[tlug] Dinosaurs 'R' not us? (Small Linux boxen)

["Shannon Jacobs" <shannon.jacobs@example.com>]

> From: "Josh Glover" <jmglov@example.com>
> > From: Alain Hoang <hoanga@example.com>
<snip>
> > Shannon Jacobs wrote:
> > > I actually have a third Ubuntu machine which is my problem child. I
> > > was thinking of bringing it along to the technical meeting next
> > > week. I hope that is not inappropriate behavior.
> > Now this sounds cool! I don't know if our officers are against it
> > but I certainly would be curious to take at seeing the problem
> > first-hand (and seeing if it can be fixed on the spot).
> > The only issues I can think of are:
> > 1. It's a pain to carry back and forth to the TLUG meeting
> > 2. Someone doesn't auction it on you at the TLUG auctions ;)
>
> Issue (1) only applies to Shannon (i.e. if he does not mind lugging
> his box to and fro, neither do we). Issue (2) is a non-issue, unless
> Shannon does not feel like lugging his machine back home. :)
>
> But here is one more issue:
>
> 3. Is there a keyboard / mouse / monitor in Wall Street's conference
> room that Karim is OK with us using?
>
> I know there is a box in the conference room with k/m/m attached, and
> we could certainly unplug them and plug them into Shannon's box for
> the duration of the troubleshooting activity, then restore them at the
> end. However, we need to make sure this is cool with our hosts first.
>
> Zev, could you maybe check with Karim?

I feel like I've confused the issue, somewhat. While the machine is a 
problem child, I rather doubt that any of it's problems are that 
interesting. It's basically just overloaded, and all I was really hoping for 
was learning how to tweak the configurations to unbundle and remove some of 
the unneeded components. I don't want to strip it all the way down to a 
server box, but there's definitely a lot of excess functionality on it. 
Obvious candidates are screen savers and games, but they seem to be locked 
into the desktop. I was thinking more along the lines of some post-meeting 
tweaking.

As possibly amusing background, it's a little hard to describe it's current 
state, but I'll try a historical approach.... When Dapper Drake was released 
I discovered that the machine didn't have enough free space to upgrade, so I 
decided to erase 'some stuff' that seemed unneeded. Kind of like a random 
lobotomy? This is how you learn? Basically I destroyed about half of the 
system, though I could still boot to a minimal shell. Per force, I studied 
some weird documentation and used dpkg to stabilize it and tweaked some 
configuration files to encourage it to apt-get itself as a Dapper Drake 
machine, and eventually I succeeded in that. I'm not certain, but it 
probably has 90% or more of Dapper Drake installed now, and it basically 
runs without problems--but it's still overleaded and it makes me nervous, so 
I'd like to slim it down.

With regards to the keyboard and display, that's a non-issue. The machine is 
just a small ThinkPad, and quite portable. It's already set up for an 
external monitor, though I should test that under Linux.

Actually, that does remind me of a more interesting project that might be 
instructive, though I regard it as a low priority. The hardware is capable 
of dual-head displays, with one desktop on the primary display and a 
separate desktop on the external monitor. That's how I normally run it under 
Windows, but I haven't even tried to do it under Linux. It seemed to be 
possible, but difficult enough that I wasn't eager to tackle it yet. I don't 
even use the workspaces.

A more difficult but potentially interesting problem to tackle would be 
related to the USB discussion. I have a Sharp/WillCom WS003SH phone that can 
(under Windows) work as a wireless modem through the USB port. Again, a low 
priority for me, but maybe someone else would think it's instructive to work 
on? My research on that problem suggested that an expert could probably 
create the required USB device driver fairly quickly--but it's an unusual 
and rather narrow kind of expertise.