[SLUG] e-commerce software/ supplier recommendations ?
Hi, an association I am associated with has recently purchased a 5-year e-commerce hosting account with Melbourne-IT. They provide (by way of referral) an $1800 basic e-commerce website. What recommendations are there for providors of such a site - we need it in the next week (or two max), initially to sell only one product (a book), and a few extras over the next couple of months. A CBA merchant account is in-process, so a gateway inteface to CBA will be needed. We would also like to set up as a B-pay merchant. If anyone has any experience in these regards, your hints and tips will be appreciated. There are lots of follow-on things we are desiring, which will follow on. This is all for an Australian human rights association. I'm subscribed to slug, but can't change my from address with Google, and I'm using someone else's Windows machine, so I don't have the luxury of Mutt. Apologies. Thanks in advance Zenaan -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Wireless Broadband for Linux
Dear SLUG, I was wondering if the SLUG knew of any ISPs that support the use of a wireless broadband service for Linux, or if there were any drivers out there for the various USB, PCMCIA and ExpressCard devices for the wireless broadband services. Whether there is support out there (for GNU/Linux) or not as yet, can anyone recommend a wireless broadband plan? I have a notebook, and would perfer to use an ExpressCard device (it has such a slot). I commute to Sydney daily, and live on the Central Coast. I update my cricket club website, so I'd like to use the time on the train to do this. Coverage is sketchy on the 'Coast with only Telstra giving a definite yes to coverage here, though some people on forums have commented they have detected 3G signals in my area on networks such as Vodafone and Optus. Regards, Bryce Robilliard -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Wireless Broadband for Linux
Bryce Robilliard wrote: I was wondering if the SLUG knew of any ISPs that support the use of a wireless broadband service for Linux, or if there were any drivers out there for the various USB, PCMCIA and ExpressCard devices for the wireless broadband services. Most of it works. In my day job, we have used : - The about to be terminated Telstra EVDO network. - The current Telstra NextG network. - Unwired. - A couple of other local services whose names I forget. - A couple of services in the US. For the second one, I blogged about getting it running here: http://www.mega-nerd.com/erikd/Blog/Tech/telstra_nextg.html Whether there is support out there (for GNU/Linux) or not as yet, can Yes. After the initial pain of setting it up for the first time with zero information form the service providers, it usually works better on Linux than it does on windows. All of the devices I have seen are either USB or PCMCIA. With either of these options, they usually show up as a USB serial port and pppd talks to them quite happily. The difficulty is figuring out the negotiation sequence for the carrier (each one seems to be slightly different). anyone recommend a wireless broadband plan? Sorry, can't hel there. I've never even *seen* any of the billing for these things, that all goes directly to accounts :-). I update my cricket club website, so I'd like to use the time on the train to do this. Do you really need to be online to do updates? Can't you tweak and review on a local test version on a local web server (ie local to your laptop) and then just push to the live server when you're happy with it and have a net connection? Cheers, Erik -- - Erik de Castro Lopo - Hey, I've re-dorkulated. -- Prof. Frink (The Simpsons) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Software Freedom Day: official announcement for Sydney
SYDNEY CELEBRATES SOFTWARE FREEDOM, THIS SUNDAY For the second time running, The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has been selected to form the centrepiece of Software Freedom Day in Sydney. Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this annual celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in education, in government, at home, and in business - in short, everywhere! Have you ever had your computer software crash, lose data or get a virus? Imagine if after only a few years that the thesis that you worked on for ages was no longer readable, or that your precious home movies were no longer watchable. If you complain to the software company, they try to talk you into spending yet more money on an 'upgrade', which only turns out to be slower and buggier than the previous version. Ever bought a new music player, only to find that it refuses to play the music that worked just fine on your old player? Unfortunately, most people are living in this world today. Software Freedom Day exists to show the general public that there is a way out of this vicious cycle. Through the use of free software, you regain control over your computer and your data. Every person has the freedom to participate in and use free software, whether it be on a totally free operating system like Linux or on a non-free platform like Windows or Mac OS. This Sunday, the Sydney FOSS community will demonstrate how easy it is to install and use free software to achieve a variety of tasks. Our activities shall gravitate around two venues in UNSW: * At the computer fair in the Roundhouse (10am-3pm), we will be demonstrating FOSS technologies to vendors and visitors. * In Law Room 203 (8am-5pm), we will be hosting a series of talks and tutorials. We will also have people roaming around campus spreading the news. We will be happy to answer any questions that you may have pertaining to FOSS. We will have CDs and other items to hand out, to get you started. If you bring (or buy at the fair) a USB drive, we can transfer free software onto it for you. If you're buying hardware at the fair, we can help you to get it running with FOSS. If you're a student, or just plain curious, we can show you how you can maximise the potential of your computer, all at no cost to you. Unlike with non-free software, FOSS is typified by extensive community networks that are able to provide detailed support should you need help. Examples include the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG), which hosts e-mail lists, monthly meetings, and other events for people of all skill levels. With the financial support of IT market leaders like IBM, HP, Dell, Intel and Google, as well as countless governmental bodies and companies in other industries, FOSS is growing from strength to strength at a phenomenal rate. If you have any further questions, please see our list of resources below. Otherwise, come and see us on Sunday, and we'll show you in person! If you'd like to get involved as a volunteer, read our plans for the day (linked below). RESOURCES To view our plans for the day, see http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/au/Sydney For more information on the meaning of Software Freedom Day, see http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/about For more information on FOSS, see http://www.linux.org.au/linux pgp4rJ9KqJLms.pgp Description: PGP signature -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Audio skipping on Ubuntu kernels
Just a quick follow-up on this.
I discovered last night that the reason that switching to 'performance'
made the problem go away is *not* that more CPU power was available, it
was that the CPU frequency no longer changed. My correlation of 'more
CPU usage == music skipping' was in fact basing my diagnosis on a
symptom. In fact, it's more like more CPU usage == clock speed changes
== music skipping. It occasionally skips still, but it's nowhere near
as bad as it used to be.
So, for now, I've set it to use 'powersave', which is a hack, but a
manageable one.
Other discoveries last night:
- If you disable the fans, the BIOS will turn them on if it really needs
to (but don't blame me if *your* laptop explodes). For some reason,
Ubuntu sets up my computer to always spin the fans slowly rather than
turn them off, so this is preferable for me (it's quieter, and it has
longer battery life).
- Despite DMA being turned on on the hard-disk, there were heaps of
other things that were not. Notably, whilst DMA transfers were enabled,
the drive was programmed to use PIO mode (I actually didn't know that
went as deep as the driver). My laptop is a lot happier with these lines
in my /etc/hdparm.conf file:
/dev/hda {
mult_sect_io = 16
write_cache = off
dma = on
read_ahead_sect = 3072
lookahead = on
io32_support = 1
spindown_time = 6
interrupt_unmask = on
write_cache = on
transfer_mode = 34
}
(again, be careful setting those. The wrong value for transfer_mode will
freeze your computer; it was however, the one that made DMA transfers
worthwhile). The read_ahead value is something I'm experimenting with.
It is my hope that using OS read-ahead will mean that the disk spins
down a bit more.
- Adding 'noatime' to the options in fstab is a 100% awesome thing to do
on a laptop.
- Even though with the new drivers my GPU is quite capable of doing
'Desktop Effects', it makes the GPU chip seriously hot on this machine.
If you're on an older laptop (mine's about 2 years old), this might be a
good thing to do.
HTH someone.
James.
On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 11:04 +1000, James Gregory wrote:
On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 09:44 +1000, Scott Ragen wrote:
James Gregory [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 01/08/2007 04:56:26 PM:
So that does substantially help matters -- I have to try pretty hard to
make it skip in that situation. It unfortunately also chews through
battery life and makes the fan scream like some kind of gently blowing
banshee. Needing 1.7GHz of processing power to download email and play
music seems a bit overkill.
But ok, it may be *switching* performance levels that is the problem
(since that will occur when my mail client wakes up and does stuff). If
that is the case, what kind of things could I do? I've previously tried
re-nicing rhythmbox and esd to -19 and it seemed to have no measurable
effect.
Which driver are you using for the cpufreq?
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver
It's set to 'centrino' atm.
If your using the generic acpi, try the driver specific for your
cpu/chipset. If not, try using acpi-cpufreq.
Is this more complicated than echoing the appropriate string into that
file? I get the following:
# echo acpi-cpufreq /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver
bash: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_driver: Permission denied
And nothing in 'dmesg' telling me what happened.
I did make a little bit of progress on this yesterday. I found that if I
use the 'conservative' frequency scaler, and renice my various courier
processes (I use courier-imap for mail) to 19, it's substantially
better. Still far from flawless, but only a stone's throw from
tolerable. I might try configuring Evolution to talk directly to the
Maildir and see what happens.
Thanks for the pointers.
James.
--
James Gregory -- http://codelore.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
James Gregory -- http://codelore.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Suspenseful laptops
Can anyone recommend a laptop that is small (11.1 - 13.3 inches), reasonably fast, and can do suspend (both to RAM and disk) easily? Oh, and that I can buy now; old models aren't so interesting to me. Ubuntu is my OS of preference, but if it makes a difference, I'd consider switching to something else. Ta, James. -- James Gregory -- http://codelore.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Wireless Broadband for Linux
On Wed, 12 Sep 2007, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: Bryce Robilliard wrote: I was wondering if the SLUG knew of any ISPs that support the use of a wireless broadband service for Linux, or if there were any drivers out there for the various USB, PCMCIA and ExpressCard devices for the wireless broadband services. Most of it works. In my day job, we have used : - The about to be terminated Telstra EVDO network. - The current Telstra NextG network. - Unwired. - A couple of other local services whose names I forget. - A couple of services in the US. I would recommend 3's HSPDA service. There are a few SLUG people who use this service including myself. They have a really good offer at the moment $29 for 1GB per month or $49 for 2GB.. I think they are giving the USB modem away free as well with a 24month contract. Very competative with wired ADSL service with better ping times, download speeds and download quota with $29 plan. I easily get 2Mbit/s downloads and sometimes even quicker. 100 ms ping times to my home ADSL2+ account and they have good coverage within capital cities. Works a treat with linux. Regards -- Joseph Goncalves mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 66D6 71CF 87F9 6B17 6824 C692 9FF0 1DAF 7DAE E661 -- Do you know about being with somebody? Wanting to be? If I had the whole universe, I'd give it to you, Janice. When I see you, I feel like I'm hungry all over. Do you know how that feels? -- Charlie Evans, Charlie X, stardate 1535.8 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Suspenseful laptops
quote who=James Gregory Can anyone recommend a laptop that is small (11.1 - 13.3 inches), reasonably fast, and can do suspend (both to RAM and disk) easily? Oh, and that I can buy now; old models aren't so interesting to me. Ubuntu is my OS of preference, but if it makes a difference, I'd consider switching to something else. I'm very happy with the Dell D420, which has been updated to Core 2 Duo with the newer Dell D430. Robert Collins has one of these, so he can tell you how sweet it is. :-) Mine works really nicely, with Intel top-to-bottom. The Dell M1330 is also pretty intriguing -- backlight and SSD storage! It is 13, slightly bigger than the D430. - Jeff -- GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008 It's my head, Schwartz - it's my head! - John Malkovich -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Suspenseful laptops
On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 12:30 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote: quote who=James Gregory Can anyone recommend a laptop that is small (11.1 - 13.3 inches), reasonably fast, and can do suspend (both to RAM and disk) easily? Oh, and that I can buy now; old models aren't so interesting to me. Ubuntu is my OS of preference, but if it makes a difference, I'd consider switching to something else. I'm very happy with the Dell D420, which has been updated to Core 2 Duo with the newer Dell D430. Robert Collins has one of these, so he can tell you how sweet it is. :-) Mine works really nicely, with Intel top-to-bottom. Neat. Thanks dude. Looks a little slow though -- 1.2 GHz. Do you find it so? The Dell M1330 is also pretty intriguing -- backlight and SSD storage! It is 13, slightly bigger than the D430. Yeah, that does look interesting, but it seems a bit weird having a wedge-shaped laptop. Still a contender though. This little one from Sony: http://tinyurl.com/26fu4d would be a good option if I decide I can deal with the slow-clocked chip. The battery life claims are pretty amazing. Has anyone used one of those with Ubuntu? James. -- James Gregory -- http://codelore.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Suspenseful laptops
On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 13:46 +1000, James Gregory wrote: I'm very happy with the Dell D420, which has been updated to Core 2 Duo with the newer Dell D430. Robert Collins has one of these, so he can tell you how sweet it is. :-) Mine works really nicely, with Intel top-to-bottom. Neat. Thanks dude. Looks a little slow though -- 1.2 GHz. Do you find it so? Slow is relative. Its a dual core 64-bit machine with 2G of ram. Frankly it goes like a rocket. 'tar xzf ../mozilla.tar.gz . ' in a fresh mozilla tree (550MB of data) takes 33 seconds. (clearly thats single cpu , and benchmarks suck - but there you go). -Rob -- GPG key available at: http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Suspenseful laptops
quote who=James Gregory Neat. Thanks dude. Looks a little slow though -- 1.2 GHz. Do you find it so? Not really, it was the fastest machine in the house until I replaced the TV and server with a very sexy Core 2 Duo box with gobs of RAM and fast disks. That's an unfair comparison for a laptop though. ;-) Rob's D430 is smokin' -- a very nice update. - Jeff -- GNOME Boston Summit 2007http://live.gnome.org/Boston2007 make: *** No rule to make target `whoopee'. Stop. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Suspenseful laptops
I find my Apple Macbook really excellent. As far as I can tell, most of the hardware issues have been fixed in Gutsy. (wifi driver needs to be installed separately.) ~James On 9/13/07, James Gregory [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can anyone recommend a laptop that is small (11.1 - 13.3 inches), reasonably fast, and can do suspend (both to RAM and disk) easily? Oh, and that I can buy now; old models aren't so interesting to me. Ubuntu is my OS of preference, but if it makes a difference, I'd consider switching to something else. Ta, James. -- James Gregory -- http://codelore.com -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
