Club Linux Coffs Harbour

Maybe some of you use Twitter to micro-blog all that overflowing brain blather. Maybe you don't. Either way I have a suggestion, go create an account on our very own local Microblog. We can chat to each other or just share info about stuff that we want to share. It'll be fun.

If you are still not convinced here are some benefits:

• Can easily set it to auto-forward to your Twitter or Facebook account
• It is Open and Free
• It is managed by us, not some billionaires in North America
• It has a bunch of bananas on it

Click the bunch of bananas and join in the conversation.

Hi,

I just wanted to introduce myself as I am staying in Coffs for a few weeks over Christmas and will be moving here later in the year when my daughter has finished vocal cord surgery at Sydney Children's Hospital.

I was actually just mucking around with a USB DVB-T twin tuner I bought ages ago, which I had just hooked onto my MSI Wind netbook to try and was happy when I fired up Kaffeine, a KDE video viewer that has good support for PC TV, and wanted a channel list to get it started.

Hi everyone.  After reading a bunch of doc over the last couple of weeks in my holiday to give myself a good understanding of how this OS works, as of this morning, I seem to have joined the ranks of GNU/Linux users.  It wasn't quite what I expected; it was definitely more awesome.

I won't be able to make it to this meeting, but please come along regardless (or perhaps because of my absence). There will be lots to discuss; to quote at length from Robert Thorsby's reminder email:

 In anticipation of delays in downloading the latest *buntu (9.04 Jaunty Jackalope) which will be released tomorrow (Friday) perhaps someone who has managed to download a copy might bring along a CD or DVD with whichever version they downloaded. I suspect that Ubuntu and Kubuntu will be popular requests at the meeting.

Also, although I haven't checked, I suspect that Mandriva will be releasing shortly (or may have released recently) their latest upgrade. Mandriva's six-monthly release cycle always seems to coincide roughly with Ubuntu's.

For those into lightweight-but-fully-featured window managers Xfce has just released its latest version, and it looks impressive. Note that Xfce manages "windows" not "Windows", the latter is only capable of being properly managed by low-level formatting.

On the kernel side, the new file system is progressing well, with bugs being squashed rapidly. I wonder when the major distros will decide that the new system is production ready and make the transition from their current "interim" file systems to the new one.

On a closing note, what will be the final effect on FLOSS of Oracle's purchase of Sun? Oracle has always been a supporter of a "free" version of it's massively-priced database and it has made many contributions to the kernel. But there are many people who have been openly sceptical of Oracle's grasp of the concept of "Free Software". Sun, of course, as originally contemptuous of FLOSS generally, and Linux particularly. There are many who say that Sun's recent epiphany was driven by its allet not its heart.

Anyway, there will be plenty to discuss on Sunday.

May the Source be with You,

A while ago we got this query via the contact form on the site, and as it's a question so often asked, I think it's worth putting the answer somewhere Google can see it.

I have loaded Ubuntu 8.04 and all is well except when I download other programs eg Banshee I have no idea how to install it or any other app. This is generally a very easy task in windows.

Those of you who have used GNU/Linux for a while are now doubtless spraying the screen with bikkie crumbs as you shout "It's EASIER than in Windows!!!", but there are good reasons why a new Ubuntu user wouldn't know that.

For those that missed Sundays meet-up here is a brief synopsis of of our nerdly chatterings;

• Mike Stanton was kind enough to show us around his expansive Customer Relations Manager Application, "DAM Suite CRM" which he has developed using PHP and MySQL. It is great to see a local developer using open source technology so effectively.
• We discussed, amongst other stuff:
  • the Australian Governments' disturbing plans for filtering the Internet. Now may well be a good time to join the EFA
  • The amazingly excellent Stellarium - A planetarium on your computer. I was very impressed with the slick interface and endless tweakabilty... (is that a real word?).
  • Again with the tweaking with gedit and nano two of my favourite text editors. Unlike Mike, my brain cannot handle vi.
  • Matthew kindly showed us a few holiday snaps which reminded me of an excellent hack I recently discovered for Canon Digital Cameras. CHDK can be installed on top of the existing camera firmware to unlock heaps of hidden functions.

It is a few years now that David Chapman and I talked about trying a Linux Club in Coffs Harbour.

The original plan was to have a club so that we could encourage more and more people to the many advantages of Linux operating systems.

 With David's generosity we did set up a once a month, Sunday afternoon session at his shop in Ocean Parade Coffs and on occasion we did have a good and interested attendance. 

First of all, a big HELLO to all of you at Club Linux! It's great to still receive the monthly meeting notices and get and idea of what you're up to, and if I'm ever back over that way, like a bad smell I'm sure to turn up again. :)

It's been a while, I know, but you see I've been busy...

I've always been annoyed by slow websites, and even more annoyed by full page refreshes in the browser just to get something you didn't really want to see anyway. So, out with the AJAX!

A bit over a year ago now, I started a project to get my openPC Labs website improved before updating it. I'm afraid it's still not updated because in the process things developed into something much bigger.

I wanted to use AJAX techniques for the site to get the responsiveness I yearned for. I also wanted to fix up the navigation so that the location bar, history and bookmarks would work.

At the time, there was very little support for browser navigation in AJAX. I stumbled on one system called Really Simple History. It was open source, but a bit buggy and a bit too slow for me, I just didn't feel comfortable with the way it was done.

So I started to roll my own..... BIG mistake.... just over a year later I might be able to start updating openPC Labs!

To cut a long story short, Xanjax and xanjax.org were born.

Hi all,

I'm on the chlug mailing list, and I don't mind staying on it for the chance there might be some interesting topics come up.... However, my spam filters have started picking up the spam on the list at such a level that mails are now being bounced at SMTP time. So now the list has informed me I'm being banned due to the excessive bounces. 

Is there any chance of better spam handling on the list? Or otherwise ignoring bounces (I think the bounces would have some spam assassin headers to hint at why they are being bounced).

Yes, That quick!  My previous backyard ISP, a local unit of odd fellows that had no idea what service meant, shut me down on the 6 july.  I rang Optus and fiddled around with them until they finally stuffed everythig up causing me to cancel my request.

Optus sent me a letter which I recieved on 27 July, it was post marked 26 July and the letter was dated the 24 July The letter stated, amongst other things, that if there were any changes to my request for boradband to contact them prior to the 24 July.  Hmmmm!