Re: [Staffslug] Minutes from Keele meeting

This meeting was kindly hosted by Peter Brooks at the Keele University. Four people were present: Kris Douglas (webbox.uk(a)gmail.com), Stuart Bell ( sailing1(a)gmail.com), Peter Brooks (peter(a)theneb.co.uk), Peter "Dick Turpin" Cannon (dick_turpin(a)archlinux.us). The first thing we discussed was Compiz Fusion running on Arch Linux. It seemed that the battery life wasn't affected too much, considering Peter C's laptop was second hand. He said he could get at least two hours out of it. The battery life on Linux still isn't up to the spec of Windows, but that is because of the lack of companies releasing open source drivers, meaning its harder to get full efficiency from hardware. On the long run, Linux is more efficient than windows when it's used on fully compatible hardware. We then went on to talk about how different revisions of Toshiba laptops have many different features. Stuart was moaning that his Toshiba didn't have the pointer, just a trackpad. Peter B then went on to say how Toshiba made some of the best laptops. We all agreed that Tosh hardware runs Linux well. Next we were discussing about the good and bad of compiling software on Linux, and how a required dependency 20 minutes into a compile causes a total failure and the requirement to search for it. We also discussed the best and worst features of package management systems for Linux. Peter B explained how he liked Portage so much, as it had many tools for blacklisting things you do not want to install. But Peter C went on to say how he liked PacMan as it made installing software easy, and had an easy to remember name. Next we talked about how BSD wasn't really succeeding. Peter B mentioned how BSD was caught stealing GPL'd code and using it under the BSD license. Stuart said that he read about the OS, but didn't use it. With the release of KDE4, the latest and greatest version of KDE's Desktop Environment, we discussed how it isn't as good as the current KDE, and how it would be worth trying. Nobody in the room wanted to install KDE, but we did theorise about it. We went on to say that Linux runs on most hardware, with very little or no tweaking required. Stuart commented on the fact that there is probably a distro for the Commodore 64. (Sadly, after looking up, there were no distributions good enough to run on the C64's powerful hardware.) Internet installation is available on many distros, Peter C said how much he liked the fact you can do this, rather than downloading a full CD or DVD you can just download an 18meg CD and get what you need for your OS from the Repo. Everyone agreed that this was a very good way of installing Linux, BUT only if you had broadband, this process would be a nightmare on dialup, in which case you would order a CD. (These disks can be purchased by the tried and tested store, www.linuxiso.co.uk) Irssi is a terminal based IRC client for UNIX systems. It also supports SILC and ICB protocols via plugins. The Peters talked about how useful and easy to use it was. I havn't used it, but I definitely intend to check it out, www.irssi.org. We quickly mentioned Google Drive, which is basically a cross platform tool for actually mounting your Google Mail account and using it as a hard drive. It is an incredible tool and we all recommend you have a look. http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm is the windows version. http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-filesystem/gmail-filesystem.... is the Linux version. Shrinking windows installations has become a reality, you can ditch all the bloat, and just install what you need. Stuart mentioned how he really likes the process, although it is easy to make mistakes on. Are DAT tapes running out of time in the backup world? We talked about how we can backup information onto anything. Rsync was mentioned by most of us, and was said to be the best thing to use, especially as it is preinstalled on Linux systems. IRC channels are still here, but are some of them full of people that need to learn to help themselves? Peter B said how the people in some of the IRC channels are asking questions that can easily be found out on Google. www.google.co.uk – Blimey, leave us alone. The Gentoo Wiki is one of the best sources of information on the web for System Admins. Peter B said how he used that wiki the most, for many different operating systems. Check it out: http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page. The SUSE community IRC was said to be dead. Do they lack a real community? We thought so. The Ubuntu community is thought to be one of the best. But the wiki is full of old and out dated information that is of no use to new users. This could be the cause of the questions that we keep getting in IRC. Partition managers were mentioned briefly. Is there one good partition editor out there? Gparted was mentioned and some of the dedicated CD solutions. But Peter B Seemed to think Fdisk did the job nicely. A large topic was how some of the Linux coders were being lazy. You shouldn't have to reboot your pc on installing software. You don't even need to reboot to change an X configuration (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) kills X and restarts it for you. Back onto the backup issue, we all agreed how backing up data was a very important thing. Stuart said how he liked the mklivecd command in PCLinuxOS that lets you create a total copy of your drive and settings and load it into an installable CD. Children shouldn't be allowed to use computers. They lack basic knowledge, as do the parents, and end up compromising security by downloading files like smilies and programs that cause damage. MSN isn't a good influence on children. We went on to say how viruses on Linux weren't a problem, but still, Windows is a virus magnet. We all recommend that you use NOD32, which is one of the smallest and most secure AV programs available. Forget about Norton and McAfee. Some of the "IT Technicians" in schools are barely qualified. Head teachers and councils look out for the big shiny gold MICROSOFT CERTIFIED badge, which is worth about as much as "dir" in Linux. SVN is a good platform, one of the best ways of keeping up to date with files. Stuart mentioned SVNUP which is his favorite SVN client. -- Kris Douglas Softdel Limited Hosting Services Web: www.softdel.net Mail: kris(a)softdel.net _______________________________________________ Staffslug mailing list Staffslug(a)staffslug.org.uk http://lists.staffslug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/staffslug