April 2016 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Ubuntu 16.04 out
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Apr '16

23 Apr '16

I just downloaded AMD64 live desktop Ubuntu 16.04. Downloading was quick. 8 minutes on my supposedly 25mbit VDSL connection. It used to be that you had to use a specialized tool to write ubuntu on a USB stick from a .iso file. Just dd-ing it works with this release (at least). The 64-bit .iso does not have 32-bit UEFI support. Rats. I think that this would only have required: EFI/BOOT/BOOTx32.EFI, EFI/BOOT/grubi32.efi and a 32-bit version of the grub command. I don't think that it would add significantly to the .iso size and would allow support for a bunch of cheap devices. debian multiboot manages this.

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Experience with MonoPrice SlimRun Ethernet cables?
by Terry Tanski 20 Apr '16

20 Apr '16

Anyone have experience using the following SlimRun CAT6 or CAT6A cables in a moderately dense datacenter environment? http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=102&cp_id=10232&cs_id=1023208&p_id=13… - Are they sufficiently shielded? - Are they easily bent or kinked? - Good quality cable ends? - Do the shorter CAT6 work properly for 10G? I have used MonoPrice CAT6 cabling before and found no issues with their product but I used the traditional thicker cable. Thanks in advance for any insight, Terry Tanski ComQi Canada Inc. ttanski(a)cogeco.ca

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Man deletes his entire company
by Stephen 19 Apr '16

19 Apr '16

The mind wobbles .... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-deletes-entire-company-running… -- Stephen

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Modem/router replacement?
by William Witteman 18 Apr '16

18 Apr '16

I have been using the same DSL modem for ages (I think I might have bought it from iStop), and it continues to work pretty well. However, because it has a router in front of it, whenever I have a problem tech support wants me to plug it directly into my computer and run the PPPoE from there to eliminate the router as the source of the problem. A brief, magically resolving problem over the weekend has brought up two things that I would like to know from the list's vast knowledge. 1) How do I run a PPPoE connection from Linux, preferably from the command line? 2) If I want to buy a new modem as a spare, do people have recommendations, and should it include a router? Thanks!

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The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux - TechRepublic
by James Knott 16 Apr '16

16 Apr '16

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-truth-comes-out-microsoft-needs-lin…

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beware CherryTrail and BayTrail systems
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 16 Apr '16

16 Apr '16

Over the last few years, Intel has been improving the Atom line of processors. Device manufacturers have been using these improved SoCs to create interesting low-end boxes. There are two marketing pushes: Android and Windows. Linux get a bit-part mention. All these processors are 64 bits but some have only 32-bit firmware (UEFI). None has a conventional old-style BIOS. Examples that I have some experience with: - Asus ZenPhone II cellphone (Android) (I think that later ZenPhones use ARM) - google nexus player (Android) - Asus transformer T100TAF (32-bit Windows) (convertible tablet/netbook) - Kangaroo little computer (64-bit Windows) - Dell Venue 8 Pro (5830) (32-bit Windows) - Acer Aspire E11 (ES1-11M-c0fq) notebook (64-bit Windows) - HP Pro Tablet 608 G1 (64-bit Windows) - for contrast: HP Stream Mini (64-bit Windows) (Haswell-based Celeron, not Atom) All these were about $200 or less -- kind of appealing. Good Linux experiences: - The Acer Aspire just worked under Linux. I don't know why. I have not tried HDMI-out: sound may not work under Linux. Sleep and all the other goodies do. I use it a lot. - The Kangaroo will boot Fedora easily. But I haven't tested much with it -- I use it in Windows 10 because of Netflix + Shomi mess. - HP Stream Mini just works. It is even possible to add RAM up to 16G and a 2.5 inch drive (with a magic cable that can be purchased from Hong Kong sellers). But it is Haswell, not *Trail. Bad Linux experiences: I don't really know an easy way of installing a normal Linux distro on an Android device. So I haven't tried. It takes hacking to get most Linux distros to boot under 32-bit UEFI. Now Ubuntu multiarch supports it out-of-the-box, things are starting to get better (as far as I'm concerned). There had already been projects to work around this limitation: <https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/T100TA> <https://www.happyassassin.net/fedlet-a-fedora-remix-for-bay-trail-tablets/> <https://plus.google.com/communities/117853703024346186936> and more. Even with that, there are plenty of problems with driver and power management support. The first link gives a nice scorecard. There is a kernel bug in handling cstates (compute states for power management) with BayTrail and CherryTrail. This has been around for over a year with no fix (initially it was thought to be a GPU driver bug). The bug appears to have been introduced by Intel. For the life of me, I don't know why they have not fixed it. <https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051> I haven't experienced this bug on my Acer notebook, possibly because I never watch videos on it. Intel created a driver to handle sound over HDMI but never upstreamed it so it no longer works. <https://01.org/ubuntu-hdmi> Most of these devices have 2G of RAM, 32G of eMMC (disk). This appears to be due to Microsoft licensing prices (free up to this size, expensive above). So there isn't really room for a dual-boot Windows/Linux setup. Before I install Linux, I want to try it to find if it works well enough on this hardware. On the T100TAF, there is a MicroSD drive. I thought that I could install Linux on that instead of replacing Windows on the eMMC. Amazingly, there is no UEFI driver for the MicroSD so the machine won't boot off MicroSD! debian 8.4.0's install disk doesn't see it either so I cannot install with most filesystems (except /boot) on the MicroSD. Incredible. CherryTrail is reputed to be very demanding of cooling and thus many systems suffer badly from thermal throttling (the chip slows down to cool off). This is true in Windows. I wonder how this works with Linux when cstates are constrained to avoid the bug mentioned above. The HP Pro Tablet 608 G1 was made for a much higher price-point (I lucked into a cheap unit from Factory Direct). It has 4G of RAM and 64G of eMMC. But it has it's own bugs under Windows that HP has been slow to fix. For my purposes, one problem is that there is only one USB C connector for power and for extra peripherals and HP won't let it act for more than one role at once (the whole point of USB C). They want me to buy a dock that connects to a proprietary POGO plug, for $200. No thanks. Summary: beware when buying a *Trail device thinking that you can just drop a normal Linux distro on it. Bonus warning: There are some problems with Linux support for Skylake, Intel's most recent generation of mainstream processors. I'm confident that they are being ironed out (Linus has a Skylake desktop).

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distro support for 32-bit UEFI
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 12 Apr '16

12 Apr '16

I have a couple of devices with 64-bit Atom CPUs, built to be cheap Windows devices, that have 32-bit UEFI firmware. With no old-fashioned BIOS or emulation thereof. This seems to be intentional crippling by Intel: they only provide power management firmware in 32-bit mode. The devices I have are an Asus TF100 "convertible" (tablet with detachable keyboard) and a Dell Venue 8 Pro. The Intel / Microsoft idea seemed to be: build very inexpensive devices to compete with ARM / Android. But be careful to limit the damage to the market for full-fledged Windows systems. It worked to some extent. The Hugh idea was: cheap computers that should run Linux! Close, but no cigar yet. What I want is a 64-bit distro that can boot from 32-bit UEFI. That could be managed but it doesn't seem to be available now. (The 64-bit Linux kernel knows how to call 32-bit UEFI functions. This feature is not always enabled.) Almost as good would be a 32-bit distro that can boot from UEFI. After all, these cheap boxes are limited to 2G of RAM anyway (crippled: see above). Scott informed me that 32-bit Debian Jessie (8.0) does support UEFI. Wonderful! But I'm chicken: there is no 32-bit UEFI live image and I don't want to install without trying. After all, there may well be unsupported bits on these screwy devices. (Sadly Linux distros seem to be weak on touch, one of the strengths of these little devices.) These cheap devices come with very little "disk". Mine each have 32G; some have 16G; a few have more. That's not really enough space for both Linux and Windows. I have a netbook built in the same style, but with 64-bit UEFI. I've found 32G quite reasonable for Fedora Linux. <https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI> Another bit of news from Scott: the next generation of Atoms, or at least some of them, drop support for virtualization! What jerks.

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting Tonight at 7:30pm
by Myles Braithwaite 12 Apr '16

12 Apr '16

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2016-04/> # Open Source Graphics Suite Panel Join Stewart, Trent, and Myles in discussing their practical experiences using a variety of open source graphics packages and suites. Bring your questions for our panelists! ## Panelists Stewart Russell is a Linux user who should probably be kept away from admin, dev and other sharp objects. He draws mostly geometric patterns and enjoys unusual output devices such as pen plotters. He mostly works in Inkscape, but also finds graphical uses for Gimp, Darktable, QCAD, OpenSCAD, Processing, Perl, PostScript, Python, netpbm and — when all else fails — ink and gouache. Some of his work is here: <https://www.flickr.com/photos/scruss/sets/72157666420609652/> --- Trent Drake is a freelance artist, with two decades experience in drawing anthropomorphic characters. A former qualitative data analyst, he continues to branch out in game design, animation, cartooning. He also directs and produces independent video productions for community organizations and YouTube. He works in Windows, using Inkscape, GIMP, and Blender. Links to content: * The Safety Prance: Lyricist, prop-builder, director: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dIu8gHkzEs> * Pixel art gallery: <https://www.weasyl.com/submissions/hiker> --- Myles Braithwaite is a web developer who sometimes has to designs user interfaces. He accomplishes this by using Open Source design tools like Inkscape for icons and wireframes, Dia for structure diagrams, and GNUpaint for rough sketching. He enjoys manipulating SVG files and manipulate them with Python and CSS (he was doing it before it was in vogue). On the rare occasion he has to interact with dead trees he uses Scribus to design page layouts. ## Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre 245 Church Street, Room 203 Ryerson University <http://goo.gl/maps/16oJ2> <http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/23447525> ## Schedule * 6:00 pm - Please discuss on the general mailing list (i.e. <talk(a)gtalug.org>) where you want to go for dinner. * 7:30 pm - Meeting and presentation. * 9:00 pm - After each meeting a group of GTALUGers move to the The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socializing. # Code of Conduct We want a productive happy community that can welcome new ideas, improve every process every year, and foster collaboration between individuals with differing needs, interests and skills. We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who enhance it. This code of conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups collaborate to mutual advantage and enjoyment. We will challenge prejudice that could jeopardize the participation of any person in the community. The Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the Linux community will be judged by our actions. We expect it to be honored by everyone who represents the community officially or informally, claims affiliation, or participates directly. It applies to activities online or offline. We invite anybody to participate. Our community is open. Please read more about the GTALUG Code of Conduct here: <http://gtalug.org/about/code-of-conduct/>. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about the GTALUG Code of Conduct please contact the GTALUG Board @ <board(a)gtalug.org>. --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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iproute2 cheat sheet
by James Knott 11 Apr '16

11 Apr '16

As net-tools is deprecated in favour of the iproute2 command, I thought I'd read up about it. I came across this "cheat sheet", which contains a lot of useful info. http://baturin.org/docs/iproute2/

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dinner before tomorrow's meeting
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 11 Apr '16

11 Apr '16

| From: Myles Braithwaite <me(a)mylesbraithwaite.com> | * 6:00 pm - Please discuss on the general mailing list (i.e. | <talk(a)gtalug.org>) where you want to go for dinner. Reference material: <http://wiki.gtalug.org/pre-meeting_dinner> Please help maintain and improve this wiki page. Where do people wish to go? Since nobody has spoken up, and it is getting late, I'll dictate. Again. (Rebelion welome.) <https://wiki.gtalug.org/pre-meeting_dinner#kaiju_japanese_curry> This is in a food court so you can choose between about three places. This is slightly hard to find. It is in the basement of the Aura building at 384 Yonge St.

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