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where to shove the spare machines
by David Nicol 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

On 1/3/06, Jon Pruente <jdpruente(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I've got pare machines out the wazoo. My wife would love it if I > could trim it down a bit. What spec level are you looking for? If > anyone else is looking for low or low-mid spec machines, drop me a > line. > > Jon. Me too. And there are others like us. We need something practical to do with the low and low-mid spec machines. We know from experience that they make perfectly dandy low-volume servers and firewalls for instance. If only there was a boot floppy that would turn the dust magnet into something that would be of use. Or if there was a need for text terminals. Or even X terminal. X servers are entirely dandy on anything faster than 150 Mhz. Really they are. Please contact me off-list if you would like to be involved in a project to recycle spare computers into something useful -- or on-list if you think that such a project makes sense as a LUG project. -- David L Nicol "our community is healthier because they had the power to make that mistake" -- ESR

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RE: where to shove the spare machines
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

I can confirm that. I ran Ipcop back in those halcyon floppy days, right after Freesco started blowing chunks and couldn't keep up on kernel versions, fixes. Search Google for "linux floppy firewall" and you will find even more options. Coyote pops up quite a bit. I recall a cool website, where you put in various info about the box you are making into a firewall, and what rules you want and then it builds a floppy.img for you with the right modules for your NICs and is pre-setup for routing. -----Original Message----- From: On Behalf Of David Spake Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 8:28 AM To: kclug(a)kclug.org Subject: RE: where to shove the spare machines Coming into the discussion late, but if you are looking for a firewall to run on a 386, you might consider older versions of Smoothwall (say .99) or IPCop. Check the IPCop forums (ipcop.org) and search thru the user forum. I found multiple hits on '386' where people talk about installing Smoothwall .99 on a 386, and IPCop on 486's with 16 meg of ram. Seems IPcop won't install with 8 meg, but if you populate it to 24, and then install you can reduce it back down to 16 (or maybe even 8) and run. I would suspect that you could search the Smoothwall forums for the same thing. Dave P.S. arrgh... damn web email client. Apologies for the empty post. --- "Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO" wrote: > Also look into mulinux. It was small before > either of those. Now on > http://mulinux.dotsrc.org/ version 14r0. Not under > active development, > but will work on a 386. There is also Tom's > rootboot and many others. > > -----Original Message----- > > > Monty J. Harder wrote: > | On 1/4/06, *David Nicol* < > | > | If only there was a boot floppy that would > turn the dust magnet into something > | that would be of use. > | > | http://www.linuxrouter.org/ > > ...which has been fairly dead for a while. For more > recent (but still > fits > on a floppy and runs on almost any old hardware) > versions: > > http://www.leaf-project.org/ > > The current uClibc based Bering release is an > excellent way to turn most > any > spare PC into a > router/stateful-firewall/vpn-gateway/whatever. >

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RE: where to shove the spare machines
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

Also look into mulinux. It was small before either of those. Now on http://mulinux.dotsrc.org/ version 14r0. Not under active development, but will work on a 386. There is also Tom's rootboot and many others. -----Original Message----- Monty J. Harder wrote: | On 1/4/06, *David Nicol* < | | If only there was a boot floppy that would turn the dust magnet into | something | that would be of use. | | http://www.linuxrouter.org/ ...which has been fairly dead for a while. For more recent (but still fits on a floppy and runs on almost any old hardware) versions: http://www.leaf-project.org/ The current uClibc based Bering release is an excellent way to turn most any spare PC into a router/stateful-firewall/vpn-gateway/whatever.

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Re: OT: Happy birthday to me! (not really happy, I guess)
by Jon Pruente 09 Jan '06

09 Jan '06

let me try again, as I hit the SPAM filter again. Maybe I should put a bit more text into this? Or is it just that I can't start new topics? On 1/9/06, Jon Pruente <jdpruente(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Ever wonder what it's like to have a run-in with the KCPD, literally? > > http://www.applefritter.com/node/10153 > > >

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wireless cards for laptop
by curt 07 Jan '06

07 Jan '06

Hi All, I've been searching for info on supported pcmcia wireless cards for my laptop. A Thinkpad T23... As yet I have found little info other than some comments regarding the chipset. I would really prefer to simply purchase a card, plug it in and be done with it. The problem seems to be that no manufacturer seems forthcoming with chipset info. Can someone suggest a card that they have had success with and tell me the "Retail" brandname and model number? Beats the hell out of buying one, taking it home, dicovering it has an unsupported chipset, returning it and repeating the process again and again. Thanks

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RE: wireless cards for laptop
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 06 Jan '06

06 Jan '06

www.linux-wlan.org/ links to a list http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz and additional info, http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html and http://at76c503a.berlios.de/devices.html That's where I refer people all the time to look. -----Original Message----- From: kclug-bounces(a)kclug.org [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of curt Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 11:04 AM To: kclug(a)kclug.org Subject: wireless cards for laptop Hi All, I've been searching for info on supported pcmcia wireless cards for my laptop. A Thinkpad T23... As yet I have found little info other than some comments regarding the chipset. I would really prefer to simply purchase a card, plug it in and be done with it. The problem seems to be that no manufacturer seems forthcoming with chipset info. Can someone suggest a card that they have had success with and tell me the "Retail" brandname and model number? Beats the hell out of buying one, taking it home, dicovering it has an unsupported chipset, returning it and repeating the process again and again. Thanks _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug(a)kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

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RE: Anyone have a spare machine?
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

Except for the customization that is possible. i.e. plugins -----Original Message----- From: On Behalf Of Luke-Jr Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 12:08 PM On Wednesday 04 January 2006 17:37, Frank Wiles wrote: > On Wed, 4 Jan 2006 17:25:42 +0000 Luke-Jr <luke(a)dashjr.org> wrote: > > Aww, cmon. Firefox is for Windows lusers... Those of us who use > > Linux-based OS have better browsers, namely Konqueror. > > Heh that's really funny. You're the first person to call me a > Windows user in over a dozen years. :) I wasn't calling you a Windows user, I was pointing out that for a Linux user, Firefox is the equivalent to IE under Windows.

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RE: Anyone have a spare machine?
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

One thing that I see that could cut down on ram useage is using all KDE-based or gnome-based apps. I found out a while back that on me system with KDE and mostly K-apps, when I launched something like X-Chat or other GTK apps, the system crawled for a bit at 384MB of ram. So I switched to Konversation for IRC. End of problem. I mostly do web-based email now, and do RSS thru my Google homepage. Some of the other stuff I don't use. A big system killer if you have ram below 1GB, is bit torrent downloads. At least as far as I can tell. I've had lockups on Linux and Windows with torrents running, IRC and Firefox with tabs open. PIII-500 with 384MB. -----Original Message----- From: kclug-bounces(a)kclug.org [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Luke-Jr Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 11:26 AM On Wednesday 04 January 2006 17:10, Frank Wiles wrote: > which kills performance. > > Or you could just use less applications at once. Hence "Unless you use only very few applications at a time". > I run Gnome all day on a laptop with only 384 MBs of RAM. It's my primary > work station and I never run into serious performance problems. Perhaps you only do one or two things at a time and don't have on average over 50 windows open? > I typically have the following running constantly: > > *) Several ( 5 or more ) terminals I have at least that many, especially if you count each individual Konsole tab. > *) Sylpheed Obviously a good idea to have a mail app open all the time ;) > *) Firefox with several tabs Aww, cmon. Firefox is for Windows lusers... Those of us who use Linux-based OS have better browsers, namely Konqueror. > *) X-Chat This used to eat a ton of RAM on my system until I limited its scrollback buffer... > *) Gaim Not sure about Gaim, but Kopete can eat quite a bit of RAM. I like Psi's nice small footprint. > *) Lifrea How's the RAM usage here? Akregator keeps all article summaries in RAM, and is eating 52 MB right now (usually more)

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RE: Anyone have a spare machine?
by Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

KDE 3.4 is supposed to fix this memory problem. -----Original Message----- From: kclug-bounces(a)kclug.org [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Luke-Jr Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:57 AM On Wednesday 04 January 2006 06:25, Arthur Pemberton wrote: > I am looking for something that would run KDE / GNOME well enough that I > don't misinterpret its performance as a bug. I suspect video card + 900 MHz > machine would do the job. Although, beggers are not choosers. + a crapload of RAM Unless you use only very few applications at a time, even 1 GB won't be enough. I generally sit around 3 GB RAM usage-- mostly swapped, which kills performance.

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Re: Linux on older laptops
by Luke-Jr 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 19:43, you wrote: > Luke-Jr wrote: > > On Tuesday 03 January 2006 00:19, Richard Piper wrote: > >> Just curious Luke, how far do you take this belief? Do you only run > >> computers which work with a free-as-in-freedom BIOs as well? > > > > If I had that choice, I certainly would. Ditto for firmware and hardware. > > I'm sorry, but at this point, you fall off the edge of your own world. > You claim it's immoral for an entity, be it personal or corporate, "corporate entities" is a bug in certain legal systems, not a real thing. > to distribute *their* creation as they see fit, The problem is only when "they see fit" involved artificially restricting the rights of others. > yet you find it reasonable to continue to use that same software/hardware? Not when I have a choice. If I am forced to use something licensed/distributed immorally, well... I'm forced to use it. Not much I can do there. The new open-design PPC system looks promising, though. > You *do* have that choice. Nope. > You could fabricate your own hardware, and then program it yourself. I could not, as I lack the skills to design the hardware or to fabricate it. > You *choose* to skip that step and use someone else's piece's and parts, all > the while espousing how immoral it all is. I have no choice but to use the parts someone else has designed due to above limitations of practicality. > >> The way I see it: the drivers aren't immoral; the company's decision to > >> not open source the drivers was immoral. > > > > And your decision to buy the device and use the drivers is an act of > > support. Now, obviously if you were given it or had already bought it, > > that doesn't apply, but you're still sacrificing your rights and > > piece-of-mind (who knows what backdoors these drivers might have?) by > > using them. > > Are you not, according to your first paragraph, also supporting them? > You're obviously using a computer, yet every computer that runs on non > free-as-in-beer hardware/software is immoral? I can only make a choice when a choice is given. If someone pushes you off a tower, are you at fault because you chose to continue falling?

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