March 2004 - main

[Alug Announce]K.Lynn, 5th Birthday, 14 April events, political news
by MJ Ray 19 Mar '04

19 Mar '04

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- Thanks for sending in a few more emails to announce@ this week -- it's appreciated. More always welcome. ALUG: ---- 1. Meeting in K.Lynn on 28 March http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/018135.html 2. Opinions/help wanted on late April Norwich meeting http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/018162.html 3. Reports of Norwich March meeting http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/018153.html 4. Discussions of mouse setup, source code locations, USB floppy drives, Gentoo and kernel 2.6 http://lists.alug.org.uk/main/2004-March/thread.html 5. Meetings list on web site completed: did you know that we just had the 55th ALUG meeting? http://www.alug.org.uk/meetings/ Lugmaster: --------- 1. ACCU (Association of C and C++ Users) spring conference, Randolph Hotel, Oxford, 14-17 April 2004. http://www.accu.org/conference/opensource.html (GBP 595/495/295 whole conference, 160/135/90 day rate) Other: ----- 1. EuroLUGParty as part of event in Brussels on 14-15 April http://plone.ffii.org/events/2004/bxl04/ 2. Government consultations on "Open Source Software" policy and e-GIF (file formats etc) http://www.affs.org.uk/government/ 3. James Heald of FFII.org.uk writes about the proposed EU IPR Enforcement Directive: "Mme Fourtou got her package through, with no further amendments. The Directive is now likely to be signed off by the Council of Ministers on Thursday. Final vote was 330 to 151 with 39 abstentions." Most UK MEPs from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties voted for the proposal. See http://www.ffii.org.uk/ for background. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ slef(a)jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Norwich sunday meetings
by Syd Hancock 18 Mar '04

18 Mar '04

We have an afternoon meeting booked for the last sunday in April at the Billy Bluelight again. I don't like the room at the Billy very much - it is dreary and cold and unwelcoming. Does anyone know of a better alternative? Does anyone know of other pubs etc in Norwich with a room to hire at a reasonable price? The room at the Billy is £15 for example. Can anyone here book a room at UEA? Syd

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Installing Gentoo 2004.0
by Richard Lewis 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

I've just downloaded the two ISOs for Gentoo 2004.0. Before I burn them to disc, does anyone know what they contain? Is it source packages or binary packages? And how long is it likely to take to install (from sources) a standard desktop system (X, KDE, OOo) on a Pentium III (512Mb RAM). Presumably I can do it a bit at a time (e.g. compile X first and then KDE in another session). What worries me slightly is that I'm running a laptop and they don't take kindly to be left switched on for long periods of time. Any thoughts would be very much appreciated. Cheers, Richard

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Homemade notebooks anyone?
by Ricky Bruce 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

I am thinking about having a go at putting together a 'whitebook' as per instructions here http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20031202/ and here http://www.techbuilder.org/article.htm?ArticleID=48122 The articles make it seem perhaps deceptively simple. Anyone done anything similar, any warnings, im not neccessarily doing it for cost savings, more for the experience. Or would small form factor be the way to go? Rick _________________________________________________________________ It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger

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USB Floppy Drive
by Nick Heppleston | infotechnicale.com 16 Mar '04

16 Mar '04

I'm looking at purchasing an external USB floppy drive for my Toshiba notebook. Does anyone have any recommendations for a specific make/model that interacts well with Linux? Nick. -- Nick Heppleston t: 07989 581766 | e: nick.heppleston(a)infotechnicale.com

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Small simple mail client
by mjr＠dsl.pipex.com 16 Mar '04

16 Mar '04

Are there programs like "mail" for reading over POP3, APOP or IMAP; or should I use mailsync or similar and use GNU mailutils? MJR

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gentoo and portage
by Glen Tyler 15 Mar '04

15 Mar '04

Hi, a question to any gentoo users on the list. I have just installed gentoo 1.4 on my second machine (Cele 333, 256MB PC100) and I'm impressed - using the stage 1 tarball has compiled a pretty nifty OS and KDE desktop compared to the Mandrake/Fedora distros that I've had on there before. The main worry I have is that if I try to emerge-sync I'll be inundated with 1000's of updates and my poor ol' 28.8 connection will be tied up for a week. I've looked at the web site documentation, but there is no suggestion of using anything but portage for updates. I'm guessing that portage just adds a script to the sources (maybe a patch or two), but does anyone know if I can just download the script and patch then use the source that I already have? I'd like to use portage as it seems excellent, but would prefer to be more efficient with my online time.. best wishes Glen

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ALUG is 5 years old
by John Woodard 15 Mar '04

15 Mar '04

ALUG is 5 on May 2nd this year! What are we going to do to celebrate? Any of you firestarters want to do something special? I like quite a few of you who are still here, was at Woodbridge on that Sunday in 1999. ALUG has given me so much over the past 5 years, many friends, much help and a real sense of being part of something that is very special, I feel we really should mark this event. Cheers, BJ

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Neill Newman 15 Mar '04

15 Mar '04

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. The meeting takes place on the irc server irc.alug.org.uk in the #alug channel. Most IRC clients should allow you to get there with the commands "/server irc.alug.org.uk" and "/join #alug". Popular IRC clients include tkirc, bitchx, xchat and EPIC on Unix, and Mirc under windows. Here are some links to help you get started with irc. Unix http://www.xchat.org/ http://freshmeat.net/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Re: [ALUG] Anyone want Mandrake 10 ISOs?
by Richard Lewis 14 Mar '04

14 Mar '04

On Monday 08 Mar 2004 17:55, you wrote: > On Monday 08 Mar 2004 9:17 am, Richard Lewis wrote: > > >I downloaded the Mandrake 10 community edition ISOs today, so if > > > anyone's in Norwich and would like a copy let me know and I'll burn > > > some CDs for you. > > > > Um, I think only Mandrake club members can donwload the ISOs at the > > moment. If you are and have respectively then you probably shouldn't give > > them away to non-club members. Community edition will be available for > > general d'load soon. > > > > Cheers, > > Richard > > They are already available on eBay. I say this not as a justification but > merely for information. > > Ian Just to let you know: Mandrake 10.0 Community ISOs are now available for public download from the usual Mandrake mirrors! However, note the new release system for Mandrake: the Community Edition is more of a pre-release. Bug fixing and security updates will contain to be made to the main package tree and, in two months time, an Official Edition of the main tree will be released as ISOs. Its a bit like an extended testing period. The consequence that users would do well to have a good Internet connection and collect packages from the network rather than installation media so as to keep on top of updates or to wait until the Official Edition is released if they haven't time to be helping with the debugging process. Cheers, Richard

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