Next Kenosha LUG Meetup: Feb 21st

Taken from our Google Mailing List:
" Hey all,

Looks like the next meeting will be February 21st, at my apartment. 6pm - 9pm.

4134 Washington Road Apt 206
Kenosha, WI 53144
(when you find the apartment building, park across from the building - adjacent spots are for residents.)

We need to start having topics/an agenda for meetings. Any suggestions for this one? I'll likely show off my MythTV box to those who are interested, but have no plans other than that.

Feel free to bring snacks, drinks, etc. to the meeting.

--
-Jameson
Omnipresent Garage Banjo"

New Parts

I recently invested in a Jaton GeForce 8400GS 256MB DDR2 PCIe x16. Awesome video card that was about 25 bucks open box on www.newegg.com. The problem is, my motherboard only does PCIe x8 even thou the MB and manual state x16. Thank god for backwards compatibility. The card also requires a 450W PSU but my 400W works good with it. Came with all the cable for out to devices, so experimenting with Nvidia's Twin View to out 21" TV. Flash video's from fancast, hulu, youtube, etc look freaking sweet. - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814139018R

Got myself a 2x1GB DDR2 800Mhz (PC6400) Kit by OCZ from newegg.com as well. The price of RAM just made me go "whoa!" at about 24.99. - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227124

I had to sacrifice some OverClocking speed from my Semperon 3000+ 1.6GHz because of the RAM and Video card. Instead of a CPU Multiplier of 300 for a 2.4GHz had to settle for a Multiplier of 263 for a 2.1GHz. Still a nice gain and with 2 80mm Fans (back), an 80mm (front), a Video Card Fan, and a nice CPU fan... Still runs about 40C for Case, 48C for the Nvidia, and 55C for the CPU. Nice if you ask me :) Also, took my PCIe from 100Mhz to 150Mhz as well.

Hrm, Compiz + Emerald works with out a hitch. The problem is trying to narrow it down to KDE 4.2 with its system settings manager and more complex customization features. Or do I stay with Gnome 2.24 with its simplicity.

The KDE widgets/plasmanoids are nice to have so I can post to twitter, gmail notifications, and folder view.

Foresight Linux

I have to say, I'm really pleased with Foresight Linux thus far. FL uses the Conary Package Manager. Conary can be hard to learn but there are many benefits you can gain from it. Foresight is ran by rPath Linux which is based out of North Carolina (Go Mid-Atlantic!)

+ Only downloads what it needs, it doesn't have to uninstall, then download, and then install. Just downloads what it needs for the update. Which makes for faster updates.
+ Say you download a package from a server, not a server you use all the time, Conary will also search that server for updates :)
+ It can do roll backs.

The most useful function is when it update a package not listed in your repositories. also using things like Troves which is like a version number. Grant it, Learn how to packages from a server is quite confusing at first but it goes something like this:

• rBuilder will display every label the package is available on, including Foresight 1.x, Foresight 2, and Foresight's two testing branches (fl:2-devel and fl:2-qa)
• Packages available in fl:2 are available for installation using Conary or PackageKit on your Foresight computer
• If the package shows available in fl:2-devel or fl:2-qa you can install it, but you are installing beta software.
• To install you will have to use Conary in the command line. To install, in a terminal type:

 Ya, not easy to explain. so lets try this: http://www.rpath.org/repos/foresight/troveInfo?t=xchat 
It works like this "package=shadowed from (minus everything past the /)" that you got off the
link above. So you get this: 

CODE:
sudo conary update xchat=contrib.rpath.org@rpl:2

That's the best way i can explain it. Other than that, not much different. One thing not corrected
is that you can go full screen with flash in Firefox or Opera.

Linux Windows Emulator (WINE) testing

All testing done in Fedora 10 GNOME with WINE 1.0.6 (Windows Emulator)... No hiccups yet. The PSOne and N64 emulators need work, thats a Windows problem, and not a Linux problem. Quake 3 Arena plays online Flawlessly at the highest settings @ 1024x768 Fullscreen. Return to Castle Wolfenstein plays 100% at full screen at highest settings. Quake 2 doesn't even touch the system resources :) Plus all the sound works!

BoycottAdvance (Gameboy Advanced Emulator)

Magic PCEngine (Turbografx-16 Emulator)Project64 (Nintendo 64 Emulator)ePSXe 1.7 (Playstation 1 emulator)Quake 2Quake 3 Arena

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Current Fedora Desktop

Just a few screens of my current desktop. I'm currently using Clearlooks-Compact2 as a GTK2 Theme and Compiz. Also, found this awesome article on how to get the most "space" in GNOME. I got it here http://tuxtraining.com/2008/12/20/how-to-best-utilize-screen-real-estate-in-gnome and everything worked :)

Computer Stats Update

My Distro-Hopping has stopped at:


HDD: Maxtor 6B200P0 (IDE/189.9 GB)
- /dev/sda1: 142.87 GB ext3 HOME/Backup
- /dev/sda2: 21.41 GB ext3 Omega 10 (Fedora 10 Remix) (GNOME / RPM Based)
- /dev/sda4: 21.63 GB XFS Zenwalk 5.2 (Enligthenment 17, XFCE, GNOME, KDE / Slackware Based)
+Extended (1 GB)
- /dev/sda6: 1 GB Swap

Fedora 10 = Success

i must say that i'm very satisfied... i ditched the Fedora 10 KDE4 for GNOME. I tripped over a Fedora 10 remix called Omega 10. Omega 10 comes with DVD, MP3, and Codec support out of the box along with a few extra video playback program. It also has preinstalled extra repositories (rpmfusion) so added Nvidia and other "non-free" software was easy as cutting pie :) KDE4 just eats memory and flashy eyecandy....

other than that.. i just have Omega 10 and Zenwalk 5.2 as my distos. Slackware will always have a home on my desktop.