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Annnnd.... Oren Beck gets the Dell Optiplex
by gregb＠west-third.com 06 Nov '08

06 Nov '08

Many thanks to all to inquired about it. Greg

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Hackett and Bankwell
by Billy Crook 06 Nov '08

06 Nov '08

Jeremiah T. Gray from The Austin, TX Linux and General Discussion Mailing List produced an Educational comic teaching Ubuntu called Hackett and Bankwell. You may have heard of it a while back. I was speaking with him, and he offered to send a few to the KCLUG. They arrived this morning, and I'm bringing them to the meeting Tonight! These might be interesting to hand out at the next ITEC or other event. I haven't had time to take them out of the envelope yet, but the binding, and what I've seen of the content, look professionally done. For more info, see: http://www.hackettandbankwell.com or http://www.linux.com/feature/131068

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Free to good home -- old Dell Optiplex
by Greg Brooks 05 Nov '08

05 Nov '08

Free to a good home: Old Dell Optiplex desktop that's been used as a server for the past five years. (The computer itself is likely closer to eight years old and was bought off-lease from Dell.) . RAM: is 680k or so (too lazy to go check). . No monitor -- you get the PC and the power cable only. . HD: Two drives installed, 250GB each. Secondary drive has been giving me trouble so I unmounted it a month or so ago. Primary drive tests healthy and is about three years old. . Video: Integrated, and nothing to write home about. This is not a machine I'd want to use as a desktop replacement running full-blown KDE/Gnome, although I've had it configured that way in the past. . Floppy and CD/ROM both work. No CD burner, no DVD. . Drives will be wiped and overwritten with random data -- you'll need to install the OS of your choice. (The machine has successfully run Ubuntu, RedHat and FreeBSD without a hitch) The catch: You need to pick it up in Plattsburg, 35 miles north of KC. If more than one person wants it, dibs go to the person who will have the most interesting use case for the hardware. Hit me offlist with questions or statements of interest. Greg

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Re: Conversion to Linux
by Luke Dashjr 05 Nov '08

05 Nov '08

On Tuesday 04 November 2008 02:04:24 am Jeffrey Watts wrote: > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Luke Dashjr <luke(a)dashjr.org> wrote: > > On Monday 03 November 2008 12:15:51 pm Jeffrey Watts wrote: > > > Actually that's not why they do that. > > > > > > The source would get out regardless of what they do, as any customer > > > who purchased a copy of RHEL would be legally able to release the > > > SRPMs. > > > > Nothing legally obligates RedHat to provide source for their own tools > > (RPM, > > etc). If they do, nothing legally forces them to permit redistribution of > > these tools. > > Well, the fact that the software is licensed under the GPL would obligate > them. :) Not quite. The copyright holder can do whatever they want. The GPL only obligates licensees. RedHat could in theory license RPM under the GPL and then refuse to give you source. At this point, you would be unable to legally redistribute RPM yourself because YOU are bound to the GPL.

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Re: Conversion to Linux
by Sean Crago 04 Nov '08

04 Nov '08

> businesses. Businesses care more about those things > than they do about the > minor differences between distributions. >>And companies like to have a good company to support >>the OS which gives them someone to sue if things go >>bad. Just out of curiosity, have you tried Canonical's support? I'll not argue about the certifications (personally, I rather loathe the concept, but I'll grant that Canonical's can't be as widespread or mature), but I haven't seen enough either way to say that Canonical's paid support is any better or worse than Red Hat's. Have you? Not an attack/really asking - It'd be good to hear what people have to say about them. Sean Crago Kathmandu

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Acer Aspire One
by Billy Crook 04 Nov '08

04 Nov '08

The GNU+Linux 'NetBook' may easily become Linux' home in everyday consumer electronics. At least sofar as desktop applications. The eeepc started the trend, and now dozens of other vendors are jumping in. Intel, AMD, and nVidia even, are making chips just for this market. Check out the Intel Atom CPU in it's picture at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom. Wow. I bought an Acer Aspire One to play with at the LUG and to give to a family member at Christmas. It's one of the first Intel Atom Netbooks out there. It comes with a distro called Linpus, which is an ofshoot of Fedora. I actually plan to, compare it with Ubuntu Netbook Edition, and the Fedora 10 version of its own packages. Any thoughts on what elseyou want to see it do would be welcome. I just bought it today, so I will not likely have it by the meeting Wednesday. But I should have it the next three meetings after that, and will be using it myself intermittently. http://www.acer.com/aspireone/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspire_One ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Woot <no-reply(a)woot.com> Date: Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 00:42 Subject: Woot Order Confirmation: <OrderID Redacted> To: BillyCrook+woot.com(a)gmail.com billycrook, Thank you for your purchase. Your order number <OrderID Redacted> for 1 Acer Aspire One Ultra Portable Notebook has been received by Woot on 11/1/2008 and your credit card has been charged $294.99. Your order will typically ship within 5 business days. To check your order status, go to the Your Account tab at www.woot.com, log in and check your order history. Please review the information above and report any discrepancy immediately to service(a)woot.com. Make sure your user name and order number are included in all correspondence related to this order. Here is a link to the discussion of this product on the Woot Community Forums: http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2708057 Thanks again for shopping at Woot. Please visit us again at www.woot.com.

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How much of one's work day can be handled by browser based software. Can we get it to 100% ?
by Oren Beck 03 Nov '08

03 Nov '08

I wonder if the path of moving everything to a server except for a local terminal browser is practical? As in having all the applications be web browser accessible which makes geographical location functionally irrelevant. All that matters is a net link from the Linux based browser to the server/s. Most of the hassles of local user support go away. Yes- we could argue about Dumb Terminals reincarnated or perhaps just examine the server concepts. The reason for my mentioning this comes from an observation on hardware already out in the wild. We have a deluge of computers being replaced largely because of gaming and bloatware. Arguing about the elements of a distro suited to lightly load hardware have been beaten beyond dead. The concept of what older hardware could serve as servers- pun potential eh? is the new question. I see it as we take that 2ghz 2gig ram "last year's model" and stuff several 500 gb drives in it for a family or small office server. Then the users take whatever suits their fancy for a terminal-from the 7K alienware gaming laptop down to a $5 from surplus exchange T30 thinterm. Thus whatever disaster befalls their "local hardware" the data is safely replicated on their server's drives and perhaps mirrored elsewhere. For a reason. It's how we can make the typical users have a bit more assurance that their sweated over data is safer than other ways we've been doing this. As reassuring users that their "world" is safer being distributed so to speak gets easier if it's true... The Long term path I see is colo's having a farm of replicant application web servers to mirror local servers.. With enough hot replication that the user's sessions etc are "safer" for it. -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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Re: Conversion to Linux
by Sean Crago 03 Nov '08

03 Nov '08

You want gradual, system by system? Okay: Can you give us a couple of examples of the systems you run and which are the most problematic? Also, you say that you're the only person in your firm with deep experience in the Lunixes - How many other people might end up responsible for these systems if you were to take leave? Feel up to the task of training 'em and documenting everything? I lucked out, the one time I was able to make this transition. I was a one man shop, working for a firm where my predecessors had failed to talk the previous generation of management into paying for a legal license for anything. Despite this, they replaced a couple of OpenBSD machines with a handful of new homemade Celerons running a proprietary operating system boxes and another firm's proprietary mail server. I walked in after everyone involved in those decisions had left, and was picking up the pieces. The mail server was incredibly crash prone, partly due to it being a Celeron with 512MB of RAM, partly due to the poorly maintained Windows install, and partly due to the lack of updates and support for any of it. Dug out the old Pentium III Xeon machines that these new Celerons had replaced and build a normal old Gentoo server. Moved over the easy stuff first - DNS, Apache (they'd moved the old webserver onto a Win32 build of Apache to save them from having to rewrite their configs - Made my life a lot easier, moving it back.) Given that proof of concept and the clear win of having replaced proprietary unlicensed software with open and freely licensed software, it was easy to talk the boss into plunking some money down to reverse engineer parts of the proprietary mail server and cut it over to something open source. I've never been in a position where I could do this since then, however. Working in a sizable department in a medium-large organization makes it a lot harder to find time to put together a proof of concept, train old employees on the new systems, and move away from deeply embedded Microsoft contracts. Good luck, but you've probably got a tough slog ahead of you, unless you're fortunate enough to either be in charge of your department or a member of a 1-3 man "department." Without that, you might just find that you're taking too big a first step. What open source tools can you roll out in your current proprietary environment that might ease the way? Again, good luck, Sean Crago Kathmandu

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DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Removes iTunes DRM with Virtual CD Burner [Featured Windo...
by JDP/Frogman 03 Nov '08

03 Nov '08

It's Windows only, but it shows the basic idea of using a virtual CD burner will work to strip DRM from iTunes purchases. Sent to you by JDP/Frogman via Google Reader: DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Removes iTunes DRM with Virtual CD Burner [Featured Windows Download] via Lifehacker by Kevin Purdy on 10/28/08 Windows only: DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Free provides a clever work-around to stripping audio tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store—and, theoretically, other protected, purchased tracks—of their DRM. The free application installs a virtual CD burner on your Windows system, so your only job is to create a playlist, hit "Burn Disc," and choose the "TurnsDrive" when prompted. If the app is running in your system tray, it catches the "burning," and works in the background to split the virtual disc back into unprotected MP3s. Album art, tags, and other metadata are all preserved, and while the burning process took unusually long for one batch of protected MP3s, it delivered on the restriction-free goods. You'll have to have authorized access to play and burn the tracks you want to unlock, but since iTunes allows unlimited CD burns (if you change the playlist just a bit), you're pretty much in the clear. DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Free is a free download for Windows systems only; a paid version adds OGG and other formats and a few other options. DVDneXtCOPY iTurns Free [via FreewareGenius.com] Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Lifehacker using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

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Migration granularity and tech refresh cycles. Windows Vs Linux models
by Oren Beck 01 Nov '08

01 Nov '08

In the pre-Linux world IT departments migrated data to the current MS incarnation. Which was often concurrent with the hardware needing replacement for whatever reason. The applications were either the bundled MS or niche "suite concept" style with attendant learning curves. And it hammered tech support in grim fashions. Then it got worse. Having seen migrations from Win95 to present, we all have war stories to share. Some of them having avoidable Very Stupid Things. And then there are the migrations/refresh projects we saw go in smooth flow states. I have been cursed to suffer the botched projects. And blessed with some joyously easy ones. The short list make or break so to speak centers on process preview and bottom back up to top feedbacks. Trying a dry run on a sandboxed desktop and/or network segment for example. Having a "THIS IS STUPID" feedback channel/s With an inviolable policy of *ZERO* risk in using it! IF folks fear saying Foo is an epic fail and why/how -it won't get commented on let alone fixed The last shortlister is granularity. Choosing your applications for interactions where practical- if possible.Some applications demand data conversion or unique servers. Where others are a painless import . So far there's a body of comment covering nearly everything I list here both on KCLUG and the rest of the web MY little whack at these scenes is from NOT wanting anyone else to be still onsite at WtFthirty because some clue lacking exec decided pre-imaged drives were not worth it.Or that swapping a drive into new hardware and copying files with a tech onsite made more sense than using a USB copy the night before! Same concept goes to installing Firefox and Thunderbird for your supported user base ASAP. So by the time you do give users a desktop lacking IE and Outlook-They won't curse at you :> There is an inestimable gulf between the "one true path" dogmatic model and the "Best tool for the job" view. Choose wisely or much wailing and gnashing of teeth will be the reward. -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645

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