- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Microsoft's marketing juggernaut
by Craig Box 16 Nov '05

16 Nov '05

How can we compete? I don't think I can ever advocate development on Linux again. http://www.microsoft.com/korea/events/ready2005/vs_song.asp Craig

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Fwd: [lca-announce] linux.conf.au 2006: REMINDER: Early bird registrations
by Ian McDonald 15 Nov '05

15 Nov '05

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: lca-announce-admin(a)lists.linux.org.au <lca-announce-admin(a)lists.linux.org.au> Date: Nov 15, 2005 9:29 PM Subject: [lca-announce] linux.conf.au 2006: REMINDER: Early bird registrations To: lca-announce(a)lists.linux.org.au 2006 - Dunedin, NZ! linux.conf.au is the annual Australian Linux technical conference, and is one of the largest gatherings of users and developers of Free and Open Source Software in the Southern Hemisphere. It is an opportunity for developers and groups to present their ideas amongst peers, and for the Free Software and Open Source communities to gather in general. Summary: Reminder: Early bird registrations close in 3 days! The 2006 conference is being held in Dunedin, New Zealand, at The University of Otago[1]. More information can be found on the conference website: http://lca2006.linux.org.au/ Early bird registrations for linux.conf.au 2006 close in 3 days! Hi folks, Just a quick reminder that early bird registrations for linux.conf.au 2006 close in just over three days, at midnight on Friday the 18th of November. Please be aware that this date and time is in NZDT, which is currently equivalent to UTC +1300. So, if you're keen to join us in January in Dunedin and wish to claim the early bird pricings on a Professional or Hobbyist registration, please head on over and register at: http://lca2006.linux.org.au/register/register.php If you've already registered, a reminder that to claim the early bird discount, your registration needs to be paid in full before midnight on Friday. See you in January! Please feel free to forward this announcement to your local LUG, or any other person or group that would be interested! [1]: http://www.otago.ac.nz/ Regards, Mike Beattie, linux.conf.au 2006 Organisers _______________________________________________ lca-announce mailing list lca-announce(a)lists.linux.org.au http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/lca-announce -- Ian McDonald http://wand.net.nz/~iam4 WAND Network Research Group University of Waikato New Zealand

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Upcoming WLUG committee meeting (1 week today)
by Meeting Reminder bot 15 Nov '05

15 Nov '05

As per the WLUG charter, please note that there is a WLUG executive committee meeting one week from today. If you wish to get an item on the agenda for this meeting, please email it to secretary(a)wlug.org.nz. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WLUG Committee Meeting To have something added to the agenda for this meeting, please email secretary @ wlug.org.nz. Provisional agenda: # Minutes from previous meeting # Matters arising # Correspondence # Treasurers report # General business

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Installing Skype on Ubuntu [Rant]
by Mathew Carley 15 Nov '05

15 Nov '05

It seems to be to have more "stuff" with it: which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your opinion. Apps and Eye candy are also a bit helpful in the choice: not just for me, either. I will put it this way... with the exception of MPlayer (matter of preference for media players) and programs like Skype, there is very little else that needs to be installed on a brand-spanking new install of SuSE, and most of the dependancies for these programs (except maybe the Win32 codecs for MPlayer) are already included and configured with the System. As I said, I still like Ubuntu, and am now considering running Ubuntu on my laptop (lightweight distro, at least, until I put some more RAM in it) and SuSE on my desktop (When I build it). It is possible that I am biased because I am more familiar with SuSE than I am with Ubuntu - it is the distro that rescued me from the "Red Hat = Linux" mindset (RH was what I had been using for most of my "Linux life"). It is also the distro of choice when I install Linux for other people (if not only for the eye candy. In saying that, though, I don't see why I can't resurrect some old hardware with the aide of Ubuntu, given that SuSE can be a heavyweight on old systems, if the people whom I am moving off of Windows don't want to buy a Mac Mini or something. So yeah: After using Breezy for a couple of days, I do now like Ubuntu as a distro; despite my being a sucker for eye-candy, though if I end up using it more than a week (quite likely at this point), then I'll start customizing Gnome with some themes and custom icons and all that. Consider my rant over. I now like Ubuntu more than I did the other day. But I still like KDE as well - I'm sure I can add it on somehow (I use both UIs... they both have certain features I like about each one, so...) When I have time... Mathew > > However, all is well now (until my hard drive and more RAM arrives), > > at which time it will be a tougher decision than originally anticipated > to > > choose between SuSE 10 and Breezy. It hasn't taken long (or much) > > to like Ubuntu so far, though as a "full featured" distro, I will probably > > > end up with SuSE. > > I'm interested to learn in which way Ubuntu is not "full featured"? > > Craig -- Regards Mathew Carley HostENZ Data Services A Carley Network Media Ltd. (NZ) Company http://www.hostenz.co.nz mathewc(a)hostenz.co.nz Office Phone (Helsinki): +358 9 2316 3712 Cell Phone (Finland): +358 4 0816 2816 Cell Phone (France): +33 6 1811 9475 Skype: mgcarley The information contained in this electronic mail message and any attachments are confidential to Carley Network Media Ltd and it's subsidiaries, and may contain proprietary information or may be legally privileged. See http://www.cnmltd.net/email/ for our standard email disclaimer. Errors & Omissions Excepted. Prices in this email do not include GST unless stated otherwise.

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Linux for Grandmother
by Mathew Carley 15 Nov '05

15 Nov '05

Going on from my previous post, would you all mind if I sent my grandmother to the next installfest and/or meeting? I threw together a SuSE 9.1 Personal system on an old box just before I left NZ, and they took the box home from my parents place the other day. What they seem to use the computer for is: Internet Email Office (Writer, Calc, Impress mostly). Is there a publisher equivalent that you would recommend? I hate publisher myself, but... yeah. Not a whole lot else. I don't mind whether you leave SuSE on the box or if you "upgrade" it to Breezy, I am happy to support either from the other side of the globe. It needs to have **A VNC server installed and configured for me to be able to do this as well, so... yeah. **A nice, easy, clean, pretty interface. **I don't think it would have to be too similar to Windows 98. Box specification is (as I said, old) Cel366/128/6GB/CD, Modem, Sound Blaster 16... Used to be in mums shop before she upgraded. I'm sure she wouldn't mind paying for some tuition as well, but I have made the suggestion that she might go there. -- Regards Mathew Carley HostENZ Data Services A Carley Network Media Ltd. (NZ) Company http://www.hostenz.co.nz mathewc(a)hostenz.co.nz Office Phone (Helsinki): +358 9 2316 3712 Cell Phone (Finland): +358 4 0816 2816 Cell Phone (France): +33 6 1811 9475 Skype: mgcarley The information contained in this electronic mail message and any attachments are confidential to Carley Network Media Ltd and it's subsidiaries, and may contain proprietary information or may be legally privileged. See http://www.cnmltd.net/email/ for our standard email disclaimer. Errors & Omissions Excepted. Prices in this email do not include GST unless stated otherwise.

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Two new library books
by Craig Box 15 Nov '05

15 Nov '05

Hi everyone, Two new books arrived today, thanks to O'Reilly. Linux Desktop Pocket Guide: Advice for running five popular distributions (Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, SUSE and Ubuntu) on a desktop or laptop http://library.wlug.org.nz/show.pl?id=47 Asterisk: The Future of Telephony: Join the Open Source PBX Revolution http://library.wlug.org.nz/show.pl?id=48 Please use either of the links above if you'd like to borrow either book. Regards, Craig

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Links in PhpWiki
by Chris O'Halloran 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

Hello, I have set up a Phpwiki using my Suse Linux Box on the company lan and using Apache, Php, MySql using the code from the Phpwiki site. I've manage to get it all going quite nicely many of the staff are keen to use it as a collaborative documentation site for keeping each other informed of the latest technical information available or the gotcha's you find working with different manufacturers equipment. I've got the linking to other pages, webpages and email addresses working fine. What I was know wanting to know was how to link to various documents etc we might have on our servers. It's an MS Active directories network. I can link to documents I put on the webserver easily enough but what about P:\Library\Electrical\Transpower\Standards\ABC.pdf Any hints appreciated. Chris -- http://homepages.maxnet.co.nz/dusky/ ICQ: 213449133 Jabber: cmoman1(a)jabber.org Jabber: cmoman1(a)jabber.meta.net.nz Yahoo: cmoman1

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Re: [wlug] Installing Skype on Ubuntu [Rant]
by Mathew Carley 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

> > > Here's why I'm a bit frustrated at the moment with Ubuntu: > > >>I think it's a bit short sighted to blame your problems on a Ubuntu when > >>the problem is caused by a non-free application being distributed in > >>binary only form. The blame should be appropriately placed with Skype. You are quite right, perhaps I should have "blamed" Skype for the lack of appropriate support for a still young (yet surprisingly mature) distro. Keeping in mind it was a bit of a rant as to why (in this particular instance) I prefer(red) SuSE, and also this install of Ubuntu was to revive/choke out the last life of this laptops hard drive, and is not of any real importance, shall we say. I have since installed breezy, and had Skype working within minutes, all appropriate packages downloaded through Synaptic (yay no dpkg!) and so on. I've even changed totem-gstreamer to totem-xine with xine-ui and was able to get the multimedia stuff working quite quickly. I must say, 6 months of obviously hard work has made a huge difference to Ubuntu, and I must congratulate all who develop in and around it. > I wanted to install Skype. Skype is a KDE app, (and it looks ugly in > > Gnome - there are workarounds, but aside from that). It requires > > libqt3-xxxxxxxx. > > > > Firstly, I was trying to install it from the .deb package distributed > > on skype.com <http://skype.com> (skype_1.2.0.18-1_i386). > > >>Luckily, as fulfilling as it is to be a Free software zealot and say > >>it's all Skype's fault there are more pragmatic members of the community > >>who are happy to put time and effort into make non-free software like > >>Skype work seemlessly. My experience with Hoary was not nearly as pleasant as the one with Breezy. I must say that I much prefer Breezy over Hoary (surprised) and it is so much quicker than SuSE 9.3, but this may be due to the light-weight nature of the distro and the fact that I have bugger all installed on a clean (but slowly dying) hard drive and clean /home partition. To get Skype working nicely on Ubuntu you need to look no further than > the Ubuntu Guide (http://ubuntuguide.org) which links to nicely > built .debs for Ubuntu that I've used successfully from Warty -> Hoary > and now for Breezy. > > See specifically http://ubuntuguide.org/#skype Correct. Once again - instructions worked fine with Breezy, but not so well with Hoary. After reading the rest of your email and the packages you installed I'm > surprised that your box still works at all! So was I. In fact, I went so far as to leave the laptop on until I was able to download and burn the Breezy ISO the next morning (after some sleep). In saying that, I did end up having to reboot it, as for some reason it thought the CD-RW drive was busy, and, well, yeah. Believe it or not, the system did boot, apparantely without error; though there were a few complaints that it couldn't talk to locale (unsurprisingly). However, all is well now (until my hard drive and more RAM arrives), at which time it will be a tougher decision than originally anticipated to choose between SuSE 10 and Breezy. It hasn't taken long (or much) to like Ubuntu so far, though as a "full featured" distro, I will probably end up with SuSE. Or I could partition the drive and just have both, sharing a /home partition (with different user-folders) - Ubuntu for lightweight applications (eg when I'm on the tram and need to write down a URL, for example) and SuSE for my Development Stuff or something. -- Regards Mathew Carley HostENZ Data Services A Carley Network Media Ltd. (NZ) Company http://www.hostenz.co.nz mathewc(a)hostenz.co.nz Office Phone (Helsinki): +358 9 2316 3712 Cell Phone (Finland): +358 4 0816 2816 Cell Phone (France): +33 6 1811 9475 Skype: mgcarley The information contained in this electronic mail message and any attachments are confidential to Carley Network Media Ltd and it's subsidiaries, and may contain proprietary information or may be legally privileged. See http://www.cnmltd.net/email/ for our standard email disclaimer. Errors & Omissions Excepted. Prices in this email do not include GST unless stated otherwise.

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Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) CD's
by Jamie Curtis 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

I have just recieved an Ubuntu Breezy ShipIt delivery of CD's for distribution via the CS department here at Waikato. There are Ubuntu sets (one install, one live CD) for x86, x86-64 and Mac available. You can get yourself one by visiting the CS office on the 1st floor of G-Block at the Uni. Please only take as many CD's as you need, we do have a limited quantity. Cheers, Jamie

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D-Link DSL-302G modem queries
by Leslie Katz 14 Nov '05

14 Nov '05

My apologies to all those who kindly replied to my post on the above subject for not acknowledging those replies sooner. I was required to be away from the computer for a few days. Encouraged by some of those replies to do so, I re-configured the modem in Windows, using the instructions from the D-Link Australia site. I then switched into Linux and found that the changes did what I'd hoped (at least for now!). My thanks to everyone.

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