VLUG Meeting Minutes 1999.08.10

Announcements

Chris Halsall started the meeting at 7:07, with some of the recent Linux news. Because there was so much recent Linux news, he tried to limit it to the last week or so:

• Linux World was in progress, and lots of big players were there
• andover.net bought Freshmeat
• Corel announced its user-friendly Linux
• RedHat/VA did a seminar for suits
• Oracle 8i for Linux available retail, and WebDB available for download
• The RedHat IPO, scheduled for the day after the meeting. Some of our members skipped the pizza&beer segment specifically for the purpose of getting lots of rest for the day's festivities...
• Kernels 2.2.11 and 2.3.13 out today
• SGI selling Cray, abandoning IRIX for Merced in favour of Linux
• Lotus Domino for Linux, available for download
• Dell offering Linux on their systems

Andrew did his commercial moment, noting new CDs available: Debian 2.1 for Intel and m68K, and LinuxPPC. We still want more buyers for the extra-large Tuxen.

Chris announced the AGM scheduled for the September meeting, and Matthew circulated a sign-up sheet for people to indicate they had received notice. Note: since the August meeting, the AGM has been rescheduled to the October meeting, not September.

Presentation

Andrew Willard, on serial LCD displays (with video capture on the side). In answer to the two most FAQs: Andrew's TV card is an "ATI All-In-Wonder", and the LCD display he showed off is from Matrix Orbital and priced at about $50.

Break

Newbie Questions

• IPChains: Major security hole fixed in kernel 2.2.11 and above. How to dump IPChains settings to a file for later restore: this was in Mike's presentation at the previous meeting, and is in the docs. For the real newbies: What is IPChains?
• Discussion of disk partitioning software, and a complicated Disk Druid problem. Generally, you can use use disk partitioning software to create a partition for Linux, but may need to use Linux fdisk to set the partition type to "Linux native". Disk Druid is probably better avoided.
• How to start X immediately on boot: this is an option in the RedHat install. To change it, or on other distros, look at the "id" line in /etc/inittab.
• X issues: the significance of Ctrl and Alt when switching consoles and inside X; putting a GUI-only install on a notebook; starting another X (use :1 , which works even on another machine).
• Adding new software, and is it possible to switch back to Windows (answer, your computer can do it, but you'll be spoiled after using Linux).
• Anybody know anything special about the Intel i740 graphics chipset (no). PowerPC compatibility (yes, but you'll probably have to compile things yourself). Fileformat comaptibility (depends on application, but generally good). Games (what do you want to play today?) Discussion of a module-related hang at boot.
• What services does a small network need? Depends what you want to do with it, but some of the popular choices are file and printer sharing, and IP masquerading to allow access to the greater Internet.

Adjourned

To Boston Pizza for the usual refreshments, around 9:07.