Freedom to Tinker - Free Speech vs. Trade Secrets

Freedom to Tinker - Free Speech vs. Trade Secrets
Certainly a good read.

The LinuxShow was really fun again ...

The LinuxShow was really fun again last evening. Some very good points were brought up about SCO (read more at the link below).

IRC chat on the show was a hoot too. lol several times.

nomasteryoda say SCO BLOWS!

Ya gotta read this ...

It Ain't Necessarily SCO
Eric Raymond and Rob Landley present a very good case against SCO.

Powerbook 3400c Saga Continues...

Got it working! Wahoo! Yellow Dog lives!
If you are using another distro on your Powerbook 3400 or similar, to try the following hsync values for the video.

hsync = "31.5-37.9"
vsync = "50-70"

The monitor is listed as unknown, which is ok by me. The thing works at 800x600 with no problem whatsoever... even has GLX extensions running, but verrrrrrrrrryyyyy slowly. Just make sure you choose the 16-bit color mode (depth = "15"). The video card was also discovered perfectly as CHIPS CT65550. Now I just need the sound working... gotta have sound.
you can read the same as posted under comments below.
nomasteryoda say night everybody...

First MGALUG meeting - Tuesday, 19 August 2003

When I arrived the a member of plant services (janitor) pointed me to the stairs and said there were some old men meeting up there. LoL! We had a whopping 7 users present, only 2 from actual MGALUG.

Myself and Eric. It was a good meeting between our 2 groups, though the Mercer group wants to remain a separate entity. We discussed the distributions we each are using. Redhat came out on top with Mandrake and SuSE trailing. Justin is going to work up bylaws for their group, though I don't think we need to persue this level of management for our group just yet.

Justin wanted to come up with another meeting date/time, but we kinda got side-tracked and left discussion for email/lists/chat. I had my Powerbook 3400c... finished the install! Very nice, but certainly slow on 48MB RAM. (see post comments below).
Justing pointed out the goal of Linux Advocacy in both groups. This is a real need not only for the Linux community, but for all users who want to work on something better. We also mentioned an install-fest, what type of hardware users need to run a minimum distro., etc. All in all it was a short meeting, but at least we now have faces to go with some of the email addresses. Justin said we could keep up via the MULUG mailing list. What a fine idea. Here's the link if want to join: Subscribe to mailserv@mercer.edu.
nomasteryoda signing off

MAC Powerbook 3400c

I've been wanting to give Linux another chance on my old Powerbook 3400c - the one I found in a dumpster. Yea. You read that correctly. Dumpster! I know hardware is cheap these days and some of it is truly obsolete, but this laptop is worthy of a second chance. I previously repartitioned the drive into 2 parts - on 200MB Mac HFS and one Unpartitioned space for Linux to split. I installed OS 8.1, which works without complaint on 48MB RAM plus a 2GB 2.5" HD (also found in the dumpster - suspect size was the reason). I have tried months ago to install Mandrake 8.2, but the install kept failing - even in text mode. I did some googling and tried Mdk 9.1 with the same result.
Well, I think I might have found a distro with just the right touch... YellowDog Linux 3.0 for the PPC. This baby started the gui install very nicely. I said to myself, "Oh Yea. This is it!" ..... Don't count you circuits before they are burned in! The gui mode locked up tighter than Windows XP on 64MB RAM!
Great Read: YellowDog Linux Beats RedHat!
Now for the text mode. Since it's taking quite a while to download the CDs (3), I was impatient and started the install while waiting on the last 2 discs. This might be a mistake, but the text installer zipped along up to the "Please Insert Disc 2" dialog. I'll know more after I get those puppies burned and complete the Text install process. But, at this point, it would appear all's well.

Powerbook 3400c Tips:
1. Have all the discs before installing.
2. Open the YellowDog installer from the CD - this system would not boot directly to the CD.
3. Confirm proper installation of BootX and Kernels into the System Folder and Extension Folders respectively.
4. Once installed, just open Control Panels and click BootX.
5. You MUST use BootX - yaboot will not work on this Oldworld Mac, though some people claim to have it working.
6. Point the Options RamDisk to the ramdisk.img.gz file in the system folder.
6. Select Force SCSI, click OK.
7. Type "install text") into the Kernel Options dialog in BOOTX.
8. Choose the BOOT kernel version in the drop-down.
9. TYPE 9350 in the Ramdisk image size box.
10. Click the Linux button.
Pray it works...
At this point you should get the standard Linux boot up sequence. If it hangs, give it the ol' Mac 3-finger (Ctrl+MacCmd+Power) though this is a full reboot. Try changing the memory option by increasing in 100k increments. Keep tweaking this setting until you arrive at the install screens - persistance and patience should pay off - we hope it does at least!

I'll keep you posted.
nomasteryoda

Posted to Google

Last week I googled for the mnemonic MGALUG and the results were quite amazing - they still are! MGALUG was totally a unique search term (link): Google if you discount the 2nd partial hit, which google tried to match to some term MEGALUG.
A few minutes ago I googled MGALUG and our URL is numero uno / #1 / topdog!
BTW: I submitted it just last night to google. One potential new user thinks MGLU would be a great name. I think so to, however it produces some 3,110 hits on google.

I'd like to keep MGALUG and and make it MGALUG.org . If we have to pay $8.95 per year, it's not bad plus it helps thelinuxshow.com keep up the ANTI-FUD. We can ask the group what they'd like. I'm sure someone has arrived at yet, another clever name relating to MercerU, as many of the people coming to the meeting are from Mercer University (they are providing the space).
;-) - happy tuxing

MGALUG site / TLS

Any comments on the main site MGALUG can be posted here. If you have links of your own, submit them via the links in that section - or here.
As for last evening's Linux Show, it was fantastic and I don't mean strange. I talked to some cool Linux dudes about making Linux a priority and helping promote it. They want to really get an effort going... something of a Linux Lobbying group. Hey, whatever it takes to help the effort.
You can DL past shows (archives link) and even IRC each Tuesday. The IRC chat is a good way to discuss issues and anything bounced from the show (The link: irc://www.thelinuxshow.com).
more later... ;-)

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Win4Lin - cool!

Super! Win4Lin works. I'd think I was using Windows 98. But wait. It is running w98. Heck, even the sound emulation is smooth. Now for the software we must use. The concern is apps requiring Quicktime and such ... will they install much less run properly?

As for the Linux side of things.. X-windows keeps locking up randomly on the menus. I've Googled for an answer, though one has yet to be found. This is certainly a pain & is possibly something simple to fix. Don't really have any desire to rebuild this puppy, but Mandrake 9.1 makes the install process simple enough. Pop in the install CD, format the /boot, /, /var, pick packages and away we go!
As with windows, everyone I know hates losing their customizations. Fortunately I took some advice I learned early on with Linux - put /home in a separate partition. Where else would it logically go? Recovering from a reinstall can take up to 3 weeks, which is due mainly to 28.8Kbps.

It's too late. Gotta sleep. Maybe post more tomorrow.

Browsers, plugins and GIMP

Browsers

What browser is best? It's a trick question. Even on Linux you must use at least two to get the job done. Aside from the bloat, Mozilla 1.3 - 1.4 is the best for most sites* and it's engine is the base for other browsers like Firebird and Dillo. These last 2 use efficient coding and provide a minimal interface. Konqueror is the KDE browser and, similar to Internet Explorer, it is used for browsing your file system as well as web browsing. It can do easily what Mozilla can not. One of those actions is provide browser header info to spoof a specific browser such as IE 6.0. As MS (M. Stewart would say, this is a good thing. You can do this in Mozilla, but it's a tedious process to accomplish - unless you are a script junky - Mozilla can be scripted extensively. As for proprietary browsers, I can safely say I have never tried any on Linux, but I hear tell Opera is the better in this class.

*Speaking of Proprietary

These little jewels do make or break a sites functionality.
Sun Java JRE
When downloading this, make sure to get the version compatible to your system (if this is still an option).
Macromedia Flash
Increasingly, sites are using Flash to make buttons, animations and navigational interfaces. Macromedia owns this baby and keeps making it better. Macromedia has a web site editor called Dreamweaver MX, which tops them all in the Windows world. It includes Flash MX and one can easily get hooked into making fancy buttons with it. The problem you might ask? It runs only on Windows systems and there are lots of poor souls out there who are unable to install much less download flash plugins.

Gimp
Gimp is a GPL image editor, which ranks right up there with Corel Photopaint or Adobe PhotoShop. Imaging Coolness example: I made a new blank 1024x768 image, opened the pattern fill, tweaked a slider, applied cubism filter and WOW! What a wallpaper! Soooo cool. Gimp can perform wonderous photo manipulation as well, perhaps even better thanks mostly to the extensive scripts through script-fu. One thing to keep in mind with Gimp - use Layers - also true for proprietary image software.

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News

Well, our first day in existence and we have a total of 3 members - all from simple email. Eric likes my IM meeting idea as it makes schedule management easier on all of us. He also said we should research the listing of our group in "The Eleventh Hour" - a local rag published for free in Macon. It has lots of on-the-fringe articles and just might bring out some hidden Linux users (even newbies). Mac is looking forward to installing Linux on an older system he has sitting around the house. I told him Mandrake would be best but he should try Knoppix to check for hardware conflicts. Mac is an old Windows/DOS PC pro, but he is willing to try something new. Not sure if Ronny is going to go for this, but we'll keep our hopes up!

As for myself, I am looking forward to installing Win4Lin from our LUG sponsor NeTraverse on my home system. I still have some Windows software I need to run on occasion - TurboTax would be one such app :.(. The install requires a net connection for registration and download of the kernel. After W4L is installed, I will install a licensed copy of Win98se into this thing.

10pm 7/31/03 -Update on W4L.
Got both patch and kernel downloaded and installed. Now for the reboot
--- I will keep you posted on the outcome - these things can get hairy.

12:00am 7/31/03 - W4L.
System rebooted perfectly and the Windows install began when I clicked the
Next button. Flawlessly, W4L made installing this MS product way too easy.
I use VMware with various versions of Windows and it can not compare to
Win4Lin's speed and install ease. Now for the software. I will keep you posted!

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This is the coolest!

This might just be the coolest way to blog guys. Site is hosted on tripod (free) and being blogged using blogger.com. Certainly better tools than what Tripod offers... maybe. We'll see after a try or two.

nomasteryoda

Survived the Storm

What a downpour Macon had yesterday evening. A thunderstorm or 3 rolled into Macon and sat hammering rain, zapping lightening all around us. I took the system completely off the grid to prevent what happened to my neighbor; his laptop internal power system and modem got fried. We lost power for about 6 hours. The house was heating up with all the candles I was using to read my Linux Magazine / Journal. I opened some windows and almost put my hand through one trying to unstick it. Only got a cut a the edge of my palm, but it is my mousing hand. Had me worried I would not be able to mouse properly. After patching it up I think I'll live. At least I can still type and mouse this morning! For the record August 1, 2003, Macon recorded 3.06 inches for the day and 1.34 for a one hour. Not since the flood of 94' have we had such a downpour. Localized street flooding occured over much of the area. Maybe the storms will be fewer today?

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