iphitus

I don't have a webcam and my wallpaper isnt that bad!

To compromise a network, a machine must be compromised. Once that happens, *you* have already screwed up. A network diagram won't help that occur. Be it your linux based router, or your computer, it doesnt matter whether they have a network diagram, you've been compromised. The network diagram won't help them compromise that machine. And if it does, then you havn't practiced basic security and deserve to be compromised. Don't rely on keeping your network "secret" to keep yourself secure, because it won't. Instead ensure you have a solid firewall on any internet facing machines, and practice basic security such as solid root passwords. If you do this, you should be fine. ianw: If someone has a static IP, then I wouldnt be surprised if they have a domain, in which case... it's as simple as resolving the domain to find an IP. Corporate networks? If anyone tried, they could get a lot of information about corporate networks. Take my uni's network, there's plenty of information on their website including ip ranges. That's because getting local access isnt overly difficult, the difficulty is in protecting the important assets. It's not hard to steal a computer at the library, or socially gain someone's password. Anyway, if anyone cares, my desktop's local ip is 192.168.1.23. My laptop is 192.168.1.21. That's not going to help you do sweet bugger all, and if you compromised my router, you'd be able to read it all in the dhcpd lease tables. James

Theres firefox extensions to put filetypes in a particular folder.

It's old enough that the hardware should all be detected on any distro. Even the wireless card, provided that the driver is installed. xmms should run fluently on any distro. Heck, it ran fluently on my old 300Mhz P2 on any distro. Programs like that will run well irrelevant of the distro. The boot time is an odd one. You can get debian and have a good boot time out of the box, but lack some of the GUI configs ala MCC, or you can get the GUI configs in Mandriva, Fedora and Xubuntu, and not have the boot time. Although with a laptop of that vintage, suspending shouldnt be an issue, so give that a shot. James

Ye of little faith. Google is your friend, scroll down to Linux on this page: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/schuster/wlan.htm What sort of distro are you looking at? Easy to use? Cutting edge? Old hardware isnt limited to tiny corner distros and old software versions. It'll work best if you avoid memory hogs, but even hogs like KDE and Gnome can be tuned pretty well to work on lower specced hardware. The kernel is designed so that it works on old hardware, and a majority of the basic userspace apps used in Linux distro's don't have very heavy requirements. (except the bleedin obvious like games and such) Keeping that in mind, Debian, Arch, Xubuntu, Mandriva, FreeBSD, Fedora would all be great choices. It'd take a few minutes to turn stuff down in some of those bigger distros, but they'd work well. Turn off some extra services, and turn off extra options in KDE and Gnome. In kde chuck the effects to none, and turn off services. Maybe disable Nautilus in Gnome and use Thunar instead. I'd probably go Debian or Arch depending on who's using it and what it's goin to be used for. They'll give you enough control when setting it up, so you can ensure only what's needed is enabled, as well as sufficent hardware and package support. Jame

Unfortunately, if it's metisse you want, it's going to run terribly/not at all under qemu. James

well... ok i got bored and joined in: http://iphitus.loudas.com/images/network.png the wep network is for my own uses and testing. firewalls are on my computers because well, i felt like messing with iptables, it's on my dad's because he uses the horrendous norton internet security package. But hey, security is better layered. James

No. Debian is far bigger than Ubuntu - Still. Ubuntu just get's lots of press. The nature and development of linux prevent's it from ever being completely standardised. The main things people want standardised, are packages, and configuration. Most of the time the focus is on packages. LSB is an example of this. For packages: The kernel releases very frequently (too frequently imho), and everything else has extremely frequent releases. To enforce any form of standardisation, core components must be tied down to a set version range to maintain ABI compatibility. This ties down the whole system to that range, and makes any attempt at packaging standardisation pretty difficult. This can be partially worked around with compat versions, but only to a limited extent. Each distro wants to have the edge over the others by providing the newest and greatest features -- which depend on the newest versions of everything. And then there's the rolling distro's like Debian unstable, Arch, and Gentoo to a lesser extent. Any form of standardising these is just pointless as they constantly change. So packaging standardisation is a pretty difficult problem, not impossible.... but not very easy. Configuration standardisation is pretty difficult too, as in doing that, you're adjusting some pretty core things of a distro. Big changes, and in doing so, removing the advantages or methods of some distros. Standardisation is difficult. The ideal way for any standardisation to occur, is for an agreement between the major corporate distros. SuSE, Red Hat, Mandriva? et al. This would allow third parties to provide working standard proprietary software to a majority of the corporate market, where the money is to be made. However this is unlikely imho, as the aforementioned distros would be far more interested in making exclusive deals with such third party vendors -- Giving them a competitive advantage of the other corportate distros. James

Debian.

It's odd really. Some people get one that lasts a long time, like me, for others they don't last very long. It's like most devices, there will be bad one's built in each batch and sold, but what it seems like with the ipod, is that there's a higher incidence of this. You can't possibly criticise my friend when he received two DOA, he did nothing wrong. His third one however, has worked flawlessly. I was lucky, mine has lasted well over a year and still shining. I received it 5 days after the release announcement, so it's among the oldest out there. The click wheel doesnt respond occasionally, but it's not too bad yet, and may just be a loose connector. Well, like i said, some are good, some are bad. You've been lucky -- i'm not saying every ipod dies, but there's a higher incidence. The build is great when you get a good one, but from what i've seen, there tends to be far more which die quickly or have immediate problems. I've never heard of France or seen france, thus it doesnt exist? Again... they're physically very durable. It's just when you manage to get one of the bad ones in the batch. Mine's working great still, and it's got scars to show what it's been through. The back has more dents in it than the surface of the moon. Not every test is perfect. Not every test will pick things up. The first DOA nano had an intermittently faulty next track button. The second had a hold switch that stopped working in the first day, and unfortunately stopped on hold. And they did bugger all testing on the first nano. They scratch ridiculously easily. Apple ignored all complaints during the time when people realised this, and then silently include a case with all nano's sold shortly after. Apple replaced both. But it's the inconvenience of shipping it back to them, and waiting for a new one to return. As for Whoflungdung? Sandisk? Whoflungdung? I might remind you that Sandisk are one of the biggest solid state storage manufacturers, and one of the inventors of the SD card. It's no surprise they've moved out into mp3 players, as the flash storage is one of the biggest costs, and they don't have anyone trying to make a profit off them. Support? Heck, a pile better than apple. Sandisk actually release updated firmwares for their devices and actually add new features, and fix problems reported to them. Their support is apparently quite good too. Apple? Yeah, they release firmwares, but they don't add sweet bugger all to the device, and claim to fix undescribed problems. They've also got a history of ignoring support requests, and ignoring faults in their devices. I'll probably get either an apple or a sandisk for my next device, but that's only because the apple runs Rockbox and i still have accessories. James

ipw3945 is fairly new, and it's license is far less restrictive than the ipw2x00 license, so give it a few months and every distro should support it out of the box in their current/next release. James

So you do get a mixer? That's a good start. You say you have a laptop, what specs? When the module loads, it tries to detect what configuration you have, this doesnt always work. You can force a configuration, by loading the module with a model= option. To test them, just rmmod snd-hda-intel, and then modprobe snd-hda-intel model=xyz This link is from the 2.6.19 kernel docs: http://iphitus.loudas.com/arch/snd-hda-intel.txt Arch: I know the problem you had with the older installers for Arch, the test 0.8 one will work a lot better. We've made some big kernel level changes since 0.7... which is why you have those problems. 0.8 is correctly configured to setup everything. James

Which model do you have? Installing rockbox is so simple. Just follow the instructions provided, and if you mess up, there's rollback instructions. If they don't work, then the apple updater will fix it. I doubt you'll go wrong though, the setup for rockbox isnt very complicated. Rockbox is worth the few minutes it takes to setup. I installed it November last year and have not rebooted back into the Apple OS once because it just works so well. The Sandisk Sansa's do this too ;) And better. I wouldn't get an iPod next time. I've given in defending the ipod, the build quality is simply shit. My ipod nano's only a year old but is already having problems. My friend has had his replaced twice as two were DOA. The problems are widespread too. Nice devices, crap build, designed to fail. Just like Gowator's printer... As for Job's comments, I can't take them at face value either. James

Just about the sound...... make sure you turn up and unmute all the volume sliders, i found my main volume control on my snd-hda-intel to be "Front". Give the latest 2.6.20 kernel a shot. If you're sure you've got everything plugged in right, and all the sliders up, it should work. If it doesnt, file a bug on the linux kernel bugzilla and it should work in no time. As for Arch, sounds like you installed with the old ISO, give the new one a shot: ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/other/0.8 James

havn't really got a hope unfortunately. There's so many great wireless drivers in *bsd that I wish would be ported, but none ever have been. I wish linux' wireless was implemented at least half as well as bsd. but then again... there's a lot of things that are implemented far better in bsd. James

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ man bash It doesnt get much better than those three resources.

Mandriva's changed a lot since it started, but that doesnt change the fact it was forked off Red Hat. Anyway, that was my point, PCLinuxOS has changed a lot too, and thus, it's really an independent distro of Mandriva now, and doesnt need it to survive. Was based on it yes, but has changed a lot since. Mandriva aren't irrelevant *yet* but they will be unless they change their ways. I wouldnt reccomend Mandriva as a first distro, because it's just so terribly buggy, and a terrible experience. James

not, can it be done, but should it be done? No. And how it can be done? There's no nice solution, which again implies that it shouldnt be done.

Used OpenBSD recently? Quality comes before everything. He'd happily merge a driver from a paid developer from anywhere if it was well written, legally safe and came with appropriate documentation. Aye. James

Distrowatch is entirely irrelevant, it is not a reliable source for statistics, as it's methods of operation tend to bias distributions that release more often, and thus get more clicks. Rolling distributions who release snapshots very infrequently like Arch, are disadvantaged. Distrorankings is crap too. Again it is biased to a different type of community. It can be broken if a distribution actually puts emphasis on it: "Vote for us here!" -- And as you can see in the top 10, that's been done. There was a discussion on it on the Arch forums a few months ago, and the general consensus was, who cares? To us using the distro, it doesnt matter what that site says. It's just a silly popularity contest. I've said it before though, Mandriva will become irrelevant if they don't change their ways. * Better documentation * Change of development style, actually use the bug tracker, fix bugs * Better testing * Properly utilise their assets, urpmi and tools. Revamp where needed * Don't go off and do things "Mandriva ways". We all remember how Kat sucked. Why didnt they just write a KDE beagle frontend? * Community. Reach out to them. * As a business: Customer service. As for PCLinuxOS? Remember, just because it's Mandrake based, doesnt mean it's the same. Mandriva is Red Hat based, Ubuntu is Debian based... you get the idea. It's diverted a long way from it's base and has had plenty of time to do the things above that Mandriva doesnt. As for Debian? That guy's got no idea, and uses false logic to mark it on the downfall. James

I'm with Theo. OpenBSD is far cleaner and better documented than linux. But when it gets to this, the support is behind linux. Linux has the programmers, it has the hardware support, so the decision is made for you. James

On the other hand, people shouldnt be forced into expensive and non-free software on windows too. People can rightfully choose that environment if they are more comfortable with it. To say that we shouldnt make things cross platform, is restricting their choice/freedom. I have windows dual boot here - for the practical reason that games, not only dont always run in linux, but often run far better in windows. Take for example my brother, his laptop stopped POST'ing the other day. I setup him an account on my laptop, spent ages setting it all up to be fine, but in the end it didn't "just work" as needed. He wanted to play Warcraft 3, while using teamspeak -- and be able to alt-tab out to firefox. Any attempt to set this up, was simply a kludge at best. Windows doesnt work for everyone, and often it's not their choice. Removing portability just punishes them. And regardless of someone's choice of OS, they should still have access to free software, otherwise they'll be forced to use Office.... and others, locking them further onto that platform. I think your post was made spur of the moment. People lose sight, and say "oh no, linux won't make it", "oh noes, it will never be a desktop system". Things take time, and regardless of what you see in this moment, over the last few years GNU/Linux has increased in capability, recognition, awareness, and professionality. We're still learning to walk, and people are still just learning who we are. Running comes next. I frequently see more and more support, in terms of drivers and software. All this recognition will only increase with time. James

Guess it depends. They don't make a huge impact, but you do see some people once in a while who do come along from one of those. When I started linux more seriously, i bought this tiny handbook and CD set of mandriva -- that got me started, and I swear, that book should come with mandrake. Only cost me about the price of a magazine, but that book and full mandriva CD set rocked. The book not only had how to install, but a basic *relevant* history of linux, basic info, a detailed glossary, and a small set of basic command line commands explained in easy language, as well as some common tasks shown. Most of the computer magazines here, even the newbie ones have a linux column, and have done the whole five part install thing, so it's good to see more recognition. James

yes. Not sure which distro it was, but it very smartly used linux's weak ntfs support. Looks like this is doing the same. At the time, and it still is the case, kernel based ntfs has poor support, only supporting basic write functions. What this did, was created a fixed length file on the ntfs partition that had a filesystem, ext3, reiser, whatever in it - Just like a partition. On boot, it mounts the ntfs, and then from that, mounts the loopback filesystem. This is perfectly safe and has zero risk of NTFS damage as it's well within the limitations of the linux NTFS driver. It's just like mounting an ISO or CD image, same concept. Except this time it boots from it. On boot, this is all managed by initrd/initramfs, which are now pretty much the norm on most linux distro's. Rather than have the kernel mount the root filesystem, these have it mounted using mount in userspace. This allows for much more elaborate setups, such as more complex encrypted systems, root from ntfs, samba, ssh, fuse -- practically anything. It also allows distro's to make slimmer kernels. Looks like this one even more craftily, uses the Windows Bootloader to chainload to a modified grub, rather than overwriting it with grub -- also eliminating another source of problems -- bootloaders. James

it's safe to disable. if you want to, go to the mandriva services control panel, find gamin, and stop it, and set it to not run on boot. James