November 2003 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

upgrading suse 7.2 to 8.1
by Gregory Avedissian 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

I'm getting ready to upgrade from SuSE 7.2 to 8.1, and I have a little confusion and some questions. I'm going from 7.2 pro edition to 8.1 personal edition. Any ideas what's missing in the personal edition? Attempting to replace what is installed, I get a list of conflicts, with advice to delete the old program, even if they don't have a replacement. I was surprised to see that balsa and gftp were listed as not having newer versions. Is this because they're not on the personal edition? I know they exist, because they're available at rpmfind. The real issue - XFree 4.x doesn't seem to want to recognize my ELSA GLoria-L video card. Sax2 will run in 640x480 only, and I can't get it to run with the glint driver (the one that's supposed to work with this card). I tried doing this with the SuSE 8.2 evaluation disk, and I'm running into the same problems I had when I tried to upgrade to XFree 4.1 about a month ago. So here's the question - Can I upgrade to 8.1 without upgrading XFree? Better yet, if I upgrade the XFree, and it doesn't work, is there an easy way to return to the older version by using the CD's. Or do I have to manually back up /usr/X11R6 and /etc/X11 first, and then recopy them to get back to the older version? Will the rest of the SuSE 8.1 be pissed off about using XFree 3.3.6? I suppose I could change the vid card, but I'd rather not spend any money, and since this one is listed as working, I'd like to be able to get it to work. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or ideas. Greg

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Digitally signed e-mails
by Andy Stewart 25 Nov '03

25 Nov '03

HI everybody, While I was cleaning out my inbox e-mail folder, I ran across several e-mails from WLUG members which were digitally signed. I've recently upgraded to SuSE 9.0 and the 'new' version of KDE's Kmail flags these e-mails in bright yellow. Kmail is telling me that I don't have the senders public key available, and thus it isn't sure that the mail actually camed from the claimed sender. My question is this: how do I get someone's public key ? Further, that brings up another question in this space: 1) How do I know that the public key I'm given really belongs to the person giving it ? Short of receiving it in person, and assuming that the person isn't an imposter, I suppose I eventually have to limit my level of paranoia to some level of trust. :-) Thanks, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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HMM, no conspiracy after all.
by Arturo Sedo 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

It seems like it may not be a conspiracy after all. Here are some searches I did followed by the resulting number of hits. Search Result ------ ------- mac OS x 48 windows xp 279 Linux 365 windows f*cking sucks 40464 bill gates genius 43093 Conclusion: The msn search engine may actually suck that badly! From: Arturo Sedo <postgres(a)sedo.net> To: WLUG <wlug(a)mail.wlug.org>, arturo_sedo(a)raytheon.com Subject: Interesting slashdot article. I didn't think it would be true. It was! Date: 16 Nov 2003 22:55:02 -0500 Here's an exercise for all to try. Search Google for Linux Windows. That gets you about 14 million pages, even with the English preference or filter turned on. Now, go to msn.com and search the Microsoft way for the same two words. You get exactly 18 pages. The word censorship doesn't seem to do justice to what Microsoft has done to a msn user who wants to compare Linux with Windows, does it? According to an MSN's Internet search, the word linux only appears 365 documents. In the entire internet! No wonder they wanted to buy google. Arturo -- Arturo Sedo <postgres(a)sedo.net>

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Interesting slashdot article. I didn't think it would be true. It was!
by Arturo Sedo 17 Nov '03

17 Nov '03

Here's an exercise for all to try. Search Google for Linux Windows. That gets you about 14 million pages, even with the English preference or filter turned on. Now, go to msn.com and search the Microsoft way for the same two words. You get exactly 18 pages. The word censorship doesn't seem to do justice to what Microsoft has done to a msn user who wants to compare Linux with Windows, does it? According to an MSN's Internet search, the word linux only appears 365 documents. In the entire internet! No wonder they wanted to buy google. Arturo -- Arturo Sedo <postgres(a)sedo.net>

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Revolution OS
by swillis＠WPI.EDU 15 Nov '03

15 Nov '03

The Worcester Area Student Chapter of the ACM based at WPI will be showing the film "Revolution OS" (www.revolution-os.com) Friday the 21st at 7:30pm in Fuller Auditorium, on the WPI campus. We would like to invite all those in the Worcester Linux Users' Group to join us to watch this film. The film is a documentary about Linux and the whole open-source/free software movement. "REVOLUTION OS features interviews with Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda. To view the trailer or the first eight minutes go to the ifilm website for REVOLUTION OS." The showing is free to all (in more ways than one). There will also be food and drink available for purchase. Recap: What: Revolution OS Where: Fuller Auditorium, WPI campus When: Friday, November 21st 7:30pm Why: Freedom -Steven Willis P.S. All are welcome to come, so let your friends, professors, students, and families know about it.

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Debian to RH 9 Migration
by Chuck Noyes 15 Nov '03

15 Nov '03

Has anyone tried this? I don't what version of Debian is currently being used. Any guidelines for this kind of migration. Thanks, -Chuck -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

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RE: [Wlug] W.L.U.G. TV show...
by Keller, Tim 14 Nov '03

14 Nov '03

Then maybe we should go in that direction. Give a five minute explanation about what linux is and where it came from and then talk about what a distribution is and the companies that make them. Then go on to talk about why you'd want to use linux (stability, resilience to viruses, breathing life into old hardware, etc.) Then take the remaining 15 minutes to show off the interface, mozilla, evolution, xmms and gnumoney. Then finish up with a blurb about WLUG (who, what, where and when). Does that sound sensible? Tim. -----Original Message----- From: Stephen C. Daukas [mailto:stephen@daukas.com] Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 5:40 PM To: Worcester Linux Users Group Subject: Re: [Wlug] W.L.U.G. TV show... I have a few thoughts to offer... Given the format of Community Access Programming on local cable, you have 30 minutes. Period. (At least in Shrewsbury.) If my experience in the past with these productions holds true, you don't have a lot of time to work with and it is very rare to see a multi part show, even from long established programming. (Never mind the editing and work that goes on behind the scences - 30 minutes translates into weeks of work.) 30 minutes isn't a lot of time. Even a high school class is 47 minutes these days, and that gets you one topic, say for example, work = force x distance. There will not be time enough to adress more than once audience, or more than one simple topic for that matter! If you are about to say "but wait, we don't have to limit ourselves to 30 minutes, we can produce what we want" then I would answer, that's true! But, just as true is my next question - who you gonna show it to and how? So, now that we have established the cart and the horse, we need to make a few decisions... I'm thinking that 30 minutes is just enough time (barely) to show a "teaser" piece that talks about Linux "the product" and what it can do. No techno-geek talk (because you will invariable try to cover too much in too little time), just something that will interest the audience enough to want more. 30 minutes is just enough time to show everyone how they can configure a Linux server to support their own real estate business or construction business or oil business or... as well as interest the experienced novice who might want to try getting out from under their ISP. When they want more, then you can talk about follow-up episodes, or direct them to WLUG at the end of the episode (or both). The WLUG site could have video available, metting topics, and so forth... Steve _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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df confused?
by Chuck Homic 14 Nov '03

14 Nov '03

I got this output from df: Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda7 1381 843 468 65% / /dev/hda1 10 4 6 36% /boot /dev/hda5 248 1 235 1% /tmp df -H produces the not-so-different: Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda7 1.4M 866k 477k 65% / /dev/hda1 10k 3.5k 6.2k 36% /boot /dev/hda5 254k 14 241k 1% /tmp My disk is 8GB, and although I believe the percentages are correct, this is a little unnerving. Any idea why df would be confused? Or have I created the most amazing single-floppy distribution ever?!? This is a system I just un-mothballed, it's mostly an older debian sid that I'm slowly upgrading to latest in stages. Could this be something out of date with respect to something else? -Chuck

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Linux Desktop Conference
by Andy Stewart 12 Nov '03

12 Nov '03

HI everybody, I'm wondering if anybody went to the Linux Desktop conference in Tyngsboro yesterday, and if so, what did you think of it? Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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W.L.U.G. TV show...
by Keller, Tim 10 Nov '03

10 Nov '03

For those who didn't attend the meeting last night, we talked a little about the idea of producing a linux focused TV Show. From that discussion we decided that the best thing to-do would be to have the main part of the discussion through the mail list. So, here it is... Firstly, I think we need to decide who our target audience is. This morning I came up with notion that generally, users can be broken into several groups. The first group are novice users. These are people who use a computer, but the concept of an operating system or the idea that windows isn't just "part of the system" and not removable is alien. The second group is "advanced" users. I think most of us would fall into this group. We understand OS's, hardware, software and all the digital glue that holds it together. The third group is educational users. These would be people who work in some education institution and they're interest in linux would be from the standpoint of deploying it for cost savings and/or using it as an education tool for teaching. The forth group would be corporate suit types. These are the people who read the trade rags, but don't have a clear understanding of what linux. They've read lots of conflicting FUD on the subject and aren't sure how linux could be used in they're environment or what the real TCO would be. Personally, I think we should go after groups 1-3. The reason I'm not too worried about the fourth type is that now that redhat had decided that they're going to go full force into the enterprise environment, they'll be busy spending lots of PR dollars convincing the suits. What do people think. Also, if it is the consensus that we should focus on groups 1-3, should we narrow our focus even more? Thanks, Tim.

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