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Amarok
by Gary Hanley 23 Feb '07

23 Feb '07

I picked up a Cowon iAudio U3 a few weeks ago after and exhaustive search for a player with a good amount of memory (2GB) and plays ogg and flec files. Anyway, I've been burning my CDs to ogg/vorbis as time allows to build a library for myself and recently burned my old copy of Mike Oldfield's _Amarok_. I honestly never made the connection between the name of the album and my new favorite media player, but when I started playing amarok.ogg in the Amarok player this morning this popped up: "One of Mike Oldfield's best pieces of work, Amarok, inspired the name behind the audio-player you are currently using. Thanks for choosing Amarok! Mark Kretschmann Max Howell Chris Muehlhaeuser The many other people who have helped make Amarok what it is" Cool! Just thought I'd share that. :-) -- Gary

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Dell survey
by Mike Leo 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

http://www.dellideastorm.com/ I found this interesting.

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interesting backups problem
by Eric Stein 22 Feb '07

22 Feb '07

Hi all, I've got an interesting issue with disk usage. I have a hard disk image (from dd) stored on a server, and it needs to be compressed it to make room for other data. The image is 160 GB, but I only have 30 GB of free space to work with; the data isn't compressible enough to fit in 30 GB in the meantime. I don't need the image right now and having only a compressed copy is perfectly fine. How can I compress the image while simultaneously deleting the old data? I can think of a way to do it using perl, dd, and some other tools, but I'd much prefer to do it the "right" way if there is one. Eric

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switch distros???
by Bill Mills-Curran 20 Feb '07

20 Feb '07

I have an opportunity to get my wife to consider switching from Windows to linux, but I don't think Fedora is the right distro for her. I'm wondering about Linspire/Freespire (Freespire is to Linspire as Fedora is to RedHat?) or Ubuntu. (I've been using Redhat & Fedora since '98.) I've also been frustrated at some of the compatibility problems (like wireless) with Fedora, so I'm considering switching, too. On the other hand, I like being able to get some of the newest apps, like the newest gnucash, on Fedora. Eric Raymond's recent piece on Slashdot was pretty convincing, too. He argued that it is good for the linux open/free community to get linux in as many places as possible, even if it means mixing the distros with commercial drivers, because linux needs more market share in order to succeed against windows, particularly as 64-bit comes on the scene. The "family license" of Linspire seems pretty attractive, too. A big win would be to get my 17 yr old son off windows. He's forever infecting the windows box with junk from his web surfing. My most-used apps: Open office Tetex/latex ps utils gnucash mutt VPN (compatible with my work, which uses Cisco) wine perl firefox USB devices: scanner, drive, camera code development utils multimedia (not so good on Fedora) gpg My wife would like to use Publisher (windows). She might be able to use Scribus (I haven't used it successfully). Her favorites: AOL (I can't break her loose of this) MS office apps Suggestions? Thanks, Bill

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Update
by Bruce Linnell 19 Feb '07

19 Feb '07

My wife complained because she couldn't print something from her computer. I checked it out and found the print queue populated with the test pages I had tried to print from the Linux box. So the good news is that the pages are making it to the printer, and the bad news is that they are still not being printed. In fact, I could not cancel the first job. I had to reboot to clear the queue. Which then let my wife print her job. When I again tried to print, the printer made noises like it was going to start, but then just stalled again. Another reboot for me, and an update for the list. Anyone know of a possible fix?

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This 'n that
by Bruce Linnell 18 Feb '07

18 Feb '07

I want to thank everyone at Thursday night's meeting for the warm welcome. What a treat it was to be sitting in a group and being able to use words like "distro", "Gnome", and "YaST" without drawing strange looks. The pizza was good, too. :-) I learned alot, but not as much as I thought I had. When I tried to get my printer functional I must have forgotten or misunderstood the advice that was shared with me. (I will be bringing a notebook with me next meeting.) I've got openSuSE 10.2 and access the net through a wireless router. There are 4 boxes on the LAN and the other 3 are WinXP systems. The printer we use is connected to one of those machines. I can ping the printer host box from my Linux system. Printer sharing is turned on at the host, and the XP machines print fine through the LAN. The CUPS job monitor acts as if the print jobs are being sent, right down to the progress bar and the printer icon going from green to yellow and back to green, with no error messages. But of course, there is no page forthcoming from the printer or this email would have been much shorter. It sounded so simple at the meeting...

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linux eye candy / video card recommendation sought
by Andrew Perry 15 Feb '07

15 Feb '07

I heard on the Linux Action Show podcast about the Beryl project, which seems to offer linux users both eye candy and improved functionality through a 3D user interface. They say that Beryl will run acceptably with 256 MB and an ATI Radeon 7500, Geforce 3, or equivalent or better video card (seems like these are all a few years old, which is great for my budget.) Since my linux machine has 512 MB RAM but only on-board video, I found a used $20 Radeon 7500 on ebay and will try Beryl out. [Side note: I bought an "afordable performance pc" for linux from madtux.com for about $200, and am generally satisified but for the power supply which sounds like a snowblower. Very minimalist interior. Space for 6 HDD's, for example.] My question: In case the Radeon 7500 isn't up to the task, or for future expansion, are there any particular low-cost video cards that anyone would recommend which are very well supported under linux ? By "very well supported", I mean that it should work "out of the box" with all of the major distros, at least if this is possible. I'm sure that avid gamers would want only the best in video cards, but there are probably a lot of folks like myself who would like a pretty good video card for linux with no hassles. Thanks in advance. -Dr. Andrew B. Perry Dept. of Mathematics, Springfield College Schoo Hall Room 123 263 Alden St., Springfield MA 01109 Work Phone (413)748-3193

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Linux kernel expert needed
by John Spencer 13 Feb '07

13 Feb '07

Our client in northern MA is looking for a Linux kernel expert for a 6+ mth project. Must have experience with Linux kernel 2.4, any experience with 2.6 is a plus. Also any experience with security and MIPS is a plus as well. If you are interested in more details, please contact me via the phone # or email below. Regards, John John Spencer (978) 256-1113 ext 7608 jspencer(a)optimaleng.com OPTIMAL ENGINEERING PARTNERS "Your Optimal partner for full-lifecycle engineering services in embedded and real-time, systems and application development" www.optimalengineering.com <http://www.optimalengineering.com/>

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Re: [Wlug] Public net access
by Clint Moyer 13 Feb '07

13 Feb '07

There's Victory Cigar Bar at the end of Shrewsbury St. Comfy couches, but no pool tables. Of course, it may not be the ideal environment if you're afraid of lung cancer. ---- Aaron Haviland <orion(a)parsed.net> wrote: ============= I've been living in the Boston area for a few years, but recently moved back to Webster, and I'm searching to fill an addiction I developed in Somerville. I'm curious to know if there are any good cafe's with free wireless in the southern Worcester county area. Bonus points if they have pool tables and comfy couches. The only cafe I know of is Java Hut (I think it's called), but I haven't had a chance to get up there to check it out. Also, as my laptop has a tendancy to not work (I think it's a bad connection in the video component of the mobo), and I'm relatively broke at the moment, are there any places with public terminals available? -- Aaron Haviland _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

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Public net access
by Aaron Haviland 13 Feb '07

13 Feb '07

I've been living in the Boston area for a few years, but recently moved back to Webster, and I'm searching to fill an addiction I developed in Somerville. I'm curious to know if there are any good cafe's with free wireless in the southern Worcester county area. Bonus points if they have pool tables and comfy couches. The only cafe I know of is Java Hut (I think it's called), but I haven't had a chance to get up there to check it out. Also, as my laptop has a tendancy to not work (I think it's a bad connection in the video component of the mobo), and I'm relatively broke at the moment, are there any places with public terminals available? -- Aaron Haviland

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