[IOML] ping

[Dylan Smith]

On 15 Jan 2005, at 15:43, Richard Smedley wrote:

> It's been a good six months since a non-UCE mail went through
> this list :-(
>
> Is anyone here interested in talking about Free Software? :-)

Well, I did a defenestration on a machine on the last day of last year 
(removal of Windows) to make an OpenBSD 3.6 server system and a 
desolification (removal of Solaris) on a sparc64 system moving it to 
OpenBSD 3.6. I'm probably the only person in the island who has a 
sparc64 machine as a router (using the Manx Telecom provided Alcatel 
USB speed touch no less - I wonder how many other sparc64 machines have 
been used with one of them!) That USB ADSL modem is supported under 
Linux BTW. I think the kernel-mode driver is part of the 2.6 kernel 
series now. Trouble is most distros are aimed towards PPPoE it seems, 
but it's not hard to configure it for PPPoA.
Well, the machine does a bit more than just routing, but it was There 
waiting to have something done with it.

Of course this is the Linux user group - but we should also be 
embracing other Free operating systems - the 'cross pollination' from 
other open source systems is what makes OSS so strong. I've been 
increasingly impressed by the quality of OpenBSD for instance as an 
Internet server system and it works excellently alongside Linux 
systems. What really shines about OpenBSD is 'pf' (the firewall) which 
is superb, and gets better with each OpenBSD release.

How many people on the LUG are running on open source only at home or 
at work, or just Windows-free? I have no Windows systems at home (but I 
must admit to some proprietary software - I have an Apple PowerBook and 
I love OS X - which is *BSD at its core of course. Best laptop I've 
ever used).

Has anyone used Xen yet for virtualisation? I'm using User Mode Linux 
quite extensively...wondering if anyone has tried Xen yet.