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Re: [Wlug] Here I am begging again.

by Richard Klein

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Ken Jones<kjones(a)ziplink.net> wrote: > I have not been making the meetings. That does not mean my SUN ULTRA1 > running Aurora Linux can no longer create 'interesting' problems. This time > the second SUN ULTRA running Gentoo is in cahoots. > > I have a new SAMSUNG SyncMaster flat screen monitor. I have attached this > monitor via a Belkin SUN adapter to my ULTRA1's. It does not work!! The > monitor flashes a little square window saying something about "Not optimum > mode". It feels that it has not been configured correctly. The buttons on > the right of the monitor, which are there to set it up, also do not work > with the SUN's is attached. > > The monitor works fine with PC type machinery. The Belkin worked fine with > a regular old tube monitor. (I have not dug out the old monitor to check > whether it still works. I suspect it does.) > > Anybody have any ideas? I assume you're using the analog input to the monitor rather than DVI. Is that the case? Either way, 60 Hz refresh is probably what you want for an LCD display. I think the analog input can tolerate other refresh rates, but DVI can only handle 60 Hz. We'd have to look at the monitor specs to figure out what other settings should be. -- Rich Sent from Marlborough, MA, United States

Aug. 20, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Here I am begging again.

by jrm8005＠gmail.com

> I have not been making the meetings. That does not mean my SUN ULTRA1 > running Aurora Linux can no longer create 'interesting' problems. This time > the second SUN ULTRA running Gentoo is in cahoots. > > I have a new SAMSUNG SyncMaster flat screen monitor. I have attached this > monitor via a Belkin SUN adapter to my ULTRA1's. It does not work!! The > monitor flashes a little square window saying something about "Not optimum > mode". It feels that it has not been configured correctly. The buttons on > the right of the monitor, which are there to set it up, also do not work > with the SUN's is attached. > > The monitor works fine with PC type machinery. The Belkin worked fine with > a regular old tube monitor. (I have not dug out the old monitor to check > whether it still works. I suspect it does.) > > Anybody have any ideas? Did your monitor come with a manual? If so, you should be able to find the supported modes listed in a table. Check that your X/drivers/dongle/etc are using a mode in that table. > > Ken Jones > kjones(a)ziplink.net > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug

Aug. 20, 2009

Here I am begging again.

by Ken Jones

I have not been making the meetings. That does not mean my SUN ULTRA1 running Aurora Linux can no longer create 'interesting' problems. This time the second SUN ULTRA running Gentoo is in cahoots. I have a new SAMSUNG SyncMaster flat screen monitor. I have attached this monitor via a Belkin SUN adapter to my ULTRA1's. It does not work!! The monitor flashes a little square window saying something about "Not optimum mode". It feels that it has not been configured correctly. The buttons on the right of the monitor, which are there to set it up, also do not work with the SUN's is attached. The monitor works fine with PC type machinery. The Belkin worked fine with a regular old tube monitor. (I have not dug out the old monitor to check whether it still works. I suspect it does.) Anybody have any ideas? Ken Jones kjones(a)ziplink.net

Aug. 20, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Book list with names.

by Sebastian Courtney

Unfortunately I must a tend a wake tonight so I will not make the meeting. Feel free to disperse the books I wanted to others. See you all at the next meeting, Sebastian On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Tim Keller <turbofx(a)gmail.com> wrote: > It's yours! > > > > On 8/15/09, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > I would like to claim "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" as it looks > > like nobody else has yet. > > > > > >> Hacking / Security Books: > >> "Secrets of a super hacker" by The Knightmare. > >> [S. Courtney] "Hackers Challenge: Test Your Incident Response Skills > >> Using 20 Scenarios" (3rd Edition) > >> [S. Courtney] "Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions" > > "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" > >> > >> Math Books: > >> [Frank Moody] "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth H. > >> Rosen > >> [Frank Moody] "Languages and Machines" Thomas A Sudkamp > >> [Alex Haley] "A Primer for Calculus" > >> > >> Misc: > >> [Alex Haley] "Latex" Second edition > >> [Frank Moody] "The Latex Companion" > >> [Frank Moody] "Mips RISC Architecture" > >> "Database Systems" > >> "Creating Web Pages with HTML" (3rd edition) > >> [Frank Moody] "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation": Tanenbaum > >> (includes Minux 2.0 disk!!) > >> [Frank Moody] "PCI System Architecture" (Third Edition) > >> > >> Programming Books: > >> [Alex Haley] "The C Primer" Third edition (this book is a bit dog eared) > >> [Alex Haley] "A First Book of Ansi C" (a bit dog eared but excellent) > >> "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" > >> "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" > >> "Virtual Reality Playhouse" > >> "Creating Turbo C++ Games" (The disk for this book is long lost) > >> [Keith Wright] "Linux Kernel Programming" (Third Edition) > >> "Using Java 1.1" (Third Edition) > >> "Using JavaBeans" (CD Long gone) > >> [S. Courtney] "Sams' Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" (Second Edition) > >> "Beginning Fedora 2" (Yeah it's 8 versions behind, but as a beginners > >> guide to red hat linux systems, it's great) > >> "User Interfaces In C++ And Object-Oriented Programming" by Mark Goodwin > >> "Gardens of Imagination: Programming 3d Maze Games in C/C++" (Disk long > >> gone) > >> "NetWarriors In C Programming 3d Multiplaery games" (CD Long gone) > >> [Ryan Pugatch] "Programming perl" (O'Reilly) > >> [Ryan Pugatch] "Learning Perl" (O'Reilly) > >> [Ryan Pugatch] "Perl by Example" (Ellie Quigley) > >> > >> Thanks, > >> Tim. > > -- > > Eric Martin > > Key fingerprint = D1C4 086E DBB5 C18E 6FDA B215 6A25 7174 A941 3B9F > > > > > > -- > Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com > > I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their > constituents as "consumers". > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > -- Sebastian Courtney WPI 2012 ECE+RBE 617-894-2460

Aug. 20, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Article on UNIX 40th anniverasry

by jbaillie＠netzero.com

I actually have played pong on a monitor like that back in my DEC daze. What's even more amusing is the paper tape loader to the right of the monitor. It sure relieved you of toggling in the boot loader. We would actually repair some of the paper tapes. jb ---------- Original Message ---------- From: E Johnson <iris.gates(a)gmail.com> To: Worcester Linux Users Group <wlug(a)mail.wlug.org> Subject: [Wlug] Article on UNIX 40th anniverasry Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:59:20 -0400 Good report by the BBC on development of UNIX. Has an interesting photo of a very old round green CRT monitor (in hexagonal case) at a workstation http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8205976.stm Enjoy, Liz J _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug ____________________________________________________________ Just drop it. Click here for free information on weight loss surgery! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxRbzrvjPpExUGZMIb6GPtO…

Aug. 20, 2009

Article on UNIX 40th anniverasry

by E Johnson

Good report by the BBC on development of UNIX. Has an interesting photo of a very old round green CRT monitor (in hexagonal case) at a workstation http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8205976.stm Enjoy, Liz J

Aug. 20, 2009

REMINDER: Meeting Thursday, 7 PM

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI gang, This is the umpteenth reminder about the upcoming WLUG meeting with maddog as our speaker. Please note the different meeting room: Salisbury Labs room 104. Also, for those of you who are interested in music, check this selection, allegedly made only from the sounds available in Windows XP and Windows 98 (at least the OS is good for something): http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1802740 See ya at the meeting! Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group (http://www.wlug.org) Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group (http://linux.meetup.com/393) Amateur Radio: KB1OIQ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFKi27iOjiraCaOTOoRAgQfAKCZ135p2dvbYrlqNaMwj2fKZZ2RxwCg0yqN k+tp+5150cDgkqDHU8Zl0i0= =6WcP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Aug. 19, 2009

PCMCIA to ExpressCard

by dulsi＠identicalsoftware.com

Well, I purchased a Rosewill RC-608 ExpressCard to CardBus Adapter but apparently linux doesn't support it. When I plug it in with the slimscsi card I get: Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pciehp 0000:00:1c.1:pcie02: Card present on Slot(0-1) Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: disabling ASPM on pre-1.1 PCIe device. You can enable it with 'pcie_aspm=force' Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: PCI bridge, secondary bus 0000:04 Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: IO window: disabled Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: MEM window: disabled Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: PREFETCH window: disabled Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pciehp: Could not get hotplug parameters Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: PCI bridge, secondary bus 0000:04 Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: IO window: disabled Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: MEM window: disabled Aug 18 16:15:44 mars kernel: pci 0000:03:00.0: PREFETCH window: disabled I'm assuming "pciehp: Could not get hotplug parameters" means it is not supported. If anyone has suggestions on how to get it to work let me know. Dennis Payne dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com

Aug. 18, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Fedora 11 and mingw32

by Mike Frysinger

On Friday 14 August 2009 13:57:54 Tatsh wrote: > Mingw32 on Linux is impossible unless you want to do simple Win32 stuff > like calling MessageBox() and running the exe with Wine. I would love to > be able to build Qt4 and SDL apps for Windows under Linux (I use Gentoo) > but it seems it always fails miserably, even when copying libs and > headers from a Windows installation of Mingw. I just run a VM and > compile there, either with gcc or cl (Visual Studio). i use mingw to build large projects frequently like cross toolchains, graphical debuggers, USB debuggers, and havent had any real problems i cant tell you anything about using cmake as everything i do is autotool based and it works just fine -mike

Aug. 16, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Fedora 11 and mingw32

by dulsi＠identicalsoftware.com

Quoting Tatsh <ddrtist(a)gmail.com>: > Mingw32 on Linux is impossible... I hate it when people tell me things are impossible. cmake can't be fixed without changing the FindSDL.cmake. I'd probably have to fix the finding of expat, physfs, and png since I use them as well. Rather than go down that rabbit hole, I started with my existing make file. Hardcoded SDL_FLAGS to -I/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/include/SDL/ instead of running sdl-config. Needed to add mingw32 and SDLmain to the link line. Since compiling SDL_image with mingw32 cross compiler doesn't work with the configure script, I stripped the png loading code and put that directly in my source. Viola everything compiles, runs with wine and runs on my wife's windows box. The project is Bt Builder. It is an open source implementation of the Bard's Tale Construction Set (or at least the beginnings of one). http://identicalsoftware.com/btbuilder/ Dennis Payne dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com

Aug. 16, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Book list with names.

by Tim Keller

It's yours! On 8/15/09, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I would like to claim "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" as it looks > like nobody else has yet. > > >> Hacking / Security Books: >> "Secrets of a super hacker" by The Knightmare. >> [S. Courtney] "Hackers Challenge: Test Your Incident Response Skills >> Using 20 Scenarios" (3rd Edition) >> [S. Courtney] "Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions" > "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" >> >> Math Books: >> [Frank Moody] "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth H. >> Rosen >> [Frank Moody] "Languages and Machines" Thomas A Sudkamp >> [Alex Haley] "A Primer for Calculus" >> >> Misc: >> [Alex Haley] "Latex" Second edition >> [Frank Moody] "The Latex Companion" >> [Frank Moody] "Mips RISC Architecture" >> "Database Systems" >> "Creating Web Pages with HTML" (3rd edition) >> [Frank Moody] "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation": Tanenbaum >> (includes Minux 2.0 disk!!) >> [Frank Moody] "PCI System Architecture" (Third Edition) >> >> Programming Books: >> [Alex Haley] "The C Primer" Third edition (this book is a bit dog eared) >> [Alex Haley] "A First Book of Ansi C" (a bit dog eared but excellent) >> "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" >> "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" >> "Virtual Reality Playhouse" >> "Creating Turbo C++ Games" (The disk for this book is long lost) >> [Keith Wright] "Linux Kernel Programming" (Third Edition) >> "Using Java 1.1" (Third Edition) >> "Using JavaBeans" (CD Long gone) >> [S. Courtney] "Sams' Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" (Second Edition) >> "Beginning Fedora 2" (Yeah it's 8 versions behind, but as a beginners >> guide to red hat linux systems, it's great) >> "User Interfaces In C++ And Object-Oriented Programming" by Mark Goodwin >> "Gardens of Imagination: Programming 3d Maze Games in C/C++" (Disk long >> gone) >> "NetWarriors In C Programming 3d Multiplaery games" (CD Long gone) >> [Ryan Pugatch] "Programming perl" (O'Reilly) >> [Ryan Pugatch] "Learning Perl" (O'Reilly) >> [Ryan Pugatch] "Perl by Example" (Ellie Quigley) >> >> Thanks, >> Tim. > -- > Eric Martin > Key fingerprint = D1C4 086E DBB5 C18E 6FDA B215 6A25 7174 A941 3B9F > > -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Aug. 15, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Book list with names.

by Eric Martin

I would like to claim "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" as it looks like nobody else has yet. > Hacking / Security Books: > "Secrets of a super hacker" by The Knightmare. > [S. Courtney] "Hackers Challenge: Test Your Incident Response Skills > Using 20 Scenarios" (3rd Edition) > [S. Courtney] "Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions" "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" > > Math Books: > [Frank Moody] "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth H. > Rosen > [Frank Moody] "Languages and Machines" Thomas A Sudkamp > [Alex Haley] "A Primer for Calculus" > > Misc: > [Alex Haley] "Latex" Second edition > [Frank Moody] "The Latex Companion" > [Frank Moody] "Mips RISC Architecture" > "Database Systems" > "Creating Web Pages with HTML" (3rd edition) > [Frank Moody] "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation": Tanenbaum > (includes Minux 2.0 disk!!) > [Frank Moody] "PCI System Architecture" (Third Edition) > > Programming Books: > [Alex Haley] "The C Primer" Third edition (this book is a bit dog eared) > [Alex Haley] "A First Book of Ansi C" (a bit dog eared but excellent) > "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" > "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" > "Virtual Reality Playhouse" > "Creating Turbo C++ Games" (The disk for this book is long lost) > [Keith Wright] "Linux Kernel Programming" (Third Edition) > "Using Java 1.1" (Third Edition) > "Using JavaBeans" (CD Long gone) > [S. Courtney] "Sams' Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" (Second Edition) > "Beginning Fedora 2" (Yeah it's 8 versions behind, but as a beginners > guide to red hat linux systems, it's great) > "User Interfaces In C++ And Object-Oriented Programming" by Mark Goodwin > "Gardens of Imagination: Programming 3d Maze Games in C/C++" (Disk long > gone) > "NetWarriors In C Programming 3d Multiplaery games" (CD Long gone) > [Ryan Pugatch] "Programming perl" (O'Reilly) > [Ryan Pugatch] "Learning Perl" (O'Reilly) > [Ryan Pugatch] "Perl by Example" (Ellie Quigley) > > Thanks, > Tim. -- Eric Martin Key fingerprint = D1C4 086E DBB5 C18E 6FDA B215 6A25 7174 A941 3B9F

Aug. 15, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Building a System

by Jim Dibb

Good points. I used a Live-thumb-drive to preview eeebuntu. Of course it was also really the only way to install it. No CD on an Asus 901... :) On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 7:26 PM, J.R. Mauro <jrm8005(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Jim Dibb<jimdibb(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > I just wanted to comment that installing Windows 7 is a significantly > > improved experience and its relative difficulty is probably not a selling > > point for Linux. > > It is still a far cry from being able to use a Live CD and verify that > the entire system will work perfectly before committing to an > installation. Also, what I like to call the ``post-install blues'' > have not yet been addressed in Windows: i.e., installing a sane > browser, office software, etc. etc. > > > > > >

Aug. 15, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Building a System

by J.R. Mauro

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Jim Dibb<jimdibb(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I just wanted to comment that installing Windows 7 is a significantly > improved experience and its relative difficulty is probably not a selling > point for Linux. It is still a far cry from being able to use a Live CD and verify that the entire system will work perfectly before committing to an installation. Also, what I like to call the ``post-install blues'' have not yet been addressed in Windows: i.e., installing a sane browser, office software, etc. etc. > > Linux has plenty of other selling points and I've installed eeebuntu- NBR > 3.01 on my wife's netbook, and it works really well but not perfectly. The > installation was not foolproof though ( because a certain fool botched it > without realizing it for about 2 months.) And some of the settings (acpi, > for example) still need to modified in a text editor. A well-flogged dead horse of a point: at least when things don't work you can find out why and where and fix them by hand as opposed to not at all. > > Windows 7 on my quad core is not perfect either, (native backup is > problematic, and something's keeping native DVD burning from working) but it > also works really well. There are draconian restrictions on DVD codecs that may or may not have an impact on Windows's ability to do things right. Linux generally lets you do these things in a technically illegal manner depending on where you are and where the person writing the open-source codecs is. The new-fangled DRM-enabled hardware these days may also have something to do with it. > > On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Sean Flynn <sflynn(a)flynnsplaza.com> wrote: >> >> I was wondering about why the original poster wanted to buy a system >> with FreeBSD/Linux installed by the manufacturer. Was the intent to >> support a freebsd/Linux friendly vendor, or was it to make everything >> easier. >> >> If possible I like to support Linux friendly vendor. But I can easily >> say that installing Linux is incredibly easy, especially when compared >> to installing windows, I don't know if you can justify extra cost just >> to support a Linux friendly vendor. >> _______________________________________________ >> Wlug mailing list >> Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org >> http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > >

Aug. 14, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Building a System

by Jim Dibb

I just wanted to comment that installing Windows 7 is a significantly improved experience and its relative difficulty is probably not a selling point for Linux. Linux has plenty of other selling points and I've installed eeebuntu- NBR 3.01 on my wife's netbook, and it works really well but not perfectly. The installation was not foolproof though ( because a certain fool botched it without realizing it for about 2 months.) And some of the settings (acpi, for example) still need to modified in a text editor. Windows 7 on my quad core is not perfect either, (native backup is problematic, and something's keeping native DVD burning from working) but it also works really well. On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Sean Flynn <sflynn(a)flynnsplaza.com> wrote: > I was wondering about why the original poster wanted to buy a system > with FreeBSD/Linux installed by the manufacturer. Was the intent to > support a freebsd/Linux friendly vendor, or was it to make everything > easier. > > If possible I like to support Linux friendly vendor. But I can easily > say that installing Linux is incredibly easy, especially when compared > to installing windows, I don't know if you can justify extra cost just > to support a Linux friendly vendor. > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Aug. 14, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Building a System

by Sean Flynn

I was wondering about why the original poster wanted to buy a system with FreeBSD/Linux installed by the manufacturer. Was the intent to support a freebsd/Linux friendly vendor, or was it to make everything easier. If possible I like to support Linux friendly vendor. But I can easily say that installing Linux is incredibly easy, especially when compared to installing windows, I don't know if you can justify extra cost just to support a Linux friendly vendor.

Aug. 14, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Fedora 11 and mingw32

by Tatsh

Mingw32 on Linux is impossible unless you want to do simple Win32 stuff like calling MessageBox() and running the exe with Wine. I would love to be able to build Qt4 and SDL apps for Windows under Linux (I use Gentoo) but it seems it always fails miserably, even when copying libs and headers from a Windows installation of Mingw. I just run a VM and compile there, either with gcc or cl (Visual Studio). dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com wrote: > I installed fedora 11 on my old laptop and turned back on glitch free > audio. It almost works perfectly. Sufficient that I probably > wouldn't bother turning it off now. > > I think the hard drive is starting to fail so I decided to purchase a > new laptop. Since I'd like some 3D functionality now I decided to go > with the Intel GMA X4500. Unfortunately Fedora 11 stumbled here. I > thought the picture quality wasn't very good and found it was using > the vesa drivers not the intel drivers. Searching found that others > had the same issue but it worked on Fedora 10. Tried a Fedora 10 live > CD and the display was nice and sharp. Modified the xorg.conf to use > the intel drivers and Fedora 11 also became nice and sharp. > > Anyway onto my question, has anyone played with the mingw32 cross > compiler on Fedora 11? I've created a simple hello world app and > cmake file (since I hate autotools). I've got it compiling by > creating a Toolchain file but it seems like that is something that > should be provided with the mingw32. Is there a standard Toolchain > file somewhere and I just haven't found it? > > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug >

Aug. 14, 2009

Re: [Wlug] (no subject)

by John Stoffel

Tim> Here's my .02 cents on building a machine. I'm going to chime in here as well with my thoughts on system building options. 0. Motherboard. - integrated vs discrete graphics. This is a toughie. For a home server, I'd go integrated. Heck, I'd try to get something with a serial console so I could manage it without a KVM, since ideally the system will be headless most of the time and just serving data, etc. - PS/2 mouse/keyboard ports or all USB? Depends on what you have and whether you're replacing it all or using existing stuff. - PCIe slots. - unless you game, don't bother with lots of x16 slots, maybe two, but get as many slots as you can. If you have legacy PCI cards you want to use, that's another factor. Think long term expandability. Remember that PCIe x1 cards will fit in x4,8,16 slots, they just won't get the performance advantage. Doesn't go the other way though. - SATA ports on board. I'd get a bunch if I can, since if you ever load up the system with lots of drives, you want to put off the day you need a PCIe SATA board. This is why I like x4 or x8 slots for the future. 0b. Network Gigabit by default. Upgrade your home switch too. If you can, get dual Gig ports, but don't sweat it too much otherwise. - skip wireless for a desktop, unless you absolutely need to put it somehwere with only power access. Then get an 802.11n card for the system and upgrade your Access Point (AP) as well. Tim> 1. Memory. You can never have too much of it. I'd say try to Tim> get a board that'll do 8GB with the expectation you'll be there Tim> at some point. Absolutely. Spending more on memory is a better idea than more on a slightly faster CPU. Don't sweat DDR2 vs DDR3 at this time unless you're seriously number crunching. Tim> 2. CPU: go duel at a minimum. If you could swing a quad I'd say Tim> go for it. Dual. Sorry, being pedantic. But I agree. I also lean heavily towards AMD because I like that they've been doing documentation drops on their GPUs, and because I want CPU vendor competition, not just one vendor. But as a suggestion, graph CPU speed vs $$$ for a family of systems and look for the sweet spot, which is where the price goes up sharply for just a small gain in speed. Do the same for the number of cores, and put them on the same graph. Think about cache, etc. Right now, the Triple Core AMD X2s looks nice. For a set amount of $$$, I'd personally go with more cores vs higher speed. Also, NEVER overclock. It's just not worth it. Yeah, it makes you feel studly, but esp for a home server, you want stability and low power draw, since it will be on all the time. Oh yeah, think about power disappation. Try to get the lowest wattage parts you can. Another reason why more cores, slower clock freq and lower thermals can be a win. Again, think about whether you really need to spend $100 more to get 200 Mhz of speed. Think how much memory you could buy instead! Or disk space. Tim> 3. Video card: Get something that will do HDMI and is capable of Tim> duel head. I've got a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS with 512MB of video Tim> memory and it cost me a whopping 40 dollars! The thing to think about is whether you go Dual HDMI, or one VGA and one HDMI. Or do you get Dual HDMI and an HDMI->VGA adaptor. One slot or two? Fanless or big honking fan? If you're not playing games, getting a video card which will have good opensource support is my metric. Go AMD. Also, quiet is nice. Tim> 4. Harddrives: If your going to spring for 1, go ahead and buy Tim> two and then mirror them. Mirrored drives have now saved my ass Tim> on three occasions. Hear hear! It's almost tempting to get an USB thumbdrive to boot from, and the two disks are just a mirror MD RAID setup, with LVM on top. Around $100/per drive is a sweet spot, you can get two 1Tb drives mirrored. Nice. Tim> 5. Case: Honestly I like cases that don't resemble a disco under Tim> my desk. I'm also fond of 120mm case fans. They move a shit Tim> load of air and are quiet. I've gotten and been really happy with the CoolerMaster Centurion 5 all black case without any windows. Lots of bays, nice clean design, plenty of IO ports up front to use with USB/Firewire. Tim> Power Supply: I wouldn't go smaller than a 350W. If you ever Tim> decide to suddenly add two more drives or a burner, nothing sucks Tim> more than your power supply being the weak link. Go with a quiet and energy efficient one if you can. Tim> 6. OS: Do it yourself. I'm not sure if Ubuntu will let you Tim> mirror drives at install, I know the Red Hat family of distros Tim> will. Doing your own install will at least give you an explicit Tim> understanding of what packages you've installed. Heck we could Tim> probably make a meeting out of helping you install and tweak your Tim> machine! Absolutely. Have fun with the system. John

Aug. 14, 2009

REMINDER: Upcoming WLUG meeting

by Andy Stewart

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI Everybody, This is the first in an infinite series of reminders about our upcoming WLUG meeting. It will be held on Thursday, August 20th, at 7:00 PM on the WPI campus in Worcester, MA USA. Note that we will be meeting in a different meeting room. The Access Grid room has been recently dismantled and is no longer available for our meetings. Chuck Anderson has secured our use of Salisbury Labs Room 104 (thanks, Chuck!!) for this meeting. Please note that the website has updated directions for this meeting location. Our guest speaker at this meeting will be Jon 'maddog' Hall, and he will be speaking on the topic of "Making Money from Free Software". This promises to be an excellent meeting that you won't want to miss. After the meeting, we'll adjourn to the pizza restaurant (Tech Pizza on Highland Street) for our usual sodas, pizza, and great conversation. I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting. See ya later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group (http://www.wlug.org) Chelmsford Linux Meetup Group (http://linux.meetup.com/393) Amateur Radio: KB1OIQ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFKhK38OjiraCaOTOoRAp1XAKDX4H0Tona7cfWNf4JlM1YtQTTD1ACfZONo auSmqgUQtCjlmgGaCuyJUOk= =Hm9h -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Aug. 14, 2009

USENIX HotPar '10 Call For Papers Now Available

by Lionel Garth Jones

The Program Committee for the 2nd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism (HotPar '10) invites you to submit position papers. HotPar '10 will bring together researchers and practitioners doing innovative work in the area of parallel computing. HotPar recognizes the broad impact of multicore computing and seeks relevant contributions in all fields, including application design, languages and compilers, systems, and architecture. We request submissions of position papers that propose new directions for research of products in these areas, advocate non-traditional approaches to the problems engendered by parallelism, or potentially generate controversy and discussion. Submissions are due January 24, 2010. More information and submission guidelines are available at http://www.usenix.org/hotpar10/cfpa We look forward to receiving your submissions! Sincerely, Geoff Lowney, Intel David Patterson, University of California, Berkeley HotPar '10 Program Co-Chairs hotpar10chairs(a)usenix.org

Aug. 13, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Book list with names.

by Keith Wright

> From: Tim Keller <turbofx(a)gmail.com> > > I am weary of the allegiances of any politician who > refers to their constituents as "consumers". Are you sure you're weary and not wary? -- Keith PS: I worry.

Aug. 13, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Book list with names.

by Tim Keller

Actually you're right, totally wrong word, though I do have to say after listening to our politicians babble, I feel myself getting weary. I've fixed the "feature"... On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Keith Wright <kwright(a)keithdiane.us> wrote: > > From: Tim Keller <turbofx(a)gmail.com> > > > > I am weary of the allegiances of any politician who > > refers to their constituents as "consumers". > > Are you sure you're weary and not wary? > > -- Keith > > PS: I worry. > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > -- I am leery of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Aug. 13, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Book list with names.

by Richard Klein

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Keith Wright<kwright(a)keithdiane.us> wrote: >> From: Tim Keller <turbofx(a)gmail.com> >> >> I am weary of the allegiances of any politician who >> refers to their constituents as "consumers". > > Are you sure you're weary and not wary? Or wooly. >From Bull Durham: THE BACK OF THE BUS -- Nuke sits across the aisle from Crash, who's re-reading Thomas Pynchon. Nuke has a guitar and is struggling with some chords to "Try a Little Tenderness". He butchers the chords and the words. NUKE (singing softly) Oh she may get wooly, women do get wooly, because of all the stress... CRASH (in disgust) Gimme that. CRASH STRONGARMS THE GUITAR from Nuke. CRASH I hate people who get the words wrong. It ain't "woolly" it's "weary" and it nobody's got stress, they're wearing a dress. (more at http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/bulldurham.txt) -- Rich Sent from Marlborough, MA, United States

Aug. 13, 2009

Re: [Wlug] (no subject)

by Tim Keller

Here's my .02 cents on building a machine. 1. Memory. You can never have too much of it. I'd say try to get a board that'll do 8GB with the expectation you'll be there at some point. 2. CPU: go duel at a minimum. If you could swing a quad I'd say go for it. 3. Video card: Get something that will do HDMI and is capable of duel head. I've got a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS with 512MB of video memory and it cost me a whopping 40 dollars! 4. Harddrives: If your going to spring for 1, go ahead and buy two and then mirror them. Mirrored drives have now saved my ass on three occasions. 5. Case: Honestly I like cases that don't resemble a disco under my desk. I'm also fond of 120mm case fans. They move a shit load of air and are quiet. Power Supply: I wouldn't go smaller than a 350W. If you ever decide to suddenly add two more drives or a burner, nothing sucks more than your power supply being the weak link. 6. OS: Do it yourself. I'm not sure if Ubuntu will let you mirror drives at install, I know the Red Hat family of distros will. Doing your own install will at least give you an explicit understanding of what packages you've installed. Heck we could probably make a meeting out of helping you install and tweak your machine! Later, Tim. On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 8:02 AM, Gregory Avedissian <avedis.g(a)verizon.net>wrote: > > > Brian McLinden wrote: > > > > > What do you think about this workaround -- > > http://www.inatux.com/order These are FSF/FOSS people. I can't see > > I would recommend more than their base system. Go with a dual-core cpu and > probably 2G memory, since it's so cheap now ($30-40 at newegg), and bigger > hard drive (e.g. 250GB for around $50). How much do they want with those > upgrades? > > > > > And, for cable broadband and live streaming of audio and video, what > > combination or package(s) of HW ad SW should I ask for. Wired case? > > Wireless case? > > If you're talking about wired vs. wireless network, it's a lot easier to > go with wired. Any linux distro will get you online with a basic desktop > installation. (OK, there are probably exceptions.) You'll also get audio > and video players. For audio and video, you might need to install > additional codecs, but that's generally pretty easy to do. > > Why don't you want to install the OS yourself? > > > > > 4. What Linux distribution would you pair with Unix? > > > > And, what will I learn from one that I don't learn from the other? > > > > I'm just going to reiterate what others said. You'll learn a lot from > installing the OS yourself. Ubuntu is a good choice if you're new to > linux, but anything in the top 5 or 10 in the list at distrowatch.com is > probably a good choice. The installation procedure is pretty easy these > days (on the major distros). > > Leave room on your hard drive for additional partitions to try other > flavors of linux if you want. That's sometimes a better choice than trying > it in a VM, because then you get to see how the OS works with your > hardware. That tends to be more of an issue when you're using the latest > hardware. > > > Greg > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > -- I am weary of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Aug. 13, 2009

Book list with names.

by Tim Keller

Please keep the other thread going, I'm going to use this thread so people can see what books have been taken. I went email by email and did it on a first come first serve basis... Here's the list with names: Hacking / Security Books: "Secrets of a super hacker" by The Knightmare. [S. Courtney] "Hackers Challenge: Test Your Incident Response Skills Using 20 Scenarios" (3rd Edition) [S. Courtney] "Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions" "Web Hacking: Attacks and Defense" Math Books: [Frank Moody] "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth H. Rosen [Frank Moody] "Languages and Machines" Thomas A Sudkamp [Alex Haley] "A Primer for Calculus" Misc: [Alex Haley] "Latex" Second edition [Frank Moody] "The Latex Companion" [Frank Moody] "Mips RISC Architecture" "Database Systems" "Creating Web Pages with HTML" (3rd edition) [Frank Moody] "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation": Tanenbaum (includes Minux 2.0 disk!!) [Frank Moody] "PCI System Architecture" (Third Edition) Programming Books: [Alex Haley] "The C Primer" Third edition (this book is a bit dog eared) [Alex Haley] "A First Book of Ansi C" (a bit dog eared but excellent) "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus" "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" "Virtual Reality Playhouse" "Creating Turbo C++ Games" (The disk for this book is long lost) [Keith Wright] "Linux Kernel Programming" (Third Edition) "Using Java 1.1" (Third Edition) "Using JavaBeans" (CD Long gone) [S. Courtney] "Sams' Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" (Second Edition) "Beginning Fedora 2" (Yeah it's 8 versions behind, but as a beginners guide to red hat linux systems, it's great) "User Interfaces In C++ And Object-Oriented Programming" by Mark Goodwin "Gardens of Imagination: Programming 3d Maze Games in C/C++" (Disk long gone) "NetWarriors In C Programming 3d Multiplaery games" (CD Long gone) [Ryan Pugatch] "Programming perl" (O'Reilly) [Ryan Pugatch] "Learning Perl" (O'Reilly) [Ryan Pugatch] "Perl by Example" (Ellie Quigley) Thanks, Tim. -- I am weary of the allegiances of any politician who refers to their constituents as "consumers".

Aug. 13, 2009