[Nottingham] [Social] *TODAY* 8:30pm Thursday 11/02/2021: *Leaping into Spring* !

[Martin]

Folks,

>> *NLUG is Socially Online* !

>> I've various fun stories to tell of my Linux 'Spring Clean'! :-P
> 
> Including quite a momentous change after nearly a quarter century ;-)
> 
> Portentous even??... ;-) ;-)

That was a good do as always :-)


Thanks also for some good comments for my 'rework' of all my 'IT':

So, after playing the Marketing game of hanging on the telephone for 
over an hour every three months for the sake of 'haggling' over what 
service and what costs I can enjoy, I think I've ridden the terrestrial 
services far enough to now instead move over to the new physical freedom 
of...

(4G LTE / 5G) Mobile Broadband!

There is also StarLink that can now be pre-ordered for the UK:
https://www.starlink.com/

(Is OneWeb the UK Gov's answer to bypassing OffCom?...)

For my modest use, I can easily go with the present '4G/5G' systems.

Stories of very silly Marketing can be told over a few beers once we've 
evolved beyond COVID ;-)

Again, thanks for good comment for making the swap.


And so while I'm making a few changes, I'm also upgrading my long old 
AMD x6 core '2008 vintage' Gentoo system for a little something 'bigger' 
and more recent ;-) To run Gentoo again ofcourse :-)

The change there is forced by the antique BIOS failing to make a boot 
disk visible when I tried to add a new ('2020 vintage') SSD...

Unfortunately, adding to the updates/upgrades, I also need to add some 
new batteries for my old UPS.


One aspect I was reminded of is that I have the Gentoo system custom 
compiled for the AMD... To move systems, a bit of a recompile is needed. 
However, due to the wonders of x86_64 backwards compatibility, and for 
upgrading to another AMD, I can gradually recompile as new updates roll in.

Just-to-be-sure just in case, I'll be compiling a 'general' kernel until 
I can check exactly what is needed for the new hardware. Which is where 
I was reminded of just what a difference a few kernel/firmware config 
options can make:

617M	/lib/firmware/
1.9G	/lib/modules/

vs

2.3M	/lib/firmware/
6.5M	/lib/modules/

Phew! Compiles faster also.



Further links from the night:

How to Drink
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCioZY1p0bZ4Xt-yodw8_cBQ

Tasting History
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsaGKqPZnGp_7N80hcHySGQ

The Tim Traveller
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2LVhJH_9cT2XKp0VAfsKOQ


... design flaw of ... dependency confusion...
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/researcher-hacks-over-35-tech-firms-in-novel-supply-chain-attack/


COVID-19 vaccine doses administered per 100 people - UK
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccination-doses-per-capita?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=England~IRL~Northern%20Ireland~Scotland~Wales&region=World

Sign up for Coronavirus vaccine research
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/research/coronavirus-vaccine-research/


https://www.speedguide.net/analyzer.php


Until the next meet! :-)

Enjoy,
Martin