Charles Campbell's notes on the October 15, 2002 meeting.

Ed Weinberg led us through a first look at RedHat 8.0 and also reminded us again of the impending danger from the Digital Rights Management movement. He has learned that the Copyright Office is inviting comments on the proposal on the Internet for a month beginning November 19th. The web site is www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/

We remind you of what was said at the September meeting. The very existence of Linux as well as the openness of the Internet are in peril and we'd better do something about it. The least we could do AND EVERY ONE OF US SHOULD DO SOMETHING is to join the Electronic Frontier Foundation to become better informed AND MAKE A CONTRIBUTION!

An amusing and informative site on this theme was mentioned, managed by a Professor at Princeton University. The URL given at the meeting was a little off, using underscores instead of hyphens. the correct address is www.freedom-to-tinker-com

Now to RedHat 8.0. Ed explained that version numbers come in two flavors - minor upgrades, like 7.1, 7.3, etc. and major upgrades like 8.0 which move up a whole integer. The new RedHat has a new look, for example combining the KDE and Gnome applications in a single menu listing, and some less obvious improvements. The installation is smoother, giving options to upgrade your old install, re-install, WorkStation, Server, etc. A cool addition is an offer before actually installing to check your CD's for integrity. This saved my bacon as my second CD was corrupted. Another modification (optional) is an icon in the task bar which reminds you when critical updates are available and will fetch them if you choose.

Ed admires the Ximian Evolution e-mail application, which is part of the standard packages, and he also likes OpenOffice.org, which replaces StarOffice and is Open Source now. It is a suite which does everything M$Office does and is compatible with M$ files. Ed said that he has discovered how to import additional fonts into OpenOffice. The trick is to put them in your home font directory at (assuming you are in /home) ~/.font/. Ed likes to customize his menus, which the new version does not make easy. In fact, he said he had been given the wrong instructions how to do it from several sources, but finally got it right. A little too complex to tell us at the meeting, but more may come later.

Here's a hint regarding multi-booting: if you use Lilo(LinuxLoader) or GRUB (Grand Unified Boot) you are asked whether to put the boot record on the Linux partition or the Master Boot Record. Choosing the latter is ok, but if you already have a boot manager such as System Commander, it is better to put it in the Linux partition, then SC can deal with it. Otherwise you will be dependant on the Linux boot manager and will lose System Commander's boot.

We had hoped to have a parallel presentation on the new Mandrake 9.0 (another integer upgrade), but our volunteer was held late at the office. I have installed it, and found it intelligently offers to upgrade an existing install. It does not check the CD's for integrity, but the mirror sites include mdchecksums with which you can verify them after downloading. Mandrake offers at the end of its install to check for updated files. I opted for that and it found one file which it could improve upon over my downloads, and installed it satisfactorily. My version 8.1 had trouble with my USB keyboard and mouse, but 9.0 did not.