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10372 discussions

New member Martin
by Martin Collins 01 Nov '03

01 Nov '03

Hi everyone and thanks for the Norwich area meeting info Syd - appreciate it. I first stumbled onto Linux with a SuSE 7.2 box set from a book shop a couple of years ago. Installed it on my 300MHz Celeron IBM Thinkpad 240 laptop but a buggy version of XFree (so I found out later) and my inexperience resulted in me giving up on Linux for another 6 months. Since then I've experimented a lot, installing various distros including MDK8.2, 9.0, RH8.0, Lycoris, Slackware & a partial Debian install (I gave up half way as I became confused & bored with all the questions). After dual booting on my self-built 1.4GHz Athlon desktop for a while with Windows, I became fed up with MS OS problems, freeze ups, crashes, expensive software, etc. and so finally settled and went 100% over to Linux with SuSE 8.2 Pro - no probs since. SuSE is still on my desktop now but last night couldn't help myself but to install MDK9.2 on my laptop - just to have a look. Mmm its OK'ish on first glance. Noticed a couple of glitches but never have got on very well with MDK on that laptop. But I will carry on with it for a while. My Wife, who isn't particularly good or interested in computers, made the switch from Windows to Linux with only about 15 mins training from me, and happily e-mails, surfs and writes letters with no problems. I also became fed up of fixing my Mother's MS Windows problems and she now also runs SuSE 8.2 (Personal) and I hardly ever get called out to fix problems anymore - thank goodness. I've always wanted to program and Linux sure does give me the freedom to learn and play in this respect. I am currently learning C++ together with QT. I am a deck officer (navigator) in the merchant navy so my first and current project is a navigation/passage planning program. Haven't actually seen any similar software for Linux but if anyone knows of any links please let me know. Also reading (but not coding yet) books on PHP & MYSQL/Postgre. Anyway that's all the guff about me out of the way. Will try and contribute something more interesting in future but am enjoying the mailing list digest very much indeed. Thanks all. Martin

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Multiple monitors
by Louise J M Worthington 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

It's a long shot, but does anyone know if its possible when using two monitors to have X running on only one of them a console on the other? Thanks Louise

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Quick intro from a new member
by Dave Briggs 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

Hello all I just thought I would send a quick email round, I only joined the list yesterday. I currently live in Ely, but as of this weekend will be moving to King's Lynn - well into the heart of ALUG territory! I work at the University in Cambridge, which is going to be a long haul every day but who cares when the rent is as cheap as it is in Lynn! I run Mandrake 9.1 on a dual boot with Windows at home. I am hardly technically proficient, but I just like the idea of open source software. My main interest lies in web site creation, and I run a book discussion website called Palimpsest - http://www.palimpsest.org.uk . I am still having some teething troubles with Linux, my soundcard seems to refuse to work and I haven't got round to buying a proper modem yet, so any internetting has to be done through Windows or at work :-( Anyhow, that's enough from me. Dave

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Re: [ALUG] DOSemu - serial help needed
by Edenyard 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

Thanks for that, Owen! I've just sent a message to the DOSemu list as you recommend - will be interesting to see what comes back! Cheers, Gerald. On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 17:41:49 +0000, owen.churchcowley <owen.churchcowley(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: > Have you tried mailing the DosEmu list, its a good product and unlikely someone > who is on it has not hit this problem before, failing that they may know where > the bug is, have a patch or at the least know the location of thier bug track > location.

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Re: [ALUG] Re: [Alug]OT: Standard of IT in schools across the country
by Ben Norcutt 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

>The d/l was blocked by the security s/w and I was told by the >network manager that it was blocked by the LEA provider not the >school. Glad to hear that it's not the case everywhere in Norfolk >though. Ah ok well we all go through the county proxy farm at bt which runs on symantec igear but they are always making changes and tweaking stuff. If it wasn't an igear ddr access denied page then it was blocked by county but they do block a lot of stupid stuff. Then again there's always around it :) Cheers, Ben

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DOSemu - serial help needed
by Edenyard 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

Please could someone help me with this DOSemu problem: I've installed DOSemu V1.9.99 (a.k.a. 1.2.0) and have got it running quite nicely on Slackware 9.1 (2.4.22 kernel). It recognises the DOS partition on the HDD and will run programmes like Xtree and Wordstar without any problems. However, I have a programme written in Turbo Basic that accesses the serial port (COM1) and I'm having trouble getting it to talk to the port properly under DOSemu. This is the error message I get as DOSemu is coming up: ERROR: PORT: conflicting devices: COM1 & std port io The programme appears to be able to send out of the port but cannot get any data coming back in. I've set /etc/dosemu/dosemu.conf to deal with the COM1 port like this: $_com1 = "/dev/ttyS0 irq 4" $_ports = " device /dev/ttyS0 fast range 0x3f8,0x3ff" $_irqpassing = "4" but I can't stop the 'conflict' message or get any data from the port into my programme. The remainder of the programme appears to work properly, even printing to what it thinks is LPT1. I've an idea that I need to tell Linux to ignore COM1 (ttyS0) so that the DOS programme can have it, but I don't know how to do this. Is there a parameter to give to a module or the kernel at boot time, or something like that? I've tried DOSemu V1.0.2 and get the same problem, so I'm sure it's something I'm doing that's messing it up, rather than a DOSemu bug. Any ideas, please, anyone? Gerald.

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Re: Welcome to the "main" mailing list
by Tim Green 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 09:01:01PM +0000, main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > We welcome new members and we'd especially like you to send a short > description of why you're interested in Linux to the mailing list. Hello! I was invited to this evening's Ely social in The Fountain, but without enough warning! So here I am at home *clickerty-click* subscribing to the mailing lists. I have been using Linux since 1993 when I discovered I could re- partition my university's public PCs and dual boot between DOS and a unix. SLS Linux needed quite a few floppies! I now run Debian on half my PCs, and I gave up dual booting because I like to be able to run both Linux apps and Win32 apps at the same time. Maybe I'll try one of those emulator-y things like VMWare one day. I like using Linux because I feel I have much more control over my computers. I can choose to share files and other resources, and I can choose not to. And its free! If only I had a bit more free time to take advantage of the free speech aspect of Linux ... Tim.

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Re: [Alug]OT: Standard of IT in schools across the country
by Ben Norcutt 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

>And, in Norfolk schools at least, can't d/l ISOs either which is a >disappointment. Syd, I don't know why you came up with that statement which is blatently untrue as I download lots of iso's from different sources all the time. We can send smtp mail using the country mail relay, ssl sites are fine, pinging web servers works, irc doesn't. As far as the best sites being filtered etc... well there are always ways Cheers, Ben

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Re: [ALUG] Ely meeting report
by Simon.Turner＠LDS.spx.com 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

Kirsten Naylor wrote: >> A pleasant meeting in the Fountain, attended by Rob, Daniel, Simon, Ted, >> Kirsty and Adam. Daniel Silverstone wrote: > It was nice to meet Simon and Ted at last. The conversation was indeed > nice and geeky, I think adding the deck of cards to the mix helped to > fill any awkward silences a bunch of geeks often end up generating, > albeit not trying to do so ;-) Many thanks to you all for making me welcome! Interesting that three of us were from the same village. If you can persuade Tim to attend next time then there would be four! I enjoyed the cards - would be more than interested in bringing a laptop to a suitable venue in the future ... > I'm all for making this a more regular thing for the Ely/Nr-Ely crowd. > Perhaps every two or three weeks would be good. Admittedly it'd be nice > if we could get a venue to have a talk etc, but just making sure there's > face2face socialising within the LUG is a good thing. Agreed - I guess somewhere with some bandwidth would be good :-), although not always easy in the Fens. See you next time ... Simon -- Simon Turner

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Ely meeting report
by Kirsten Naylor 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

A pleasant meeting in the Fountain, attended by Rob, Daniel, Simon, Ted, Kirsty and Adam. A penguin was present, as was lots of very interesting conversation about wireless internet, open source hardware etc etc (over a game of cards :). We met at 7pm (well, a bit after 7 for most of us - sorry Rob and Daniel!) and did not adjourn till after 10.30pm so it was a good night out! /Kirsten

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