[sf-lug] Sunday meeting & SliTaz 1.0 - 25 megabytes of GNU/Linux Power.

[jim]

nice to have a report on the meeting, thanks! 

here's a blurb on solid state drives: 
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/09/samsungs-low-power-128gb-ssds-go-mass-production-on-the-cheap/ 

i'd be willing to reimburse you if you bring me at 
least one CD with slitaz on it, just in case you're 
taking orders. 


On Tue, 2008-07-08 at 20:01 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> 	
> 
> 	Jim Stockford was there with his new ASUS EEE machine from
> the ZaReason folks.  Screen is a bit small for my taste but Daniel
> showed him how to brighten the display enough for the Javacat Cafe.
> It seems a bit slow but it works fine with the Zareason installed
> Ubuntu.
> 
> 	Daniel got my Inspiron 4000 upgraded to the proper bios and I
> was happy to see it again.  Thanks Daniel.
> 
> 	Jason was there having ridden on a bicycle all the way. He
> managed to haul along his big laptop.
> 
> 	John had a small customized IBM Thinkpad having replaced the
> hard drive with solid state drives.
> 	Two other enthusiasts were there and it is the fault of my
> poor memory that I do not name them.
> 
> 	There was a bit of discussion of the possibility of finding
> other meeting places but the problems are of course parking for the
> drivers and transportation for the rest of us.
> 
> 	The meeting concluded a bit after 1 PM with a discussion of
> the changes to be made to servers in which I was awed bystander.  Seems
> as though the movers and shakers will be moving the old box as soon as
> they are sure the new virtual setup handles everything properly.  This
> used up most of the time before 2 PM.
> 
> 	As we were getting ready to leave a young man with an Inspirion 8500
> asked me about the group.  Looks like we may have another new member in
> the near future.  I think the current economic problems may be
> helpful to the advancement of the Free and Open Source Software movement
> as people and organizations will have increased economic motivation to
> escape Microsoft's expensive licenses and endless security problems.
> 
> 	Read about this new small Linux disto in the current Linux Format 
> magazine, SliTaz 1.0 which is only 25 Megabytes in ISO and
> while at the SF-LUG meeting on Sunday downloaded the iso from the
> web site.
> 
> http://www.slitaz.org.
> 
> 	SliTaz is an acronym of course and think about Small, light and
> so forth.
> 	Moved it with my little SD card reader from the Inspiron to the
> Dimension and wrote it to a CD.  It looks very nice though I couldn't
> find instructions on doing dial-up but they have a package I found
> when I went to:
> 
> 	http://www.slitaz.org/en/doc/handbook/index.html
> 
> 
> 	You have two hundred or more commands and the handbook has directions 
> on installation to a hard disk and to a USB drive.  Even a very small 
> USB drive.  The USB install moves everything in the system
> to memory and it takes relatively little memory.  Things happen
> as fast as though you were on an Amiga since everything is in memory
> and how many users of the Amiga remember the hack to move a system
> image to a rebootable ram disk?.  Non-Amigans can dis-regard.  It
> is not slow.
> 	Estimate for the Live CD or USB key is 80 MB of ram to run
> in.  But there are cheats to let allow use in as little as 16 MB.
> Unlike DSL which is twice the size SliTaz uses the latest kernel,
> (2.6.24) and other up to date basic building blocks for the
> system. It uses Joe's Window Manager on top of an X vesa and
> all the tools are light and fast.
> 	It also has a file manager that is to die for.  It looks
> like a desktop MC but here is a quote from the handbook.
> 
> emelFM2 - File Manager
> 
> EmelFM2 is a file manager providing many useful functions for daily
> tasks such as managing devices, opening a terminal in the current
> directory, drag and drop, create/rename directories, key bindings or
> managing file permissions. It contains bookmarks to allow you to browse
> faster, a text editor/viewer and much more. EmelFM2 can be launched with
> some command line options - you can specify the dustbin directory or set
> the start directory to display. For a full list of options: $ emelfm2
> --help.
> 
> The context menu (right click on file/directory) makes it easy to unpack
> .taz .gz archives, compress and create archives or compare files. You
> can also create symbolic links via 'Create a link...'. Once learnt,
> emelFM2 will allow you to work quickly and effectively.
> 
> 	http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080331
> Just scroll down the page a bit and you will find the remarks,
> 
> 	But the Handbook is wonderfully direct and gives good instructions on 
> command line use of the important tools.  There
> is also a SliTaz Cookbook for developers with directions on
> building packages using the wok with tools and receipts(recipes?)
> which should make people feel more at home with the package.
> 
> 	This is a package meant to keep old machines in use
> as long as possible but the developer runs it on his high
> speed hardware which must be very fast.
> 
>      later
>      bliss at california dot com
>