[conspire] conspire Digest, Vol 98, Issue 10

[jose tav]

If Dan doesn´t mind, on the HackerDojo how-to-get-there direction, you two alternatives: Central expway take the Whisman Overpass, right there at the bottom of the ramp on your right hand side of the street you will find HackerDojo. The other one take Evelyn south to Kitty?? just before the Whisman Rd., overpass. turn right go straight to H.dojo. (at the very end of the road).

--- On Sat, 8/13/11, conspire-request at linuxmafia.com <conspire-request at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> From: conspire-request at linuxmafia.com <conspire-request at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: conspire Digest, Vol 98, Issue 10
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Date: Saturday, August 13, 2011, 12:00 PM
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13 (Rick
> Moen)
>    2. Re: CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> (Dan Bikle)
>    3. Re: CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> (Rick Moen)
>    4. Re: CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> (Rick Moen)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:02:51 -0700
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Subject: [conspire] CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> Message-ID: <20110812230251.GH28669 at linuxmafia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> Hey there!  CABAL gathering tomorrow, 4 pm to
> midnight.
> (After the weekend, Deirdre and I will be driving to the
> World Science
> Fiction Convention in Reno.)
> 
> 
> 
> I'm just about to burn a few CDs and DVDs:
> 
> # ls -lh *.iso | awk '{ print $5" "$9 }'
> 2.0G
> aptosid-2011-02-imera-kde-full-i386-amd64-201107131633.iso
> 473M aptosid-2011-02-imera-xfce-amd64-201107131632.iso
> 468M aptosid-2011-02-imera-xfce-i386-201107131632.iso
> 4.4G CentOS-6.0-i386-bin-DVD.iso
> 4.0G CentOS-6.0-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso
> 1.2G CentOS-6.0-x86_64-bin-DVD2.iso
> 3.8G KNOPPIX_V6.7.0DVD-2011-08-01-EN.iso
> 621M pclinuxos-phoenix-2011-07.iso
> 348M systemrescuecd-x86-2.3.0.iso
> 4.3G ubuntu-10.04.3-dvd-amd64.iso
> 4.2G ubuntu-10.04.3-dvd-i386.iso
> 20M ubuntu-natty-powerpc-minidisc-2011-04-22.iso
> 20M
> ubuntu-oneiric-powerpc-minidisc-dailybuild-2011-06-27.iso
> # 
> 
> Let's see what we have, there:
> 
> Aptosid is my favourite way to install Debian, lately, and
> also a really
> good, cutting edge live CD distro, that you can use for a
> lot of
> purposes.  The 2 GB DVD thing is a bi-architecture
> (both ia32 and
> x86_64) image of an extremely full-featured KDE 4.6 desktop
> system.  
> 
> The other two discs are XFCE 4.8 variants, one for each
> architecture.
> 
> Aptosid has a quarterly release schedule that they
> more-or-less stick
> to, so you always have really good support for recent
> hardware.
> 
> I mentioned recently a minor gotcha:  The aptosid
> developers
> understandably refuse to take the legal risk of shipping
> firmware image
> files for hardware whose sponsoring companies haven't given
> the public
> permission to redistribute those files.  (The aptosid
> CD/DVD images, by
> policy, contain only 'DFSG-Free' contents.)  There are
> _very_ easy ways
> to make aptosid fetch and install such non-free firmware
> files off the
> Internet at the end of installation and drop them into
> /lib/firmware,
> detailed here:  http://manual.aptosid.com/en/nf-firm-en.htm 
> _However_,
> say your machine's connection to the Internet is via its
> Broadcom
> BCM5705 ethernet chip, which is one of Broadcom's 'Tigon'
> series and so
> needs the 'tg3' ethernet driver.  Unfortunately, your
> Broadcom ethernet
> chip can't be initialised until Linux has that firmware
> file, and it
> can't get the firmware file off the Internet while your
> box's Internet
> access is offline:  Chicken and egg problem.
> 
> Broadcom's attorneys could resolve this roadblock for the
> cost of 
> postage, but they simply don't care.  Same problem
> applies for a number
> of network hardware chips:  See cited page.
> 
> 
> CentOS 6.0:  Yeah, this is the release of their
> version of RHEL6 that
> was delayed, occasioning much 'End of CentOS
> predicted.  PNG at 10' 
> commentary from the more vapid IT press drones (who claimed
> everyone
> would need to migrate to Scientific Linux, or Oracle Linux,
> or God Knows
> What).  Personally, I didn't see the issue:  The
> CentOS developers
> worked first on 5.6 (RHEL5 Update 6), and only got to the
> parallel 6.0
> (RHEL6) branch when they were done.  Personally, I'll
> care about RHEL6
> only when it's actually used in production, and so far
> everyone I know's
> sticking with RHEL5.  Seems to me as if the CentOS
> developers merely had
> a healthy sense of priorities.
> 
> It's worth mentioning that there are official live CD
> images of CentOS
> 5.x and unofficial images of 6.0.  I suspect that, for
> whatever reason,
> they are less picky about the legal exposure from
> questionably licensed
> firmware files.  So, for example, a firm I work with
> that uses CentOS
> 5.6 extensively on rack machines keeps a PXE-bootable image
> of the
> CentOS 5.6 live CD on the kickstart server for
> maintenance/recovery
> purposes.  That way, it's guaranteed that the
> maintenance image will
> have 100% of the hardware drivers used on production
> machines because --
> hey! -- same distro as used in production.
> 
> 
> Knoppix 6.7.0.  Still healthy.  The default
> desktop these days is
> LXDE, but you can also start into KDE4 or GNOME. 
> Klaus Knopper has
> moved Knoppix even closer to full Debian compatibility, but
> still
> cherry-picks things from Debian-unstable and
> -testing.  And it's still a
> really fine general-purpose live distro.
> 
> 
> PCLinuxOS 2011-07 'Phoenix' is another XFCE 4.8 installable
> live CD,
> this one an rpm-based distro originally forked from
> Mandriva.
> PCLinuxOS's desktop distros -- and they have Enlightenment,
> Fluxbox,
> GNOME, IceWM, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, and XFCE variants -- are
> all very
> polished and very leading edge.  If you like RPM-based
> distros but
> CentOS / Fedora dissatisfy, try PCLinuxOS.
> 
> 
> SystemRescueCD is not for installation but rather rescue /
> maintenance 
> / forensics / partitioning / backup-restore, etc.  Not
> that it matters, 
> but it was originally based on Gentoo.  I keep my copy
> updated.
> 
> 
> Ubuntu for PowerPC.  PowerPC's been an unsupported
> platform for the
> *buntus for quite a long time, now.  Starting v 7.04
> Gutsy Gibbon, it
> became an _unofficial_ but still available
> (community-maintained) disc.
> After a while, it dropped off the map because of build
> problems (not to
> mention that, hey, your PowerMacs are getting pretty
> ancient).  But, if
> you do some searching, you can still find unofficial,
> don't-complain-if-it-doesn't-work-for-you
> 'InstallationMinimalCD' isos
> for 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (18 MB
> each) that
> use a text-based ncurses installer and fetch all needed
> packages off the
> Internet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:14:48 +0100
> From: Dan Bikle <dan.bikle at gmail.com>
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Subject: Re: [conspire] CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> Message-ID:
>     <CABEDG-LYKAZOCHeyak4kUw55TCTFFWZ4k8ERnZ4M0mUZbvt8RA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> CABAL people,
> 
> if after Saturday you want more social interaction on
> Sunday,
> I invite you to Sunday Hackternoon at Hacker Dojo at 1pm.
> 
> Here -> http://meetup.com/Hackternoon
> 
> --Dan
> -------------- next part --------------
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:27:15 -0700
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Subject: Re: [conspire] CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> Message-ID: <20110812232715.GN26131 at linuxmafia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> Quoting Dan Bikle (dan.bikle at gmail.com):
> 
> > CABAL people,
> > 
> > if after Saturday you want more social interaction on
> Sunday,
> > I invite you to Sunday Hackternoon at Hacker Dojo at
> 1pm.
> > 
> > Here -> http://meetup.com/Hackternoon
> 
> Yeah, that sounds like fun, and I might bicycle over and
> join y'all.
> Thanks for the invitation, Dan.  (I'll probably be
> still sufficiently
> brain-fried that I'll not be good for much besides
> socialising, though.)
> 
> I stopped by the Dojo parking lot briefly, the evening of
> the recent Bay
> Area FreeBSD User Group meeting, hoping that Josef Grosch
> might still be
> there.  Unfortunately, work had detained me until
> really late, and
> pretty nearly everyone had already gone home.
> 
> I can also say that the Dojo's really easy to get to, once
> you've done
> it once.  One way is:  Start in downtown Mountain
> View.  Get to Dana
> Street.  (If you're a coffee fancier, you know where
> it is.)  Take it
> logical-south towards Sunnyvale.  Go under CA-85, then
> turn left just
> before CA-237.  Go a block.  Look left into a
> light industrial parking 
> lot, for office addresses including 140 S. Whisman, just
> before you hit
> S.  Whisman proper.  If you end up at the
> railroad tracks and Central
> Expressway, you overshot and should backtrack.
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:57:13 -0700
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Subject: Re: [conspire] CABAL meeting, Saturday, Aug. 13
> Message-ID: <20110813025713.GA9916 at linuxmafia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> I wrote:
> 
> > I'm just about to burn a few CDs and DVDs:
> [...] 
> > 4.3G ubuntu-10.04.3-dvd-amd64.iso
> > 4.2G ubuntu-10.04.3-dvd-i386.iso
> 
> See those?  Notice that they're DVD images.
> 
> Any of you who's been dealing with the *ubuntus for a while
> has probably
> gotten used to what the project urges on people. 
> Since earliest days,
> they've pushed people towards CDs of the Desktop Disk
> edition for their
> respective CPU architectures.  When in doubt: 
> Ubuntu whatever-is-current
> i386 arch Desktop Edition CD, was the one-size-fits-all
> solution.
> 
> The logic of this recommendation has always been
> understandable.
> Desktop Edition presents a friendly graphical face to the
> target novice
> market.  If all goes well, it offers a pleasant
> live-CD environment with
> an optional graphical installer that asks the user almost
> no questions
> and just bulk-installs stuff, then runs to completion and
> pops up a
> friendly message that it's done -- the canonical (no pun
> intended)
> 'forehead installer'.
> 
> There are a few drawbacks.  The thing sucks down RAM
> and CPU like
> there's no tomorrow, is inflexible, is relatively slow, and
> often
> completely fails (hardware-support obstacles) on machines
> that work
> great with the more-reliable Alternate Disk.  However,
> because Ubuntu
> Project pushes 'Desktop Disk' and because of Alternate
> Disk's name, 
> rarely is it even considered even though it's better in
> just about every
> way.
> 
> People act surprised when I reach for Alternate Disk by
> strong
> preference.  *I* act surprised when I see people claim
> that Ubuntu is
> intolerably slow to install on their 512 MB Pentium 4 boxes
> -- but it
> inevitably turns out that they mean the bloatware Desktop
> Disk.
> 
> 
> Because people inevitably want to have Desktop Disk
> available at CABAL,
> and because of its one feature Alternate Disk lacks
> (live-CD operation), 
> I've for years been obliged to burn and store both
> editions.  Two
> editions for Ubuntu on i386, two for Ubuntu on x86_64, two
> for Kubuntu
> on i386, two for Kubuntu on x86_64, and so on.  And
> then burn them all
> again next release -- and keep one LTS set and one
> non-LTS.  That chews
> through a lot of CDRs over time, and it's a storage and
> handling
> headache.
> 
> This new-ish _DVD_ edition fixes much of that, because it's
> basically
> Alternate Disk _and_ Desktop Disk both bootable from a
> single optical
> frisbee.  At boot time, you can elect to start either
> the live-distro
> environment (which then offers the graphical install) of
> Desktop
> Edition, _or_ you can boot into the battle tested
> ncurses-driven
> Alternate Disk installer.  
> 
> Less clutter, fewer discs.  I like that.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
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> 
> End of conspire Digest, Vol 98, Issue 10
> ****************************************
>