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Linux-compatible Laptop add-on sound cards?
by Leo Mauler 04 Aug '08

04 Aug '08

For the last few years I've been seeing these add-on sound cards for laptops which promise better sound than the standard laptop sound chipsets. And on the same lines as my recent thread on printers, I know of at least one person who still uses Windows98 on his ancient laptop (PII) because Linux doesn't have drivers for the sound hardware on his laptop. I've popped out his hard drive, dropped in another one, and installed Ubuntu 8.04, and while he's impressed, the "no sound" problem is an upgrade-killer. Does anyone know if there is an add-on sound system for laptops, for which there are Linux drivers? While a laptop upgrade may sound better, even the used laptops with PIII CPUs are over $400, while the add-on sound cards generally are under $50, making the Linux switch "with sound" much more attractive with just the add-on sound to an existing perfectly functional laptop. Even the folks who have Linux-supported sound on their laptops would benefit from these cards (if Linux drivers exist for them), which generally have features on them not found on most laptops, such as surround-sound features.

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Going the extra mile (UPDATE: Built-in sound now working fine)
by Justin Dugger 03 Aug '08

03 Aug '08

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Leo Mauler <webgiant(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > --- On Mon, 7/28/08, Jon Pruente <jdpruente(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Jeffrey Watts >> <jeffrey.w.watts(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> > What's the chipset? You might want to dig a bit >> > deeper, it's very possible that the chipset is >> > supported, but that auto-detection fails. Back >> > then a lot of those chipsets were very non-standard >> > and you had to manually enter in IRQs and so forth. >> >> I've had a few older systems that defaulted to muted >> sound, or defaulted to sending the output to some >> crazy non-exsistant output that didn't exist on the >> card. They generally just required a quick flip of >> bits somewhere to get on track. Of course checking >> dmesg output and alsaconf, etc. will tell you more >> of what is going on. > > Well I guess a litle bit of information goes a long way. I had been thinking that the laptop had some weird very proprietary ESS Audiodrive chipset, ESS0006, which is what popped up in the Ubuntu Device Manager. > > Recently I discovered that his laptop actually uses the ESS1869 chipset, which is supported by the snd-es18xx module. Turns out one line ("snd-es18xx") added to /etc/modules made his sound work in Ubuntu Linux. Funny thing was that he didn't know he had a built-in microphone on his laptop until Ubuntu rebooted and the speakers started echoing everything we said... > > Turns out that Ubuntu likes to disable some systems' sound by default, though I've never found the criteria they use to determine which systems shouldn't have sound and which get get sound. This link describes the problem and how to fix it, if any of you run into someone having the same problem and can't fix it personally. > > Linux - Installing Ubuntu - Enabling your sound card... > > http://www.aotk50.dsl.pipex.com/install-ubuntu-sb16/install-ubuntu-sb16.htm > > TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/2kp9so > > Anyway, now that his sound works I think I've hooked another Linux convert. WINE already ran the few bits of Windows software he has to run. Thank you for the update; I'm glad to know Ubuntu works for you now. Ubuntu is a community driven distribution. Canonical might put gas in the tank, but the wheels and engine are people like you, me and your friend. I encourage you or your friend to file a bug in Launchpad about this so it can be tracked and fixed for everybody. If you need help, just come into #ubuntu-bugs on Freenode and we'll sort you out. Justin Dugger Ubuntu Member

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Re: win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?
by David Nicol 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Luke -Jr <luke(a)dashjr.org> wrote: > On Thursday 31 July 2008, David Nicol wrote: >> configured as networked printer driver > > Windows 98 (and newer AFAIK) requires printer-specific drivers even to print > to a network printer. Good luck with that idea. Right, but you can configure the clients for the network printer to print to "generic postscript printer" which is a driver that comes with it. -- Drilling is a cheap gimmick that won't lower gas prices but will make the oil companies even richer.

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gmail fetching comcast
by bewkard 31 Jul '08

31 Jul '08

does anyone have any experience with using gmail to fetch email from comcast's POP servers? I'm getting ready to do this for a friend, and he doesn't have access to the comcast account until next week. I wondered if anyone has done this and if there are any peculiarities that I should know about Thanks Tim

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Re: Simple VPN?
by Sean Crago 29 Jul '08

29 Jul '08

Actually, I really don't care that much evading detection. Is there a simple way with DropBear's minimal SSH implementation to just establish an SSH tunnel from my router in Kathmandu to a box in KC and route only :80 and :443 over it? -Sean

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Re: Simple VPN?
by Billy Crook 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

Openvpn is actually detectable apart from regular ssl web servers because while SSL is always authenticated, the very beginning of the session is not encrypted, and handshake parameters will reveal the certificate issuer, and use and such. If a bad guy tried go mangle any of it, it would be detected because it's all signed, but it's clear, and that's how deep packet inspection IDS systems can tell https apart from ssh on port 443 and openvpn on port 443. IPSEC for one purpose though would look identical to IPSEC for any other purpose. It also encapsulates layer 4 stuff, so a bad guy can't manipulate window sizes and send RST packets to DoS your connection. In this sense, IPSEC would have prevented comcast from attacking their p2p using customers. Even sneakier VPN systems include ones that tunnel the data through ICMP echo and echo reply packets, and ones that tunnel using DNS queries and responses. While I've never set either of those up, I imagine they are quite slow. I know the former requires some invasive kernel patch as well. On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 14:08, Bradley Hook <bhook(a)kssb.net> wrote: > IPSec is very difficult to setup and extremely easy to break. It's easy to > end up locking yourself out of remote systems too. > > The nice thing about OpenVPN is that you can configure it to do all sorts of > sneaky stuff. You could always configure your OpenVPN to run TCP over port > 443 (HTTPS), which your ISP would have an awful time trying to block. IPSec > wont give you that kind of flexibility, and when your ISP starts seeing > those kind of weird packets they are likely to start filtering them. > > IPSec is awesome when you have control over all or most of a network, and > want the traffic to be extremely secure. When you start routing it over the > public Internet, you can expect problems. > > ~Bradley > > Billy Crook wrote: >> >> Nor am I. But I know that it is valiable as a module in ddwrt and >> openwrt, so it is likely also avaliable on tomato, and for the common >> "router" architectures. >> >> I probably shouldn't have overlooked IPSEC. While significantly more >> difficult to set up, it works at a lower layer of the stack, and is >> thus harder to make sense of. Assuming the ISP's tampering works in a >> default-allow, tamper-by-list setup, IPSEC may work as well as >> anything else. >> >> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 13:42, Bradley Hook <bhook(a)kssb.net> wrote: >>> >>> OpenVPN seems fairly flexible and is cross platform. Not sure about which >>> CPU architectures it has been ported to though. >>> >>> ~Bradley >>> >>> >>> >>> Sean Crago wrote: >>>> >>>> My DSL provider with the DNS masquerading and Squid transparent proxy >>>> is feeding me all sorts of bad DNS information. I think I need to move >>>> to the VPN option temporarily. Anyone have any advice on a basic, easy >>>> to configure VPN solution? Support by Tomato firmware (a DD-WRT like >>>> replacement) to allow my wife's Windows box access and to allow access >>>> from my Internet Tablet is deeply desired. >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> Sean Crago >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Kclug mailing list >>>> Kclug(a)kclug.org >>>> http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Kclug mailing list >>> Kclug(a)kclug.org >>> http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug >>> > >

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Semi-OT: Windows98 now truly obsolete thanks to Printers (helps encourage Linux)
by Leo Mauler 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

I was going to donate a HP printer to the arts center I'm volunteering for, but the computer they have right now is a PII-233Mhz machine running Windows98. This turns out to be a sticking point which prevents the printer from being useful to them, as I don't have the original Windows driver CD. I found out that HP (and I expect most other printer manufacturers) have discontinued support for Windows98 (since July 2007), going so far as to remove all Windows98 printer drivers from their website, not even making them available on an "as-is, no official support" manner. Folks with older computers running Windows98 (that can't run any newer version of Windows) cannot use new printers, even those manufactured prior to July 2007. Linux, of course, still receives printer driver support from HP and a few other places (and auto-installs HP USB printers without any prompting), so it appears that to donate the HP printer I'm probably going to have to donate Linux as well, either on the existing system or donate a newer computer as well. (sits back and waits for the inevitable "standards printers are a better choice than driver-based printers" comment from someone... ;-) )

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Simple VPN?
by Sean Crago 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

My DSL provider with the DNS masquerading and Squid transparent proxy is feeding me all sorts of bad DNS information. I think I need to move to the VPN option temporarily. Anyone have any advice on a basic, easy to configure VPN solution? Support by Tomato firmware (a DD-WRT like replacement) to allow my wife's Windows box access and to allow access from my Internet Tablet is deeply desired. Thanks, Sean Crago

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Re: Linux-compatible Laptop add-on sound cards?
by Sean Crago 28 Jul '08

28 Jul '08

I'm kind of shocked that his sound card doesn't has support under ALSA or OSS - What's the chipset? Is NetBSD an option if Linux isn't? On a more on topic note, I've had good experiences with my Logitech USB headsets. 350 something or other is what they're called. Anything with the same chipset should work. Can't personally vouch for anything else, but they sound like the USB sound cards are fairly standardized: http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/x319.html That said, if this thing is as old as it sounds, you might want to check and make sure that the USB ports actually work with reasonably modern devices before spending any money. Might have to buy one of those old PCI add-on USB controllers. -Sean Crago/MrZaius MrZaius.com

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Immediate, paying gig -- halp!
by Greg Brooks 24 Jul '08

24 Jul '08

Guys, Got an ancient server that runs primarily as a Samba/FTP setup (intra-LAN for the former, remote access for the latter). It's been rock solid running Ubuntu server, until. well, yesterday. Now I get timeouts, lack of accessibility from the LAN, etc. Rebooting fixes things, but only temporarily. What I need: Someone who Knows More Than I Do (that would be virtually all of you) to SSH in and poke around, telling me what the problem might be. If it's something big and terminal, I just need to get stuff stable enough to move files off of it and bring in a Netgear RAID unit. This is a paying gig - if you're available immediately, send me a short email with 1-2 sentences about your experience and your hourly rate. I can pay via PayPal, credit card or old-fashioned, drive-the-check-to-you means. Thanks, Greg Brooks

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