[HLUG] Gee its quiet here these days !!

[Julian Robbins]

Hi

Happy new Year to all Herefordshire LUG Members

Since its been quiet recently, I thought I'd post a few Linux good and 
bad issues I've been having in case this will help others or myself.

I bought a little Freecom USB Freeview digital receiver - amazing it 
works being so small! Unfortunately, even when running Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 
and supposedly being supported, it wasn't quite. Actually, this is where 
the fun began. Me thinking well Edgy is only two months old, why doesn't 
it work, when the drivers from linuxtv.org say it should ? In the end, I 
found that there were newer drivers than Edgy and compiling new driver 
modules, was actually really easy - a 10 minute process and very 
straightforward.

So I can now watch Freeview on my PC, all I have to do is get MythTV 
setup properly, and get a decent aerial feed to it, as the reception is 
fairly poor in Leominster for DTV (it works, but you need a high 
position or a medium /high gain well sited antenna).

Next. My birthday was today ;-) and I got a nice LG1900R Ring LCD 
Monitor to replace my ageing 17" Iiyama CRT monitor which had provided 
me with many many years of good service, but was just looking a little 
tired.

I'm pleased with the new screen, but one problem :- Like a few new TFT 
monitors, it doesn't actually have physical buttons to change 
brightness, contrast etc. You have to install a Windows app it do this. 
Great but what about Linux? Well I tried installing the Windows 
ForteManager software with Wine ( which worked), and ran the program - 
and as expected didn't get any further ...

Little on the web about this, apart from a Brazilian Forum post on same 
issue with same monitor. 
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://www.forumpcs.com.br/viewtopic.php%3Ft%3D194597%26start%3D0&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dfortemanager%2Blinux%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGGL,GGGL:2006-45,GGGL:en

Basically after being lambasted for buying a TFT, someone mentioned to 
him that there is a linux app that will work with these protocols to 
control the screen characteristics, i.e. SoftMCCS .

I haven't looked thru this yet, but hope it'll work.

Anyone who can offer any advice on this -please email. Interestingly, 
the Windows software also allows you to control the screen via SNMP and 
other network means, which in theory could allow a virus to control your 
monitor, ie turn contrast up or down or turn it off I guess ..

Scary....

So if buying a new monitor - check if it has real buttons first! I am 
happy with mine anyway, and was aware of this ....

Cheers

Julian