April 2024 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

anyone have this bell item?
by Karen Lewellen 06 Mar '25

06 Mar '25

hi all, Layered times, leaving me reading more than commenting. My landlord wishes to provide, but cannot seem to successfully secure from bell, the box below. it's a basic bell cable box vip2502 https://www.bellmts.ca/support/tv/fibe-tv/installation-and-setup/arris-vip2… Anyone have this sitting in a closet? Might be wise to confirm the idea will work. This entire property, even outside, has bell fibe for home coverage including internet..But my on going issues with them have me a bit scared. Thanks, Kare Who has not given up on Over The Air, just gauging offered options.

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Feature Highlight - Wayland Compositor Hand-Off
by Scott Sullivan 24 May '24

24 May '24

http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/qt6_wayland_robustness/ This is a robustness improvements that let Wayland clients (applications/programs) gracefully survive and reconnect with the Wayland Compositor after a crash / restart or even complete replacement with a different Wayland compositor. X11 Server, from what I understood in my old explorations, architecturally it would not have been possible to get there from within the limits of X11's design. As someone who daily drives KDE Plasam Wayland, I'm really looking forward to this coming down stream. I've at various time suffered the pain of loosing my whole session over crash bugs. A frustrating, but thankfully brief example was a combination of PrusaSlicer and the QT file dialog triggering a compositor crash. It really takes me back 15 years, when the same level of instability was in X11's ecosystem. But I switched to KDE's Wayland compositor because there are meaningful parts that are already surpassing the prior art, and competing with what the commercial OSes are putting out. -- Scott Sullivan

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A dos port of the Linux program neofetch.
by Karen Lewellen 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

Hi folks, I may only end up using Linux via dos ssh into Linux shells, but boy am I happy when someone ports a Linux tool for DOS. https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2024/03/fetch4fd-system-info-program/ My goal was something comparative to MSD, and Poof! Cheers, Karen

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Windows mutates Linux bootable installation disks
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 30 Apr '24

30 Apr '24

To make a bootable Fedora installation disk, I just do a dd from the .iso file to the USB flash stick (not a filesystem on the USB device) These work well for system repairs as well as installation. When you boot from these sticks, they offer an integrity check: the whole image is checked against a know checksum. Unfortunately, if Windows sees one of these sticks, it mutate the contents. So future integrity checks will fail. I've suffered from this for years: if you are not fast enough during POST to hit the key that lets you specify the boot device, your system might boot into Windows. And then your bootable stick is ruined. I learned a few things from links in Villy Kuses' posting in <https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/why-does-windows-corrupt-the-fedora-…> Basically, this stick has a FAT ESP and Windows adds a magic file and changes a timestamp. How rude. It turns out that the USB stick will boot. Just don't do an integrity check. I wish USB sticks had read-only mechanical switch.

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timestamps on files saved by evince
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 29 Apr '24

29 Apr '24

I'm filling out a few copies of a CRA form (due tomorrow!). They are fillable PDF files. I'm using GNOME's "Document Viewer" (formerly called Evince). (The new name is confusingly generic.) All the saved copies have a "modified" timestamp identical to that of the original empty form that I fetched from the CRA. Has anyone else noticed this? This seems like a Bad Idea. Why would Evince go out of its way to backdate a saved file. I do like that file copying can preserve the original's timestamp but that seems wrong when a mutation is involved.

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ot: backlab?
by Karen Lewellen 23 Apr '24

23 Apr '24

It might not be that far off topic, given I am told it is a comparative list for computer projects. I have also been told some on this list are members. Reason for seeking the list is this. One of my colleagues att he Center for Social Innovation began providing tech support to the organization for whom I work Curtain up distribution, common ground media. www.commongroundmedia.ca Although James provided fine expertise, his own professional workload has changed..right in the middle of almost finishing our project. Equally concerning the machine he largely constructed with items from backlab may behaving a power supply issue. The fan is not always working. and I want to head off a greater problem. basic question is how to connect with this resource, hopefully finding someone with a few hours to finish what James started. Thanks, Karen

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monitor characteristics: EDID
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 20 Apr '24

20 Apr '24

I'm trying to figure out the characteristics of the display on my Asus Vivobook S notebook. One way to figure this out is to look at the monitor's EDID (Extended Display Identification Data). I installed a program called edid-decode since otherwise the EDID is just binary bytes. Then I used this command: edid-decode /sys/class/drm/card1-eDP-1/edid | less The path is to one of the edid's exposed by the Linux kernel. I picked eDP because that should be the built-in display. I've included to result at the end of this message. Things I noted - manufacturer is SDC (Samsung Display Company) - manufactured in the 25th week of 2021 (older than I thought) - bits / color channel: 10 (very nice) - only color format: RGB 4:4:4 That means no chroma subsampling but RGB doesn't support chroma subsampling anyway ================ EDID ================ edid-decode (hex): 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 4c 83 6d 41 00 00 00 00 19 1f 01 04 b5 1f 14 78 02 0c f1 ae 52 3c b9 23 0c 50 54 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 39 ff 40 5c b0 08 20 70 14 20 08 04 38 c3 10 00 00 1b 39 ff 40 5c b0 08 48 77 14 20 08 04 38 c3 10 00 00 1b 00 00 00 0f 00 ff 0a 78 ff 0a 3c 28 80 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 fe 00 41 54 4e 41 34 35 41 46 30 31 2d 30 20 01 72 02 03 0f 00 e3 05 80 00 e6 06 05 01 74 60 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 b7 ---------------- Block 0, Base EDID: EDID Structure Version & Revision: 1.4 Vendor & Product Identification: Manufacturer: SDC Model: 16749 Made in: week 25 of 2021 Basic Display Parameters & Features: Digital display Bits per primary color channel: 10 DisplayPort interface Maximum image size: 31 cm x 20 cm Gamma: 2.20 Supported color formats: RGB 4:4:4 First detailed timing includes the native pixel format and preferred refresh rate Color Characteristics: Red : 0.6796, 0.3203 Green: 0.2373, 0.7226 Blue : 0.1396, 0.0498 White: 0.3125, 0.3291 Established Timings I & II: none Standard Timings: none Detailed Timing Descriptors: DTD 1: 2880x1800 120.001014 Hz 16:10 219.842 kHz 653.370000 MHz (312 mm x 195 mm) Hfront 20 Hsync 32 Hback 40 Hpol P Vfront 16 Vsync 8 Vback 8 Vpol N DTD 2: 2880x1800 60.000507 Hz 16:10 219.842 kHz 653.370000 MHz (312 mm x 195 mm) Hfront 20 Hsync 32 Hback 40 Hpol P Vfront 16 Vsync 8 Vback 1840 Vpol N Manufacturer-Specified Display Descriptor (0x0f): 00 0f 00 ff 0a 78 ff 0a 3c 28 80 02 00 00 00 00 '.....x..<(......' Alphanumeric Data String: 'ATNA45AF01-0 ' Extension blocks: 1 Checksum: 0x72 ---------------- Block 1, CTA-861 Extension Block: Revision: 3 Native detailed modes: 0 Colorimetry Data Block: BT2020RGB HDR Static Metadata Data Block: Electro optical transfer functions: Traditional gamma - SDR luminance range SMPTE ST2084 Supported static metadata descriptors: Static metadata type 1 Desired content max luminance: 116 (616.884 cd/m^2) Desired content max frame-average luminance: 96 (400.000 cd/m^2) Desired content min luminance: 7 (0.005 cd/m^2) Checksum: 0xb7 Unused space in Extension Block: 112 bytes

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KiCad or ...
by Colin McGregor 11 Apr '24

11 Apr '24

I'm looking at doing a small electronic project several times in my boat. I've got the project up and running on a small solderless breadboard, so I know the circuit / software (there is an Arduino knock-off here) works, My soldering skills leave enough to be desired that so far my efforts to get a solder based protoboard up and running ... have not gone so well. So, as I am going to need several of these, and I know I can solder printed circuit boards, I am wondering if I shouldn't just use the services of one of the China based firms that do small runs of custom printed circuit boards for little money (firms like (but not necessarily) PCBWay)? Of course to make that happen I will need computer aided design (CAD) software to generate the files needed by the firm in China to manufacture. So, CAD software for electronics work that runs under Linux, is available under the GPL, what is available? I have looked at KiCad, but are there better options out there? Also, looking for learning the software in question, are there any good YouTube tutorial videos? Thanks.

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Apr 14th - Hacklab Junk Independence Day
by Scott Sullivan 11 Apr '24

11 Apr '24

Hacklab Junk Independence Day Drop off / swap old electronic and e-waste, remainders will be recycled. * Sunday April 15th * 2PM – 7PM https://twitter.com/hacklabto/status/1777909304260968539 https://hacklab.to/archives/junk-independence-day-4/ -- Scott Sullivan

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GTALUG General Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 07 Apr '24

07 Apr '24

What’s changing with the GTALUG <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2024-04/> with GTALUG Board and Ops Team <https://gtalug.org/> 09 April, 2024 at 07:30 PM This week we will discuss the big changes coming our way with the group and some of the technology we will be using going forward. We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *Time:* April 9th, 2024 19:30 AM Eastern Time *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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