Posts by keithpeter

@Munchausen and all including OP

Clustery options also include Springdale Linux. This RHEL clone dates from before Scientific Linux and is used at IAS and Princeton and a number of other academic sites.

https://researchcomputing.princeton.edu/systems/tiger

Springdale also works fine on my crappy old refurbished laptop. Cool isn't it? Boot iso only then rest of install over the wire.

PS: does anyone know what Fermilab and CERN are doing after the CentOS discontinuation? Free RHEL licences or what?

PPS: no mention of Oracle Linux? Like it is a total non-person? It is still there.

Re: This is unnecessary

"If HR knew they would order me not to, and so make my work more difficult, but fortunately it's France, where everyone ignores inconvenient laws."

But they *have* that law and can use it when needed.

Below is a long read in the form of a book review for anyone who might be interested.

https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-paradox-of-control

Icon: off out for a walk

Can you add libraries with pip and all yourself?

(Just thinking of possible future project costs Altos could come up with...)

Re: Windows 11 also requires the presence of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) – version 2.0

Would there be a Microsoft Web page that spells out this new information that you have found for us?

If so, a link would be useful. The places I work in have only just made it to Windows 10 and that is on basic low spec hardware.

Re: Windows

"Just checked around the office. Only half of our PC's can support Windows 11 due to the TPM chip requirement. So that's a no-go."

Way down the comments on this article, someone has suggested that the TPM 2.0 requirement is only confirmed for beta testing release and therefore perhaps not for the final version.

Can anyone pin the TPM 2.0 requirement down? Domestic users only? Beta trial versions only? All installations?

Otherwise I'm thinking of vast waste and extra cost for large IT estates (think NHS, civil service, local authorities and so on) for no special benefit (they sit behind firewalls of various qualities on networks that are monitored in various ways). I feel my once-a-decade letter to my MP coming on.

You jest, but remember that younger adults these days (i.e. the future market) are quite happily moving from phone/tablet/tv-thing/laptop/car and mode-switching amongst the various interfaces.

A generation of *perfectly fine* corporate laptops rendered unsupported and sold to the refurbishers may well end up being deployed with a suitable linux and sold on.

Alternatively, Microsoft may be complaining that businesses are failing to update in a few years (because the businesses don't want to send perfectly usable devices to refurb/landfil)

"One day I'd love to introduce someone from M$ and the rest to the few thousand OAPs (average age 87!) I have to deal with."

I'll raise your Senior Citizens with my dear fellow teachers.

Re: What . . . why?

To encourage the purchase of new computers in the absence of large increases in computing power?

tpm.msc tells me that the perfectly serviceable Thinkpad X230 that my partner uses to run Windows 10, teams, zoom and her basic software has a TPM 1.2 standard chip fitted, and so will not be able to run Windows 11 if we believe the press release.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/tpm/switch-pcr-banks-on-tpm-2-0-devices

TPM 2 devices have extra memory locations that can store a set of SHA1 hashes between boots. Perhaps some form of hardware fingerprint?

Free upgrades: anyone taking bets on an auto-upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 failing to check the TPM standard and refusing to boot once installed?

Re: So, SatNad...

"We need to be empowered to choose the applications we run, the content we consume, the people we connect to, and even how we allocate our own attention,"

Well, that is what the man said.

PS: the choice of the word 'even' in that last clause really bothers me.

Re: Money...

"...occasional hard stares when someone wakes up and starts applauding at the end of a movement..."

which response makes me chuckle quietly given performance practices and behavioural norms in the historical periods you mention.

Re: Laptop + Monitor = two computers?

Science developed originally from alchemy and magic, and also the need to entertain patrons with 'demonstrations' of various phenomena.

Google John Dee for an example of someone who was in transition from magus to mathematician. Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers is a good story about early science, if not fully historically accurate. Hooke and Galileo were paid 'demonstrators' - demonstrations before society members and aristocrates morphed into experiments slowly.

We are only something like 10 to 15 generations from Dr Dee, and a couple or three away from when there were 32 kilowords of memory in the world.

Coat: mine's the one with the unix escape characters embroidered on the sleeves.

Most fleenode domains are not registered including the .org. Only fleenode.net has been registered.

Very tempting...

Re: "confiscated by the new freenode management."

I know nothing about IRC or trademarks but that isn't going to stop me having a thought...

Ubuntu is a registered trade mark of Canonical, a company in the UK I believe. I also gather that one of the freenode related companies whose sale to Mr Lee has caused all this kerfuffle is based in the UK. Would Canonical's legal people perhaps be sending letters about the use of Ubuntu on Freenode servers sometime soon? Can Canonical stop having their Ubuntu brand 'represented' on Freenode's servers?

Re: Efficiency?? Ha ha ha ha….

@Roland6 and all

I understand what you are saying, and I worked for many years as a 'supported end user' (see icon) in a public sector organisation that used Microsoft everything. It worked generally very well, stuff got done. The platform supported the databases around which the organisation's activities were structured, and various 'business logic' applications from third parties with the usual borderline useable interfaces worked well enough for us to do our jobs. Shared drives housed various caches of documents and the usual Excel shadow IT applications disguised as spreadsheet files.

More recently, I work on a part-time casual basis (see icon again) for an employer that has migrated to Web everything. Currently it is MS 365/Sharepoint plus Moodle. People are working from home on their own devices (not all laptops/desktops) and getting stuff done. The 'business logic' applications are mostly subscription based services from externally accessed Web sites that do not depend on the core systems we use. The migration process involved changing email servers and losing older email. Noone seems to have missed it.

It strikes me that the 'cost' of moving over to Google Education or something else will now be *much lower* than it used to be. Younger colleagues are very comfortable hopping from one system to another and getting their head around a new interface. I have had no issues whatsoever accessing the various systems from a Webcamed laptop with Mint Linux (needed Zoom quickly, it was the easiest solution).

Perhaps the moat is drying out?

Best of luck all.

Re: My friend has a 14.2 box that's still running.

The fat install and no dependency graph is the unique selling point for slackware I suspect. I think it may be the only distribution providing that short of LFS. I gather crux linux has some dependency tracking system now.

The unofficial isos mentioned in OA are available as live images in a variety of flavours or as an installer. The installer is text based and assumes you know how to partition the hard drive, but the travails of yesteryear have been smoothed over for the most part now.

PS: where is Jake?

Re: Bye Bye FSF

Sadly, I suspect there needs to be an organisational fork for the reasons outlined in posts above this.

However, there is now a membership sifting process occurring with those who find FSF 1.0 unsustainable moving on. This leaves those who are comfortable with FSF 1.0 in place, and therefore unlikely to actively manage the change process in a sensible way.

We shall have to see what transpires.