February 2006 - main

Windows Vista UI
by Wayne Stallwood 14 Mar '06

14 Mar '06

It's always worth looking at beta's of upcoming OS releases to see where they are heading...you never know there may be one or two good ideas that should be in Linux....But looking at these shots of Vista I am wondering if MS have sacked half their UI team (if they haven't they should do) http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931914,00.asp Check out the media player shot non standard widgets, confusing boundaries between content tree and content files, media buttons that force you to mouse down to the bottom middle of the screen....madness or unfamiliarity clouding my opinion ? We stuck IE7 preview on a spare XP machine at work, same UI issues, looks pretty but is totally unusable for power users...The only good thing I would like to see implemented in firefox is the tab preview button that gives a screen of thumbnails of all current tabs.

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Humax PVR9200T and Linux per USB -- any experiences?
by Jan T. Kim 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

Dear list, The PVR-9200T is a DVB-T receiver / HD recorder with an USB interface, see http://www.humaxdigital.com/uk/products/pvr-9200t.asp Does anyone here know what the USB interface has to offer from a Linux perspective? The technical specification and user manual are not too informative, they just indicate that there is some "media eLinker.exe" program included, which allows copying recorded video from the recorder's hard disk to a computer, but it's not clear to me whether I could also do this with Linux (the docs just mention the Windows software and don't provide any technical details about the device's USB port). Ideally, I would like to simply mount the recorder's HD and copy the recording in question to some more permanent storage -- but does the PVR-9200T implement the USB mass storage class? Best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | email: jtk(a)cmp.uea.ac.uk | | WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*

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my computer frozes at boot loading
by Paul, Jean R 03 Mar '06

03 Mar '06

I am wondering if anyone has encountered the same problems. I have installed dual boot with Mandrake 10 and windows XP. When i turn on my computer if either frozes before the LILO or restarts after i have chosen the operating. Recently when Windows was chosen the computer didn't load XP at all. In addition while i am working with linux, the computer frozes at any time, or just reboots. i would appreciate any help from people who have had the same experience with their PC.

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miniBB
by David Noble 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Do any of you have much experience in editing the php.ini file? I compiled php without the mysql option, and although the phpinfo function and other basic functions work, for some reason I can't connect to mysql from php. I am able to connect to mysql directly; and it appears to function normally otherwise. Cheers, Dave.

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Cant enable DMA
by Ben Whyte 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Hi guys Appreciate all the assistance that anyone can provide. I have an ABIT IG-80 motherboard, which uses an intel 915 chipset. When I do an hdparm -t -T /dev/hda I get the following result /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 3928 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1963.32 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 8 MB in 3.32 seconds = 2.41 MB/sec Now the drive is a 200gb, pata drive and when I try and activate DMA using hdparm -d1 /dev/hda it comes back with /dev/hda: setting using_dma to 1 (on) HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted using_dma = 0 (off) I am using the defualt debian kernel 2.6.15. Any ideas as to why it wont let me activate DMA ? Ben

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Irony....
by Peter Onion 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

"We don't want customers to be forced into buying something that isn't going to meet all their needs," said Barry Goffe, Microsoft's director of Windows client product management. Strikes me as ironic ! Peter

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Weekly IRC reminder
by Brett Parker 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

This is the automated ALUG IRC meeting reminder sent to remind you that there is an IRC meeting tonight (Monday) at 8.00pm. Historically, these used to be the only time a lot of us would be about, now the channel has some usual faces that are there most of the time (except at silly o'clock, when we might be sleeping, or on the second thursday of the month, where we might be drinking in the Reindeer), so don't feel limited to visit during this time, come visit us when ever you feel like it! 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 xchat, irssi 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://www.irssi.org/ http://www.epicsol.org/ Windows http://www.mirc.com (loads of help with irc for newbies!)

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Once again I try - and fail!
by Barry Samuels 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

I had some help from the group a little while ago when I was trying to get my Thinkpad to boot from an external (USB/IDE) drive and, with various peoples' help I finally suceeded. Now I'm trying to do the same thing with a drive from another computer. I'm part way there but during boot I see: pivot_root: No such file or directory /sbin/init: 431: cannot open dev/console: No such file kernel panic: Attempted to kill init! Then the process proceeds with a few more lines about USB and SCSI until: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi1, ... etc Attached scsi generic sg1 at scsi1, ... etc and here it stops. I don't remember seeing these errors on my previous attempt. Any suggestions (in the nicest possible way of course) would be appreciated. Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain

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[ALUG Announce] Autistic GNU/Linux User Group http://autisticlug.org/
by MJ Ray 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- From: Steve Parkes Like many Linux users and contributers I am on the Autistic spectrum. Over the last few years I have ranted over and over at friends and colleagues about how existing LUGS are failing their membership I took the logical next step and formed a LUG for people on the Autistic spectrum or with co-morbid communication and self esteem issues. The Autistic GNU/Linux User Group is open to anybody on the Autistic Spectrum, with other communication or social issues or who wishes to be a friend of people with these problems. Membership is open to anybody using or interested in using a Unix™ like system with particular emphasis on Free and Open Source Software. We have a mailing list where people can geek out and no question or comment is considered off-topic from the uber deep geekery of kernel development to the newbie questions about ls, a wiki for knowledge management and hope to provide a link to local LUGS via our membership so our members can reach out into the wider Linux community and meet like minded people. With the support of mailing lists from lug.org.uk we hope to provide a worldwide virtual LUG with a membership stretching around the glode making visits to events and meetings anywhere in the world an enjoyable experience for people on the spectrum. http://autisticlug.org/ Please forward this message to anybody you think may be interesting in joining the LUG or helping support autistic Linux users when visiting your LUG. cheers sparkes ----- 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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Icon editor - any ideas?
by Chris Green 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

I am looking for a simple icon editor for my Slackware system. The only two Linux icon editors I can find are babygimp (which almost works on my system but I get a perl error when it runs) and kIconEdit which seems to want an ancient version of QT for it to build. Does anyone have any other ideas (like should I just use gimp?). -- Chris Green (chris(a)areti.co.uk) "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."

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