Re: [SLUG] Quick one on a Toshiba laptop.
On 29/09/15 17:23, William Bennett wrote: The function keys on my Toshiba Satellite A660 are rather worn ... Here is a high resolution of the Toshiba Satellite A660 keyboard: http://www.plusrepair.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/k000110480-frente-traz.jpg If you need a new keyboard, it is part number: nsk-tn00p I found this with two web searches: First for the keyboard image: https://www.google.com.au/search?newwindow=1&safe=active&biw=1280&bih=599&tbs=isz%3Alt%2Cislt%3A4mp&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=%22Toshiba+Satellite+A660%22+keyboard&oq=%22Toshiba+Satellite+A660%22+keyboard Then to confirm the part number, in the image: https://www.google.com.au/search?newwindow=1&safe=active&biw=1280&bih=599&q=Toshiba+nsk-tn00p&oq=Toshiba+nsk-tn00p -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Website
On 21/09/15 12:00, James Gray wrote: ... give ye olde web page a shot in the arm? ... Here is my attempt to remove the bits from the Slug website which don't work and put in simple links to the bits which do work. The result is not pretty, but at least it should work: --- Sydney Linux User Group Sydney Linux User Group The Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG) is a community of passionate freedom and technology lovers in Sydney, Australia. Join the http://www.meetup.com/Sydney-Linux-User-Group/";>Slug Meetup for details of the next event, to be a sponsor, or offer a short lightning talk, or a longer presentation. Slug meets at 6pm on the last Friday, most months, at http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=+48+Pirrama+Road%2C+Pyrmont%2C+au";> Google Sydney. We are one of the largest and most active of http://linux.org.au/usergroups";>Australia's users groups for the Linux free and open-source computer operating system, with a diverse membership of users, developers, sysadmins, and advocates. Also: https://www.youtube.com/user/sydneylinuxusergroup";>Videos of Slug Events https://twitter.com/slugupdates";>@slugupdates and https://twitter.com/hashtag/sydlug?src=hash";>#sydlug on Twitter mailto:slug-requ...@slug.org.au?subject=subscribe";>Join to Slug Email List ----------- -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Website
On 09/09/15 23:12, Heracles wrote: ... SLUG Site, now I cant get past the front page ... On the Slug home page I see a row of menu items across the top: "Home | Events | Archives | Mailing Lists | Get the code!": http://www.slug.org.au/ Here is what happens when I select them: * Home: takes me to the same page (as expected). * Events: displays the text "SLUG Events", with a yellow rectangle below it, but no actual events. * Archives: displays the text "Welcome to nginx!" but no archives * Mailing List: displays "Welcome to nginx!" but no mailing lists. * Get the code!: takes me to GitHub with a repository of Slug stuff, but why? Below these menu items it says "Sydney Linux User Group" and there is a paragraph describing the group (which makes sense). Then below that it says "#sydlug @slugupdates both Loading tweets..." which does not make much sense. I assume these are the hastag, twitter address and a list of recent Tweets is then supposed to appear (but thankfully does not: who would want this?). Next to that is "Previously at SLUG (more on YouTube) Enabled HTML5 Video!" with a video window underneath. I have video turned off by default so thankfully nothing plays (why would I want it to?). Below that is "Attend the next meeting, Sponsor An event or SLUG as a whole, Give a talk Educate your fellows". Here is what I get when selecting each: * ATTEND: "Traceback (most recent call last): File "/base/data/home/runtimes/python/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/_webapp25.py", line 715, in __call__ handler.get(*groups) File "/base/data/home/apps/s~sydney-linux-user-group-hr/8.353599326443764872/events.py", line 26, in get self.redirect(event_lists.get_next_event().get_url()) AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_url'" * SPONSOR: Creates an email with the address "commit...@slug.org.au&subject=Sponsoring SLUG". I assume "Sponsoring SLUG" is supposed to be in the subject line, but is not. * GIVE A TALK: Opens a window asking for my Open Id to log into the Slug website, but why? I suggest: 1. Replace the video and the twitter feed windows with hypertext links. 2. Delete "Get the code!" 3. Get the other menu options to work. ps: I am using Firefox 40.0.3 for Linux. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] How to deal with Hacker Activity ?
On 02/06/15 13:57, David Lyon wrote: ... steps can be taken to minimise hacking problems. I used to run my own Moodle server until I found Viagra ads on it. I decided that I did not have the time needed to keep the server secure and now leave it to specialists to do. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] ubuntu unity slow
On 27/10/14 08:02, Ashley Maher wrote: ... running Unity Desktop. ... Well, there's your problem! As they say on Mythbusters. ;-) Have you tried it with MATE? http://www.webupd8.org/2014/10/ubuntu-mate-sees-its-first-release-1410.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Low Cost Linux Laptop for Learning
I bought a $300 11.6" laptop and found Linux Mint and a $50 mSATA 64GB drive improved it: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2014/10/low-cost-linux-laptop-for-learning.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Question on Ubuntu.
On 27/07/14 19:50, William Bennett wrote: ... problem associated with the BCM 4313 802 Wireless ... I had problems with the BCM 4313 driver for my HP laptop from day one. I tried assorted Linux releases. Eventually I ended up installing the Broadcom driver manually in Mint Linux, which worked (but still not perfectly). See: * Driver: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php * Discussion: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1889170 ps: I will be in Vancouver, 22 to 25 August for a computer education conference and have volunteered to speak at VanLUG. Anyone every been to one of their meetings?: http://www.meetup.com/VanLUG-BC/ -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Online Linux Course from Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is offering the course "Introduction to Linux" (LFS101x) starting 3rd Quarter 2014: https://www.edx.org/course/linuxfoundationx/linuxfoundationx-lfs101x-introduction-1621 This is through the edX Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) consortium. The course is free to "Audit", or $US250 with a Certificate of Achievement. ps: But before signing up for the certificate, note that this may not be recognised by employers and educational institutions. Also the completion rate for MOOCs is about 10% (about one fifth that of more conventional on-line courses). -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] SLUG March meeting
On 22/03/14 13:58, commit...@slug.org.au wrote: SLUG ... March 28, 2014, 6 p.m. ... Our first short talk will be Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer by Tom Worthington ... Your homework is the chapter on "Materials Use" in "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/materials.shtml There will be a test. ;-) -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Slug Join Kill-XP Army?
Microsoft discontinuing support for Windows XP and encouraging users to upgrade to Windows 8. But many old computers will have difficulty running the new software. Perhaps users could be encouraged to install Linux alongside XP. They could continue to use XP non-networked applications, but use Linux for non-networked applications. By the way, the situation is not as urgent as previous thought, as security updates for XP will continue until the end of July of 2015: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2451550,00.asp ps: Computerworld describes Microsoft asking for volunteers to help users convert from XP as a "kill-XP army". That is something Linux enthusiasts could support. ;-) http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/537793/perspective_microsoft_asks_volunteers_join_its_kill-xp_army/ -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer
On 04/02/14 15:20, Eden Cane wrote (in response to my running a semester long ICT Sustainability course): ... they must be burning a lot of calories doing that for 6 months, surely there is a way to work that out using less energy! I have one student trying to do the semester long course in three weeks. But working out how much energy and materials all the computer and telecommunications equipment in an organisation use is not that easy. Even harder is working out how to reduce this, while not costing the organisation too much (or even saving them money). As an example, you can replace the desktop PCs with some form of "thin client", but Microsoft Windows applications don't work so well remotely. Convincing a company to use Linux applications, unless you disguise it as a proprietary product, such as Google Android. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer
On 04/02/14 16:42, Glen Turner wrote: I’d also be careful when comparing old v new computers that you include the entire system, especially if moving from a CRT to LCD screen. ... Are there many CRTs still in use? The computer recycling bins in Canberra were full of old LCD screens last year: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/02/e-waste-collection-working-in-canberra.html But when I had a look more recently there seemed to be mostly LCDs. New LCD displays are more energy efficient than old ones, but the savings are much less than moving from a CRT. One problem with the official recycling scheme in Canberra and some other locations, is that there is no one looking to see what could be reused: everything goes straight in a bin for recycling. The flip side is that old computers can be outstanding value for money when used as computers ... monochrome laser printer ... Free old equipment good value. My last two laser printers I picked up discarded in the street, complete with toner. But keep in mind that a laser printer uses a lot of power and if you only use them occasionally, turn them off at the wall. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer
On 03/02/14 13:07, James Linder wrote: Tom just for fun (well not really, but for a consider this) Your old computer uses much more energy than a new one. Powering the beast creates much more CO2 than the new ones ... But about half the energy used by a PC is in its manufacture and delivery (called "embedded energy") and half the electricity to run it. So the new computer has to save a lot of energy to make up for its manufacture. If the components are reused or recycled, rather than thrown away, this will lower the energy use. Also newer computers tend to have less materials and so take less energy to make: http://www.katescomment.com/embedded-energy-of-servers-pc/ My students spend a semester working out the trade-offs between a new computer using less energy and the waste caused by replacing the old computer: http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/introduction.shtml binning it (hopefully decently) ... Yes, Australian has a "National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme", funded by industry. Old equipment is sorted, packed into shipping containers and then sent for recycling: http://www.environment.gov.au/node/21281 -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer
I have volunteered to give a Slug talk on: "Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer" Computers and mobile devices become obsolete much quicker than other consumer products, such as refrigerators and cars. Electronic equipment can contain toxic and valuable materials which should not be simply put into landfill. Before you buy a new computer, tablet or phone, look at the options of what to do with the old one. Tom Worthington is author of the free ebook "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/introduction.shtml Tom teaches an on-line course in ICT sustainability which starts at the Australian National University in mid-February: http://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/course/COMP7310 -- Tom Worthington, PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux Exchange Alternative
On 30/01/14 14:40, David Lyon wrote: ... Lightning Calendar ... runs inside Thunderbird ... Yes, I find with Lightning and LookOut installed in Thunderbird, I can cope in a Microsoft world. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Firefox 20.0 Problems in Mint Linux
On 11/04/13 08:19, I wrote: ... Version 20.0 of the Firefox web browser in Mint Linux ... pull down menus (File, Edit View and Help) no longer function, nor does the right mouse button ... After much searching I found mention of problems with menus when "layout.css.devPixelsPerPx" was changed from the default of "-1.0". Resetting it fixed the problem (a value of "1" also works). Unfortunately this then makes the text in web pages much smaller than other applications and much too small to read comfortably. See: Bug 840881 "Wrong menu rendering with layout.css.devPixelsPerPx non-default (makes some menus unusable)": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=840881 I first found this in "Firefox Input", 2013-04-08T21:38:10: "... as of Firefox 20 ... altering layout.css.devPixelsPerPx messes up the context menus and any drop-down menus that are part of the Firefox UI. ..." at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DQrTewVi7wQJ:https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/%3Fq%3Dscroll%26product%3Dfirefox%26version%3D13.0a1+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Firefox 20.0 Problems in Mint Linux
On 11/04/13 12:10, Heracles wrote: ... enlightenment will work well on Mint ... Installed Enlightenment, but it did not fix my problem with Firefox 20. On 11/04/13 12:42, Francis (Grizzly) Smit wrote: you can launch it in safe mode from the command line ... That produced a small scrambled Firefox 20 window, with even less working. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Firefox 20.0 Problems in Mint Linux
On 11/04/13 09:01, Heracles wrote: Works fine in Enlightenment on Ubuntu ... That helps. There seems to be a problem in the interface between Firefox and the desktop managers in Mint Linux. I found I had fewer problems if I changed from "MATE" to "XFCE 4". More of the pull down menus work, but those that do still looks strange: they float alongside or over the top of the menu bar, instead of being underneath. Also the right mouse button still doesn't work. This does not happen in Thunderbird, or other applications, just Firefox. Have you tried using the "reset firefox" button from the Help/Troubleshooting menu? ... No, unfortunately the Help menu is one of those not working in Firefox. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Firefox 20.0 Problems in Mint Linux
This week I installed Version 20.0 of the Firefox web browser in Mint Linux. I have found it all but unusable. Some of the pull down menus (File, Edit View and Help) no longer function, nor does the right mouse button. What seems to happen is a collapsed list appears which just displays an up and down arrow, with no options to pick from. Anyone else have this problem? -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux training
On 01/04/13 10:11, grant_malcolm_bai...@westnet.com.au wrote: ... Does anyone know of any suitable courses. ... Might be a bit technical, but I see the not-for-profit Saylor Foundation has a free on-line Operating Systems course, with a section on Linux: http://www.saylor.org/courses/cs401/ I found this while preparing "MOOCs with Books" for CPUG last night: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/04/moocs-with-books-at-cpug-canberra.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Pimp My Notebook: Linux, Solid State Disk, RAM and New Paint Job for the HP Pavilion DM1
The screen broke on my Kogan Agora (during a SLUG presentation) and it was not feasible to repair. So I looked around for a similar unit: a low cost laptop with a screen between 11 and 12 inches, which is suitable for running Linux. I chose the HP Pavilion DM1-4108AU ($368). I tried Open SuSe, Ubuntu, Mint and Puppy Linux. There are problems with the driver for the Broadcom WiFi hardware (BCM43103) in a default Linux installation and WiFi would only work in Puppy and then not very well. So I settled on Mint 14 and installed a proprietary WiFi driver: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2012/12/installing-linux-on-hp-pavilion-dm1.html The HP Pavilion came with only 2 Gbytes of RAM. I added an extra 4GB for $23. The hard parts were finding the store to buy the RAM (in a park behind Sydney TAFE) and getting the back off the computer: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/01/4gb-extra-ram-for-hp-pavilion-dm1-4108au.html The HP comes with a 320 GB hard disk, which I swapped for the 64 GB Solid State Disk (SSD). I solved the problem of the shiny black bezel around the HP's screen, by spraying it with a can of flat black enamel paint: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/01/installing-solid-state-disk-in-hp.html Some problems remain with the HP hardware, in particular the shiny screen is still an annoyance and I have yet to find a suitable anti-reflective filter. Happy to talk about it at a future Slug meeting. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Restore laptop screen after use in Google Sydney seminar room?
On 06/12/12 13:34, Norman Gaywood wrote: Do you get the BIOS messages on the screen if you restart it? No. The back-light lights up, but with no text. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Restore laptop screen after use in Google Sydney seminarroom?
On 06/12/12 19:13, Ben Donohue wrote: ... If you can get any picture on any monitor, then set everything back to 640x480 256 colours. Good thought, but it didn't help. ... Closing the lid and opening it again a few times restored the screen. ... I don't think that is going to help as the system seems to know when the lid is open, as the back-light comes on (it goes off when I close the lid). Reviews of low cost (under $500) 11 to 13 inch laptops and Chromebooks would be welcome. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Restore laptop screen after use in Google Sydney seminar room?
On 05/12/12 21:24, pe...@chubb.wattle.id.au wrote: ... If it works with an external monitor, get yourself an xterm or similar and type xrandr ... Thanks, that shows "LVDS1" and "VGA1" connected, so the X server thinks the LCD screen is operating. Type xrandr --output LVDS --auto and it should come good ... No, still no image on the laptop LCD, just the back-light. So I guess it must be a hardware problem. I will check with Kogan. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Restore laptop screen after use in Google Sydney seminarroom?
On 05/12/12 11:32, kfos...@tpg.com.au wrote: Often on the number keys is a different colour picture of a screen (box inside a box in yellow or brown) and a function key ... On the Kogan Agora laptop I used to hold down the function key and press DEL to cycle through the laptop LCD screen, both the LCD screen and external monitor, or just the external monitor. But now it just activates the back-light of the LCD monitor (no image), the back-light and external display or just the external display. ps: Is there a small screen (about 11.6 inch display) low cost (under $500) laptop replacement anyone could recommend? -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Restore laptop screen after use in Google Sydney seminar room?
I plugged the video cable into my laptop to give a presentation at the Slug meeting in the Google Sydney seminar room last Friday. As soon as I plugged the cable in, my laptop screen went blank and has not worked since. The laptop works fine with an external monitor connected. Also the backlight on the laptop lights but nothing is displayed. I have tried changing the display settings and booting from a different Ubuntu on a flash drive. These work fine, with an external monitor, just not the laptop screen. This is the same Kogan Agora laptop I used at Slug in the same room at Google Sydney last year, when it worked fine: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/kogan-agora-laptop-at-sydney-linux.html Any suggestions? -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Tuning Systems and Energy Use (Sys Admin Roles and Responsibilities)
On 18/10/12 10:02, Marghanita da Cruz wrote: Has anyone done any work/know of any research on the effect of Tuning ICT systems and direct energy use/indirect energy use ... See the chapter "Energy saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment" in my book "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future": http://www.tomw.net.au/ict_sustainability/saving.shtml -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] XSLT to remove font tags from xhtml?
On Wed, Jul 18, 2012, at 10:18 PM, Sonia Hamilton wrote: > I've written (well adapted) an XSLT transform to attempt to remove font > tags from some XHTML ... HTML Tidy does a good job of removing font tags and other fixing up of XHTML: http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Agora Smart TV HDMI Dongle
Kogan have announced an "Agora Smart TV HDMI Dongle", will be available from 31 July 2012 for $99: http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/agora-smart-tv-hdmi-dongle/ This is a tiny desktop computer designed to plug into the HDMI video port on a digital TV (or computer monitor) to turn it into a Google Android computer. This could be useful to have at home to complement an Android smart phone. While intended for entertainment, with a keyboard and mouse (or touch-pad) this would be sufficient for web access and might be useful for undertaking online courses, particularly where web based applications and "Apps" are being used for education. The device has WiFi, a full size USB socket and a microSD slot. It is powered via a miniUSB socket. One feature lacking from the Dongle is Bluetooth for a remote keyboard, although a TV type hand-held remote control is provided. To use the Dongle as a desktop computer, a keyboard would be needed. Kogan offer their own "Android Deluxe Wireless Keyboard & Trackpad", but this is too small for serious typing: http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/dlx-android-wireless-keyboard-trackpad/ Agora is the brand name Kogan give their low cost computer range. I have the Kogan Ultra Portable Agora 12" Laptop, which has proven very reliable and useful: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/kogan-agora-laptop-at-sydney-linux.html Agora Smart TV HDMI Dongle Technical Specifications Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n Display Resolution 920 x 1080 General Dimensions 9.045 x 3.396 x 1.55cm OS Android 4.0 ICS Hardware CPU Cortex A9 1GHz Internal Storage4GB RAM 512MB Inputs Card Reader microSD up to 32GB USB 2.0 USB drives up to 32GB miniUSB Power only Outputs HDMI Hardware GPU Mali 400 -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] flakky USB connection to Phone storage
On 19/03/12 11:50, Voytek Eymont wrote: ... on three or four occasions, my phone was plugged into charger overnight, but didn't charge ... trying to decide who to blame ... Sunspots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_maximum#Predictions ;-) -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Raspberry power supply
On 02/03/12 12:53, Marghanita da Cruz wrote: ... The Chinese are standardising on USB (though connectors don't seem to be standard) There are two interoperable standards for USB mobile phone chargers: * The Chinese standard requires a USB Type A socket (the big USB plug) on the charger. * The European standard requires a micro-USB socket on the phone. Compatibility with both can be achieved by having a charger with a USB Type A socket, a phone with a micro-USB socket and a cable to connect them. See: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2009/07/micro-usb-standard-for-mobile-phone.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Linux Tablet
On 09/02/12 12:01, Marghanita da Cruz wrote: SDG systems launched a new Ubuntu based tablet called 'Trimble Yuma' ... Yes, this appears to be much the same as the previous model Trimble Yuma rugged tablet computer, but with Windows 7 replaced by a Linux option and more flash RAM. The unit has a low performance processor (much like a netbook), so installing Linux should make a big improvement over Windows. These are commonly used for military and emergency applications and sell on Amazon for about $4,000: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2012/02/rugged-linux-military-tablet-computer.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Android-based smartphones - any drawbacks ?
On 03/02/12 09:21, Marghanita da Cruz wrote: ... Given the issues with Battery life, seems there is some scope for tuning either customised/personal/individual or across the op system. ... Phones have plenty of options for turning off functions to save battery power, such as WiFi and GPS. Another option is to turn off the 3G and use 2G if you are only making voice calls, as this uses less power. ps: SLUGers will recall I demonstrated a Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android smart phone at a meeting in 2011. I have now handed it back to Allphones and asked for my money back. This phone seems to be prone to locking up, judging by my experience and that of others. This is a shame as it has some good features: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/09/huawei-deuce-u8520-dual-sim-android.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Solid State Disk Works Okay with Linux on Kogan Laptop
On 14/12/11 19:53, Jake Anderson wrote: On 12/12/2011 09:27 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: ... replaced the 2.5 Inch SATA disk drive with a Solid State Disk (SSD) ... double check your file system has options appropriate to make use of TRIM ... Done for the main partition. But I was not sure if I should do this for the swap partition as well. As I understand it, adding the "discard" option tells the system to send an ATA_TRIM command to the solid state storage device, to tidy up (a bit like de-fragmenting a disk): http://sites.google.com/site/lightrush/random-1/howtoconfigureext4toenabletrimforssdsonubuntu -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Solid State Disk Works Okay with Linux on Kogan Laptop
On 12/12/11 10:19, Thomas Davies wrote: On 12/12/2011 09:27 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: The computer seems to boot a bit quicker but otherwise is no different in operation. Really? You must have had a pretty quick disk before. ... Yes, the disk the the top specification Kogan laptop was pretty quick. Or to put it another way, the processor is slow. So the Solid State Disk (SSD) does not make much of difference in for the limited use I make of it. Where SSD it makes a difference is the digitised newspaper search, at the National Library of Australia. Kent Fitch talked in Canberra last week about the open source software used for the Library's Trove service. He was enthusiastic in recommending SSD for this application: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/12/trove-digital-culture-search-service-at.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Solid State Disk Works Okay with Linux on Kogan Laptop
I dropped my Kogan Agora 12 Inch laptop onto a stone floor. Remarkably there was no damage to the case or screen (the screen was open at the time and the computer running). But the hard disk was not functioning afterwards, so I replaced the 2.5 Inch SATA disk drive with a Solid State Disk (SSD). This turned out to be a useful upgrade: relatively easy and inexpensive. Kogan offered me a 30GB SSD, as provided in one model of the laptop, but I decided on a larger 60 GB unit, costing 50% more for twice as much storage. Replacing the disk drive required me to un-clip the battery from the back of the laptop and remove one screw holding a small panel over the disk drive. The disk then slid out and I slid the new SSD in. The new disk was completely blank so I booted the computer from a USB flash drive with a copy of Ubuntu Linux on it and then partitioned the disk with that and installed Linux. This took about 20 minutes. After installing Linux, about 40 GB of the disk is available for data. As I just use the computer for taking notes, the smaller 30 GB disk would have been adequate (with Linux taking up about 20 GB), but the extra space may be handy. The computer seems to boot a bit quicker but otherwise is no different in operation. I am yet to see if the battery lasts longer with the lower power storage device. More at: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/12/solid-state-disk-for-laptop.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] For those wondering about the benefits of rooting your phone
On 01/12/11 12:57, scott wrote: Not only can you get rid of the apps the manufacturer and providers puts on your phone ... Perhaps I need to do that with the Huawei deuce u8520 android phone I demonstrated at a Slug meeting. The phone reboots itself at random and has been in for repair for several weeks: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/09/huawei-deuce-u8520-dual-sim-android.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] SLUG Web site
On 26/11/11 20:17, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: What are people's experiences with using http://www.slug.org.au? Mostly good, but it would be useful if the events link displayed the upcoming events. At present it just displays the words "SLUG Events": http://www.slug.org.au/events Also I suggest removing the Flash display from the front page, or at least made smaller. Moving the buttons from the bottom to the top of the page and adding some icons for them (Attend, Sponsor, Talk) would be good. It would help if the home page passed a W3C Markup Validation Service test. At present it has 23 HTML errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slug.org.au%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0 The home page rates okay on the W3C mobileOK Checker at 68%, but if you could get to 80% that would be better: http://validator.w3.org/mobile/check?task=202802432374.mobile1&docAddr=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slug.org.au%2F It comes close to passing the automated Guidelines for WCAG 2.0 Level A, with some small corrections needed: http://www.tawdis.net/ingles.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Affordable wireless AP hardware to support 30+ connections
On 05/11/11 15:34, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On 4 November 2011 08:28, Tom Worthington wrote: ... $64 D-Link DIR-600 worked reasonably well ... re-flash it with DD-WRT ... I think that flashing is beyond what can be reasonably expected of a teacher. Yes, I found it difficult. But perhaps you could set it up so the teacher does not have to choose any options or set any parameters. They would plug the router in and run a program which set it up. We only distribute XOs to teachers to pass our online learning course [http://laptop.moodle.com.au/].However, we've learnt the hard way that the course is not short teachers won't do it. Our base-line course is 10 hours. ... Ten hours is not what I would call a very short course. Perhaps if the teachers got formal recognition for the course (along the lines of the Queensland scheme) that would be an added incentive. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Affordable wireless AP hardware to support 30+ connections
Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote Wed, 2 Nov 2011 23:14:29 +1100: ... simple appliance that I can recommend to teachers ... I found a $64 D-Link DIR-600 worked reasonably well (the D-Link equipment seems to be older hardware designs repackaged at a cheaper price): http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/04/low-cost-wireless-router.html But you have to re-flash it with DD-WRT to get it to do anything useful. I used it to make a bridge to an Internet TV: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/04/connecting-samsung-tv-to-internet.html Perhaps you should try the La Fonera devices, which one of my colleagues used in Europe and recommended. This is a scheme where you share your WiFi with others : http://blog.tomw.net.au/2008/12/la-fonera-20-linux-wireless-broadband.html It might also help if the teachers have some ICT training, as for example in the Queensland Smart Classrooms Strategy: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/11/queensland-smart-classrooms-strategy.html -- "Our mission is to enhance learning opportunities for the 300,000 primary school aged children, living in remote Australia, by providing each one with a connected XO laptop as part of a sustainable training and support program, by 2014." -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Using a Dual SIM Android Smart Phone
I have volunteered to talk on "Using a Dual SIM Android Smart Phone" at the SLUG meeting this Friday, on: Using a Dual SIM Android Smart Phone by Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM One of the more unusual Google Android smart phones available is the Huawei "Deuce" U8520, which has provision for two SIM cards and so can be connected to two different mobile phone networks, with two different telephone numbers simultaneously. The benefits and limitations of this and other features will be discussed. See also: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/09/huawei-deuce-u8520-dual-sim-android.html -- Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Kogan Agora Laptop at Sydney Linux User Group
The notes from my talk about the Kogan Agora Laptop at the SLUG meeting Friday, 24 June 2011 are at: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/kogan-agora-laptop-at-sydney-linux.html> Here is the text: KOGAN ULTRA PORTABLE AGORA 12" LAPTOP Three models: 1. SOLID STATE DISK MODEL: 30GB SATA Solid State Hard Drive, Google's Chromium OS, 1GB Ram, $349 + delivery 2. STANDARD MODEL: 250GB Disk, Ubuntu 11.04 OS, 1GB Ra, $349 + delivery 3. PRO MODEL: 500GB Disk, Ubuntu 11.04 OS, 2GB Ram, $389 + delivery COMMON FEATURES IN ALL MODELS 1. Intel Pentium Processor (SU2700) - 2M Cache, 1.30 GHz, 800 MHz FSB 2. 11.6" WXGA Widescreen LED back-light LCD Display, 1366 x 768 (16:9), VGA and HDMI video out sockets, 3. 2 speakers, 1 Microphone, audio in and out sockets, and 1.3 Mpixel Webcam. 4. 802.11 B/G/N WiFi, Bluetooth (Not Compatible with Chromium OS, but Bluetooth works fine with Linux) . 5. SD/MMC/MS Pro Card Reader, 3 USB and 1 Ethernet socket 6. 4 Cell, 4600mAh Battery 7. Dimensions: W:29.0cm x D:19.5cm x H:2.56cm, Weight: 1.32kg I purchased the "pro" model. FEATURES 1. VALUE FOR MONEY HARDWARE: The hardware looks good in comparison with laptops costing hundreds of dollars more. The laptop has panels covering the hard disk and RAM on the back of the unit allowing easy upgrade. 2. BIGGER THAN A NETBOOK, BUT SMALLER THAN A LAPTOP: The unit is about the size of an A4 page and as thick of two pads of paper, so it will fit in a school bag. Even so, the 11.6 inch screen is significantly larger than a 10 inch netbook, as is the keyboard. This is a keyboard and screen which could be comfortably used all day. 3. COMES WITH OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE SETUP: The unit comes with office productivity and other applications pre-installed and read to go. 4. GOOD AFTER SALES SERVICE ON HARDWARE: The power supply of my previous Kogan netbook was replaced promptly, with no questions asked, when it failed. PROBLEMS 1. UNITY USER INTERFACE: "Unity" attempts to provide an Apple iPad like interface on Linux, but fails to have the iPad's elegance and ease of use. In addition the interface has bugs making it hard to use and drains battery life. Selecting "Ubuntu classic interface (no effects)" from the login screen solves this problem, by reverting to a traditional GUI, which works fine on the Agora's relatively large screen. 2. LIMITED BATTERY LIFE: Kogan claims approximately 3.5 hours battery life. The real world life is two hours with the Unity interface and 2.75 hours with the classic interface. 3. EVOLUTION EMAIL PACKAGE: The "Evolution" email package attempts to provide calendar and email features in one integrated package, but is slow and unreliable. Replacing this with Mozilla Thunderbird email solved the problems. 4. LIMITED SOFTWARE SUPPORT: Kogan seem to have simply installed the generic Linux installation on the hardware without customization or tuning. The user is essentially reliant on a small number of fellow Agora users for DIY support. Kogan should sponsor a user group for its products, to make a virtue of a necessity. RECOMMENDATION For a low cost ultra-portable laptop consider purchasing the Kogan Agora Laptop Solid State Disk model and add 1 GB RAM yourself. The solid state disk should extend the unit's battery life. Replace Google's Chromium OS with Linux yourself, if you need a full function operating system. Use the classic GUI (without effects) and Thunderbird email package in place of Unity and Evolution. Kogan should consider offering the Solid State Disk model with 2GB RAM and a version of Linux with the "classic" interface switched on by default and Thunderbird as the default email package. Kogan should sponsor a user group for its products, to to encourage user support. ps: More in my Blog at: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/search/label/Kogan%20Agora>. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Kogan Agora Laptop Better with Classic Interface and Flash Disk
On 04/06/11 11:49, I wrote (was: "Kogan Laptop With Google Chromium OS"): ... I have ordered the Kogan Agora Pro laptop... On 10 June I took delivery of a Kogan Agora PRO 12" Ultra Portable Laptop Computer. The minimalist on-line store and the minimalist packaging impressed me almost as much as the modest design of the hardware. Kogan's business and products have been pared down to give the customer what they want and no more. In this case a very plain cardboard box with a very generic looking black laptop, with a generic version of Linux on it. The lightweight laptop form provides a 11.6 inch screen and a good size keyboard, sufficient for a days work, but small enough to fit in a bag with a pad of A4 paper. The LED back-light screen is very readable. This would make a good laptop for a student, if a few battery and interface problems could be fixed. My favorable impressions of the hardware changed when I discovered the battery only lasted about 2 hours, much less than the claimed 3.5 hours. However, more of a problem was the new "Unity" interface of the Ubuntu Linux software installed. Unity attempts to provide an interface which makes maximum use of the limited space on a netbook screen. However, the Kogan has a relatively large 11.6 inch screen and so does not need a compact interface. Also the way the interface saves space is to strip off the borders around windows, the titles and menu bars from them. This has not been implemented consistently across the applications which make up Linux. Even applications which are provided by default with Ubuntu had problems. The "Evolution" email package's setup menus did not work correctly: clicking on one icon actives the icon below it and attempting to click on a button instead causes the window to scroll. I was ready to send the laptop back for a refund when one of my colleagues suggested switching back to the Ubuntu classic (no effects) user interface. This can be done from the login screen, without changing software. It transformed my experience of the laptop. The borders and menus reappeared around windows and the menu items I clicked on activated. The responsiveness of the machine improved noticeably. Also the battery life increased by 45 minutes, due to the interface not making intensive use of graphics, for effects such as translucent menus. While the menus in "Evolution" now worked, it still did some strange things and I decided to switch to the simpler Mozilla Thunderbird email package. The laptop still has limitations, the major one being the limited battery life (now 2 hours and 45 minutes and less than the claimed 3 hours and 30 minutes). I tried a number of other Linux power saving tips, but most of these seem to have already been incorporated into the newest versions of Linux. One option left to consider is a flash Laptop Solid State Drive. The flash drive will save a little power when running, but more importantly would allow the laptop to be switched off more often, as it can be switched on more quickly. Ironically, a cheaper model of the Agora is offered with a 30 GB solid state drive. But this has only 1 GB of RAM and comes with the Google Chromium OS. I did not want to have to install a different operating system and more RAM myself, but in retrospect, that would have been easier than the changes I have to make to get Ubuntu to work properly. More in my blog at: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/kogan-agora-laptop-okay-but-would-be.html>. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Kogan Laptop With Google Chromium OS
Kogan are offering a 11.6 inch screen laptop with 30GB of solid state memory. Apart from the low price (under $400) the feature of note is that it comes with Google's Chromium Operating System: <http://www.kogan.com.au/shop/agora-12-ultra-portable-laptop-chromium-os>. This has prompted news items such as "Aussies First to Get Chromebook Laptops" (Melanie Pinola, PCWorld, Jun 3, 2011 1:30 PM): <http://www.pcworld.com/article/229370/aussies_first_to_get_chromebook_laptops.html>. Kogan seems to have a gift for getting free publicity. This is a better headline than: "Generic Chinese Laptop With Free OS to Avoid Paying Microsoft". ;-) I have ordered the Kogan Agora Pro laptop, which appears to be the same unit, but with more RAM, a hard disk and Ubuntu, for about $50 extra: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/04/agora-12-ultra-portable-laptop-computer.html>. Previously I bought the Kogan Agora 10" Netbook, which has worked fine, but the screen and keyboard are just a bit too small: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2009/08/kogan-agora-netbook-pro-mostly-good.html>. I do some teaching and there has been much discussion in the last year about Apple iPads for students. But the average student would not be able to get by with just a tablet computer. They would still need a physical keyboard and a bigger screen for the wordy assignments they still have to do. They could have an external keyboard and monitor for a tablet computer, but that adds to the cost and complexity. A laptop with a 11.6" screen will display about the area of a printed A4 page, has a reasonable size keyboard and should still fit in a bag designed for A4 pads. This seems a good compromise. The Moodle open source learning management system I use for teaching should work fine with Chromium OS, as it just needs a web browser for the interface. ps: A4 size pads are popular, because they are about the largest size which can be easily held in two hands. In a similar way, smart phone screens about about the size of a credit card are popular. This has nothing to do with electronics, but depends on the size of the human hand. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Election ICT Policy Forum online at 1pm, 10 August 2010
The Australian Computer Society has organised an 2010 Federal Election Forum at the National Press Club in Canberra, from 1 to 2pm AEST, 10 August 2010. This will be live on Sky News and YouTube. You can comment via the ACS Blog, or Twitter using the tag #ITElectionForum. The forum will feature Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Labour Party), Tony Smith MP, Shadow Minister (Liberal Party) and Senator Scott Ludlam (Greens ICT spokesperson). Issues to be discussed include the Digital Economy, High Speed Broadband, Professional certification, ICT Skills, and no doubt Internet censorship. More details in my blog at: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/08/election-ict-policy-forum.html>. -- Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Resource kit for implementing W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Scott Hollier ... 31 March 2010 08:15 Do you work for or with government? Yes, I teach accessible web design to about 100 ANU students each year, many then work for the government: <http://www.tomw.net.au/2009/wd/>. This is after giving evidence to the Human Rights Commission in the SOCOG web accessibility case: <http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/bat.html>. Did you know that the Federal government recently announced that all their websites will have to meet the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines by 2012 (for level A)? No, as it says in the Minister's announcement, WCAG 1.0 has been a mandated requirement for agencies since 2000. The new requirement is for WCAG 2.0 by 2015: <http://www.financeminister.gov.au/media/2010/mr_052010_joint.html>. The guidelines did not specify a level, so I suggested AGIMO do that, which they did (I think it was around mid 2007). We're putting a free resource kit together to help implement these guidelines, and keen to find out how we can help and who needs to receive it. ... More tools would be useful for teaching accessible design. I use the TAW tool which is good, but it tends to revert to its native Spanish: <http://www.tawdis.net/index.html?lang=es>. ... resource kit ... Yes, please. ps: I assume your kit will be available free, like TAW, thus putting the back on topic for the Slug list. ;-) -- Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694 Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890 -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
At 12:35 PM 23/07/2007, Zhasper wrote: On 23/07/07, Tom Worthington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... reference the originals from their web sites ... It sounds like you're saying that a convenient way to reduce load on your own server is to make it some random third party's problem. ... It was not a random third party I was referring to, but sponsors who had not only authorized, but demanded, the use of their logo. Given a choice, I expect these organisations would rather you used the official version of their logo, than make your own copies. Caching should result in a minimal increase in load on their server. Ideally (for the sponsor) the reader will click on the link and go to the sponsor's web site and so would have been downloading the original of the logo anyway. The Australian Government logo (Commonwealth Arms) has not been optimized for online use <http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/epolicy.html#edocs>. But you have to be careful with what you do with the Commonwealth Arms, as there are strict guidelines for its use <http://www.pmc.gov.au/guidelines/commonwealth_coat_arms.cfm>. I once had to tell the staff of a government minister that they couldn't have the commonwealth arms as a background pattern on the minister's web page. Sticking the MPs face over the top of the pre-eminent symbol of the power and authority of the Commonwealth Government did not seem to be appropriate. By the way I had a message from the Technical Director at Australian Screen, pointing out that they were not throwing hardware at the problem, as media repots suggested, but instead optimizing the server software (which is the sensible thing to do). In the case of the film archive I suggested offering fewer films per web page. They might also change the default setting for the media player from Broadband to Dialup and so it does not start downloading content by default. At present the media player will start downloading the broadband content as soon as you go to a clip web page, in anticipation you want to play it. If you don't want to play it, or want to dialup version, that is a waste. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
Rev Simon Rumble wrote Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:59:51 +0100: ... It can be as simple as getting your developers to do things sensibly. Like, all the everyday graphics hosted on a majorly-well connected web server with no fancy stuff (lighthttpd). ... Even better; use the graphics from someone else's web site. ;-) For example Australian Screen credits a lot of participating organisations and has their logos listed <http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/features/>. This does not make for good web design, but if you have to have all those logos, then you might as well reference the originals from their web sites and save the load on your server. The Australian Screen pages list all films in a category on one page, which may be more than anyone would want to look at and so is a waste of resources. As an example 219 documentaries are listed on one page (each with an image) <http://australianscreen.com.au/title-index/documentaries/>. This is about ten times as many as anyone is likely to look at. If divided into ten web pages, the load on the server would be reduced. For more on this approach, see my "Writing for the Web" Moodle course: <http://tomw.net.au/moodle/course/view.php?id=3>. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] re: Not good publicity for Linux, is it?
"Amos Shapira" wrote Thu, 19 Jul 2007 09:29:10 +1000: "Aussie film archives launch and then crash" - ZDnet mentions how a 2.5years project ... melted on the first morning it went public. ... This has happened before with new instantly popular sites. It can happen with Linux based systems as well as others and adding more hardware does not necessarily help if a million people suddenly want to look at your site. It happens that I was talking with staff at the National Film and Sound archive on Monday and warned them there was likely to be a problem with the new web site. A similar problem occurred with the UK based "Aerial Reconnaissance Archives" in 2004. There is a discussion of the issues archived in the ANU's Link mailing list at <http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2004-January/054679.html>. The UK designers had made the job for their server particularly difficult by giving every image on the site a different URL for each person who looked at it. This made sense for tracking use of the valuable historical photos, but not when applied to to the logos on the home page. It made it impossible to cache the images. When the BBC ran a news item about the site the server was overloaded. Fixing the URLs for the images on the main pages seemed to help. A similar problem occurred with the Sentinel fire tracking system which the Australian Government launched a few days before bushfires in Canberra in 2003 <http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/enet.html>. When the fires broke out the system became overloaded. A separate server with userids and passwords for firefighters was installed, but I also suggested putting some canned output from the system for the general public to look at. The canned output could be cached and did not tie up the database server generating a new map for each user. Tom Worthington FACS HLM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ph: 0419 496150 Director, Tomw Communications Pty LtdABN: 17 088 714 309 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617http://www.tomw.net.au/ Visiting Fellow, ANU Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
