Re: [ILUG-BOM] Red Hat Partners in Mumbai
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 05:39:11PM +0530, Amit Joshi wrote: Hi, I have completed my engineering and seriously looking at System Administration as a career option. Can you tell me about the career Prospects are good. Training isn't really useful. You might prefer to lurk on #lopsa on Freenode instead. Also see http://www.lopsa.org/ Slightly cheaper. The Practice of System And Network Administration is a good book to start with for a job description. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
[ILUG-BOM] [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [foss.in] FOSS.IN/2008: Event Announcement]
- Forwarded message from Atul Chitnis [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Team FOSS.IN is happy to announce that this year's edition of Asia's biggest Free and Open Source Software contributor conference will be held on November 25th to 29th, 2008, at the National Science Symposium Centre, of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. As always, this event is focused on actual contribution to FOSS projects, not evangelism or advocacy, in line with the event motto Talk is cheap - show me the code The conference website at http://foss.in will have all the information you will need about the event, including the Call for Participation, schedules, speaker, volunteer and delegate registration, etc. The website is currently being populated, and will be opened over the next couple of days. To stay informed about the event and to participate in the discussions about it, subscribe to the event mailing list at http://foss.in/list, follow the FOSS.IN Twitter account at http://twitter.com/fossdotin, subscribe to the website's RSS feed at http://foss.in/feed, or simply keep an eye on the website at http://foss.in Cheerio! Atul Chitnis Project Lead FOSS.IN http://foss.in - End forwarded message - -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] creating user from /etc/passwd file ?
On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 05:21:28PM +0530, Agnello George wrote: HI i had a small query, i wanted to know if it is possible to create a home directory for a particular user by just editing the /etc/passwd file. No. Suppose for eg : i have abt 1000 unix users, and due to some unforseen reasons my server crashes, however i have copy of the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file , Now is there a way to directly add those ( 1000 odd user ) to my system with out actually manually using the useradd command chpasswd(8) Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] ps -ef | grep nobody ???
On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 12:30:19PM +0400, Nadeem M. Khan wrote: On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Ravindra Jaju [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 11:13 AM, Nadeem M. Khan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It has an entry in the passwd file. That makes it a valid linux user. 65535 or 65536 is its GID on RH based systems. Thats default. You can ofcourse change the name, the GID, or whatever. Oh, interesting. Can you point to some official reference for this? Please google for valid linux user. Users that have an entry in /etc/passwd are valid linux users, as opposed to users that login through directory services. Errr, no. Any user whose informaion can be accessed via getpwent(3) are valid Linux users. This is regardless of whether the information is in LDAP, NIS, NIS+, Radius, a RDBMS, /etc/passwd, or any other sort of store. I would like to see which 'Linux standard' sets uid '65535 OR 65536' It isn't a Linux standard, it's a Sunos-ism. Of course, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ getent passwd nobody nobody:x:99:99:Nobody:/:/sbin/nologin [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 4.6 (Final) SunOS tradition was 65535. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux on laptops: furthering the cause
On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:27:31PM +0530, Rony wrote: Nishit Dave wrote: 1. Lobby local computer makers like HCL and Zenith to offer an option for loading Linux or selling systems without a pre-loaded OS (and with a tiny little discount). The pre-installed OS can be on a secondary partition, to allow Windows to be installed on a primary partition at the user's option later. I know, the manufacturers would risk paying the Microsoft Tax (TM) heavily if they tried to do anything like this, but this could at least help bring an unfair practice out into the open. There are not many FOSS engineers available to service FOSS based computers. It brings to my mind a question for all:- Computer servicing needs a technician, not an engineer. Given good hardware, and reasonable maintainance (like installing needed upgrades), Unixy solutions work _very_ well. Given bad hardware, it's just easier to fix Windows temporarily. How much does a FOSS service provider charge to install GNU/Linux on a computer? What would be the annual maintenance cost per year per FOSS based system? Any average figures? That would depend on the profile, but you could look at the charges for RedHat as the higher end of the spectrum. Actually, if you keep a few standard hardware profiles, it would be easiest for you to simply keep one machine running and serving up network booting and installation services. Literally plug the host into the network, power it on, and take it off the network when installation is done. No need to look at the screen, no clicking needed ... Another problem is that FOSS is ready for the people, but people are not ready for FOSS. Both users as well as programmers/developers. A guy working for one of the biggest software companies in India told me that FOSS programmers are few and too expensive. Windows based pros are FOSS programmers are exactly as expensive as Windows programmers. Actually, except for those who need to work at the really low end, the skills needed are pretty much the same. available in lots. Software giants that make banking software use things like dot net for banking solutions. How can such software be expected to run on FOSS? Everyone is looking at the economical side of hiring cheaper programmers who are available by the dozen. Average programmers are more expensive. It is actually cheaper to hire a few good programmers than to hire a hundred average ones. There is plenty of stuff in the computing management literature about this. (Ref: Facts and fallacies of software engineering - Robert Glass, Peopleware - DeMarco and Lister, The Mythical Man Month - Fred Brooks for example). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux on laptops: furthering the cause
On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 12:09:31AM +0530, gaurav chaturvedi wrote: All ths talk of supporting laptops with foss is well and fine, but I wonder how many of many of us would *actually* buy a laptop just because it has FOSS installed in it (i know i wont) because most of Don't top post. I agree on not buying the cheap stuff. what you need to do is ask for Linux to be preinstalled on the higher end ones (and refuse to buy hardware with Windows preinstalled). these comanies use non MS os just to make cheap laptops even cheaper. Also if i was going to have just one laptop i would rather pay a bit more and buy something which i *know* comes with good and reliable after sales service. Good hardware doesn't need much service. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] unable to access http://manage.resellerclub.com/reseller throgh firewall
On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 09:09:30AM +0530, Agnello George wrote: you'll will never believe this bu the reason we couldn't visit manage.resellerclub.com/reseller was cause they blocked our public ip address we had an additional public IP address we added it and the proxy server was able to connect to manage.resellerclub.com/reseller ( myorderbox.com ) . Now need to find out why they would do such a thing ...HUmm thanks anyways for all the help Well, if you ever manage to figure out why letting me know your public address was needed, let me know, and I'll see what I can dig up about the blocking from our internal logs. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] unable to access http://manage.resellerclub.com/reseller throgh firewall
On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 05:14:24PM +0530, Agnello George wrote: HI I have a Linux based fire wall ( iptables) that allow access to client on the Internet, I have current allowed all ports open both incoming and out going . I can access all site and all ports accept the site http://manage.resellerclub.com/reseller or http://manage.answerable.com/kb ( which i currently really important site for a dept in my company ) . i have no error logs to work with ... no logs what so ever except it give me page cannot be displayed on the browser. I had squid configured on my sever but have current stoped it . This problem has occurred since yesterday i flushed the cache ( # /var/spool/squid/swap.state) but i don't think that should be a problem since i stoped squid !! . Did you have an iptables rule redirecting you automatically to Squid? Do you still have it? Can you try from a host outside this network? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] unable to access http://manage.resellerclub.com/reseller throgh firewall
On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 05:34:54PM +0530, Agnello George wrote: Active Internet connections (servers and established) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name tcp0 0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.static-v:33511 67-15-47-4.opticaljung:http FIN_WAIT2 - Pssst, hiding IP addresses when troubleshooting is a bad idea. Especially now that I can't even look at the logs on the webserver. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] software testing - Automation tools
On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 10:53:25AM +0530, Nishit Dave wrote: A friend has sent the following query. Can anyone help? Sorry for the cross-posting! Does any of you have any experience with software testing tools? I have to select a tool for automating the tests for a GUI based java application. jmeter. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] [Commercial] Regarding comments on my site!!
On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 12:43:11AM +0530, (Anand M R) wrote: He might be building it on LAMP ... in which case it might be related, but our list just likes to go off on a tangent evertime. The shaving cream thread for a freat example. Shouldn't we be helping enterpruners buy showing them the benifits of foss instead of slamming them. Showing enterpreneurs the benefits of FOSS is one thing. Giving them a business plan is another. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] LUG meeting btwn 4/2 and 4/9?
On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 10:20:20AM -0400, Russ Nelson wrote: Yes, that would be two different talks, although of course I'd entertain questions on either subject. But more to the point is you guys setting a time and place and getting the word out in a prompt manner! Newspapers like to get community announcements well in advance of the event. Can someone please offer a location? BTW, Russ, did Rediff come back with anything about the question I had raised at FOSS.IN? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Reducing IT costs in Govt. Offices.
On 16/03/07 12:41 +0530, Rony wrote: Hello All, The points raised by Kenneth got me thinking about this issue and came up with an idea for long term cost reduction in IT. Right now every http://www.infrastructures.org/ Most major IT installations work similarly. snip and so on. Since all the machines have their own HDDs, they run independent of their parent servers in case the servers break down. If Not quite. The core component of the application is still on the server(s). Using ordinary thin clients and X will work just as well, without the additional complexity of browser based applications. Devdas Bhagat -- Flanders: Homer, affordable tract housing made us neighbors, but you made us friends. Homer: To Ned Flanders, the richest left-handed man in town. When Flanders Failed -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] RE: is this foss?
On 14/03/07 15:51 +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Vimal Joseph wrote: All software mentioned in the book are custom made software for specific purpose of the different govt./public sector organizations. There is not much need to make those software distributable or made available to public. As those software are not public utility software. I could not follow the above thread of logic - can you elaborate a bit more ? As I understood it, this was specialised software written for one customer. It isn't meant for general purpose distribution. Devdas Bhagat -- This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses. George W. Bush January 14, 2000 Quoted in the Financial Times. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] RE: is this foss?
On 14/03/07 16:15 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: snip So when we talk of spreading FOSS, are we talking of spreading the usage of the foss tools and platform or are we talking of spreading the culture of sharing of code? In my opinion, the tools and platform Good point. IMO, the second is the more important criterion. Though I would not restrict it to sharing of code, but instead ideas. The other, more commonly forgotten point is that the formats in which data is stored need to be public specifications as well. Locking up data in proprietary closed formats is even more evil[1] than merely using a closed source binary to manipulate the code. In this context, the tools may be useful to other governments or not. Being able to reuse code would save other governments time and/or money. Note that the code reuse can be done by simply hiring the same vendor. On the other hand, having the code out there implies that there will be competition later when third parties have gotten the chance to analyse the released code. Devdas Bhagat -- Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the next job after a series of three is not the fourth job -- it's the start of a brand new series of three. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] is this foss?
On 12/03/07 08:26 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: On 11-Mar-07, at 9:42 PM, Raj Mathur wrote: Do remember that even if the software is, e.g., GPL, there's no reason why you should have access to it. If I write a GPL software, only the people I distribute it to have any any right to the software. There is nothing in the GPL that states that I must make the source available for download, modification and/or redistribution to anyone except the people I distribute the software to. when government writes software with our money, they should be forced to release it under a f/oss license - that is my contention. They havent. Or more like the US government rules, where software written by/for the government is all public domain. Devdas Bhagat -- Marriage is the sole cause of divorce. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] is this foss?
On 12/03/07 22:33 +0530, Vihan Pandey wrote: the national security caveat is also part of the rules Meaning what ? The software is in the public domain, but the government has no requirement to release source or binary. Devdas Bhagat -- panic(If this is a 64-bit machine, please try a 64-bit kernel.\n); linux-2.6.6/arch/parisc/kernel/inventory.c -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] UFB-15 Protocol ( Proposed by Rony )
On 06/03/07 21:20 +0530, Rony wrote: saurabh daptardar wrote: The free-to-air satellite service you are talking of if a mulitimedia broadcasting service. Can it be used for applications where every bit of data is important , lossy compression is unacceptable ? Secondly , if the Linux CD is broadcast along with these TV signals , won't a processing element be required to interpret the data ? True! That's why we need to think of a reliable transmission method. Reliability implies two way communication, or massive retransmits. You can get one way satellite traffic working, at rates cheaper than those provided by a dedicated wired circuit. You need a DVB and a satellite hookup. I suggest talking to Teleglobe ^WVSNL about this. Once such a protocol is developed, it will not take long for satellite broadcasters to realize its potential. If such a protocol is a success, there is a lot of software outside the linux domain that can be downloaded by users and it can be exploited for commercial applications too. That helps in making the hardware popular and brings down costs for The cost of the equipment isn't in the receiver (those are dirt cheap). The cost is in the satellite and the uplink, mainly in the satellite and the licensing fees for uplinks. Making hardware popular isn't going to give you volumes. Could you please find out actual numbers on implementation of satellite broadcasts, as opposed to shipping data on CD or DVD? Comparing data transmission with television signals has a small issue. Mass media sells _your_ time to the advertisers. They have to broadcast shows at fixed time slots for _all_ their viewers, so that their customers are guaranteed an audience. Recipients won't really care if they get the data two days later, as long as they get it correctly. Advertisers care about getting their message to viewers, and establishing brand relationships. Give a thought to why Tivo is bothering television stations so much. Free to Air equipment. The protocol should be GPLed so that anyone can make use of it free and libre. It can be improvised as better options come up. The cost of the satellite itself is fairly small, as compared to the cost of putting every kilo of mass in orbit. Now if you could find a way to get out of the gravity well for cheap, and actually implement it, that would be lovely. Keep in mind that every hard disk you put into orbit needs shielding from cosmic rays, and that is mass you would rather do without. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Learning Language
On 04/03/07 14:00 +0530, Rony wrote: snip Should new computer users start working directly on the internet and be a safety hazard to others? Or should they be taught the basics of computers first and then slowly introduced to internet? :) New users aren't a problem. Clueless administrators are. Often they are overlapping populations. Devdas Bhagat -- The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's: My brain is paged out to my liver. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Learning Language
On 03/03/07 19:32 +0530, Dhawal Doshy wrote: snip perl/php has its own place and so does ruby/python etc.. *your* thinking its crappy doesn't make it so.. if it was really crappy, there would be mass exodus from php to $CURRENT_BUZZWORD_PROGRAMMING_TOOL. php was PHP is the Visual Basic of the Unix world. I don't see all that many Windows programmers moving away from VB. http://tnx.nl/php http://czth.net/pH/PHPSucks Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux Download Satellite?
On 28/02/07 20:13 +0530, Rony wrote: snip The discussion was on possible transmission protocols for uni-directional Linux file broadcast. Satellite is only the medium. s/Linux file/large files/. Just because you mention Linux does not imply that it is a relevant topic. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: deb vs. rpm
On 28/02/07 10:05 -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: snip chmod, ar and tar. rpm's need a special tool. Now, why is this important at all? Well, think of a classified environment, where you do not want to rely on the packaged tool to help you with forensics; but you have a trusted solaris box. A unix system without cpio? RPM is essentially cpio with a specified header format. snip points 2 and 3 4) Debian packages may run binaries at install and un-install times. I am not sure if this is a major plus. RPMS can run binaries from pre and post install sections. This is not a major plus, and in some environments can be a major minus. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: deb vs. rpm
On 28/02/07 12:30 -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Actually, no: it is a modified cpio. The implementation is pretty close, but it has some behaviors which are more to RPM's liking. If you take a plain old cpio from Solaris/Aix/HPUX et al you'll find that you can't really inspect/create rpm files. No, RPM is cpio encapsulated in packaging headers. If you remove the headers, you are left with plain old cpio files. Which is why we have rpm2cpio package, it converts the rpm to standard cpio format. If it was a plain old cpio, you would not need rpm2cpio. rpm2cpio understands the RPM headers. As long as you know the packaging header length, you can simply use dd to extract the cpio file out. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] RHEL 4 - Cannot ping.
On 27/02/07 23:12 +0530, Nadeem M. Khan wrote: On 2/26/07, jtd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That leaves only the phy on the laptop. Check on another machine wether sent packets are recieved at all and vice versa. When I boot the lappy to windows, all is fine. I thought something would be wrong with the init scripts. So I booted into rescue mode, enabled networking, assigned the same ip address and tried to ping other hosts. No luck. Sheesh this is ridiculous. Syslog too refuses to help. Which network card is this? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux Download Satellite?
On 27/02/07 20:16 +0530, Rony wrote: snip HeHe! And I was googling for postal dept. protocol, postal dept. broadcast protocol. But on a serious note, a lot of research work is To paraphrase Dijkstra, 'Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Boeing 747 full of DVDs'. being carried out on transmission protocols. Unfortunately its all happening abroad. Even on this list there is little participation in technological discussions. This is not a general technology list. Technical questions related to FOSS are generally handled quickly, the philosophical ones aren't. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] LUGRadio, OpenMoko, and more....
On 26/02/07 16:34 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: snip not OT, but spam How? Spam has a precise technical meaning. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux Download Satellite?
On 26/02/07 21:40 +0530, Rony wrote: jtd wrote: Amateur radio enthusiasts did send up their satellite. http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php Even at these astronomical costs the dn bw is 9600 bps. Completely unsuitable for downloading isos. But aren't the internet satts. as well as voip satts. giving high bandwidths in Mbps? And we would only need one way download broadcast, Uh? No. IP traffic is two way. Even consumer grade broadband over satellite requires you to have one end on dialup, and some software to do a bunch of NAT/routing. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Timed Download Cron Script Required
On 26/02/07 04:41 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: snip script is being written - what is the command to stop the download? killall wget Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
[ILUG-BOM] Yet another hardware thread
LinuxBIOS support for the GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4 motherboard: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/496453 Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: internet connection through mobile in laptop
On 19/02/07 21:00 +0530, Vivek J. Patankar wrote: snip 11 words is all that was needed to redirect him to Tata's website to get the information. Instead you make him feel like a friggin' idiot to even post on this list expecting a fruitful reply. I know because I would have felt the same if I was in his place. Congratulations. This is a GNU/Linux oriented list, where we also have topics related to Linux, FOSS and some FOSS software. Hardware which works with FOSS is an acceptable topic, but anything going beyond that is off topic. While some offtopicness may be acceptable, too much of it is not. If you have not yet understood it, I recommend using your favourite search engine to find the meaning of the term SNR. I believe the biggest asset of Linux is how the community supports it. If there are a few more like you in this community, God help us. There is a difference between supporting Linux and acting as marketing agents for another company. The OP's questions were better suited for a Tata Indicom forum or their marketing department. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Fwd: Scilab Workshop
On 18/02/07 14:05 +0530, saurabh daptardar wrote: snip with their own solutions -- be it products or services .Their world is centered about offering sevices ( an euphemism for labour ) to their Nothing wrong with offering development services. The issue we have is with calling that a high tech job. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Shaving cream ran out. Suggestions for a new, shaving cream/foam
On 18/02/07 07:43 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: snip on your motherboard that failed - which was highly OT. No harm in a little OT - the list is much livelier for it, and those who are made lively also start reading/contributing to the things that are on topic. Actually, it just turns people off from reading content. Liveliness is not an indicator or useful activity. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Shaving cream ran out. Suggestions for a new, shaving cream/foam
On 18/02/07 11:45 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: snip maybe in theory - in practice I have noticed that OT has increased active membership in this list. On the other hand, the good and active contributors aren't posting as much. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] How to port WSAEVENT and WSANETWORKEVENT to linux
On 06/02/07 14:04 +0530, Anant Narayanan wrote: snip Again, .NET is an ECMA standard; complete with a reference implementation. If you consider JavaScript to be a standard, there's no reason why .NET isn't. .NET is a standard, but with parts covered by patents in the US. OOXML is a specification, which is not yet a standard. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] fedora support and reliability question.
On 05/02/07 23:19 +0530, krishnakant Mane wrote: then in that case how is ubuntu server? by the way since mandriva is officially supported by intel what is its condition? debian is good but wont work on latest hardware. and I can't tell my custommers to go for old hardware just because I want to run gnulinux. There is a Hardware compatibility list for the major commercially supported distributions. Pick something from that list. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Growth of the Use of GNU-Linux OS and FLOSS
On 03/02/07 16:53 +0530, das wrote: Please suggest links or documents on the growth of the use of GNU-Linux systems and FLOSS. I want statistics and good overview too. Hmmm, this might be tough. Why don't you do some legwork instead (since Google isn't being good for you)? Working with a magazine like PC Quest/Chip/LFY should help you get a survey out. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Daylight Saving Time
On 25/01/07 07:24 -, Mangesh V Rakhunde wrote: ? Hi The United States Congress passed an energy policy act which will change the start and end dates for daylight savings time (DST). The changes go into effect March 2007. Microsoft has released patches for this. Is there any requirement to do anything on Linux boxes ? Unless you have applications which deal with DST issues, no. Otherwise upgrade your tzdata package. Running on UTC and using TZ is far more sensible on servers. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Sun Ultra SPARC T1
On 19/01/07 18:50 +0530, Vihan Pandey wrote: snip With Apple its the Aqua GUI interface(and a certain apps with come with the O.S that are closed) which comes to about 30%-40% of the system. The rest is, G N U + Python + Apache + TeX + etc etc etc After all, it is the interface which defines the Mac experience. The main complaint is with the way they support DRM to sell music on their iTunes music store and how they react when someone violates it(remember the entire sarovar.org episode). In fact they kind of set a trend(like always) of DRM in digital music and video. But Apple has never been a big FOSS supporter. They have usually been more closed than Microsoft. However i have to make one statement here. i LOVE Apple. Surprised? i'm not ashamed to admit it. Its their creativity and artistic brilliance which is UNPARALLELED. The way they take care of every single thing that is needed for a good user experience is simply beautiful and VERY inspiring. It is also probably the only company that only stole an idea(GUI from Xerox PARC) JUST once in its life - and that's it since then they have ALWAYS been original. Its hard to find such a culture in today's world. Lets see, they attempted to sue Microsoft into not shipping a GUI (one of the earliest look and feel lawsuits). Microsoft and Apple took two entirely different routes into the market. Apple is primarily a hardware vendor, and they attempt hardware lockin. Microsoft is a software vendor, and they attempted to run on as many systems as possible. They got lucky with the price of the x86 system. The PC revolution was driven by Compaq, who beat IBM in the reverse-engineering lawsuit of 1984. The PC world adopted fairly open standards while Apple was closed. This kept the price of Macs high, while the prices of PCs kept falling, and performance increasing. Today, by running on a locked down PC, Macs are essentially competing with midrange to top of the line PC hardware in laptops, but they still aren't all that competitive in desktops. Again, you can get cheaper laptops by avoiding brand names, and then Apple is suddenly not competitive. Hardware will just work, as long as it is Apple approved hardware, or USB (Intel invented USB and PCI, PCIX, Bluetooth, Sun opened the Sparc architecture and NFS amongst other things). Solaris runs on Sun hardware, Intel, and Fujitsu hardware. Apples are nice toys, but they don't even come close to Sun. As for desktops, those are being turned into thin clients in corporate environments again, so about the only place where Apple is making any headway is in tech circles, where Unix geeks are moving to Macs because they need something to run MS Office and would rather not run the even more broken Microsoft Windows. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [not really OT] Is there a TCS LUG?
On 09/01/07 22:37 +0530, Philip Tellis wrote: Sometime Today, DB cobbled together some glyphs to say: The most FOSS friendly big Indian company I know of is Infosys at the monment. Like how much have they contributed? They have been pushing commits to NetBSD, according to Mahindra. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Opensource for a Small Manufacturing unit
On 10/01/07 17:45 +0530, Sachin G Nambiar wrote: Mate, READ the disclaimer they have written on their website before quickly defending them and quoting FOSS philosophy. AS i mentioned before, IF .. .. i was just wondering for a sec if FOSS said anything about not being able to distribute. :) FOSS actually does imply the right to modify and distribute. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Postal estamps with emails.
On 11/01/07 00:16 +0530, Rony wrote: snip the mobile pre-paid refills. As a statutory requirement, all email providers must recognize and accept mails that carry these Postal Estamps and deliver the messages directly to the inbox of the recipient. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Offline email clients like Thunderbird can carry an option to 'add estamp'. The estamp account holder simply clicks a button which uses a user_name and password to fetch a stamp and attach it to the mail. The Attach a stamp? Sucks, because my systems will never see that email. In protocol rejection is far nicer. mail will be sent only after the stamp is fetched so its headers will not contain any information of the estamp login/passwd. The cost of estamps will be definitely lower than normal postage and that may also encourage more senders to get net savvy. All stamps will be of the same value, say 5paise to 25paise per stamp. The high volume of genuine mail traffic will provide a huge revenue for the Postal Dept. The spam guards can continue to filter mails like they did before except You assume that good spam reducing solutions filter based on content. Spam is about consent, not content. for *any* mails from *any* server that carries an estamp. This will also help recognize many small local mail servers that directly send mail and are otherwise rejected by other servers. We can setup our own mail servers that will be recognized by all. How do you propose to prevent stamp forgery? Or deal with zombie systems? Micropayments do not work. (Assume that I inserted the appropriate checks in the FUSSP evauluation form here). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [not really OT] Is there a TCS LUG?
On 09/01/07 12:09 +0530, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote: On 1/9/07, Vihan Pandey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The logical thing would be to ask the guy who told you so :-) The interview happened last year, so I don't remember her name :) If you find there is currently no GLUG/LUG in your company, start one :-) I'd love to but there's little access to company resources when on-site. All I get is the essentials -- timesheets, documentation, knowledge center, etc. Also, looks like there's few (none?) active 'big corporate' employees (the self appraised tech-cream) on this list, mostly students and independent businessmen. That's quite sad :( Define big. My employer is one of the bigger email hosting firms out there (Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL are the only ones bigger). If you mean big as in number of employees, we are fairly small. The most FOSS friendly big Indian company I know of is Infosys at the monment. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Opensource for a Small Manufacturing unit
On 08/01/07 22:07 +0530, Saswata Banerjee Associates wrote: Devdas Bhagat wrote: On 06/01/07 17:55 +0530, Saswata Banerjee Associates wrote: snip Huh ? Tally works with double entry accounting. Where did you get the idea that tally does not follow double entry accounting ? One of the few things about double entry accounting I remember is that deletion was not allowed. I may be wrong, though. Devdas Bhagat Double Entry accounting specifies that for every entry that is made in the accounts, there has to be 2 parts, one being the credit and the other being debit and that the total of the debits should be equal to the total of the credits. It does not say anywhere that you can not delete an entry. You are very much allowed to delete entries, though it is frowned on by all good accountants and auditors. You are supposed to add a negative entry to achieve the same goal. Allowing deletions also allows fraud. snip switch. Only problem is that there is no Indian Accounting software that is any better. So you are stuck. So why not contribute to AVSAP? BTW, I am yet to see Tally Linux. I doubt if the dealers or even Tally customer support would have heard of it. It is a statement that they have been making for a lng time and can be classified with vaporware. Is that Tally on Linux, or a Linux distro from Tally? Tally on Linux is supported on RHEL and SuSE, only, afaik. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Windows tax refund
On 07/01/07 20:44 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: On Sunday 07 January 2007 19:53, (Anand M R) wrote: When i asked the toshiba guys to give me the laptop minus windows they plainly refused. It seems toshiba recommends only windows. :( Dell generally honours such requests. You can buy the laptop with Windows and when you first turn it on, you can refuse the EULA and contact the vendor ( Toshiba ) and tell them that you want a refund. They can't refuse. If they do, you can take them to the consumer court I guess... Toshiba sells the software+hardware as a bundle, they aren't separate components. The only option for a refund is to return that laptop. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Windows tax refund
On 07/01/07 22:11 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: On Sunday 07 January 2007 21:49, Devdas Bhagat wrote: On 07/01/07 20:44 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: Dell generally honours such requests. You can buy the laptop with Windows and when you first turn it on, you can refuse the EULA and contact the vendor ( Toshiba ) and tell them that you want a refund. They can't refuse. If they do, you can take them to the consumer court I guess... Toshiba sells the software+hardware as a bundle, they aren't separate components. The only option for a refund is to return that laptop. Nope. You can REFUSE the EULA when you first turn on the laptop. Refusing the EULA means you have NOT used M$ Windows and thus you can claim the refund. I am 100% sure of it. This is the only way you can get a refund on preloaded laptops... The point is, Toshiba does NOT treat the OS as separate from the hardware. You cannot get a refund on one _part_. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Opensource for a Small Manufacturing unit
On 05/01/07 21:48 -0800, Koustubha Kale wrote: --- Laxminarayan G Kamath A [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Requirements: Tally software Tally is available on Linux. Also your accountants and Auditors will be really happy if they have tally. Its a sound investment for a company of any size. I am sorry, but I do recommend reading the archives for opinions about this. Given that Tally breaks the 400+ year old principles of double entry accounting, I am not going to call it a sound investment. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] wold domination - Roadmap
On 05/01/07 23:58 +0530, Mrugesh Karnik wrote: On Friday 05 January 2007 22:39, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote: On 1/5/07, Devdas Bhagat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Me? I would attack the business desktop market. That's much easier to deal with, does not have patented codec and multimedia issues, and gives bigger returns faster. And that is really much more difficult to penetrate, especially since OOo is still not good enough. I think OOo got it wrong when they tried to emulate M$ Office rather than innovate. Errr, you do need compatibility with MS Office for things to work. At this point, ODF is a standard format, and a much better format than MS Office (even the XML stuff). Given the UI changes to MS Office, it might even make sense to tell people that OOo will actually reduce their training costs. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Opensource for a Small Manufacturing unit
On 06/01/07 17:55 +0530, Saswata Banerjee Associates wrote: snip Huh ? Tally works with double entry accounting. Where did you get the idea that tally does not follow double entry accounting ? One of the few things about double entry accounting I remember is that deletion was not allowed. I may be wrong, though. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] ways to get a working Linux server in to an installable CD set for future reinstall?
On 06/01/07 17:59 +0530, Balachandran Sivakumar wrote: On 1/6/07, jtd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: a What are the best ways to do this? (Apart from using commercial Imaging or Disaster Recovery software.) I have a similar but a different problem. I need to install Debian GNU/Linux in a lab of about 50 computers.Is there any Netboot and FAI. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] wold domination - Roadmap
On 05/01/07 13:43 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: On 05-Jan-07, at 1:23 PM, jtd wrote: omg - quoting the antichrist ;-) Not. ESR is just a mortal and needs penance like writing the above ;-) and double bonus points for pounding the real antichrist (not bsd inspite of the mascot). the analysis of the multimedia scene is worrisome - each solution looks as bad as the next one. Me? I would attack the business desktop market. That's much easier to deal with, does not have patented codec and multimedia issues, and gives bigger returns faster. Plus, anyone wanting to/needing to take work home will need compatibility with work systems, not the other way round. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Triband Problems - Anyone?
On 03/01/07 22:57 +0530, Rony wrote: snip 200/- only and that is a technological dream come true. I know someone who works for Bell Canada (The BSNL of Canada) and they failed in implementing broadband over telephone. Here we are with telephone, 2 Bell Canada offers 10 Mbps (50 GB cap), and 16 Mbps (75 GB cap) in some areas, and 5Mbps in the rest of their territory. Upload speeds are 1Mbps. The rates are 70 CDN for 10/1 and 100 CDN for 16/1. Keep in mind that relative to Canadian income, the rates are similar to MTNL. Mbps net and IPTV with 50 channels and VOD for Rs. 300/- per month ( IPTV only ). Even in the US many are still using dialup. As are a lot of people in India. Pssst, I recommend looking at actual numbers, rather than relying one the evidence of one person (if you are too far away from the CO, you won't get DSL). Vickram had posted something about broadband in Kutch on another list as well. Note the recent questionnaire put out by TRAI as well. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Triband Problems - Anyone?
On 04/01/07 00:03 +0530, Rony wrote: Devdas Bhagat wrote: On 03/01/07 22:57 +0530, Rony wrote: snip 200/- only and that is a technological dream come true. I know someone who works for Bell Canada (The BSNL of Canada) and they failed in implementing broadband over telephone. Here we are with telephone, 2 Bell Canada offers 10 Mbps (50 GB cap), and 16 Mbps (75 GB cap) in some areas, and 5Mbps in the rest of their territory. Through telephone lines? I thought twisted pair tel. lines had a max. possible bandwidth of 2 Mbps for ADSL. ADSL is 2M, ADSL+ is 24M. DOCSIS 3 allows 50/50 over coax, Ethernet is 1000/1000 over copper, 1/1 over fibre, and currently standards are being developed for 10/10 over fibre. Upload speeds are 1Mbps. The rates are 70 CDN for 10/1 and 100 CDN for 16/1. Keep in mind that relative to Canadian income, the rates are similar to MTNL. Mbps net and IPTV with 50 channels and VOD for Rs. 300/- per month ( IPTV only ). Even in the US many are still using dialup. As are a lot of people in India. Pssst, I recommend looking at actual numbers, rather than relying one the evidence of one person (if you are too far away from the CO, you won't get DSL). Agreed that India is still developing but many good things are also happening and 2 Mbps at home with no investment is one of them. :) Erm, you mean, you had already invested in the router, and the company has recovered the cost of the telephone lines many times over. Have you looked at France Telecom recently? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] reverse-engineering pacenet password is unethical?
On 01/01/07 09:12 +0530, Amish Mehta wrote: On 12/30/06, Philip Tellis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sometime Today, Amish Mehta assembled some asciibets to say: Samba is what? Reverse engineering. Isnt it? Microsoft cant to anything about it. You're confusing software and protocols. A software's licence can prohibit reverse engineering the software itself. A protocol cannot be protected by a licence. As far as I know for knowing SMB protocol, MS Windows was reverse engineered, probably to know exactly how passwords are passed. Same is true for this Pacenet issue. No. They used a network sniffer to figure out the network protocol, but they never touched the Windows code itself. Wine, OpenOffice.org are also other examples of reverse engineering certain softwares. Wine is an implementation of the Win32 API. Pretty public information. OOo uses filters for document formats, not code. The issue is if you can reverse engineer a software or not, whatever it is done for. Dont count on it but my opinion is as long as its not patented and its for personal use and it does not harm anyone, it should be ok. Software reverse engineering was pretty clearcut in the US from 1984 till the DMCA was passed. Properly done reverse engineering started the PC revolution (yay for Compaq). Patents harm software development simply by existing. Any implementation of the same process would still result in infringement. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] CDs4grabs wiki for ILUG-BOM
On 29/12/06 16:41 +0530, Anurag wrote: Sometime on Friday 29 December 2006 07:14, Kenneth Gonsalves said: well, now it is 50-50. Ilug-bom is there a glug-bom is there. It is clear that the original founders founded a lug. Also clear that AFAIR, our's has always been a GLUG. I've been around only since a couple of years and am not aware of much of its history, but internet archive - web.archive.org suggests me so. I joined ilug-bom.org.in in 2000. None of this GNU/ stuff was around then. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: Linux expert with a monitoring background required.
On 20/12/06 23:19 +0530, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote: snip For example, I would have had trouble sending my resume fopr this requirement two months back if the limitation was ODF only since I did You know, the requirement said plain text. ODF and DOC were _also_ acceptable, but not preferred formats. Psst, BTW, OOo runs on Win32, as does vim(1), or yuo could even use notepad. Or any webmail client. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: Linux expert with a monitoring background required.
On 20/12/06 11:32 +0530, jtd wrote: snip We arent talking about newbie users we are talking of experts who would be managing other peoples it setups. That's pretty irrelevant, surely? If OP was accepting mail from recruiters, he would get .doc. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] as low as it gets: P2-350, 64 MB, 4 GB
On 19/12/06 05:08 +, Vickram Crishna wrote: snip If this is a completely trivial question, please do mail me back offlist, anyone who can guide me ensure that neither settings nor stuff like mailboxes get lost (this is the computer my wife uses, and my life will be at stake). This is pretty much a FAQ, but for the sake of completeness, here goes: Unix systems have the conecpt of a user home directory. This is the place where you start from when you log in. This is usually represented by the character ~. Applications have their configurations in dot files (the file names start with a .) in the user home directory. Global configuration information like passwords or system wide configuration files go into /etc. Normally, mail is stored in ~, but you may also find it being stored in your mail spool directory (/var/mail or /var/spool/mail on Linux systems, mostly). In the case of RH, home directories are under /home, so as long as you back that up, you should have most of your customisations. Keep in mind that version changes can affect configuration files or directories, particularly in the case of application suites like GNOME and KDE. For most people though, backing up ~ and /var/spool/ should save system state. A backup of /etc/ is advisable as well, _particularly_ /etc/X11. If you are switching distros, you should recreate your users manually (or script it using chpasswd(8)). Then after you have restored /home, run 'chown -R user: /home/user/' as root, where user is to be substituted by the appropriate user name. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] problem with pyQt
On 17/12/06 16:37 +0530, Pradnyesh Sawant wrote: On 17 Dec, 03:41:27 PM, Chirag Wazir wrote: I don't really use the designer myself so I haven't looked, I find it is easier to maintain code I write from scratch rather than worrying about exactly how the designer pyuic decide to do things. Thanks again for those helpful links and info However, some Qs crop up to my mind -- plz do pardon me if i'm asking something stupid, as am a newbie to gui programming: why would one not use an IDE (especially one where one can drag-drop widgets onto a form) to create a gui? is it not more intuitive? is code Because sometimes it is just easier to write source directly. Not always, just sometimes. Intuitive, yes, but setting properties is just easier in the editor. generation not less cumbersome this way? especially with layouts; coz i just saw Layouts are best done in a visual medium, properties are not necessarily best done that way. Code generation isn't necessarily a good idea either, often the programmer can do a better job. For a newbie, I would recommend the use of the designer tool and automagic code generation, until you learn what the code generator does. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Simpler explanations? - Broad Band in India
On 16/12/06 13:38 +0530, jtd wrote: snip Opex is high with current business model. The wifi network is a DIY non-business. That doesn't make sense. You have two choices: 1) Put in a fat pipe (fairly expensive), even if you go wireless. Wireless has other issues as well, but will work fairly well in a rural environment. Then just keep growing and lighting up more of the fat pipes for a very small expense. Your per unit costs come down as you oversell. 2) Put in a narrow pipe, and then put in more pipes as you grow. Lowers your capex, increases your opex drastically. Can you show me how it would scale upto a few thousand nodes? Eat the pudding test: In my experience bw drops to 4 mbps and stays there with a 54Mbps AP for 10 to 20 users (havent tried higher). Latency increases though, And dies beyond 25, from experience :). I suggest you try filesharing and something else on the same LAN with wireless. but not by much. And we are talking of fat pipes for tens of nodes. According to Fred pook, the city of Dharamstala is fully covered by wifi - afaik 1000 nodes. Essentially, the capability to service 2 people, who will be accessing basic non-voice/video services, and not be doing any heavy data transfers. However Scalability to this size will definetly be a problem. But scalability to lets say 3 to 4 nodes with one 10mbps pipe per cluster, and 30 users per node. Should give u good performance. We And the 10 Mbps pipe costs you how much to lay? For a slightly higher cost, why not lay fiber (where the costs are in the termination, not in the pipe as opposed to being the other way rounf for copper), and get 100Mbps to the central node? The problem isn't in the fat pipe. The problem is in taking bandwidth from the termination of the central pipe to the edge. are talking of rural and semiurban areas with poor phone penetration. The problem in ISPs isn't one of bandwidth (that becomes cheaper per unit as you buy more), it's one of getting a reliable internal network which scales cheaply. Having said the above. Cellular and land networks are almost ubiquitos in India. And a wireless infrastructre would be an non lucarative business (given prevalent business models for content, voice and live Errr, you do realise the BSNL refuses to allow other telephone carriers to use their fiber backbone to even carry voice calls? And charges their customers more money for interconnectivity and that subsidy for rural connectivity? Honestly, our problem is stupid bureaucrats and their old, outdated business models. media), but would help in providing competition the same way as libre software has. Note libre software provides several viable business models. One would have to think deeply about possible business models for such disruptive wireless networks. Me? I would make access a public good, and run out fibre to lots of places (cheap), copper to the last mile, and then lease it out to service providers. The closest I have seen to that model is in Scandanavia, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] What is stoping Indians from contributing to FOSS ?
On 15/12/06 20:30 +0530, Rony wrote: Devdas Bhagat wrote: On 14/12/06 22:55 +0530, Rony wrote: If you buy a Debian CD, you are paying for the media, not the software, so you are free to make copies. If you buy an RH Enterprise Linux CD, you cannot make copies and distribute the same. You can make copies. You cannot redistribute because there is material copyrighted to RH which isn't distributable. Make copies and install them on more machines? Nothing stops you, _as long as you remove the RedHat copyrighted material_. You won't get support, of course. You can always use CentOS. Could you tell me how many PCs you installed with Ubuntu 6.06 can play VCDs with proper sound? Mine does not even after installing codecs and Mplayer works for me. Are you able to play VCDs using Mplayer in Kubuntu 6.06? I don't use Ubuntu. At the moment, I am a Gentoo user. snip I have no issues with hardware. Its the software and the way its packaged. I get frustrated due to the inconsistency of installation methods over same distro brands with different versions or across Inconsistency _across_ versions? apt-get for Debian (clones), yum for the RH derivatives, Yast on SuSE, emerge on Gentoo... different distros. In the case of Kubuntu 6.06 in the Acer 2428 laptop, Across distros, yes. But again, why would you want to use so many distros in the first place. Choose a limited, small set to support and support only those? Devdas Bhagat all the hardware was detected and I can play open format video as well as audio files from the 'examples' folder. Its the VCDs that don't give any sound. Haven't tried mp3s or dvds. Even VLC player gives alternete clear and broken sounds when playing VCDs. Hmmm, got any reasonably old non Sony VCDs? Can you try those? I have had issues with a few newer ones (the VCD itself was bad), and I don't trust Sony to do the right thing with media. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Simpler explanations? - Broad Band in India
On 16/12/06 10:59 +0530, jtd wrote: snip The experiment at HBCSE proved conclusively that capital costs are very low. Caveat upstream has to be cheap and profits would be near zero. How scalable was that network? Capital costs are low for any small network, but opex is relatively high. Can you show me how it would scale upto a few thousand nodes? The problem in ISPs isn't one of bandwidth (that becomes cheaper per unit as you buy more), it's one of getting a reliable internal network which scales cheaply. Devdas Bhagat -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Sify broadband connection on Linux RHES 4
On 15/12/06 20:42 +0530, Rony wrote: snip This is for everyone. Nowadays some cable guys are giving alternative cable modems that have an ethernet port as the output. Talk to your cable guys for this alternative. For this they will have to replace the CAT5 cable with the coaxial RF cable. Only if they have a CMTS in the first place, or they have an upstream which actually gives broadband over cable, as opposed to simple ethernet. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Simpler explanations?
On 14/12/06 08:24 +, Roshan wrote: College was shut today, for unknown reasons, so I returned home and was reading my emails. Came across this blog http://www.leadstep.com/BusinessBlog/technology/the_truth_behind_indian_broadb.html Could someone have simpler explanations to what is mentioned in this article? Lots of them. I suggest reading recent postings on the india-gii mailing list, hosted at lists.cpsr.org Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] What is stoping Indians from contributing to FOSS ?
On 14/12/06 22:55 +0530, Rony wrote: krishnakant Mane wrote: Hi Krish, when people (at least a few) can pay for non-free crap ware which gives them no transperency, why should they not pay for some thing which gives them total freedom to do what ever with the copy they buy. for example if one buys a copy of debian gnu/linux and wishes to make copies and install on many computers he is free to do so and that's right. because I paied for my copy so I have every right to do what ever I want with my copy. If you buy a Debian CD, you are paying for the media, not the software, so you are free to make copies. If you buy an RH Enterprise Linux CD, you cannot make copies and distribute the same. You can make copies. You cannot redistribute because there is material copyrighted to RH which isn't distributable. You are allowed to take all the RPMS, remove the RH specific stuff and make your own ISOs. now where does the issue of total ownership goes? so the point should not really be cost. the point should be what you get and what you can do with it. people must realise that gpl gives them every right including copying the cd and installation on various locations. People will copy and install linux cds if they work and do what is expected from them. At present they don't. Mine do. Could you tell me how many PCs you installed with Ubuntu 6.06 can play VCDs with proper sound? Mine does not even after installing codecs and Mplayer works for me. snip FOSS companies ( Not individual comtributors ) who make distros should make good distros that work in the user's environment, not their OSS labs. This point should not be confused with proprietary issues as the They do have a list of supported hardware. If you can ensure that the devices are in that list, your applications should work. Don't blame the distro for not supporting the latest and greatest versions of hardware available in the Indian market. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Simpler explanations?
On 14/12/06 22:25 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: On Thursday 14 December 2006 13:54, Roshan wrote: College was shut today, for unknown reasons, so I returned home and was reading my emails. Came across this blog http://www.leadstep.com/BusinessBlog/technology/the_truth_behind_indi an_broadb.html Could someone have simpler explanations to what is mentioned in this article? complete nonsense. dont believe it a bit. Regarding the DNS issue, yes US has the root DNS servers so technically the really really low level DNS updates are taken from there but for everything else local DNSs are used which are caching servers. Pt. Google: Anycast. snip know major portion of the submarine cables IN THE WORLD are being controlled by Reliance and TATAs ( FLAG and TYCO deal anyone? ) Like I said, search the India-GII archives. Unlike the discussion on this list, that one actually has informed and interested people talking (including people from the telecom industry). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] What is stoping Indians from contributing to FOSS ?
On 12/12/06 12:47 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: snip Does anybody know what SQA activities FOSS have? How are the quality standards defined? What are the metrics? The metrics are what the contributors want them to be. Heavily arbitrary, but then, it does what I want it to do, the way I want to do it is the core metric. Some projects have public quality standards (GNOME/KDE), others don't (mutt). For applications implementing open specifications, the reference point is how well the application follows the standard. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] What is stoping Indians from contributing to FOSS ?
On 11/12/06 11:26 +0530, Philip Tellis wrote: Sometime Today, Devdas Bhagat assembled some asciibets to say: Connectivity. Contributing to FOSS in terms of code does require decent connectivity. nonsense. it never stopped me and all I had was a VSNL student account. If you have any connectivity at all, that's sufficient. Which was decent for those days. How many people here are dealing with metered downloads? Personally, I still would take dialup over a metered download (even the per minute billing is cheaper than the per MB stuff). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] What is stoping Indians from contributing to FOSS ?
On 11/12/06 11:37 +0530, jtd wrote: snip That apart even users are contibutors. since foss is highily effecient in it's usage of resources and fantastic in it's ability to make people productive, by merely using it u are freeing up resources for better usage. Eg power consumption, chewing lesser bandwidth, increasing the jump distance for virii, being very aware of the undelying security implications of net usage, forcing adherence to standards etc etc. That assumes that the end user demands standards compliance. IMO, any user who assumes the responsibility for any stake in FOSS is contributing to it, whether by filing a bug report, providing feedback, writing code, merely answering questions on mailing lists or newsgroups, or by actually paying for products in hard cash. On the other hand, the people who do not contribute in any way have no standing in the FOSS world, which is a meritocracy. How many people actually use open document formats over MS Office formats? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [Spam][94.4%] Re: [ILUG-BOM] mailserver
On 09/12/06 12:05 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: On 09-Dec-06, at 11:45 AM, Dr Sunil wrote: thanks for yr response. it is a postfix installation and will try to copy the main.cf and master.cf files to u thanks a million in advance What was changed? Other than the IP address and default routes? Any changes made to /etc/hosts? How were the changes made? postconf -n output preferred, along with relevant logs. See http://www.postfix.org/DEBUG_README.html for details Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] openSUSE ???
On 05/12/06 10:42 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: On Tuesday 05 December 2006 10:33, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: pcbsd No Don't touch BSD with a 10 foot long pole :( I might sound paranoid but I have a perfectly good reason for it. FreeBSD 5.2.1 burnt me. Corrupted all my partitions. If it weren't for Knoppix back then I Hmmm. AFAIK, that only happens when you forget to read the BSD partitioning instructions. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: RHCE course??
On 28/11/06 03:22 +0530, deja vecu wrote: Which training place in Mumbai is good for RHCE? Ultramax or MTNL's CETTM ?? or any other better place? sorry to bug you again guys but if you know this, help me out here.. me new to GNU/Linux platform and looking for practical training.. Why not just install Linux (any distro), play around with it, and learn how to solve problems? That's far better (and more important) training than anything a structured course will teach you. Apprenticeship is another option, but you will find painfully few companies who would be willing to hire totally fresh people. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: MTNL Triband using USB Interface
On 22/11/06 11:42 +0530, Rony wrote: deja vecu wrote: It is happening a lot.. me too sify user n get h/w error on ping when trying to config link speed to 100Mbps frm 10Mbps.. its just one prob.. there r many.. 100 Mbps works for short distances only, not for cable internet. Huh? The Ethernet protocol standard says that 100 Mbit ethernet and GigE should work upto 100m. If they don't, ask for a refund. This has nothing to do with cable Internet (which by definition needs a coax cable and cable modem, not a switch/hub). If you mean that the local cable operator is trying to be cheap and setting up an unmanaged hub instead of running a proper LAN which is limiting the OP to 10 Mbit/sec half duplex, that would be correct. Getting rid of the hub would solve that problem. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linux Infringing Microsofts IP
On 18/11/06 11:49 +0530, Rony wrote: Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote: The FUD never seems to end: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/1324248from=rss Can FSF which is the owner of GPL, file a suit or legal notice to M$ to either come out with facts on its claim of infringement of IP or retract its statement publicly? The FSF doesn't hold the copyrights to the Linux kernel. There should be no reason to file a case though, because until MSFT actually says which patents are infringed by Linux, the only thing they are doing is spouting FUD. Also, the only country which would be affected by this issue is the US, so you can happily continue to use Linux as is. Of course, given that Novell's agreement violates the GPL, we are in for some interesting times. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Since when is this list moderated ?
On 16/11/06 17:54 +0530, quasi wrote: snip I was not aware of the procedure. I thought we generally consider people sane till proven insane, or something like that. ;) Innocent until proven guilty is only true for courts. Around here, it's guilty until proven to post properly, if only because so many people have their quoting style broken by webmail and Microsoft MUAs. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: FSF announces release of gNewSense 1.0
On 03/11/06 11:00 +, Dinesh Joshi wrote: On Friday 03 November 2006 04:52, krishnakant Mane wrote: wrong with g nusence as well. ROTFL...krishnakant its new sense and not nusence :P I have no idea of what Krishnakant uses for input (voice recognition? keyboard? both?), but I do know that his computer's output is by voice only. Please keep his disability in mind before cracking jokes. Or write a spellchecker which understands what he is saying and writes correct output even for homonyms. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Forbes.com: Toppling Linux
On 28/10/06 11:35 +0530, jtd wrote: snip Inspite of BSD being more complete and useable before linux was being written?. BSD 4.3 (afair) was available for $100 on 30 5.5 floppies ( and ran a whole lot of engineering software in 1988 (afair). (That ^^^ ATT happened. was why i had written to them for a set of floppies. ) Logically it should have had far more traction than linux inspite of the legal hassles. And it would have made sense for IBM or anyone It did. But managers tend to take a dim view of lawsuits (unless the company involved is really, really big, like IBM or MSFT). ATT vs BSD was Goliath vs David. Also, *BSD at that time did not run on IDE disks, which most home users had (and still have). else to use BSD. But the problem was (imo) the licence. Others could take away your code, screw the market and sit back. Bad for u in the short term and the longterm. If you pay IBM enough money, they will even support *BSD, and provide code. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Forbes.com: Toppling Linux
On 28/10/06 19:45 +0530, ???|Praveen wrote: 2006/10/28, Kenneth Gonsalves [EMAIL PROTECTED]: if license is all that important, how come hurd is where it is? Because Linux is GPL. Hurd was started because GNU project wanted a Free kernel tocomplete the GNU Operating System. Once Linux is available under GPL that goal is alreaday achieved, we have GNU/Linux as a variant of complete GNU Operating System . Only motivation to go So why won't the FSF finish off the HURD and get a proper GNU OS out under the GPLv3? Because Linux is *NOT* a GNU project. I promise, I will call it GNU/HURD. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Forbes.com: Toppling Linux
On 28/10/06 21:26 +0530, ???|Praveen wrote: snip There weren't many Open Source or Scratch my itch people before GNU/Linux got popular. GNU project was started in 1984 and Linux was Well, the FSF was mostly started as a response to then new closed source culture. It wasn't idealism, as much as the fact that there was a bunch of people who wanted to do things differently from the closed source vendor and use whatever was available. There was the BSD camp, and the FSF. The BSD folks didn't write their own compiler because the output of gcc is not GPLed. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Forbes.com: Toppling Linux
On 27/10/06 11:23 +0530, Baishampayan Ghose wrote: snip I really fail to understand the reason behind your fascination for BSD / MIT style licenses. Do you really think Linux (the kernel) would have been as powerful as t is now had it been released under, say the BSD Yes. Linux happened at the right time. In case you didn't know your history, the original BSD group was sued by ATT for releasing BSD in the late 80s/early 90s. The suit was eventually won by the BSD hackers, but they lost crucial momentum in the early 90s (till ~ 1994 or so). After ths, the BSD project forked, with FreeBSD focussing on x86, wile NetBSD focussed on portability. license? Exactly why do you think FreeBSD doesn't support half the hardware that Linux (the kernel) supports today? Even 5-6 years back Because Linux ran with the PC, while BSD ran on far more servers. Until 2.6, the BSD kernel was far superior to Linux. With 2.6, Linus had resources from IBM and the NSA thrown in to help, making it take a slight lead over FreeBSD 5.x. Also, FreeBSD 5.x was the first BSD version which had kernel threads, and was basically an experimental release (think Linux 2.5 quality). Today, more developers use Linux and are happy if their code works there, rather than writing portable code. Earlier, developers would write on *BSD at home, and test on Solaris at work, with the resultant benefits of stability and performance. FreeBSD was considered far more superior than Linux (the kernel), so exactly what happened to the Linux kernel project in the recent times and how did FreeBSD lose the race? IBM happened. Now don't talk about the licenses of Python, PostgreSQL, etc. They are in BSD style licenses because those projects are relatively smaller in scope and size as compared to say gcc or the Linux kernel. None can take What does size have to do with it? snip kernel or gcc, you need to give up some freedoms to make sure the essential freedoms are maintained no matter what. Otherwise you may Do you understand the meaning of irony? suffer as FreeBSD is suffering these days. Theo de Raadt (hacker extraordinaire) has absolutely no way to make sure people who use FreeBSD source contribute back in some way, and thus the only thing he Theo De Raadt is the lead developer for OpenBSD, not FreeBSD. His goal is to ensure that _all_ the code out there is good, regardless of whther it is closed source or not. This is a different goal from RMS, whose goal is to ensure that hackers can always modify the code and make their systems do what they want done. can do is cry out loud and beg people for code and or money. A lot of GPLed projects also ask for donations. Keep in mind that OpenBSD has avoided a lot of security exploits because of their insistence on source, not binary blobs. snip in any sense and yet they are not so simple. What you need to understand is that the GPLv3 text _is_ legalese, and legalese is never simple. The problem is that legalese looks like English, but isn't. I am sure that the lawyers will actually understand the GPLv3, and the preamble will explain the intent to the non-lawyers out there (for those who actually read licenses). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Forbes.com: Toppling Linux
On 27/10/06 16:10 +0530, jtd wrote: snip That apart, the majority of coders prefer that their works are not misapropriated and hence prefer to gpl their work, which results in a one way migration of code from bsd to linux. I know more people who put out code under the BSD license than the GPL. snip IBM happened. why did it not happen to BSD? couldnt be the licence? Customers were asking IBM for Linux. Keep in mind that the biggest driving factor for IBM was server sales. IBM was basically losing out to whitebox vendors on the basis of price alone. That was due to quite a bit of hype being garnered by Linux (and the fact that newer admins tended to be more familiar with Linux than *BSD). The fact that the BSDs took longer to support IDE was a significant factor in admins being more experienced with Linux than *BSD. The license doesn't have _much_ to do with the populatiry of Linux. snip kernel or gcc, you need to give up some freedoms to make sure the essential freedoms are maintained no matter what. Otherwise you may Misconception (or inapropriate words). Permission to treat others less equally than yourself is not freedom, it's exploitation. The gpl does not ask u to give up freedom. It tells u treat others exactly equally. . -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
[ILUG-BOM] ADMIN: Greetings
Please do not send festival greetings to a mailing list full of people you do not personally know. If you want to send a greeting, send it to individual contacts directly. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 15/10/06 23:38 +0530, Saswata Banerjee Associates wrote: snip But please understand that it allows you to manipulate the data by putting in entries in the middle. That makes the program unsafe from the owners perspective. There is no data integrity. There is no guarentee that the data you see now is the same as the one you saw earlier. Quoting myself: That is precisely why most SMEs like Tally. Accountants like Tally because they can input data quite fast. SMEs like Tally because they _can_ manipulate accounts without a trace. snip X will work in the office. How will you connect multiple offices to the same database ? X is already network capable. You application is an X client, and speaks to the X server. X can be tunneled over ssh, or the client application can run locally and talk to a remote database, preferably over a VPN. If you want a Windows analogy, think MS-SQL server as the backend, not MS Access or a flat file like Tally. And how will you allow the owner to access the data from outside the office (say from his home). X, VNC, NX. Will you allow an user from outside the office to log into X ? a) The user has an X server, and uses a VPN or ssh to access the data and runs the app remotely. b) The user has a VNC client, and connects to a remote VNC server. c) The user runs a VNC applet in a browser. b) The user uses NX to connect to the remote server and gets a full desktop. How much bandwidth do you need from working from outside the office ? I have successfully used X over dialup at 33.6 kbps. I have seen NX being used (slowly) over GPRS to view a full KDE desktop. Not using a heavy widgetset allows for good network performance. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 17/10/06 23:23 +0530, Saswata Banerjee Associates wrote: snip OK, either I dont understand what is going on or people on the group are being particularly obtuse. The first. Even with the database access and client server architecture, the software can only be used within the office. Why? It can not be used from outside the office. Today many of the clients you want will have multiple offices, and owners want to be able to access the data when they are outside the office. And nothing stops them from doing it, except lack of connectivity. Coming up with solutions like using ssh tunneling goes against your own aim of making and keeping the software simple enough to use without having to call an expert IT support personnel everytime you want to switch the computer on. You are assuming that the tunnel will be exposed to the end user. http://www.nomachine.org/ Also VNC is pretty much point and click, and tunneling it using Putty on Windows (if you WANT to use Windows) is trivial. Most companies will in any case be cagy about allowing external access to an internal LAN network. It is different to set up the firewall to allow apache to serve pages to users from outside the office. HTTP *is* a client server mechanism. Technically, the tunnel is a more secure way of doing things. And how will you allow the owner to access the data from outside the office (say from his home). Not a problem with a client server arch. Client Server arch is a negative point in this scenario. Client Server tech was designed to work inside the same office. Please do not confuse between peer to peer and client-server. A client-server architecture implies that there will be central system (the server) to which all other systems connect (the clients), make requests and get back responses. A peer to peer architecture implies that either side can initiate a connection, and the other can respond. A common example of a peer to peer system is the IP. All hosts are equal in theory (NATted hosts are not peers). Examples of a client server system are the various protocols which sit on top of IP, such as HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, FTP, ... This has nothing to do with a LAN, a MAN or a WAN (which are physical architectures). Will you allow an user from outside the office to log into X ? A policy issue not a technical one. This policy issue is very important. Not taking this into account is going to be a very stupid move. Important? Yes. Should application writers take it into consideration? Not necessarily. Scenario 1) The user will connect to the database from a remote office. The user has a local X server, and a copy of the application configured to connect to the main office. This will work fine. Scenario 2) The user will connect to the main office via a VPN (per user, or site to site), and then login via a X server provided at the main office for that purpose. How much bandwidth do you need from working from outside the office Depends on what u are doing and on how u have written your app, but would work on a reliable 64kb connection. We are working with multi-branch set up in our clients offices. We have 1 mbps triband lines connecting each of the branches. Even with that, and with ssh tunneling set up, we find the set up a problem. I suspect the 64kb line is going to be a source of frustration in client server arch environment. What are you doing on those lines? Is it the bandwidth which is an issue, or the latency (different issues)? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 15/10/06 10:40 +0530, krishnakant Mane wrote: snip I have been holding this point very strongly right since the thread began by my email. let's take this very professionally. because quality means dedication and for dedicated work we need money. and Let me quote this guy again: I'm doing a (free) operating system, (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) clones. Money will come in if your code actually gets deployed. the only way we can see this through as a successful venture is by having a dedicated team of developers as Abhishek rightly suggests. You aren't going about this the FOSS way. You are still thinking in the we need a company and funding mode. What is needed is slightly ... different. You don't need a team of developers. You need a team of CAs. We have an application already. The code is out there[1]. Take it, run with it. What Kenneth doesn't have is a CA. So can one or more of the CAs on this list provide input to him on getting things working[2]? Kenneth, does Python have non wxWidgets bindings? Until more distributions ship wxWidgets natively, that library is a PITA. If not, can someone clone the UI in Gtk2/QT? I know Perl has bindings for both these, so doing that in Perl would be trivial. (If you are doing it in Gtk2, the XML file generated from Glade2 would be good enough, just use glade2perl2 to generate your UI code from there). Devdas Bhagat [1] http://avsap.sourceforge.net/ [2] This is a Unix application, so you _are_ going to have to use Linux on yur desktop for this. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 15/10/06 00:04 +0530, Navneet Karnani wrote: snip - I read one comment about non IT people being the target, and I also read a comment in the same post about scripting language. For one person who actually deployed a custom accounting software in a live environment, believe me, you wouldn't want the users to be able to touch the code. Its As long as they don't go about full fledged applications in OOo ... the most dangerous thing. Actually, its scary. So please do not have this consideration. Personally, I think Java scales up pretty well. Specially Personally, I don't think Java is as good as it is billed to be. I will wait for the opening of the JVM, but till then GNU classpath is what you would want to use. I have heard good things about Java 1.5, but I would rather wait for someone else to show me that it works well in production, without the memory bloat. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 15/10/06 10:41 +, Dinesh Joshi wrote: snip Anyway, what about GWT? We can use GWT. Its very simple to use and provides 100% abstraction from the icky HTML / JS aspects of the browsers so we can concentrate on the development rather than standardizing HTML and making it work in all browsers. Have you ever tried to do rapid data entry using a web GUI? Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 15/10/06 16:47 +0530, Navneet Karnani wrote: snip Have you tried using the new Google web apps (GMail?) from keyboard ? If not, you should try it. It works now. It was broken till a few years earlier and hence no one liked web apps. Hmm, I use mutt and vim. Gmail needs a bit more ... performance. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 15/10/06 18:48 +0530, Dinesh Joshi wrote: snip No. It is OSS. Anyone can download and modify it. How exactly do you define the end user? What exactly do you mean by participation? In the FOSS world, there are contributors, and there are non contributors. Contributors put up in terms of time, knowledge, money or any combination of the above. There is no distinction between end user and developer. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Chipset and Original Motherboard
On 14/10/06 19:12 +0530, Rony wrote: snip Hmm. So in reality, he did not earn any money from the sales of the wonderful piece of software he created for the world, while everyone You mean, like pre-IPO shares in RedHat? down the line is making mega bucks installing, customizing and maintaining his software. If the same was sponsored by a big foss supporting institution he would have made money on the software too. What part of he made money from writing Linux, which he would not have made otherwise, do you not understand? Whatever other benefits he received would have come his way even if he made world famous closed software. I am not trying to pull down foss but Nope. He would have been too busy writing code to make that much money. Money is merely a way to keep score. Code it written for the challenge of writing it, and for having fun while doing so. my point is that since it is for the people, it needs support from large FOSS is democratic. By the people, for the people. You are looking at only the financial aspect of FOSS. The people responding to you don't. Merely looking at the short term balance sheet leads leads to things like burning petroleum regardless of enviornmental impact, DRM and copyright additions, regardless of the incredible damage it does to the creative arts Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: need a tally alternative on gnu/linux.
On 14/10/06 22:09 +0530, Saswata Banerjee Associates wrote: Hi Everyone, First, I am against the concept of cloning tally. Because tally is a very unsafe software. We refer to it as a Time Bomb. I have explained this in the past on the group, but let me explain again. In tally, you can insert an accounting transaction at any point of time behind in date. It will automatically renumber all vouchers and documents. There is no trail or any indication showing that it has been done. Similarly, you can delete an acccounting transaction at any point of time. Again, no one will be any wiser. In a corporate (or even SME Segment), this is dangerous as the accountant may manipulate the data for his own purpose, causing a loss to the organisation. I have made good money in the past by explaining this to the clients and sold them our services and moved them to alternate software. That is precisely why most SMEs like Tally. Accountants like Tally because they can input data quite fast. Second, I think we should build web-based software. It is easier to run I disagree. Web stuff is far harder to get right than a plain, simple client/server thing. (everyone has broadband connection today), easier to maintain (you do not have to go to the clients office to solve the problem). It is also more popular platform. An added fact is that it works in case of multiple branch scenario and also allows owners to see the data from home. X works for that. Third, with all respects to Kenneth, there are already existing accounting software that is good, but not designed for India. The 2 I like best is CKERP and WebERP. I have used both. Both have some faults and problems which can be solved. The advantage is that they are stable software and already used by people. You will need to add a few modules for taking care of Indian Tax Laws and providing for Indian GAP rules. It will be much faster than starting from scrap. I say we use the backends, but put the frontends on regular applications. X is designed to run over the network, and you don't need to bother about the complexities of web apps. For Windows users, there is NX or VNC. We may even strip down the software to remove things we dont plan to use (eg. CKERP has a small CRM module). and add things they dont have (Fixed Asset Register and automatic depreciation computation). Using this route, with a team of 5 programmers, in 3 months we will be ready to What kind of programmers? Personally, my architecture would look something like this: DB - stored procs for data insertion/modification/reporting/logging - application layer API - GUI frontend. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Chipset and Original Motherboard
On 13/10/06 11:31 +0530, jtd wrote: snip And these wont do (prices, need to run doze, games, 3d accl) for an average user. 3D accel? What do you mean, you have a video card on that server? that requires minimum setup time. FAI, dd, cp. U think there are 25 guys installing manually on 100 machines or what. U plug in 23 of em on a 24 port switch and do FAI. Or kickstart, or any of the other ways in which you replicate over a network. And then bring it up to date with cfengine, bcfg2, or puppet. Many a times dont do that either. Just install on one server en of story. That too. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Chipset and Original Motherboard
On 11/10/06 21:59 +0530, Rony wrote: snip Except for Devdas who is not a follower of GNU, no other supporter of Erm, come again? I follow the GNU philosophy (important). I do not say GNU/Linux (far less important). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Chipset and Original Motherboard
On 14/10/06 07:29 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: On 13-Oct-06, at 6:54 PM, Rony wrote: I am curious to know, how much money did Linus earn for creating the kernel and how much does he earn every year on giving out new kernels? Rough figures will do. roughly, to five decimal accuracy: 0.0 (in bangladeshi takas) I have no clue about actual numbers, but he does have his current employment because of writing the kernel. He got a few shares in a bunch of companies as well, before IPO. That's quite a bit of money. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Re: Linus on Linux and the GPLv3
On 12/10/06 11:38 +0530, Vihan Pandey wrote: To be very precise, there isn't a Free alternative to gcc yet. If the GNU folks will continue with the whole GNU/Linux thing, I might just get bugged enough to write a BSD licensed compiler. Does that mean you would have absolutely no problem at all in exploitative corporates taking your hard work, (sometimes) turning it into crap and making a huge pile of cash on it ? No. I use enough BSD licensed software to know how the BSD community works. Given the popularity of web services, DRM and closed hardware (how many people here use nvidia's drivers?), I don't really the GPLv2 as giving a specific advantage to end users. The one way to get around the requirements for distributing source is not to distribute it at all, but only provide public APIs (or protocols) to allow access to your code. Talking about freedom and practicing it is not just a momentary thing but has to be a continuous and perpetual struggle. If we leave the option for people to take what they want and commercialise it, they will never bother about freedom and the cause is diminished. Please note that I have no issues with commercialising code. Nor does the FSF. Both of us have issues with closing source for the second level of users. The _sole_ reason I would be using the BSD license would be to keep the GNU zealots away. snip Hmm... is it not so that in all GNU projects painstaiking efforts are made to credit every single person who contributed to any project. In fact in the And should I not then give equal credit to every project which has contributed to my Linux system? GNU C manual itself they are about 20 odd pages in the pdf crediting every person individually with the work they did. This includes BSD guys who did the BSD ports. This happens irrespective of what the personal beliefs are(i don't recall seeing a tag near anyone's name stating with GNU or without GNU :-) ) Therefore when credit is given to a community, it is every single individual that has worked who is actually credited. Moreover, and correct me if i'm wrong, but GNU was the first movement to credit every person involved with a software project in a public manner. Saying GNU/Linux deprives the other communities of that credit. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linus on Linux and the GPLv3
On 12/10/06 13:47 +0530, Faraz Shahbazker wrote: On 10/11/06, Devdas Bhagat [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/10/06 20:35 +0530, Faraz Shahbazker wrote: snip toward GNU then it is only fair that you should NOT use any GNU tools to bootstrap your project. Best of luck!!! :-P As RMS put it, it was necessary to use closed source tools to write emacs initially. Touche :-) A pure GNU/Linux system wouldn't be very useful, unless I was to write a lot of software myself. By definition that is exactly what forms an Operating System . The rest are applications. Once again the boundaries may be blurred for YOU becoz the distro packages everything together. Errr, gcc is just another application. What part of userland and kernelspace distinction do you refuse to understand? eg. say I don't need X or apache / (never use KDE anyway) / and I am prepared to use w3(GNU) instead of Firefox. Now with a few small applications which may [not] not fall under any particular large project, I still have a usable system. It may work for you, it doesn't work for me. Try recreating the above scenario without glibc/binutils/coreutils (or any replacement thereof) and see what you get. Note that I've not even Uhm, BSD? confused mentioned gcc since a user may not want to do any programming at all. Linux == kernel, GNU == indispensible(but kernel-less) project [excuse HURD] Pssst. gcc is about the only indispensible component. All the rest are dispensible. You are wrongly equating dispensible with replacable. We are not saying that you cannot replace GNU, but that without GNU or any equivalent replacement there would be no system to use inspite of all other large contributors. And now, since you are using GNU and not some equivalent replacement you should acknowledge as much. Fine, Mozilla/Apache/OpenOffice.org/Trolltech/KDE/WindowMaker/BSD/PostgreSQL/GNU/Linux. And no one would deny them the credit for initiating the Free Software movement. But on my system, there is _no_ first among equals. There is root, and then there are the mortals. There is the kernel, and then there is the userland. If by root you mean Operating System, then see the difference between a kernel and what constitutes an Operating System. root is UID 0. Define Operating system. By Microsoft's definition, a browser and media player are essential parts of an operating system. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linus on Linux and the GPLv3
On 11/10/06 16:11 +0530, Nagarjuna G. wrote: 2006/10/10, Devdas Bhagat [EMAIL PROTECTED]: This is not the case with Linux. GNU tools sit at the same status as other applications. For most people, the GNU tools don't even matter, they run other applications. Most of the userland tools can be replaced with busybox too. Busybox doesn't give you a compiler, libraries. I dont agree that GNU sits with other applications. Other applications don't exist without BSD. They require gcc, but everything else is non GNU. As far as I am concerned, GNU is _one_ component of my system. A lot of other components use the GNU toolchain to exist, but practically, if those applications didn't exist, I might as well not use the computer. So me crediting just GNU would be wrong. IBM/QT/Apache/Artistic/Mozilla/X/BSD/GNU/Linux would be acceptable (off the top of my head, those are the licenses used by software on my system). GNU. *Can you explain how they can exist without GNU?* If this dependency is claimed falsely, I will correct myself. In fact most of the applications, including GNU exist without Linux, because they can depend on other kernels. As I said, they are userland. And if GNU gets credit, everyone else who makes my desktop experience useful gets credit too. I am not. I am reading it specifically as a branding issue, where the FSF is actually losing ground by insisting on the term GNU/Linux. No one part of the userland should claim dominance over the whole. Your perception that GNU is userland is dubious. In order to prove otherwise, you have to explain the above question. Everything that is not kernelspace is userland. This includes libc. As the GNU folks themselves say, Linux by itself is just a kernel. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linus on Linux and the GPLv3
On 11/10/06 17:21 +0530, Nagarjuna G. wrote: 2006/10/11, Devdas Bhagat [EMAIL PROTECTED]: BSD. They require gcc, but everything else is non GNU. As far as I am concerned, GNU is _one_ component of my system. A lot of other components use the GNU toolchain to exist, but practically, if those applications didn't exist, I might as well not use the computer. that is the point. if those application dont exist without GNU, and there is nothing left useful for you on the computer without it, you have proved that GNU is indispensable. However, this is true only if you want to stick to free software. Otherwise GNU is dispensible anyway. To be very precise, there isn't a Free alternative to gcc yet. If the GNU folks will continue with the whole GNU/Linux thing, I might just get bugged enough to write a BSD licensed compiler. So me crediting just GNU would be wrong. IBM/QT/Apache/Artistic/Mozilla/X/BSD/GNU/Linux would be acceptable (off the top of my head, those are the licenses used by software on my system). You are diverting the attention to licenses again. What about all But my whole point is that GNU/Linux is pretty much useless to me. Regardless of how essential gcc is. If the GNU project gets credits, everyone else deserves the same amount of time. snip So, my thesis is, dispensing GNU will also take away your freedom. Dispensing with the GPL? Definitely. Dispensing with the GNU project? Right now, other than the compiler, what else do you need to get a full BSD userland? My thesis is that Linux != GNU/Linux and there are other projects which deserve equal time in the OS name. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linus on Linux and the GPLv3
On 11/10/06 20:35 +0530, Faraz Shahbazker wrote: snip toward GNU then it is only fair that you should NOT use any GNU tools to bootstrap your project. Best of luck!!! :-P As RMS put it, it was necessary to use closed source tools to write emacs initially. But my whole point is that GNU/Linux is pretty much useless to me. Regardless of how essential gcc is. If the GNU project gets credits, everyone else deserves the same amount of time. Maybe it is useless to *YOU* ... that's your personal opinion and your free to have one. Is the GNU/Linux system useless or is the name A pure GNU/Linux system wouldn't be very useful, unless I was to write a lot of software myself. GNU/Linux useless? IMO the name is not supposed to have any utility besides clear and unambiguous denotation. So The name GNU/Linux gives credit to one important entity in userland. My principles require that either all components I consider important be given that credit, or none. Linux == kernel, GNU == indispensible(but kernel-less) project [excuse HURD] Pssst. gcc is about the only indispensible component. All the rest are dispensible. snip development. So can we atleast agree that GNU is the first amongst equals and give it it's rightful place? That would be a good start. And no one would deny them the credit for initiating the Free Software movement. But on my system, there is _no_ first among equals. There is root, and then there are the mortals. There is the kernel, and then there is the userland. Seriously, you would be better off trying to make the world understasnd why the GPL is better than the BSD license than trying to market the GNU foundation with the GNU/Linux thing. It would have been different if Linus had handed over copyright to the FSF, or if the involvement of the FSF had been more. And now, if you will excuse me, I have some code to write. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] [OT] Chipset and Original Motherboard
On 11/10/06 21:59 +0530, Rony wrote: Roshan wrote: To be slightly on topic, have Linux distro users on this list, used motherboads manufactured by HIS, VIA,etc. (Not many have replied to Mr. Rony's question of compatible motherboard) Except for Devdas who is not a follower of GNU, no other supporter of 'freedom' , 'open source', 'gnu' and 'gpl' gave any details of the motherboards they used for their clients. When it comes to some else's s/client/employer/. Said employer requires support contracts and *immediate* response time. Downtime would make headines. fruits of labour, its freedom and open source but when it comes to opening the source code of their own fruits of labour, they clam up. Then you get a lot of advice but not the actual information you are looking for. Quite a few of us don't _own_ companies (yet). I know a few people who do, but again, they make their living by consulting and not by selling hardware. I know that one of them gets clients *only* because his code is GPLed (His clients insist on the code being available and modifiable). Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
Re: [ILUG-BOM] Linus on Linux and the GPLv3
On 11/10/06 21:48 +, Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray wrote: snip But Linus himself uses GCC to build the kernel.. Eh? Why can not Vihan say so? Linus Torvalds said he could not have made Linux without GCC. He does say GCC is used to compile Linux. Linus used GCC because it was the only free (beer) compiler available to him on a x86. Yes, well the point is, to a layman, who is completely new to this world, the word GNU doesn't make any sense. Ok fine. So what makes sense? Linux? The X factor is it, eh? For all the reasoning, Linus Torvalds can be labelled as egoistic, if one went by the anti-FSF lobby. After all Linus named the kernel after himself, while Stallman never named GCC as 'Stallman Compiler Linus didn't name the kernel. He wanted to name it Freenix, the person sponsoring his hosting put it in a directory named linux (For Linus' Unix). Collection', Emacs as 'Stallman Editor', and the Free Software Movement as 'Stallman's Movement', and GNU as 'Stallman is Not Proprietary'. :-) But many GNU people do think Linux sounds cool, so why throw mud at GNU? But honestly, we aren't throwing mud at GNU. We are merely refusing to say GNU/Linux because it makes no sense to us. Devdas Bhagat -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
