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Dial up modems...
by Colin McGregor 24 Jul '23

24 Jul '23

Toronto Free-Net is downsizing and getting rid of stuff that likely should have been gotten rid of one or two decades ago. With this I've been tasked with getting rid of about a dozen PCI card modems (all used) and about 2 dozen desktop modems (also all used), while hopefully making some $$ for Toronto Free-Net.I have not properly checked the PCI modems, but I would not be surprised if at least a few are WinModems that would require a MS Windows specific driver for some no longer supported version of MS Windows (ie: useless for effectively everyone). Does anyone know of anyone who would be interested in these modems? At this point I see the market for these modems being so tiny as to be effectively non-existent. Still I would like to see the space these devices take up in my apartment freed, I would like to see them kept out of the e-Waste stream a little while longer and ideally I would like the Toronto Free-Net to make a few $.

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computer hardware testing tools.
by Karen Lewellen 20 Jul '23

20 Jul '23

Hi folks, What I am seeking is an open source program that tests aspects of say your motherboard. that the serial ports or parallel ports work, that the USB ports are sound etc. I am asking because due to an as of yet not fixed hydro problem in my new apartment, the occasional power surges, even with machines attached to protectors, are causing slight damage to hardware. Need to know how much as I only have so many computers I can use. Any program ideas? Will be sharing suggestions with someone hopefully helping me troubleshoot. Thanks, Karen

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LED bulbs was Re: computer hardware testing tools.
by Michael Hill 19 Jul '23

19 Jul '23

On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 11:27 AM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: (I too suffer a problem that might be power-related. My home office > seems to burn out LED lightbulbs more quickly than it should. I don't > know where to start on that one. It might even be heat related rather > than power-related.) > Would love to hear any conclusions to this. All of ours require a ladder to change, and change is generally required more frequently than the claim on the box. Mike

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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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Tonight's meetings Canceled.
by Alan Heighway 11 Jul '23

11 Jul '23

Please note that tonight's general meeting is canceled. Next months meeting information will be posted on the GTALUG website once our speaker confirm. Thank you.

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Latest Firefox on Debian 12
by Daniel Wayne Armstrong 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

For anyone interested in running the latest stable release of Firefox on Debian 12 aka "Bookworm", its possible to use the Firefox tarball provided by Mozilla. Steps: 1. Download the Firefox tarball from Mozilla - https://www.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/new/ 2. Unpack tarball and store the folder somewhere, i.e on single-user system I keep it in home 3. Create a link somewhere in your PATH to the Firefox executable, i.e ln -s ~/firefox/firefox ~/bin/firefx . Hint: I call the link something different - "firefx" - so as to differentiate this manually installed Firefox from any Firefox (firefox-esr) installed by the Debian package manager. 4. If you use a traditional desktop menu to select and launch your programs, you can create a .desktop file for your new Firefox. I skip this step because I use a dynamic menu/application launcher (rofi/wofi). This is how I do it and it works good! --- Open Source Outer Space => https://www.dwarmstrong.org

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Debian releases
by Giles Orr 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

As I mentioned in a previous email, I'm kind of intrigued by which toy Debian releases will be named after. To quote Wikipedia: "Debian distribution codenames are based on the names of characters from the Toy Story films." The current release is "bookworm," and I was amused to see that the current testing branch is called "trixie." According to Wikipedia's page on Debian's version history, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history, the release after "trixie" will be "forky." If we've progressed to "Toy Story 4," I look forward to Key and Peele's characters "Ducky" and "Bunny" - although the names aren't the most exciting. And of course we can hope for "Caboom" - named after Keanu Reeves' decidedly Canadian character ("for you, Rejean!"). -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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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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