Friday, June 5, 2009

[BLUG] Best of BLUG #2: Bill Gates posts to the list

What the? Can anyone claim this from 9 years ago?

==============================================================================
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/pipermail/blug/2000-July/000071.html

Bill_Gates@microsoft.com Bill_Gates_at_microsoft.com
Thu, 20 Jul 2000 12:05:37 -0500

Hey guys I've got this other neat operating system that works really
swell! It can be installed along side linux too. It's called Winblows,
err, I mean Windows 98. Just boot up with dos, then use the dos version
of fdisk to make some windows partitions. Dont worry that it cant see
your linux partitions, it automagically steps around them (Hehehehaha
Mwuhaaahahawuhaha). Then format your new windows partitions and you are
ready to go. Just send $150 to me and I'll mail you a shiny new windows
cd... better yet send me your creditcard number('s). It's so nice and
pretty and easy to use, I'm sure you all will be using it instead of
linux in no time. And hey, there's nothing like a freshly rebooted
machine to brighten your day! Well I have to go now, someone named 'DoJ'
keeps sending me email... I keep telling them I'm not interested in what
they have to say, but they keep harassing me. Oh well... tata for now!

P.S. Check out this website I really like:
http://www.linuxstinks.com

Bye!
==============================================================================

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

[BLUG] Posts from the past (Best of BLUG)

To add to the massive amount of list e-mail this month, Barry suggested
that I send this one to the list. Maybe this is a Best of BLUG.
It was from 4 years ago:

===============================================================================
Mark Krenz blug_at_mailman.cs.indiana.edu
Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:46:12 -0000 (GMT)

I was reading this:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/browse_thread/thread/e9a25c6688188ede/12c015c336ceb5dc

and came across this reply 3 posts down:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Did you ever have to deal with IBM DeskStar (a.k.a. DeathStar) drives?

The most spectacular HD blowout I ever witnessed was one such DeathStar.
The postmortem was that the drive had first suffered from bearings
failure, which then led to a headcrash. That wasn't the spectacular bit
though ... no that came a second later, when microfractures in one of the
platers caused the now unbalanced disks to shatter with such force, that
shrapnel from the explosion penetrated the outer casing, and embedded into
the aluminium of the drive bay and surrounding area.

Oh, and of course, I had no backups.

One hard drive, one aluminium PC case, three months worth of work, and a
perfectly good pair of pants, all gone forever.

-
[H]omer
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Has anyone ever heard of something like that happening for real? It
just seems kinda unbelievable.

Mark
===============================================================================

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:02 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 04:36:09PM -0400, Simón Ruiz wrote:
>> Copyleft—the GNU license, Creative Commons etc.—as I understand them,
>> are clever hacks designed to subvert the copyright system as it
>> stands, basically to *free* people from it. Artists who choose these
>> licenses are expressing disgust with the system.
>
> Now, I disagree with you there. I don't think there's any implication
> of disgust.

No, you're right, mere use is no implication of disgust.

However, their creators were openly motivated by disgust.

>> These licenses may derive their legal teeth from copyright itself, but
>> they exist as criticisms of it. They are good, I'd say, not because of
>> our copyright system but in spite of it.
>
> Again, I disagree with you.
>
> I think it is easy to be dissatisfied with copyright out of a general
> disgust with the manipulations of "intellectual property" talk made by
> the media on behalf of big business. There's an active attempt to blur
> the lines between things right and good (like copyright) and things
> wrong and bad (like software patents).

I've heard plenty of bad stuff being done with copyright itself. The
letters RIAA and MPAA conjur up as much evil in the minds of some as
the name Microsoft might to others.

>> I hear this "We have a crappy implementation of it, but copyright is
>> good in principle" idea often, but I'm not sure I know which principle
>> is being talked about.
>>
>> What is this principle? Can we name it?
>
> How about from "Principles of copyright" located at
> http://www.damic.qc.ca/damic/eng/pages/rights/principe.htm :
>
> |Copyright is a legal convention which recognizes the paternity of a work
> |to its author's natural person. It is based on two types of fundamental,
> |inalienable, perpetual, imprescriptible and complementary rights: moral
> |rights and patrimonial rights.
>
> The principles then appear to boil down to:
>  * Moral rights: It is mine, and you can not change it.
>  * Patrimonial rights:
>   * Exclusive proprietory rights: I, alone, own it.
>   * Remuneration right: I can be paid for it.
>
> The Creative Commons licenses offer finer control over these rights.
>
> It does not appear to conflict with them. I see nothing about these
> rights and the CC licenses which even conflict.

These principles I can get behind.

I'd say that not only do CC licenses not conflict with these ideas,
they better reflect them than traditional copyright does now.

I believe society has some rights itself when it comes to its members'
brain work, though.

No one's creative works comes wholly formed to their brain in a
vacuum, it is as much a product of society as it is theirs
individually, and society should have a right to it after a reasonable
time.

I think it's stupid that large, important parts of our shared culture
essentially do not belong to us, legally.

> Cheers,
>
> --
> Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
> Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

Cheers,

Simón

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] burning boxes (was: Openfiler and Zumastore)

LOL. Too funny. It worked great (she didn't even know that her Mac was rsyncing back to it!) But company was coming over, so she shoved it into a cupboard and stacked stuff on top of it. And it got way too hot -- not fun to wake up to that smell in the middle of the night!

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 05:35:00PM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> [...] Unfortunately my wife burned that box up, so I lost
> it all. *sigh*

If it worked like it should, it wouldn't have inspired her to waste the
liquor on it and set it ablaze... I mean, you can only frustrate a person
so many times before they snap...

;)

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
>        Freedom and justice. It's your work, you decide.
>
>        Don't get me wrong. I run software all the time that was written a/o
> is still being written by people who charge nothing for it; as an old
> retired fart on a small pension, I probably couldn't run anything else if I
> tried. I'm intensely glad that so many people who can write code are so
> generous with it.
>
>        But unless they own their work, how can they choose to give it away?

I don't disagree that artists "own" their work in some real moral sense.

However, I don't believe copyright was created to guarantee freedom
and justice, though justice may have been a side effect from time to
time.

I think copyright was created as a compromise, that society would cede
certain "rights" to authors of certain types of works (i.e., we'll be
willing to enforce already common social conventions by law on your
behalf) in exchange for the net benefit to society of encouraging
their increased cultural and intellectual output.

It's important, and deliberate, that a person was required to seek
copyright, that it only covered certain types of work, that it was for
only 14 years renewable once by a living author, and that a copy had
to be archived in the library of congress, thus ensuring the work's
availability to the public.

I think it was understood that monopolies are dangerous and ultimately
harmful and anti-competitive, and so monopolies were issued
conservatively, were limited in scope, and required the copyrighted
work to be given to "the people" up front as a precondition.

I feel copyright is now failing at, if not actively working against,
its original intent.

And it's doing a pretty lousy job at protecting our freedoms and
justice, too. ;-)

It's *almost* as if money buys you laws in this country.

>        If you follow several lists and forums, as I expect you do, you must
> notice that many of those who post to them also make their living writing
> code. Some few, like the RedHat employees at Fedora, may be getting paid to
> give their work away. Others create some software at work, and some at home
> -- and contribute what they do at home to the cause.
>
>        If they weren't being paid for what they write for their employers,
> what would they live on?

At the risk of sounding like I'm just looking for ways to be contrary
(I'm not, I'm just enjoying an interesting conversation):

I don't think coders are being paid for a manufactured good, code.

They're being paid for their time, for the privilege of having all
their skills, expertise and experience focused on solving your
problems.

Most code doesn't end up packaged up and sold to anyone.

> --
> Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
> On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
> supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.

Simón

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

On Friday 05 June 2009 18:16:38 Steven Black wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 05:32:10PM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> > I installed Fink on OS X before it had any apt-ability. dselect was it,
> > and it was not fun (almost made me wish for RPM).
>
> You're not the only person who didn't enjoy dselect. I was comfortable
> with it, personally. In fact, only recently (~2-3 years) did I stop
> using it.
>
> It took me a little while to get used to aptitude. Once I got used
> to it, I found I like it much, much better. I've spent a lot of time
> dependancy surfing, whether it is to try another tool using a common
> library, or it is to remove everything that uses a GNOME library... I,
> perhaps perversely, find it a lot of fun.

I never liked dselect. I switched to aptitude shortly after I started using
Linux (around 2004, Debian Sarge was about to release). dselect kept doing
unintuitive things like making changes after I quit and restarted the program
that I thought I had cancelled the first time. aptitude's interface was so much
nicer. Of course, once I learned apt-get I really didn't see why I needed a
ncurses interface (I didn't realize until later that I could use aptitude like
apt-get).
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] burning boxes (was: Openfiler and Zumastore)

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 05:35:00PM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> [...] Unfortunately my wife burned that box up, so I lost
> it all. *sigh*

If it worked like it should, it wouldn't have inspired her to waste the
liquor on it and set it ablaze... I mean, you can only frustrate a person
so many times before they snap...

;)

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 05:32:10PM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> I installed Fink on OS X before it had any apt-ability. dselect was it, and it
> was not fun (almost made me wish for RPM).

You're not the only person who didn't enjoy dselect. I was comfortable
with it, personally. In fact, only recently (~2-3 years) did I stop
using it.

It took me a little while to get used to aptitude. Once I got used
to it, I found I like it much, much better. I've spent a lot of time
dependancy surfing, whether it is to try another tool using a common
library, or it is to remove everything that uses a GNOME library... I,
perhaps perversely, find it a lot of fun.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E


_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 04:36:09PM -0400, Simón Ruiz wrote:
> I hear this "We have a crappy implementation of it, but copyright is
> good in principle" idea often, but I'm not sure I know which principle
> is being talked about.
>
> What is this principle? Can we name it?

Dude. So I looked at another link from my earlier Google search, and I think
you'll like it.

I found it through
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/ReEstablishingtheFoundingPrinc/151472
and I wasn't sure what to make of it from the abstract:
|This paper illustrates the benefits of copyright's legitimate use
|in promoting a democratic society and then delineates the dramatic
|expansion of the copyright monopoly and its resultant commodization. The
|third part addresses the confrontation between copyright and emerging
|technologies-detailing aggressive efforts to extend copyright protection
|into the digital arena. the final part concludes that the globalizing
|effect of the Internet, supported by a true, democratic copyright,
|should serve to stem the copyright assault.

The link to the paper is actually http://cryptome.org/bauchner.htm

It talks about how the principles of copyright were right and good, but
they've become corrupted by corporate greed.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

I think the best one of these stories has to do with a poor canadian freelance coder named Mike Rowe. Microsoft served him a cease and desist for hist website: mikerowesoft dot com (or maybe it was dot ca). In the end the llittle guy won, but it was kind of funny.


On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Mark <mark@slugbug.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 06:59:30PM GMT, Simón Ruiz [simon.a.ruiz@gmail.com] said the following:
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
> > Copyright is the law. While I disagree with how it has been manipulated
> > by XXXXXX and the like to protect their commercial franchises, I most
> > certainly do not disagree with the principles behind Copyright.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> Out of curiosity, which principles are those?
>

 The company that I work for during the day, which used to own a drum
and bugle corps, received a take down notice from the previously
mentioned company for having the corps performance of a popular movie
tune about a wooden boy on their website. It had been on there for
years, but they just found it like a few months ago. Even though the
song was performed by the group that the company owned and they had
previously it had been ok to perform and record it, things had somehow
changed and the fact that the song is 70 years old now doesn't really
matter.  What is dumb is that in the drum and bugle corps world, a corps
playing a certain piece of music usually leads to people buying more of
the original recording and finding out about the music. Duh!

 Companies also really like to send out cease and disist letters in the
hopes that you'll crap your pants and do what they say, regardless of
whether they have the right to do so or not.  Witness:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2003/04/25/strawberry-shortcake-and-penny-arcade/



_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Openfiler and Zumastore

Actually what I am hoping to play around with the most on this is iSCSI, which, from what I can see, is often the differentiator between whether or not a project such as Openfiler calls itself SAN or NAS (checkout FreeNAS for a comparison). I have used FreeNAS, and it was pretty cool, but the iSCSI implementation was buggy. Unfortunately my wife burned that box up, so I lost it all. *sigh*

--Kirk

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com> wrote:
Lord Drachenblut wrote:
> On Friday 05 June 2009 1:27:43 pm Barry Schatz wrote:
> > I set up a SAN at home using my trusty NSLU2 and Debian. I primarily use
> > it to run rtorrent, but it serves samba and nfs admirably for running on
> > a 133MHz (266 after overclock mod) ARM chip. I also have a tiny Dell box
> > doing similar things with samba, nfs and sshfs. The few backups I take
> > are handled by a cronjob of rsync.
> >
> > -Barry
> >
> > Kirk Gleason wrote:
> > > Has anyone ever had any experience with http://openfiler.com/. I am
> > > thinking about trying to build up a small SAN at home using this just
> > > to play around with, and wondered if I would be wasting my time. If it
> > > works out, I might be looking into Zumastore
> > > (http://www.zumastor.org/) for some replication functionality. Anyone
> > > have any experience with that?
> > >
> > > Of course, if anyone know of any alternatives, I'm open to
> > > suggestions. This is a project that doesn't have much definition yet;
> > > just looking to play with some stuff at home.
> > >
> > > --Kirk
> > >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > BLUG mailing list
> > > BLUG@linuxfan.com
> > > http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > BLUG mailing list
> > BLUG@linuxfan.com
> > http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
> I want to ask the question if you mean a san, storage area network, or
> nas, network attached storage? I know there is some differences
> between the two and wanted to clearify which your talking about?
>
>

Good catch. I confused the terms. I was talking about NAS, and Kirk is
talking about SAN. Sorry about that! :)

However, with NFS on a reasonable local network the two are pretty
similar to the user.

-Barry

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

I installed Fink on OS X before it had any apt-ability. dselect was it, and it was not fun (almost made me wish for RPM).

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
The big thing is:

apt-get is depricated. It isn't recommended anymore.

aptitude functions nearly identically with near-the-same command line
parameters.

In the future, apt-get may well disappear, so you can get used to it not
being there now.

apt-get is ancient, dating back to the dawn of the APT system. It
doesn't do a number of things as well as aptitude (which is actually
configurable when it comes to handling Suggested/Recommended packages).


I'm old enough to remember the days when all we had was 'dselect'.
I think I'm one of the few, though.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 06:59:30PM GMT, Simón Ruiz [simon.a.ruiz@gmail.com] said the following:
> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
> > Copyright is the law. While I disagree with how it has been manipulated
> > by XXXXXX and the like to protect their commercial franchises, I most
> > certainly do not disagree with the principles behind Copyright.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> Out of curiosity, which principles are those?
>

The company that I work for during the day, which used to own a drum
and bugle corps, received a take down notice from the previously
mentioned company for having the corps performance of a popular movie
tune about a wooden boy on their website. It had been on there for
years, but they just found it like a few months ago. Even though the
song was performed by the group that the company owned and they had
previously it had been ok to perform and record it, things had somehow
changed and the fact that the song is 70 years old now doesn't really
matter. What is dumb is that in the drum and bugle corps world, a corps
playing a certain piece of music usually leads to people buying more of
the original recording and finding out about the music. Duh!

Companies also really like to send out cease and disist letters in the
hopes that you'll crap your pants and do what they say, regardless of
whether they have the right to do so or not. Witness:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2003/04/25/strawberry-shortcake-and-penny-arcade/

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

I like the sounds of that. I always found the BSD kernel easier to configure and compile than the linux kernel. I can't tell you how many Gentoo kernels I botched up back in the day. I did force me to leanr how to use lilo effectively though...

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com> wrote:
Kirk Gleason wrote:
> I know is this is a LUG (versus a BUG), so flame away if you want ...
>
> Have you ever run NetBSD on a PPC? Server-wise I found it to be far
> superior than linux (I was comparing it to Gentoo). It is (or at least
> was) a real hassle to install.
>
> --Kirk
>
I have a box running Debian kFreeBSD. Not the same thing, I know, but
still fun to learn. The userspace is still GNU, but anything hooked into
the kernel is BSD. Package management is still Apt and Dpkg.

-Barry
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Openfiler and Zumastore

Lord Drachenblut wrote:
> On Friday 05 June 2009 1:27:43 pm Barry Schatz wrote:
> > I set up a SAN at home using my trusty NSLU2 and Debian. I primarily use
> > it to run rtorrent, but it serves samba and nfs admirably for running on
> > a 133MHz (266 after overclock mod) ARM chip. I also have a tiny Dell box
> > doing similar things with samba, nfs and sshfs. The few backups I take
> > are handled by a cronjob of rsync.
> >
> > -Barry
> >
> > Kirk Gleason wrote:
> > > Has anyone ever had any experience with http://openfiler.com/. I am
> > > thinking about trying to build up a small SAN at home using this just
> > > to play around with, and wondered if I would be wasting my time. If it
> > > works out, I might be looking into Zumastore
> > > (http://www.zumastor.org/) for some replication functionality. Anyone
> > > have any experience with that?
> > >
> > > Of course, if anyone know of any alternatives, I'm open to
> > > suggestions. This is a project that doesn't have much definition yet;
> > > just looking to play with some stuff at home.
> > >
> > > --Kirk
> > >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > BLUG mailing list
> > > BLUG@linuxfan.com
> > > http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > BLUG mailing list
> > BLUG@linuxfan.com
> > http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
> I want to ask the question if you mean a san, storage area network, or
> nas, network attached storage? I know there is some differences
> between the two and wanted to clearify which your talking about?
>
>

Good catch. I confused the terms. I was talking about NAS, and Kirk is
talking about SAN. Sorry about that! :)

However, with NFS on a reasonable local network the two are pretty
similar to the user.

-Barry

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Openfiler and Zumastore

On Friday 05 June 2009 1:27:43 pm Barry Schatz wrote:
> I set up a SAN at home using my trusty NSLU2 and Debian. I primarily use
> it to run rtorrent, but it serves samba and nfs admirably for running on
> a 133MHz (266 after overclock mod) ARM chip. I also have a tiny Dell box
> doing similar things with samba, nfs and sshfs. The few backups I take
> are handled by a cronjob of rsync.
>
> -Barry
>
> Kirk Gleason wrote:
> > Has anyone ever had any experience with http://openfiler.com/. I am
> > thinking about trying to build up a small SAN at home using this just
> > to play around with, and wondered if I would be wasting my time. If it
> > works out, I might be looking into Zumastore
> > (http://www.zumastor.org/) for some replication functionality. Anyone
> > have any experience with that?
> >
> > Of course, if anyone know of any alternatives, I'm open to
> > suggestions. This is a project that doesn't have much definition yet;
> > just looking to play with some stuff at home.
> >
> > --Kirk
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > BLUG mailing list
> > BLUG@linuxfan.com
> > http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug


I want to ask the question if you mean a san, storage area network, or nas, network attached storage? I know there is some differences between the two and wanted to clearify which your talking about?




--
PGP e-mail is welcome! Get my 1024 bit signature key from:
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x00D1EABB>

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

On Friday 05 June 2009 5:07:33 pm Steven Black wrote:
> The big thing is:
>
> apt-get is depricated. It isn't recommended anymore.
>
> aptitude functions nearly identically with near-the-same command line
> parameters.
>
> In the future, apt-get may well disappear, so you can get used to it not
> being there now.
>
> apt-get is ancient, dating back to the dawn of the APT system. It
> doesn't do a number of things as well as aptitude (which is actually
> configurable when it comes to handling Suggested/Recommended packages).
>
>
> I'm old enough to remember the days when all we had was 'dselect'.
> I think I'm one of the few, though.


I have seen once or twice before in the past that aptitude will find less packages than apt-get.


Cheers


--
PGP e-mail is welcome! Get my 1024 bit signature key from:
<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x00D1EABB>

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

The big thing is:

apt-get is depricated. It isn't recommended anymore.

aptitude functions nearly identically with near-the-same command line
parameters.

In the future, apt-get may well disappear, so you can get used to it not
being there now.

apt-get is ancient, dating back to the dawn of the APT system. It
doesn't do a number of things as well as aptitude (which is actually
configurable when it comes to handling Suggested/Recommended packages).


I'm old enough to remember the days when all we had was 'dselect'.
I think I'm one of the few, though.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

Sidarth Dasari wrote:
> Ok im sorry if this has been asked repeatedly in the past, but I just
> wanted to get a simple explanation of the differences between these
> two package managers. Ive done done some googling myself and I've come
> across two basic answers. One is that they are just about the same and
> it doesn't matter which one to use. The other answer was that aptitude
> does a better job removing packages.
> Are there any other differences between these two? And if Aptitude is
> better at removing packages why don't more people use it?
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
apt-get can do either "upgrade" or "dist-upgrade". The former will avoid
installing or removing packages and only upgrade packages already on the
system if possible. The latter (dist-upgrade) will also allow installing
new packages as depended on by new versions of other upgraded packages.
Neither will uninstall orphaned dependencies.

aptitude has "safe-upgrade" and "full-upgrade". Safe will upgrade as
many packages as it can, install new dependencies, and remove newly
orphaned dependencies so long as those orphans aren't marked "Manually
installed" in the local Apt cache. Apt does track if you installed a
package directly or if it was pulled in automatically to satisfy a
dependency. Full-upgrade will try to get every package to uptodate
status. If it can't do so cleanly, it will look at what packages will
break and make suggestions on how to resolve the situation.

The problem I have with aptitude is that while it's smarter, it's
sometimes /too/ smart. It sometimes gets stuck on an upgrade and wants
to remove something I don't want to lose. That's when I do apt-get
upgrade and let aptitude pick up the scraps. I could also use apt-get to
mark the package manually installed, but sometimes I don't want to do
that for some reason.

aptitude also rolls in the functionality you can get from apt-cache and
other apt tools. It's a multi-faceted beast. I think it's convenient to
need only one tool, but I like having my smaller tools. Each tool has a
unique purpose and a more direct manpage.

-Barry
-Barry
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Simón Ruiz wrote:

> Copyleft—the GNU license, Creative Commons etc.—as I understand
> them, are clever hacks designed to subvert the copyright system
> as it stands, basically to *free* people from it. Artists who
> choose these licenses are expressing disgust with the system.

The point is that they are able to choose.

> These licenses may derive their legal teeth from copyright
> itself, but they exist as criticisms of it. They are good, I'd
> say, not because of our copyright system but in spite of it.

I'm not defending the present system. The real question
is whether you own the fruits of your labor, and have the right
to do what you choose with it. If all creative work automatically
fell into the public domain, nobody would be able to issue it
under any license.

> I hear this "We have a crappy implementation of it, but copyright is
> good in principle" idea often, but I'm not sure I know which principle
> is being talked about.
>
> What is this principle? Can we name it?

Freedom and justice. It's your work, you decide.

Don't get me wrong. I run software all the time that was
written a/o is still being written by people who charge nothing
for it; as an old retired fart on a small pension, I probably
couldn't run anything else if I tried. I'm intensely glad that so
many people who can write code are so generous with it.

But unless they own their work, how can they choose to
give it away?

If you follow several lists and forums, as I expect you
do, you must notice that many of those who post to them also make
their living writing code. Some few, like the RedHat employees at
Fedora, may be getting paid to give their work away. Others
create some software at work, and some at home -- and contribute
what they do at home to the cause.

If they weren't being paid for what they write for their
employers, what would they live on?

--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 04:36:09PM -0400, Simón Ruiz wrote:
> Copyleft—the GNU license, Creative Commons etc.—as I understand them,
> are clever hacks designed to subvert the copyright system as it
> stands, basically to *free* people from it. Artists who choose these
> licenses are expressing disgust with the system.

Now, I disagree with you there. I don't think there's any implication
of disgust.

> These licenses may derive their legal teeth from copyright itself, but
> they exist as criticisms of it. They are good, I'd say, not because of
> our copyright system but in spite of it.

Again, I disagree with you.

I think it is easy to be dissatisfied with copyright out of a general
disgust with the manipulations of "intellectual property" talk made by
the media on behalf of big business. There's an active attempt to blur
the lines between things right and good (like copyright) and things
wrong and bad (like software patents).

> I hear this "We have a crappy implementation of it, but copyright is
> good in principle" idea often, but I'm not sure I know which principle
> is being talked about.
>
> What is this principle? Can we name it?

How about from "Principles of copyright" located at
http://www.damic.qc.ca/damic/eng/pages/rights/principe.htm :

|Copyright is a legal convention which recognizes the paternity of a work
|to its author's natural person. It is based on two types of fundamental,
|inalienable, perpetual, imprescriptible and complementary rights: moral
|rights and patrimonial rights.

The principles then appear to boil down to:
* Moral rights: It is mine, and you can not change it.
* Patrimonial rights:
* Exclusive proprietory rights: I, alone, own it.
* Remuneration right: I can be paid for it.

The Creative Commons licenses offer finer control over these rights.

It does not appear to conflict with them. I see nothing about these
rights and the CC licenses which even conflict.

Cheers,

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

(Reply at bottom)

Steven Black wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 10:02:09AM -0500, Beartooth wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Steven Black wrote:
>>
>>> [....] (Speaking of which, if you have PPC Macs, Debian may be one of
>>> the last Linux distros which actively supports them. I found the Debian
>>> support better than the "community" Ubuntu support last I tried it.)
>>>
>> You can get Fedora 10 at
>>
>> http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc ; and I haven't checked, but
>> YellowDog is probably still around -- Fedora with an Apple interface.
>>
>
> My problem with Fedora is the same problem I have with all .RPM-based
> distributions: The package management is bad enough to cause a
> reasonable chunk of their development staff to jump boat and start
> another Linux distribution (Foresight Linux). The RedHat management has
> known it has been bad for years, and has ignored the engineers' requests
> to get permission to improve it. (This being the reason the Foresight
> people give for the development of the distro.)
>
> The RedHat folks seem to think that package management isn't important
> to people. (I only mention RedHat as they're the folks that invented the
> RPM format. Their decisions with regard to RPM packaging are canon.)
>
> Check this out (from http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-single/Release_Notes/ ):
> |Further, although Anaconda provides an option for upgrading from earlier
> |major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
> |5.3, Red Hat does not currently support this. More generally, Red Hat
> |does not support in-place upgrades between any major versions of Red Hat
> |Enterprise Linux. (A major version is denoted by a whole number version
> |change. For example, Red Hat Enteprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise
> |Linux 5 are both major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.)
>
> The whole "Red Hat does not support in-place upgrades between any
> major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux" thing is older that RHEL.
> In-place upgrades for any RPM-based system is relatively new, and RedHat
> still doesn't support it.
>
> As I said, this isn't just a RedHat thing (from http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/What_is_New_for_Installation_and_Live_Images.html#sn-Upgrade_related_issues ):
> |2.1.4.3. Upgrades versus fresh installations
> |
> |In general, fresh installations are recommended over upgrades. [...]
>
> According to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades it looks
> like Fedora started allowing for upgrades in Fedora 8:
> |PreUpgrade is an application you can run on an existing Fedora 8 or
> |above installation. You can continue to use Fedora while PreUpgrade
> |downloads the packages required for the upgrade. Once everything is
> |downloaded and set up, you will be notified that you can reboot at any
> |time to start the Fedora upgrade. To read more, refer to PreUpgrade.
>
> I know some people like to do the whole wipe/reinstall on a regular
> basis, but it has just never been fun for me. I want to do cool stuff.
>
> Reinstalls are work with the fun only coming in to play when you start
> picking the new packages. Why not skip the labor and move straight to
> the fun of picking the new packages faster with a distro that does real
> system upgrades?
>
> 10+ years ago Debian had package management supporting clean, complete
> system upgrades and migrations from experimental to stable releases, as
> well as between one major stable release to another.
>

The Apt tools have been ported to work in an RPM environment. Yum is a
step in the right direction, but why have McDonald's when you can have
steak?

Then again, the thing that really sets Debian's packaging apart isn't
the tools. It's the commitment to quality. There are strict rules on
when packages can be migrated from experimental to unstable, to testing,
and eventually to stable. When Debian releases, you can count on Stable
to be /STABLE/. I never used a special tool to upgrade between Debian
releases. I left my sources.list pointing to testing (an alias for the
current testing release) and did apt-get dist-upgrade. Any problems I
had were minor and easy to fix.

Well, that and they have much, much more software packageed in the
official repos than the RPM-based distros do. You rarely need a
third-party repository, and when you do it's usually just
debian-multimedia.org.

-Barry
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc and BSD

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 02:25:29PM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> I know is this is a LUG (versus a BUG), so flame away if you want ...
>
> Have you ever run NetBSD on a PPC? Server-wise I found it to be far superior
> than linux (I was comparing it to Gentoo). It is (or at least was) a real
> hassle to install.

I tried FreeBSD (or was it OpenBSD) years back (like 10+ years). Back
then installation was much more complex than then-current Debian.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_systems for
details on the various BSDs. The important marketing points are NetBSD =
portable, OpenBSD = secure, FreeBSD = standard desktop.

NetBSD remains very, very portable. Any design decision that would
impare portability has been avoided. OpenBSD has a similar philosphy
with regards to security, while FreeBSD went the easier-to-use
runs-on-x86 route.

Would I expect NetBSD to be as easy to install as FreeBSD? No way.
FreeBSD gets to expect (and rely upon) modern hardware.

That being said, every supported platform should be able to support a
nice curses-based display -- even if it is only over a serial console.
The BSDs have likely made significant improvements since I saw them
last, and possibly since you saw them last.

Almost bringing it back to Linux...

The Debian project has been working on non-Linux distributions, namely:

The Debian GNU/kFreeBSD folks supposedly have something usable:
http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/index.en.html

Debian will also likely be the first with a HURD release.
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/index.en.html

Cheers,

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E


_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

Kirk Gleason wrote:
> I know is this is a LUG (versus a BUG), so flame away if you want ...
>
> Have you ever run NetBSD on a PPC? Server-wise I found it to be far
> superior than linux (I was comparing it to Gentoo). It is (or at least
> was) a real hassle to install.
>
> --Kirk
>
I have a box running Debian kFreeBSD. Not the same thing, I know, but
still fun to learn. The userspace is still GNU, but anything hooked into
the kernel is BSD. Package management is still Apt and Dpkg.

-Barry
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 3:54 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
>        The last few Congresses, filled as they are with politvermin, have
> loused up many things not only royally, but beyond belief. Nevertheless,
> copyright in and of itself is a good thing -- inter alia, copyleft, the GNU
> license, and similar good things, couldn't live without it.

Copyleft—the GNU license, Creative Commons etc.—as I understand them,
are clever hacks designed to subvert the copyright system as it
stands, basically to *free* people from it. Artists who choose these
licenses are expressing disgust with the system.

These licenses may derive their legal teeth from copyright itself, but
they exist as criticisms of it. They are good, I'd say, not because of
our copyright system but in spite of it.

I hear this "We have a crappy implementation of it, but copyright is
good in principle" idea often, but I'm not sure I know which principle
is being talked about.

What is this principle? Can we name it?

> --
> Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
> On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
> supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.

Simón

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

[BLUG] Debian supporting EeePC

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC

--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Simón Ruiz wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steven Black
> <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:

>> Copyright is the law. While I disagree with how it has been
>> manipulated by Disney and the like to protect their commercial
>> franchises, I most certainly do not disagree with the
>> principles behind Copyright.
>
> Out of curiosity, which principles are those?

Article 1 of the Constitution commands the Congress to
promote the general welfare, not just over all, but in a number
of specific ways. One of those directs it "To promote the
progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited
times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries" (U.S. Constitution, Article
I, Section 8)

That is at http://www.copyright.gov/about.html among
other places; all of http://www.copyright.gov (and, for that
matter, all of loc.gov) is full of good stuff.

Historical detail : until Goethe got to be a very big
cheese all over Europe, and promoted it, copyright had no
effective existence. So you couldn't make a living writing; only
the independently wealthy could write full time.

The last few Congresses, filled as they are with
politvermin, have loused up many things not only royally, but
beyond belief. Nevertheless, copyright in and of itself is a good
thing -- inter alia, copyleft, the GNU license, and similar good
things, couldn't live without it.

--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:48 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
> Copyright is the law. While I disagree with how it has been manipulated
> by Disney and the like to protect their commercial franchises, I most
> certainly do not disagree with the principles behind Copyright.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
> Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

Out of curiosity, which principles are those?

Simón

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Beware Copyright Law (was Transform Ubuntu to OS-X)

I just want to point out...

That site includes a link to the Mac OS X fonts. These appear to exist
on the Internet because some doofus copied them and uploaded them
without thinking. They're commercial, copyrighted works made less than
10 years ago.

... and you can say the same thing about the Mac OS X icons.

The fonts, the icons, and the background images are all commercial
copyrighted works. We're not talking about whacked-out "Software
Licenses" or "EULAs" -- we're talking good, old-fashioned Copyright. The
same thing protecting all works of art.

When providing and promoting the tools to allow for the look-and-feel
to be the same, you need to be *very* sure you don't violate copyright.
Also, you most certainly do not want to *ever* appear to promote the
violation of copyright.

Copyright is the law. While I disagree with how it has been manipulated
by Disney and the like to protect their commercial franchises, I most
certainly do not disagree with the principles behind Copyright.

Cheers,

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 01:10:22PM -0400, Vivek Krishna wrote:
> I found this interesting and it works great and gives me a Mac look..
>
> http://www.stchman.com/transform_osx.html
>
>
> Cheerio,
> Viv

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

Quoting "Gillis, Chad" <rcgillis@indiana.edu>:

>
> I'm foggy on the details too, but from one experience I had once,
> aptitude might keep track of dependencies better. Once I had
> something on my laptop that wouldn't run properly (sorry I can't
> remember what), after I'd installed a bunch of packages with apt-get,
> and according to apt-get everything was up to date and there was
> nothing more to install. Doing an upgrade with aptitude on the other
> hand ended up causing a bunch of other packages to get installed and
> after this there was no more problem.
>

Then again, one instance isn't enough to say that one is better than
the other, but I was convinced from this that they at least handle
dependencies differently. This was probably about a year ago.

> Chad
>
>
> Quoting Sidarth Dasari <Sidster802@gmail.com>:
>
>> Ok im sorry if this has been asked repeatedly in the past, but I just
>> wanted to get a simple explanation of the differences between these
>> two package managers. Ive done done some googling myself and I've come
>> across two basic answers. One is that they are just about the same and
>> it doesn't matter which one to use. The other answer was that aptitude
>> does a better job removing packages.
>> Are there any other differences between these two? And if Aptitude is
>> better at removing packages why don't more people use it?
>> _______________________________________________
>> BLUG mailing list
>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

I know is this is a LUG (versus a BUG), so flame away if you want ...

Have you ever run NetBSD on a PPC? Server-wise I found it to be far superior than linux (I was comparing it to Gentoo). It is (or at least was) a real hassle to install.

--Kirk

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 11:47:14AM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> I tried to install YDL on an XServe G4 a while back, and the installer
> would kernel panic. I did try Ubuntu as well (back when their PPC
> stuff was pretty up to snuff), and I had problems with the media.

I've had good luck with PPC Debian. I've been lax on updating it
to the latest release, but Debian does support the widest range of
CPUs for a Linux distro right now:

   alpha, amd64 (also Intel's EM64T), arm, armel (using ARM EABI)
   hppa, i386, ia64 (Intel's first 64-bit architecture),
   mips, mipsel (MIPS little-endian),
   powerpc, sparc

   s390 is also supposed to be currently supported
   m68k had official support dropped for Debian 4.0

This really makes Debian the NetBSD of Linux distributions. (Though it
doesn't support as much as NetBSD -- NetBSD currently formally releases
for 53 architectures. Their motto is "Of course it runs NetBSD!")

Personally, I don't know why anyone would want to boot from media more
than once per distro installation. Any distro worth its salt should
support a complete upgrade without booting from media.

> I think I can still get some use out of the things, but man are they
> old. One of those might actually make a great linux based DMS ...

The right distribution makes a world of difference. Any of the older CPU
families tends to want lighter-weight choices than some of the "we've
made your choices for you" Desktop/Enterprise distros.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
big

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFKKWGN3nFUM4WW+o4RAtuoAJ0WdY+6e1Z85CAhdg4c/sHJ9fTlmwCffLNV
UI5gbacZYp6LrVU9a17i68I=
=2ci6
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug




--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

As I recall, aptitidue will make more assumptions than apt-get. Meaning that aptitude will install "suggested" and "recommended" updates, whereas apt-get will only install one or the other (and I can't remember which because I use aptitude almost all of the time.

There is also something about aptitude removing no-longer needed dependencies, which is nice IMO.

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Sidarth Dasari <Sidster802@gmail.com> wrote:
Ok im sorry if this has been asked repeatedly in the past, but I just
wanted to get a simple explanation of the differences between these
two package managers. Ive done done some googling myself and I've come
across two basic answers. One is that they are just about the same and
it doesn't matter which one to use. The other answer was that aptitude
does a better job removing packages.
Are there any other differences between these two? And if Aptitude is
better at removing packages why don't more people use it?
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

I'm foggy on the details too, but from one experience I had once,
aptitude might keep track of dependencies better. Once I had something
on my laptop that wouldn't run properly (sorry I can't remember what),
after I'd installed a bunch of packages with apt-get, and according to
apt-get everything was up to date and there was nothing more to
install. Doing an upgrade with aptitude on the other hand ended up
causing a bunch of other packages to get installed and after this there
was no more problem.

Chad


Quoting Sidarth Dasari <Sidster802@gmail.com>:

> Ok im sorry if this has been asked repeatedly in the past, but I just
> wanted to get a simple explanation of the differences between these
> two package managers. Ive done done some googling myself and I've come
> across two basic answers. One is that they are just about the same and
> it doesn't matter which one to use. The other answer was that aptitude
> does a better job removing packages.
> Are there any other differences between these two? And if Aptitude is
> better at removing packages why don't more people use it?
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

Yeah I had a clamshell iBook G3 that ran UbuntuPPC for a while. It was surprisingly responsive given the overall crappiness of the machine. As I recall my biggest headache was dealing with the mouse. Being an apple user, I am used to Control Click and Option Click. I had a had time getting that set up. Also, IIRC OpenOffice was pretty much a bust on the thing. somewhere around 30 minutes to open up.

Ah fun times ...

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Kirk Gleason wrote:

I tried to install YDL on an XServe G4 a while back, and the installer would kernel panic. I did try Ubuntu as well (back when their PPC stuff was pretty up to snuff), and I had problems with the media.

I will be trying again, because all of my XServes are PPC based (for now) and OS X support for that architecture will officially be dead when 10.6 comes out.

I think I can still get some use out of the things, but man are they old. One of those might actually make a great linux based DMS ...

       Fwiw, my wife had a G3 iBook from summer 2002 until a year or two ago, though she pretty well quit using it once I got her a decent monitor as well as a PC. During the time she had it (and I served as the nearest thing we have to tech support, as I still do), we tried OSX, YDL, and Fedora.ppc.

       We happen to detest the vaunted Apple interface. (Yes, there are such people; we know several.) So we went from OSX to YDL very soon, and from YDL to Fedora as soon as it offered a .ppc version -- FC 4, iirc.

       Once I got the machine to running Fedora, the only problem I ever had specifically with it was getting the blasted thing to boot from media -- every time I wanted to install a new release, or iow at least twice a year.

       NB : YDL is essentially RedHat/Fedora under the hood, with an interface as much like Apple's as feasible; and I run Fedora in strong preference to anything else on all my own machines. So there's a built-in bias there: I knew what I was doing a lot less badly under Fedora.ppc than YDL, let alone OSX. Otoh, there are very large numbers of Alpha Plus Technoids running Fedora ...


--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug



--
Kirk Gleason

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 11:47:14AM -0400, Kirk Gleason wrote:
> I tried to install YDL on an XServe G4 a while back, and the installer
> would kernel panic. I did try Ubuntu as well (back when their PPC
> stuff was pretty up to snuff), and I had problems with the media.

I've had good luck with PPC Debian. I've been lax on updating it
to the latest release, but Debian does support the widest range of
CPUs for a Linux distro right now:

alpha, amd64 (also Intel's EM64T), arm, armel (using ARM EABI)
hppa, i386, ia64 (Intel's first 64-bit architecture),
mips, mipsel (MIPS little-endian),
powerpc, sparc

s390 is also supposed to be currently supported
m68k had official support dropped for Debian 4.0

This really makes Debian the NetBSD of Linux distributions. (Though it
doesn't support as much as NetBSD -- NetBSD currently formally releases
for 53 architectures. Their motto is "Of course it runs NetBSD!")

Personally, I don't know why anyone would want to boot from media more
than once per distro installation. Any distro worth its salt should
support a complete upgrade without booting from media.

> I think I can still get some use out of the things, but man are they
> old. One of those might actually make a great linux based DMS ...

The right distribution makes a world of difference. Any of the older CPU
families tends to want lighter-weight choices than some of the "we've
made your choices for you" Desktop/Enterprise distros.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
big

[BLUG] Apt-get vs Aptitude

Ok im sorry if this has been asked repeatedly in the past, but I just
wanted to get a simple explanation of the differences between these
two package managers. Ive done done some googling myself and I've come
across two basic answers. One is that they are just about the same and
it doesn't matter which one to use. The other answer was that aptitude
does a better job removing packages.
Are there any other differences between these two? And if Aptitude is
better at removing packages why don't more people use it?
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Transform Ubuntu to OS-X

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Barry Schatz <sorbetninja@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> = And making people think you're running OS X on your
> non-Apple computer is a great way to show off how you can customize free
> software desktop environments. Good find!
>
>
> -Barry


I would have to agree. I have a specific user account that looks like
a mac just to show friends and introduce them to linux. I dont
particularly like that feel myself but the new gnome-do docky bar has
been fantastic.
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 10:02:09AM -0500, Beartooth wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Steven Black wrote:
>> [....] (Speaking of which, if you have PPC Macs, Debian may be one of
>> the last Linux distros which actively supports them. I found the Debian
>> support better than the "community" Ubuntu support last I tried it.)
>
> You can get Fedora 10 at
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc ; and I haven't checked, but
> YellowDog is probably still around -- Fedora with an Apple interface.

My problem with Fedora is the same problem I have with all .RPM-based
distributions: The package management is bad enough to cause a
reasonable chunk of their development staff to jump boat and start
another Linux distribution (Foresight Linux). The RedHat management has
known it has been bad for years, and has ignored the engineers' requests
to get permission to improve it. (This being the reason the Foresight
people give for the development of the distro.)

The RedHat folks seem to think that package management isn't important
to people. (I only mention RedHat as they're the folks that invented the
RPM format. Their decisions with regard to RPM packaging are canon.)

Check this out (from http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-single/Release_Notes/ ):
|Further, although Anaconda provides an option for upgrading from earlier
|major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
|5.3, Red Hat does not currently support this. More generally, Red Hat
|does not support in-place upgrades between any major versions of Red Hat
|Enterprise Linux. (A major version is denoted by a whole number version
|change. For example, Red Hat Enteprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise
|Linux 5 are both major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.)

The whole "Red Hat does not support in-place upgrades between any
major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux" thing is older that RHEL.
In-place upgrades for any RPM-based system is relatively new, and RedHat
still doesn't support it.

As I said, this isn't just a RedHat thing (from http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f10/en_US/What_is_New_for_Installation_and_Live_Images.html#sn-Upgrade_related_issues ):
|2.1.4.3. Upgrades versus fresh installations
|
|In general, fresh installations are recommended over upgrades. [...]

According to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades it looks
like Fedora started allowing for upgrades in Fedora 8:
|PreUpgrade is an application you can run on an existing Fedora 8 or
|above installation. You can continue to use Fedora while PreUpgrade
|downloads the packages required for the upgrade. Once everything is
|downloaded and set up, you will be notified that you can reboot at any
|time to start the Fedora upgrade. To read more, refer to PreUpgrade.

I know some people like to do the whole wipe/reinstall on a regular
basis, but it has just never been fun for me. I want to do cool stuff.

Reinstalls are work with the fun only coming in to play when you start
picking the new packages. Why not skip the labor and move straight to
the fun of picking the new packages faster with a distro that does real
system upgrades?

10+ years ago Debian had package management supporting clean, complete
system upgrades and migrations from experimental to stable releases, as
well as between one major stable release to another.

--
Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07 78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Kirk Gleason wrote:

> I tried to install YDL on an XServe G4 a while back, and the
> installer would kernel panic. I did try Ubuntu as well (back
> when their PPC stuff was pretty up to snuff), and I had
> problems with the media.
>
> I will be trying again, because all of my XServes are PPC based
> (for now) and OS X support for that architecture will
> officially be dead when 10.6 comes out.
>
> I think I can still get some use out of the things, but man are
> they old. One of those might actually make a great linux based
> DMS ...

Fwiw, my wife had a G3 iBook from summer 2002 until a
year or two ago, though she pretty well quit using it once I got
her a decent monitor as well as a PC. During the time she had it
(and I served as the nearest thing we have to tech support, as I
still do), we tried OSX, YDL, and Fedora.ppc.

We happen to detest the vaunted Apple interface. (Yes,
there are such people; we know several.) So we went from OSX to
YDL very soon, and from YDL to Fedora as soon as it offered a
.ppc version -- FC 4, iirc.

Once I got the machine to running Fedora, the only
problem I ever had specifically with it was getting the blasted
thing to boot from media -- every time I wanted to install a new
release, or iow at least twice a year.

NB : YDL is essentially RedHat/Fedora under the hood,
with an interface as much like Apple's as feasible; and I run
Fedora in strong preference to anything else on all my own
machines. So there's a built-in bias there: I knew what I was
doing a lot less badly under Fedora.ppc than YDL, let alone OSX.
Otoh, there are very large numbers of Alpha Plus Technoids
running Fedora ...

--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Transform Ubuntu to OS-X

Many would ask "Why imitate Apple?" but I think Ubuntu's default look
needs improvement. And making people think you're running OS X on your
non-Apple computer is a great way to show off how you can customize free
software desktop environments. Good find!

Other sites worth checking out are gnome-look.org and kde-look.org.

-Barry

Vivek Krishna wrote:
> I found this interesting and it works great and gives me a Mac look..
>
> http://www.stchman.com/transform_osx.html
>
>
> Cheerio,
> Viv
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] Openfiler and Zumastore

I set up a SAN at home using my trusty NSLU2 and Debian. I primarily use
it to run rtorrent, but it serves samba and nfs admirably for running on
a 133MHz (266 after overclock mod) ARM chip. I also have a tiny Dell box
doing similar things with samba, nfs and sshfs. The few backups I take
are handled by a cronjob of rsync.

-Barry

Kirk Gleason wrote:
> Has anyone ever had any experience with http://openfiler.com/. I am
> thinking about trying to build up a small SAN at home using this just
> to play around with, and wondered if I would be wasting my time. If it
> works out, I might be looking into Zumastore
> (http://www.zumastor.org/) for some replication functionality. Anyone
> have any experience with that?
>
> Of course, if anyone know of any alternatives, I'm open to
> suggestions. This is a project that doesn't have much definition yet;
> just looking to play with some stuff at home.
>
> --Kirk
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

[BLUG] Transform Ubuntu to OS-X

I found this interesting and it works great and gives me a Mac look..

http://www.stchman.com/transform_osx.html


Cheerio,
Viv

[BLUG] Openfiler and Zumastore

Has anyone ever had any experience with http://openfiler.com/. I am thinking about trying to build up a small SAN at home using this just to play around with, and wondered if I would be wasting my time. If it works out, I might be looking into Zumastore (http://www.zumastor.org/) for some replication functionality. Anyone have any experience with that?

Of course, if anyone know of any alternatives, I'm open to suggestions. This is a project that doesn't have much definition yet; just looking to play with some stuff at home.

--Kirk

Re: [BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

I tried to install YDL on an XServe G4 a while back, and the installer would kernel panic. I did try Ubuntu as well (back when their PPC stuff was pretty up to snuff), and I had problems with the media.

I will be trying again, because all of my XServes are PPC based (for now) and OS X support for that architecture will officially be dead when 10.6 comes out.

I think I can still get some use out of the things, but man are they old. One of those might actually make a great linux based DMS ...


On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Beartooth <beartooth@beartooth.info> wrote:
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Steven Black wrote:

[....] (Speaking of which, if you have PPC Macs, Debian may be one of the last Linux distros which actively supports them. I found the Debian support better than the "community" Ubuntu support last I tried it.)

       You can get Fedora 10 at

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc ; and I haven't checked, but YellowDog is probably still around -- Fedora with an Apple interface.

--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

[BLUG] .ppc (was Laconica, Enlightenment, and LFS)

On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Steven Black wrote:

> [....] (Speaking of which, if you have PPC Macs, Debian may be
> one of the last Linux distros which actively supports them. I
> found the Debian support better than the "community" Ubuntu
> support last I tried it.)

You can get Fedora 10 at

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc ; and I haven't
checked, but YellowDog is probably still around -- Fedora with an
Apple interface.

--
Beartooth Implacable, Curmudgeonly Codger Learning Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] document management

Yeah KT is the solution that I am going to implement. Using it elsewhere and it is solid.

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Matt Standish <mstandish@gmail.com> wrote:
While you are researching check out Knowledgetree
(http://www.knowledgetree.com/). It indexes Microsoft files and
includes workflows and the extras.

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Kirk Gleason<kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:
> You just went way over my head dude. I have a whole list of stuff to
> research tonight now ... :-)
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 09:32:40AM -0400, Barry Schatz wrote:
>> > Kirk Gleason wrote:
>> > >     * We are working on implementing document management using OSS
>> > >       with a Linux backend.
>> > >
>> > In a pinch, you can use SVN. It's not pretty (and doesn't do diffs), but
>> > it does version binaries. I take it you have a more appropriate solution
>> > in mind?
>>
>> Heh. I've been such a fan of transparent document formats for so long,
>> that at first I had no idea what Barry was talking about. My group
>> manages our internal documents quite well using Subversion...
>> but then our documents are primarily written in Markdown. We use the
>> Ikiwiki wiki compiler for the presentation details.
>>
>> Even for my own documents, I keep them under source control. However for
>> my own documents I prefer reStructuredText. It gives easy outputs to
>> HTML, LaTeX, Postscript, PDF... and with a little web research, you can
>> get others, such as ODT. Through it all, the source file also provides
>> the plain-text form.
>>
>> --
>> Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
>> Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> BLUG mailing list
>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>



--
Matt Standish
www.mattstandish.org

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] document management

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 12:09:31PM GMT, Matt Standish [mstandish@gmail.com] said the following:
> While you are researching check out Knowledgetree
> (http://www.knowledgetree.com/). It indexes Microsoft files and
> includes workflows and the extras.
>

Going to that site was worth it just to see the picture of the
Balmer-esque boy IN THE HOUSE. Gave me a laugh.

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug

Re: [BLUG] document management

While you are researching check out Knowledgetree
(http://www.knowledgetree.com/). It indexes Microsoft files and
includes workflows and the extras.

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Kirk Gleason<kgleason@gmail.com> wrote:
> You just went way over my head dude. I have a whole list of stuff to
> research tonight now ... :-)
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 09:32:40AM -0400, Barry Schatz wrote:
>> > Kirk Gleason wrote:
>> > >     * We are working on implementing document management using OSS
>> > >       with a Linux backend.
>> > >
>> > In a pinch, you can use SVN. It's not pretty (and doesn't do diffs), but
>> > it does version binaries. I take it you have a more appropriate solution
>> > in mind?
>>
>> Heh. I've been such a fan of transparent document formats for so long,
>> that at first I had no idea what Barry was talking about. My group
>> manages our internal documents quite well using Subversion...
>> but then our documents are primarily written in Markdown. We use the
>> Ikiwiki wiki compiler for the presentation details.
>>
>> Even for my own documents, I keep them under source control. However for
>> my own documents I prefer reStructuredText. It gives easy outputs to
>> HTML, LaTeX, Postscript, PDF... and with a little web research, you can
>> get others, such as ODT. Through it all, the source file also provides
>> the plain-text form.
>>
>> --
>> Steven Black <blacks@indiana.edu> / KeyID: 8596FA8E
>> Fingerprint: 108C 089C EFA4 832C BF07  78C2 DE71 5433 8596 FA8E
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> BLUG mailing list
>> BLUG@linuxfan.com
>> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> BLUG mailing list
> BLUG@linuxfan.com
> http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug
>
>

--
Matt Standish
www.mattstandish.org

_______________________________________________
BLUG mailing list
BLUG@linuxfan.com
http://mailman.cs.indiana.edu/mailman/listinfo/blug