[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
Hi It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? Regards Nige -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Since my last update
On 06/03/12 17:33, James Morrissey wrote: 3. Suspend on lid-close appears to have stopped working - the box is checked in my power preferences This recently stopped working for me as well, although I'm using Precise. http://pad.lv/948844 JT -- ---+ James Tait, BSc|xmpp:jayte...@wyrddreams.org Programmer and Free Software advocate |Tel: +44 (0)870 490 2407 ---+ smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Xorg high CPU usage
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:45:23 + Pete Smout wrote: On 06/03/12 18:15, Grant Phillips-Sewell wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:07:08 + Pete Smout wrote: On 05/03/12 21:10, Pete Smout wrote: Hi, For about a week now my laptop (ubuntu 10.04 LTS fully updated) has been freezing up for approx 30 secs, with gkrellm and top showing xorg using 100% cpu usage? There seems to be no pattern to what programs I am using, everything from open office to clementine to smplayer or thunderbird, not at any certain time of day or day of the week, or even weather using the inbuilt screen or external one. My understanding (admittedly limited) is that xorg is the bit that works the display (screen). Has anyone else come across this? For reference the laptop specs are: Acer Aspire 5720 Intel T5250 Dual core processor Ram 2.0 gb Internal graphics (intel) Internal sound (intel) Thanks in advance for any ideas Regards Pete just for reference my xorg.conf: Section Device Identifier Configured Video Device Driver fbdev EndSection Might want to look into that bit. You should have a specific Xorg driver for your onboard Intel graphics chip. Run the following command to find out your graphics chip: lspci Look for the line that has VGA on it. If it does indeed say something about an Intel chip, then make sure you have the following package installed: xserver-xorg-video-intel (That package deals with all i8xx and i9xx chips) Once that's installed, remove the xorg.conf file and restart X. You can restart X by going to a terminal (NOT a terminal window... press CTRL+ALT+F2 and log in) and then run: sudo service lightdm restart (Or just reboot... up to you.) Grant. Hi Grant, Thanks for your reply, the lspci command produces (relevant lines only I hope) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) Synaptic shows xserver-xorg-video-intel is installed (reinstalled for good measure) moved the xorg.conf file to my documents folder and rebooted, opened t-bird to reply to you and the machine 'greyed out' for approx 20 secs with gkrellm showing xorg as using 100% CPU! Please note that last time it happened was with clementine running, when playback stopped mid song so I cannot blame t-bird! As an aside but possibly related?! when I open a tty shell (ctrl-alt-f1) log in it tells me 'Your CPU appears to be lacking expected security protections. Please check your BIOS settings, for more information please run /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose which produces smouty@smouty-laptop:~$ /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose This CPU is family 6, model 15, and has NX capabilities but is unable to use these protective features because the BIOS is configured to disable the capability. Please enable this in your BIOS. For more details, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/CPUFeatures I am unable to find any related settings in BIOS, if this is unrelated to my original question please ignore it and I will do further research Regards Pete Hi Pete, That is interesting, about your CPU security extensions, but I do not believe it is related to this. Your original post showed that your xorg.conf file was using fbdev as the graphics driver - this *should* work on most machines and so it is useful as a fall back if all else fails. The fbdev driver means that the CPU is doing all the graphics donkey-work rather than the GPU. Essentially all I suggested was that you ensure you have the correct xorg driver available (which you do) and you (re)move the xorg.conf file so that xorg regenerates it (or creates on on-the-fly) when you reboot... which you've done. It is still entirely possible that xorg is still using fbdev, so you may want to re-instate your xorg.conf file but edit the fbdev entry to say intel instead. Essentially, as I understand it, if there is an xorg.conf file present then XOrg will use it; if there is no xorg.conf file then XOrg will try to detect what's going on and make up a configuration on-the-fly. Since the on-the-fly thing doesn't seem to be working for you, let's try *making* it use the Intel driver by having an xorg.conf file that specifies to use the Intel driver and nothing else. I hope that makes sense. Grant. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] What does this remind you of
mac wrote: On 3 Mar 2012, at 11:30, Bruno Girin brunogi...@gmail.com wrote: ...Both Unity and Metro are bold changes to the way you use your computer and raise the risk of severe backlash from users who were used to something different. Nothing against it as an *option* in a routine 10.04 to 12.04 upgrade. What should the other option be? Going from 10.04 to 12.04 involves deprecating Gnome 2.x, so *something* has to replace it. Of course, if I'll get an option during my routine upgrade 10.04 to 12.04 to install a standard desktop-computing UI, I'll be entirely happy, as I don't particularly want the faff of a new install of Xubuntu or Debian. However, I'm assuming that the routine upgrade will just install Unity. But if I've misunderstood, and I'll be able to choose a different UI, I withdraw my objections. This is how it's always worked on most (all?) OSes. Big changes happen at major version releases, the expectation being that on upgrading between major versions you'll have a look at what you're getting before beginning the work; and minor releases don't make such big changes to how things work so don't need such research or preparation. That's why there's two sorts of upgrade. -- Avi -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 10:36, Nigel Verity wrote: Hi It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? Regards Nige Well there is the raspberry PI, which is an arm based system, I wonder if canonical can work with broadcom / rasp PI foundation and come up with something that way, as in build a specific tablet device for this, In fact the raspberry Pi (type motherboard) + suitable case + screen should do the trick, let MS do their secure boot thing, we don't need it, we certainly don't need the restrictions this will come with, oh specific hardware, fully closed linux can't run, its not just the secure boot we need to contend with. Offer a REAL alternative, that is designed FOR ubuntu / LInux and we should be far better off. Paul -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
** paul sutton zl...@zleap.net [2012-03-07 11:29]: On 07/03/12 10:36, Nigel Verity wrote: It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? Well there is the raspberry PI, which is an arm based system, I wonder if canonical can work with broadcom / rasp PI foundation and come up with something that way, as in build a specific tablet device for this, In fact the raspberry Pi (type motherboard) + suitable case + screen should do the trick, let MS do their secure boot thing, we don't need it, we certainly don't need the restrictions this will come with, oh specific hardware, fully closed linux can't run, its not just the secure boot we need to contend with. Offer a REAL alternative, that is designed FOR ubuntu / LInux and we should be far better off. ** end quote [paul sutton] Sadly Ubuntu ARM doesn't support ARMv6 which is what the Raspberry Pi uses so without some serious work Ubuntu won't be running on this particular device. iirc support was dropped after the last LTS release. I suspect the Canonical work is as much aimed at working with manufacturers directly as allowing people to install Ubuntu on existing hardware supplied with another OS. It would be great to see a selection of ARM based boards that Ubuntu, or any Linux, can be installed on though. -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 == Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 2012-03-07 11:33, Simon Greenwood wrote: It's slightly different to the PC platform in that the assumption, rightly or wrongly, is that customers don't generally install custom operating systems on their phones and tablets, and indeed I think there would be some reticence on behalf of the phone companies to allow that from both support and system security perspectives ... This is changing. Sony and HTC now have both committed to providing an easy way to unlock their phone devices' boot loaders. The process involves informing them of your IMEI, so you effectively sign away the warranty. I think that's a fair compromise. I prefer to be covered in case of hardware failure, which shouldn't be within the capability of software to harm. However, that is no longer true. For instance, I can turn on my phone's camera light with such intensity that it will - theoretically - heat up and destroy the LED. Of course, the hardware should have overrides preventing that. Regards, Tyler -- Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science. -- Charles Darwin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
Well there is the raspberry PI, which is an arm based system, I wonder if canonical can work with broadcom / rasp PI foundation and come up with something that way, as in build a specific tablet device for this, In fact the raspberry Pi (type motherboard) + suitable case + screen should do the trick, let MS do their secure boot thing, we don't need it, we certainly don't need the restrictions this will come with, oh specific hardware, fully closed linux can't run, its not just the secure boot we need to contend with. Offer a REAL alternative, that is designed FOR ubuntu / LInux and we should be far better off. That's a great idea, but it's actually missing the point about what Canonical wants to do, if I understand their intentions. They are about putting Linux on desktops and commercial devices, which is potentially now where the company can make a difference and a profit. For that matter there is now a tablet that run Linux on ARM, although it's KDE and Mer, s/ -- Twitter: @sfgreenwood more of a stain than a globule -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 10:36, Nigel Verity wrote: It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? There's a big difference between Canonical talking to device manufacturers to get a 'certified' hardware platform for Ubuntu, and community people picking random tablets to put Ubuntu on. For the first instance I don't see secure boot being an issue. For the second it may or may not, but there's plenty of other issues too. It's unlikely we'd be able to spin out a one size fits all iso image which works on any ARM tablet in the same way that we do for x86/x86_64 based computers. ARM devices generally need some hardware enablement work done, so it's not as simple as Insert disk and run installer. If Canonical find a hardware partner to work with then we can do the enablement with them for those specific devices. You can see that we've done that before by noting how many different ARM ISO images we have including ac100, mx5, omap4 etc. http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/11.10/release/ Cheers, - -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPV0qGAAoJEMx6UFtfvV4wF2oIAIl6nBevGnkG5WTopYLhoqYZ +sQ/LtQ+gG9Ln+ylYBicH0YrTTDDpz8QUzKh0CCLvERHZEsZOU2o9twRPM/1n5jL jZUZ3H/dn5WD8A7M1m4hHs6zozJB4GsShzcIieLIGCv393TBN8ix0o4zKCq/aJJi zTZf0PTi9hYRvj5bVULAC9UYdPj36kBTS2WTizkBLSVxW7RPlm7Kpd/YjQtZ7rBN JsaoxLCmEndkmKWYXicQ+DX2duYuzazEJqz+X9qB1vjU1i1ZnCgf2ceb9poHMK4b 9C6j6hsnLDD1qTGkHW07WWguK9XKxp2O5FP6lytAB8fuoZG/0SoegdYnGV+l530= =Bqc+ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Xorg high CPU usage
On Mar 7, 2012 10:50 AM, Grant Phillips-Sewell dcg...@cornwall-it.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:45:23 + Pete Smout wrote: On 06/03/12 18:15, Grant Phillips-Sewell wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:07:08 + Pete Smout wrote: On 05/03/12 21:10, Pete Smout wrote: Hi, For about a week now my laptop (ubuntu 10.04 LTS fully updated) has been freezing up for approx 30 secs, with gkrellm and top showing xorg using 100% cpu usage? There seems to be no pattern to what programs I am using, everything from open office to clementine to smplayer or thunderbird, not at any certain time of day or day of the week, or even weather using the inbuilt screen or external one. My understanding (admittedly limited) is that xorg is the bit that works the display (screen). Has anyone else come across this? For reference the laptop specs are: Acer Aspire 5720 Intel T5250 Dual core processor Ram 2.0 gb Internal graphics (intel) Internal sound (intel) Thanks in advance for any ideas Regards Pete just for reference my xorg.conf: Section Device Identifier Configured Video Device Driver fbdev EndSection Might want to look into that bit. You should have a specific Xorg driver for your onboard Intel graphics chip. Run the following command to find out your graphics chip: lspci Look for the line that has VGA on it. If it does indeed say something about an Intel chip, then make sure you have the following package installed: xserver-xorg-video-intel (That package deals with all i8xx and i9xx chips) Once that's installed, remove the xorg.conf file and restart X. You can restart X by going to a terminal (NOT a terminal window... press CTRL+ALT+F2 and log in) and then run: sudo service lightdm restart (Or just reboot... up to you.) Grant. Hi Grant, Thanks for your reply, the lspci command produces (relevant lines only I hope) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) Synaptic shows xserver-xorg-video-intel is installed (reinstalled for good measure) moved the xorg.conf file to my documents folder and rebooted, opened t-bird to reply to you and the machine 'greyed out' for approx 20 secs with gkrellm showing xorg as using 100% CPU! Please note that last time it happened was with clementine running, when playback stopped mid song so I cannot blame t-bird! As an aside but possibly related?! when I open a tty shell (ctrl-alt-f1) log in it tells me 'Your CPU appears to be lacking expected security protections. Please check your BIOS settings, for more information please run /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose which produces smouty@smouty-laptop:~$ /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose This CPU is family 6, model 15, and has NX capabilities but is unable to use these protective features because the BIOS is configured to disable the capability. Please enable this in your BIOS. For more details, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/CPUFeatures I am unable to find any related settings in BIOS, if this is unrelated to my original question please ignore it and I will do further research Regards Pete Hi Pete, That is interesting, about your CPU security extensions, but I do not believe it is related to this. Your original post showed that your xorg.conf file was using fbdev as the graphics driver - this *should* work on most machines and so it is useful as a fall back if all else fails. The fbdev driver means that the CPU is doing all the graphics donkey-work rather than the GPU. Essentially all I suggested was that you ensure you have the correct xorg driver available (which you do) and you (re)move the xorg.conf file so that xorg regenerates it (or creates on on-the-fly) when you reboot... which you've done. It is still entirely possible that xorg is still using fbdev, so you may want to re-instate your xorg.conf file but edit the fbdev entry to say intel instead. Essentially, as I understand it, if there is an xorg.conf file present then XOrg will use it; if there is no xorg.conf file then XOrg will try to detect what's going on and make up a configuration on-the-fly. Since the on-the-fly thing doesn't seem to be working for you, let's try *making* it use the Intel driver by having an xorg.conf file that specifies to use the Intel driver and nothing else. I hope that makes sense. Grant. As well as the xorg.conf file, there is also the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory that should be checked to see if it has an override for the auto generated file. Neil. P.S. Sorry for the brevity, this is typed on my phone. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
It could well be just the thing to undermine Microsoft's ARM plans. If there are good alternatives to Windows on ARM then the device manufacturers can vote with their wallets, so to speak. I imagine it is more costly to implement Microsoft's requirements than it would be to not implement them... but if there are no real alternatives for usable tablet operating systems (Android is good but, in my opinion, not really that usable on tablets) then they would seem to have no choice but to implement Microsoft's requirements. Get a decent alternative in place and let the manufacturers sorry themselves out. Grant. On Mar 7, 2012 10:37 AM, Nigel Verity nigelver...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? Regards Nige -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 11:59, Grant Phillips-Sewell wrote: It could well be just the thing to undermine Microsoft's ARM plans. If there are good alternatives to Windows on ARM then the device manufacturers can vote with their wallets, so to speak. I imagine it is more costly to implement Microsoft's requirements than it would be to not implement them... but if there are no real alternatives for usable tablet operating systems (Android is good but, in my opinion, not really that usable on tablets) then they would seem to have no choice but to implement Microsoft's requirements. Get a decent alternative in place and let the manufacturers sorry themselves out. Grant. On Mar 7, 2012 10:37 AM, Nigel Verity nigelver...@hotmail.com mailto:nigelver...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? Regards Nige I am also guessing here, that with the raspberry PI the exposure that Linux will get should really help drive the fact there ARE real alternatives., Especially if local user groups and the loco teams Ubuntu local teams up their game, then the support structure will be out there and people will know about it. Any product will HAVE to come with real AGGRESSIVE marketing, Local lugs have problems simply finding people in stores to talk to about alternatives to windows, let alone agreeing to agree take in cd's or other materials for display etc. . Paul -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 12:20, paul sutton wrote: I am also guessing here, that with the raspberry PI the exposure that Linux will get should really help drive the fact there ARE real alternatives., Or people will say Linux, hmm, that's the thing that runs on those really slow, cheap things that come without a case?. I'd like to hope that's not the general view and that we can use the positive characteristics to help promote Linux in general. It's a massive bummer that the RPi won't ship with Ubuntu. I'd love for some community people to get together and make that happen, but it doesn't seem to have yet. Especially if local user groups and the loco teams Ubuntu local teams up their game, then the support structure will be out there and people will know about it. We've heard this before :) When the OLPC came out Intel and Microsoft made the Classmate which ran XP (badly) which somewhat scuppered the OLPC launch. When netbooks came out we crowed about how they ran Linux better than Windows. Microsoft came along and dictated (via the terms for Windows Starter Edition) that netbooks be hobbled to a very specific hardware profile, one which suits their OS. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do something unexpected to screw with the RPi. I remain optimistic though. Cheers, - -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPV1VLAAoJEMx6UFtfvV4wEBwH/iEEFasA4j52J0zweqjd4WNQ KCvby2FAA8NFxIAxHabEgi1iKk44ObXC7Fd4r3Nn/G2Zr9lwpJHA6FPN05e7nmK4 gKb4TYJdEfEr4MIj9ShZwqxU/htoS2OKXEdQbodSSrbGue50q7qzPV+PZJupstHM d8p+UA+432cEWBjggsvw1hoy/AqaczP4iW8nkCdeoA7yg37ATjZXyGSUPO6/1Q1L 6aQ1amh1M8Pa6lUF2qirHkkXCrj41AXzJJBss9GqtS6+PqKBQm3c/SxrtxOXWuRp A4poVPfrJc5vQttEFuqlD/D1A+YRjoLjTV7+GhZfZPN3BaeDuLeR/Y6Hob8dFNg= =POkr -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 12:32, Alan Pope wrote: On 07/03/12 12:20, paul sutton wrote: I am also guessing here, that with the raspberry PI the exposure that Linux will get should really help drive the fact there ARE real alternatives., Or people will say Linux, hmm, that's the thing that runs on those really slow, cheap things that come without a case?. I'd like to hope that's not the general view and that we can use the positive characteristics to help promote Linux in general. It's a massive bummer that the RPi won't ship with Ubuntu. I'd love for some community people to get together and make that happen, but it doesn't seem to have yet. Perhaps when there are a good few of these out there this may happen, however it would be easier if there were a few people in one area say where I am (Torbay) who want to do a port, that way face to face meets can be arranged to discuss / look at the issues and collaborate closely on specific issues. Especially if local user groups and the loco teams Ubuntu local teams up their game, then the support structure will be out there and people will know about it. We've heard this before :) When the OLPC came out Intel and Microsoft made the Classmate which ran XP (badly) which somewhat scuppered the OLPC launch. When netbooks came out we crowed about how they ran Linux better than Windows. Microsoft came along and dictated (via the terms for Windows Starter Edition) that netbooks be hobbled to a very specific hardware profile, one which suits their OS. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do something unexpected to screw with the RPi. I remain optimistic though. Cheers, -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 11:28, paul sutton zl...@zleap.net wrote: On 07/03/12 10:36, Nigel Verity wrote: Hi It's been interesting to read about Canonical's ideas for the future of Ubuntu; in particular its use as an OS for tablets and other mobile devices. It strikes me that some of this vision is undermined by the implications of the Secure Boot functionality being specified by Microsoft on ARM processors as a pre-requisite to achieve Windows 8 Compatible status. A lot of the up-coming tablets are going to be using ARM chips, so unless the Microsoft requirement is modified, or manufacturers choose to ignore it, the Canonical vision seems to be flawed. Or am I missing something? Regards Nige Well there is the raspberry PI, which is an arm based system, I wonder if canonical can work with broadcom / rasp PI foundation and come up with something that way, as in build a specific tablet device for this, In fact the raspberry Pi (type motherboard) + suitable case + screen should do the trick, let MS do their secure boot thing, we don't need it, we certainly don't need the restrictions this will come with, oh specific hardware, fully closed linux can't run, its not just the secure boot we need to contend with. Offer a REAL alternative, that is designed FOR ubuntu / LInux and we should be far better off. Have you actually *looked* at the Rpi at all? It's a *very* low-spec £25 computer. 256MB of non-expandable RAM, no local storage or storage interface, just an SD card, a very low-powered low-end ARM core, and a proprietary GPU with proprietary drivers, even a proprietary bootloader. It /does/ run Ubuntu - v9.04. Ubuntu 10.04 dropped support for the Rpi's series of ARM cores. It is roughly equivalent to an 11 or 12 year old PC: a Pentium II 300MHz with a quarter of a gig of RAM. It is not a suitable system for running Ubuntu on, unless you want to give people a very bad impression. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 13:08, Liam Proven wrote: It's a *very* low-spec £25 computer. 256MB of non-expandable RAM, no local storage or storage interface, just an SD card, a very low-powered low-end ARM core, and a proprietary GPU with proprietary drivers, even a proprietary bootloader. Sounds delightful! :D It is roughly equivalent to an 11 or 12 year old PC: a Pentium II 300MHz with a quarter of a gig of RAM. It is not a suitable system for running Ubuntu on, unless you want to give people a very bad impression. You could install GNOME 2 instea.. oh wait.. - -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPV2DSAAoJEMx6UFtfvV4w5m8IAKIa1bG/hHXRG2pglbmJFjG8 nH+z9mXSvol+vayYfJ1q1FbYDJRRs0sWac7QEt7yjjOxKBwK95ldfl9fuwIW0Gcc LZt2CTgLwdYXOOUxb+Bgqu4OyWETJ++FoZSXpi+gCGLLXulZab2A3zHkoCWliFLh olvoLf1OpgFLfvRYTq0VxGPc35NuclHz/NRIwineNnZQNKm1FFhN9yTWWZnMLMQW E1ja4lxs3tkSU2m5espXrqBiF6oSM+ghLeVPYRKCyinhjuGLc6ssbPIYcBrKvGyQ x8q9yDRUXsA0qOQ4p37ifLXvuMV84+HbOyo7TtZ0FlOUPrXZudOJYKyidhQ2W+k= =KrAU -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 13:21, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 13:08, Liam Proven wrote: It's a *very* low-spec £25 computer. 256MB of non-expandable RAM, no local storage or storage interface, just an SD card, a very low-powered low-end ARM core, and a proprietary GPU with proprietary drivers, even a proprietary bootloader. Sounds delightful! :D Hey, it's a hella cool toy for £15 (standalone model) or £25 (with LAN). They sold out the initial production run in about 3min, at 6AM, and there have been 7 orders a second ever since. Looks like they will sell several million units. My hope is that they do really well and it results in a second version which is a bit more powerful and a bit more open. It is roughly equivalent to an 11 or 12 year old PC: a Pentium II 300MHz with a quarter of a gig of RAM. It is not a suitable system for running Ubuntu on, unless you want to give people a very bad impression. You could install GNOME 2 instea.. oh wait.. Ha! Indeed. I think someone is working on a Lubuntu version, or at least a custom LXDE port. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 13:28, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 March 2012 13:21, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 13:08, Liam Proven wrote: It's a *very* low-spec £25 computer. 256MB of non-expandable RAM, no local storage or storage interface, just an SD card, a very low-powered low-end ARM core, and a proprietary GPU with proprietary drivers, even a proprietary bootloader. Sounds delightful! :D Hey, it's a hella cool toy for £15 (standalone model) or £25 (with LAN). They sold out the initial production run in about 3min, at 6AM, and there have been 7 orders a second ever since. Looks like they will sell several million units. My hope is that they do really well and it results in a second version which is a bit more powerful and a bit more open. Out of interest, in what way is it not open? It is roughly equivalent to an 11 or 12 year old PC: a Pentium II 300MHz with a quarter of a gig of RAM. It is not a suitable system for running Ubuntu on, unless you want to give people a very bad impression. You could install GNOME 2 instea.. oh wait.. Ha! Indeed. I think someone is working on a Lubuntu version, or at least a custom LXDE port. I should think someone is working on just about anything one would possibly imagine doing with it, and probably a good number of things one would not imagine doing. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 13:28, Liam Proven wrote: Hey, it's a hella cool toy for £15 (standalone model) or £25 (with LAN). They sold out the initial production run in about 3min, at 6AM, and there have been 7 orders a second ever since. Looks like they will sell several million units. Indeed! I know it's had some detractors, especially in the BeagleBoard and Pandaboard communities. I can't help thinking there's a touch of sour grapes there given the alliance those devices have with Broadcom competitors. Mine is due to arrive April 16th or so. I've already been asked by the ICT guy at my kids school if I can take it in and let him have a play with it. He wants to get some for the school to expand their ICT work. My hope is that they do really well and it results in a second version which is a bit more powerful and a bit more open. Yeah. The initial one should work fine for a bit, especially for inquisitive minds. I would imagine a set of classes could easily be setup around the devices. I think someone is working on a Lubuntu version, or at least a custom LXDE port. That's good to hear. The screenshots and demos I've seen seem to be showing LXDE on (I expect) Debian. I'd be happy to run Debian on mine. Mind you that's the beauty of those SD cards, you can have lots of them each with different desktops distros etc. Looking forward to playing with it! - -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPV2Q4AAoJEMx6UFtfvV4w1ZMH/08WLp7srSDBcYPqvL1iQLAJ JhnpqdFFvpjJ9pEHAxHCwCtD8vZwx7lqsQSqWyaVmY8XKuHxn7qhnbYryRVSa1W0 p2O4MOZ06oz39cfJA6O20rZXfN+Cltk1xCvxoFSNxQWu6KRdH/vopiQRkF8hgi/q qVAFyPotG0ECN8ajT88r6ZlQd3M1CewUnf8FuM6QbSPYHyrH6E68U9+FRLsXt0EX VNUDZIkz+YsbvvGN+mRrIG35LhBPulqaN5fHp9hLKQDSW4iFbI0coNO70Cd7//Iy ZB758RK+ektI0M8ArVxiHrVS1Sv4zXtY3/272WraJjPU4/NdhTympr47UJNEwus= =gJBD -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: Out of interest, in what way is it not open? It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also only licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video. Cheers, - -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJPV2TKAAoJEMx6UFtfvV4wdUgIAIqjD16dbwsq/1e9kmKbbBnY MOADICQEdeJ0t0T00ZeJztzNppmsteRWvf0SSI7CRS4VbY3joz+4eg6CShKphpFc x+B4B8a1TbVf591teuac0Jg8mqgeGz8kNvwDfAbOoMW0Zge4mTft2eg1wVCPWhjd KJCo0hfPhPxg014as6MSWzKrZNULcJvoWywrItOD97ZsDasZpXoqjTZZgInVD3BK WTUOrLxXOgaLdVVipO1/6iRd+llWoGsGL0yUGh9Tvp3bRSR3c27j7WCBGBwkbbwf AEpiYj7vE4gLyR4h6KnTuQ6VqYry1YQ9WdvT9hQy3SgRMc7wMSY4OfVvTMRAhug= =VDjH -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 13:38, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: Out of interest, in what way is it not open? It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also only licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video. OK, I see. I don't suppose it will take long for that to be hacked. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 13:38, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: Out of interest, in what way is it not open? It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also only licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video. Broadcom bought up the rump of what was Acorn Computers. Acorn designed and developed the ARM chip. (Interestingly, after Acorn was split up and sold off, the rump renamed itself Element 14. This is now a trading name for Farnell, one of the distribution partners for Rpi.) Broadcom still employs Sophie Wilson, who (back when she was called Roger) designed the ARM chip, BBC BASIC and much of the BBC Micro. Rpi is basically a Broadcom GPU and video-decoder chip with a small, basic ARM CPU added in one corner. It's a very proprietary device and so are the Linux drivers. Something nobody is giving any attention to is that Linux is not the only OS for Rpi. It will also come with Acorn RISC OS, meaning a full networked multitasking Internet-capable GUI OS, complete with optimised BBC BASIC interpreter with ARM assembler, GUI editor and so on. Whereas it's a very low-spec system for Linux, it's a high-end one for RISC OS. For beginners, RISC OS may be a much more appealing prospect. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 13:49, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 March 2012 13:38, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: Out of interest, in what way is it not open? It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also only licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video. Broadcom bought up the rump of what was Acorn Computers. Acorn designed and developed the ARM chip. (Interestingly, after Acorn was split up and sold off, the rump renamed itself Element 14. This is now a trading name for Farnell, one of the distribution partners for Rpi.) Broadcom still employs Sophie Wilson, who (back when she was called Roger) designed the ARM chip, BBC BASIC and much of the BBC Micro. Rpi is basically a Broadcom GPU and video-decoder chip with a small, basic ARM CPU added in one corner. It's a very proprietary device and so are the Linux drivers. Something nobody is giving any attention to is that Linux is not the only OS for Rpi. It will also come with Acorn RISC OS, meaning a full networked multitasking Internet-capable GUI OS, complete with optimised BBC BASIC interpreter with ARM assembler, GUI editor and so on. Wow! Chuckie Egg! Best video game ever. Whereas it's a very low-spec system for Linux, it's a high-end one for RISC OS. For beginners, RISC OS may be a much more appealing prospect. Not that low for Linux, I have linux on a machine with 12MB (12 Megabytes) of RAM and an SD card, operating as a 1-wire server for my weather station. It is a Linksys WRT54G router running OpenWRT. Running top via ssh I see it is using about half the RAM, including 1.3MB for top. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 14:12, Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com wrote: Not that low for Linux, I have linux on a machine with 12MB (12 Megabytes) of RAM and an SD card, operating as a 1-wire server for my weather station. It is a Linksys WRT54G router running OpenWRT. Running top via ssh I see it is using about half the RAM, including 1.3MB for top. Well, true, but there's not much s/w development you could do in that space, and it's hardly an enticing prospect for C21 schoolkids, is it? -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 13:28, Liam Proven wrote: Hey, it's a hella cool toy for £15 (standalone model) or £25 (with LAN). They sold out the initial production run in about 3min, at 6AM, and there have been 7 orders a second ever since. it is cool, and I have one on order, but I do have to pick on this 7 orders a second ever since thing. That would be 420/minute or 25,200 per hour or 604,800 per day, which just isn't happening. What is going on is someone said something like: the initial 10,000 sold out in about 25 minutes!! (which I don't believe - the sites were not able to process the orders fast enough, took all morning to recover, I very much doubt they could do 7 orders/second) which someone else calculated as about 7 a second, and then someone else reported this as a sustained ongoing order rate of 7 a second. They are taking a lot of pre-orders and the initial batch did sell out quick, but lets get the back of an envelope calculations within the bounds of possibility. Alan. -- Libertus Solutions http://libertus.co.uk -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 14:41, Alan Bell alan.b...@libertus.co.uk wrote: On 07/03/12 13:28, Liam Proven wrote: Hey, it's a hella cool toy for £15 (standalone model) or £25 (with LAN). They sold out the initial production run in about 3min, at 6AM, and there have been 7 orders a second ever since. it is cool, and I have one on order, but I do have to pick on this 7 orders a second ever since thing. That would be 420/minute or 25,200 per hour or 604,800 per day, which just isn't happening. What is going on is someone said something like: the initial 10,000 sold out in about 25 minutes!! (which I don't believe - the sites were not able to process the orders fast enough, took all morning to recover, I very much doubt they could do 7 orders/second) which someone else calculated as about 7 a second, and then someone else reported this as a sustained ongoing order rate of 7 a second. They are taking a lot of pre-orders and the initial batch did sell out quick, but lets get the back of an envelope calculations within the bounds of possibility. https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8q=raspberry+pi+700+second I scaled it down 2 orders of magnitude to something I find a bit more plausible. At £25, yes, I can believe they have a million-odd preorders. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 12:32, Alan Pope wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 07/03/12 12:20, paul sutton wrote: I am also guessing here, that with the raspberry PI the exposure that Linux will get should really help drive the fact there ARE real alternatives., Or people will say Linux, hmm, that's the thing that runs on those really slow, cheap things that come without a case?. I'd like to hope that's not the general view and that we can use the positive characteristics to help promote Linux in general. It's a massive bummer that the RPi won't ship with Ubuntu. I'd love for some community people to get together and make that happen, but it doesn't seem to have yet. Well nobody has the hardware yet, I could have applied to get a dev board, but I am not a developer that low down the stack, and the Ubuntu ARM people I spoke to told me there was no possibility of Ubuntu building for ARM6 any more. What I did do was talk to Eben and Liz and explain why I didn't want them shipping it with an unsupported and EOL Ubuntu 9.04 and causing lots of people to come to the LoCo community looking for support with an elderly Ubuntu that can't be upgraded. I would rather people have a good experience on something else than a bad experience on Ubuntu. I think the ARM6 problem is going to be a bit of a showstopper for having Ubuntu all the way down on the Raspberry Pi. It will however run Debian, and it will run python and it will run various Ubuntu bits of GUI goodness if they are compiled for it. I can see it being possible to have a Raspberry Pi running Unity2d (sadly I doubt compiz will work) on Debian plumbing, so it will could look rather a lot like Ubuntu. Alan. -- Libertus Solutions http://libertus.co.uk -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 14:43, Liam Proven wrote: https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8q=raspberry+pi+700+second I scaled it down 2 orders of magnitude to something I find a bit more plausible. At £25, yes, I can believe they have a million-odd preorders. yeah, I had seen the 700 a second stuff too, ridiculous! I can certainly believe they have a lot of pre-orders, certainly in the hundreds of thousands. A million is plausible taking into account international orders. What I am not seeing is a massive buzz about this in the educational sector yet. My teaching twitter friends are not really talking about it, it is a technology thing so far. Anyone else heard about the Raspberry Pi via a teacher or someone at a school who would not ordinarily be interested in geeky stuff? Alan. -- Libertus Solutions http://libertus.co.uk -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
[ubuntu-uk] Playing DVD through projector
Hi, Ubuntu 11.10 fully updated. I need to play a DVD through a projector as part of a course. I followed the procedure here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs which made the DVD play fine in VLC. However as soon as I went to full screen through the projector, the DVD played fine but there was a flashing rippling image of the launcher on the L/H side of the screen showing up on the projected image, even though nothing showed on the computer screen Anyone seen this, and is there a cure? (I had been using Windows Media Player on Win 7 which kept misbehaving and I thought that this might be a chance for Ubuntu to shine!) I've had to install VLC on Windows 7 to get it playing without hiccoughs :-( -- Registered Linux User no 240308 GBP's alternative computing:http://gbplinuxfoss.blogspot.com/ Say No to OOXMLhttp://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9594#mpart8 I only accept odf or pdf documents by email -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 14:56, Alan Bell alan.b...@libertus.co.uk wrote: On 07/03/12 14:43, Liam Proven wrote: https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8q=raspberry+pi+700+second I scaled it down 2 orders of magnitude to something I find a bit more plausible. At £25, yes, I can believe they have a million-odd preorders. yeah, I had seen the 700 a second stuff too, ridiculous! I can certainly believe they have a lot of pre-orders, certainly in the hundreds of thousands. A million is plausible taking into account international orders. What I am not seeing is a massive buzz about this in the educational sector yet. My teaching twitter friends are not really talking about it, it is a technology thing so far. Anyone else heard about the Raspberry Pi via a teacher or someone at a school who would not ordinarily be interested in geeky stuff? Some. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/06/raspberry-pi-hits-the-playground But I think the point is that this is not aimed at *schools*, it is aimed at *schoolkids*. The concept is that ICT teaching now amounts to just classes in how to use a Windows PC some majority (monopoly?) apps. Rpi is aimed at being affordable to kids, or to parents to buy for their kids, for kids who want to play around and learn. Getting it into classrooms would mean a total revamp of ICT teaching, which is too ambitious a project at this stage. I think it's a great idea. Not sure it will work, but hey, major kudos to David Braben Co for *trying.* -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 15:12, Liam Proven lpro...@gmail.com wrote: On 7 March 2012 14:56, Alan Bell alan.b...@libertus.co.uk wrote: On 07/03/12 14:43, Liam Proven wrote: https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8q=raspberry+pi+700+second I scaled it down 2 orders of magnitude to something I find a bit more plausible. At £25, yes, I can believe they have a million-odd preorders. yeah, I had seen the 700 a second stuff too, ridiculous! I can certainly believe they have a lot of pre-orders, certainly in the hundreds of thousands. A million is plausible taking into account international orders. What I am not seeing is a massive buzz about this in the educational sector yet. My teaching twitter friends are not really talking about it, it is a technology thing so far. Anyone else heard about the Raspberry Pi via a teacher or someone at a school who would not ordinarily be interested in geeky stuff? Some. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/06/raspberry-pi-hits-the-playground But I think the point is that this is not aimed at *schools*, it is aimed at *schoolkids*. The concept is that ICT teaching now amounts to just classes in how to use a Windows PC some majority (monopoly?) apps. Rpi is aimed at being affordable to kids, or to parents to buy for their kids, for kids who want to play around and learn. Getting it into classrooms would mean a total revamp of ICT teaching, which is too ambitious a project at this stage. I think it's a great idea. Not sure it will work, but hey, major kudos to David Braben Co for *trying.* It's certainly got my wife's school's ICT staff excited although I'm not sure what direction it would take learning in. Last night I was having a conversation with an old acquaintance who has done stuff with ARM systems for years and is currently looking at bridges between the RaspberryPi and Arduino boards, which is another area altogether and one that could potentially create little computers that are aware of their surroundings and can respond to them. We also agreed that secondary market around the RaspberryPi is probably going to be bigger than the actual market for the machines, which again makes them interesting because they are more of a blank slate than a cheap laptop. s/ -- Twitter: @sfgreenwood more of a stain than a globule -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Xorg high CPU usage
On 07/03/12 11:46, Neil Greenwood wrote: On Mar 7, 2012 10:50 AM, Grant Phillips-Sewell dcg...@cornwall-it.co.uk mailto:dcg...@cornwall-it.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:45:23 + Pete Smout wrote: On 06/03/12 18:15, Grant Phillips-Sewell wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:07:08 + Pete Smout wrote: On 05/03/12 21:10, Pete Smout wrote: Hi, For about a week now my laptop (ubuntu 10.04 LTS fully updated) has been freezing up for approx 30 secs, with gkrellm and top showing xorg using 100% cpu usage? There seems to be no pattern to what programs I am using, everything from open office to clementine to smplayer or thunderbird, not at any certain time of day or day of the week, or even weather using the inbuilt screen or external one. My understanding (admittedly limited) is that xorg is the bit that works the display (screen). Has anyone else come across this? For reference the laptop specs are: Acer Aspire 5720 Intel T5250 Dual core processor Ram 2.0 gb Internal graphics (intel) Internal sound (intel) Thanks in advance for any ideas Regards Pete just for reference my xorg.conf: Section Device Identifier Configured Video Device Driver fbdev EndSection Might want to look into that bit. You should have a specific Xorg driver for your onboard Intel graphics chip. Run the following command to find out your graphics chip: lspci Look for the line that has VGA on it. If it does indeed say something about an Intel chip, then make sure you have the following package installed: xserver-xorg-video-intel (That package deals with all i8xx and i9xx chips) Once that's installed, remove the xorg.conf file and restart X. You can restart X by going to a terminal (NOT a terminal window... press CTRL+ALT+F2 and log in) and then run: sudo service lightdm restart (Or just reboot... up to you.) Grant. Hi Grant, Thanks for your reply, the lspci command produces (relevant lines only I hope) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) Synaptic shows xserver-xorg-video-intel is installed (reinstalled for good measure) moved the xorg.conf file to my documents folder and rebooted, opened t-bird to reply to you and the machine 'greyed out' for approx 20 secs with gkrellm showing xorg as using 100% CPU! Please note that last time it happened was with clementine running, when playback stopped mid song so I cannot blame t-bird! As an aside but possibly related?! when I open a tty shell (ctrl-alt-f1) log in it tells me 'Your CPU appears to be lacking expected security protections. Please check your BIOS settings, for more information please run /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose which produces smouty@smouty-laptop:~$ /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose This CPU is family 6, model 15, and has NX capabilities but is unable to use these protective features because the BIOS is configured to disable the capability. Please enable this in your BIOS. For more details, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/CPUFeatures I am unable to find any related settings in BIOS, if this is unrelated to my original question please ignore it and I will do further research Regards Pete Hi Pete, That is interesting, about your CPU security extensions, but I do not believe it is related to this. Your original post showed that your xorg.conf file was using fbdev as the graphics driver - this *should* work on most machines and so it is useful as a fall back if all else fails. The fbdev driver means that the CPU is doing all the graphics donkey-work rather than the GPU. Essentially all I suggested was that you ensure you have the correct xorg driver available (which you do) and you (re)move the xorg.conf file so that xorg regenerates it (or creates on on-the-fly) when you reboot... which you've done. It is still entirely possible that xorg is still using fbdev, so you may want to re-instate your xorg.conf file but edit the fbdev entry to say intel instead. Thanks trying that, so far so good no issues to report! Essentially, as I understand it, if there is an xorg.conf file present then XOrg will use it; if there is no xorg.conf file then XOrg will try to detect what's going on and make up a configuration on-the-fly. Since the on-the-fly thing doesn't seem to be working for you, let's try *making* it use the Intel driver by having an xorg.conf file that specifies to use the Intel driver and nothing else. I hope that makes sense. Grant. As well as the
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 15:51, Alan Pope wrote: The 'official' Fedora spin was made by a bunch of guys at a University in Canada, not as I understand it Red Hat. Their video explains that they went out and bought a bunch of ARM6 devices (not Pis) and did the builds on the bare metal. This could just as easily be done for Ubuntu. You've got me thinking of Pi farms now... Just think - the smell of all those pies... Ahhh wrong pie/pi oh blast! It is British Pie week this week after all: http://www.britishpieweek.co.uk/ Al -- Libertus Solutions http://www.libertus.co.uk -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Xorg high CPU usage
On 07/03/12 16:43, Pete Smout wrote: On 07/03/12 11:46, Neil Greenwood wrote: On Mar 7, 2012 10:50 AM, Grant Phillips-Sewell dcg...@cornwall-it.co.uk mailto:dcg...@cornwall-it.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:45:23 + Pete Smout wrote: On 06/03/12 18:15, Grant Phillips-Sewell wrote: On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 18:07:08 + Pete Smout wrote: On 05/03/12 21:10, Pete Smout wrote: Hi, For about a week now my laptop (ubuntu 10.04 LTS fully updated) has been freezing up for approx 30 secs, with gkrellm and top showing xorg using 100% cpu usage? There seems to be no pattern to what programs I am using, everything from open office to clementine to smplayer or thunderbird, not at any certain time of day or day of the week, or even weather using the inbuilt screen or external one. My understanding (admittedly limited) is that xorg is the bit that works the display (screen). Has anyone else come across this? For reference the laptop specs are: Acer Aspire 5720 Intel T5250 Dual core processor Ram 2.0 gb Internal graphics (intel) Internal sound (intel) Thanks in advance for any ideas Regards Pete just for reference my xorg.conf: Section Device Identifier Configured Video Device Driver fbdev EndSection Might want to look into that bit. You should have a specific Xorg driver for your onboard Intel graphics chip. Run the following command to find out your graphics chip: lspci Look for the line that has VGA on it. If it does indeed say something about an Intel chip, then make sure you have the following package installed: xserver-xorg-video-intel (That package deals with all i8xx and i9xx chips) Once that's installed, remove the xorg.conf file and restart X. You can restart X by going to a terminal (NOT a terminal window... press CTRL+ALT+F2 and log in) and then run: sudo service lightdm restart (Or just reboot... up to you.) Grant. Hi Grant, Thanks for your reply, the lspci command produces (relevant lines only I hope) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) Synaptic shows xserver-xorg-video-intel is installed (reinstalled for good measure) moved the xorg.conf file to my documents folder and rebooted, opened t-bird to reply to you and the machine 'greyed out' for approx 20 secs with gkrellm showing xorg as using 100% CPU! Please note that last time it happened was with clementine running, when playback stopped mid song so I cannot blame t-bird! As an aside but possibly related?! when I open a tty shell (ctrl-alt-f1) log in it tells me 'Your CPU appears to be lacking expected security protections. Please check your BIOS settings, for more information please run /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose which produces smouty@smouty-laptop:~$ /usr/bin/check-bios-nx --verbose This CPU is family 6, model 15, and has NX capabilities but is unable to use these protective features because the BIOS is configured to disable the capability. Please enable this in your BIOS. For more details, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/CPUFeatures I am unable to find any related settings in BIOS, if this is unrelated to my original question please ignore it and I will do further research Regards Pete Hi Pete, That is interesting, about your CPU security extensions, but I do not believe it is related to this. Your original post showed that your xorg.conf file was using fbdev as the graphics driver - this *should* work on most machines and so it is useful as a fall back if all else fails. The fbdev driver means that the CPU is doing all the graphics donkey-work rather than the GPU. Essentially all I suggested was that you ensure you have the correct xorg driver available (which you do) and you (re)move the xorg.conf file so that xorg regenerates it (or creates on on-the-fly) when you reboot... which you've done. It is still entirely possible that xorg is still using fbdev, so you may want to re-instate your xorg.conf file but edit the fbdev entry to say intel instead. Thanks trying that, so far so good no issues to report! Essentially, as I understand it, if there is an xorg.conf file present then XOrg will use it; if there is no xorg.conf file then XOrg will try to detect what's going on and make up a configuration on-the-fly. Since the on-the-fly thing doesn't seem to be working for you, let's try *making* it use the Intel driver by having an xorg.conf file that specifies to use the Intel driver and nothing else. I hope that makes sense. Grant. As well as the xorg.conf file, there is also the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ directory that should be checked to see if it has
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
On 07/03/12 12:20, paul sutton wrote: Any product will HAVE to come with real AGGRESSIVE marketing, Local lugs have problems simply finding people in stores to talk to about alternatives to windows, let alone agreeing to agree take in cd's or other materials for display etc. . A couple of years ago I asked to see the duty manager in PC World in Reading. Affable person. I asked if I could maybe hand out leaflets (on Ubuntu) and maybe set a small table by the door one Saturday, demo ubuntu? He simply asked Can I sell it? I said Err, well no, it is free software He instantly said, (pleasantly though), Not interested He rushed of like he was busy with stuff to sell :-) What I took from this exchange was that the retail goldfish bowl we all actually live in, is one of deep immersion. There is hardly anywhere we can go, or that I can think of, which does not have only retail air to breathe. There is 'no such thing as a free lunch' is mostly true in the real world, although exceptionally, not with most of GNU/Linux. There is a price, though, but for end users all they have to do is trust in the social generosity of developers and teams. But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. A 'conventional' marketing presence would be very useful in normalising some of this. However, many non tech people take it for granted that once they have decided, then Ubuntu can be installed also while keeping their Windows (just in case), and they do not have reinstall images or have lost the CDs etc. The consequence for me as a volunteer installer helper is some serious disc image creation, and maybe careful partition work. I find a high chance of disc utility showing failing discs too. All in all, when most of Ubuntu UK Team are of working age and hopefully in work, then it is hard to see how the aftermath of a good marketing splat could be handled. But maybe if it was high profile marketing and it had a retail technician team offshoot, who knows? Wubi seems to dislike some grub updates so I do not recommend it if I am going to turn my back for long. However, I do like the idea of more marketing. -- alan cocks -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
On 07/03/12 19:00, alan c wrote: But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. Correction trust in strangers only comes easily if people have paid a lot of money for a retail box! -- alan cocks -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
On Mar 7, 2012 7:07 PM, alan c aecl...@candt.waitrose.com wrote: On 07/03/12 19:00, alan c wrote: But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. Correction trust in strangers only comes easily if people have paid a lot of money for a retail box! -- PC World have sold both RedHat and SUSE in the past, probably not for a good 10 years though. s/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
On 7 March 2012 20:05, Simon Greenwood sfgreenw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mar 7, 2012 7:07 PM, alan c aecl...@candt.waitrose.com wrote: On 07/03/12 19:00, alan c wrote: But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. Correction trust in strangers only comes easily if people have paid a lot of money for a retail box! -- PC World have sold both RedHat and SUSE in the past, probably not for a good 10 years though. s/ And in early days of netbooks, they had some with Linpus (a chinese version of Linux) on them. -- Regards, Andy -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
On 07/03/12 20:05, Simon Greenwood wrote: On Mar 7, 2012 7:07 PM, alan c aecl...@candt.waitrose.com wrote: On 07/03/12 19:00, alan c wrote: But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. Correction trust in strangers only comes easily if people have paid a lot of money for a retail box! -- PC World have sold both RedHat and SUSE in the past, probably not for a good 10 years though. I remember that yes. My first non Windows diy adventure was to actually purchase a retail suse box (9.0 I think) for 60 pounds, it contained a lot of merch, and seemed good value. Included some support too. Interesting that at the time, as a Windows user, to me, a retail box felt 'right' -- alan cocks -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 14:37, Liam Proven wrote: On 7 March 2012 14:12, Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com wrote: Not that low for Linux, I have linux on a machine with 12MB (12 Megabytes) of RAM and an SD card, operating as a 1-wire server for my weather station. It is a Linksys WRT54G router running OpenWRT. Running top via ssh I see it is using about half the RAM, including 1.3MB for top. Well, true, but there's not much s/w development you could do in that space, and it's hardly an enticing prospect for C21 schoolkids, is it? I had an early slackware and i think slackware 3.4 running on a 486 sx with 8 mb ram, even had x working that was back in the early 90's I dual booted with DOS / Win3.1. Not that I am suggesting we go back to the 2.0 - tree of course. Paul -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 13:49, Liam Proven wrote: On 7 March 2012 13:38, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 07/03/12 13:33, Colin Law wrote: Out of interest, in what way is it not open? It needs a binary blob for the GPU and to boot apparently. They also only licensed the h.264 and one other codec bundle from broadcom for that blob. So only certain video files will play back accelerated. So it wouldn't do for a FreeView set top box, but would be good for playing back pre-recorded/downloaded h.264 encoded video. Broadcom bought up the rump of what was Acorn Computers. Acorn designed and developed the ARM chip. (Interestingly, after Acorn was split up and sold off, the rump renamed itself Element 14. This is now a trading name for Farnell, one of the distribution partners for Rpi.) Broadcom still employs Sophie Wilson, who (back when she was called Roger) designed the ARM chip, BBC BASIC and much of the BBC Micro. Rpi is basically a Broadcom GPU and video-decoder chip with a small, basic ARM CPU added in one corner. It's a very proprietary device and so are the Linux drivers. Something nobody is giving any attention to is that Linux is not the only OS for Rpi. It will also come with Acorn RISC OS, meaning a full networked multitasking Internet-capable GUI OS, complete with optimised BBC BASIC interpreter with ARM assembler, GUI editor and so on. Whereas it's a very low-spec system for Linux, it's a high-end one for RISC OS. For beginners, RISC OS may be a much more appealing prospect. Ohh i am sure I have a few games on 3,5 floppy that ran on an acorn risc/os machine, in fact I may have a manual for the Acorn Archimedes somewhere :) Paul -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ancient hardware - was Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 21:48, paul sutton wrote: Ohh i am sure I have a few games on 3,5 floppy that ran on an acorn risc/os machine, in fact I may have a manual for the Acorn Archimedes somewhere :) Paul I've still got my Sinclair ZX81 and the manual. Maybe one day I'll dig out a 12v power supply and see if it still works. I actually taught myself to program in Z80 assembler code on that one. I found assembler easier to work with than basic. Later, I found C and loved it. Regards,Barry. -- Barry Drake is a member of the the Ubuntu Advertising team. http://ubuntuadverts.org/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ancient hardware - was Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 22:01, Barry Drake wrote: On 07/03/12 21:48, paul sutton wrote: Ohh i am sure I have a few games on 3,5 floppy that ran on an acorn risc/os machine, in fact I may have a manual for the Acorn Archimedes somewhere :) Paul I've still got my Sinclair ZX81 and the manual. Maybe one day I'll dig out a 12v power supply and see if it still works. I actually taught myself to program in Z80 assembler code on that one. I found assembler easier to work with than basic. Later, I found C and loved it. Regards,Barry. Cool, I am sure I have a few books on the speccy and z80 assembler, my spectrum still works (I think) actually composite lead may be useful for the raspberry PI. will have to check, Paul -- -- http://www.zleap.net http://www.ubuntu.com skype : psutton111 -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ancient hardware - was Ubuntu Plans
On 7 March 2012 22:01, Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com wrote: On 07/03/12 21:48, paul sutton wrote: Ohh i am sure I have a few games on 3,5 floppy that ran on an acorn risc/os machine, in fact I may have a manual for the Acorn Archimedes somewhere :) Paul I've still got my Sinclair ZX81 and the manual. Maybe one day I'll dig out a 12v power supply and see if it still works. I actually taught myself to program in Z80 assembler code on that one. I found assembler easier to work with than basic. Later, I found C and loved it. If you look on ebay you might be surprised how much it would fetch. Particularly if it still works. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ancient hardware - was Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 22:03, paul sutton wrote: Cool, I am sure I have a few books on the speccy and z80 assembler, my spectrum still works (I think) actually composite lead may be useful for the raspberry PI. will have to check, Paul When I graduated to the speccy, I bought an ex-naval teleprinter for a fiver and wrote a routine that fed a teleprinter adaptor that I had built, with a signal from the cassette port. I seem to remember that I had to provide a switching +-100v signal to give the binary marks and spaces to the printer which ran at an amazing 75 baud (that's bps). I wrote an article for Practical Electronics and received £150 for it! Just amazing how I was able to drive a dinosaur from a (then) state-of-the-art computer. I really enjoyed that exercise - must have been about 1983 or 1984 I guess. Regards,Barry. -- Barry Drake is a member of the the Ubuntu Advertising team. http://ubuntuadverts.org/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ancient hardware - was Ubuntu Plans
On 07/03/12 22:07, Colin Law wrote: If you look on ebay you might be surprised how much it would fetch. Particularly if it still works. Colin I have looked - and I am amazed. I really will have to see if it works. Thanks. Regards,Barry. -- Barry Drake is a member of the the Ubuntu Advertising team. http://ubuntuadverts.org/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
On Mar 7, 2012 7:01 PM, alan c aecl...@candt.waitrose.com wrote: What I took from this exchange was that the retail goldfish bowl we all actually live in, is one of deep immersion. There is hardly anywhere we can go, or that I can think of, which does not have only retail air to breathe. There is 'no such thing as a free lunch' is mostly true in the real world, although exceptionally, not with most of GNU/Linux. There is a price, though, but for end users all they have to do is trust in the social generosity of developers and teams. But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. However, I do like the idea of more marketing. -- alan cocks Whenever I've been faced with trying to explain to people about how the whole open source/Free Software thing works, I usually end up using the St. John's Ambulance as an example of people's generosity and helping for no cost, and using footballers playing charity matches for examples of how someone doing something for no cost doesn't automatically mean that the result of their efforts is of a poorer quality than that of someone being paid for their work. People seem to understand these two analogies quite well. Grant -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ancient hardware - was Ubuntu Plans
** Barry Drake ubuntu-advertis...@gmx.com [2012-03-07 22:02]: On 07/03/12 21:48, paul sutton wrote: Ohh i am sure I have a few games on 3,5 floppy that ran on an acorn risc/os machine, in fact I may have a manual for the Acorn Archimedes somewhere :) Paul I've still got my Sinclair ZX81 and the manual. Maybe one day I'll dig out a 12v power supply and see if it still works. I actually taught myself to program in Z80 assembler code on that one. I found assembler easier to work with than basic. Later, I found C and loved it. ** end quote [Barry Drake] Don't get me started, I have way too many old computers - well according to my family anyway, I'd happily have more! I have a selection of ZX81, Spectrum, QL, BBC Micro, Acorn Archimedes, Amstrads, Ataris, Vic 20 C64, Oric, Jupiter Ace, MSX, Amiga, etc. safely stored for me to have more time to play with them. One I really want to get running is the Doomsday project BBC Micro and Philips LVD I have. Most of this lot has been saved from being scrapped. I did a course in C some years back, but never got the opportunity to make use of it, so I'm somewhat rusty now. I enjoyed it though. That may not be a glowing recommendation as I also enjoyed Forth (hence my Jupiter Ace) and Prolog. I always thought I'd end up being a programmer, but never got the break I needed. Partly this was because I was interested in computers and did Maths and Computing. When it came to getting a job when I graduated I found that if you wanted to do programming the last thing you should have studied was anything related to computers. All the companies wanted people that had humanities degrees so they had no outdated experience and were a blank canvas to train up. I work with Linux now, so I mustn't grumble :) -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 == Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu Plans (marketing)
** Simon Greenwood sfgreenw...@gmail.com [2012-03-07 20:06]: On Mar 7, 2012 7:07 PM, alan c aecl...@candt.waitrose.com wrote: On 07/03/12 19:00, alan c wrote: But trust in strangers is not something that comes easy in a world full of scams. Correction trust in strangers only comes easily if people have paid a lot of money for a retail box! -- PC World have sold both RedHat and SUSE in the past, probably not for a good 10 years though. ** end quote [Simon Greenwood] Yes, my first purchased copy of Linux was Caldera Open Linux 1.1 purchased from PC World. Little did I know where they would end up! Still it got me going once I finally had spare hardware without Windows NT or OS/2 running on it for work to get hooked on Linux (I think I already was, I'd been reading about it on the IBM 'forums' for a while already having found one on getting Linux running on my IBM L40sx laptop). I shouldn't grumble too much though, OS/2 saved me from too much reliance on Windows and made Intel hardware bearable. Being and Amiga user Windows was such a major step down I couldn't understand how anyone could consider it any more than a toy! -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 == Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
