****** The LUGOD FAQ ****** **** Peter Jay Salzman **** p@dirac.org Copyright © 2002 by Peter Jay Salzman 2002-08-14 ver 1.2 =============================================================================== Table of Contents 1. Administrata 1.1. What_Is_The_LUGOD_FAQ? 1.2. Where_can_I_find_the_LUGOD_FAQ_online? 1.3. Are_there_translations_available? 1.4. Who_Wrote_This_FAQ?_Who_Do_I_Contact_About_Corrections? 2. The_Basics 2.1. What_Is_LUGOD? 2.2. Where_Does_The_Money_From_Donations_Go? 2.3. Is_LUGOD_Associated_With_UC_Davis?_The_City_Of_Davis? 2.4. What's_The_Fastest_Way_To_Make_Friends_At_LUGOD? 2.5. Who_Has_Been_Kind_To_LUGOD? 3. General_Questions 3.1. How_Do_I_Ask_a_Question? 3.2. Where_Can_I_Get_More_Info_Or_Hints_About_My_Problem? 3.3. What_Is_The_Best_Linux_Distribution? 3.4. No,_Really._What_Is_The_Best_Linux_Distribution? 3.5. Why_are_you_wasting_my_time_like_this? 4. The_LUGOD_Mailing_Lists 4.1. How_Do_I_Subscribe_To_The_Mailing_Lists? 4.2. How_Do_I_Unsubscribe_From_The_Mailing_List? 4.3. No,_I'm_Serious._How_Do_I_Get_Off_The_Mailing_List? 4.4. How_Do_I_Post_To_The_Mailing_List? 4.5. I'm_Subscribed_To_The_List._When_I_Post_To_The_LUGOD_Lists,_My Email_Bounces. 4.6. Why_Do_You_Call_The_Mailing_List_"Vox"? 4.7. Can_I_Prevent_My_Email_From_Getting_Archived? 5. The_Linux_Emergency_Response_Team 5.1. What_is_LERT? 5.2. What_can_I_use_LERT_for? 5.3. Can_LERT_help_me_install_Linux? 5.4. Can_LERT_come_to_my_home_or_office? 5.5. OK,_I'm_Freaking_Out._It's_An_Emergency._How_Do_I_Get_Help? 5.6. How_can_I_get_non-emergency_Linux_help? 5.7. A_LERT_Member_Came_Over_To_Help_Me._What_Should_I_Donate_To_LUGOD? 5.8. Is_LERT_A_Violation_Of_Rick_Moen's_Rule_#22? 6. The_Davis_Area 6.1. Is_Cable_Broadband_Available_in_Davis? 6.2. What_DSL_options_are_there_in_Davis? 6.3. Who_can_I_get_Linux_support_from? ***** 1. Administrata ***** **** 1.1. What Is The LUGOD FAQ? **** Some questions get asked repeatedly. When this happens, they may not get answered as fully or as well as they did before. Repeated questions are a waste of time and bandwidth for everyone. This is an attempt at providing high- quality answers for frequently asked questions. =============================================================================== **** 1.2. Where can I find the LUGOD FAQ online? **** The latest stable version resides at http://www.lugod.org/documents/faq. The latest beta version can be found at http://www.dirac.org/linux/lugod. =============================================================================== **** 1.3. Are there translations available? **** Ab, ohg vs lbh jnag gb genafyngr guvf qbphzrag gb nabgure ynathntr, lbh pyrneyl unir gbb zhpu gvzr ba lbhe unaqf. Tb ernq fbzr zna cntrf! :-) =============================================================================== **** 1.4. Who Wrote This FAQ? Who Do I Contact About Corrections? **** It was written by Peter Jay Salzman . I accept corrections and additions gracefully. =============================================================================== ***** 2. The Basics ***** **** 2.1. What Is LUGOD? **** LUGOD stands for "The Linux Users' Group of Davis". Note the placement of the apostrophe. We are, as our name implies, a Linux users' group: a bunch of people who use Linux. LUGOD provides a means for us to support each other with technical know-how and also to provide a cool social network. We are quite proud of LUGOD. People who come into contact with us like Dave Anderson (seti@home), Jeremy Allison (Samba), Rick Moen (linuxmafia.com), Chris DiBona (VA Software), and many others all say that LUGOD is the most active and prolific LUG they've ever seen. We do lots of stuff: support, social, evangelism. Why do we do it? Because it's fun! LUGOD started out as a purely social group. We're a bit too big for that anymore, but the social element is still an important aspect of everything we do. =============================================================================== **** 2.2. Where Does The Money From Donations Go? **** The mission of LUGOD is provide services, technical assistance and a social network to the local Linux using community. Every penny that LUGOD makes goes to fulfilling this mission and nothing else. We're financially responsible, but what we do sometimes take money. Some donations go to expanding our lending library. We don't purchase many books because we get so many book donations, but sometimes there will be a book that people want and really ought to be in our library which has no chance of getting donated. A book on learning LaTeX is a perfect example. We don't normally provide food at the meetings, but for special meetings, where the guest speaker is special, we like to have some kind of food and beverage at the meeting to help celebrate the event. The food you see at the average meeting has been donated by some kind soul. Part of our mission is to hold monthly installfests. The people run the installfest give up an entire day (10:00am to 6:00pm) once a month for every month of a year. And it can be a very difficult job! These people are the heroes of LUGOD; without them, we couldn't have installfests. As a way of saying "thank you" to the installers, we provide them with pizza for lunch. We don't feed the attendees (we couldn't possibly pay for all of them), but they can donate money to the installfest fund and share in the pizza. We usually have around 10 installers each month. That can be a little pricey. LUGOD is constantly holding public Linux demonstrations, classes, info sessions and speaking events. The money required for making copies of our pamphlets and handouts can really add up. We constantly advertise since part of our mission is to get people to use Linux and attend our events. We don't usually pay for advertising since we don't usually have the funds for it. However, for really special events we will sometimes take an ad out in a newspaper like the Comic News Press. =============================================================================== **** 2.3. Is LUGOD Associated With UC Davis? The City Of Davis? **** When we first started, we considered being a registered UC Davis club. This would've given us a lot of money each year and certain perks like being able to register rooms in UCD for events. Unfortunately, the price was too high. As a campus group, there are no restrictions on who could be a member, but officers have to be registered UCD students. We didn't want our non-student membership to be 2nd class citizens by not being elegible for officership. So we chose not to be associated with UCD. It has been asked "why not become a campus club and just not tell UCD that your officers are non UCD students". We could've done that, and chances are that nobody would know the difference, or more importantly, care. We wanted to be honest. Imagine that! When we outgrew Steve's Pizza, we began to look for a new meeting place. The city of Davis has many perfect meeting rooms, but they are very costly to rent. We applied for a waiver of room fees but the Davis City council turned us down. They would rather have let our group die than give us a room for free that wasn't being used in the first place. So, no, we're not affiliated with the city of Davis, either. =============================================================================== **** 2.4. What's The Fastest Way To Make Friends At LUGOD? **** We've all been there. You go somewhere and everyone knows each other, except for you. You don't know who to talk to and it's uncomfortable until you eventually make some friends. But some of us make friends faster than others. How do you speed up the process? Firstly, have the webmaster (currently Bill_Kendrick) take a picture of you at our meeting for our members page. This will allow other people to associate your name with your face so we can say hi to you at the meeting and know whom we're greeting. Secondly, sign up for the mailing_lists and interact with us. We can't expect to know someone without interacting with them. The mailing lists provide an excellent forum to interact and get to know you. Thirdly, the single most important thing you can do to make friends quickly at LUGOD is to volunteer for something. We have plenty of things you can volunteer for. We're always looking for people to staff our monthly installfests and Linux demonstrations. LUGOD always has something in the works: classes... talks... booths at events... tons of stuff. We always need people to help staff these things. You don't need to be technically inclined either. We always need people to just "be there" to pass material out, field general LUGOD questions and direct traffic. By volunteering at events, your name is almost guaranteed to be remembered by the people at the event. Bringing food like chips and salsa to a few consecutive meetings is guaranteed to make you an extremely popular person. =============================================================================== **** 2.5. Who Has Been Kind To LUGOD? **** The following people have been most kind to LUGOD: * Joel Baumert: Arranged for us to get some excellent meeting space at Z- World. * Z-World: Even though we don't meet at Z-World anymore, it would be hard to overstate how kind Z-World has been to us. Jim Riffel, Joel Baumert and Z-World has donated so much to LUGOD that I'm not sure how we'd ever pay them back. * Codeweavers: Donated Crossover Plugin and Crossover Office to LUGOD for our demo machine. * Bill Kendrick: Cofounded LUGOD, is the best webmaster we could ever hope for. * Maxim Group: Donating sandwiches at lots of meetings. * Rusty Minden: Tirelessly organizing our installfests. * mother.com: Gave us our initial web connectivity and mailing lists. * nerdbooks.com: For giving all LUGOD members an in-store discount of 10%. * O' Reilly Books: Donated hundreds of dollars worth of books to LUGOD, most of which LUGOD donated to the Yolo Public Library. * Rod Roark of Sunset Systems: Gave us our current web connectivity and mailing lists. * Christine Scobee: Bringing lots of snackables to meetings. * Officers, current: Mike Simons, Henry House, Melissa Hardenbrook * Officers, previous: Rhonda Bailey (treasurer) * Remington Stone: Co-wrote the bylaws and helped get tax-exempt status with Peter Salzman. * Steve's Pizza, Lampost Pizza: Provided space for meetings before we found Z-World. * VA Linux Systems (and Joe Arruda): Gave us lots of swag. * VMware: Donated a full version of VMware work station to LUGOD for our demo computer. * Marianne Waage: Designed the LUGOD website. * Z-World: Gives us excellent meeting space twice a week. =============================================================================== ***** 3. General Questions ***** **** 3.1. How Do I Ask a Question? **** It's not as easy for newcomers as it sounds. Asking for help involves 4 things: 1. The symptom: "My system does X". 2. When does X happen: "My system does X when I do Y 3. The output: "My system does X when I do Y. The output is Z" 4. Relevent entries in your system log. So in other words, this question: __________________________________________________ | My computer hangs. What could be causing this?| | _______________________________________________| is much better asked as this question: _____________________________________________________________________________ | After my computer is on for a few hours, the system doesn't respond to the| |mouse or | | keyboard. The monitor is blank, and the only way I can recover from this | |is by hitting | | the reset button. I looked in /var/log/messages, but the last few entries| |just say | | "MARK" (what does that mean?). I'm running Suse 7.3 with a 2.4.2 kernel. | |I can | | successfully log into the computer remotely from my system at work when | |this happens. | | __________________________________________________________________________| And this question: _____________________________________________________ | My CD writer doesn't work. How do I configure it?| | __________________________________________________| Is much better asked as: _____________________________________________________________________________ | I'm having trouble with my CD writer. It's a SCISI Plextor Ultra writer. | |I | | tried to burn a copy of some mp3's using xcdroast, but it keeps burning | | coasters. My SCSI card is an Iomega EZ SCSI PCI card. I have a SCSI hard| | drive connected to the same card (but I know they're assigned different | |SCSI | | id's) and it works perfectly. I'm running Redhat 7.1 with a 2.2.18 | |kernel. | | When I run xcdroast, it prints out: | | | | Starting to write CD/DVD at speed 4 in dummy mode for single session. | | Last chance to quit, starting dummy write in 1 seconds. | | Waiting for reader process to fill input buffer...input buffer ready. | | Starting new track at sector: 0 | | Track 01: 0 of 59 MB written. | | /usr/bin/cdrecord: Input/output error. | | write_g1: scsi sendcmd: retryable error | | status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION) | | CDB: 2A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0D 00 | | Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 64 00 00 | | Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0 | | Send email to p@dirac.org if you're actually reading this. | | Sense Bytes: 70 90 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 10 00 00 64 00 00 | | Sense Code: 0x64 Qual 0x00 (illegal mode for this track) Fru 0x0 | | Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid) | | cmd finished after 0.002s. Timeout 40s | | __________________________________________________________________________| =============================================================================== **** 3.2. Where Can I Get More Info Or Hints About My Problem? **** One of the myths propagated by Microsoft is that nobody is around to help you when you have trouble with a Linux system. I admit, there is a problem with Linux support, but it's quite the opposite -- at times, there can be TOO MUCH support. Unlike Microsoft support, Linux support is free and available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Linux support doesn't end with documentation---it starts there. LUGOD is available for help, as are countless websites, other user groups, Usenet, Google and more. Before asking a question on vox-tech, check out the vox-tech archives to see if anyone has asked it before: ___________________________________________ | http://www.lugod.org/mailinglists/search| | ________________________________________| Also, do a search on Google groups. It's not an overstatement to say that most questions that get asked on vox-tech have been asked over 100 times and have answered 100 times on a Usenet newsgroup. Arguably, Google groups is the #1 best source of info about Linux (and evertyhing else) in general: _________________________________________________ | http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search| | ______________________________________________| Next, for more verbose discussions about various topics, you can consult a HOWTO. The collection of HOWTO's is ever increasing and they're a good way to learn a topic which may not be covered by a book. You can probably find the HOWTO's on your system in /usr/share/doc/HOWTO. If you don't see them then you should definitely install them from your Linux installation disk. Every distro carries the HOWTO's, often in various formats like text, postscript, pdf and html. If you don't know how to do this or don't have the Linux installation CD's you can download the HOWTO's from linuxdoc: __________________________ | http://www.linuxdoc.org| | _______________________| There are also FAQ's, Guides and books at linuxdoc. This is definitely a case where there can be too much information to wade through. But give it your best try. Familiarize yourself with what's there, at least once, and the next time you need to know something about, say, firewalling, you'll remember there were a few relevent sounding documents on linuxdoc.org about firewalling. By the way, there is an excellent Linux FAQ at linuxdoc.org. Even seasoned Linux veterans can learn from it: ___________________________________________________ | http://www.linuxdoc.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/index.html| | ________________________________________________| And don't forget the man and info pages on your system. Sometimes you have a quick question and don't want to wade through all the information out there to get the answer. This is called wanting to be spoonfed. Sometimes we just don't have the mental strength to hunt down the answer to every small question we have. That's OK. Just don't make a habit out of it. =============================================================================== **** 3.3. What Is The Best Linux Distribution? **** Post this question to the comp.os.linux Usenet newsgroup. They'll have some excellent answers for you. =============================================================================== **** 3.4. No, Really. What Is The Best Linux Distribution? **** Nicole Carlson thought the previous answer was too evil for words, so I'll give a real answer. Debian is the best Linux Distribution. Like Babylon 5, all other distributions are but shadows of perfection. =============================================================================== **** 3.5. Why are you wasting my time like this? **** OK, some people don't appreciate my sense of humor. If someone wants to write up an answer to "what's the best Linux distro?" then I'll put it here. =============================================================================== ***** 4. The LUGOD Mailing Lists ***** **** 4.1. How Do I Subscribe To The Mailing Lists? **** _________________________________________________ | http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox| | ______________________________________________| =============================================================================== **** 4.2. How Do I Unsubscribe From The Mailing List? **** It generally depends on whether you have the five-year or the lifetime subscription. Both of these can be terminated in similar ways. Things are bit more complicated with the lifetime subscription, but we have lawyers here who will help with this. To discover which subscription you have, you'll need to study the mail headers in great detail. Most of us here can't help, since we're mostly lifetime members and many of us inherited our subscriptions from dearly deceased, caring friends or relatives, and would no more think of unsubscribing than jumping off a bridge. It's possible that your subscription is new enough that you can still cancel it by stopping payment on the credit-card charge. There are several list members who will assist you in this, but they will need your credit card and bank account numbers, in order to verify our records. Just post these numbers to the list and the proper personnel will process your accounts within 24 hours. =============================================================================== **** 4.3. No, I'm Serious. How Do I Get Off The Mailing List? **** If you want to unsubscribe from vox, point a web browser at _________________________________________________ | http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox| | ______________________________________________| At the very bottom of the page, you'll see a text entry field next to a button that says Edit Options. Type in the email address you're subscribed with and click the button. If you get an error here, you entered an email address which is not subscribed to vox. If you received no error message, you'll see "Unsubscribing from vox" in the upper left corner. Type your password in the password box and click on "unsubscribe". To unsubscribe from vox-tech or vox-announce, the instructions are exactly the same. Simply replace "vox" with "vox-tech" or "vox-announce" respectively. =============================================================================== **** 4.4. How Do I Post To The Mailing List? **** * Send non-technical posts to vox by sending an email to: . * Send posts and questions to vox-tech by sending email to: . * Only LUGOD officers can post to vox-announce. =============================================================================== **** 4.5. I'm Subscribed To The List. When I Post To The LUGOD Lists, My Email Bounces. **** This is the most asked question I get, so I'll try to answer as fully as I can. The LUGOD lists get quite a bit spam, so we have certain safeguards to prevent spam from reaching everyone. Our spam controls block anywhere between 20 and 40 spams per day. One thing we do to block spam is to make the lists "subscriber only". That is, you need to be subscribed to the lists in order to post to them. When you signed onto our mailing lists, you gave a certain email address. Let's say you signed onto vox with the address . Now suppose you have another, similar but different, email address . If you send a post to vox from , your post will reach vox and be sent to everyone. If you send a post from the other address, , it will bounce and not be sent to vox. So that's the short answer -- the reason why your post isn't being sent to the list is because you subscribed to the lists using one email address, but are sending email from a different email address. There are two approaches to fixing this problem: 1. Send email from your subscribed email address. This basically means making sure the From: header on your email matches the email address you used to subscribe to the mailing list. 2. Unsubscribe your already subscribed email address, and resubscribe to the mailing list using the email address you want to use. =============================================================================== **** 4.6. Why Do You Call The Mailing List "Vox"? **** As told by Melissa Hardenbrook: It was my idea. Marianne Waage went to an independent high school named Nova and worked on the newspaper there, called Vox Nova. I always thought that was a clever name... Voice of the schoool, the New Voice. When we were naming the officers (of which I also take credit for root, /dev/null and the idea behind typescript) and we were all obviously in a giggly goofy mood. I joked that we should have a Vox Lugod, and those who knew about Vox Nova laughed. Somehow we all agreed that it was a pretty good name for a mailing list. =============================================================================== **** 4.7. Can I Prevent My Email From Getting Archived? **** Lugod maintains an archive of every email that gets sent to vox and vox-tech. There could be a number of reasons why you wouldn't want an email to be archived. Perhaps what you're about to say couldn't possibly be of interest to the future, like "The Backstreet Boys are hot!". Or perhaps you simply don't want future archive browsers to read the stupid things you post, like "The Backstreet Boys are hot!". To prevent your email from getting archived, add the empty header X-No-Archive: to your email. It takes no content; don't put anything after the colon. How to put this line in your header is another question altogether, but I'll answer it here anyhow. I don't know. If you use the mutt mail client, the default key to edit your headers is "E" (note, this is not "e" which edits the message body). I'm not sure about other mail clients since I don't use other mail clients. If anybody knows how to edit headers with other mail clients like pine, elm or god forbid Outlook, please email me so I can include the instructions in this FAQ. =============================================================================== ***** 5. The Linux Emergency Response Team ***** **** 5.1. What is LERT? **** LERT was started by Peter Jay Salzman and taken over by Henry House . It stands for "Linux Emergency Response Team", which is a pun on the (now mostly defunct) Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT, at University of Purdue. CERT was started by Gene Spafford for computer security emergencies. LERT was started for Linux emergencies. LERT can help you when something goes really, really wrong with your Linux system. If you're having problems with Linux, and need to get the problem resolved quickly (suppose you're doing a class project on your computer and find, one morning, your computer won't boot and the project is due the next day), LERT can help. Basically, we're a bunch of volunteers who are interested in Linux activism. We want people to use and not be afraid of Linux. Therefore, we will go out and fix your problem for you. In return, all we ask for is a donation to LUGOD. This has the added benefit that not only are we promoting Linux usage, but we're also helping generate revenue for the LUGOD. =============================================================================== **** 5.2. What can I use LERT for? **** Lots of things. But only for emergencies. Suppose you wake up one morning to find your computer is completely dead and you're freaking out. Suppose you boot your computer and it freezes after printing "LI" and you have an important paper due the next day, and you're freaking out. Suppose you have a dual boot and you keep all your financial data on Windows. You try to boot Windows one day and discover that lilo can't find Windows. And taxes are due in a week. And you're freaking out. Suppose you've been HONESTLY trying to get a printer to work for 2 weeks. You've read the relevant HOWTO's, did tons of Google searching and have reached the point where if your printer doesn't start working really soon, you're going to start shooting people at random. Can you see a commonality here? The words "emergency", "freaking out" or "time sensitive" should apply to you before you ask LERT for help. =============================================================================== **** 5.3. Can LERT help me install Linux? **** No. That's not what LERT is for. Installing your own Linux system is like doing homework. Nobody learns math by having someone else do the homework for them. Nobody learns Linux by having someone else install it for them. Your best bet is to go to one of our installfests, not a LERT call. =============================================================================== **** 5.4. Can LERT come to my home or office? **** LERT is staffed by volunteers. They go on the assignments they WANT to go on. The key word here is "volunteers". Most likely, none of us will go to Sacramento. We might go Dixon. Even Vacaville is a bit far. But it never hurts to ask; maybe someone wouldn't mind making a roadtrip. We're trying to get some LERT members in Sacramento. Remember, since this is a volunteer effort made by members of a non-profit group, we have no obligation. It's not our job and we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. When convenient, we do it when we have time, simply because we like to help people. =============================================================================== **** 5.5. OK, I'm Freaking Out. It's An Emergency. How Do I Get Help? **** Send an email to and describe your problem fully (see section Section_3.1). However, asking for LERT assistance when your situation is not an emergency will just piss everyone off. Please don't cry wolf if there's no wolf. =============================================================================== **** 5.6. How can I get non-emergency Linux help? **** LUGOD has a mailing list, "vox-tech", for technical questions. See http:// lugod.org/mailinglists/. Posting a complete description of your problem (including your hardware configuration, Linux distribution and version, what you did before the problem started, how you tried to fix the problem, etc) generally results in helpful responses from LUGOD's members. See Section_3.1 If you need someone to come to your home or business, several LUGOD members offer for-pay consulting services. A list of such consultants and their contact information is available at {insert URL here}. Please note that LUGOD is not affiliated with these individuals and does not endorse or recommend their services; we simply maintain the list for the benefit for the Linux-using community. =============================================================================== **** 5.7. A LERT Member Came Over To Help Me. What Should I Donate To LUGOD? **** It's a donation, so there's no set amount. Give what you think the help is worth. Remember that someone, who is every bit as busy as you are and possibly more so, actually went to your house to help you get out of a jam. We find that most people seem to donate $20 for simple problems, and $40 for very complicated jobs. Give according to your capability to pay and your level of gratitude. Rest assured, the money will be put to good use -- it will go right back into the Davis Linux community. =============================================================================== **** 5.8. Is LERT A Violation Of Rick Moen's Rule #22? **** The short answer is "no, otherwise we wouldn't be doing it". Here's the longer answer. Rick Moen wrote "Recipe for a Successful Linux User Group" which you can find at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/essays/newlug.html. The 22nd rule states: _____________________________________________________________________________ | Don't go into any other business, either. I hear of LUGs being | |suckered into the | | strangest, most cockamamie business schemes. Don't: Don't try to be a| |Web design | | firm, a technical support firm, a network design consulting firm, or a | |LAN cabling | | contractor. Or any other business. Not even if you're told it's for a| |wonderful | | charitable cause. | | _ _________________________________________________________________________| LERT is done on a voluntary basis. Nobody is obligated to do anything they don't want to; there have been plenty of LERT requests that nobody had time for, so they went unanswered. In addition, there is no requirement for payment of services. In fact, a few people donated zilch for services that LERT rendered. There's no contract and no obligation, so LERT isn't a violation of Rick's 22nd rule. =============================================================================== ***** 6. The Davis Area ***** **** 6.1. Is Cable Broadband Available in Davis? **** As of August 2002, the answer is no. =============================================================================== **** 6.2. What DSL options are there in Davis? **** There are two options: Omsoft Technologies and Southern Bell Communications http://www.sbc.com which owns Pacbell. Unanimously, people with DSL through Omsoft speak highly of Omsoft. People with DSL through SBC speak lowly of SBC. The choice seems obvious. That said, I have DSL through SBC. Getting it installed was a nightmare of missed appointments, poor service and confusion about my service. However, once installed, my own experience with SBC hasn't been terrible if you neglect all the "we don't support Linux" rhetoric that their employees are supposed to spew. OK, that was the subjective take. Here are facts. Basic Omsoft service provides a static IP address. With SBC, you get a dynamically allocated IP address with their basic service. So if you want to run a webserver or be able to ssh into your machine at home, you need to go with Omsoft. SBC does offer static IP addresses, but the catch is that you have to pay extra (how much?) and they'll give you 5 IP addresses. If you're considering getting broadband, check out www.dslreports.com. They have alot of information about the good, the bad and the beautiful of the DSL world. =============================================================================== **** 6.3. Who can I get Linux support from? **** If you don't want to (or can't) do it yourself using the normal avenues, like the vox-tech mailing list, Google and Google_groups and it's not appropriate for LERT, there are still options for local Linux support. Rod_Roark of Sunset_Systems provides contractual Linux support. He also sells custom Linux systems if you want a high quality computer with Linux preinstalled. Honestly, I can hardly think of someone I'd rather touch my own systems. If you want to be listed in this section, please contact me.