February 2009 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

GIMP tutorials
by E Johnson Feb. 14, 2009

Feb. 14, 2009

A couple of WLUG members had been interested in GIMP a few months back. A presentation I gave to the group last Fall may have been effective that it could have been, since we couldn't get the big monitors working in the meeting room. But now while looking for one piece of info, I came across this in article Linux Haxor: "50 Tutorials To Get You Started With Gimp." http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2009/02/09/50-tutorials-to-get-you-started-with-g… Some of these tutorials seem to be concerned with specific special effects, but others, such as "Using and Manipulating Layers with Gimp" and "Retouching hair and eye (video)" might be of interest to non-artist persons, and to those who want to work with photos they have uploaded from digital camera. Enjoy, Liz J

1 0

Miro gets a makeover
by Richard Klein Feb. 14, 2009

Feb. 14, 2009

I haven't read the article yet, but it looks like Miro 2.0 has launched. Miro was the topic of last month's meeting. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/10/miro-gets-a-makeover/ -- Rich

2 1

tux's new prison
by Doug Mildram Feb. 14, 2009

Feb. 14, 2009

Suffering from "temporary" (winter) shrinkage, Tux looks a bit worried in his "new" computer room..... OK so he's homeless and I merely bought him a bottle and a limited air supply with the other derelicts in my man-cave... ( ! warning, no disturbing images, 3 boring pix at.... ) http://dmildram.jalbum.net/Server+DesktopClutter/index.html

3 2

Lenovo S10 Netbook
by Mike Leo Feb. 13, 2009

Feb. 13, 2009

I picked one of these up at Circuit City last week and am looking to speed it up where ever possible. (Reviewed below). It has a normal SATA II drive in it and I know an SSD drive would significantly speed it up, but don't want to spend any more $ on it. http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/review/2008/05/08/OCZ-64GB-SATA-II-SS… has pretty graphs to compare. I weaseled a RAM upgrade out of my hard ware guy so I have 1.5gigs in it now (max'd). I ran speed tests between booting off the SATA II drive and the same install via USB 2.0 thumb drive and boot times were around 50 seconds for either. I know there are SSD ExpressCards for cheap (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820191057) but I read that the ExpressCards are really just USB 2.0 speeds anyway so I wouldn't see any difference from my thumb drive test. Short of compiling my own kernel (which I never can seem to do right), any other advise on how to speed up a netbook's boot time? I will say once booted, everything runs pretty well, though I'm sure I wouldn't mind more speed then, too! grazie! Mike Review: Stopped in to Circuit City today and (impulsively?) bought a Lenovo IdeaPad S10. I've been looking for something to waste my money on/replace the Dell I bought that I ended up not liking and turning over to my wife, so it wasn't extremely impulsive, just a little impulsive. Anyway, it was 10% of the normal price, which brought it down to $370. Not a great deal at that price since online it is like $350 or so, but the one I got has twice as much RAM and hard drive space as online numbers, plus no shipping. Specs: Intel Atom N270 1.6ghz CPU (Intel has returned to multi-threading) 10.2 inch screen 1GIG RAM 160Gig SATA II Hard drive Wired/Wireless NIC cards 3 Cell Lithium-Ion 2.64lbs No CDROM (not a big deal as I have a Lenovo USB CDROM drive anyway) The size: possibly the perfect size...small, light weight without being tiny. 10.2 inch 1024x600 screen and not an impossibly tiny keyboard (though obviously not full sized). It is about the size of a larger hard cover book. The OS: Comes with Windows XP and it ran very well...applications opened fast, web surfing was responsive and I could open several apps at once without much hit to performance. After 27 different questions about my loyalty to Bill Gates, I decided it was time to upgrade. Concerned that the new hardware may have issues with older versions of Linux, I jumped right into an as-yet-to-be released version of Ubuntu (9.04). Booted right up, answered a couple questions and installed like a champ...saw the disk, the RAM, the wireless card, everything...during the install. Upon reboot into Linux though, nothing...it just wouldn't boot. "No OS found". I thought my partitioning might be screwing me up, so I let the installer pick, but to no avail. I booted off live CD's, but when I mounted and chroot'd into my install, the install didn't even see my /dev/sda. At one point I finally got to a grub > boot, but still wouldn't boot to the OS. I tried a Debian 4.0 install, but that didn't see either the wired or wireless nics. Similar to the Ubuntu, Fedora 10 installed, but would never boot. So I tried a Ubuntu 8.10 install and everything was fine! Installed with my partitions (/boot, /, /home and swap) and all is well in the world. Wired, wireless, SATA, screen resolution....everything works straight from the install. I'm still testing and upgrading but over all this is a great netbook and takes to Ubuntu Linux straight away, and for less than $400 a great addition to my daily commute.

3 8

How to (not) Damage a FLASH Storage Device
by Chuck Anderson Feb. 6, 2009

Feb. 6, 2009

I found this article enlightening: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_Damage_a_FLASH_Storage_Device

4 3

Any ruby hackers?
by John Stoffel Feb. 6, 2009

Feb. 6, 2009

Guys, I'm looking for some help with a Ruby script which uses the 'Drb' and 'Slave' libraries. Basically, I'm doing a recursive readdir() on a directory, but with parallel processes (since Ruby Threads aren't really parallel, sigh...) and I'm running into some problems. I'm happy to post the code here, before I start begging for help on the http://www.ruby-forum.com site. Thanks, John

2 2

Re: [Wlug] reaching college students with linux
by Aljerin Butler,Jr. Feb. 5, 2009

Feb. 5, 2009

I don't know how much this would help in your efforts, but I put up a website to advocate and encourage students and other people alike to use Linux and Free/Open Source software. Please take a look at http://customlinux.tripod.com/. BTW, if you think there are any subjects that should be included or links not included in the subjects given, I would like to hear from you. Thanks, Al Butler --- On Wed, 2/4/09, wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org <wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org> wrote: From: wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org <wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org> Subject: Wlug Digest, Vol 64, Issue 3 To: wlug(a)mail.wlug.org Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 11:40 PM Send Wlug mailing list submissions to wlug(a)mail.wlug.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wlug-request(a)mail.wlug.org You can reach the person managing the list at wlug-owner(a)mail.wlug.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wlug digest..." Today's Topics: 1. System 76: computers with Ubuntu pre-installed (Richard Klein) 2. Re: RH Enterprise 5.0 Question (Chuck Anderson) 3. FOSS Gaming Survey (Joseph Guarino) 4. Re: reaching college students with linux (Sean Corbett) 5. Re: RH Enterprise 5.0 Question (William Smith) 6. Re: reaching college students with linux (Gregory Avedissian) 7. Linux at 35,000 feet (Michael Long) 8. Re: Linux at 35,000 feet (John Stoffel) _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

1 0

Linux at 35,000 feet
by Michael Long Feb. 5, 2009

Feb. 5, 2009

Hi All, I took a trip on DirectAir to Florida this past weekend. I flew out of Worcester on a direct flight to Punta Gorda, Fl. I wish I could say it was for pleasure but that would not be true :( Anyway the airline is a public charter owned by Virgin America and operated by Jet Blue. What does this have to do with Linux? Each seat had a monitor with a gaming remote control. The passengers had the choice of watching TV or movies. They could also listen to many different radio stations or select by artist. I found it refreshing to put on some Jimmy Hendricks and Frank Zappa. The last, or was it first, option available were games. Our friend Tux appeared in two of the games and the rest were available on all modern distributions of Linux. I spent a fair amount of time playing Doom. When you board the plane it feels very modern. There is a pleasant blue glow to the cabin. First and second class is separated by clear Plexiglas so the cabin feels very open. The mandatory speech about safety is done by video and is appropriately smart-alecky. All in all it was a great experience. Look them up if you need to travel on the east coast. Oh yeah, tickets were $99 each way. Happy Travels, Mike

2 1

Re: [Wlug] reaching college students with linux
by Sean Corbett Feb. 5, 2009

Feb. 5, 2009

To be honest, I think the overwhelming majority of non-technical students will not want to get involved with Linux, even with Ubuntu... even some of my fellow computer science majors will only use Linux for coursework and refuse to touch it otherwise, mainly because they don't want to have to worry about "learning new software" or dealing with the fact that, in some cases, there aren't enough drivers to support all their software. Even Ubuntu can be a real pain in terms of out-of-the-box hardware compatibility, especially with laptops (which for most students serve as their main machine of use). I'm sort of sad to admit that many of the kids I go to school with are, in almost all cases, looking for the easiest means to accomplish anything; anything that requires too much effort is bound to be ignored by the majority. I picked up Linux out of genuine interest, and because I knew it served as a very good platform for development (and thus a worthwhile thing to use), and especially because of it's compliance with my (mild) disdain of proprietary software. Also, because I look up to Linus Torvalds, and Richard Stallman, and all those great guys... but, I don't know anyone else at my school who shares my enthusiasm. Perhaps its a bit better at a purely technical school (like WPI)... In short, if students aren't pursuing Linux out of their own interest (or at least out of necessity), I wouldn't try much beyond what you've already attempted in order to get kids more interested... I don't mean to be discouraging or pessimistic, but I really think your efforts are better spent aiding students who've developed an interest in running Linux on their own, as opposed to trying to turn them on to it. Hope this helps, -Sean C. > Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 13:31:19 -0800 (PST) > From: Andrew Perry <perryand(a)yahoo.com> > Subject: [Wlug] successful upgrade to openoffice.org 3.0 ; ubiquity of > .docx; reaching college students with linux > To: wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > Cc: Andrew Perry <perryand(a)gmail.com> > Message-ID: <377215.4592.qm(a)web35208.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > Hi Everyone, > > (1) Thanks a million for all of the help, especially the link to the fantastic tutorial, posted by James Gray, I think. I am in the process of installing hardy updates, and it appears that openoffice.org 3.0 is part of what's being installed, so it looks like everything is working perfectly. > > (2) To Greg: yes, I could ask students to submit all of their assignments in .doc or .rtf format (or even open office format), but they most wouldn't listen. Many can't figure out how to save to any format but .docx. It's a perpetual hassle to nag them. Besides that, I get many files from colleagues, professors at my college and other colleges and universities, as well as the Mass. Dept. of Education, and increasingly, most are in Office 2007 formats. It's hard to convert the whole world to linux. > > (3) Here is a new issue for everyone who is interested in commenting. I am a mathematician but besides math ,I also teach a computer literacy course each semester. You would all be proud: I do my best every semester to convert students to the linux religion, or at least to make them aware of linux and the evils of Microsoft. However, for every student who finds my linux modules interesting (about 2 hours of a 45-hour course on average), there are a dozen who get annoyed and find the material boring and irrelevant. > > Once I brought in a PC running compiz and they found that mildly intriguing. > > They absolutely hate the movie "revolution os". If I pass out ubuntu cds, I doubt they get used. > > Can anyone suggest teaching resources (videos, for example) that would be likely to make an impact for non-technically minded college students ? > > > Thanks, > Andrew > > -Dr. Andrew B. Perry > Dept. of Mathematics, Springfield College > Schoo Hall Room 123 > 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 > Work Phone (413)748-3193 > >

2 1

RH Enterprise 5.0 Question
by McDonald, Melissa Feb. 5, 2009

Feb. 5, 2009

Greetings, I need to determine the hardware configuration of a RH 5.0 Linux server. Is there a command that will probe the hardware configuration and send the output to the screen? Thanks in advance. Melissa McDonald 508.841.0549 (Office) 774.275.4449 (Mobile)

6 5