November 2008 - KCLUG

I installed Linux on my pumpkin
by Brian Kelsay 18 Nov '09

18 Nov '09

As a fun project I decided to promote Linux on Halloween. About 30 minutes with the dremel and a pattern from the web. http://www.pumpkinlady.com/tuxpattern.htm

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64 bit distributions - Worth bothering yet?
by Sean Crago 29 Nov '08

29 Nov '08

I've passed on the upgrade to x64 distros, despite every box in my inventory other than my Eee PC 900 supporting them. The trouble with binary packages etc. seemed to be substantially worse than the minor benefits at the time to making the switch. Even today, various 32-bit OSes (Linux & 'doze alike) seem to dominate both at my current and last job, and only seem to be swapped out for 64-bit OSes when dealing with obscene amounts of RAM or specialized scientific routines. Is there something I'm missing, though, that has a dramatic impact on the desktop-user's experience? Are there substantial speed gains to be had, either on AMD or Intel Core * architectures? Is there any practical benefit at all to making the switch other than the specialized workstations and servers mentioned above? Thanks in advance, Sean Crago Kathmandu

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Black Friday
by Jim Herrmann 27 Nov '08

27 Nov '08

Anyone have strategies for doing Best Buy's Black Friday? Thanks, Jim -- - That One - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCUOHKznUyI

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Meeting Goals 2008-11-18
by Billy Crook 24 Nov '08

24 Nov '08

I'm bringing the Acer Aspire One running it's stock Linpus Linux in a mercilessly hacked up state. I think I'll be able to get it on the Library's wifi.... using iwconfig.... Then I'll demo Acer's factory restore DVD, and you can all play with the thing freshly reloaded and working. At the next meeting, I'll have Ubuntu with their netbook thing on there, and Fedora 10 after that. If you have anything else you'd like to see on a netbook, chime in now. I also at this point have Fedora 10 running on my laptop in its entirety. If anyone wants a sneak peak at what F10 will look like on its release, here's your chance to see it. If anyone had any distros they want to install, now's the time to ask if you want me to bring a disc ready to install from. Also, I thought I'd share a package I discovered a couple days ago called clive. clive takes as an argument, a youtube hyperlink, and swiftly downloads an flv or mp4 to your home directory. Supposedly it supports other sites as well. yum install clive. http://clive.sourceforge.net/ Then you can play it in vlc and probably other players, without ever installing flash. There's another script floating around out there that lets you play a youtube vid directly in mplayer or vlc, but you can't always stop and reverse and stuff since its streaming. There's another program I really wanted called pytube, a python gtk+ app that turns a youtube vid into an ogg file, but its author's site seems to be completely gone now.

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Will this supercomputer run Linux?
by Oren Beck 22 Nov '08

22 Nov '08

http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-249874.html Hey- I could have made a cheap dig at which OS would slow it down:> -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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Speaking from personal experience in migration battles with my wife:>
by Oren Beck 19 Nov '08

19 Nov '08

The reality is most non-tech "appliance operators" don't give a thought to what's in their computer. At least that's my home experience. The migration away from outlook to purely web based mail was not traumatic. Firefox replacing IE has been a recurrent headache. Largely born of UI changes breaking her learned interactions, I have had her use my oft mentioned Kiosk install of Puppy 4.0 with an amusing set of comments. Most notable being the frustrations over subtle differences, That is going to be the headache inducing leitmotif for all migration projects if mine is any indication. -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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Old Computers
by Jonathan Hutchins 16 Nov '08

16 Nov '08

Aargh! I just found another one! I now have I think seven old computers. Anybody interested? These were all working when pulled for upgrade. I'm pulling the HD's out of all but one, need to go through and wipe them and offer them seperately. Three 486 class, probably AMD K5's, tower case. Pre-ATX. XT keyboard. Deskpro 2000 Pentium 133-200 (not sure), 32M RAM, Floppy, CD. Deskpro 4000, 200MHz, 64M RAM, 2.4G Hard Drive included because it has the Compaq BIOS-on-disk. NT4 workstation installed. Floppy, built in NIC & Video, (& sound?). Not sure if it netboots. (Deskpros are about four inches tall and have a riser board w/ PCI & ISA.) K6-III 400MHz, 40M RAM, HP Superstore Tape 6000 Floppy Tape, floppy, CD. PIII, 400MHZ, 328M RAM Compaq SFF, about 4"x14"x18", PIII 600MHz, 128M RAM, CD, Floppy. I think there are enough nic's to go around, with the possible exception of the older towers. All free if you take 'em all, pester me directly for details. I also have a LaserJet IIP+ if anybody's interested in that. Will be posting other components (Drives!) as I get them cleaned up and inventoried.

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Migrating is still a good idea...
by Haworth, Michael A. 15 Nov '08

15 Nov '08

Is there a way to set up a CentOS server to have it do some kind of mapping to/from Microsoft AD? I am thinking that any Linux users we start could authenticate against the CentOS server and simply have it push out some type of 'translated' permissions for those users to work with server shares currently hosted on Server '03 boxes Michael Haworth Enterprise Systems Support Manager PAS Technologies Inc. Direct Line: (816) 556-5157 Mobile Phone: (816) 585-1033 Fax: (816) 556-5189 E-mail: michael_haworth(a)pas-technologies.com<mailto:michael_haworth@pas-technologies.com>

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From Slashdot today
by James Sissel 15 Nov '08

15 Nov '08

"For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of "network neutrality," until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), "both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication."" And we should all know when the Government gets involved (for good or evil) the whole thing starts circling the drain. And just what is "light regulation"? Are both candidates clueless or just stupid? Which one is the lesser of 2 evils?

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in search of a google maps engineer
by David Nicol 12 Nov '08

12 Nov '08

In eearly negotiations with a potential client who wants some map overlay kinds of things on a web site. please contact me off of this list if you are, or want to be, good with such things, for more details. David Nicol Da Man, David Nicol Consulting -- "When laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have laws" -- Ginger Root

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