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Positions at Toronto Public Library
by Giles Orr 24 Feb '22

24 Feb '22

Two positions are being advertised in my immediate department, should anyone be interested. https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2926612537/ - ITS Lead, Digital Products https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2926616569/ - Dev/Ops Analyst Feel free to contact me if you have questions. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Firmware Test Suite
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 21 Feb '22

21 Feb '22

UEFI firmware is quite complex and abstruse. It is easy for a vendor to get it wrong. As long as Windows seems to run, ship it. I just discovered the Firmware Test Suite <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FirmwareTestSuite/> It acts as a lint for firmware. It detects some violations of standards (such as ACPI). Although it is a Ubuntu / Canonical project it can run on other Linux systems or even from a stand-alone bootable image. To install it on Fedora: sudo dnf install fwts Probably the only thing you can do with the result is fling it at your vendor. It might also give a consumer insight into the quality of the firmware engineering.

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I'm discarding an old notebook!
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 17 Feb '22

17 Feb '22

I have an Acer Aspire 9300 that I bought in 2007. I cannot get it to be useful. The problem is (mostly) with drivers for the NVidia Go 6100 video. - nVidia stopped supporting this in the proprietary Linux driver. - nouveau is unreliable https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46557 - using the generic video driver just doesn't cut it. Darn NVidia! If they released specs, I think nouveau would work. There seems to be some bug related to more than 2G of RAM (a lot in 2007). But that's not the whole story. Other than that, the machine is functional. Oh: Windows 10 goes into a slow failure loop if you try to install it. (The computer came with Vista. Not safe to use these days.) The machine would not be fast but it would be useable for many tasks if it worked! It has a 64-bit AMD Turion processor. This was before AMD bought ATI; the "chipset" was made by NVidia.

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Can anyone recommend a source for Laptop batteries..
by Michael Galea 10 Feb '22

10 Feb '22

I'm looking for recommendations on replacing my T420's battery pack. Either a store, source, particular manufacturer or any experiences would be welcome. -- Thanks Michael Galea

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OT Raspberry Pi 4 Powered Rubik's Cube Solver
by Ivan Avery Frey 10 Feb '22

10 Feb '22

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-bot-solves-rubiks-cube Cheers, Ivan

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Tomorrow: Join 18 Readers at "[ONLINE] #34 Jenny Ren on Linux Performance Revolution" (fwd)
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 08 Feb '22

08 Feb '22

Papers We Love is a great idea for a meetup group. It hasn't been very active during the pandemic. This might be of interest to GTALUGers. <https://www.meetup.com/Papers-We-Love-Toronto/events/283482352/> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Papers We Love - Toronto <info(a)meetup.com> Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2022 18:10:32 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Tomorrow: Join 18 Readers at "[ONLINE] #34 Jenny Ren on Linux Performance Revolution" A quick reminder that this event is coming up tomorrow. Are you going? Ding Yuan added this event for Papers We Love - Toronto What: [ONLINE] #34 Jenny Ren on Linux Performance Revolution When: Wednesday, February 9, 2022, 6:30 PM ET Where: Online event Let's revive Papers We Love :-) Jenny Ren will discuss "An Analysis of Performance Evolution of Linux's Core Operations" (http://meet.meetup.com/ls/click?upn=yBf4llw5PeaY7leriFwBBpcdDwF5GMjZuOVJGeF… And Jenny is the author of the paper! (You shouldn't need to read the paper ahe...

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[GTALUG-Announce] Tonight's Meeting
by Alan Heighway 08 Feb '22

08 Feb '22

When: Feb 8, 2022 7:30PM Speaker: D. Hugh Redelmeier Topic: Gitlab fundamentals followed by Q&A and Discussion Date/time: 2022-01-11 T19:30:00 Location: Virtual - Big Blue Button (https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl) TOPIC: The GTALUG executive uses several tools. I hope to introduce those tools centred around git: git, gitlab (a public host for git trees), and markup (a simple text markup language for text). *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing] --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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Can anyone recommend a "health" smartwatch?
by David Collier-Brown 04 Feb '22

04 Feb '22

My fitbit with a heart-rate sensor died, so I bought a Spade and Co "Health Smartwatch 2", which was absolutely /beautiful/, just what I wanted... and didn't work. All three apps they use all demand I own a phone with a larrrrge screen, so you can fill in the forms. I have a small screen, and the app knows I wouldn't want to scroll down, so it prohibits my doing so. (They should terminate their UX person with extreme prejudice (:-)) Any recommendations about good "health" watches? If folks have had good experiences with some, I'll try their apps, and if they work, order one. --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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[GTALUG-Announce] February Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 03 Feb '22

03 Feb '22

*When: *Feb 8, 2022 7:30PM *Speaker:* D. Hugh Redelmeier *Topic:* Gitlab fundamentals followed by Q&A and Discussion *Date/time:* 2022-01-11 T19:30:00 *Location:* Virtual - Big Blue Button (link above) --- GTALUG Announce mailing list announce(a)gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

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decent cheap ChromeOS tablet -- can run debian in a container
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 24 Jan '22

24 Jan '22

https://forums.redflagdeals.com/lenovo-canada-chromebook-10e-tablet-129-les… This is $129 tablet seems to be aimed at kids in schools. It's not particularly powerful, but it has a nice screen (1920x1200, 400nit), battery, and a solid build. This version of ChromeOS invites you to create a container with debian in it. The debian is from the debian repos: not customized. I've done so. I can run xterm, but it is awkward without a keyboard and mouse. I've loaded gnome desktop but I'm not sure how to start it. I wanted to use gnome's on-screen keyboard. Seems like a fun toy for this price. The weakest point is that it has only 32G of eMMC (disk) and no slot for an SD card. It has only one USB port and that is used for power. I was able to use a USB-C hub with "power delivery" to add more peripherals. The sale might end at any time. Perhaps the end of the day or the end of the weekend.

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