Speaker Peter Perry on “Cellular Automata”.

Refreshments provided. Cost $3. Parking available, all welcome.

Speaker BARRY DWYER on “Genetic Algorithms in Computing”.

Refreshments provided. Cost $3. Parking available, all welcome.

Note: The talk PDF has been added to our ‘Tutorials’ section.

RICK MATTHEWS details the new Linux “RASPBERRY Pi” Single Board Computer.

Refreshments provided, Cost is still only $3.00. All welcome.

What really impressed me?

Slack boots to a console for login by default, so you can upgrade without stuffing up the X-server.

It still uses lilo for boot management, which is so much easier to configure than grub2.

Xfce ran without a hitch using startx.

Even better, ctrl+alt+bksp killed the X-server, so no more configuring this key combination with ’setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp’ as you have to in other ‘modern’ distros.

And amazingly, with no X-server running, just on the bare login console, movies play perfectly using the frame buffer, because Slack had created the device /dev/fb0 by default on booting:

$ mplayer movie.avi
MPlayer 20101218-4.5.1 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
Playing movie.avi.
vo: couldn’t open the X11 display ()!
VO: [fbdev] 640×480 => 640×480 BGRA

The only small quibble I have is that 13.37 perpetuates the brain-dead /bin/df of recent times, which can’t get the root filesystem device right, even though the OS has access to that info:

$ /bin/df -HPT
Filesystem     Type   Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root      ext4    12G  5.7G  5.3G  52% /

Easily fixed, however, with this kludge:

$ /bin/df -HPT|sed s/root/$(/bin/ls -l /dev/root|awk ‘{print $NF}’)/
Filesystem     Type   Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      ext4    12G  5.7G  5.3G  52% /

What a distro!

The problem is in the advanced Linux distros, where /bin/df reports that the root filesystem is mounted on root, which is pretty pointless — after all, that is the definition of the root filesystem. Worse than that, /bin/df now fails to report which device the root filesystem is on, and cannot even report the file type, even though all that information is available to the operating system.

Research on the ‘web seems to suggest two reasons for this recent weird behaviour: implementation of ’systemd’ and a careless soft link of /etc/mtab to /proc/self/mounts. I have developed a workaround which restores the normal default behaviour, with the correct root device and type displayed, and it shall be placed on our website in a couple of days in the “Tutorials” section.

We shall have a “Micro Talk-Fest” where all attendees talk for up to ten minutes on a computing subject they are currently dealing with.

Subjects so far are: Impressive (app.); FreeBSD & Linux; Number System development;  Rosegarden composing (app.); Image processing; and the Halting problem.

We will supply refreshments, wine and nibbles. No extra cost, still only $3.00. All Welcome.

Just drop in. Refreshments supplied, Cost $3 if we help, $2 otherwise.  All welcome

Hayden explores “Linux Kernel Concepts”.

Refreshments supplied; Cost still only $3  —  All Welcome.

[Note: PDF of notes have been added to the 'tutorials' section of our website]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

Linux User and Developer (Issue 107, Dec 2011)
– A few tips on how to fix some common problems that occur using Linux
– Build your own distro. using SUSE
– How to get media onto your Android
– Clever password managers
– Reviews of distros: OpenSUSE 12.1, Lubuntu 11.10, Sabayon 7
– Reviews of apps: AV Linux (audio/video), Shotwell (photo management)
– Bootable DVD included.