Search results for "meeting" - WLUG

I choose Slackware.. God help me! (And you guys, please?)

by Brian McLinden

That�s why I hope to meet guys into slack. Tomorrow night�s meeting? The email below is about my climb in life and the three technical things foremost in my concerns. If you�re not into slack, there�s no need to continue reading. tks, Brian - - - - - - - - - - - - - I'm a newbie with just a little Fortran experience and a 1 gig HDD machine with Windows 98 and no printer either! Nonetheless I�m feeling the need to choose Slackware 9.1. It�s because I�ve read a bit of craft obligation and personal challenge in the following: �Slackware is Linux's oldest living distribution. It does not try to emulate Windows, it tries to be as Unix-like as possible. It does not try to cover up processes with fancy, point-and-click GUIs(Graphical User Interfaces). Instead, it puts users in control by letting them see exactly what's going on. Slackware is for people who enjoy learning and tweaking their system to do exactly what they want. Slackware's stability and simplicity is why people will continue to use it for years to come.� But simple does not mean easy, does it? Back in the days when men were Men........... I�m up in years (you�ll know me when you see I�m fat, ugly, and bald with white hair), but in my day I made 5 violins under a master (before life took me somewhere else). The only power tool I used was a band saw to cut smaller pieces out of a split log. You can make a violin out of very few knives, chisels, scrapers, and a block plane. I made my own patterns, knives, and scrapers. I had never worked wood before, even by power tools. (I never had had interest in those.) Those early instruments were slow going and not a little agony, but I knew with control of the hand and discipline of the heart that I could step up in my work, and take it to the level of art, well beyond anyone skilled with power tools. Am I a bit competitive and still trying to be a man�s man? Anyhow, I believe you see the parallel. I want to get to command line and not rely at an emotional level on commercial distributions what with all *their* packaging schemes (read: complications) and *their* bloatware GUI�s. It�s a bit about control and pride, isn�t it? How else can I bypass the Windows mentality and hope to step up in open source as a craft? I want to be a thinker and doer in this game, not just a consumer or user of various Distributions. My goal longer term is art, not just sitting at the feet of documented Authority. Another parallel: how can you design a Cadillac with no skills to build a model T Ford? Man or not, I�m scared! At the least I�m feeling a little shaky, and here�s why. Switching back to the violin story, I knew how to make those knives out of straight razors and scrapers out of blue shim stock. I could sharpen on my own the blade of a block plane until no one could see the edge. It was intuitive and it wasn�t rocket science. It took no prior reading or class instruction. I put in plenty of sweat time at the bench. It took me eight days (no kidding) to cut my first bass bar to a perfect fit, and I never backed off once from the challenge. Of course I knew my master was back there, watching. I did not quit while seeing him work at ten times my rate. My pride would not let me give up. But there came a time when I could go no further without my master�s help. Art was not possible without the ultimacy and intimacy of oral tradition. Thank God for newsgroups and the WLUG. It takes a community to raise a boy to manhood. So learning slackware, as learning unix in the old days, must require a combination of self-reliance AND guru help. In life we must settle for no false choices. Three items below. As background, I�m about ready to place an order for a stripped down machine with two IDE drives and Slackware. (Forget all that talk last week about SCSI, I don�t need bragging rights or a hardware �screamer.� Because, as you must know by now, the �screaming� I�m experiencing now has nothing whatever to do with any hardware.) 1. Partitions. I�m new to Linux, but trying to learn, so please don�t shoot me. What should my (various?) slack files look like? I have never seen any. I don�t know what to look for. Specifically, what partitioning specs can I give to the vendor who will pre-install and configure slack for me so that I have a working machine? I would like to be able to read and learn from these files BEFORE the iron arrives on my desk. I would like to split my slack partitions over two 80G disks for speed of random access. Thus, taking platter construction into account, the most frequently used partitions should be in the physical center of each disk. I would like to put slack primarily on hda, and, later on, any second distribution (Mandrake? Libranet? new Debian when it comes out?) primarily on hdb. What detailed partitioning do you recommend upfront to permit or pave the way for this control and flexibility? 2. Internet. auuggh..! Here, a problem of the chicken/egg variety. What should my slack files look like for dial-up access (to start with my current Prodigy) and DSL access (Speakeasy later when I�m ready to try downloads)? Unless I have these things up and running, I won�t be able to interface with online Linux help! 3. Printer. Anyone have a reliable model number for a Linux printer to suggest? Nothing fancy, just something to print out docs for Linux study in the woods, and an occasional letter. What should my slack files look like? (Of course I don�t know a thing yet about driver stuff..) These three are my foremost technical concerns that seem to be holding me back from my first flight. I hope to receive you hand up on these things! Biggest thing of all, the opportunity to meet you tomorrow night and chat over pizza. until then, Brian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

20 years, 6 months

REMINDER: Upcoming meeting Thursday Oct 9th

by Andy Stewart

Hi everybody, Our next WLUG meeting is coming up soon. This e-mail is a friendly reminder of that fact. This meeting will be held in a totally new location on the WPI Campus in Worcester, MA USA. The location is called the "Access Grid" room, and it is located in the "lower wedge" of Morgan Hall. Detailed directions appear on the recently updated WLUG website. I'll try to post a few of my penguin signs to guide you. I'm told that this room has some great projection equipment and can hold approx. 20-25 people without a problem. At this meeting, Doug Waud will talk about and demonstrate some genealogical Linux software called Lifelines. As I don't expect this to take the entire duration of the meeting, I'll also bring my laptop and demonstrate XFce version 4, a lightweight desktop for Linux. In addition, I was asked to spend a few minutes describing a couple of commands for the new Linux users of the group. We can also explore the capabilities of the new meeting room and make plans for its use at future meetings. After the meeting, we'll go out for pizza and beer at the Boynton Restaurant. See ya later! Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wlug] what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Andy Stewart

On Saturday 04 October 2003 7:57 am, Brian McLinden wrote: > Hello -- I'm new here, and hoping to meet many of you soon! > > I want to multi-boot and play with three distros for a machine that would > most likely always be a workstation, not a server. It would be for > numerical work and not involve large or many audio or video files. > > It happens that the smaller the SCSI drive, the better the performance, and > of course the smallest, fastest sizes available for SCSI are 18G and 32G. > > I'm planning to buy a matched pair of drives in order to spread the > partitions for each distro across the two drives. > > Two questions: > > 1. I'd like to use use 2x18, but in your opinion, do I need 2x32? HI Brian, I admire your zeal ! :-) I run SCSI drives in my systems at home. It is true that SCSI drives have better performance at higher cost relative to IDE. It is also true that a drive spinning at 10-15K rpms has an acoustic quality which my ears don't like. I don't think most people need 18 GB of disk space, but that's what is sold today. Folks who consume large amounts of disk space are typically saving alot of videos, mp3s, and pictures. > 2. Do you think 15000 rpm will be noticeably snappier than 10000 rpm? For your purposes, probably not. In a server environment with a large number of users, most definitely. Save a few bucks and get the U160 drives as they are trying to sell those off to make room for the (new) U320 drives. Your SCSI controller would be cheaper, too, if you did that. Later, Andy -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA USA http://www.wlug.org

20 years, 6 months

what size/speed combo to use for a dual SCSI system?

by Brian McLinden

Hello -- I'm new here, and hoping to meet many of you soon! I want to multi-boot and play with three distros for a machine that would most likely always be a workstation, not a server. It would be for numerical work and not involve large or many audio or video files. It happens that the smaller the SCSI drive, the better the performance, and of course the smallest, fastest sizes available for SCSI are 18G and 32G. I'm planning to buy a matched pair of drives in order to spread the partitions for each distro across the two drives. Two questions: 1. I'd like to use use 2x18, but in your opinion, do I need 2x32? 2. Do you think 15000 rpm will be noticeably snappier than 10000 rpm? Thanks all, Brian 752-3033 anytime __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by John Stoffel

Charles> Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the Charles> one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any Charles> good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other Charles> than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Charles> Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Charles> Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a Charles> ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to Charles> find such addons. Well, part of it has been that I've been using it for so long, it seems like I should try something new and see how that goes. Another issue is that I haven't been wild about some of the system configuration tools they provide, but it's not a big deal. I dunno, it's more of an urge to do something else, not a true desire to move off. Also, I have noticed that alot of packages are still staying with 7.3 or 8, and that 9 hasn't seemed to be as popular. Hard to tell... Charles> The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is Charles> turning into the Fedora Core community supported and Charles> developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, Charles> etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. Charles> In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I Charles> believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may Charles> have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker Charles> and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the Charles> distro if the community desires it. Charles> Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with Charles> third party repositories of software. This will include Charles> Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Charles> Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, Charles> more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See Charles> http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. But none of this exists right now, and I want to rebuild my system this weekend if I can. :] Of course, nothing says I can't play with this stuff later one. Also, some of the rpmbuild and rpm commands have really ticked me off, since I consider the syntax and errors messages to be really baroque and unhelpful. Especially when trying to build a SRPM package, and it dies for no frigging obvious reason. And since I'm planning a fresh install, I've got the Debian and RH9 disks to play with. So maybe I'll just go with Debian for now and see how it goes long term. Thanks for the input. John

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wlug] Picking a distro (was: 1st posting: Worcester ISP? Distros? LAC?)

by Charles R. Anderson

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 09:43:09AM -0400, John Stoffel wrote: stoffel> So, what do you all think is the next best distro to go with now? Well, Red Hat 9 meets all your requirements above, except the one that says you don't want Red Hat :) You didn't give any good reason why you wanted to stay away from Red Hat other than you "want to change try to stay away from GNOME". Well, Red Hat 9 has KDE too, and you can always get WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, XFCE, or something else if you want a ligher weight GUI. http://freshrpms.net/ is a good place to find such addons. The Red Hat Linux distro that we all know an love <g> is turning into the Fedora Core community supported and developed distro. Its direction, shape, package selection, etc. will be very much driven by what the community wants. In this way, it will be more like the Debian Project, which I believe will alleviate some of the reservations people may have had about using Red Hat in the past. E.g. WindowMaker and those other GUIs will be able to come back into the distro if the community desires it. Fedora Core will also support apt-get, yum, and up2date with third party repositories of software. This will include Fedora Core itself, updates, Fedora Extras, Fedora Alternatives, and Fedora Legacy (for those who want an older, more stable distro to be supported for a longer time). See http://fedora.redhat.com/ for more info about the project. -- Charles R. Anderson <cra(a)wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886

20 years, 6 months

Re: [Wlug] Re: Does the WPI Linux Association exist?

by Theo Van Dinter

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 12:37:31AM -0400, Ryan Caron wrote: > There's no reason not to restart the WPILA, especially since it > provides meeting space here on campus. I'm sure it will be closely tied > to WLUG, of course. Man ... I remember filing the paperwork for it back in the day (I still have copies), but I'm not terribly surprised it sort of disbanded. :( -- Randomly Generated Tagline: "Marriage is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." - Lisa Hoffman

20 years, 7 months

Re: [Wlug] Re: Does the WPI Linux Association exist?

by Mike Frysinger

i too would like to see it reborn ... if only to provide better local mirror support for many of the more popular Linux distros ... *cough* *gentoo* *cough* there also is the issue of wpila.org ... i noticed that when it expired no one local picked it up ... i say local because it was picked up by a pr0n site for sometime ... -mike On Thursday 02 October 2003 00:37, Ryan Caron wrote: > There's no reason not to restart the WPILA, especially since it > provides meeting space here on campus. I'm sure it will be closely tied > to WLUG, of course. > > Ryan Caron > > On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Chuck Haines wrote: > > The club has indeed falled through the cracks. As far as I know, WPI > > still recognizes us as a club, but we might need to get some paperwork in > > to continue that (possibly a revised constitution). I would definitely > > be interested in restarting up the club, since I've got tons more time > > this year than last. > > > > As for reserving rooms, any WPI Alum if I remember correctly can reserve > > a room. I know there are a ton of WPI alum's in WLUG so it shouldn't be > > a problem. > > > > Chuck

20 years, 7 months

Re: Does the WPI Linux Association exist?

by Ryan Caron

There's no reason not to restart the WPILA, especially since it provides meeting space here on campus. I'm sure it will be closely tied to WLUG, of course. Ryan Caron On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Chuck Haines wrote: > The club has indeed falled through the cracks. As far as I know, WPI > still recognizes us as a club, but we might need to get some paperwork in > to continue that (possibly a revised constitution). I would definitely be > interested in restarting up the club, since I've got tons more time this > year than last. > > As for reserving rooms, any WPI Alum if I remember correctly can reserve a > room. I know there are a ton of WPI alum's in WLUG so it shouldn't be a > problem. > > Chuck > > - > Chuck Haines > WPI Class of 2005 > chaines(a)ece.wpi.edu > AOL IM: CyberGrex > > On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, MegaZone wrote: > > > Andrew George Marut <agmarut(a)polyesterworctechnicinstitute.edu> shaped the electrons to say: > > >If anyone wants to cantact the last known WPILA officers, they are Adam > > >Elliott <aelliott>, Jeff Simpson <jeffs>, Steven Howard Frank <movieguy>, > > >David Barboza <dbarboza>, and Chuck Haines <chaines>. They may have the > > >WPILA members list, announce list, and/or passwords. Chuck, as Lab > > >Manager, probably has the passwords. > > > > Well, if the club is still recognized *now*, why start over? If WPI > > doesn't *know* it is defunct, then you work with the last known > > officers, follow the bylaws, and get new officers - if they don't wish > > to continue running the club. Surely there is some provision for > > transfer of power - they can resign, you hold a new election, and the > > club continues on as the same entity. > > > > Don't try to restart the club, just continue it - much easier with the > > administration. > > > > -MZ, RHCE #806199299900541, ex-CISSP #3762 > > -- > > <URL:mailto:megazone@megazone.org> Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.. > > "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 508-755-4098 > > <URL:http://www.megazone.org/> <URL:http://www.eyrie-productions.com/> Eris > > >

20 years, 7 months

Re: [Wlug] Very confused ...

by Stephen C. Daukas

All this time I though I was attending WLUG meetings only to find out they are WLUG meetings! I wondered why we met in Worcester instead of Westborough! (And I thought it was because of the Boynton!) Andy Stewart wrote: >On Wednesday 01 October 2003 1:40 am, Theo Van Dinter wrote: > > >>I was searching around Google for something, and I came across WLUG >>information, and I thought it was wierd. Then I noticed the URL: >>http://wlug.org.nz/ >> >>They are, apparently, "the WLUG", versus our just being "WLUG". >> >> > >That's OK, I'll just keep putting "Worcester, MA USA" on all things "WLUG" so >"the WLUG" folks won't get confused, not to mention the folks in Worcester, >England or Wuermtal, Germany. :-) > >I also found: > www.wlug.net - Whidbey Linux Users Group (in Washington, USA) > www.wlug.de - Wuermtal Linux Users Group (In Germany) > wlug.paradise.net.nz - Wellington Linux Users Group >...and there are probably many others. > >Later, > >Andy > > > -- Stephen C. Daukas - stephen(a)daukas.com - http://daukas.com/

20 years, 7 months

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