The remainder of the meeting was devoted to hands-on demonstration and discussion. Roger Petty and Alan Jump brought in their systems, and Daniel Yount brought in his exotic dual-motherboard hotrod! Some highlights:
- What support is available for the new AGP graphics interfaces? Does http://www.xfree86.org/ or http://www.suse.de/XSuSE/index.html have accelerated drivers?
- The LS-120 floppy drives are supported under Linux. The parallel-port versions currently require a little extra work to set up. See http://www.torque.net/parport/ for more information.
- If your web pages are displaying fully, it could be from improperly closed comments in the HTML. The standard specifies that comments start with "". Either learn the standard fully, or at least make sure there are no "--" sequences internal to your comments. Also, to support (usually older) browsers that didn't follow the standard, don't include HTML markup within your comments.
- Some people used DOS to install their Linux system, but have since removed DOS from their machine. When they want to re-install Linux, there's no need to use DOS again. The Linux CD-ROM should include a Linux floppy image that you use to create a boot floppy for starting the install procedure. (Also if you don't have an emergency boot floppy already, then make one ASAP!)
- The Squid proxy cache, http://squid.nlanr.net/, reduces the bandwidth needed for web traffic by allowing a common LAN cache instead of individual browser-cached pages. So if one user has downloaded a page, another user can get it quickly, without having to re-download the exact same contents. This is also useful in hierarchy of subnets, or at the end of a slow connection, such as from home. Even with only one machine at home, this can work great under Linux. Folks with a browser, such as lynx, that doesn't keep a cache, or who experiment with many different browsers, or have different logins for other family members, can make great use of this.
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