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Recent and Upcoming WLUG meetings
by Andy Stewart 16 Dec '03

16 Dec '03

Hi everybody, Please note that I just rescheduled a bunch of the meetings for calendar year 2004. Please check the WLUG website for more information. Please accept my apologies for scheduling two Wednesday meetings for consecutive months. I am scheduling around my commitment to teach a Linux course for the Adult Education program in Chelmsford, MA. A note about the December 2003 meeting: This meeting was well attended, with at least 30 people present to watch the "Revolution OS" DVD. Many thanks for your generous donations to help defray the cost of the raffle items (we broke even *and* set a WLUG record of $58.50!), and to Chuck Anderson for his help with the projection system. It was nice to see some faces of people who occasionally attend meetings in addition to the "regulars" and a few newbies. With regard to the January 2004 meeting, there was an interesting discussion on the WLUG mailing list recently about digital signatures and e-mail. I would like to know if there are any volunteers who would like to do a presentation on this topic. If so, please send me an e-mail. Here are some ideas which came to mind: - how to create your own digital signature (and why) - how to get your friend's digital signature and be sure it is authentic - how to configure (pick a mail client) for use with digital signatures - verifying a digitally signed e-mail - other related ideas? Finally, if you are unfamiliar with this comic strip, take a look. Its pretty amusing: http://www.userfriendly.org Happy holidays! Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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it was a *great* December meeting!
by Brian McLinden 13 Dec '03

13 Dec '03

The film Thursday was tops, a great intro about where free software and open source came from. In a mock of the film, Doug Mildram stood us all for free beer at the Boynton afterwards. Present: Scott, Amy, Greg, Andy, Doug, Chuck, Keith, Al. I truly appreciate all you do, Andy. It was a great evening and intro for the holidaze ahead! __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/

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Give away...
by Keller, Tim 13 Dec '03

13 Dec '03

Hey Everybody, I've got a color 13" television I'd like to give to a good home. It's an oldie, but a goodie. Every once and a while it'll get a bit of a red ting, but overall it works great. Note, this TV only has coax input. I've also got a 21" viewsonic monitor that the red electron gun has gone on the fritz. I'm sure a monitor tech could fix it in no time, however since it cost me nothing, I feel no qualms in just giving it away. Other stuff... 1. Pentium 166 with 128mb of ram. This entire machine is questionable and possibly a fire hazard (due to some dodgy soldering work done by your truly on the power supply after the fans bearings went south and I installed a new fan) though I ran the machine for many years after my repairs and never had a problem. With a new case and power supply this machine would probably be a great firewall. It's also got a 512mb and 3gig hard drive in it. 2. Huge Server case minus power supply. 6 bays in the front, lots of room for fans and drives and all that good stuff. If you want any of this stuff, just write me back and I'll bring it with me to the next wlug meeting. If you can't make it to the meeting, we'll arrange something. Thanks, Tim.

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WLUG Meeting: Thurs Dec 12 7:00 PM
by Andy Stewart 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Hi everybody, Our next WLUG meeting will actually be a joint meeting with WLUG and the Worcester County IEEE Computer Society. We'll hold the meeting in Olin Hall room 107 on the WPI campus in Worcester, MA USA (we've been there before) since it seats more people. We're anticipating a larger than normal turnout for this meeting due to the showing of the documentary entitled "Revolution OS" (on DVD!). This documentary runs for 1 hour and 25 minutes. No expertise in Linux is required to understand this documentary. Revolution OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement. This documentary features interviews with Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda. I've purchased a few items for the no-cost raffle which will be held after the showing of the documentary: o a copy of the Revolution OS DVD o a Revolution OS tee shirt o a Revolution OS coffee mug o a Revolution OS poster (11"x7") As always, light refreshments will be served at the meeting. After the meeting, we'll adjourn to the Boynton Restaurant for pizza and beer, and all are invited to attend. -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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verizon, suse
by gaba 10 Dec '03

10 Dec '03

hello, im staying in worcester for christmas so im trying to configure a dsl verizon's account in suse but i cant figure out how to do it. i called the verizon support's center and they told me that verizon doesnt works with linux!!!! Does somebody can help me? thanks, gaba

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Wireless PCMCIA cards?
by Bill Smith 06 Dec '03

06 Dec '03

List, I recently was given a 3com wireless gateway from my employer. I would like to put this baby to good use! :D I have to admit that I am at a loss as to what to do about the NIC, though. I am running RH9 (although this may change soon) on my Gateway Solo 9100 laptop. Sometimes it's running WinMe, but that's only when I want to play games. ;) My question to you all is this: What PCMCIA Wireless (802.11b) cards should I consider? Which ones should I avoid? * I would like to be able to do WEP as painlessly as possible, if I can. * I'm not too worried about range, since my apartment isn't terribly large. There are a couple walls to contend with, though. 8\ On the other hand, the battery on this laptop STINKS, so it will be plugged into the wall around 99.4% of the time that the system is up. Because of that little truth, power consumption is not a big worry. * The gateway I have does 802.11b. I'm not worried about doing 802.11g, just yet. :) Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com Oh, and I just made that up. * TAG! v3.1 *

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Red Hat vs SuSE....
by Bill Smith 06 Dec '03

06 Dec '03

okay. I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has been following the goings-on with respect to Red Hat (dropping the Personal Edition in favor of Fedora) and SuSE (being bought by Novell). I am looking for some honest advice here. I am NOT trying to start a flame war or a distro war. I will honestly take suggestions. I am running Aurora Linux on a Sun SPARCstation 10 (it's based on RH7.3) and RH9 on my laptop (Gateway Solo 9100) right now. I have been running Red Hat on my systems since 5.x. given what I have seen in the news, I think it is time to consider another distro, though. Here are my thoughts so far: I am feeling a bit underwhelmed with what i've been reading about Fedora from RH's website and from Aurora's list. I can't say with any level of certainty that I will stay and shift to Fedora. I will likely shift to another distro, though. I'm not considering Debian at the moment because I don't think that it moves quickly enough to keep up with updated stuff. Perhaps that is a flawed perception, but I don't look kindly on installing a baseline (from the CD) and spending a month of Sundays running apt-get to update everything. The last time i played with SuSE was around 1997 or 1998. I got the SuSE disc from CheapBytes so I could play with it. I liked the tools that it had (YaST was just getting ready to shift to YaST2, i think), but I didn't like the fact that many of the libraries were a couple versions behind what my favorite applications (of the day) wanted to find. I am actually favoring SuSE right now, if I can get what i need on CDs. (Andy, do you have any suggestions?) I cut my eye-teeth on Slackware back when Linux was still at 0.99pl10. My Dad sent me a box of floppies that had everything i'd need to get started. I had a blast! I don't know about Slackware now. I have not been following them (at all) since I shifted to RH all those years ago. Gentoo is not even being considered right now. My fastest system is a P2/400, and that is running Win98se. (My wife uses it to play the Sims. Games are all Win* is good for anyway.) My fastest *nix box is my laptop, and that's a P2/266. I don't have the time nor the resources to (re?)compile everything to suit my system. Given these thoughts, the Debian and Gentoo folk should understand that my opinions, as stated above, are open to change. Show me where i misunderstood, and i will thank you. :) I'm just looking for a Distro that will let me install my system with a minimum of pain, let me tweak where I want, when i want, and provides a neat way to keep things up to date (think security, etc.).... I've gotten used to the RPM system of archives, but I prefer tarballs. I have this "thing" about putting anything I add to the system in /usr/local .... :) Thanks for any advice. Best regards, -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- William Smith wsmith-at-chezsmith-dot-com Fall River, MA http://www.chezsmith.com Bad Joke #2 -- Q: How many Real Men does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None. Real Men aren't afraid of the dark. * TAG! v3.1 *

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new mutt user ?'s
by Bill Mills-Curran 03 Dec '03

03 Dec '03

I've made the switch from pine to mutt, and I have 2 questions. 1. Why is mutt so slow in sending outgoing email? Pine delivered outgoing email quickly, but mutt seems MUCH slower -- too slow to even consider that there's a performance problem. It seems to be some issue about how it interfaces with sendmail. (I'm using my own machine as an outgoing relay through my web services provider.) 2. I had set up a filter in pine to move "[SPAM]" subject lines to a different folder. Should I try the same thing with mutt, or should I use procmail? (I'm not sure of the syntax.) mutt syntax? I can't find anything that looks right at all. procmail syntax? I already have spamassassin set up: :0fw: spamassassin.lock | /usr/bin/spamc So I think I need to add: :0 * ^Subject: *\[SPAM\] $HOME/Mail/autospam (I'm a newbie with procmail, too.) TIA, Bill

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RE: [Wlug] Router/firewall
by Hemstreet, Jeffrey L (Jeffrey) 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

I just bought a Dlink DI-514 from Best buy for $30 after rebates (about 2 weeks ago, $70 before). I would suggest either D-link, Linksys, or Netgear. If you watch the Best Buy/OfficeMax/Staples ads, you can end up one for 30-50. The Wireless Access Points themselves are $80. I bought the Dlink because it's not Linksys/Cisco, and I have been VERY happy with it. All 3 of these devices are fully compatable, so you can buy anyones card and connect with the access point. I would go with the 802.11b wireless unless you have a great need for a large wireless network (5+ clients). Where you plan on running lots of traffic over the wireless (i.e., not just web surfing/email) jeff -----Original Message----- From: wlug-bounces(a)mail.wlug.org [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org]On Behalf Of Mike Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 10:48 PM To: 'Worcester Linux Users Group' Subject: RE: [Wlug] Router/firewall You already have the Linksys router just ad any wireless access point behind it for a reduced cost. This way you can still have a wired network in your house/office and a wireless network as well. An access point without the "router" portion should be cheaper and can offer you more options in control i.e. rules for the wired intranet and different rules for the wireless intranet. I have an older Proxim unit that works well. It uses a PCMCIA card as well as the remote "users" so it's very upgradeable without the need to change the whole unit. ~ Michael LaPointe ~ HorizonNet Communications ~ Http://allLongdistance.com ~ Mailto:mike@alllongdistance.com > -----Original Message----- > From: wlug-bounces(a)mail.wlug.org > [mailto:wlug-bounces@mail.wlug.org] On Behalf Of Doug Chamberlin > Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 10:24 PM > To: Worcester Linux Users Group > Subject: Re: [Wlug] Router/firewall > > > At 11/27/2003 01:38 AM (Thursday), mlong(a)datalong.com wrote: > > >I am looking to replace a Linksys router/firewall with a wireless > >router/firewall > >solution and was wondering what routers others would recommend. > > Err, why not a Linksys wireless router/firewall? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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

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Ultimate Linux Box
by Andy Stewart 01 Dec '03

01 Dec '03

HI everybody, I received this e-mail which I am forwarding to you. Go to the website mentioned in the e-mail and register if you are interested in possibly winning the $5000 Ultimate Linux Box as featured in Linux Journal magazine. I'd be happy to let the winner share with me... :-) Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

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