Introduction.

It is not unusual, for new users wanting to try Linux for the first time to want to use an old discarded computer. This is quite a reasonable attitude, as these users have probably never seen a Linux operating system, let alone used one.

Fear plays a part in this, as computers remain a mystery to many thousands of people. They are content with switching them on and using them. What goes on "under the bonnet", is of no relevance.

They are used to Windows and that's it!

Just how old is Linux?

Just how old is "Linux" I hear you ask - well the answer may surprise you. Whilst Linux does indeed dominate the world with regard to the "WWW" or "World Wide Web" the origins of the individual distribution's can seem very confusing. Browsing the web as you do I came across this map it seems to suggest that Linux started in 1992 now as a Desktop this may be true but I a sure that Linux is considerably older than suggested here, however that is not the point of this map. This map clearly shows from humble beginnings how Linux as an operating system has evolved and diversified upto to the present day.

Linux Origins

Installation of Thunderbird Mail and Opening an Account

I have recently updated my laptop to run with Ubuntu Lucid Lynx and in doing so opened some accounts in Thunderbird which I have installed separately. I ran into one or two problems and thought it might be useful to describe the opening of an account, the problems and the manner of overcoming them.

Changing Ubuntu Window Control Icons

One of the unusual features about the installation of Ubuntu 10.04 is the appearance of the window controls on the left hand side of a window. This makes life confusing for some of us because we are so used to these controls being on the right hand side.

Therefore I propose to set out below how these controls can be moved to the right hand side. In this workshop click on the drawings to open them.

Press Alt + F2 and a Run Application box appears as shown in Figure 1. Type into the box gconf-editor and press Run.

Introduction.

I suffered a network problem this week, that I misdiagnosed as being a laptop problem, when in fact, it was my router.

This in a round about way, led me to Install the latest version of Linux Mint - 9 Isadora, based on Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx, which in turn uses the amazing Debian core.

Enough reviews can be found around the Internet singing its praises, without me adding to the tune, but it truly is an excellent release.

I have been meaning to do a write up the things that I install or configure after a fresh install, when I came across this at The Silent Number's Blog and thought it was much better than anything I could write so copied it here. original article can be found @ http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2009/09/top-things-to-do-after-installing...

I have added at the end the only step I feel that is missing - installing Android fonts!

Enjoy and thanks to The Silent Number for the great post.

Introduction

A friend of mine recently asked if I could recommend a Linux distro for him to load for one of his family. Of course, there are several mainstream distros that would fit the bill, but I've become rather fond of Linux Mint for new users swapping from Windows.

Although Mint uses gnome as it's desktop, its developers have created a nice menu, that Windows users will feel right at home with and of course, it's based on the Ubuntu family, which in turn uses the very solid Debian core.

A Novice View of Linux

The purpose of this workshop is to outline the common areas between Windows and Linux so that you will see, as I did recently, that operating Linux is similar to Windows other than some of the places you would go to find a particular item differs and may have a different name. Linux is not something to be afraid of; in fact it is quite straight forward.

ASCII Printable Characters

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)

Both codes and characters can usually be used when building wikisite pages however some characters are used as tags to denote a specific text format this can be a small problem when building pages and especially when providing a tutorial of some sort.

The solution is to use the codes themselves to generate the printable characters rather than the characters you see on the keyboard. Look in the table below for your chosen character then copy and paste the code that relates to the character you want to display in the wikipage which is causing the trouble. The character code set is not used in the same way by the wikipages on this site so these are immediately converted into the printable characters you see displayed on the keyboard, and displaying these to the screen.

SoSLUG Mailing List

For some time SoSLUG had a mailing list this was a general mailing platform and still is but our efforts to enable people to subscribe and unsubscribe where prohibited, well we have now sorted out our mail server problems and can give prospective members the opportunity to subscribe and unsubscribe to the list as they so choose.

We had some problems regarding automatic newsletter subscription relating to configuration changes we made to prevent unauthorised post to the list - This we hope is now resolved if you have any further difficulties please send you post along with the error to derek AT soslug DOT org we will be happy to look at your email subscription problem.