18/12/1999 meeting minutes.

["K. Arun" <kar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

        Here are the minutes for today's meeting. This should show up
at chennailug.org soon too. Could someone subscribed to the linux-india
list please forward this post there ?
------------------

	ILUG-Chennai met at 1530hrs., Saturday, 18th. December
1999. Twenty odd attended a meeting that reminded one of ilugc's early
days. On the agenda were demonstration installs of WinLinux 2000,
EasyLinux 1.2 and Corel Linux Open Circulation Version 1.0, and a talk
on electronic mail (the works) by Chitoor Srikrishnan.

	Srikrishnan's talk was well-received. Starting with an
illustrative conversation with a hypothetical MTA listening at port 25
on a Unix box, the talk proceeded with mention being made of the
protocols currently in use (SMTP, POP, IMAP et al.) the various MTAs
available, mailing list software, the dangers posed by open relays,
the annoyance of spam, the existence of blacklists, and possible
remedies. Questions, related to the talk and otherwise, peppered the
session.

	Ironically, of the three projected installations, only the
WinLinux 2000 install proceeded normally (well, almost, read
on). After consuming space at an alarming rate on a sacrificial
Windows machine, the UMSDOS-based, KDE-desktop-toting WinLinux proved
surprisingly sprightly and slick. All configuration being graphical,
and unfamiliar tasks such as mounting/unmounting devices being taken
care of by autofs, this is a good distribution for dropping into some
(a lot of) spare space on a Windows machine with the purpose of taking
Linux for a test drive.

	Unfortunately, both EasyLinux 1.2 and Corel Linux flattered to
deceive, with their installations hanging at different points. While
the EasyLinux install was admirably efficient (employing the wm2
window manager, of all things !), its inability to write the boot
block to disk, and stubborn refusal to yield to every attention
bestowed, cleared the decks for an attempt at installing Corel's
much-hyped Debian-based distribution. Again, the test machine hung,
trying to detect (non-existent ?) hardware. However, having seen both
distributions running earlier, it can safely be said they have a lot
of potential. One worrying factor is the absence (in both
distributions) of an option to proceed with a text based install.

	In the midst of the din and bustle, George Samuel gave an
impromptu talk on reiserfs, the new filesystem which sports
journalling support and a host of other very interesting
capabilities. So convincing was George, that members of the audience
intend giving reiserfs a try in production environments.

	A proposal to set up a separate, ultra-low volume
announcement-only mailing list was vetoed in favour of regularly
updating the web pages to reflect the schedule of future meetings. 

	The meeting wound up with the traditional bazaar session,
questions, advice, instructions and CDs being traded on the floor.


						- K. Arun


-- 
arun krishnaswamy  <aroon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  <kar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  
<http://prometheus.home.dhs.org>	Debian~OpenBSD~XEmacs~Gnus~fvwm 
PGP: 0x5606B2B1       9E B8 7A A4 63 B0 DA 46  21 75 2F 87 1D A9 39 69
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