[Powys] Intro, modems and hard disks

[Richard Smedley]

On Tuesday 05 December 2006 15:09, Dave Briggs wrote:
> Just joined the LUG as I have recently moved to Llansantffraid. Not
> too big a move as I was in Shropshire recently.

Hello Dave,

I recently joined too, as I spend a fair bit of time in Montgomeryshire,
and in Salop.
This is a quiet list, isn't it?

> I have been playing about with linux distros on and off for a few
> years, mainly Mandriva/drake and Ubuntu. Couple of weekends ago I
> installed the latest Ubuntu on my main desktop machine, dual booting
> with Windows for now, and am looking to move permamently away from
> Windows in the near future.

Ubuntu does a lot of things very well. For an easy life, I have 
installed it onto the desktops of most of my clients :-)

> Main interests are web based, specifically around 'social media',
> blogs, wikis and that sort of thing; as well as the web based office
> and all the web2.0 stuff that's floating around.

It's been years since I had time to make a blog entry - but I am spending
a fair bit of time with wikis atm, though I'm not terribly fond of any of
them :-/

> Ubuntu installed like a dream, only I don't have web access at the
> moment as I am waiting for Pipex to connect me up. I'd like to know if
> anyone has any recommendations for an ethernet modem so I can get
> online in Ubuntu as soon as the phone line is sorted.

Any ethernet modem should work with any Unix desktop. However
Ubuntu runs IPv6 by default, and doesn't like routers with cheap,
old firmware that reject its IPv6 advances :-(
If you should end up with such an old clunker, Ubuntu is easily
persuaded back to IPv4.

> Second thing is that I would like to get a second (external) hard
> drive, probably USB connected, to store media like audio, video and
> photos on. Again, does anyone have a recommendation, and also will I
> need to format it in Ubuntu, or will it work out of the box?

Should be fine out of the box - but partitioning and formatting will
also be straightforward. Just shout up here if you have a problem.

You may also be interested in getting an NSLU-2 to put your 
USB drive on the network and stream its content :-)

Pob hwyl,

 - Richard

-- 
Richard Smedley,                                    richard at sc.lug.org.uk
Sustainable IT Consultant
http://m6-it.org/           ``Software Freedom for the Voluntary Sector''