Thanks DSL for one great year..

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Thanks DSL for one great year..
started by: ke4nt1

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 14 2004,21:31

John, Robert..

I wanted to share my 1000th post with you..

Just a word of thanks for the opportunity to serve,
and appreciation for your sharing and time ..

Kent

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Oct. 14 2004,21:41

congrats, you've officially been here too much.

Go away!

...wait, doesn't me replying to this mean...

i need to go rethink my existance.

-J.P.
SaidinUnleashed

Posted by roberts on Oct. 15 2004,02:41

Kent,
Thanks for the kind words. It has indeed been an incredible year for DSL. I just looked and I see that I officially joined Oct 4, 2003, so I have been here just over a year. John, has indeed created an incredible system. DSL now has nearly twenty spin-offs, validating John's ideas and code. I thank John, for allowing me the opportunity to contribute to DSL. John and I work well together having a shared interest in small apps and systems. Most of my early contributions were based on prior experiences. But mostly now the ideas come from the members that grace these forums. I feel so strongly about this, that I have kidded Kent and John that these forums should be called the "University of DSL". I won't try to begin to name all the names of members that I would like to thank. We have great forums and much information that is shared so freely and very helpful members. When I had the myDSL system in mind, the "my" part was for the users. It not only only that you can create "your" custom myDSL without the remastering process, but that the users could easily contribute extensions, thereby participating in part of the system creation. I think that name and the concept has proved more successful that I had thought. Thanks go to you, Kent for being the gatekeeper of the "flood" or user contributed extensions. This really is has become a "group" thing. The best small distro, great extensions, and great forums, or as John has stated "have your cake and eat it to". OK. Enough of this kind of talk. Now back to work!
Robert

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 15 2004,03:59

Since we are getting sentimental, I'll share my story....

I looked back and see that I registered on Dec 31, 2003. Many of you who have been around here for awhile know that I started a not for profit organization in Sept, 2003 called No Computer Left Behind, Inc. My goal was to refurbish old computers and give them to needy children by working through local schools. It started as a church ministry. Up to that time I was strictly a PC user with NO development experience whatsoever. I quickly realized that the reason many people are not doing this is because of software. NFP's were having to pay $5 per license for Win98. That doesn't sound like much until you take 5 x 1000 computers. I didn't want the organization's success to be determined by whether I had $5 to put a PC together. I had heard about Linux and thought I would investigate. As anyone new would do, I looked at RedHat, Mandrake, Vector, etc....but they required too much horsepower. I knew that I would be getting tons of PI 133 type machines. After some searching, I came across DSL and was intrigued. I thought it might work but I was clueless on how to use it. So, I contacted a few LUG's thinking I could easily find some Linux "geeks" who would want to tackle this with me. Well, I was wrong!! When I mentioned DSL they were not interested in helping. They always recommended that I try to use fedora or suse and if a machine couldn't handle it, I should part it out!! I was frustrated but, very determined. I decided to roll up my sleeves and see what I can do. I believed I was being driven to do this.

I came to the DSL forum and started learning. The thing that really struck me was how friendly this forum was. People were very patient with me. Every once in awhile I would try another distro but always ended up back here. Now, almost a year later, I am a proud Linux "geek" who is tweaking his own OS that is based off of John's vision. I have a box with an insane number of partitions, multiple distros and a remastering environment. I think I have been officially converted!!

I will keep you all posted of some exciting things that are coming about because of this work.

John - Thank you so much for pushing your vision and sticking to your guns. I can't begin to tell you how much I have learned. It is fun to wow the IT guys at work. :cool:

I have to mention the people who have been instrumental in guiding me....CappyCaffiene (where is he, anyway?), cbagger01, roberts, ke4nt1, TyphoonMentat, hasty, roadie, clacker...there have been many.

I can't wait to see what the future holds................

Chris

Posted by John on Oct. 15 2004,06:15

Hey Guys!

I know you all have read me say this before, but it *really* needs to be said again. Okay, I'll say it a little differently this time...

$John =~/^the spark that started the fire$/;

And that's about it.

--------------

Seriously, you all fallowing DSLs development know how much time and work a core group of users are putting in. You all know how hard Kent is helping out the newbies. You know how much of the suggesting from the community end up in the distribution. You know how talented Robert is, and how much time he has pot in.

Congratulations Kent, 1000+ posts is a hell of a lot of helping.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 15 2004,16:21

Way to go man!!!

Without you DSL would be alot harder!!!

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by hasty on Oct. 15 2004,20:35

Surely your sig should read

Group: Member Emeritus

Posted by somerville32@hotmail.com on Oct. 18 2004,01:13

Great Job Ke4nt1! You are a BIG help to the DSL community. We thank you very much

~Me

Posted by darkdragoon on Oct. 18 2004,01:54

You guys really warm this place up making it like a home.

Posted by docdtv on Oct. 28 2004,02:15

Quote (clivesay @ Oct. 14 2004,23:59)

Many of you who have been around here for awhile know that I started a not for profit organization in Sept, 2003 called No Computer Left Behind, Inc. My goal was to refurbish old computers and give them to needy children by working through local schools. It started as a church ministry. Up to that time I was strictly a PC user with NO development experience whatsoever. I quickly realized that the reason many people are not doing this is because of software. NFP's were having to pay $5 per license for Win98. That doesn't sound like much until you take 5 x 1000 computers. I didn't want the organization's success to be determined by whether I had $5 to put a PC together...
Chris

Chris,

You have an interesting story and some sentiments I share. With our common appreciation for DSL, perhaps we might at some point cooperate in a way that serves both of us.

But I scratch my head in confusion when you cite the $5 per seat cost for Windows 98 as a barrier. Those PCs will not run on love - they will need electricity - and one will face electrical costs of $5 EACH time one consumes little more than 50 Kw-Hr.

That's not even to talk about the considerable costs of handling the PCs between when they are donated and disbursed - even if nearly all of that is volunteer labor.

cf. < http://news.com.com/2100-1040-938746.html > which says:
"...existing recycling programs are designed to handle the electronic devices consumers already own. HP, for instance, charges between $13 and $34 to take a PC off someone's hands, while IBM charges $29.99, and Dell says people should expect to pay between $15 and $25."

cf. Cox News Service in 2000:
"[At a] computer collection day at the [Ohio] Clark County Fairgrounds... a computer monitor costs $19 to leave... and a computer system intact was $3 a pound."

I think a bigger issue in helping poor [and many other] people usefully own a PC is minimizing the cost of support. Job one in this effort is making it trivial to restore the PC to its arrival condition (without erasing any user data it holds.)

For PCs that can CD-boot DSL, it is not a very big deal to fashion a bootable CD that simply boots (e.g. Linux) and then restores a bit-by-bit image of the C drive (and master boot record) from the CD itself, whether the installed system is based on Linux, Windows 98 or any other OS. (One would leave unmolested other hard disk partitions in which user data is kept for this very reason.)

The only messy issue is the copyright question. I am not an attorney, but by the precedent of long corporate practice, backing up your working computer system is not construed as unprotected by Fair Use. But it is equally true that when PC makers provide purchasers with a disk of the kind I describe, they bundle it with an agreement the user must confirm before the installation goes forth - and it often includes a numerical code idiosyncratic to the disk which the user must enter. (Of course that generally doesn't *physically* prevent one from duplicating said disk at trivial cost and giving the copy and code to another party, any legal issues be hanged!)

The issue of whether Microsoft or whomever would be happy with a less fussy such "restore disk" is obviated by using software which is distributed without the restrictions common to commercial software.

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 28 2004,03:07

docdtv -

Thank you for your feedback. I admit that some of the things you talk about are a little over my head.

All I know is that people are throwing away good computers while kids go without. In this day and age, a kid without a computer is way behind the eightball. I couldn't take seeing this happen when I talked to teachers who told me about kids going without.

Currently, there is no cost associated with setup/repair of these machines. My storage and utilities for the storage are donated. I have a half dozen NFP's that use win98 eagerly waiting to try my Linux remaster. The MS program is not the greatest. The sad thing is that I didn't even learn about that program from MS. They insisted on trying to get me to purchase WinXP licenses since they would apply to Win98 installs!!

I am working with other NFP's to build alliances with recyclers that will help keep PC's out of the landfills and will give us a place to send the parts that need demanufacturing for little to no cost for us. So as you can see, my vision is alot larger than just refurbishing a few PC's.

With my remaster, and some notes on things such as soundcard chipsets, I can easily spin up a PC, format the HD and install an OS in 10 to 20 minutes. I think it's easier than installing Win98.

Support is an issue, but I am writing docs as I go. As I release my first few machines, I am getting feedback from the users to refine the howto's and the OS. Is this the easiest way to go...absolutely not. If it was easy, lots of people would be doing it. This is a spiritual journey for me. If I change the lives of a few kids, I will be successful but I believe it is destined to do much more. In my opinion, it is the right track. I would rather spend my time expanding my mind (and others) rather than worry about MS legal mumbojumbo. I can give these kids very usable PC's with a ton of programs and games that will make computing fun and educational. It is amazing what you can still do on a P133 with 32mb ram.

I am working on other things like low cost external modems and working with a local ink place to supply ink cartridges at a minimal charge. I have over 100 HP inkjet printers!!

Thanks for your interest. I am always interested in feedback...especially from the people in this forum.

Posted by docdtv on Oct. 30 2004,02:26

Quote (clivesay @ Oct. 27 2004,23:07)

docdtv -

Thank you for your feedback. I admit that some of the things you talk about are a little over my head. :)

All I know is that people are throwing away good computers while kids go without... My storage and utilities for the storage are donated. I have a half dozen NFP's that use win98 eagerly waiting to try my Linux remaster. The MS program is not the greatest. The sad thing is that I didn't even learn about that program from MS. They insisted on trying to get me to purchase WinXP licenses since they would apply to Win98 installs!!

I am working with other NFP's to build alliances with recyclers that will help keep PC's out of the landfills and will give us a place to send the parts that need demanufacturing for little to no cost for us. So as you can see, my vision is alot larger than just refurbishing a few PC's.

With my remaster, and some notes on things such as soundcard chipsets, I can easily spin up a PC, format the HD and install an OS in 10 to 20 minutes. I think it's easier than installing Win98.

Support is an issue, but I am writing docs as I go... I would rather spend my time expanding my mind (and others) rather than worry about MS legal mumbojumbo. I can give these kids very usable PC's with a ton of programs and games that will make computing fun and educational. It is amazing what you can still do on a P133 with 32mb ram.

I am working on other things like low cost external modems and working with a local ink place to supply ink cartridges at a minimal charge. I have over 100 HP inkjet printers!!

Thanks for your interest. I am always interested in feedback...especially from the people in this forum.

Hello again Chris,

I decided to look into what you are doing a bit more and discovered something you may have to face at one point:
< http://www.computercorps.org/Legal/terms_and_conditions.htm > says that "ComputerCorps" claims the phrase "No Computer Left Behind" as a trademark/servicemark and that "The use of any ComputerCorps trademark or service mark without our express written consent is strictly prohibited." I am not a lawyer and will say no more about this.

You may perhaps find of use some materials pertaining to PC refurbishing I've collected since reading your latest post. Find them here: < http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/Technology/PCrecycle.htm > As you observe, there are a number of efforts similar to yours: you are wise to share knowledge of "best methods" rather than "trying to reinvent the wheel".

I am of the opinion that perhaps the first thing to teach a new PC user is how to access a page on the World Wide Web. Once he can do that, he has access to BILLIONS of pages of material - including a vast computer-instruction bonanza!

At our local public library, we deploy Windows 98 and configure Internet Explorer in a particular way, so that our users can get started retrieving Web pages WITHOUT learning to use the mouse. (Sadly not ALL libraries near to us do this!) We provide a lesson on Web access at: < http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/BHPL/WebLesson-OneHour.html > on the use of these computers. You may find it helpful, too.

One nice thing about Microsoft Windows is the "Windows Key", which provides relief from using the mouse. All of us here may think mouse use is trivial, but I assure you it is a formidable barrier for many new users, particularly, in my experience, older people.

Another nice thing about Microsoft Windows is the ready availability of free low-latency text-to-speech engines. (cf. < http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/BHPL/TTSlobby.htm > ) The Linux world does not have anything like it yet.

Despite all these nice things said about Microsoft Windows, I do see great value in something like DSL. If you are given a mish-mash collection of PCs, no two alike, you DO have to install Windows on each machine using Microsoft's installation disk, and that can be very time-consuming. It is very true that booting DSL from a CD-ROM is much faster - **IF** it works.

But the point of my earlier post was that if you have a group of IDENTICAL PCs, you can prepare a CD-ROM from which an installation of Windows can be made as fast as one can copy data from the CD-ROM to the hard disk (e.g. well under 10 minutes, depending on what other stuff you bundle.) You don't even have to use any commercial software (other than Windows itself) to do this - Partition Image ( < http://www.partimage.org/ > ) does a decent job, albeit it is still pre-version 1.0.

But say you are persuaded that DSL is the way to go. What other advice might I offer you?

Be aware that the hard disk (or the bootable CD-ROM) is not the only place from which a PC gets its programming. A volatile adjunct to the (ROM) BIOS is the coin-cell-powered CMOS memory, which holds critical BIOS parameters. When your computer "wakes up", it looks at the BIOS first, before it can examine any CD or hard drive. Eventually, the cell ("battery") runs down and the CMOS memory discharges (it can take up to 15 minutes after the cell power is totally removed). DSL might work with a variety of CMOS settings, but maybe not the one that ensues when the cell power is depleted. Indeed, if DSL requires a particular set of CMOS settings to run (no surprise, I have found that true for at least one PC on which I have tried it), it is important to document those settings, that they may be restored when the cell runs down and needs to be replaced (a few dollars). Depletion of cell power is not the only way the CMOS parameters may change. A curious user may tap the key needed to elicit its alteration during the boot process and effect changes, to his great eventual dismay. That's another reason CMOS settings should be recorded for any PC you dispense with DSL installed.

Given how light-weight DSL is, there is something to be said for always booting it from a CD-ROM. If you give end-users root access, they can alter critical files on a hard disk in their naivitee, and time has to be wasted "diagnosing" and "fixing". Support work is far more trivial when the support person knows one booted from the CD-ROM. (Maybe it would be wisest to just keep root away from end-users, but sometimes that makes things harder to do than I personally happen to enjoy.)

If you go with CD-ROM booting, I suggest that your remaster symbolically link /home/dsl/filetool.lst to a floppy-based copy. (I'm assuming that will work.) In this way, you can provide everyone with an identical CD-ROM and put any customization on an easily-altered, cheap floppy disk. You can even archive a virtual copy of said floppy upon dispensing a PC, that you might offer the end-user a replacement in the event of disaster.

Of course, CD-booting means you can even ship a PC for which there is no hard disk. (cf. Lindows/Linspire Webstation < http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=58 > ) Users can use floppy disks, USB flash drives, or even Internet-based archives to store their data.

If, on the other hand, you want to do a hard-disk installation, I suggest you bundle an installation/restoration CD-ROM of the type I described for Microsoft Windows above. If the hard disk gets corrupted but is still functional, it will only take minutes to put it back into the condition it was when you customized and dispensed it.

Good luck with your project, Chris, and keep us updated on how DSL helps you carry it out!

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 30 2004,02:43

Quote

Another nice thing about Microsoft Windows is the ready availability of free low-latency text-to-speech engines. (cf. < http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/BHPL/TTSlobby.htm > ) The Linux world does not have anything like it yet.

I will soon be releasing the excellent "festival" text to speech program as a .dsl
It works well as a standalone speech , but it also can be integrated with quite a few programs,
many of which I have already made available in the repository.
I will also look into making the tkfestival gui for it as well, since there seems to be some interest...

Here are some links to give you more details ..

www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html
festvox.org/festival/
linux-sound.org/speech.html

73
ke4nt

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 30 2004,03:39

Wow!! Thank for taking the time. Alot to think about.

Quote

http://www.computercorps.org/Legal/terms_and_conditions.htm says that "ComputerCorps" claims the phrase "No Computer Left Behind" as a trademark/servicemark and that "The use of any ComputerCorps trademark or service mark without our express written consent is strictly prohibited." I am not a lawyer and will say no more about this.

Interesting. My company is officially "No Computer Left Behind, Incorporated". With state NFP designation and federal pending.....I will forward this to my attorney.

Yeah, I am guessing I don't have this thing mastered by any means.

The way I see it, no one has come out with a good way to do this. If it was out there, it would be widely used. I live in a city of around 13,000 and I am getting the idea that the number of kids without PC's is in the high hundreds.

I do not want to reinvent the wheel but I have some definite ideas I want to explore. I feel that I have absolutely nothing to lose.I am going to go for it with Linux and see what happens. If it fails all the MS IT guys can tell me "told you so". Most of the one's I talk to think I am crazy anyway. I believe that people underestimate kids. My 5yr old twins are playing tuxpaint, gcompris and circus linux on one of my remasters on a P75 with 48mb ram. They hardly ever ask me a question. They even break out tetris once in awhile!

Thanks again for all the info....I am reading with great interest!

Take care

Chris

Posted by clivesay on Oct. 30 2004,03:41

BTW - I have thought about doing pm or frugal installs on the machines. Still not sure about that one.......

Chris

Posted by docdtv on Oct. 30 2004,19:40

Quote (ke4nt1 @ Oct. 29 2004,22:43)

Thanks, ke4nt

Third parties had led me to believe that Festival was the best free public tool for TTS (text-to-speech) under Limux. Sadly, when I tried it, I was disappointed. While the rendering was decent, there was a totally unacceptable delay between when the engine was called and when it started to produce sound. That's why my previous remark used the qualifying phrase "low latency"! Festival is fine if you want to pre-generate speech for later playback (e.g. a talking book). But when I tried it, I couldn't accept the delay in *interactive* applications. (e.g. an incremental screen reader.)

I'd be pleased to hear if Festival (or some other free public engine running under Linux) can now do low-latency TTS. Is that the case?

Many thanks for your interest. I'm sure wrappering Festival for DSL is a welcome contribution all the same.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 30 2004,20:06

The festival.dsl is now available..

I wonder if the low-latency kernel patches you find in distros like the
AGNULA/DeMuDi project will help.. They had the same problems
with multitrack recording/sync-to-midi, and other challenges..

They have overcome them, and latencies are WAY down from a
normal kernel response.. Might be worth a look ..

73
ke4nt

Posted by docdtv on Oct. 31 2004,03:33

People tell me the simple architecture of the CMOS memory in the BIOS is now passe, and things are very idiosyncratic these days. This suggests you are not likely to find (or write!) a single utility program to set and restore the CMOS for an arbitrary collection of PCs.

Chris, perhaps this means your best bet is just to look at all the BIOS configuration screens and snap digital photos of each. By archiving those, you'd be able to restore them in the event of the unwanted changes I had pointed out.

By the way, in trying to figure out what parts a PC has, you might find it useful to use the Aida tool bundled into the bootable SystemRescueCd ( < http://www.sysresccd.org/ > )