October 2017 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

In Conversation
by Scott Sullivan 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

Thanks to all those that came out to the GTALUG meeting, and the social afterwards. A couple of interesting items came up in conversation, so I wish to share the links more broadly. * Computer / Device Firmware fwupd: Updating Firmware in Linux https://fwupd.org/ https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devicelist I wrote about this a few months back when logitech got on board. But the explosion of UEFI updates for DELL hardware is encouraging. It's nice to see hardware vendors collaborate with the community to improve this part of the hardware life-cycle for Linux users. https://gtalug.org/pipermail/talk/2017-May/004847.html * Phones ** Librem 5 https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ Pursim, is a company offering laptops with the most comprehensive Free/Libre and Open Source for their hardware (their laptops ship CoreBoot). There now trying to do the same for a phone, and have successfully funded it's development. KDE and Gnome communities are on board for UI development. ** Unihertz Jelly http://www.unihertz.com/spec.html I tiny, Android 7, 4G LTE smartphone, that fits in your pants coin/watch pocket. It is feature packed, and I'm enjoying mine. The semi-rigid rubber case is nice, the armband... not so much. -- Scott Sullivan

2 1

Re: [GTALUG] touch screens
by John Moniz 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

1 0

Kernel and/or X upgrade broke my video setup
by Evan Leibovitch 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

Hi there. I tried sending a message the other day on this but it got no bites. But I'm a little desperate to figure out what's happening and I've never been good at configuring X. Something broke on my system and the only thing I can pin it to is a recent upgrade in my Linux Mint setup that involved both new kernels and X servers. What's happened is that my two video screen setup, once logged in, does not recognize the second screen as being a different screen, so they now just mirror each other when I could once have then side by side as one big horizontal screen. What's stranger (to me) is that when logged out (running LightDM) the system DOES recognize my mouse pointer going from one screen to the next. So somewhere it IS being recognized as a separate screen, but once I log in that goes away and I'm back to a mirroring situation.. Any suggestions! -- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56

2 1

Re: [GTALUG] touch screens
by Scott Sullivan 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

On 11/10/17 08:31 AM, ac via talk wrote: > On Wed, 11 Oct 2017 07:08:40 -0500 > o1bigtenor via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: >> Am I the only person who finds that touch screens don't work worth >> a !@#$%^ using my fingers? >> > > you are not alone. for some basic stuff they are fine, but, in addition to > your valuable observations, I frequently find that my fingers are simply > just too big and the effort required to operate the various screens > accurately, is simply too much... > > <insert poop emoji here><insert phone emoji here><insert more > interesting and relevant emojis here, of course so that more people will > understand my communications> > > maybe the 2020's will be better after all the kids grow up (and some of > the present old people have shuffled off the mortal coil / outran the > other rats) I agree this is a problem in the North American market. In Korea, Samsung does seem to be paying attention to this issues though. The Samsung Galaxy Folder 2, is a hybrid smartphone/flipphone with full keys, and larger UI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYC0gw7g1zA&t=4m5s -- Scott Sullivan

2 1

OnePlus OxygenOS built-in analytics
by Scott Sullivan 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Looks like OnePlus is phoning home identifiable information. I know these devices are popular among our community. https://www.chrisdcmoore.co.uk/post/oneplus-analytics/ It can be disabled with a little work. But another option is to switch to LineageOS. This the continuation of the Community that was CyanogenMod. -- Scott Sullivan

3 2

Video card weirdness
by Evan Leibovitch 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Hi all. This one seems strange. My home desktop is an up-to-date Linux Mint KDE, with an AMD/ATI Radeon HD 6670. It drives two ports on the back of the card, - an HDMI driving an LG monitor - a VGA port driving a Benq monitor Until tonight, the video settings allowed me to see both ports and both screens (even identified the vendors), and I could run them side by side as one double-width screen. Tonight, that facility just died, and the computer just blanked for a moment then displayed a mirror image of the LG onto the Benq. Now systems settings doesn't even know that the second screen exists. I've updated all system software, but have not installed any proprietary drivers. At the AMD site there are proprietary drivers available for download, but only for Ubuntu 14.04 which is a few years old. And I didn't need the proprietary drivers when the side-by-side displays were working fine just a few hours ago. Any suggestions are welcome. -- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56

1 0

Obligatory pre-meeting where-to-eat discussion
by Evan Leibovitch 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Another month, another "so where do we go for dinner THIS time?" discussion. Since I know I'm coming tomorrow I thought that actually asking 24 hours in advance might be a good idea. Last month was Kabul Express IIRC. If it worked out OK, is it worth doing again? It's certainly close enough to the venue. If not, does Tacos101 <http://www.tacos101.com/> have enough seating? -- Evan Leibovitch Toronto, Canada Em: evan at telly dot org Sk: evanleibovitch Tw: el56

4 3

[GTALUG-Announce] GTALUG Meeting on Tuesday at 7pm
by hi＠gtalug.org 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2017-10/> # The State of Mozilla with Mike Hoye In November, Mozilla will release Firefox 57, a major update to the browser with a lot of new technology and features under the hood. Mike Hoye will be joining us to talk where Firefox, Mozilla and the Web are today, and where they're going. ### Annual General Meeting After Mike's talk GTALUG will be doing it's annual general meeting. * **GTALUG Update** -- 5 minutes * **Treasury Update** -- 5 minutes * **ICANN & CAG** -- 5 minutes * **Board Elections** -- 20 minutes ## 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 Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St East) for refreshments and more socialising. # 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 jeopardise 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 honoured 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

1 0

Dead DVD drive in laptop
by Chris F.A. Johnson 04 Oct '17

04 Oct '17

The DVD drive on my Dell Inspiron laptop has died. I see three options: 1. Get it fixed 2. Replace it 3. Ignore it and get an external DVD Which would you recommend? (I'm running Linux Mint.) -- Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com>

11 18

FSOSS: last day for early-bird registration!
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 04 Oct '17

04 Oct '17

I don't remember seeing an announcement here. FSOSS is a conference put on by Seneca @ York each year. I've found it well worth going. Tomorrow the registration fee doubles! <http://fsoss.senecac.on.ca/2017/index.html> Date: Oct 26-27 (Thursday and Friday) Location: the Seneca buildings on the Campus of York University

3 2