June 2023 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

[GTALUG-Announce] Membership Dues
by Warren McPherson 13 Nov '23

13 Nov '23

With the agm coming up, now is a great time to renew membership and make a small twenty dollar contribution to the organization. For those looking forward to the chance to wind their way through the Interac E-Transfer process again here is my summary of how it works. (Actually I forget each time so the novelty never wears off -- luckily it is easy.) Log in to your bank and look for "Interac e-Transfers" you may need to go to the "Transfers" page and then you will see this option. Select "email method" and use the email address: membership(a)gtalug.org Putting your name in the message can be helpful as the notification I get can sometimes be a touch obtuse. Thank you to those who have already contributed! (I know who you are. Ha ha) Thank you, Warren --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Red Hat Paywall...
by Colin McGregor 18 Jul '23

18 Jul '23

Let's see if I understand this correctly, Red Hat has now put a whole lot of open source / GPL software behind a paywall, where you have to pay $$ for a subscription in order to access the source code. Then if anyone uses that subscription to produce an Red Hat style distribution (ie: Red Hat minus any support services) their subscription will be cancelled... Is the above what I am reading here? : https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/im-done-red-hat-enterprise-linux If this is true then it confirms my decision to use Debian GNU/Linux as for all its' faults (and it does have several) Debian GNU/Linux just doesn't pull this sort of @#$% .

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Calander
by bitmap 29 Jun '23

29 Jun '23

Long time lurker here. I always see the announcent for an interesting meeting juuuust after it has happened. Is there a share calendar I can sub to? Or just look in advance for second tuesday of the month. Is there a modified summer schedule or things stay the same? Also wondering if they are virtual only on an indefinate basis. Would love to meet some other linux types.

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Debian 12
by Colin McGregor 21 Jun '23

21 Jun '23

I assume I'm not the only Debian GNU/Linux fan here. So, just of note Debian 12 (code name: bookworm (for the non-Debian fans let me note that major Debian releases get code names taken from characters in the "Toy Story" series of movies)) was released earlier this month. I have upgraded my main desktop and laptop computers from Debian 11 (code name : bullseye) to Debian 12 without any significant issues. A review of Debian 12 can be seen here : https://youtu.be/YRaJa-VjLGE Colin.

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CVT-RB: another video mystery
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 20 Jun '23

20 Jun '23

Video bandwidth is precious. In particular the HDMI standards seem to lag in providing the bandwidth I need. Partly because I run old hardware. One silly wast of bandwidth is blanking intervals. That mattered for CRTs since steering the electron beam took time. It should not matter for LCDs. CVT-RB (Coordinated Video Timings - Reduced Blanking) is a standard for reducing the blanking intervals. It sometimes makes the difference for supporting UltraHD. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Video_Timings#Bandwidth> I haven't yet fiddled with this. Perhaps it is currently optimal on my systems. But I have had mysterious troubles getting UltraHD working on some systems. The linux cvt(1) command has a flag --reduce: Create a mode with reduced blanking. This allows for higher frequency signals, with a lower or equal dotclock. Not for Cathode Ray Tube based displays though. But I don't think that command is used in my (automatically generated) configurations. Does Linux automatically know when to use CVT-RB? If so, how does it know? If not, how do you tell it?

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Toshiba Satellite L500 rejects Linux
by Giles Orr 16 Jun '23

16 Jun '23

I've recently acquired (through a friend who stopped using it) a Toshiba Satellite L500 - Core i3 (3rd gen?), 4G RAM. I'm determined to get Linux onto it (preferably Debian). I thought I had succeeded: I booted from a Debian USB stick, installed to the HD. All appeared to go well, but the system won't boot. It returns to the Boot Menu and says "HDXXXX has failed." What the search engines are telling me is that with this generation of Toshibas, the problem is generally Secure Boot / CSM etc. Which makes sense, but ... there is absolutely zero mention in the BIOS/UEFI ("Phoenix SecureCore Tiano Setup") of "Secure Boot," "CSM," "Legacy," or "UEFI." Acccording to notes I found online, "SecureCore Tiano" has "full support" for legacy booting. Another issue with this machine is my mixed success booting from USB sticks: I have an old-ish USB stick I built myself that has GRUB and a large menu of ISOs: works great on most systems, won't boot on this thing - probably because it's an old-style BIOS-boot only(?). One of my ideas was to upgrade the BIOS: it appears there's a newer version available, but it's NOT available from Toshiba, which is the only place I'd want to download it from. The rest look like dubious secondary download sites (if you know one you consider reliable, let me know). What I read online said that Fedora's installer puts an EFI partition on the HD as part of the install, while Debian doesn't. And that may(?) be why I can't boot from my Debian install? So ... I downloaded the Fedora installer, put it on a USB stick ... and no joy: the Toshiba doesn't recognize the Fedora USB stick as a bootable item. Would this be because I burned it on a "Legacy" system? Is there a fix for that? Except ... I'm about 99% sure the Debian Installer USB stick was created on the same machine. Worst case, I can stick the HD from the Toshiba into another machine, install Fedora on it, repartition to make room for Debian, put the HD back into the Toshiba ... but that's getting damn complicated and annoying. As always - any suggestions welcomed. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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computer hobbiest with about 45 minuets?
by Karen Lewellen 15 Jun '23

15 Jun '23

Hi folks, The freecycle cafe used to be wonderful for this sort of thing. If I am honest my situation is sort of getting desperate. On top of my lack of usable landline services, my main computer is having issues now. what I need quite intensely Is sighted help in person to trouble shoot what I cannot due to blindness. and no, CNIB has not provided resources of this kind since well..ever. At least not without a 2 or 3 year waiting list. Might be fun for someone curious about adaptive technology in a low graphics setup. Any prospects? I am on Kingston road if that helps. Thanks, Karen

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Meeting 2023 June 13: Digital Citizenship, Part 2
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 13 Jun '23

13 Jun '23

with Warren McPherson 13 June, 2023 at 07:30 PM “Being involved in open source indicates an interest in the ethical aspects of technology” For this meeting we wish to get your input on what it means to you to be a digital citizen in 2023. What is a Digital Citizen and why is it important? https://www.digitalcitizenship.net/nine-elements.html https://usidhr.org/what-is-digital-citizenship-and-why-is-it-important/ We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl Time: June 13, 2023 7:30 PM Eastern Time Join us on Big Blue Button: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl

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War Story: old Nvidia card vs. Fedora 38 upgrade
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 10 Jun '23

10 Jun '23

My desktop computer is quite long in the tooth. It runs on Fedora Linux. It uses an Nvida GTX 650 video cart that I bought in 2012. I used this card because of the screen resolutions it supported. BACKGROUND: you may ignore this - the computer came with an OK AMD video card, but the OEM (HP) limited it to 1920x1200 (the non-HP versions supported dual link DVI, which is what I initially needed. - although the Haswell CPU's integrated GPU could support DisplayPort up to 3840 x 2160 @ 60 Hz, the motherboard didn't have a connector for that. Over the years, it has taken some babying to use this video card with Fedora. - the open source driver, Nouveau, never worked reliably for me (I only tried a few time). - Fedora itself will not distribute proprietary drivers. - over the years, third party repositories have made using the Nvidia driver mostly easy. RPMFusion is a good repo. FOREGROUND I did an upgrade to Fedora 38 and a bunch of video-related things went wrong. - my desktop was switched from X to Wayland - my video card doesn't work in Wayland, in mysterious ways that need debugging - current Nvidia proprietary drivers can now live with Wayland (this is fairly recent). (I think that that is why the Fedora upgrade felt that it could switch me to Wayland) - my card is no longer supported by Nvidias current drivers, I have to use "legacy" drivers. They apparently don't support Wayland. Solutions: - I discovered these gradually, painfully, tentatively. Appropriate documentation is not very discoverable - in GDM (GNOME login screen), after you have selected your identity but not entered you password, there is a gear symbol towards the lower right of the screen. When you click it, you can select one of GNOME <== the default GNOME Classic GNOME Classic on Xorg GNOME on Xorg Select one of the ones with Xorg - this is not enough. I needed to make GDM itself use X. Change /etc/gdm/custom.conf to enable the command WayLandEnable = false - to fix screen-blanking after 30 seconds, I typed "xset -dpms". I don't know why I started having to do this with Fedora 38. I don't know the correct way of having this apply automatically

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war story: supporting an old printer on Windows, with Linux
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 06 Jun '23

06 Jun '23

A friend has an old trusty HP LaserJet 4MP printer. This is so old that HP no longer makes Windows drivers for it and HP no longer has online manuals for it. I'm guessing that the 4mp model was introduced about 30 years ago. (I bought a LaserJet IIP in 1989 for $1400. Long dead.) It works fine under Linux (he has used Ubuntu). He did need a dongle to connect the serial or parallel port (I don't remember which) to a USB port on the computer. There is a hack to support this for use by Windows: <https://openprinting.github.io/wsl-printer-app/> Highlights: - run Ubuntu in WSL2 (requires Win11) - use ubunto-previow because that allows systemd, which is needed - use <https://github.com/dorssel/usbipd-win> to pass through the USB device to Ubuntu He is about to try this. I hope it work Boy is that a lot of duct tape.

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