- luv-main - luv.asn.au

email width
by Russell Coker 23 Aug '26

23 Aug '26

HTML email is useful for advertising, but has no benefit for the vast majority of the use of email. Plain text email (the standard that even most programs that compose HTML mail send out) has traditionally been based around monospaced fonts to permit indenting and ASCII art diagrams. It has also traditionally had line lengths a bit less than 80 columns, initially because in the early days 80 column displays were a standard and in modern times because people still have email display configurations based around a lot of ~76 column email and the noteworthy corner case of Braille displays which are 80 column. For things which can't cope with >80 columns nowadays the common case seems to be phones which mostly can't properly cope with even 80 columns - the portrait layout for the terminal window on my current phone is 52 columns. So we can ignore phones when considering whether to use more than 80 columns. How to make email work on phones is a separate issue. HTML mail often works best for phones. Most programming is done on monitors significantly larger than 80 columns and expressive function names are a good thing to make things easier to understand. So line lengths in programming often exceed 80 columns through constructs like if(func1(func3(param1)) || func2(func4(parm1)) ) for which each of the 4 functions could have names >20 chars and the param could have a name of similar length giving a line length of 130+ characters for a rather simple logical operation. Even outside from direct code there are situations where longer lines are needed. The below is a comment I've just put in some SE Linux policy showing the call graph for user domains which is clearer without wrapping words at <80 columns. A line length of 120 columns would be significantly better for reading code, as a lot of stuff is in the 80-120 range. But it would really suck for Braille having half-length lines and also not be great for quoted text, it would be like the common experience of plain-text 80 column email on a 52 column phone display. A line length of 160 characters would display the vast majority of source code without wrapping and on a Braille display it would cleanly wrap into 2 lines provided that the MUA doesn't try to split on a word boundary. A line length of 152 characters would allow a MUA that splits a line on a work boundary to cleanly fit into 2 lines in the vast majority of cases while not having the second slightly shorter line look too ugly. A text file attachment is one way around the problem but most MUAs don't allow viewing it inline. A phone MUA will often launch a separate program and even if it's a separate window of the same program that is unpleasant to read for a phone display and often annoying for a desktop PC configuration. What do you think? # userdom_login_user_template() -> userdom_base_user_template() # userdom_restricted_user_template() -> userdom_login_user_template() # userdom_restricted_xwindows_user_template() -> userdom_restricted_user_template() # userdom_restricted_xwindows_user_template(xguest) # userdom_unpriv_user_template() -> userdom_restricted_user_template() # userdom_unpriv_user_template(user/staff/secadm/auditadm) # userdom_admin_user_template() -> userdom_login_user_template() # userdom_admin_user_template(sysadm) # userdom_common_user_template() -> userdom_basic_networking_template() # userdom_unpriv_user_template() -> userdom_common_user_template() # userdom_admin_user_template() -> userdom_common_user_template() -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Fwd: New Contact Us Form: Linux Users of Victoria
by phil＠philfixit.com.au 12 Aug '26

12 Aug '26

Hi All, We have had an enquiry from the luv website, it is as follows: ########################################################################### Linda --- Email --- ag.t1(a)icloud.com --- Comment or Message --- HI, I have been a MacOS user for 12 years (loved it at the beginning) & at 81 yo & health issues, haven't got the time to continue pushed upgrades of software & hardware & total control & continually having to learn new stuff. and cyber security. I accept that it is hard to live in this world without IT, but with little life left, I want to minimise it. Wondering if you have any members who have a lot of experience with MacOS various vintages and hardware, who would like to earn a bit of money installing & maintaining the most suitable Linux distribution on one of my od MacBook Pro & MacBook Airs (all top of the range for their era - 2013-2014 vintage with thunderbolt 2 ports and requiring everything permanently cabled: keyboard, mouse, superdrive, USB-A & USB-C, 2 time machine backup external 4TB drives, Brother & HP Lazer printers, sound system, iPhone sync cable due to my EMF hypersensitivity which prevents me from using bluetooth & wifi). Whatever distribution it is, needs to have the briefest learning curve because although I was an IT expert 50 years ago, I have significant health problems & brain fog now so want something simple safe and reliable which does all the necessary computing to participate in this world, ie. communicate with my home care package provider (SAH now) and my friends, family, health professionals, regular support workers, buy all my food & other needs online, do all my banking & listen to my favourite music. Have also fpiund it difficult to buy a Linux book that doesn't just pay lip service to Mac Users - they are all highly windows user focused. If you know of some that is for the layman, not compute geeks, that woudl help me, I'd love to know. Linda ########################################################################### Linda has about 3 or 4 and are 2013 or 2014 macs If anyone has experience with linux os's on apple macs and would be willing to reach out to her and assist her it would be most welcome. Cheers Phil in Sunny Mildura

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Don't you hate it when the install works better than the distro?
by Piers Rowan 11 Aug '26

11 Aug '26

Hi there, Things are much better now but many graphics installer booted right away, looked good and got the job done - often better than the distro they installed. Well I had too much time on my hands and wanted to try LFS (Linux From Scratch) again. Result: - CLI and GUI tools - Boots in 10 seconds - Useful as a live / recovery system, headless server and desktop. - KVM with GUI controls https://www.webgen.com.au/linux/ Things got out of hand quickly because when things aren't working and you need a toolkit to boot to something to fix a server invariably you will need a browser to download drivers and manuals and a PDF reader to view them, and, and ,and. Building in Chrome or FF for a live distro was going to be a big build. No bother I just wrapped wrapped the relevant library in GTK and added some controls and called it an app. Yes I used AI. (My first browser was MDI based of VB6 with ie.dll running it in the 90's; never thought tabbed browsers would take off so didn't bother with it). I need help because I can't test this on hardware I have. If you have millions of dollars then send me most of it so I can buy some. Or perhaps download the 1.5GiB and spin it up in 10 seconds and see if you can connect to your Enterprise hardware, your extra monitor, anything that works or breaks will be great to hear about. There is a "Bug Submit" under Utilities. Many thanks Piers

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Don't you hate it when the install works better than the distro?
by Piers Rowan 02 Aug '26

02 Aug '26

Hi there, Things are much better now but many graphics installer booted right away, looked good and got the job done - often better than the distro they installed. Well I had too much time on my hands and wanted to try LFS (Linux From Scratch) again. Result: - Runs in UNDER 400MB - CLI and GUI tools - Boots in 10 seconds - Useful as a live / recovery system, headless server and desktop. - Untested base VM / Container OS. Things got out of hand quickly because when things aren't working and you need a toolkit to boot to something to fix a server invariably you will need a browser to download drivers and manuals and a PDF reader to view them, and, and ,and. Building in Chrome or FF for a live distro was going to be a big build. No bother I just wrapped wrapped the relevant library in GTK and added some controls and called it an app. Yes I used AI. (My first browser project was MDI based of VB6 with ie.dll running it in the 90's; never thought tabbed browsers would take off so didn't bother with it). I need help because I can't test this on hardware I have. If you have millions of dollars then send me most of it so I can buy some. Or perhaps download the 1.5GiB and spin it up in 10 seconds and see if you can connect to your hardware, your extra monitor, anything that works or breaks will be great to hear about. There is a "Bug Submit" under Utilities. WebGen Linux: https://www.webgen.com.au/linux/ 379 Packkages: https://www.webgen.com.au/linux/packages.html My Apps Shipped https://www.webgen.com.au/linux/apps.html Ubuntu / Debian Builds (How I test them before shipping them to WebGen's repo): https://www.webgen.com.au/linux/deb.html I am going to add more and more features as I get time because I learn a great deal and enjoy it. Currently I am running it on an Acer 4GiB laptop, a router I use a set top box and a VM in Binary Lane's cloud. AI and software development isn't everyone's cup of tea. I get it. What I am not doing is re-writing TCP via AI. I am using AI to put wrappers on proven libraries and enable CLI system admins and GUI users to work on their distro as they see fit. TL/DR ~ Give it a spin. 10 sec boot from USB / SDD. Submit a bug and I will install your favourite app for you. Thanks for reading. P Updates shipped daily. Still Linux under the hood so you can work with it as you normally would.

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MLUG tomorrow! (in-person & online)
by Duncan Roe 26 Jul '26

26 Jul '26

Hi everyone, The next MLUG meeting is tomorrow night, 6pm for talks to start at 7:30pm. This is a hybrid meeting, online and on jit.si. Location: 644 Rathdowne St (corner of Pigdon St), Carlton North VIC 3054 Online: https://meet.jit.si/mlug-au More details on the MLUG website https://mlug-au.org/ Cheers ... Duncan.

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Humble ebook Bundles: O'Reilly (7 d) Linux: All the Things. Apress: Soft. Arch. Pragmatic: AI, ML, ...
by Rodney Brown 22 Jul '26

22 Jul '26

NB ebooks https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-all-things-oreilly-books Humble Tech Book Bundle: Linux: All the Things by O'Reilly Book Bundle Entire 15 Item Bundle 5 Item Bundle Pay at least AU$38.51 for these 15 items Learning Kali Linux Linux Pocket Guide Learning Git Practical Linux System Administration Version Control with Git Kubernetes: Up and Running Network Programmability and Automation Learning Modern Linux Efficient Linux at the Command Line Linux Cookbook Linux Observability with BPF Git for Teams Git Pocket Guide Linux System Programming Understanding the Linux Kernel https://www.humblebundle.com/books/software-architecture-apress-books Humble Tech Book Bundle: Software Architecture by Apress Book Bundle Pay at least AU$39.61 for these 22 items Mastering Machine Learning Architecture and Solutions Mastering Software Architecture Cloud-Native Modernization Unleashed Fault Detection in Microservice Architectures The Art of Decoding Microservices Doing Enterprise-Architecture Unit Oriented Enterprise Architecture Mastering Enterprise Solution Modeling Practical Microservices Architectural Patterns The Art of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) with Azure Building Distributed Systems with Go and NATS AI and Microservices Crafting Great APIs with Domain-Driven Design Pro Microservices in .NET 10 Pro Azure Governance and Security Cloud-Native DevOps Architecting Enterprise AI Applications Java Microservices and Containers in the Cloud The Art of Immutable Architecture API Management Distributed Serverless Architectures on AWS Modern Data Architecture on Azure https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ai-ml-and-decision-engines-pragmatic-boo… Humble Tech Book Bundle: AI, ML, and Decision Engines by Pragmatic Book Bundle Pay at least AU$39.38 for these 17 items Process Over Magic: Beyond Vibe Coding A Common-Sense Guide to AI Engineering Vector Search with JavaScript A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms in Python, Volume 2 Next-Level A/B Testing Serverless Apps on Cloudflare Machine Learning in Elixir Practical A/B Testing Designing Data Governance from the Ground Up A Common-Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms in Python, Volume 1 Pandas Brain Teasers Genetic Algorithms in Elixir Programming Machine Learning Web Development with ReasonML Genetic Algorithms and Machine Learning for Programmers Data Science Essentials in Python Good Math

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Re: [Linux-aus] Feedback requested: Linux Users Victoria vs Linux Victoria
by Russell Coker 12 Jul '26

12 Jul '26

On Sunday, 12 July 2026 14:04:38 AEST Andrew Pam via linux-aus wrote: > On 12/7/26 13:45, Linux Australia President via linux-aus wrote: > > It is currently not clear to the Linux Australia Council whether these > > are the same organisation, given not all of the membership appear not > > to know of a name change, nor has Linux Australia been officially > > notified of a name change. > > As a member of LUV, to the best of my knowledge Linux Victoria is an > additional name for the organisation and there is only one > organisation. The Linux Victoria elections were not announced on the luv.asn.au mailing lists (which Alexar was always capable of sending email to). Therefore LUV members were not invited to the meetings unless they had decided to sign up for Linux Victoria. The previous discussions on these lists show that there are more than a few people who are LUV members who are not members of Linux Victoria and were not aware of what it was doing. > Members who meet in person have continued to do so, but > it appears there are many members on the old mailing list who are not up > to date; this is not surprising, as the list was not functioning > correctly until very recently and while I was previously the primary > list moderator, the software kept kicking me out and eventually I The software was however working well enough for the Linux Victoria people who wanted to argue about whether unsolicited bulk email (UBE) is spam. https://www.luv.asn.au/ Linux Victoria has been transitioning to become a separate organisation to LUV over the course of years. If you look at the LUV web site (which I have recently restored to functionality) the last event listed is from 2024. That seems to be when Linux Victoria cut ties to LUV. I've attached an archive of the web page Alexar put on the LUV web site to redirect people to Linux Victoria over a year ago. When he did that he made a commitment to keep the Matrix server etc running which he broke by not renewing the domain. I don't think it would be in anyone's best interests to try and reunite Linux Victoria and LUV at this stage. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Re: [Linux-aus] Feedback requested: Linux Users Victoria vs Linux Victoria
by Phil'll Fix IT Mobile Computer Services 12 Jul '26

12 Jul '26

On 12/07/2026 2:04 pm, Andrew Pam via linux-aus wrote: > > On 12/7/26 13:45, Linux Australia President via linux-aus wrote: >> It is currently not clear to the Linux Australia Council whether >> these are the same organisation, given not all of the membership >> appear not to know of a name change, nor has Linux Australia been >> officially notified of a name change. > > > As a member of LUV, to the best of my knowledge Linux Victoria is an > additional name for the organisation and there is only one > organisation. Members who meet in person have continued to do so, but > it appears there are many members on the old mailing list who are not > up to date; this is not surprising, as the list was not functioning > correctly until very recently and while I was previously the primary > list moderator, the software kept kicking me out and eventually I > couldn't even log in to the web interface, so I gave up and ceased > both moderating and participating in the broken list. This was also > one of the primary motivations for setting up a new list, though the > original has since been upgraded to newer software and is apparently > functioning again. > > Regards, > Andrew > Hi All, Also a member/sysadmin of LUV i can confirm the above is correct. Cheers Phil in Sunny Mildura

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DNS routing and the luv.asn.au domain
by Russell Coker 03 Jul '26

03 Jul '26

DNS=144.76.186.21 Domains=luv.asn.au If you add the above 2 lines to the end of /etc/systemd/resolved.conf (or put them in a separate file in the /etc/systemd/resolved.conf.d/ directory) and run "sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved.service" you will have a separate DNS configuration for the luv.asn.au domain. Note that you can't have multiple separate DNS servers for different domains using the above, so this won't give what you want if you already have a private DNS server. After setting up the domain the command resolvectl should give output like the following: Global Protocols: +LLMNR -mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/unsupported resolv.conf mode: stub DNS Servers: 144.76.186.21 DNS Domain: luv.asn.au Link 2 (mb) Current Scopes: none Protocols: -DefaultRoute +LLMNR -mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/ unsupported Default Route: no Link 3 (wifi) Current Scopes: DNS LLMNR/IPv4 LLMNR/IPv6 Protocols: +DefaultRoute +LLMNR -mDNS -DNSOverTLS DNSSEC=no/ unsupported DNS Servers: 8.8.8.8 DNS Domain: coker.com.au Default Route: yes This shows that the "Default Route" for DNS is 8.8.8.8 while the route for luv.asn.au is 144.76.186.21 This will allow it to keep working for you until we get the domain renewed. NB Make sure you remove this after the renewal. The resolvectl command is supposed to be able to set this and I have done it in the past, but I can't work it out from the man page and the google hits haven't turned up anything useful. Anyone know how to use resolvectl to do this? Before anyone says "read the source", I have read quite a bit of systemd source and it is not easy for outsiders to understand. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Re: [Linux-aus] The luv.asn.au domain
by Russell Coker 02 Jul '26

02 Jul '26

On Sunday, 28 June 2026 21:04:56 AEST Max Benoiton via linux-aus wrote: > On 6/28/2026 2:54 PM, Lucas Symons via linux-aus wrote: > > Transfer will be locked until 2 weeks after expiry or after it's > > renewed so it can't be transfered out. We will need some one with > > access to the account if we want to keep it live. > > The whois isn't listing any locked statuses, so you might be able to > just transfer out to another registrar if you had to, but it usually > takes a week. > > Domain password can be recovered here: https://pw.auda.org.au/ > > They'll only send the details to the registrant contact: > president(a)linuxvictoria.org > > The technical contact is also showing: president(a)linuxvictoria.org Thanks for the information. It seems that Alexar has renewed the domain and also changed the tech contact. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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