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Notebook Computer Recommendations
by CLIFFORD ILKAY 06 Jul '16

06 Jul '16

Hello All, I am in the market for a laptop with the following specs. Supports at least 32GB of RAM. 64GB would be better if the premium is not too high. If the memory is not maxed out, it should be a matter of adding more sticks rather than throwing away what it already has installed. (I intend to run a bunch of virtual machines on this machine.) At least 1920x1080 display. 3k or 4k would be "nice to have" but not essential. 13" to 15" display would be fine. A 17" machine had better be exceptional for me to consider having to lug something that big around. Excellent full-size, U.S. English keyboard and pointing device(s). I have a couple of older ThinkPads (A21p and T43) and love their keyboards, three button mice, and pointing sticks. If it must be a TrackPad, it had better work as well as the TrackPad on my Mac. I do not know if that is possible with Windows or Linux. I do not like laptops that have numeric keypads because that means the keyboard is offset to the left of the center of the screen, which I think would be like driving a car with the steering wheel that is offset a little bit from the center of the driver's seat. The hard disk type or capacity is not important as long as I can upgrade it to whatever I want. Options: Used ThinkPad W530 can be had for under $1000 with the 32GB of RAM that it supports. I have seen a few brand new W541s (the "s" is for Spanish) but it is not clear to me if they have U.S. English keyboards. New ThinkPad P50 - Linux support seems iffy. Numeric keypad means the keyboard is offset. Expensive. Dell and HP both have workstation notebooks. I do not know much about them. Any recommendations? Any recommendations besides what I have mentioned? -- Regards, Clifford Ilkay + 1 647-778-8696

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Article: Blockchain Revolution review – Satoshi Nakamoto’s world-changing innovation
by Ivan Avery Frey 06 Jul '16

06 Jul '16

Blockchain Revolution review – Satoshi Nakamoto’s world-changing innovation http://flip.it/lK6l_

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Fedora 24 Upgrade - Flawless 4k Support
by CLIFFORD ILKAY 05 Jul '16

05 Jul '16

Hello All, I did a fresh install of Fedora 24 on a new SSD and did not have to do anything special for it to recognize the nVidia GeForce 960 video card or my 40" Philips 4k monitor. The Nouveau driver worked without a hitch, thus eliminating my dependency on the proprietary binary driver, not that it was much of a hardship to deal with in Fedora 23. The random flickering that I would see on a daily basis on a visible part of a window that did not have focus that I used to see with Fedora 23 and the proprietary binary driver from nVidia has not happened in 24 hours of operation with Fedora 24. One oddity was that try as I might, I could not get a USB key created via Unetbootin in Fedora 23 to boot the Fedora 24 netinstall image so I had to burn a CD and boot from that. I had previously used Unetbootin to create a Fedora 24 Beta Live bootable device with the same key and it had worked. -- Regards, Clifford Ilkay + 1 647-778-8696

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Intel i7-6700 vs Xeon E3-1230 v5 --> 65W vs 80W ??
by William Park 04 Jul '16

04 Jul '16

Intel i7-6700 and Xeon E3-1230 v5 are pretty much the same, except that i7 has builtin Graphics and Xeon does not. I don't get it. How can i7 with builtin graphics consume less power?-- William

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war story: upgrading Win8.1 to Win10 on a triple-boot system
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 03 Jul '16

03 Jul '16

If you wish to ever have a free-as-in-beer Windows 10 upgrade, you have to do it before July 29th (according to my unreliable memory). Windows 10 is OK except for the continuous leakage of information to Microsoft. But even earlier Windows versions are being updated to spy too. The main advantage of Win10 over its predecessors is that it will be supported longer. A second advantage is that your license is recorded in the cloud so in future you can wipe Win10 and install it again without much difficulty. Windows 7 and on continually bombard you with update offers. Some even appear to be opt-out. Don't accept these offers. Download Win 10 once to a USB stick and install from there instead. That means that you will only have to download it once, even if the installation fails a few times or if you have several machines. To create a USB stick with the Win10 update, you need to use the "Media Creation Tool", an option wherever you can download Win 10. You can create a USB stick for64-bit, 32-bit, or both. Then it is just a matter of mounting the stick on the Windows non-10 system and running "setup". I've done this on several machines previously and it mostly worked (a previous war story described puzzling disk space issues). On my notebook, I attempted to upgrade 64-bit Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 from within Windows 8.1 using Win10 update from a USB stick. Salient points about this notebook: - partitioning / booting is MBR, not GPT / UEFI - all OSs are 64-bit - came with Win 7 - upgraded to Win 8 (free) and then Win 8.1 (free) (Thankfully I made recovery disks!) - it has Ubuntu and Fedora installed - booting is via Ubuntu's GRUB It did not work. The update process chugged for a while and then came up with this helpful message Something happened. We can't tell if your PC has enough space to continue installing windows 10 Isn't that a great message! It doesn't say why it cannot tell if there is enough space. It won't let me tell it (yes, it does have enough space). It just gives up. If you google for this message, you will find lots of random advice on this one. Probably because there are a lot of causes. I tried a few of the easier ones with no success. So I decided that perhaps Windows needed to own the boot record. I booted into the recovery system provided by the manufacturer. I pushed a couple of options (repair boot? I don't remember and there isn't a trace left). The result was an unbootable system grub only found enough of itself to report that there was a problem: none of its modules were found. I could not boot Windows, the Windows recovery partition, or either Linux. I then studied <https://peter.upfold.org.uk/blog/2013/02/28/restore-windows-8-bootloader/>. I booted a Win 8 recovery DVD that I'd made. - I tried "repair your computer" "advanced options" "Automatic Repair". Didn't work. Apparently it put diagnostics in C:\Windows\... but there was no such filesystem. - I tried "repair your computer" "advanced options" "Command Prompt". Set the "active partition" (as per first comment in that blog entry): > diskpart > list disk > select disk # > list partition > select partition # > active > exit > bootsect.exe /nt60 C: > BootRec.exe /FixMbr > BootRec.exe /FixBoot I don't really know what each step does, but it worked. I could boot into (only) Windows 8.1) >From Win 8.1, I clicked on "setup" from the mounted USB stick. All went uneventfully. Now I will install Fedora 24 (replacing Fedor 20) and in the process re-install grub.

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Re: [GTALUG] mysterious restarts
by Russell Reiter 03 Jul '16

03 Jul '16

> I also have heard of the power grid, being a microgrid designer and all. > Although it's not Linux specific, given the number of posts on this thread regarding power quality and continuity, perhaps microgrids and power walls might be an interesting meeting topic. I'd be interested in knowing what types of control systems are in use for linking and delinking? ie. how would you handle spinning up and linking a wind turbine to a hydrogen cell; bonus if there were discussions around Sandia SPIDERS and cybersecurity. Got some spare time? > > --- >> Talk Mailing List >> talk(a)gtalug.org >> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk >> > > > -- > Michael Galea > > --- > Talk Mailing List > talk(a)gtalug.org > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk

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[GTALUG-Announce] Linux in the Park 2016
by Myles Braithwaite 02 Jul '16

02 Jul '16

<http://gtalug.org/picnics/2016/> GTALUG is having the annual Linux in the Park Potluck this year at Dufferin Grove Park on 23rd July at 2pm. Things we will provide: Plates, Cutlery, Serviettes, Cups, and Garbage bags. Things you might want to bring: chairs, tasty beverages (that are non-alcoholic, as the city prohibits alcoholic beverages in the park), food stuffs that you would like to share and enjoy, tarp/blanket, sunscreen, hats, things to help survive the warmth of the Canadian Wilderness. We will doing this in a pot-luck style. Thus, please bring enough food and drink for yourself and your guests, and try to bring enough to share with others in the group. We are using the GTALUG wiki to organize everything: <https://gtalug.org/picnics/2016/>. Note that if you forget anything you needed, Dufferin Mall is across the street, featuring a supermarket (No-Frills) department store (WalMart), as well as other specialty stores. ## Location Dufferin Grove Park 875 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario <https://goo.gl/maps/hnGg5> <http://osm.org/go/ZX6BHsVZx-?layers=N&way=15703371> ## Social Media Links Facebook: <https://www.facebook.com/events/1738615543061007/> ## 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 one of the GTALUG Board Members @ <board(a)gtalug.org>. --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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classes of x86 performance
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 01 Jul '16

01 Jul '16

This is oriented to gamers but I think that it is interesting. It helps one answer the question: will an upgrade be worth the bother? <http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html> [wandering elsewhere in the topic of upgrades] My last desktop upgrade (a couple of years ago) was from class 6 (Core 2 Quad Q6600) to class 1 (i7-4770). RAM capacity might also matter. In theory, my old desktop could have 8G of RAM but in fact it could not, so I installed 6G. My newer desktop should handle 32G but I only have 24G installed. SSD is so much zippier than HDD that it might be the first upgrade to consider. It seems to make a lot of difference with "modern" desktops like Gnome 3, Unity and Windows 8.x and 10. Make sure that you do backups.

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Linux in the Park travel advisory
by Seneca Cunningham 28 Jun '16

28 Jun '16

I just noticed when this year's Linux in the Park is, and thought that I should pre-warn everyone about some routing issues surrounding July 23. Bloor will be closed between Lansdowne and Dufferin on July 23 (and 24) for the Big on Bloor Festival of Arts & Culture (http://bigonbloorfestival.com) As you might expect, Dufferin Station will correspondingly be busier than usual, and parking may be harder to find. College streetcars may be busses, and may also be affected by streetscaping-in-progress.

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Re: [GTALUG] mysterious restarts
by Russell Reiter 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

I wonder about grid security and whether or not a microgrid can be designed to repel all borders. That is, only allow links to trusted sources. The way things are headed in the IoT, perhaps power source monitoring will detect the harmonic characteristics of each user in a trusted cluster and when combined with the overall harmonics of the grid, this data can be used for quality control and billing, or even equity trading between users. Sent from mobile. On Jun 25, 2016 3:21 AM, "ac via talk" <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > On Thu, 23 Jun 2016 11:43:19 -0400 > Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 07:39:34PM -0400, Michael Galea via talk > > wrote: > > > No, the device is not a UPS. It is a PLC that measures voltages, > > > currents, real and reactive power of a 3-phase service. It > > > provides me the results as IEEE754 32-bit floating point numbers. > > > It's me that truncates to 2 digits. > > > You know I'm sorry I ever implied that the grid wasn't long term > > > accurate at 60 Hz! What I should have said was that in the short > > > term the grid could be quite off 60 Hz but over the longer term it > > > could average out. > > > If I really needed to know the answer to the question of "how much > > > out", I would get ask the PLC to just count cycles and send me the > > > count with a timestamp. That would tell. > > Well wikipedia claims the grid can be off by up to 10 seconds in north > > america on this side of the continent. The west and texas allow a > > lot less. So it can certainly be a bit off for quite a while. > > > this is a very interesting thread, i frequently ponder personal grid > timing and other cycles using various oscillations, until the old 40Hz > streak lights up (sync) my life > > > --- > Talk Mailing List > talk(a)gtalug.org > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk >

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