Re: [Sheflug] Re: Re: My First Post

["Chris J/#6" <nospam [at] nccnet.co.uk>]

> Dear All,
> 	I will reply if I may to a few of your comments:-
> 
> Richard Wrote
> >
> >Can you try not to use HTML to post please.  Not many people do use =
> that
> feature to post to discussion lists.
> 
> I don't know what you mean, I just type it into MS Outlook and press =
> send!
> As far as I was concerned it was just a normal E-mail. I'm sorry if =
> this
> causes problems. I'm posting this from Windows because my Linux setup =
> seems
> unable to connect to the net.

Outlook formats the email to HTML by default, which is a known and continued 
annoyance with a lot of people ... me, I'm not fussed (exmh handles HTML mail 
just about), but I prefer plain :) A good example asl of the waste that HTML 
mail is in terms of byte size...your plain text message is about 3.5k. The 
Outlook HTMLized version is about 7.2k...more than twice the size. Just. 
Outlook in its wisdom includes both a plain text and a HTML version so 
everyone can read the message, giving a message size of at least 10.7k ... 
which is pretty big for 3.5k's worth of text. Add associated header 
information, and your getting an email that's about 12k rather than 5k ... 
doesn't seem a lot. Now ... if everyone sent emails with both HTML and text 
.. and you receive, say, 50 emails a day of various sizes ... at least hald 
the disk space, if you keep old email, is wasted. That extra 7k will soon 
mount up over time...

> 
> Yes I know about Winmodems, my modem is an external 56k serial modem. =
> At one
> point I had it ringing up and connecting to the ISP they negotiated for =
> a
> few seconds and then broke the connection. I managed to find a log file
> somewhere (I might even be able to find it again given enough time) =
> which
> contained a log of the login process. It said 'Terminated by Remote =
> Host' so
> I guess there was a problem with the authentification. Compuserve is =
> not
> particularly Linux friendly.

Compuserve is also expensive :) If you don't fancy tackling a manual ppp 
config (though it is recommended in the long term once yout get used to the 
box...I've been able to copy my /etc/ppp directory between openbsd and 
freebsd with no changes, so there are advantages :) ) then try using a 
program like wvdial...might be able to find it off freshmeat 
[www.freshmeat.net] if its not with your GNU/Linux dist.


> Even though they are free software they still seem to be commercially =
> driven
> and so there is a temptation to put as many software packages as =
> possible on
> the disks. Never mind the quality feel the width, is there a non =
> commercial
> distro out there which only uses proven software?
> 

Slackware - this tends to hold a version or two back and isn't as cutting 
edge as SuSE or RH. I don't know what the Slack 7 installer is like; I've got 
it here on CD but yet to install it (to replace by SuSE dist).

Debian - I get the impression Debian tends to go through more regression 
testing than other dists, it's also the only dist to use totally free 
software, and it has a mroe "BSD"ish community (ie, its a lot more open to 
its developers and maintainers) than RH or SuSE. I've never installed it so I 
don't know what its like.


> I have a CD burner in my system, it works fine under Windows but I have =
> not
> yet got it to work under Linux, the main reason for this is that this
> (Linux) is all new to me and there is too much information to take in =
> all at
> once, nothing works the same as I am used to! I'm still busy =
> assimilating it
> all.

IDE or SCSI? IDE needs SCSI emulation switched on, I belive, for it to work 
right. It's also a little trickier to write CD's as there are few all-in-one 
front-ends. The standard method is (for data CD's):
	1. Use mkisofs to create the CD ISO image
	2. Use cdrecord to burn the ISO image to CD.
Front-ends (like xcdroast) apparently make this easier, but again I've but 
used any, preferring to stick to the command line.


Chris... 



-- 
Chris Johnson            \  "If not for me then, do it for yourself. If not
sixie@nccnet.co.uk        \  for then do it for the world." -- Stevie Nicks
www.nccnet.co.uk/~sixie/   ~---------------------------------------+
Redclaw chat - http://redclaw.org.uk - telnet redclaw.org.uk 2000   \______


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