- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Raspberry Pi camera module now available
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '13

16 May '13

"After being in development since late last year, the Raspberry Pi camera module is available to purchase and the software to support it is now built into Raspbian." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1863706 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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50 million Apache OpenOffice downloads in a year
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '13

16 May '13

"Just a few days after the one year anniversary of the release of the first version of OpenOffice from the Apache Foundation (Apache OpenOffice 3.4) on 8 May 2012, the project can now boast 50 million downloads of the open source office suite. More than 80% of these downloads have come from Windows users, with the rest of the downloads spread between Mac OS X and Linux. Over time, the percentage of Windows users has slightly increased at the expense of Mac OS X, with Linux usage hovering steady under 5%." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1864812 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Crunchbang mirror
by Ian Young 16 May '13

16 May '13

Anybody know of a mirror for Crunchbang? They used to list one but it's all torrents now. From time to time various kindly people have offered mirrors, but the surviving ones I've found lately are no longer current.

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Unity 8, Mir To Be Experimental Choice In Ubuntu 13.10
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '13

16 May '13

"For those Linux enthusiasts wishing to toy with the Mir Display Server and Canonical's next-generation Unity 8 interface, they will be made optionally available for desktop users with the Ubuntu 13.10 release due out in October." -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM3MzY Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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New Yorker opens Strongbox - a Tor-based anonymous drop site
by Peter Reutemann 15 May '13

15 May '13

"The magazine's anonymous drop site is based on DeadDrop, developed by the late Aaron Swartz. Anonymity is in part ensured by only accepting connections via the Tor project's network. ... The project is available to fork fromGitHub. Although the project was designed to make secure dead-drop systems available to all, at this point the developers do say that expertise is needed to safely deploy it and the actual code still needs more work. With the first implementation now running at the New Yorker, the software will see practical use and hopefully fulfil its design goals." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1863768 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu to stop Brainstorm
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '13

14 May '13

'The collaborative ideas site is to finally close, having been left behind by changes to how Canonical design the Ubuntu operating system. Meanwhile, the company is to return the "Community" button to the top of its pages.' -- source: http://h-online.com/-1862298 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Canonical plans dogfood-capable phones by the end of May
by Peter Reutemann 12 May '13

12 May '13

"Canonical's developers are going to dogfood the Ubuntu phone just as soon as some important features get added to the current installable images. Ubuntu VP Rick Spencer is setting out to get that done by the end of May." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1859877 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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LinuxDevices.com Vanishes From the Web
by Peter Reutemann 10 May '13

10 May '13

"Embedded Linux pioneer LinuxDevices.com departed from the web earlier this week. The site became a collateral casualty of the aquisition of eWEEK by Quinstreet in February 2012, as part of a bundle of Ziff Davis Enterprise assets. Quinstreet immediately fired all the LinuxDevices staffers and ceased maintaining the site. A few days ago, the site's plug was finally pulled and it is now gone from the Web, save for a few pages on the WayBack Machine. For more than a decade, LinuxDevices played a pivotal role in serving and fostering an emerging embedded Linux ecosystem, and it was well respected by the embedded Linux community at the time it was acquired by QuinStreet. Unfortunately, the site did not mesh well with QuinStreet's B2B market focus. Fortunately, its spirit remains alive and well at LinuxGizmos.com, a site recently launched by LinuxDevices founder Rick Lehrbaum." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/05/09/2243250/linuxdevicescom-vanishe… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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CrunchBang - Debian + Openbox
by Peter Reutemann 09 May '13

09 May '13

"CrunchBang is a Debian GNU/Linux based distribution offering a great blend of speed, style and substance. Using the nimble Openbox window manager, it is highly customisable and provides a modern, full-featured GNU/Linux system without sacrificing performance. The primary aim of the CrunchBang project is to produce a stable distribution offering the best possible out-of-the-box Openbox experience. To achieve this goal, CrunchBang pulls many base packages directly from Debian's repositories, which are well-known for providing stable and secure software. Packages from CrunchBang's own repositories are then customised and pinned to the system to produce what is known as the CrunchBang distro." -- source: http://crunchbang.org/about Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu Developing Its Own Package Format, Installer
by Peter Reutemann 08 May '13

08 May '13

"While complementing Debian APT/DPKG, Canonical is now developing their own package format. The new package format has promised highlights of having no dependencies between applications, each package would install to its own directory, root support wouldn't always be required, and overall a more self-contained and easier approach for developers than it stands now for Debian/Ubuntu packages. The primary users of the new packaging system would be those distributing applications built on the Ubuntu Touch/Phone SDK. The initial proof-of-concept package management system is written in Python and uses JSON representation." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/08/2038243/ubuntu-developing-its-own-p… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux still "benchmark of quality" in this year's Coverity Scan
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '13

07 May '13

"While Linux stands out for its repeated performance as a quality code base, Coverity's defect scanning finds what may be an interesting pattern in mapping how projects grow and how that affects the flaw factor of the code." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1858366 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Certificate bug in open source IPsec VPN
by Peter Reutemann 06 May '13

06 May '13

"The strongSwan open source IPsec VPN software potentially accepts invalid digital signatures and certificates for IPsec connections. The developers report that the issue affects versions 4.3.5 up to 5.0.3 – but only if the OpenSSL crypto backend is enabled using --enable-openssl; the default crypto libraries are not vulnerable." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1855695 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Cinnamon 1.8 adds desklet support
by Peter Reutemann 06 May '13

06 May '13

'The now available Cinnamon 1.8 no longer relies on the GNOME Control Center and supports "desklets", which are similar to Android widgets. The developers say that the Nemo file manager now better integrates into the desktop environment .' -- source: http://h-online.com/-1857166 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Care needed when combining Exim and Dovecot
by Peter Reutemann 06 May '13

06 May '13

"A commonly used method of coupling the Exim and Dovecot mail server programs results in a serious security issue. The cause is an officially recommended, but problematic configuration." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1856664 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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On the Heels of Wheezy, Aptosid Releases 2013-01
by Peter Reutemann 06 May '13

06 May '13

"Right on the heels of Debian's 7.0 ('Wheezy') release, the Aptosid team is proud to announce the immediate availability of the 2013-01 release. Aptosid is a rolling release built on top of Debian's most modern branch Sid, providing the most up-to-date kernel available with patches and stabilization not yet seen in mainline, along with many patched Debian packages, all while maintaining 100% compatibility with upstream Debian (unlike other distros based on Debian). If you think Debian Stable is too old to be useful, give Atposid a spin!" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/05/06/0111241/on-the-heels-of-wheezy-apt… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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"Portal" Now Available On Linux
by Peter Reutemann 05 May '13

05 May '13

"Valve have released Portal for Linux through the Steam platform. If you have a copy of the Windows version you will automatically have a copy of it for Linux in your account. There are also rumors of Portal 2 coming soon." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/05/05/1840224/portal-now-available-on-li… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Debian 7 "Wheezy" released
by Peter Reutemann 05 May '13

05 May '13

"Up front, the new release brings a GNOME 3 front end to the community-driven Linux distribution, but the big changes are behind the scenes with multiple architecture support and cloud-enabling packages." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1856723 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The IPython Notebook
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '13

02 May '13

"The IPython Notebook is a web-based interactive computational environment where you can combine code execution, text, mathematics, plots and rich media into a single document. These notebooks are normal files that can be shared with colleagues, converted to other formats such as HTML or PDF, etc. You can share any publicly available notebook by using the IPython Notebook Viewer service which will render it as a static web page. This makes it easy to give your colleagues a document they can read immediately without having to install anything." -- source: http://ipython.org/notebook.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail)
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '13

02 May '13

"This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu 13.04 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge." -- source: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-13.04-raring-ringtail Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Android and Linux Nanosats Shine Bright in Open Source Space Race
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '13

02 May '13

'Three Android-powered NASA "PhoneSat" nanosatellites deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere on April 27 after successfully completing their six-day mission. Meanwhile, the Android- and Linux-powered STRaND-1 nanosat, which was launched by the U.K.'s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and Surrey Space Centre on Feb. 25, is still orbiting, but has yet to phone home.' -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/mobile-linux/716910-android-and-l… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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AMD's Open Source Linux Driver Trounces NVIDIA's
by Peter Reutemann 02 May '13

02 May '13

"In a 15-way graphics card comparison on Linux of both the open and closed-source drivers, it was found that the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver is much faster than the open-source NVIDIA driver on Ubuntu 13.04. The open-source NVIDIA driver is developed entirely by the community via reverse-engineering, but for Linux desktop users, is this enough? The big issue for the open-source 'Nouveau' driver is that it doesn't yet fully support re-clocking the graphics processor so that the hardware can actually run at its rated speeds. With the closed-source AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce results, the drivers were substantially faster than their respective open-source driver. Between NVIDIA and AMD on Linux, the NVIDIA closed-source driver was generally doing better than AMD Catalyst." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/02/1421258/amds-open-source-linux-driv… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Lightworks for Linux now in open beta
by Peter Reutemann 01 May '13

01 May '13

"EditShare has opened the beta programme for the Linux version of its Lightworks editor for public testing. Lightworks is one of the oldest video editing packages still being developed, its initial release dating back to 1989." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1854081 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Open Build Service 2.4 understands Arch Linux packaging
by Peter Reutemann 01 May '13

01 May '13

"The openSUSE developers have released version 2.4 of the Open Build Service that powers the openSUSE Build Service. New features include support for Arch's PKGBUILD format and AArch 64" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1853966 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Dual boot
by Wolfgang 30 Apr '13

30 Apr '13

Hi I am trying to install Ubuntu Gnome 13.4 on my new HP520. Installation from disk went without hitch, but on restarting the grub2 bootloader is not starting. Instead, the windows loader loads Windows 7. Partition information is as follows (taken from the ubuntu install disk output): Device Type Mount Point Size Used System /dev/sda /dev/sda1 ntfs 104 MB 35MB Windows 7 (Loader) /dev/sda2 ntfs 95000MB unknown /dev/sda5 ext4 14999MB 3676MB Ubuntu 13.04 (13.04) /dev/sda6 ext4 14998MB 406MB /dev/sda7 swap 4998MB 0MB /dev/sda8 ext4 348996MB 5681MB /dev/sda3 ntfs 21004MB 18359MB Windows recovery Environment (loader) sda5 contains the root (/) partition, sda6 the /home partition, and sda8 will contain all my data, so that I may format both sda5 and sda6 once I re-install or update to a new version without data loss. grub 2 is supposed to be installed on /dev/sda. The BIOS is UEFI, without locks, and may also be run in classic mode. I have tried both, but do not gain access to grub2. Should I have installed grub2 on sda1 and loose the Windows loader? Any other suggestions? Thanks Wolfgang

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How to Bring More Women to Free and Open Source Software
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

"As an undergraduate engineering student Karen Sandler was used to being the only woman in a class. At the time she didn't want to talk about why there weren't more women in technology, though, believing the attention would only make things worse. That attitude has changed over time, however, as she experienced sexism more directly. At tech conferences, for example, her male colleagues would sometimes ask her whose spouse she was, not knowing that she was actually a speaker at the event. Now as a FOSS attorney and the executive director of the GNOME Foundation, Sandler is taking a different approach by addressing sexism head-on. ... 5 tips for Bringing More Women into Open Source 1. Address women directly. 2. Accept non-students and non-coders. 3. Connect women with mentors. "There's a feeling that women are less likely to ask for help, and find a mailing list intimidating... Mentors respond to newcomers and make them feel welcome," Sandler said. 4. Require a contribution as part of the application. It can be small like fixing a minor bug or rewording a pagraph of documentation. It gives people a head start for joining the community and also gives program administrators a better idea of who is applying and whether they're good. 5. Make sure women don't feel pressure to propose really ambitious projects." -- source: http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/714599-women-in-fr… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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BitTorrent Sync creates private, peer-to-peer Dropbox, no cloud required
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

"BitTorrent today released folder syncing software that replicates files across multiple computers using the same peer-to-peer file sharing technology that powers BitTorrent clients. The free BitTorrent Sync application is labeled as being in the alpha stage, so it's not necessarily ready for prime-time, but it is publicly available for download and working as advertised on my home network." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/bittorrent-sync-creat… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Geeksphone Firefox OS phones now available
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

"Following their unveiling at Mobile World Congress, smartphones running Mozilla's open source OS are now available to buy online from Geeksphone. The phones are aimed at developers and interested end users" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1847833 Cheers, peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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13.04 based Ubuntu Touch arrives with few changes
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

"Although billed by some as "beta", the latest images released for Ubuntu Touch are just marking its underlying switch of foundations to the newest release on Ubuntu, 13.04. Beyond that, little has changed in the fledgling mobile operating system. These "Raring Ringtail" images, available for the Galaxy Nexus (codename: maguro), Nexus 4 (mako), Nexus 10 (manta) and Nexus 7 (grouper) – the four officially supported devices." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1846907 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ack 2.0 enhances the "grep for source code"
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

"Version 2.0 of ack, a grep like tool optimised for searching source code introduces a more flexible identification system, better support for ackrc configuration files and the ability to read the list of files to be searched from stdin." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1847056 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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meeting tonight!
by Peter Reutemann 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

Hi everyone Looks like the latest crash of the blades killed the meeting reminder. Thanks for Ian of reminding me and apologies for the (very) late reminder for tonight's meeting. We do have two talks scheduled for tonight: - Review of Linux live CDs (openSUSE, Slax, Porteus): Ian Young - Anti-aliasing / Code design / LibreOffice: Ian Stewart http://elgg.wlug.org.nz/event_calendar/view/731/meeting http://www.wlug.org.nz/MeetingTopics.2013-04-22 See you tonight! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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The flavors of Ubuntu from A to Z—or at least from Kubuntu to Xubuntu
by Peter Reutemann 21 Apr '13

21 Apr '13

'The release of Ubuntu 13.04 is less than a week away, bringing with it some refinements to the Unity interface that users either love or hate. But Ubuntu with Unity is far from the only choice for Linux lovers or those looking to avoid Windows and OS X. In addition to the many Linux distributions such as Fedora, Debian, or OpenSuse, there is a thriving open source community maintaining desktop operating systems based on Ubuntu code but with different user interfaces. These often have whimsical names like "Kubuntu" and "Xubuntu." While you can download the standard version of Ubuntu and apply a different user interface to it, most of these alternative distros are built with a non-Unity interface in mind from the start.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/the-flavors-of-ubuntu… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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email for Graham Lauder - the SUSE and OpenOffice guy in Tokoroa
by Ian Young 17 Apr '13

17 Apr '13

Hi, anybody got a current email for Graham Lauder? I was hoping to get some DVDs of the latest SUSE Linux release from him for distribution at the LUG. ~ Ian Y

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Jolla Ports Wayland To Android GPU Drivers
by Peter Reutemann 12 Apr '13

12 Apr '13

"A Jolla Sailfish OS engineer has ported Wayland to run on Android GPU drivers. The implementation uses libhybis with the Android driver so that the rest of the operating system can be a conventional glibc-based Linux operating system, such as Mer / Sailfish OS. The code is to be LGPL licensed. The reported reasoning for making Wayland support Android GPU drivers was difficulty in ODM vendors not wishing to offer driver support for platforms aside from Android." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/11/2147208 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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USB sticks - best brand?
by Ian Young 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Just wondering whether anyone has opinions about a 'good' brand of USB stick. Having a wee spell of trying to run live Linux from these. Someone reckoned Sandisk is where it's at. This seems to be an area where the consumer is not offered much useful information, or perhaps I just haven't found that info. These gadgets have some flash memory and a controller chip I believe and that's about it, but maybe some of these components are somehow superior to others? Any thoughts? Good and cheap, can I have both?

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Empty boxes?
by Bryce Utting 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Hi all, I'm moving in a couple of weekends (which delights me enormously, I can tell you), and'm looking for boxes -- anyone have a stack of a dozen or so collapsed boxes of useful size tucked away? (any bigger than say 50x50x35 is kinda awkward, but if they're consistent then no biggie) Can reach me here or at 021 217 6386. cheers, butting

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Optimus support comes to the NVIDIA Linux driver
by Peter Reutemann 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

"NVIDIA has released a beta version of its proprietary driver for Linux systems which supports its Optimus hybrid graphics technology. Version 319.12 of the driver requires the current development version of the Linux kernel ." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1838415 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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SailfishOS SDK arrives
by Peter Reutemann 08 Apr '13

08 Apr '13

"A first look at Jolla's SailfishOS SDK reveals a novel dual virtualised machine arrangement, Qt tooling and an easy to use system for developing applications for the devices due in the second half of the year." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1837300 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Alienware in the US sells gaming PCs with Ubuntu
by Peter Reutemann 08 Apr '13

08 Apr '13

"Alienware is now selling four variants of its X51 series of gaming PCs with Ubuntu 12.04 preinstalled; however, the Dell subsidiary is currently only offering these systems in the US." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1836869 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu 13.04's "Final Beta" arrives
by Peter Reutemann 07 Apr '13

07 Apr '13

"The only beta for the Ubuntu 13.04 cycle has been released, but it is more notable by what features aren't present in the beta. The final release comes at the end of the month." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1835805 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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How to Run Linux on ODROID-U2: A Monster of an ARM Machine
by Peter Reutemann 03 Apr '13

03 Apr '13

"The more you look into the options for running a low-power Linux machine, the more products you will uncover. The target of this article is the ODROID-U2, which is an extremely small form factor, ARM-based computer that packs enough grunt to replace a modest desktop." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/711478-how-to-run-linux-on-odroid-u2-a… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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ZFS on Linux is "ready for wide scale deployment"
by Peter Reutemann 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

"The developers of the native ZFS port for Linux have announced that the project is now is ready for wide scale deployment. ZFS for Linux 0.6.1 also adds packages for Debian, Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1832848 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Security fix leads to PostgreSQL lock down
by Peter Reutemann 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

"A flaw in PostgreSQL, which will be fixed in the forthcoming 4 April release of the software, is severe enough that the developers have locked down the source code repositories and issued a notice that users should install the update as soon as it is released." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1832846 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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End of life for three Ubuntu editions on 9 May
by Peter Reutemann 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

"9 May is the end of life day for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on servers, 10.04 LTS on desktops and 11.10 generally. Upgrading to 12.04 LTS and its five year support cycle is recommended" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1832813 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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GNOME 3.8 brings polish and new Classic Mode
by Peter Reutemann 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

"The lastest version of the open source desktop for Linux and Unix systems adds a new Clocks application, a number of new settings panels and a number of design changes throughout the desktop environment. A Classic Mode has also been added." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1832713 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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GTK+ 3.8 brings Wayland support
by Peter Reutemann 28 Mar '13

28 Mar '13

"The latest version of the open source widget toolkit adds support for Wayland 1.0, support for touch interfaces, and better text rendering and theming." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1831722 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Enlightenment Terminal Allows Video Playback, PDF Viewing
by Peter Reutemann 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

"The E17 Enlightenment project has released a new version of its Terminology terminal emulator. With Terminology 0.3 comes several fancy features, including the ability to preview video files, images, and PDF files from within the terminal. There's new escape sequences, inline video playback, and other features to this terminal emulator that's only built on EFL and libc." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/03/27/1217241 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Spanish Open Source Group Files Complaint Over Microsoft Use of UEFI Secure Boot
by Peter Reutemann 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

"Hispalinux, which represents Spanish Open Source developers and users, has filed a complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission. 14 pages of grief cited Windows 8 as an 'obstruction mechanism' calling UEFI Secure Boot a 'de facto technological jail for computer booting systems... making Microsoft's Windows platform less neutral than ever.' On March 6 of 2012 the Commission fined Microsoft 561 million Euros for failing to offer users a choice of web browser, and there was also a 2004 ruling which found the company had abused its market position by tying Windows Media Player to Windows itself. Relations appear to remain more tense towards Windows in Europe, so there may be some hope of making UEFI more Linux-friendly. UEFI has been implicated in the death of Samsung laptops running Linux." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/03/26/2226246/spanish-open-source-gro… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

DOS Emulation Arrives For the Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

"Homebrew Coder Pate has released a DOS Emulator for the Raspberry Pi. Originally released for the Nintendo DS and Android, the emulator currently can emulate a CPU: 80486 processor, including the protected mode features (for running DOS4GW games) but without virtual memory support. The emulation runs at a speed around that of a 20MHz 80486 (which equals a 40MHz 80386) machine. It has support for Super VGA graphics, Soundblaster 2.0, Memory, USB keyboard and mouse. Perfect for playing old classics such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Theme Park." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/03/26/1256210/dos-emulation-arrives-for-t… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Fwd: Google Alert - linux
by Michael McDonald 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply(a)google.com> Date: 27 March 2013 07:52 Subject: Google Alert - linux To: mikencolleen(a)gmail.com Live Twitter Q&A Thursday with Adapteva CEO on the $99 Linux Supercomputer Linux.com (blog) Back in October Adapteva wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign to build a Raspberry Pi-inspired $99 Linux supercomputer. Next month the company expects the first Parallela boards to be in production -- just in time to show off at The Linux ... <http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/711034-live-twitte…>

1 0

Media Centre Linux OpenELEC now on Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

"The recently released version 3.0 of OpenELEC, the minimalist media centre Linux distribution, supports more hardware. Based on XBMC 12.1, it now includes images for the Raspberry Pi and Arctic MC001 computers" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1829751 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Weak keys in NetBSD
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

"An incorrect bracket in the program code of NetBSD causes systems to generate weak cryptographic keys. OpenSSH server keys are particularly affected" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1829336 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Orion launches bid to boost NZ ICT talent
by Rene Bartosh 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

They are sponsoring raspberry pi's for 'S schools. http://nzh.tw/10872863 Regards Rene

1 0

ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- !Special General Meeting A draft of the revised charter will be tabled, this will reduce the quorum to the smaller of 5 members or 50% of the general membership, and reduce the size of the committee to 4. Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards

2 1

Too Perfect a Mirror
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

"Jeff Mitchell writes on his blog about what almost became 'The Great KDE Disaster Of 2013.' It all started as simple update of the root git server and ended up with a corrupt git repository automatically mirrored to every mirror and deleting every copy of most KDE repositories. It ends by discussing what the problem is with git --mirror and how you can avoid similar problems in the future." -- source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/03/24/1252237/too-perfect-a-mirror Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

SpaceX: Lessons Learned Developing Software For Space Vehicles
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

"On day two of the 2013 Embedded Linux Conference, Robert Rose of SpaceX spoke about the "Lessons Learned Developing Software for Space Vehicles". In his talk, he discussed how SpaceX develops its Linux-based software for a wide variety of tasks needed to put spacecraft into orbit—and eventually beyond. Linux runs everywhere at SpaceX, he said, on everything from desktops to spacecraft." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/03/24/2050221 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Kivy - Open source Python library for development of UI apps
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

I know, not strictly speaking Linux, but interesting nonetheless... "Kivy - Open source Python library for rapid development of applications that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps. Kivy is running on Linux, Windows, MacOSX, Android and IOS. You can run the same code on all supported platforms. It can use natively most inputs protocols and devices like WM_Touch, WM_Pen, Mac OS X Trackpad and Magic Mouse, Mtdev, Linux Kernel HID, TUIO. A multi-touch mouse simulator is included." Release under LGPL3 -- source: http://kivy.org/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GCC 4.8 completes migration to C++
by Peter Reutemann 24 Mar '13

24 Mar '13

"The GCC developers have, after years of planning, completed the switch to C++ as the implementation language for their software. The new version of GCC also includes performance improvements and a new general optimisation level." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1824539 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Hardware up for grabs
by Daniel Lawson 23 Mar '13

23 Mar '13

Hey guys I'm clearing stuff out again, and have some more hardware available: PC 1: Intel Core2 Q8200 (Quad-core, 2.33GHz) Intel desktop board DQ45CB Thermaltake Litepower 600 PSU Cooler Master Elite 330 4GB DDR2-800 RAM hard disk of some size, I'll dig something up. PC 2: AMD Phenom II X4 925 (Quad-core, 2.8GHz) Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2 Motherboard Cooler Master Elite 330 8GB DDR3 RAM Seasonic 740W PSU w/modular connections Fanless radeon graphics card of some description (1GB ram i think) 750 GB harddisk. Other stuff: Altec Lansing speakers and subwoofer XBox 1.6, mod chipped (Xecutor 3 mod chip, I think) No hard disk unless I can find the original one, but it shouldn't be hard to fit another one. DVD Remote, one (maybe 2) controllers, and a Grand Theft Auto boxed set if I can find it Pickup from work in town (Alexandra St) preferred, but can do a weekend/evening pickup in Silverdale if arranged in advance

1 1

Canonical and China Announce Ubuntu Collaboration
by Peter Reutemann 22 Mar '13

22 Mar '13

"Canonical, the software company that manages and funds Ubuntu, announced that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will base their national reference architecture for standard operating systems on Ubuntu, and they will call it Kylin. Arguably China is the largest desktop market and the announcement has important implications. Shuttleworth says, 'The release of Ubuntu Kylin brings the Chinese open source community into the global Ubuntu community.'" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/03/21/2235251/canonical-and-china-announ… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Debian 7.0 for Easter?
by Peter Reutemann 21 Mar '13

21 Mar '13

"The Debian developers are preparing for the release of Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" and have shortened the list of Release Critical Bugs to less than one hundred, of which the majority will most likely be ignored or corresponding packages will be dropped" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1827628 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 21 Mar '13

21 Mar '13

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- !Special General Meeting A draft of the revised charter will be tabled, this will reduce the quorum to the smaller of 5 members or 50% of the general membership, and reduce the size of the committee to 4. Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards

1 0

OX Text offers open source collaborative DOCX/ODT editing
by Peter Reutemann 20 Mar '13

20 Mar '13

"OX App Suite is to expand with OX Text, a collaborative document editor which works with DOCX and ODT documents natively on the web and intelligently avoids damaging complex document content it isn't able to edit" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1826451 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu to halve support length for non-LTS releases
by Peter Reutemann 19 Mar '13

19 Mar '13

"The Ubuntu Technical Board has decided to half the support time for non-LTS releases to nine months and enable users to more easier track the development of the distribution without switching to a rolling release model" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1825716 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

KDE sets its sights on Wayland
by Peter Reutemann 19 Mar '13

19 Mar '13

"After the GNOME project's decision, the KDE developers seem to also have decided to renew efforts to get their desktop environment ported to the Wayland display manager. This leaves Canonical as the only backer of Mir as an X replacement." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1825273 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Major Bug In The Bitcoin Software Tests The Community And The Exchange Rate
by mailinglist 18 Mar '13

18 Mar '13

Bitcoin went into crisis mode early this morning. This time, the threat wasn't from hackers tampering with poorly secured virtual wallets. It was Bitcoin's own code that was causing the trouble.... http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/bitcoin-/#.UUdqqVxLcf…

1 0

OpenSUSE 12.3 Is Out
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '13

13 Mar '13

"OpenSUSE 12.3 is out. There are several methods of downloading, as well as different media. It is also possible to boot the live CD from a USB stick. When using the DVD or Net install ISO, the standard is to select between KDE or GNOME, but XFCE and LXDE are also options. ARM images are available as well. More information about the release can be found in this feature guide" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/03/13/1951235/opensuse-123-is-out Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GNOME plans to promote Wayland port
by Peter Reutemann 13 Mar '13

13 Mar '13

"GNOME developer Matthias Clasen has proposed that efforts to port the GNOME desktop to Wayland should be given more weight and be completed within the next year." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1821991 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

How to run an Arduino (clone) on a 9V battery for weeks or even months
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '13

12 Mar '13

"It is quite possible to run an ATMEGA with Arduino code for weeks if not months on a normal 9V battery, but it requires a different/special Arduino (clone)." -- source: http://hwstartup.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/how-to-run-an-arduino-on-a-9v-bat… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Atheros open sources firmware for two wireless chips
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '13

12 Mar '13

"Qualcomm Atheros has open sourced the firmware for its 802.11n wireless chips AR9271 and AR7010. The source code, build tools and instructions are available on GitHub." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1820950 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Intel's graphics driver installation program for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 12 Mar '13

12 Mar '13

"Intel has released an installation program that provides Fedora and Ubuntu with newer versions of its graphics drivers by replacing parts of the distribution packages." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1820608 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Samsung plans to turn smartphones into data safes
by Peter Reutemann 05 Mar '13

05 Mar '13

"Like the home of the US government's gold reserves, Samsung's KNOX project is all about keeping intruders out. Samsung's version, however, will not protect precious metals, but business data in mobile device storage. KNOX, which was unveiled today, is based on SE Android, the Android version of SELinux that was originally developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA)." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1816663 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Canonical reveals plans to launch Mir display server
by Peter Reutemann 04 Mar '13

04 Mar '13

'On the evening before the first online Ubuntu Developer Summit, Canonical has revealed its plans for "Mir", a next-generation display server which will run as a system-level component to replace the X Window system. Canonical has rejected Wayland, seen by many as the successor to X Windows, because they feel it recreates X semantics in its input event handling and parts of the protocol include privileged shell integration which the Mir specifiers would rather not have. The decisions along this path of development appear to have been taken in the summer of 2012.' -- source: http://h-online.com/-1815982 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Dell Sputnik now being sold in Europe
by Peter Reutemann 03 Mar '13

03 Mar '13

"Dell is now selling its Sputnik developer laptop, pre-installed with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, in its UK and German online stores. In the UK, customers save £120 (ex VAT) compared to the regular Windows model" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1814767 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Ubuntu Touch Beats Firefox OS For 'Best of MWC' From CNET
by Peter Reutemann 01 Mar '13

01 Mar '13

"This week at Mobile World Congress both Firefox OS and Ubuntu have been wooing the audience with their mobile offerings. CNET reviewed both and felt that Ubuntu was 'the clear winner.' From the article, 'The team thought that Ubuntu Touch, the tablet version of which we got our hands-on for the first time at MWC, feels more like the complete package at this point. We liked its slick, elegant interface that makes use of every side of the screen and puts your content and contacts front and center, minimizing the time spent hopping back to a home screen.'" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/02/28/2120252/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

ipv6 webcam
by Bruce Kingsbury 26 Feb '13

26 Feb '13

I've got a machine running apache2/php5/mysql and motion at pi.fairfield.org.nz (ipv6 only outside our lan) In theory it should work, but it seems motion is ipv6 only. is there some way eg php script that I can have apache connect to localhost:8081 and just forward the raw data through to the browser? I set up two scripts webcam.php and webcam2.php that are supposed to do this, but neither seem to work (as far as I can test them; I won't have ipv6 at home until tomorrow). webcam.php is this; <?php $socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP); socket_connect($socket, '127.0.0.1', 8081); $reply = ""; do { $recv = ""; $recv = socket_read($socket, '1400'); if($recv != "") { $reply .= $recv; } } while($recv != ""); echo($reply); ?> webcam2.php is this; <?php system(nc 127.0.0.1 8081); ?>

2 3

Booting desktop Linux on the Chromebook Pixel
by Peter Reutemann 25 Feb '13

25 Feb '13

"Google engineer Bill Richardson has detailed how to boot Linux Mint on the new Chromebook Pixel. The Pixel is the first Chromebook to include the option of booting other operating systems with a third-party bootloader." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1809912 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Special General Meeting 25th March 2013 - Change of Charter
by Rene Bartosh 25 Feb '13

25 Feb '13

Notice is hereby given of a special general meeting to take place at 7:30pm on Monday 25th March 2013 at MS4.G.02. A draft of the revised charter will be tabled, this will reduce the quorum to the smaller of 5 members or 50% of the general membership, and reduce the size of the committee to 4. Regards, Rene Bartosh WLUG Secretary -- >From Rene Bartosh (Gmail account) <kirjava(a)gmail.com> Personal: http://kirjava.net.nz/

2 1

SPAM filtering.
by Colin Palmer 24 Feb '13

24 Feb '13

On 22 February 2013 16:21, mailinglist <mailinglist(a)blahdeblah.co.nz> wrote: > he he, finally got the link through that I wanted to share. Any one at > the Uni realise how agressive the present spam filters are? > Yes, we do. The list server uses Postini to do spam detection, but leaves it up to Mailman to make discard and moderate decisions, so you can make it a bit less aggressive by tweaking the header rules in each list's spam filters section. -- Colin Palmer <colinp(a)waikato.ac.nz> Linux Architect, Systems and Development Team

2 1

(no subject)
by Ronnie Collinson 24 Feb '13

24 Feb '13

Sounds good. Just some small typos corrected and I booked the room for 25/2: Regrettably, I must inform you all, that we failed to attain quorum at the AGM last night, with only 7 members arriving. As by the charter, we will hold a second AGM on February 25th (after Christmas and summer festivities). If we fail to obtain quorum or a new committee, we may have no choice but to file for dissolution with the registrar (could be re-registered for a fee of $204.45). If this is needed we will endeavour to leave as much of the online presence running as possible. The club does however remain in good financial standing. If any member is unable to attend the AGM, we will be happy for you to attend via IRC, we will attempt to stream the meeting too (perhaps audio-only via mumble). On behalf of committee

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Second attempt at http://www.wlug.org.nz/AGM Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards

1 0

Ubuntu For Tablets Announced
by Peter Reutemann 19 Feb '13

19 Feb '13

"Keeping its promise from yesterday Ubuntu has announced an operating system for tablets dubbed 'Ubuntu for Tablets' that it says will work on tablets of any size. Advertised to work on both entry level tablets as well as high-end tablets with enterprise specifications, the operating system offers multitasking, safer sharing, instant launch of applications through the menu bar on the left, effortless switching between applications among other features." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/02/19/1655233/ubuntu-for-tablets-announc… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 17 Feb '13

17 Feb '13

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Second attempt at http://www.wlug.org.nz/AGM Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards

1 0

Samsung Laptop Bug Is Not Linux Specific
by Peter Reutemann 10 Feb '13

10 Feb '13

"Matthew Garrett, a Linux kernel developer who was investigating the recent Linux-on-Samsung-in-UEFI-mode problem, has bricked a Samsung laptopusing a test userspace program in Windows. The most fascinating part of the story is on what is actually causing the firmware boot failure: 'Unfortunately, it turns out that some Samsung laptops will fail to boot if too much of the [UEFI] variable storage space is used. We don't know what "too much" is yet, but writing a bunch of variables from Windows is enough to trigger it. I put some sample code here — it writes out 36 variables each containing a kilobyte of random data. I ran this as an administrator under Windows and then rebooted the system. It never came back.'" -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/02/09/2146207/samsung-laptop-bug-is-n… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 2

GNOME developers plan "Linux apps"
by Peter Reutemann 08 Feb '13

08 Feb '13

"Some GNOME developers are planning to implement an app format that allows developers to provide their Linux programs in distribution-independent files that can be installed as easily as smartphone apps. A sandbox model is supposed to isolate the apps from each other, and from the rest of the system, in a way that goes further than the isolation in current Linux distributions. Various developers worked to conceptualise such "Linux apps" at the GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest, which was held in the run-up to FOSDEM 2013 in Brussels. At the hackfest, the GNOME developers also declared JavaScript as the de-facto standard for GNOME programming." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1798691 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

(no subject)
by Bruce Kingsbury 07 Feb '13

07 Feb '13

This is STILL causing me grief. Firefox under Debian defaults to US_Letter after every single upgrade. I have to go into about:config and change each occurence of "Letter" back to "A4" otherwise if anyone tries to print from Firefox it stops the printer and I have to manually flush out all the US_Letter jobs. Locale settings in debian are all set to New Zealand. Every other program defaults to A4. Is there any way of universally making Firefox always default to A4? It's realld driving me MAD!!!!

2 1

Ubuntu Smartphone Shipping In October
by Peter Reutemann 07 Feb '13

07 Feb '13

"Smartphones running the open source Ubuntu operating system will be available to customers beginning in October 2013, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told CIO Journal. Ubuntu will be available on a full range of devices, including desktop and tablet computers, potentially providing corporate IT executives a way to reduce the number of devices they purchase and manage, and would allow users to access all manner of corporate data through a single, pocket-sized device. 'You can share Windows apps to the phone desktop,' said Mr. Shuttleworth during a meeting in New York Tuesday." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/02/06/217237/ubuntu-smartphone-shipping-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Windows Software Coming To Android Via Wine
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '13

04 Feb '13

"Software that allows Windows apps to run on Android devices was demoed at the Fosdem 2013 open source conference this weekend. The demo by Alexandre Julliard, one of the original developers of Wine, showed Wine running on an emulated Android environment. Phoronix reports the performance of Wine on Android to be 'horrendously slow' but says these problems were attributed to it running on an emulated environment rather than a native Android OS. ... The makers claim it bypasses many performance and memory penalties of other methods for simulating computing environments, such as running virtual machines, by translating Windows API calls into POSIX calls on the fly. The Android OS predominantly runs on ARM-based devices today, and a separate demo at the Fosdem conference showed Wine running on ARM-based hardware. There was no news on when support for ARM-based devices or Android will be added to a publicly available Wine release." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/02/04/2228218/windows-software-coming-to-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Booting Via UEFI Can Brick Samsung Notebooks
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '13

04 Feb '13

"Heise News reports today some Samsung notebooks can be turned into a brick if booted just one time via UEFI into Linux. Even the firmware does not boot anymore. Some reports in the Ubuntu bug tracker system report that such notebooks can not be recovered without replacing the main board. Other Linux distributions may be affected as well. Kernel developers are discussing a change in the samsung-laptop driver." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/01/30/1426255/linux-booting-via-uefi-can… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

Gnome Goes JavaScript
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '13

04 Feb '13

"Much to most programmers' shock and dismay Gnome has made JavaScript its main language for apps. It will still support other languages and it still supports C for libraries, but for apps it is JavaScript that rules. JavaScript seems to be a good choice for Gnome 3, as the shell UI is written in the language. It is also consistent with the use of JavaScript in WinRT, Chrome Apps, and FirefoxOS apps, and generally the rise of web apps. As you might expect, the initial reactions are of horror at the idea that JavaScript has been selected rather than the favorite language of the commenter. There is a great deal of ignorance about (and prejudice against) JavaScript, which is often regarded as an incomplete toy language rather than the elegant and sparse language that it actually is." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/02/04/1819231/gnome-goes-javascript Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

MS Won't Release Study Disputing Munich's Linux-Switch Savings
by Peter Reutemann 04 Feb '13

04 Feb '13

"As previously reported on Slashdot, in November of last year, the city of Munich reported savings of over €10 million from its switch to Linux. Microsoft subsequently commissioned a study (conducted by HP) that found that, in fact, 'Munich would have saved €43.7 million if it had stuck with Microsoft.' Now, Microsoft has said it won't release the study, saying that '[it] was commissioned by Microsoft to HP Consulting for internal purposes only.'" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/01/22/1716244/ms-wont-release-study-disp… Sounds like good old FUD to me... Like "Linux is infringes on heaps of our patents", without ever stating which patents exactly, if I recall that correctly: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 4

Gnome login screen accessability features
by Bruce Kingsbury 01 Feb '13

01 Feb '13

I'm having a bit of a problem with people fiddling at the logon screen, turning on features like sticky keys and screen reader and large text. These stay on even after the computers are shut down and I have to go around all the machines and turn them off again. Is there any way to dissable the accessability menu in GDM? Or at least some way that I can easily reset everything back to off?

1 0

Bit coin links and Greg's presentation notes.
by Chris O'Halloran 27 Jan '13

27 Jan '13

Hello All, Here is some more information from Greg's note at last Friday's presentation. I'd also like to thank Greg for volunteering to talk and for such a well presented and technical topic. Seeing the data miner in action was also a bonus. Attached is the email that Greg sent to Bruce and myself earlier this week. It seems as though there is plenty more reading on the topic. I've also loaded Greg's presentation to google docs so that those that weren't at the meeting can appreciate the presentation. <quote> Hi Chris, Bruce, as discussed here's the slideshow and talk-notes from last night I promised I'd send to you to forward on to relevant people, (group-wide bounced me on the email size limit). Also here's a list of relevant links as requested; Project home page http://www.bitcoin.org/ Wiki Main_Page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page Network status live feed http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ Forum https://forum.bitcoin.org/ Layman promo video site http://www.weusecoins.com/ Instawallet (web wallet) https://www.instawallet.org API -reference pages https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/API_reference_(JSON-RPC) https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls_list Monetary theory - Austrian economics http://www.libertariannews.org/2011/06/18/the-economics-of-bitcoin-how-bitc… http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2009/05/the-best-of-modern-aus… http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae9_4_5.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School http://mises.org/ Szabo bitgold post http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html Namecoin, distributed DNS Dot-bit project homepage http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page Feel free to email me for further links or information. Cheers, Greg B. Link to Greg's Bit Coin presentation<https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1ggO7B5SX…> Link to Gregs' presentation notes<https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1SqdoXYL8…> </quote>

7 13

Ubuntu considers “huge” change that would end traditional release cycle
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jan '13

23 Jan '13

"In the nine-year history of Ubuntu Linux, a new version of the operating system has come out every six months. But Canonical, Ubuntu's developer, is considering ditching that model in favor of one that produces an entirely new version only once every two years—while speeding up the overall pace of development by adopting a "rolling release" cycle in between." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/ubuntu-considers-huge… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Pear Linux
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jan '13

23 Jan '13

Hi there Last week, I came across the Pear Linux distribution, an Ubuntu remix, which is visually quite appealing: http://pearlinux.fr/ The last couple of days, I've unsuccessfully tried to run the live CD on: - virtualbox - old Dell Vostro dual-core laptop - Lenovo x100e The SysLinux prompt ("boot:") shows up and when continuing, the CPU seems to go nuts and nothing happens anymore. Just wondering whether anybody else had any luck installing it... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 10

Test
by mailinglist 23 Jan '13

23 Jan '13

Hi guys, Sorry again. It's definitely what I'm trying to talk about. The spam filters are just blocking it though the messages happily get through to my work email. At least I know why I cannot contribute to the list. Cheers, Chris

3 5

test message
by mailinglist 22 Jan '13

22 Jan '13

Hi guys, Sorry about the messages. I've been trying to send a message so many times but it seems as though some filter is blocking it. Cheers, Chris

1 0

test message
by mailinglist 22 Jan '13

22 Jan '13

sorry for the test message

1 0

AGM second attempt
by Bruce Kingsbury 22 Jan '13

22 Jan '13

Following the failure to reach quorum at the 2012 AGM, we will have a second attempt at an AGM on Monday 25th February. This meeting will be at MS4.G.02, from 7:30pm onwards

4 3

Valve Starts Promoting Steam For Linux To Windows Users
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jan '13

22 Jan '13

"Steam is now being used by thousands of gamers running a Linux OS, and Valve has got to the point where they are happy to start urging Windows users to make the switch. Proof of that comes from a 'Join the Beta' promotion on the homepage of Steam suggesting you try Steam for Linux. There's even a download link to get Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which removes yet another barrier to entry. With Gabe Newell's clear hatred of Windows 8, this shouldn't be a surprising move. We aren't going to see another version of Windows appear for a few years, so in Valve's eyes pushing Linux to gamers makes a lot of sense." -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/13/01/21/2021206/valve-starts-promoting-ste… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GPLv3 driver for exFAT reaches version 1.0
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jan '13

21 Jan '13

"ExFAT project member Andrew Nayenko has released version 1.0.0 of fuse-exfat, a filesystem driver that can read and write to Microsoft's exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) filesystem. Like the Ntfs-3G NTFS driver that is used in Linux distributions, the exFAT driver is based on FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) and works under Linux as well as OS X." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1788226 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

64-bit Window version of Scribus open source DTP program available
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jan '13

16 Jan '13

"Those who use the open source Scribus layout program under Windows can, like those who use it under Linux, finally install the new version 1.4.2 as a native 64-bit application on the 64-bit versions of Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. This means that the program is no longer subject to the memory limit of 2 GB per process that exists with 32-bit applications. Those who use an older version of Windows can still download and install a 32-bit version of Scribus." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1785023 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Kolab 3 debuts new user interface
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jan '13

16 Jan '13

"Kolab Systems has released Kolab 3, the latest incarnation of their open source groupware server. Kolab 3 has been in development for quite some time and was originally expected to arrive in the third quarter of 2012. Kolab 2.4, released in May 2012, included a preview of some of the new features, including a new web interface based on the Roundcube email client, that supports mobile use on smartphones and tablets. Development of Roundcube is being funded by Kolab Systems." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1784192 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Fedora 18 - released
by Peter Reutemann 15 Jan '13

15 Jan '13

Fedora 18 has been released. You can review the flavours of desktop iso's available for download here... https://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options The default desktop iso uses Gnome. Others available include KDE, LXDE and Xfce The nearest download site for Gnome and KDE seems to be in Aussie at... http://fedora.mirror.uber.com.au http://fedora.mirror.uber.com.au/fedora/linux/releases/18/Live/i386/ Fedora-18-i686-Live-Desktop.iso 10-Jan-2013 04:48 889M Fedora-18-i686-Live-KDE.iso 10-Jan-2013 05:38 805M http://fedora.mirror.uber.com.au/fedora/linux/releases/18/Live/x86_64/ Fedora-18-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso 10-Jan-2013 04:49 916M Fedora-18-x86_64-Live-KDE.iso 10-Jan-2013 05:51 831M -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 1

Report: ZTE to bring Firefox OS to Europe
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jan '13

11 Jan '13

"The Chinese phone maker ZTE says that it is working with an unnamed European wireless carrier to bring smartphones based on Mozilla's Firefox OS to the market this year. According to the Bloomberg report, Cheng Lixin, the CEO of ZTE's US business revealed the plan during an interview at CES, the consumer electronics show taking place in Las Vegas." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1780805 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Plasma Active, Sailfish, and Ubuntu Phone Developers Discussing Common APIs
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jan '13

10 Jan '13

"Jolla's Sailfish, Canonical's recently announced Ubuntu Phone, and KDE's Plasma Active environments are all using Qt5's QML for interface design. Unfortunately, the set of UI components provided by each, although similar, are incompatible with the others. After a chat on IRC between developers of all three platforms, they've decided to discuss the reasons behind each implementation, in the hopes that they can work toward a common architecture." -- source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/01/10/1513251/plasma-active-sailfish-an… Now that would be quite a feat! Fingers crossed... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Mint 14 Is a Breath of Fresh Air
by Peter Reutemann 09 Jan '13

09 Jan '13

"Linux Mint 14 contains some well-needed facelifts. For example, the Mint Display Manager used for the login screen is refreshingly improved. MDM now supports legacy GDM 2 themes with some 30 installed by default and about 2,000 more available for download. Even better, the format is so easy to apply for making themes that you can quickly add your own personalization to make your login screen look your way." -- source: http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/76989.html Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Mindstorms EV3: Lego announces new robotics kit
by Peter Reutemann 08 Jan '13

08 Jan '13

'Announced for the second half of 2013, Lego's Mindstorms EV3 robotics kit includes a completely new central operating component, which Lego calls the "Intelligent Brick". The controller uses an ARMv9 (the company's previous NXT 2.0 products work with ARMv7) and includes 16MB of flash memory that can be further expanded with an SD card. A quite generous 64MB of RAM is probably required by the new operating system. According to the specifications, it is Linux-based and should, therefore, be "hackable".' -- source: http://h-online.com/-1778671 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Snowlinux 4 "Glacier" released
by Peter Reutemann 07 Jan '13

07 Jan '13

'Snowlinux 4 "Glacier" is based upon Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 "Wheezy" and uses Linux 3.5. MATE 1.4 is the default desktop environment and LightDM as new default login manager to replace GDM 3. It was built an own greeter for LightDM. There were introduced much new features like snowMenu, the Snowlinux menu and snowMount, the Snowlinux mount tool for drives. The Snowlinux-Metal-Theme was colored blue and the icon set was updated with the latest Faience icons. Snowlinux uses Pidgin now as default IM client. This release comes along Firefox 17 and Thunderbird 17, LibreOffice, Rhythmbox and Shotwell.' -- source: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=07652 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 2

Mobile Raspberry Pi Computer: Build your own portable Pi-to-Go
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jan '13

05 Jan '13

"When I started this project four weeks ago, I just wanted to see if it was possible to make an ultra portable, mobile Raspberry Pi<http://blog.parts-people.com/2012/12/20/mobile-raspberry-pi-computer-build-…>that you can take to-go. As I was building my Pi-to-Go I kept saying to myself, it would be cool if it had this, and then I would find a way to make it happen." -- source: http://blog.parts-people.com/2012/12/20/mobile-raspberry-pi-computer-build-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Raspberry Pi Gets an Open Source Educational Manual
by Peter Reutemann 03 Jan '13

03 Jan '13

Last year a group of UK teachers started working on a Creative Commons licensed teaching manual for the Raspberry Pi. That work has produced the Raspberry Pi Education Manual which is available at the Pi Store or here as a PDF. From Raspberry Pi: "The manual is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 unported licence, which is a complicated way of saying that it’s free for you to download, copy, adapt and use – you just can’t sell it. You’ll find chapters here on Scratch, Python, interfacing, and the command line. There’s a group at Oracle which is currently working with us on a faster Java virtual machine (JVM) for the Pi, and once that work’s done, chapters on Greenfoot and Geogebra will also be made available – we hope that’ll be very soon." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/01/02/2316251/raspberry-pi-gets-an-open-s… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Steam for Linux beta now open to the public
by Peter Reutemann 20 Dec '12

20 Dec '12

"Good news for those who didn't score an invite to the first round of Valve's closed beta of Steam for Linux. The service is now available to anyone running Linux." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/12/steam-for-ubuntu-beta-now-open-to-the… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Raspberry Pi Team Launches Pi Store
by Peter Reutemann 17 Dec '12

17 Dec '12

"Raspberry Pi developer team has introduced the Pi store, a place to get software for Raspberry Pi, in collaboration with IndieCity and Velocix. The team hopes that the store will become a one-stop-shop for Raspbian Pi users. The store already has 23 major applications available for users including LibreOffice and Asterisk. There are classic games like Freeciv and OpenTTD and Raspberry Pi exclusive Iridium Rising. The team also managed to get 'one piece of commercial content: the excellent Storm in a Teacup from Cobra Mobile.'" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/12/17/1353255/raspberry-pi-team-launches… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Nukes 386 Support
by Peter Reutemann 13 Dec '12

13 Dec '12

sfcrazy writes with news that Linus pulled a patch by Ingo Molnar to remove support for the 386 from the kernel. >From Ingo's commit log: "Unfortunately there's a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff." Linus adds: "I'm not sentimental. Good riddance." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/12/12/1414238/linux-nukes-386-support Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

How to install Ubuntu on Acer's $199 C7 Chromebook
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '12

11 Dec '12

"Maybe you think the price of Acer's new $199 C7 Chromebook is appealing and that the hardware doesn't look bad, but you're a little worried about using Chrome OS to get your work done. Or maybe you're looking for a small, cheap laptop to run Ubuntu, and you're not really interested in buying a computer running a Windows license you'll never use. If either of those sentences describe you and you aren't afraid of the command line, it's actually pretty easy to convert the cheapest Chromebook yet into a nice little Linux laptop." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-acers-199-c… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Samba 4.0 Released: the First Free Software Active Directory Compatible Server
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '12

11 Dec '12

"We released Samba 4.0 today, containing the first compatible Free Software implementation of Microsoft's Active Directory protocols. 'Samba 4.0 comprises an LDAP directory server, Heimdal Kerberos authentication server, a secure Dynamic DNS server, and implementations of all necessary remote procedure calls for Active Directory. Samba 4.0 provides everything needed to serve as an Active Directory Compatible Domain Controller for all versions of Microsoft Windows clients currently supported by Microsoft, including the recently released Windows 8. The Samba 4.0 Active Directory Compatible Server provides support for features such as Group Policy, Roaming Profiles, Windows Administration tools and integrates with Microsoft Exchange and Free Software compatible services such as OpenChange.'" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/12/11/1922220/samba-40-released-the-firs… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux 3.7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 11 Dec '12

11 Dec '12

"Linux kernel 3.7 has been released. This release adds support for the new ARM 64-bit architecture, ARM multiplatform — the ability to boot into different ARM systems using a single kernel; support for cryptographically signed kernel modules; Btrfs support for disabling copy-on-write on a per-file basis using chattr; faster Btrfs fsync(); a new experimental 'perf trace' tool modeled after strace; support for the TCP Fast Open feature in the server side; experimental SMBv2 protocol support; stable NFS 4.1 and parallel NFS; a vxlan tunneling protocol that allows to transfer Layer 2 ethernet packets over UDP; and support for the Intel SMAP security feature. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/12/11/160259/linux-37-released Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Old-ish Fiber-Optic Gear For Disposal
by Elroy 08 Dec '12

08 Dec '12

Need to clear garage. Have various older hubs (~16-24 ports 10Mbps ethernet plus optical ports), various older fiber-optic cables (mainly patch (less than 1m)), and other bits and pieces. Most gear is untested, was bought as-is. Also have a couple 100Mbps UTP <==> 100Mbps fiber converters. Would prefer they go to non-profit/educational homes; if for-profit, then I'd appreciate a few dollars to a good cause I know of (wikipedia being one). Will try to get a more detailed list shortly. Elroy.

1 1

Python Creator Guido van Rossum Leaves Google For Dropbox
by Peter Reutemann 08 Dec '12

08 Dec '12

"Guido van Rossum, the proclaimed Python Benevolent Dictator For Life, has left Google to work for Dropbox. In their announcement, Dropbox says they relied heavily on Python from the beginning, citing a mix of simplicity, flexibility, and elegance, and are excited to have GvR on the team. While this is, without a doubt, good news for Dropbox, the big question is what this will mean for Python (and for Google)." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/12/07/2242237/python-creator-guido-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

$100 Android/Linux tablet hits funding goal, ships in January
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '12

03 Dec '12

'A $100 tablet that can run both Android and Linux is on the verge of becoming a reality. We wrote about the "PengPod" last month when its creators were seeking $49,000 on a Kickstarter-like site called Indiegogo. The project's deadline expired last night, with the PengPod getting a healthy $72,707 from more than 500 contributors.' -- source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/100-androidlinux-tablet-hits-funding… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Comment: OpenOffice's Tale of Two Cities
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '12

03 Dec '12

Failure in Freiburg, success in Munich. Experiences with open source software in the public sector couldn't be more different. If there's a lesson to be drawn from this, it's "go the whole hog or not at all". -- source: http://h-online.com/-1760502 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Secure Boot bootloader for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '12

03 Dec '12

"Linux developer Matthew Garrett has released a version of his Shim Secure Boot bootloader that allows any Linux distribution to be launched on Secure Boot systems without the need to disable UEFI Secure Boot. As Garrett's Shim binary has been signed by Microsoft, the Secure Boot bootloader will be executed by almost any type of UEFI firmware." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1761089 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Plan 9 ported to the Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '12

03 Dec '12

'Plan 9 developer Richard Miller has ported the open source Unix-like operating system to the Raspberry Pi mini-computer. Plan 9, which was originally developed primarily for research into distributed operating systems by Bell Labs, is still being developed at Bell Labs (now a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent) and a number of independent developers. The operating system extends the classic "everything is a file" philosophy of Unix to network objects without differentiating between local and remote resources.' -- source: http://h-online.com/-1761509 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Dell launches Ubuntu-powered Sputnik for developers
by Peter Reutemann 03 Dec '12

03 Dec '12

"Dell has launched its Ubuntu laptop for developers in the US. The project, which was first announced in May, uses an XPS 13 Ultrabook as the base for a customised Ubuntu 12.04 installation that is aimed at application developers and systems administrators. Dell has worked with Ubuntu sponsor Canonical and various hardware manufacturers to provide support for the hardware, and the system ships with additional features such as the sputnik command that allows developers to easily replicate their development environment on other machines." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1759350 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 3

Mozilla Combines Social API and WebRTC
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '12

02 Dec '12

"Mozilla has put together a demo which combines WebRTC with Firefox's Social API. Over on Mozilla's Future Releases blog, Maire Reavy writes, 'WebRTC is a powerful new tool that enables web app developers to include real-time video calling and data sharing capabilities in their products. While many of us are excited about WebRTC because it will enable several cool gaming applications and improve the performance and availability of video conferencing apps, WebRTC is proving to be a great tool for social apps. Sometimes when you're chatting with a friend, you just want to click on their name and see and talk with them in real-time. Imagine being able to do that without any glitches or hassles, and then while talking with them, easily share almost anything on your computer or device: vacation photos, memorable videos — or even just a link to a news story you thought they might be interested in – simply by dragging the item into your video chat window.'" -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/12/02/214216/mozilla-combines-social-api-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Why KDE Plasma Makes Sense For Linux Gaming
by Peter Reutemann 02 Dec '12

02 Dec '12

"Martin Gräßlin, a lead KDE developer, addresses some queries around a topic bugging Gnome and Unity users — the fallback mode. In this post he says that 'having the non-composited mode around allows us to do things like turning compositing off when running games or heavy OpenGL based applications such as Blender. So if you want to get some of the now finally available games for Linux, KDE Plasma should be your primary choice to enjoy the game. I have also heard of users switching to KDE Plasma because we still provide non OpenGL based setups.'" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/12/01/2351222/why-kde-plasma-makes-sense… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

AGM Tonight (7.30)
by Ronnie Collinson 26 Nov '12

26 Nov '12

The AGM is tongiht at MS4.G.02 Waikato University, 7.30pm, come along chat, have some pizza, hear how the year has been for the club, and prehaps run for the committee yourself.

1 1

Cinnarch: Arch Linux with Mint's Cinnamon desktop
by Peter Reutemann 25 Nov '12

25 Nov '12

"Cinnarch project lead developer Alex Filgueira has released an update to his Linux distribution that includes a new default file manager and LibreOffice installer and improves the live system's overall stability. Cinnarch is a rolling release operating system based on Arch Linux that features Linux Mint's Cinnamon as its default desktop environment. The OS uses the LightDM login manager and Chromium, the open source browser project run by Google, as its default web browser." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1755860 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Mint 14 Is Out
by Peter Reutemann 25 Nov '12

25 Nov '12

"New submitter medge_42 sends words that Linux Mint 14 has been released. Check out their list of features and release notes to see what's new. One version uses MATE 1.4, which includes some long-needed bug fixes as well as functional bluetooth and mate-keyring, its own character map, fast alt-tabbing, and improvements to Caja. The other version uses Cinnamon 1.6, which contains a huge number of fixes and new features including its own file browser, persistent workspaces and a window quicklist to go with them, a notifications applet, an improved sound applet, and alt-tab graphical improvements. MDM now supports legacy GDM 2 themes and userlists, and has improved user switching. Gedit 2.30 has replaced Gedit 3, and MintStick replaces USB-ImageWriter." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/21/0455245/linux-mint-14-is-out What a shame that I don't have time at the moment to play around with it... :-( Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Minecraft Ported To the Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 25 Nov '12

25 Nov '12

"The amusing 'but does it run Crysis?' question has a cousin: 'but does it run Minecraft?' The makers of Raspberry Pi can now officially say that yes, yes it does. Called Minecraft: Pi Edition, the latest flavor of the popular game carries 'a revised feature set' and 'support for several programming languages,' so you can code directly into Minecraft before or after you start playing. That means you can build structures in the traditional Minecraft way, but you can also break open the code and use a programming language to manipulate things in the game world." -- source: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/11/24/2334209/minecraft-ported-to-the-ra… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

On Demo, a $25 1080p Camera Module For Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 23 Nov '12

23 Nov '12

"The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new add-on – a camera module that will enable the credit card sized computer to snap pictures as well as record 1080p videos. Showcased by RS Components at the Elecontrica 2012 in Germany [watch video here] the £16 (apprx) module will be equipped with a 5MP sensor and will plug into the otherwise unused CSI pins of the Pi. The camera module's board is still in prototype stage and is expected to reach production sometime soon. Liz Upton, Executive Director of the Foundation said in a blog post, 'We've a (very) little way to go before we're able to send it out to manufacture.' According to Upton, testing slots have been booked in December to check on electromagnetic radiations from the ribbon cable." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/195219/on-demo-a-25-1080p-camer… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 22 Nov '12

22 Nov '12

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards http://www.wlug.org.nz/AGM Topics * Presidents Report * Treasurer Report * Election of 2013 Committee * Discussion of life-long/honorary members * Consumption of pizza

1 0

Hardware Hacking Entries Open For First Ever 24-Hour Raspberry Pi Hackathon
by Peter Reutemann 22 Nov '12

22 Nov '12

"Called the Raspberry Pi 'hack day', the competition will pit 100 entrants against one another in a number of categories using only the board, Internet access, soldering irons and as much coding as they think appropriate. Participants will have 24-hours to complete projects, at the end of which winners will be awarded from a variety of prizes including camcorders, Android tablets and the geek must-have, the Hubsan H107 Quadcopter." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/11/22/0342241/entries-open-for-first-… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Linux Foundation struggles with Microsoft's Secure Boot signing service
by Peter Reutemann 21 Nov '12

21 Nov '12

"Despite several attempts, the Linux Foundation's James Bottomley has not managed to get Microsoft to sign the mini bootloader for starting Linux on systems with UEFI Secure Boot. In a blog post, the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board (TAB) member says that he successfully managed to use a Linux system for various preparatory bootloader signing tasks, although Microsoft stipulates that a specific Windows platform must be used. However, Bottomley said that to upload the CAB file containing the bootloader, he had to use a virtual machine with Windows 7 because this step requires Silverlight, and the open source Moonlight implementation of Silverlight didn't work." -- souce: http://h-online.com/-1754209 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

$250 Chromebook With Ubuntu Linux Is Very Fast
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '12

20 Nov '12

"The Google Samsung Chromebook was already interesting for its competitive $250 price-tag and that it can be loaded with Linux distributions beyond Chrome OS, but it turns out that its performance is particularly good, too. When loaded with Ubuntu Linux, the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM SoC on the Chrome notebook had outperformed a 1.8GHz Intel Atom, a quad-core Calxeda ARM server, and a TI OMAP4 PandaBoard." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/11/20/1617210/250-chromebook-with-ubu… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

New Linux Rootkit Emerges
by Peter Reutemann 20 Nov '12

20 Nov '12

"A new Linux rootkit has emerged and researchers who have analyzed its code and operation say that the malware appears to be a custom-written tool designed to inject iframes into Web sites and drive traffic to malicious sites for drive-by download attacks. The rootkit is designed specifically for 64-bit Linux systems, and while it has some interesting features, it does not appear to be the work of a high-level programmer or be meant for use in targeted attacks. The Linux rootkit does not appear to be a modified version of any known piece of malware and it first came to light last week when someone posted a quick description and analysis of it on the Full Disclosure mailing list. That poster said his site had been targeted by the malware and some of his customers had been redirected to malicious sites." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/20/1733237/new-linux-rootkit-emerges Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Two FreeBSD Project Servers Hacked
by Peter Reutemann 19 Nov '12

19 Nov '12

"The FreeBSD project has suffered a security breach. Hackers have successfully compromised servers that were part of the infrastructure used to build third-party software packages. The Security team over at the FreeBSD project is of the opinion that hackers were able to gain access to the servers using legitimate SSH keys and not by exploiting any operating system vulnerabilities. Instances of intrusion were first detected on November 11. FreeBSD project, through a message on public announcements mailing list said that the security breach hasn't affected the project's core components like kernel or system libraries but, has affected third-party software packages being distributed by the project." --source: http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/11/19/1649254/two-freebsd-project-servers-h… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 18 Nov '12

18 Nov '12

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards http://www.wlug.org.nz/AGM Topics * Presidents Report * Treasurer Report * Election of 2013 Committee * Discussion of life-long/honorary members * Consumption of pizza

1 0

The Release Candidate For Linux Mint 14 "Nadia" Is Out
by Peter Reutemann 11 Nov '12

11 Nov '12

"Well, the latest edition of Mint is finally here (the release candidate, anyway); according to The Linux Mint Blog, 'For the first time since Linux Mint 11, the development team was able to capitalize on upstream technology which works and fits its goals. After 6 months of incremental development, Linux Mint 14 features an impressive list of improvements, increased stability and a refined desktop experience. We're very proud of MATE, Cinnamon, MDM and all the components used in this release, and we're very excited to show you how they all fit together in Linux Mint 14.'" -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/11/2039229 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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AGM Announcement
by Ronnie Collinson 09 Nov '12

09 Nov '12

The WLUG AGM, is coming up, on the 26th November starting at 7.30pm at MS4.G.02 (Waikato University). Pizza and drink will be provided Agenda Presidents Report. Treasurer Report. Election of 2013 Committee. Discussion of life-long/honorary members. Consumption of pizza. Hope to see you there.

2 2

ZFS File
by mailinglist 08 Nov '12

08 Nov '12

Hello all, I was reading an article in Linux User magazine about Sabayon Linux and their use of the ZFS file system. Supposedly the file system support deduplication which I thought could be useful if manually tidying up a photograph archive. Has anyone on the list used the ZFS system or Sabayon Linux? Any recommendations or experience? Cheers, [1] http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/ [2] http://www.sabayon.org/ [3] http://zfsonlinux.org/

5 7

Fwd: [Announcements] CrossOver for free on Wednesday, October 31
by Matthias Dallmeier 31 Oct '12

31 Oct '12

This might be of interest to some of you... -- Matthias -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Announcements] CrossOver for free on Wednesday, October 31 Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:04:04 -0500 From: CodeWeavers Forums <noreply(a)crossover.codeweavers.com> To: Matthias Dallmeier <matthias(a)dallmeier.net> CodeWeavers Announcements Post http://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/announce/?t=24;mhl=132802#msg1328… ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM: Jeremy White <jwhite(a)codeweavers.com> TOPIC: CrossOver Announcements SUBJECT: CrossOver for free on Wednesday, October 31 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Folks, I am happy to announce that we will be providing a copy of CrossOver for free to all comers this Halloween, Wednesday, October 31, from 00:00 until 23:59 pm, Central Daylight Time. That's the treat - we hope you enjoy it, and we hope you spread the word to all your friends so they, too, can enjoy CrossOver goodness. The expected 'trick' is that if you're a US citizen, you should go vote next Tuesday. You can read more about it in our press release here: http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20121029/ and you can see our internal staff reaction to the news here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkKiMJFvXbc Existing customers will get a free 12 month extension added to their entitlement, so they can enjoy CrossOver for 12 further months. To sign up for your free copy or free 12 month extension, simply visit this web page: http://flock.codeweavers.com any time on October 31, 2012, from 00:00 until 23:59 CDT. If you have questions about the details of this promotion, we have a FAQ page here: http://www.codeweavers.com/flockthevoteqa/ Now I've got to run, they've tracked my IP address to this coffee shop I'm hiding in... <grin> Cheers, Jeremy "Mallard" White ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This e-mail was sent to your e-mail address because you subscribed to the Announcements forum. If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future, click the link below to unsubscribe (login required): http://www.codeweavers.com/account/?inp=lists DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE

1 0

EFF calls Ubuntu Shopping Lens a "major privacy problem"
by Peter Reutemann 30 Oct '12

30 Oct '12

Something new in 12.10 after all... "The EFF has criticised Canonical for its recent inclusion of the shopping lens feature in Ubuntu 12.10 and the way the company is handling data collected by the software." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1739019 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Firefox: disable zoom via Ctrl+scrollwheel
by Peter Reutemann 29 Oct '12

29 Oct '12

Hi there I know, it's not strictly Linux related, but nonetheless it has been annoying the hell outta me for years. Being a keyboard person, I quite often linger a wee bit too long on the ctrl key after closing a window with ctrl+w and already used the scrollwheel/touchpad to scroll down the other window. Unfortunately, Firefox uses ctrl and scrolling to zoom the current page, leaving you with a page with massive or tiny font. The steps to turn off this feature: - type the following in the URL edit field (and accept the warning in case that should pop up): about:config - and set the the value of the following property to 0: mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action Source: http://duntuk.com/disable-scroll-wheel-zoom-firefox Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting tonight!
by Meeting Reminder Bot 29 Oct '12

29 Oct '12

There's a WLUG meeting tonight: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * MichaelMcDonald talks about Scribus * LindsayDruett talks about XEN ---- AGM Announcement The Annual General Meeting (AGM]) will take place on http://www.wlug.org.nz/Monday 26th November ([MeetingTopics.2012-11-26)

2 1

upcoming meeting - topics?
by Peter Reutemann 26 Oct '12

26 Oct '12

Hi everyone For the upcoming meeting on the 29th, we still need some topics. How about reviving the topics from last meeting, which didn't happen in the end: Scribus and Android? Other suggestions welcome! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

5 11

REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 25 Oct '12

25 Oct '12

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * MichaelMcDonald talks about Scribus * LindsayDruett talks about XEN ---- AGM Announcement The Annual General Meeting (AGM]) will take place on http://www.wlug.org.nz/Monday 26th November ([MeetingTopics.2012-11-26)

1 0

All code on Raspberry Pi’s ARM chip now open source
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '12

25 Oct '12

"The makers of the Raspberry Pi credit card-sized computer today announced every last piece of code running on the computer’s ARM chip has been open sourced. While the computer could already run several Linux-based operating systems, not all the drivers were open source. Going fully open source prevents users from having to use drivers that are proprietary or reverse-engineered, and it should make it easier to create new Raspberry Pi-targeted OS ports." -- source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/all-code-on-raspberry… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

Stable Linux kernel hit by ext4 data corruption bug
by Peter Reutemann 25 Oct '12

25 Oct '12

"A bug introduced with version 3.6.2 of the Linux kernel can cause an ext4 filesystem to lose data if the system is rebooted twice in a short period of time. After the bug was reported, kernel developer Ted Ts'o quickly published a patch." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1736110 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

4 5

Ubuntu less Unity: A first look at Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10
by Peter Reutemann 23 Oct '12

23 Oct '12

"For users who want GNOME 3 rather than Unity, a group of developers has now made the first GNOME 3 desktop remix of the Ubuntu Linux distribution available. Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 is based on the recent release of Ubuntu 12.10 and even uses a GNOME package management tool." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1733616 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 22 Oct '12

22 Oct '12

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * MichaelMcDonald talks about Scribus ---- AGM Announcement The Annual General Meeting (AGM]) will take place on http://www.wlug.org.nz/Monday 26th November ([MeetingTopics.2012-11-26)

2 1

Free Ubuntu manual updated
by Peter Reutemann 22 Oct '12

22 Oct '12

'The Ubuntu Manual Team has announced that the Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal version of the Ubuntu Manual, "Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.10" has been published. The 143 page manual provides an introduction to Ubuntu covering topics such as how to try out a LiveCD, how to install the distribution, using the Ubuntu desktop, working with Ubuntu, managing hardware and peripherals, managing software and updates, and offering pointers for further research and reading.' http://ubuntu-manual.org/download/12.10/en_US/screen -- source: http://h-online.com/-1733212 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Avoid the pain of Windows 8.
by Peter Reutemann 21 Oct '12

21 Oct '12

Ubuntu 12.10 is out... http://www.ubuntu.com/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

3 3

photos from sfd?
by Peter Reutemann 19 Oct '12

19 Oct '12

Hi there Did anybody actually take pictures at software freedom day? With the tidypics elgg plugin in place, we could add a little photo gallery. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

new elgg site online
by Peter Reutemann 18 Oct '12

18 Oct '12

Hi everyone We've upgraded the version of elgg, powering the social networking part of wlug's website, from 1.7 to 1.8 over the last few weeks. Since the old version was hammered by spammers, we decided to take a clean slate approach and migrate only "actual" content manually. The new version has a number of anti-spam measurements in place. So hopefully we don't seem the same problem again. The upgrade means that you'll have to create a new user account, unfortunately. Have fun using it! :-) http://elgg.wlug.org.nz/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Calligra 2.6 alpha previews professional writing program
by Peter Reutemann 17 Oct '12

17 Oct '12

"The preview release of Calligra 2.6, the next major version of the open source productivity application suite, now includes "Author", a writing tool aimed at professional authors. New features have also been added to the suite's existing programs." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1730523 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

OS Upgrades Powered By Git
by Peter Reutemann 09 Oct '12

09 Oct '12

"The latest Webconverger 15 release is the first Linux distribution to be automagically updatable from a Github repository. The chroot of the OS is kept natively in git's format and fuse mounted with git-fs. Webconverger fulfills the Web kiosk use case, using Firefox and competes indirectly with Google Chrome OS. Chrome OS also has an autoupdate feature, however not as powerful, unified & transparent as when simply using git." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/10/09/163210/os-upgrades-powered-by-git Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting is tomorrow!
by Meeting Reminder Bot 04 Oct '12

04 Oct '12

There is a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting tomorrow: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university, usual meeting room for Monday meetings: MS4.G.02 Time: 10am to 4pm Agenda: If you have a Linux problem or question bring along your machine and hopefully we will be able to help you. We'll have internet access (48Mbit/s). Entry is free for visitors and club members. However, if you, as a visitor, wish to connect your computer to the internet for more than a few minutes, a fee of $4 dollars to cover internet costs would be appreciated. We will accept membership applications on the day ($20). There are no kitchen facilities within the room. Toilets will be available around the campus, a couple of bakeries not far from campus.

1 0

MeeGo to return next month with Jolla phone launch
by Peter Reutemann 03 Oct '12

03 Oct '12

"Jolla says it will launch its "Sailfish" smartphone design, which uses the MeeGo operating system abandoned by Nokia, next month, with its own patented user interface" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1722465 Unfortunately, the GUI is patent-encumbered and won't be released as open-source. Partially thanks to the litigation war happening in the mobile space. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Workshop this Saturday
by Peter Reutemann 03 Oct '12

03 Oct '12

Hi there The bot didn't send out a reminder for this weekend's workshop, but it's happening nonetheless. There is not a fixed theme this time round, but we might start revamping the WLUG homepage. Also, if you have a Linux problem/question, you're more than welcome to stop! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Debian 6.0.6 is available
by Peter Reutemann 03 Oct '12

03 Oct '12

"The latest release presents a collection of updates and security fixes that have already been rolled out to current users of the distribution. The new images are most useful for new installs of the popular Linux distribution" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1722216 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

GNOME 3.6 Released
by Peter Reutemann 27 Sep '12

27 Sep '12

"Gnome 3.6 is out. The announcement reads: 'The GNOME Project is proud to present GNOME 3.6, the third update to the 3.x series. This latest version of GNOME 3 includes a number of new features and enhancements, as well as many bug fixes and minor improvements. Together, they represent a significant upgrade to the GNOME 3 user experience. Andreas Nilsson, President of the GNOME Foundation, said: “The GNOME Foundation is proud to present this latest GNOME release, and I would like to congratulate the GNOME community on its achievement.” He described the release as “an important milestone in our mission to bring a free and open computing environment to everyone.”' New applications include Clocks and Boxes. Clocks is a world time clock, which allows you to keep an eye on what the local time is around the world. Boxes allows you to connect to other machines, either virtual or remote. For developers there's the new GtkLevelBar widget in GTK+, and GtkEntry can now use Pango attributes." -- source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/26/2228204/gnome-36-released Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

Monday meeting
by Michael McDonald 24 Sep '12

24 Sep '12

Hi Looks like i won't be able to make the meeting. No Scribus demo. Sorry Michael

3 2

some Raspberry PI news
by Peter Reutemann 23 Sep '12

23 Sep '12

"The Raspberry Pi gets a turbo mode" -- http://h-online.com/-1713194 "Breaking out the Raspberry Pi" -- http://h-online.com/-1704735 "GeeXbox" will have PI support in the future -- http://www.geexbox.org/2012/09/18/geexbox-3-0/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

1 0

REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 22 Sep '12

22 Sep '12

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * TBA

3 2

Meeting topics for Monday 24th Sept
by Rene Bartosh 17 Sep '12

17 Sep '12

Hi All, Does anyone have anything they would like to present at the next Monday meeting, or any requests for presentations that some of our members may be able to fill? I see from the committee meeting minutes suggestions include android and btrfs. I would be happy to collaborate with someone on an Android presentation as I think being such a diverse platform a presentation could benefit from multiple points of view - maybe we could have an android show and tell? Does anyone have a decent quality webcam or video camera that could be used to show Android demos on the big screen? Or a rooted android device with a VNC server or similar? Cheers, Rene -- >From Rene Bartosh (Gmail account) <kirjava(a)gmail.com> Personal: http://kirjava.net.nz/

4 4

ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 16 Sep '12

16 Sep '12

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * TBA

1 0

Lost microsd cable
by Bruce Kingsbury 15 Sep '12

15 Sep '12

Just wondering if anyone found themselves with a spare microsd cable after Saturday, Verne is short of one and would like it back if it turns up, thanks ..

1 0

Upcoming Event: Real World IT Security
by David Hallett 15 Sep '12

15 Sep '12

Institute of IT Professionals National Series: Real World IT Security 20 September 2012: 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm Wintec City Campus Events Room 2 Gallagher Hub Gate 3, Tristram Street Hamilton National Series: Real World IT Security As professionals we're trying our best to protect our customer's information, store it securely, on secure websites, behind layers of firewalls, authentication and encryption. All the while our customers are trying their best to share every personal detail with the world, use the simplest passwords possible, and then run everything from their own device which they refuse to lock-down or patch! No wonder there's a security breach in the news every week! In this session we'll review what attacks are actually happening in the real world, show how they're being put together and see what's the biggest risk - technology or people? About The Speaker Andy Prow is Managing Director of security specialists Aura Information Security, is an ITCP Certified Professional and holds a BSc(Hons) in Computer Science and Software Engineering. With over 19 years of IT experience Andy has designed and written software for companies including IBM, Telecom, Vodafone, Ericsson and Microsoft. Andy launched the Aura group of companies in 2001 and Aura InfoSec has developed into one of NZ's leading IT Security Consulting practices with many significant clients including the NZ Government, Xero, TradeMe and Banking and Corporate companies in New Zealand and overseas. Note: Light lunch provided. Free for IITP members, inexpensive for others. Registration required at the following URL: http://www.iitp.org.nz/events/waikato_bop/633-Real_World_IT_Security Regards, David Hallett, BSc, MIITP ITCP P.O. Box 15-516 Hamilton, New Zealand Mobile: +64-21-802 256

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Software Freedom Day 2012
by Peter Reutemann 14 Sep '12

14 Sep '12

Hi everyone Just a friendly reminder (since the bot didn't seem to send out anything), that we'll be celebrating Software Freedom Day 2012 tomorrow! For more information visit this URL: http://wlug.org.nz/sfd Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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University Team Builds Lego and Raspberry Pi Cluster
by Peter Reutemann 12 Sep '12

12 Sep '12

"A team of computational engineers over at the University of Southampton led by Professor Simon Cox have built a supercomputer using Raspberry Pi and Lego. The supercomputer is comprised of 64 processors, 1TB of storage (16GB SD cards in each of the Raspberry Pis) and can be powered on using just a single 13-amp mains socket. MPI is used for communications between the nodes through the ethernet port. The team managed to build the core of the supercomputer for under £2500. Named 'Iridis-Pi' after University of Southampton's supercomputer Iridis, the supercomputer runs software that was built using Python and Scratch. Professor Cox used the free plug-in 'Python Tools for Visual Studio' to develop code for the Raspberry Pi." -- source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/12/145256/university-team-builds-l… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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netlink_family=31
by LIBCHABER, JACQUES (JACQUES) 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

Hello, I am studying some code involving NETLINK sockets. The code involves a call to socket: sock_fd = socket (AF_NETLINK, SOCK_RAW, 31) looking at NETLINK(7) or '/usr/include/bits/socket.h' I can't find any documentation for netlink_family=31 Could you point me to some answers. Thanks

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Debian Download
by Wolfgang 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

Hi Can somebody advise me how to download Debian Wheezy? I want to get away from Ubuntu 12.4, which the developers have locked down hard enough that I am unable to set it up the way I like my Linux to function. Key issue is of course Unity, which I regard as excellent for all those who prefer small screens (i.e. Smartphones and Tablets), but for those of us who have bought large screens, Unity is a regression back towards the ugly side of DOS. (You had to remember each command before you could use it. Menus may be slow to work with, but their use is quick to learn, and for infrequently used commands they are simply superior.) I need the amd64 edition, and I do not want to download just a basic system to try whether my knowledge is good enough to get it running, not reams after reams of iso's that eventually I never use. A further complication is that my wi-fi adaptor, D-link DWA-131 (Realtek RTL 8192SU), is not correctly installed by Suse 12.1 or Mageia-2-x86-64, and perusal of the fora indicated that I will have to wait until kernel 3.4 (3.2 is currently used) becomes standard before I can use any rpm based distribution. I have tried Linux Mint XFCE as well, as another possible way to escape Canonical's lockdown into Unity, but that does not install at all on my machine for reasons apparently not connected to my hardware. What is the most appropriate server here in NZ to download Debian? Thank you Wolfgang Vogelbein

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Fritzing, the Hot New Electronics Designer for Real People
by Peter Reutemann 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

"Fritzing is the sophisticated new electronics application with the funny name. It is a powerful tool for making schematics, prototyping circuits, and designing printed circuit boards." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/631016-fritzing-the-hot-new-electronic… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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First beta of Ubuntu 12.10 released
by Peter Reutemann 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

"The first beta version of Ubuntu 12.10, code-named "Quantal Quetzal", has been released for testing ahead of its October final release. The new version brings together a range of enhancements the developers have been working on, from reducing the number of install images, to making 3D accelerated desktops run on non-3D hardware, and switching to Python 3.0." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1702021 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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slight problem with disk publisher
by Bruce Kingsbury 08 Sep '12

08 Sep '12

slight problem with disk publisher, after about the first ten disks, the labels are printing very faint and getting worse with every disk. black and white cartridge not printing at all, and colour one is a bit sketchy. If anyone has a pair of lexmark cartridges I could borrow to test 53335 and 53336 that would be good, otherwise we'll just use the machine for burning the disks (which works well, it's very fast) and have to sort out something else for labelling them.

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Comparing against a repository
by mailinglist 06 Sep '12

06 Sep '12

Hello All, Again, I'm trying to get this vmware server going that has preconfigured wiki set running on it. However, I'm adding some extensions. For that I need to install some additional programs off the debian repositories. I'm finding I cannot install 1) ocaml 2) nscd because of dependency conflicts. Now, I don't know what software the original person who configured this machine did but it there anyway of running a comparison of the installed software to what is on the repositories. And/or similary is there way get around the following error. How do you resolve this one? wikiserver:~# apt-get install nscd Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: default-jre-headless : Depends: openjdk-6-jre-headless (>= 6b14) but it is not going to be installed nscd : Depends: libc6 (> 2.11) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6 (< 2.12) but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages wikiserver:~# dpkg-query -l libc6 Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Description +++-=============================================-=============================================-========================================================================================================== ii libc6 2.13-7 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries wikiserver:~#

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Domain Name Resolution and LDAP
by mailinglist 05 Sep '12

05 Sep '12

Hello all, I've got a query for the networking types. I'm currently trying to get a wiki to LDAP authentication. Despite my best attempts it keeps failing. I can't understand the following. Some commands can resolve the ip address of internal servers when using there FQDN while others cannot. This is all within a Windows network. The server I'm trying to configure is Debian Squeeze. I am wondering if this might be why the LDAP authentication is not working. Any thoughts? Cheers, Chris ############## Find the ip address of thesun.tesla.local ############## wikiserver:~# dig thesun.tesla.local ; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> thesun.tesla.local ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 45615 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;thesun.tesla.local. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: thesun.tesla.local. 3600 IN A 10.0.0.10 ;; Query time: 1 msec ;; SERVER: 10.0.0.10#53(10.0.0.10) ;; WHEN: Wed Sep 5 15:36:29 2012 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 52 ############### Then check if port 389 is open. It fails to resolve the IP address. ############### wikiserver:~# nmap -p 389 thesun.tesla.local Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-09-05 15:37 NZST Failed to resolve given hostname/IP: thesun.tesla.local. Note that you can't use '/mask' AND '1-4,7,100-' style IP ranges WARNING: No targets were specified, so 0 hosts scanned. Nmap done: 0 IP addresses (0 hosts up) scanned in 5.15 seconds wikiserver:~# ############## Try again using the IP address Promptly returns an answer ############## wikiserver:~# nmap -p 389 10.0.0.10 Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-09-05 15:37 NZST Interesting ports on thesun.tesla.local (10.0.0.10): PORT STATE SERVICE 389/tcp open ldap MAC Address: 00:50:56:93:76:FB (VMWare) Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.44 seconds wikiserver:~#

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Hybrid graphics support in NVIDIA's Linux driver
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

"NVIDIA is working on a new version of its proprietary Linux graphics driver that will add support for its Optimus switching technology, which is usually found used in laptops. The company's plans were revealed in an email from NVIDIA's Aaron Plattner, in which he asks open source developers for advice on some implementation details." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1697756 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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No software patents (again)
by Ronnie Collinson 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

So if you haven't heard some members of the government have recently met with reps of some big international software giants, such as IBM and Microsoft. Which has resulted is some possible changes to patent law here. The exclusion for software that many members of the NZ software communities (both commercial and open source), a couple years back, which was accepted, is looking to have a new clause 10A, which would exclude embedded systems (which for things like home routers and cellphones, are an absolute mine field of patents) from the software exclusion. The other unusual aspect for a democratic country, is that this clause is being added without going to select committee and therefore is unlikely to receive public submissions. If you haven't all ready, please sign this. http://no.softwarepatents.org.nz Ronnie

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Xen-Based Secure OS Qubes Hits 1.0
by Peter Reutemann 03 Sep '12

03 Sep '12

"Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard." --source: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/09/03/2147217/xen-based-secure-os-qubes-h… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting tonight!
by Meeting Reminder Bot 31 Aug '12

31 Aug '12

There's a WLUG meeting tonight: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- !!!WLUG Workshop Meet up at the university, usual meeting room for Monday meetings: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 10am to 4pm Agenda: Apart from the usual workshop (e.g., if you have a Linux problem or question) we will also prepare material (posters, flyers, etc) for SoftwareFreedomDay. We'll have internet access (48Mbit/s). Entry is free for visitors and club members. However, if you, as a visitor, wish to connect your computer to the internet for more than a few minutes, a fee of $4 dollars to cover internet costs would be appreciated. We will accept membership applications on the day ($20). There are no kitchen facilities within the room. Toilets will be available around the campus, a couple of bakeries not far from campus.

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Diaspora* Announces It Is Now a "Community Project"
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '12

31 Aug '12

"Decentralised social network startup Diaspora* announced on their blog today that they will become a 'community project' with the intention of making it an entirely community-driven, community-run project. Whether this is a sign of the project losing impetus, or whether this will provide the push needed to challenge commercially run social networks, remains to be seen." -- source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/08/28/0117226/diaspora-announces-it-is-no… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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GNOMEbuntu Set To Arrive In October
by Peter Reutemann 31 Aug '12

31 Aug '12

"Good News Everyone! Thanks to the Ubuntu Gnome Community and Jeremy Bicha, it seems that the popular distribution will ship a flavor with a relatively pure GNOME experience in the next release cycle, on October 18. At this point the effort is community based, but hopefully GNOMEbuntu will make it as an official Canonical spin, similar to Kubuntu, Xubuntu, et cetera, in the 13.04 release. This is the story: At the Ubuntu Developer Summit in May, some discussions took place on the need for a Gnome spin. On August 13, Jeremy Bicha posted on Gnome mailing lists about looking a name for the new Ubuntu derivative. After that, I had no news till Stinger gave us a thread in Ubuntu Forums. On there, Jeremy talks about working on an Alpha version! So I contacted him and he verified that GNOMEbuntu will be released together with Ubuntu 12.10." -- source: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/08/30/175221/gnomebuntu-set-to-arrive-in… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu to drop alternate installer
by Peter Reutemann 29 Aug '12

29 Aug '12

Bummer... "The alternate installer, required when users want to configure cryptsetup, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) or software-based RAID arrays during installation, may disappear from Ubuntu as early as version 12.10." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1676906 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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KDE 4.10 KWin To Properly Support AMD Catalyst
by Peter Reutemann 28 Aug '12

28 Aug '12

"KWin, KDE's compositing window manager, will better play with the AMD Catalyst binary blob in the KDE 4.10 release by enabling direct rendering and the OpenGL 2.x back-end for those using the latest Catalyst driver. " -- source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2OTI Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting tonight!
by Meeting Reminder Bot 26 Aug '12

26 Aug '12

There's a WLUG meeting tonight: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * ReneBartosh will give a short demo of the Raspberry Pi running the RaspBMC and Raspian distributions and will include a chance to get hands on and have a tinker with the Pi

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REMINDER: WLUG meeting is on Monday
by Meeting Reminder Bot 23 Aug '12

23 Aug '12

There's a Waikato Linux Users Group meeting on Monday: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * ReneBartosh will give a short demo of the Raspberry Pi running the RaspBMC and Raspian distributions and will include a chance to get hands on and have a tinker with the Pi

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Fwd: [Marketing] Promote SFD 2012
by Bruce Kingsbury 21 Aug '12

21 Aug '12

How's our SFD planning going? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pockey Lam <pockey(a)softwarefreedomday.org> Date: 21 August 2012 16:39 Subject: [Marketing] Promote SFD 2012 To: The SFD marketing committee list <marketing(a)sf-day.org> Dear marketing committee, We are about 24 days to the big day, SFD 2012, so far we have 220 teams registered. It's time to boost registration and have more teams for 2012! There are some ways to promote SFD, e.g.: 1) email local communities in your country 2) Blogging 3) Social Networks [1] 4) SFD Banner (link to SFD site) [2] 5) SFD countdown (link to SFD site) [3] 6) Join local conferences / events to talk about SFD 7) others We need your help to promote SFD in your country! If you think of any other ways to promote SFD, please share with us! [1] http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/SocialNetworks [2] http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Promote [3] http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CountDown Regards, Pockey _______________________________________________ Marketing mailing list Marketing(a)sf-day.org http://mail.sf-day.org/lists/listinfo/marketing

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ANNOUNCE: WLUG meeting is one week away
by Meeting Reminder Bot 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

The Waikato Linux Users Group have a meeting in one week from today: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Meet up at the university: MS4.G.02 (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/contacts/map?MS4) Time: 7:30pm onwards Topics * ReneBartosh will give a short demo of the Raspberry Pi running the RaspBMC and Raspian distributions and will include a chance to get hands on and have a tinker with the Pi

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MATE and gnome-keyring
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Hi there Running a MATE session, you might encounter warning messages like this in your terminal when, for instance, updating via subversion: WARNING: gnome-keyring:: couldn't connect to: /tmp/keyring-*****/pkcs11 Apparently, gnome-keyring is only started if a session manager is started that supports this. E.g., running the MATE session manager on my Linux Mint Cinnamon install generates this error message, since "MATE" is not listed in the "OnlyShowIn" key of the "/etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop" config file. Just add "MATE" to the value of the "OnlyShowIn" key, e.g.: OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;MATE Original source: http://laslow.net/2012/05/06/gnome-keyring-issues-in-ubuntu-12-04/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Discovering and Monitoring Hardware in Linux
by Peter Reutemann 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

Handy overview in this article. "Nothing ever need be a mystery on Linux as it has a large number of excellent utilities for discovering hardware and monitoring hardware health. Here are a handful of good tools for spotting possible hard drive failure, displaying hardware information and monitoring temperatures, fans, voltages, email, music players and more." -- source: http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/620416-discovering-and-monitoring-hard… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Is MySQL Slowly Turning Closed Source?
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '12

18 Aug '12

"Sergei from MariaDB speculated on some changes within MySQL 5.5.27. It seems new testcases aren't included with MySQL any more, which leaves developers depending on it in the cold. 'Does this mean that test cases are no longer open source? Oracle did not reply to my question. But indeed, there is evidence that this guess is true. For example, this commit mail shows that new test cases, indeed, go in this "internal" directory, which is not included in the MySQL source distribution.' On a similar note, updates for the version history on Launchpad are not being updated anymore. What is Oracle's plan here? And is alienating the developer community just not seen as a problem at Oracle?" -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/18/0152237/is-mysql-slowly-turni… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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(no subject)
by Bruce Kingsbury 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

We're starting to prepare for software freedom day which will be held on Sept 15th at Te Whare o Te Ata, 60a Sare Cres. Progress so far; We have a venue (not huge but I think it'll do) wireless internet, a VOIP PABX, 8 reasonable machines running Linux. And I have two small volunteers who will take turns wearing the penguin suit and handing out CDs and chocolate fish to visitors. For the inside space, I'd like to have tables set up where people can show interesting things they're using Linux for. If anyone has something specific they'd like to demo, get back to me and I'll set a table aside. I'd also like to print off A4 or A3 posters about some of the more polished bits of free software such as OOo/LibOO, VLC, Gimp, etc and put those up around the room. We need an A5 flyer done as soon as possible, and I can arrange to have this delivered with the community newsletter to a couple of thousand houses around the area.

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Nokia Researcher Puts Firefox OS On Raspberry Pi
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

"Mozilla's mobile phone operating system only exists in an early beta form, but Oleg Romashin, a researcher at Nokia, has already got it working on the Raspberry Pi and posted video to prove it. We don't think this indicates any alternate strategy for Nokia if Windows Phone doesn't pan out, but it does show that Firefox OS is portable, and the Pi is capable, and both can be played with — which will please both Mozilla and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. And the Firefox OS work in progress is available for download." -- source: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/16/1237214/nokia-researcher-puts… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Linux Is a Lemon On the Retina MacBook Pro
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

"It turns out that Linux doesn't work too well on the Apple Retina MacBook Pro. Among the problems are needing special boot parameters to simply boot the Linux kernel, graphics drivers not working, no hybrid graphics support, WiFi requiring special firmware, Thunderbolt troubles, GNOME/Unity/KDE not being optimized for retina displays, and other snafus, including 20% greater power consumption with Linux over OS X. According to Michael Larabel, it will likely not be until early next year when most of the problems are ironed out for a clean 'out of the box' Linux experience on the Retina MacBook Pro." -- source: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/16/1741235/linux-is-a-lemon-on-the-re… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Debian celebrates its 19th birthday
by Peter Reutemann 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

Only a day late, so happy belated birthday! "Today, Debian celebrates its 19th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, parties have been organised all around the globe and users traditionally bake cakes to bring to these events." -- source: http://h-online.com/-1668366 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Mounting a USB drive without hotplugging or logging in
by mailinglist 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

Hello all, I've got a mythtv set up on a pc. It got a 40G drive which I'm finding a bit limiting. I figured I'd just plug in an external USB drive, have it mount on boot up, and configure mythtv to use a directory on it as part of its storage area. Well, its becoming a frustrating exercise. As a user logged in, I can hotplug it and read and write to but anything else either doesn't work or will only ever mount the drive read only. I've tried 1) editing fstab (result read only despite specifying rw) 2) pydsm (result read only despite specifying rw) 3) Some scripts using udev rules. (can't find the drive) The system used lightdm as the window manager and Thunar is available as a GUI file manager. Underlying system is Mythbuntu updated to Precise Penguin Any clues? Or scripts known to work? Cheers, Chris

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Calligra 2.5 released
by Peter Reutemann 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

"In the second stable release of the KDE-oriented office suite, Calligra has now been updated to version 2.5 with, among other changes, enhancements to the spreadsheet, word processor, database and painting components". -- source: http://h-online.com/-1666586 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

2 1

The OggBox Project
by Peter Reutemann 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Not strictly speaking Linux, but with all those little hackable boxes around, I thought this worth mentioning: "The OggBox is a simple, hackable open hardware music player. It's a pocket sized device, about the size of a smart phone which can play or record open formats to or from an SD card. It will support Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and WAV files, but has only been tested on Ogg so far. The hardware was designed in KiCAD and all the files are available to download and use (CC-BY-SA)." --source: http://www.nathandumont.com/node/269 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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Ubuntu debates replacing Nautilus file manager
by Peter Reutemann 12 Aug '12

12 Aug '12

"Members of the Ubuntu development team are discussing whether the distribution should switch away from GNOME's Nautilus file manager and if it should include an older version of the software until a decision has been reached" -- source: http://h-online.com/-1665463 I'm actually quite happy with Mate's custom version of Nautilus. After all those years of people complaining about Nautilus not being able to do an "undo", the Mate version of Nautilus called "Caja" can do exactly this. Yay! :-) Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174

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