uninet/servers.html) The bof and conferences will > take place in the #linux channel. > > For those new to IRC, you need an IRC client (such as xchat, chatzilla, > ircII) which has to be told to connect to one of the servers listed on the > previously given web page and you have to join the #linux channel (usually > by issuing a /join #linux command). If you need help or assistance, feel > free to ask. Some web gateways to IRC servers are also available for users > sitting behind restrictive firewalls or networks (http://irc.fr.uninet.edu/ > is one of these gateways). > > gb > > _______________________________________________ > bxl mailing list > (un)subscribe via > http://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/bxl and http://aktiv.ffii.org/. If you subscribed via the latter, you can unsubscribe only by going to both. > _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list Fsfe-uk(a)gnu.org http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk --__--__-- Message: 2 From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)dsl.pipex.com> To: announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 22:47:20 +0000 Subject: [Alug Announce]LOCAL: GNU/Linux/East Anglia: 17 Dec, 25 Jan, 29 Feb+more tbc ALUG meets frequently around East Anglia to discuss and demonstrate GNU/Linux and other free software. The next meetings are: * [7]King's Lynn on Wed 17 Dec 2003: Informal chat and xmas quiz * [8]Norwich on Sun 25 Jan 2005: A talk? * [9]Syleham, mid-Suffolk on Sun 29 Feb 2004: Film screening and software demos * IRC each Monday from 8pm in irc.alug.org.uk #alug * Ely, date tbc If you are interested in coming along, look at the pages mentioned for details and send an email to our discussion list or the meeting organiser. We are also interested in hearing from people who can help make meetings happen again in the Ipswich and North Norfolk areas. Join the mailing list and start organising, or drop us an email privately if you'd rather. Discussion If you want to talk about this, please [13]use the mailing list. * Jump to 1. [15]Join ALUG 2. [16]FAQ 3. [17]Meetings References 7. http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2003/meeting19.html 8. http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2004/01-25Sun.html 9. http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2004/02-29Sun.html 13. http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main 15. http://www.alug.org.uk/background/contacts.html 16. http://www.alug.org.uk/contrib/?AlugFaq 17. http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/2003/ --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announce mailing list Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce End of Announce Digest

1 0

Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. 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 tkirc, bitchx, xchat 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://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

1 0

Norwich evening meet: Thursday 13th November
by Syd Hancock 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

Norwich evening meeting on thursday 13th November at 8pm at the Forum bar. All welcome - put faces to names, gossip, exchange tips, have flame wars, whatever gets you through the night. See you there Syd Other Norwich dates for your diary: Thursday 11th December 8pm at the Forum Sunday 25rd January 2pm at the Billy Bluelight Meetings pages on the ALUG site will be updated soon.

18 34

Apache failure to start
by J 14 Dec '03

14 Dec '03

Rar afternoon of intense heaches trying to work out the solution to this problem: Initial problem: dead, unpingable, unloginable, unviewable box: Theory (due to being able to look at console) Debian UM Linux box crashing, seemingly due to mysql Solution: Restart box via interface.... Box restarts, things come up. Now: Problem: box unpingable, but loginable. ircd and mysql have both started and are being used again, mail is up, but apache is dead: try starting apache (using apachectl) Configtest: all ok Graceful: root@dev:/var/log/apache# apachectl graceful /usr/sbin/apachectl graceful: httpd not running, trying to start [Sun Dec 14 16:07:44 2003] [error] (2)No such file or directory: mod_mime_magic: can't read magic file /etc/apache/share/magic /usr/sbin/apachectl graceful: httpd could not be started looking at error.log: root@dev:/var/log/apache# cat error.log [Sun Dec 14 15:36:00 2003] [error] (2)No such file or directory: mod_mime_magic: can't read magic file /etc/apache/share/magic getpeername: Socket operation on non-socket getsockname: Socket operation on non-socket Error getting local address again, thom steps in saying the mod_mime_magic isnt a problem as that wiill just die nicely when it cant configure itself, but the getpeername is possibly due to a failure of some non-existing domain name somehwere, so I go through the entier config file commenting out the virtual host loads, and the bit which makes it look for virtual hosts, and changing anything which poitns at dev.imen.org.uk to pointing at its ip address, and then try again, but I get the same error, checking all the way through a couple of times and repeating. The box is still unpingable from the outside world, (from various hosts) but pingable by itself (duhh). Could this have an affect on it. DNS lookups to it return the correct ip address for that box (otherwise I couldnt log in or irc to it). Searching the web gives me either results not relavent to apache, or just other people (including entries on debian-users which havnt been replied to (dating back years). Am I doing something incredably stupid here? J ps apologies if this goes in the wrong format its my first time using thunderbird

1 1

unmounting nfs mounts
by Syd Hancock 14 Dec '03

14 Dec '03

How can I unmount an nfs-mounted partition from the client? Or is that even the right question? Here is the situation: I have a directory exported on an nfs server (a desktop PC) and mounted from the command-line on my laptop. The desktop is a dual-boot which spends most of its time in windows (kids gaming machine). My plan is to have somewhere to store backups. What should I do on the client before shutting-down the server PC to let things end gracefully? Can I set-up fstab (or ?) on the client so that it will mount the exported drive if it is there but not cause problems if it is not there? Is there a better way to do this??? Many thanks Syd

2 1

Tele-conferencing under linux & M$
by Paul 14 Dec '03

14 Dec '03

Just had a cry for help in setting up a teleconferencing system for a small group of FOSS developers. The proposed solution is to use a specialist service provider based on conventional telephony equipment - This works fine as long as it uses local rate calls, but I would need to dial a US number.. IRC would be my favoured choice, but it has been ruled out as some people have an aversion to the keyboard. This leaves voice-over-internet (VoIP ?), an area I have no experience of. Looking at www.linphone.org, it would appear that it would only support a one-to-one connection. On the other hand, it may provide a solution to the problem of long distance calls... Question: Are there any compatable software packages that will run on linux and microsoft platforms ? Regards, Paul. -- "To err is human...to really f*** things up requires the root password."

4 6

For sale : Understanding the Linux Kernel (O'Reilly)
by Ashley 14 Dec '03

14 Dec '03

I have an O'Reilly book for sale. It covers the technical details of the Linux 2.2 kernel. More information at: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxkernel/ I am looking for £5. Please email me off-list if interested. -- Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. http://www.ashleyhowes.com "When all the animals of this world are gone, man will die of loneliness"

1 0

Subject: Re: [ALUG] Norwich evening meet: Thursday 11th December
by Ricky Bruce 13 Dec '03

13 Dec '03

if anyones ever in the market place in norwich watch out for streetwalkers handing out heart shaped leaflets, get as many as you can, they are for Nandos on the riverside or red lion street, and you can get a free meal with them, get enough and thats free catering for the meet. The foods pretty good aswell, their chilli sauce knocks your head off, i went temporarily blind and almost passed out after a few minutes of eating my extra-hot burger. The music isnt too invasive either. Rick ps: hello everyone aswell, keep meaning to write but im lazy. Just moved back to the uk after a spell in the US, my old lug wasnt very active, as theres not a whole lot of technology in central illinois..just corn but greetings from lugop anyway. www.lugop.org _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with cool emoticons - download MSN Messenger today! http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger

2 1

Re: [ALUG] laptop recommendations
by Matt Parker 13 Dec '03

13 Dec '03

On Fri, 2003-12-12 at 23:20, adam(a)thebowery.co.uk wrote: > Hi all, > > I am looking for a new laptop and need a few suggestions... > I'd recommend an IBM. I've had Linux running on a number of Thinkpads and it's been rock solid. They're not the best laptops for their price in the world, but Linux loves them, and they're built like tanks. I dropped one from a fair height once, and except for a small crack in the LCD screen it worked without a problem. Matt -- http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk Experts in Java development and website design

1 0