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Toy
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

Snarfed from The Shed: Here, if any Penguinistas want to waste a bit of time, have a look at xplanet. 's really rather shiny. It's turned the background piccy on my screen into a picture of The Whirled, upadted every few minutes, with day and night rotating around it as it does, and the piccies are real ones, and every few hours it grabs a new piccy of what the clouds are doing and overlays it ... you can lose hours playing with it. Coo. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Gentoo
by Richard Lewis 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

OK, I've had a look at the Gentoo website and it looks quite cool. I'll have a go at installing (if the UEA network decides to behave itself! Grr!) Just a couple of questions: 1) People say it takes a long time to install. If I've got a PIII, 512MB RAM, 20GB HDD, etc and I want a fairly standard system (KDE, basic development tools, a few music progams) how long does anyone think it might take? 2) Its source based, which seems like a really good idea. But can you use portage to install any old source.tar.gz? Or do they have to be recognised ones? (in the portage 'tree', is it, or something?) And if you can't is there a way that you can make them installable with portage? 3) Does it have an equivalent to Debian's 'non-free' or MDK's PLF? (For things like libdvdcss, pardon my French ;-) Cheers, Richard

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Linux Friendly MP3 Player
by Matt Parker 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

I just bought an Oracom 200M 256Mb player. Mandrake 9.1 detected it automatically and magically added an entry to my fstab. Not only does it sound absolutely fantastic, it was only £80 and it says "Diverse OS support for Windows, Mac and Linux" on the front of the box in big letters. No OGG though, but that was too much to hope for. Matt -- http://www.mpcontracting.co.uk Experts in Java development and website design

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When?
by Anthony Anson 27 Nov '03

27 Nov '03

When I log on (using Gnome - to start with, anyway) I'm asked for username and password, both of which I've remembered this time - certain listmembers will know why (!), I can get into the program, and following yesterday's help, I can now get out of it without a parachute. Q: If I need to get in as root, do I type 'root' instead of username? Q: Under what circumstances might I need to go rooting? Q: I fired Wine up yesterday and it demanded a Windows program to play with, and sulked because the one I had in mind was in the CD romdrive waiting to be installed. How should I set about installing the program, where should I put it, and how? (It's my internet software, and someone has reported that it runs under Wine. If it does, expect me to lay down a barrage of questions about modems and error messages. And Syd, I really will try to get most of the answers off that CD you kindly sent me, honest I will.) -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

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Open networks
by Graham Trott 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

For those interested in open (wireless) broadband, head off to http:// consume.net. -- GT

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Norwich meeting.....
by Craig 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

I think I should really pop along to this meeting... not sure how I would fit in ;) However, I could bring my little ipod for drooling purpose...... I presume anything goes at all linux meetings? ;) C

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Debian (with high version numbers)
by Richard Lewis 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

(This is sort of Re: 'MDK9.2 ships w/out kernel sources') One of the reasons why I've been using MDK is because it always uses the latest versions of software packages. (I'm afraid I'm a bit of a features junky!) I keep meaning to try Debian. The 'stable' release comes with quite old packages, doesn't it? Whats the best way to use Debian with more up-to-date packages? I've looked at downloading the ISOs for the 'testing' release. But it comes on about 11 discs and I can't find out whats on what disc. Any hints? Cheers, Richard

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Re: Debian (with high version numbers)
by Richard Lewis 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

OK, I will install Debian (all my K menu icons and panel icons have just disappeared!). But I have one more question: I've got three partitions on my disk: root (/), swap and home (/home). Can I install Debian into / and set up a user with the same name as I have at the moment ('richard') and have that user's home directory the same as it is at the moment ('/home/richard') but without overwritting any of the data in /home/richard? Cheers, Richard

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Peterborough on 27 Nov
by MJ Ray 26 Nov '03

26 Nov '03

Hi all, I'll be travelling to Peterborough LUG's meeting tomorrow evening, from KL via Wisbech. The meeting topic is still being decided, as far as I know. If anyone near the route would like a lift there and back, email me off-list, please. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/

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Linux on a Laptop
by Stan Fraser 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

Have installed Red Hat on a HP Pavilion N5472 and it seems to run Ok except the desktop only covers a fraction of the screen ie centered with a huge black border. How do i utilise all the screen. Regards Stan Fraser

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