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Quoting james kilty <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 10:21 +0000, Rob Beard wrote: >> If it wasn't so far I would have >> probably made it but it's a good 5 hours there and back from Torquay >> (according to Google) so it's a long journey to do in a day with not >> much sleep. > If we have any more meetings at this end, please ask to stay over - we > have space. This applies to any member. >> >> Maybe next time I could make a weekend of it. > It's worth the journey just to savour the far west. > Yeah, will do. I'm actually visiting Cornwall in May next year. Not entirely sure which part of Cornwall it is, all I know is it's a Haven holiday park. > I was pleased with the meeting. The membership brought some excellent > things to see and hear. Mike ssh-ing to his home computer, Viv with her > Virtualbox (which amazed most people), Chris with his PCLos advice. > Gemma came all the way from Plymouth with great experience and > expertise. Viv's husband (Paul?) came along and chipped in - as a nearly > new user, the conversations went over my head a lot, but pointed the way > for me personally and seemed to give members something more than a > social. Grant came along later and was able to advise where he could and > discuss possibilities of Linux at Cornwall College. Sounds good. Virtual Box is a great way of having a play with Linux without the worry of trashing your PC if you don't know what you're doing. Shame there isn't a Windows version of the Open Source Virtual Box (it seems to be only Free for personal use). > We had a couple of older citizens wanting to try GNU/Linux out, one who > programmed in COBOL way back in the last century and he could even get > advice on how to get started in Ubuntu (or PCLos) with it. > > As the holder of several iso's I had prepared on CD (one on dvd) I was > the one who showed the beginners how to install - embarrassing to find a > couple of iso's that could not install - found others that could. Tested > the ecafe computers to the limit and discovered a badly-functioning hard > drive which cured one problem. Put on Fedora 8 which seemed good. > > Another of Stephen's staff came along and was impressed enough to add > Ubuntu to his pen drive along with other FSW. These chaps are brilliant. > The guy who was installing Ubuntu on a Mac came back with an improved > set up - still unable to get GRUB working - had to click on a Windows > image to get Ubuntu! I suppose it thinks all guests have to be Windows. If it's an Intel based Mac, I think it doesn't have a conventional BIOS but some sort of OpenFirmware like on the PPC Macs (hence the need for Bootcamp to run Windows). Not sure how this affects Linux on an Intel Mac though. > Some discussion of the way to run several distros on one machine - Mike > has one partition and installs in separate folders. It seems to give > much more flexibility. Please tell us how Mike. Does this include > Windows? Is WINE dying, in the face of VMWare and Virtualbox (and one > other I couldn't see) and is having 3 layers the best way? How do you > upgrade the bottom layer? Several distros on one partition? Is this with our without something like Xen or VMWare? I wouldn't say Wine is dying. If you want to run a full blown version of Windows on a virtual machine you still need a licence (and nowadays, if you run Vista in a VM it has to be a Business or Ultimate version of Vista as the Home versions EULA don't allow running in a VM). I run Wine for a few Windows apps that I can't live without. Saves space rather than having maybe 4 to 12GB used up by Windows. > > I must have missed some of the goodies promised: Web Converger, putting > a distro on a pen drive. I was sad Mark had left the LUG after the last > round of why Debian is so much better than Ubuntu as we missed Edubuntu > and games under Linux and Wine (though if you have a legal install of a > Windows, perhaps the virtual way is better). I'd say with as far as games are concerned, Cedega is a better solution than plain Wine on it's own as it's tailored to running Windows games. I wouldn't run any of the latest games on a VM as there won't be any decent 3D support. Shame really because I'd really love to run the Mame frontend 3D Arcade but I refuse to run Windows just to use it. > Publicity seems to be the key. The article in the Cornishman drew one at > least and my posters in Penzance drew another. Networking produced > another and word of mouth from members and Stephen produced another > couple. (I waylaid 2 in the ecafe who happened to be there.) No school > accepted an invitation. I failed to get any interest from the BBC, ITV, > local radio from emailing a press release with the suggestion they make > a feature of it. I would take the plunge and offer a phoned interview > next time (or get someone more quaified to do so, perhaps as a duo. > > If we get a couple of new members from the 2 meetings, (potentially 3 > from the conversations we had), we may get to the point where we could > sustain regular meetings down here. Perhaps members could give their own > reports and thoughts. I have one other friend who uses Unix at his > veterinary practice and SUSE at home. Maybe regular meetings would be a good idea. There's always a chance that those who've been introduced to Linux could introduce other people. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html