wilcal
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Posts posted by wilcal
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The Ubuntuists are spreading everywhere their opinion
that Blahbuntu is much better than anything else,
even if the topic has nothing to do with Ubuntu or
other Linuxes.
I'd like to comment on that. I agree that the "Ubuntuists"
are in fact becoming a bit Elitist. But having said
that is that a bad thing as it effects the Linux
Community as a whole? I think we can all agree here
that Ubuntu in its many forms is the leading Linux Distro.
Good or bad, your choice or not, it's #1.
I suggest that all the Linux Distros are positioning themselves
for that time in the distant future when "Vista" hits
the street. When that does all of us will be waiting
for it to fall on its sword. And when it does there sits
Ubuntu, the leading Linux Distro, just waiting to go bigtime.
Let me make a wild prediction here. In the USA when you
go through the check out lane in many grocery stores
there's a rack of AOL CD's to grab for free, take home
and give it a try. I'll go out on a limb here and predict
that some form of Ubuntu and Google, sometimes called
GoBuntu, will find its way into those checkout aisles.
Ubuntu in marketing terms has gained "traction". Every
day Vista is not available off the shelf Ubuntu gains
a little more traction. Given enough time, traction,
delays and a self impaling sword Ubuntu could become
quite the thing in 07/08.
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i don't know of any legal problems with libdvdcss, but there have been some issues with libdecss: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/20040122_eff_pr.php
Here's some more documents worth a read:
http://www.licensing.philips.com/licensees...cuments752.html
You can look at these docs in a couple ways. One
is obvious. If you are going to build a DVD drive
you better be paying a license fee. If you are
going to create a software decode codec for Audio-CD
and/or DVD playback then it gets a little gray.
The ruling you pointed out states that because
DVD is pervasive if someone can figure out how
to read them then so be it. But, that person cannot
pass it on to someone else. But, because it's become
so commonly pervasive then it ain't worth pursuing
everyone that has a copy or passes it on. I suspect
that's where we are right now.
The danger here, and what I am driving at, if I created
a commercial product that contained libdvdcss and that
became wildly successful then I think that Philips
would invite me to court and ask for its license fees.
There is such an open source product. It is:
http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html
this is a slick little thing that converts your PC
to a DVD Player in the wink of an eye. I suggest that
if this thing became wildly successful and used
in a commercial venture then Philips/Sony would become
pretty upset.
Thanks for your thoughts.
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As far as I can see, I don't think the manufacture of DVD players covers a license for watching DVD's.
They are region encoded, and you normally have to chip it or pay for it to become region-free.
Actually it does in the same way as an Audio CD Player uses the Philips Red Book patent.
Anytime you play an Audio CD you have to have paid a copyright fee for the decode.
This is a very gray area and I suspect that Philips/Sony are just letting it all ride for the time being.
Maybe until they get a juicy enough victim to chop up in court.
Thanks for your thoughts.
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I'd like to ask input of this Group as to what their
feelings or experience is with using the ever popular
libdvdcss codec is in respect to copyright fees.
http://developers.videolan.org/libdvdcss/
states:
"libdvdcss is a simple library designed for accessing
DVDs like a block device without having to bother about
the decryption".
The technology embedded into a DVD is a patented and copyrighted
technology under Philips and Sony. Anytime you play a
DVD effectively you have to pay a copyright fee to these
organizations for the right to do that. I am open to comment
or challenge to that position.
I have asked a number of individuals in a number of
organizations that are distributing libdvdcss to define
where they think they are positioned and I have received no
answer. That does not mean that it's not illegal, or illegal,
to use libdvdcss? It may just mean that Philips/Sony are
just not expending the effort to chase the users.
When you purchase a DVD Player the cost of that Player
includes a tiny fee for the right to view a DVD. A similar
situation exists in the Windows world where in order to
view a WMV file you are paying a tiny fee for the codec
to do so. I'm sure many here have purchased a download
for WinBlows XP for the codec to view DVDs.
http://www.sonic.com/products/Consumer/Cin.../quicklook.aspx
Here's my challenge. If I was to create a Linux based DVD Player
based on libdvdcss and sell 10's of thousands of those on
the consumer market is the likes of Philips/Sony gonna get upset?
Thanks for your thoughts.
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Good question for any OS on a hard disk.
How to get it back to what the disk
looked like when it was delivered from
the factory.
The best and easiest utility I have found
is:
Careful though. Virtually every bit from
the first sector first track to the last
sector last track is set to "0". There
is nothing left.
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I want to back up my individual partitions...home, usr, var and mount point.
May I make a simpler alternative that I use every week.
I have split the HD on my server(s) into multiple
partitions two of which are absolutely identical in
size and structure. Example two exactly the same 40.2GB partitions.
I use:
to do this. Then using the Ranish Partition Manager when
I warm boot the system I direct Ranish to bit copy the
active partition to the secondary backup partition.
In this way an exact copy of the primary at that moment
is copied to the secondary (backup) partition. Everything
in the primary is copied.
If for whatever reason the primary goes down I need only
force warm boot the server and direct that the secondary
partition become active. The entire process takes only the
time to reboot the system. And, you always have that
known working partition ready to go regardless of what
happens to the primary.
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does anyone know if, in the meantime, Mandriva has been adopted?
I have found the Skype RPM install for Mandriva to be extremely hardware
sensitive. Before you install the Skype RPM make absolutely sure that
your sound system is completely operational. Do things like record and play
back short verbal messages using either the KDE or Gnome Sound Recorder
applications. I also make sure that that which is recorded by the Sound Recorder
is playable, cleanly, with Totem or Beep.
Also a trap you can fall into is you do the RPM install restart X and run Skype
successfully then fails on the second attempt. If you open things like
the Gnome System Monitor you'll find Skype lurking in the background still
running but not on the desktop.
Use the Skype ID: "echo123" to test your connection.
Use the ALSA Sound Mixer. Sometimes you'll need the +20db mic boost
to get enough gain.
IMO Skype is a work in progress with a LOT of work still to be done
especially in the Linux world. I ending up having to run it on one of
my older machines
P600 - Test System
-----------------------------
Mandy 2006
Pentium III (Coppermine), 600Mhz, 256Kb Cache
440BX MoBo
DIMM1 128MB, DIMM2 128MB = 256MB
ATI Rage 128 GL AGP 1x/2x 32MB All-In-Wonder TV Tune/out
SoundBlaster Live (snd-emu10k1 driver)
USB Intel 82371AB PIIX4
D-Link DFE 530 TX+ Fast Ethernet
DVD-ROM (hda) Hitachi DVD-ROM GD-2500
CD-RW (hdb) Sony CRX140E
Floppy 1.44MB
KingWin HD Rack/Tray subsystem (Multiple HD's)
Boot Sequence - Floppy -> DVD-ROM -> HD
where it finally stablized and fully understood the platform
it was on. I suspect that because of the for sure real
Sound Blaster Live board.
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Does someone know of
the best media players for Mandriva Linux 2006?
I bought a SanDisk Sansa e130 a couple weeks ago and it's a
Plug n Play with Mandy 2006.0
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People, how smooth is an upgrade in Mandriva? I mean, how do people
running Mandriva servers deal with upgrading their production servers?
Now this may be a little convoluted and won't work for
many a folk here. First, I'm not concerned with a little
down time maybe even for a day. And some down time, an
hour or so, for testing. So given that.
The always on line server has a HD more then large
enough to support multiple partitions. Lets say
part1=60GB, part2=60GB, part3=20GB. part4=20GB.
Always part1 is the on-line and running partition
with whichever OS is in vogue at the time. In my
case today that would be Mandy 2006.0. Before that
it was Mandy LE 2005, before that 9.2 and so on
and so forth.
part3 and part4 are test partitions into which I'll
load the OS to be tested. Lets say for now that's
Mandy 2006.1. I can load it and tinker around with
it to make sure that this new OS really does run
on this server hardware. I have other computers that
are used to load and get smart on how the new OS works.
During my normal backups I mirror copy part1 -> part2
every Sunday morning. So if something bad happens
to part1 I would reboot and make active part2. I've never
had to do that.
But, once I have completed my testing on part3 & 4, and
am comfortable with the way the new OS works, I wipe part2
completely clean to all zeros and load the new OS into it.
I then restore all the users and public_html directory's
and make it live. So now part2 is the live production
partition. Let it run a couple days making sure things
are kool. All that while part1, the old OS is sitting
there just ready to go back on line in the time it
takes to reboot the system. Once I'm happy with the
new OS I mirror copy part2 -> part1, make part1 the active
partition, reboot and I'm on my way.
Tools used are:
Oh, I never upgrade. I always replace every bit and byte
starting from all zeros.
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For the record here I purchased one of these things
and up to this point it appears to be compatible
with Mandriva 2006. Trying to find documented
compatibility between MP3 Players and Linux is
a bit of a challenge. I sent some messages to
several sales@xyz.com and got mostly no replies
and in once case a flat out "it won't work" message.
I decided on this particular machine because I own
a SanDisk 512MB Cruser USB drive and Mandriva
recognizes that. So, you would expect that an MP3
Player from the same manufacturer should be the same.
At least in this case, it is.
When you plug the e130 into the USB port Mandriva
recognizes it and places a Sansa e130 icon on the
Mandriva desktop. Opening that presents you with
the same file presentation structure you would
see with the 512MB USB drive. Drag, drop and delete
functions work the same. I do give things a minute
or two to settle before disconnecting the e130.
Do not unmount it as that appears to do awful things.
Also before disconnecting empty the trash and do
not have the Sansa e130 as "focus" on the desktop.
Choose something else or nothing at all, then
disconnect it. Otherwise I think there's some
incompleteness going on there. Especially if you
have deleted something and not emptied the trash.
Since the e130 is functionally the same as the e140
at 1GB of internal memory I would expect that
they would preform the same.
[moved from Hardware by spinynorman]
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How about if I
installed even newer version of mandrake without upgrading the CPU, RAM and
other hardware?
I have been probably spending as much time with the Puppy Linux
development process (testing) as I do with the Cooker (next Mandriva testing). Both
distros are targeted for a different audience. Puppy is specifically designed for
older platforms with fewer hardware resources. My test platform for Puppy is:
Dell Insperon 7500
Model PPI
Intel, Celeron 466Mhz
440BX Chipset
64MB DRAM
6.5GB HD
20VDC, 3.5A PS
Belkin Wireless G PCMCIA F5D7010, BCMWL5-INF XP2K Driver
This machine was originally supplied with either Win/98 or
ME2000. A friend had been attempting to get WinBlows XP Pro
to work on it. XP does in fact install completely but does
complain of limited resources during the install. When installed
the time it takes WinBlows XP to boot from power up to a working
desktop on this machine is just about 10 minutes. Once at
a working desktop the time to open Word is another 10 minutes.
Using Ranish Partition Manager
I split the HD into two partitions. The first at 1GB is a Linux Swap
partition, the second and rest of the HD into a Linux ext3 partition.
From power up to a working desktop using the Puppy Live-CD takes
just about 90 seconds. From the click on the Abiword Icon to a working
wordprocessor takes about 10 seconds.
The install of the driver to support the Belkin WiFi adapter is
a little tricky but ndiswrapper does what it's expected to do
and your off and running in just a couple minutes of install time.
One of the more exciting parts of the Puppy development process
is to get it all to work in 32MB of real DRAM.
Puppy Linux - WOOF! WOOF!
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I don't see viri as a major threat to Linux platforms.
So long as you don't forward suspicious e-mails your
not spreading nor vulnerable to the WinBlows stuff.
What I do see, and see it every day, is a blitzkrieg
attack on my server ( 66.159.200.93 ) constantly.
Once someone, or something, senses it as a webserver
they will go after it with a vengeance.
Attacks range from the stupid, they think it's a WinBlows
box to the insane blitz ID/PW trys. I review the content
of the log files
access_log
error_log
every day to make sure someones not been successful.
Since Mandy 10.1 it's been pretty clean. When 9.2 came
out the install defaulted to an open proxy on Apache.
That open proxy took about a week to be found and I
tell ya for awhile I think the world was using
my Mandy server. Anyway I shut off the proxy service
and that was the end of that.
Mandy 2006 has been up on my server since the first week
of Jan 06 and has not been compromised yet. I update
it 1x every week and carefully look at what it's been
doing. You'd be amazed at what you see in them log files.
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I wouldn't put high hopes on making it work under Linux.
Rats. Thanks. That's kinda what I thought.
It does not even work with WinBlows XP dialer. I tried it.
You gotta be using their software on a WinBlows platform.
I guess.
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I have stumbled across a situation that I'd like
to post for comments here. A friend purchased a
peoplepc.com dial-up account. I was setting up
her laptop with Puppy Linux and I was unable to
get Puppy to connected into her dial-up PeoplePC
connection. I tried a real WinBlows XP system
with a 56Kb modem and that too did not work.
My question is do the Dial-up connections using
"Accelerated" feature mean that you really have
to use their software and exclusively only on
WinBlows systems? It seems that way.
I have sent a message asking the same to
info@peoplepc.com
and not gotten a response.
Thanks
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Specifically for older and/or low powered platforms
Puppy continues to amaze me.
I have successfully installed Puppy to the following
Laptop using the Belkin FSD7010 PCMCIA WiFi adapter:
Dell Insperon 7500
Model PPI
Intel, Celeron 466Mhz
440BX Chipset
64MB DRAM
6.5GB HD
20VDC, 3.5A PS
Belkin Wireless G PCMCIA F5D7010, BCMWL5.INF XP2K Driver
Using the Ranish Partition manager
I split the HD into two partitions. First partition
a 550MB Linux Swap drive, the second an ext partition.
Upon booting using the Puppy Live-CD the install
sees the swap drive and uses it properly. You do
have the option to use the ext Linux partition for
pup001 or an install.
Puppy boots to a 640x480 screen and you are given
the option to increase to 1024x760x16 and that will
work nicely.
You can then set up the Belkin FSD7010 PCMCIA adapter
by installing Perl, activating ndiswrapper, mounting
the Belkin WinBlows CD and installing the BCMWL5.INF
driver to ndiswrapper, modprobe ndiswrapper and your
on your way.
I believe that this (very weak) Laptop originally
came with WinBlows/98. Not having the original intall
disk the user attempted to install WinBlows XP Pro
into this box. It did install but complained about
insufficient resources. Boot time from power up to a
working desktop for this Laptop running XP is about 10
minutes. Once in a working desktop XP's time to bring
up "Word" was another 10 minutes or so.
Boot time for Puppy ( power up to a working desktop ) for
this laptop using the above setup, and not installed to
HD, is about 2 minutes. Once you get to a working desktop,
under Puppy, the time to bring up Abiword
was right at about 11 seconds. Yes, eleven seconds.
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IMO
There is an upcoming event that is motovating
many companies like Google. Ubuntu is being
driven by it as are Mandriva, Red Hat, Novell,
Suse and many more. And that is the official
release of "Vista". When that officially occurs
it's performance and susceptibility to attack will
be watched by everyone with a keyboard connected
to a processing device.
Should "Vista" stumble, or be tripped up, then
that is the end. Alternatives will be sought
after. Corporate America is still mostly sitting
on ME 2000, not XP. M$ is counting on Vista to
migrate those millions of platforms. Will those
platforms be lured by some other OS, lets say in
this case "Goobuntu"?
It won't happen over night but if alternatives
are out there to test drive users will look at
them. Google is putting one of those alternatives
in place so folks can test drive it when, and
if, Vista falls on it's own sword or is put
to one.
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DesktopLinux reports on the Novell poll asking Linux users which Windows/Mac apps they'd most like to see running on their machines.
I was waiting for the final results, but apparently they're going to collect data for a year, so there's plenty of time for you to complete the survey. :)
I actually read that report end to end several times
and I think there's some important messages here.
One message is that M$ is still #1 in the desktop
arena regardless of the quality of their platform
and applications.
The second message is that so many people use these
applications in M$ that they are unwilling or
are uncomfortable with considering anything else.
I'm no Photoshop expert but I work amongst a whole
bunch of Linux users many of them Graphic artists.
We had to set up many of our Linux Workstations
with Wine so that they could use Photoshop instead
of GIMP. Not that one is better or equal to the
other it's just that M$ Photoshop is so pervasive
that's it's hard to change anyones habits.
Pick up a class roster from any Community College,
Tech School or University. Look at the lineup of
what applications are being taught and on what.
Do you see any courses on GIMP?. Do you see any
Course on using Linux anything?
There's the real message.
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Just for the record a friend of mine, and user
of WinBlows XP Pro, got themselves into one of
those won't boot to desktop because "xyz.dll"
is missing. So as I understand it the OS won't
get to a working desktop even in the "Safe Mode"
so that they can reinstall the dll file or
something like that.
Anyway I met the person that evening and gave
them a copy of Ubuntu 5.10 Live-CD. That evening
the person, who had never experienced a Linux
platform in their lives and with no coaching,
was able to boot off the Ubuntu Live-CD and get
back on line at least to manage their Yahoo
messages.
IMO Ubuntu continues to work towards an extremely
intuitive platform and is truly as they put it
"Linux for Human Beings"
[moved from "Other Linux and Unix distributions" - arctic]
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I use a Sony DW-D26A on my test computer and have
probably loaded, cut & booted 50+ Linux Distros
on that thing. I've never had a problem with it.
I've never had a problem with CD's cut by this
drive being read by other drives.
FWIW I have spent over 30+ years in the data
storage industry. Mostly disks and tapes. Half
of that time as a real engineer designing interfaces,
the other half in Marketing and Sales both in the
USA and Europe.
A fact of life in removable media, whatever it
is, there is no 100% guarantee on media read/write
compatibility from machine to machine and even
with the same machine. If you write a media
( CD, Floppy, tape, whatever ) remove it from the
drive and reinsert it in the same machine there is
always the possibility that you won't be able to
read what you just wrote and that on the same
machine.
The challenge is not the physical location of
the "tracks" written to the media. It has more
to do with what I will refer to here as the
"tuning in" of the data stream. Reading magnetic
or optical media is like tuning a radio. De-tune
it and you can't hear the station (data). And there
lies the compatibility issues.
You'll not find anywhere a manufactures guarantee
on read/write compatibility anymore. You assume
it and the manufactures let you do so.
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"Goobuntu" - Live-CD
If that actually happened and Google made them
as available as what AOL did some years back I
suggest they would make a serious dent in the
M$ market.
There is going to be a lot of posturing of
competitive products to Vista and Goobuntu for
free would certainly be one.
If Vista stumbles just a little it's gonna be
curtains for M$ at least in the desktop workstation
market.
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Sorry if this may be a little redundant. Is there
anyone here who has successfully, and seamlessly,
integrated a USB WiFi Wireless USB Network Adapter
to Mandy 2006? Examples:
LINKSYS WUSB54GP USB 2.0 Wireless Adapter
D-Link DWL-G122 USB 2.0 Wireless Adapter
NETGEAR WG111 USB 2.0 Wireless Adapter
What I'm asking here is you disconnect the RJ-45
LAN eth0 connection, reboot the system, once the
user desktop is loaded and active you insert the
adapter into the USB port, Mandy recognizes the
Adapter and then steps you through the process to
make the connection using MCC or something. I'm
looking for a similar experiance that you would
have with a USB based ( HP ) printer.
I'd like to see how mature this process has become
specifically in Mandy but with other Distos too.
Thanks.
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I've had 2006.1.0.3 up on my test machine for 4
days now. Mandriva has been putting some considerable
effort into the cold start -> boot -> usable desktop
process and I have to agree that this is one of
the strong points of this first look.
There are some package errors during the install but
it all loads in nicely and gets to a working desktop
quickly. They've kinda not done anything with Gnome
for this release so most of that is not usable at
this time.
The install, just like previous versions of Mandrake
and Mandriva, behave themselves and don't walk all
over how you have your hard disk configured. So you
can easily dual boot it with other OS's on other
partitions on the same HD. I use the Ranish Partition
Manager for this process.
Next official snapshot is set for 2006.02.15
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Are there any other thoughts on what could be causing
the slowdown and how I can speed things up?
On one of my older machines ( P350, 192MB, 5GB HD )
I use Ubuntu 5.10. Do try Puppy Linux as it will
do most of the functions you are looking for
in well under 192MB of DRAM.
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Mandriva ROX in most categories except speed.
I use a removable hard disk system that allows me
to A <=> B <=> C <=> X hard drives (HD) with different
and varied Operating Systems on exactly the same
computer platform. I have a legal copy of WinBlows Home
on exactly the same model and size ( Maxtor 80GB )
hard drive as one of my Test/Scratch drives. The
removable rack system is from Kingwin.
WinBlows XP Home is quicker to boot to a working
desktop then Mandriva 10.2, about the same as 2005 LE.
2006 is clearly faster to a working desktop and
2006.1.0.3 screams to a working desktop in about
half the time that WinBlows does.
Be very careful on measuring speed to applications.
If you have enough DRAM that is not being used the
first time you open that app big parts of it will
get put into cache so the next time you open it
it'll seem to open immediately. Your being fooled.
WinBlows will do that as well as Mandriva.
The best way I have found to measure time to a working
version of an application on an OS is to execute
a warm boot to desktop then execute the app. Measure
that time not any subsequent times you open the
same app.
Another factor here is available DRAM cache and/or a
linux swap partition in the HD. Lots of DRAM and
available swap will speed things up. I have both in
large chunks so it appears everything is running
from DRAM.
IDE vs. Serial HD's. Unbusy SATA-100/150 drives with
8MB of buffer, some now have 16MB, will scream. So
a clunky old OS like WinBlows will seem quicker.
If I had a 1971 VW Bug and installed a jet engine
in its engine compartment it'd run pretty fast too.
New article on MDV 2006
in Everything Linux
Posted
Now add a Google/Ubuntu mix in there and what do the numbers look like?
It'll be an interesting battle.