[Glastonbury] meetings

[tim hall]

Last Tuesday 21 December 2004 11:50, Andrew M.A. Cater was like:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 11:09:10AM +0000, Greg Browne wrote:
> > Tim,
> > I'd be interested in those - plus how about a couple or so for newbies -
> > 1. discussion of distros, pros and cons (or have we had enough of that),
>
> What would be more interesting would be an install fest - everyone has
> to install a different distribution from the one they're used to on a
> spare machine and configure it.  That would be an interesting comparison
> - it's also a fairly good demo of how alike most distributions are once
> you get away from ready-made GUI tools :) It might be worth running
> through the installs for SuSE Personal / Debian / Mandrake / Fedora
> anyway.

Good plan, we could discuss the pros and cons while we're doing it. I'll bring 
the pillows with appropriate designer distro logo cases and I'm sure we can 
debate the matter in an orderly and adult manner. ;-]

I'll bring Robert Jonssen's 'KDEvsGNOME' 
http://spamatica.se/music/spamatica/default/spamatica_-_kde_vs_gnome_0.99c.ogg 
to use as a soundtrack.

> > 2. package and hardware installation - overcoming common difficulties,
>
> What package installation problems - dependency problems are about the
> only thing I find these days?  Hardware - with the possible exception
> of wireless cards and the most up to date graphics cards - is more or
> less straightforward at least as far as I find it recently.

APT-HOWTO

> > 3. simple networks and common network problems
>
> Hard to do: a lot of people just plug in an ADSL router and pray hard.
> If you want an in-depth tutorial, I'm sure Martin or I could oblige
> on debugging with traceroute / dig / nslookup and how to use nmap to
> sort out which ports are open on localhost :)

Actually this could be quite cool. ;-)

> > or maybe just an introduction as to how to find the right 'how toos'
>
> www.tldp.org. Under Debian/Kanotix, apt-get install doc-linux-text /
> doc-linux-html and go to /usr/share/doc. You may also want to install
> dwww if you have Apache on the machine.
>
> > Is anyone able to talk on, or does anyone want to hear about:
> > 1. LINUX, a desktop replacement or desktop partner for 2005?

Er, not really. 

> Substitue 1998 for 2005 and you're about right :)
>
> > 2. Top 3 favourite software maintenance tools and essential maintenance
>
> Define maintenance - do you mean package installation - apt-get, dpkg,
> dselect - or system config file/log maintenance and inspection - vi/less,
> grep, locate - or real software building - make, autoconf, automake ??

Autotools, real software building. Yes please!

> > 3. Mail servers, how to set up a simple mail server for home/SOHO use
> > with spam and anti-virus tools
>
> apt-get install postfix, apt-get install clamav - should get you started
>
> :)
> :
> > It would be nice to think that I'll have learned enough by mid 2005,
> > to introduce one of the topics, if wanted

:-)

cheers

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk