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processor progress sure has slowed down
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

I got an ad from NCIX for systems with Intel's new Kaby Lake processors. Here's the headline: UP TO [LARGER FONT] 28% BETTER PERFORMANCE* [/LARGER FONT] versus a 3-year-old-desktop The footnote shows that a i7-7700K processor system was being compared with a i7-4770K. Some of the improvement would be in DDR4 vs DDR3 and so on. OS and video card were the same. The power requirement of the CPU went up slightly. You'd normally expect a 7xxx processor to be compared with a 6xxx procecessor, but they've reached back an extra two generations to show even a modest 28% improvement. There are useful features added to the processors since the Haswell generation. Like a working TSX-NI: Haswell had it, with bugs, so Intel suppressed it with a microcode update. Not completely fair since the K models never had it. Intel has put a lot of extra transistors into on-chip video, something useful at least sometimes. Perhaps this shows where Intel feels it needs to compete -- AMD has a better on-chip GPU but an uncompetitive CPU. One can only hope that AMD's Zen/Ryzen lives up to AMD's talk.

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[GTALUG-Announce] Meeting Tomorrow at 7:30pm
by hi＠gtalug.org 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

<http://gtalug.org/meeting/2017-01/> # Round Table Q&A Session A Round Table Q&A Session is where we take questions from the audience, and the audience discusses and attempts to answer those questions from their own knowledge. It's a great way to meet fellow members of our community and discover the skill sets we each bring to the table. ## 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 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 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

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Fwd: AirDrop-alikes
by Giles Orr 09 Jan '17

09 Jan '17

Mac's AirDrop ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirDrop ) is wonderfully simple and quite fast - but only supported on Mac (that I'm aware of). Has anyone tried NitroShare ( https://github.com/nitroshare/nitroshare-desktop ), Dukto ( http://www.msec.it/blog/?page_id=11 ), or any other cross-platform alternatives? Encryption is a requirement, which I think lets Dukto out. I'd consider a Linux-only solution, but would prefer cross-platform. I'm looking for local-only solutions, so "Dropbox" or anything else that reaches out to the Internet isn't a viable solution. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Cyber Monday cheap netbook
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 06 Jan '17

06 Jan '17

<https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/ASUS-EeeBook-E402SA-UB0…> Typical netbook, with twists Points of interest: ++ FullHD resolution (1920x1080). I don't know any other notebook with this kind of resolution under about $500. + $249.00 today (list price is $399.00) + if you collect AirMiles, and you go through the AirMiles site, you can get about $25 worth of AirMiles back + 4G RAM (2G seems standard in netbooks so this is very good) - 14", so larger and heavier than I'd like. But you might like the size. - 32 eMMC "disk". Small, but enough for a full Linux distro. Normal for netbooks due to Microsoft's licensing model. - slow but useable: "Intel Celeron N3060 1.60 GHz with Intel Burst Technology up to 2.48 GHz" Might have problems with the Linux/Atom bug I keep pointing at. + free delivery (and return). MicrosoftStore's policies are pretty good + comes with 64-bit Windows 10 so it must have 64-bit UEFI firmware. Makes Linux installation a lot easier. I bet that this can run Linux well, but I haven't tried it. Nor have I googled to find other's experiences.

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Re: [GTALUG] A question about boot
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 05 Jan '17

05 Jan '17

[This is a copy of a reply I sent to another list.] | From: David Collier-Brown <davec-b(a)rogers.com> | Who can talk about (intel or arm) boot? I'm looking at a problem that can be | solved by setting up a device at boot time and not letting the OS have the | privilege or perhaps the physical ability to change it... Not enough information for me to understand the constraints. What's your threat model? - Are you scared of the OS, the user of the OS, or something else? - Are you scared of random misbehaviour or an intentional attack - Can you control physical access to all or part of the system? What would enforce change prevention? Some things come to mind: - the device itself could be set in an unchangeable mode after setup + eg. a physical switch that latches until "reset" (but this becomes a recursive problem: how to prevent the OS from resetting the device). - security through obscurity: ability to change the device is hidden behind a secret handshake only known to the initiates. We generally distrust this kind of approach. - security through a layer of indirection that implements the protection policy that you require + put a little controller (Raspberry Pi?) between the device and the computer. You would probably need physical protection of the device from the Bad Guys (an OS? A bad operator?) + run the OS under a VM system that implements the policy. + Conventional PCs have a mysterious "SMM" that overrides anything that the OS thinks it can do. It is part of the firmware commonly called the BIOS and isn't easily mucked with by mortals. With a high enough budget, SMM might be a useful vector. But maybe you already have a solution in mind, with some blank bits, and haven't sketched this for us.

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A question about boot
by David Collier-Brown 05 Jan '17

05 Jan '17

Who can talk about (intel or arm) boot? I'm looking at a problem that can be solved by setting up a device at boot time and not letting the OS have the privilege or perhaps the physical ability to change it... --dave -- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb(a)spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain

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Bash on Ubuntu on Windows
by William Park 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

Hi all, I just tried "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows" (yes, it's real title). With this, there are now 4 ways of running Unix tools on Windows. 1. busybox -- single binary running on Windows. 2. Cygwin -- you download and install bunch of programs, like bash, bc, awk, sed, etc, that will run natively on Windows. 3. VirtualBox -- full VM. 4. Bash on Ubuntu on Windows -- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS command line on Windows 10 (64bit only). I kind of like it, because it's "official" and will replace Cygwin, at least. Busybox is still useful for other Windows, but as Windows10x64 becomes the standard, it will be replaced too. -- William

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What Not To Backup
by John Moniz 27 Dec '16

27 Dec '16

Hi everyone, I'm backing up my system on a more regular basis and am trying to fine tune the files that I backup. I am looking for advice on what NOT to bother to backup on the /home directory. I am using rsync (took a long time and lots of trials to figure out the man page - and still don't know 90% of it) and presently have the following on my exclude_list.txt: (Note: multiple items shown on one line are just for readability, each line in the file only has one item) tmp* TMP* .cache* cache* Cache* CACHE* *CACHE *Cache *cache .cookies* cookies* Trash Trash* TRASH* Junk* junk* .gvfs Backups backups Crash* .xsession-errors* .macromedia .thumbnails .mozilla/firefox/*/thumbnails *.corrupt minidumps .local/share/gvfs* I'd love to exclude things that perhaps one would never use from a backup to rebuild a system after an accidental clean wipe of all data. Similarly, any recommendations of what I should back up outside of /home? I am thinking of things like /etc/fstab, files that would make it easier to recover from a crash or to upgrade a distro. Thanks for any advice. John.

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Experience Upgrading From Fedora 24 to Fedora 25
by CLIFFORD ILKAY 24 Dec '16

24 Dec '16

Hello All, I've been using Fedora for a few years on my primary workstation, though I use Debian (stable) for servers. Whenever Fedora released a new major version, I'd do a fresh install, which based on past experience with attempts to upgrade in place was the best way. I just followed the directions here <https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade> to upgrade from 24 to 25. Within 20 minutes, I had a flawlessly working system. I'm very impressed. Hardware specs, in case you're wondering, are as follows. ASUS P755D with Intel i5-750 CPU, 16GB RAM /boot, /, and swap on a 120GB Samsung 750 EVO SSD /home on a 960GB SanDisk SSD /data on an 8TB Western Digital Red HDD nVidia 960GT video card (using nouveau driver) -- Regards, Clifford Ilkay + 1 647-778-8696

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@ Re: What Not To Backup
by Stewart Russell 24 Dec '16

24 Dec '16

On Dec 23, 2016 3:58 PM, "William Park via talk" <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: Our audience is GTALUG members, so they know what we're talking about. I dunno; certainly wouldn't include me. Rsnapshot is about the limit of what I can handle. You can set it to do daily, weekly and monthlies. For me, that's to a NAS that is (or was, until Crashplan pulled compatibility) backed up online. The only thing that's fiddly is the config file: it's very particular about tabs vs spaces. Stewart

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