[ale] mint 13 vm running out of storage space

[Michael B. Trausch]

On 10/14/2013 04:06 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> There is nothing free about free software.  Not for the developers.  Check out this link and quote.

Then you miss the point.  The point is that the software---whether
written by an individual, hundreds or thousands of individuals, or
entire large corporations---is free for all /to analyze, review, audit,
use, modify, /and/or /redistribute/ (that is, sharing).

When I write software personally, I typically BSD, MIT or GPL it.

Our position as a corporation is somewhat undefined at the moment,
though I'm inclined to go with a dual-license model.  Probably AGPL or
GPL for the primary license, and a relatively lean EULA if you want to
go out of those bounds.

Why would I do such a thing?

Because I want to encourage the use of free software overall.  I don't
really want to sell proprietary licenses, but knowing that I will
personally chose a BSD or MIT-licensed product over a sometimes superior
GPL one for licensing reasons, the option is reasonable and fair, I think.

[snip non-relevant stats]
> So, I agree that it's great when software is free to me as a user, and like to use some of it.  But, I don't agree that software has to be free, and, in fact, it has to be not free, sometimes, in order to provide the incentive for a developer to spend the time and resources necessary to develop it.

Developers who are motivated solely or largely by financial means tend
to produce sub-par software.  I'll even go so far as to cite Microsoft
Windows as an example of this.  The product itself, from a technical
point of view, really stinks.  It is rigid, it has THOUSANDS upon
THOUSANDS of legacy components, configuration settings and knobs. 
Things that Just Work on Linux and have for years (let's think USB) are
/still to this very day/ problematic on Microsoft Windows.

After all, what kind of brain-dead kernel can't just load a driver
on-demand regardless of what port the thing is put into?  That'd be
NTOSKRNL.EXE and its friends.

And yes, I do know enough about Windows to give useful and meaningful
technical comparisons that are actually relevant.  I may not use it as
my day-to-day operating system, but I have spent more than enough time
screwing with its innards to know how a good chunk of it works internally.

When they can get little issues like USB correct, then a SLOC comparison
would maybe be apples-to-apples.  But since that's not the case... 
(seriously.  99% of the USB devices out there that have Windows drivers
available for them make you install the drivers first, and the hardware
won't work correctly if you don't.  And each time you plug it in a
different root hub, a new instance of the driver has to be installed. 
That's so stupid I can't even begin to describe it.  Under Linux, if it
has a driver, it Just Works and far more quickly.)

> But, that's not the case with me.  So, Mike T and Phil, what you're essentially telling me is that I could spend weeks reconfiguring everything I own, copying data, installing things, learning new maintenance and configuration and backup procedures, and possibly buying new equipment.  And, in so doing, I could get back to about the same level of functionality that I have now.  Plus, the pc's would be somewhat easier to maintain and somewhat more secure, given my usage habits.

If you think it'd require weeks, sure.

A basic understanding of LVM can be had in a few days time.

A basic understanding of the POSIX model comes with regular use of the
system and understanding the design and some history of the system goes
a long way.  Though you really only need that if you're doing
development; otherwise, learning the commands to do things and knowing
how to quickly find the man page(s) you need is the primary skill, and
that takes hardly any time at all to master.

> I just don't have a strong motive to do that.

*shrug*

As long as you've been using Linux---at least based on your posting
history---I'd say that you've been using the system and on the list more
than long enough to have passively found things to learn about and piece
together, assuming motivation enough to have done so.  I picked up Linux
in 1996, back before LUGs and books and stuff were written on the topic,
and within one year I was able to run a server system and do basic
programming on it.  Of course, my motivation was that I had no money, as
I wasn't old enough to have a job, and I couldn't raise hundreds of
dollars for that new-fangled Microsoft crashes-all-the-time stuff that
everyone was so into.

I know that I've mentioned LVM to you before.  It's not that difficult
to setup or to learn, and the return on investment will pay off
infinitely as you use the system.  There are so many things that you can
do with LVM that you simply cannot do with filesystems on bare metal
(for example, zero-downtime backups) that it's kinda silly in this day
and age to /not/ use LVM.  Especially since on e.g., Ubuntu, Debian,
RHEL and CentOS, LVM is offered to you out of the box with zero effort
required to install on top of.

>>> * running my remote wireless weather station
>> I don't see why that wouldn't be possible with Linux.  Linux and
>> wireless applications go hand-in-hand together.
>>
> app is win specific

And?  So is the application for the stamps.com reader.  Doesn't mean you
cannot use it under Linux <http://is.gd/pxz836>.  It's just a USB HID
(Human Interface Device).

I'd need to take a look at your WWS but, put simply, if it can be
controlled by a userspace application running on top of Windows, then it
can be controlled by a userspace application running on top of Linux.

Or, put another way, the only thing that stops you from doing so is a
lack of motivation.  Most hardware speaks really simple protocols.  Any
person with some software or engineering experience can easily make
heads or tails of it with some simple experimentation.  Before I'd
thought to look and see if anyone had reverse-engineered the HID
protocol that the stamps.com scale uses, I'd done a little work on it
myself and managed to get most of the readings correct.  Of course, I
stopped once I'd found someone else did the same work---never reinvent
the wheel if you don't have to.

And that's another stellar reason to use free software.  It gives us the
ability to reuse components and not have to waste time---making, for
example, my use of time far more efficient than it otherwise would be. 
If I had to write every single component of every single project I
worked on, I would never have a project done.
>>> * remote controlling my Dad's windows box
>> I remote control Windows boxes all the time.  No, I don't have Windows
>> installed.  I do it from Fedora.
> please elaborate, as I may need to do that at some point in the future

Have you ever asked Google?  I can't find a page that *doesn't* say how
to do it on a Linux system if I search for it.

[snip things you didn't respond to]
>>> * playing blu ray discs - linux cannot
>> It can't?  That's news to me.  I do it on my Fedora system.
>>
> I thought that a) encryption was not cracked, b) encryption changes, and c) it was illegal - although I certainly wouldn't MIND viewing my own blu-ray discs on a linux machine or vm.

I'm guessing that you haven't asked Google about this, either.  Not even
one minute of searching reveals that commercial BD-R has been playable
on Linux since 2010.

As to whether or not it is illegal, I suppose that depends on if you
believe that you're allowed to---as the license states---perform the
work for personal use only.  My reading is that I am allowed to play
back the things which I've licensed, so long as I comply with the license.

You may recall that DMCA does allow interoperability even of
cryptosystems for interoperability.  It is a topic that has come up on
the list at least once or twice before, I am sure.
>>> * multiple monitor setup - I have a triple monitor setup.  I don't
>> think Mint 13 or Ubuntu 12.04 can run three monitors at all, except in
>> clone mode.  In extended desktop mode, with two monitors, it
>> consistently assigns the wrong monitor as "primary".  Thus new apps
>> start up on the wrong monitor, etc.  I spent 2 hours messing with x
>> commands and xrander, etc. to fix that one time.  Then, a later update
>> unfixed it.  In some cases, when running on different pc's through a
>> kvm, the wrong screen resolution is detected, and enforced.
>>
>> Uhm... Multiple-head support Just Works with 2 or 3 heads since about
>> Fedora 18, and has worked upstream even longer than that.  I do it on
>> my
>> system.
> Perhaps Ubuntu / Mint is more finicky about this than Fedora.

I don't see why, unless they've modified the KMS drivers in the kernel
or you have hardware that does not function with any KMS drivers. 
However, I have yet to see an Intel or ATI system in ages that doesn't
work that way.  I cannot speak to NVIDIA since I stopped using them
years ago due to problems with constantly faulty hardware.
>>> * running flash - I think Adobe stopped updating flash for linux,
>> which is a security risk.
>>
>> So?  Mitigate with knowledge, or don't use it at all.  I don't use it
>> at
>> all.  I miss nothing.

For that matter, it seems that products which "betray you
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/99398>" are OK to
not update.  So, why not when the upstream stops publishing updates for
it?  Or are you saying that it's okay to run insecure software on the
Internet when Ron Frazier says it's OK, and it's not OK when Ron Frazier
says it is not OK?

I'm more than a little confused on that one.

>>
>>> * running scrivner - a writers program for storyboarding and
>> constructing novels, etc.
>>
>> There are alternative programs available, but have you attempted to run
>> this program under Wine?
>>
>>> * running the metatrader currency trading program (whenever I can
>> find money to trade with)
>>
>> Again, have you tried Wine for this program?
>>
> I'm aware of wine and had it installed on my old Ubuntu install before I fired them and went to Mint.  I haven't tried these apps in it.

Then---as I've asked before---please don't make claims about things you
do not carry knowledge of.  That simply leads to dissemination of bad
information.

Of course, if they don't work in Wine, I'd want to hear about it.  At
least there, I can offer a hand.
>>> * updating my gps
>> Why not?  I've updated TomTom units without Microsoft Windows just
>> fine.  You have to jump through a couple more hoops because they don't
>> document how to do so manually, but it's not hard to figure out.
>>
> I have a TomTom.  Can you point me to some info on that?

Point you to?  No.  It's been a little while.  However, their downloads
can (or used to, anyway) be purchasable and downloadable on their Web
site and I was able to put the new maps on the TomTom media just fine
without Windows.

Of course, I stopped using single-purpose GPS hardware when smartphones
became ubiquitous.  No need for them anymore (and I honestly wonder why
they still exist---doesn't seem much point to me anymore, now that
phones can have offline maps and cache routes and stuff internally).

>
>>> * updating my mp3 player from sansa
>> Never worked with one.
>>
>>> * updating my ebook readers
>> Not sure why you need a computer to do that at all.
>>
> Mainly talking about firmware updates on these things.  Any pc can transfer files by usb.  Some of the ebooks are protected and require Adobe Digital Editions.  That may be the wrong name, but it's something like that.

Again, I don't know why you'd need a computer at all to do that.  Every
eInk reader I have ever owned updates itself just fine.  Though you can
crack ("jailbreak") them if you want, and that requires a computer to do.

> Oh, I forgot, last time I checked, I cannot listen to Audible.com books on linux, although that could have changed.  I do have an Audible player on android.

Sounds like you have a workable solution for listening to Audible.com
books on Linux!  After all, the program running on Android is written in
Java, and compiled to run in the Dalvik VM.

Also, according to a quick search on Google, there are at least two
different methods for playing Audible.com books on Linux desktops, one
involiving the use of the official Audible software for Windows running
under Wine.

>
>>> I will also admit that, sometimes, linux can do things for me that W
>> cannot.
>>
>> Interesting that there is no list for that.
>>
> Nothing personal.
>
> I wasn't trying to list that at the time.  And, I can't think of too much to add to it.  But, to be fair, here are some:
>
> * allow me to build a pc with little or know software cost
> * allow me to avoid yearly licence fees and periodic upgrade fees
> * allow me to read the source code ( a benefit I very rarely use)
> * allow me to boot an alternate os to troubleshoot the main os with dual boot or live cd
> * allow the pc to be more secure

All of which are things that I assume are quite valuable.  At least,
they are to me.  I may not read the source to the Linux kernel---but
then again, so many others have.  Security doesn't always come from the
fact that YOU read something that you use, but the fact that PEOPLE
CAN.  And that is worth way more to me than not knowing where my data
truly goes or whether it can be secured against a given threat.

    --- Mike

-- 
Naunet Corporation Logo 	Michael B. Trausch

President, *Naunet Corporation*
? (678) 287-0693 x130 or (855) NAUNET-1 x130
FAX: (678) 783-7843

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