Mailserver
We look back on mailbags of yore and see what the pressing issues of 20-years ago were bugging LXF readers.
I’ve noticed in your magazine that many Amigaowning readers are concerned about the lack of support for their systems when it comes to Linux, and fair enough, the support for Amiga’s when it comes down to Linux is very poor compared to PCs.
How often does this apply to Atari users then? My Atari runs Linux Debian (Potato) better and faster, than Mandrake 7.2 runs on the AMD – by quite a long way actually, but is there any support for me, and the rest of us? It took me days to actually get it installed, but when it finally did go, I was able to set everything up, even the graphics card – which it clearly states is not supported! (Yes, Atari’s do have graphics cards – and soundcards, and all new ones even ISA & PCI Slots by the way!) It even lets me access both SCSI ports and the IDE line!
Damion Jones
Nick Veitch said…
The majority of Linux users run x86 architecture, so it’s no surprise that that’s where all the attention is focused from the distro side of things, with notable exceptions like Debian. As the Amiga and Atari platforms saw the first ports of Linux, it’s no surprise that these platforms are actually well supported by the kernel.
The only time we deal with specific installation instructions is when we have a big distro on the CD (which tend to be x86 only). If we did install guides for every architecture that supports Linux, it would fill the magazine and then some. But what specific support do you want? It may be possible to do install guides on CD, but I’m not sure they could ever be more complete than the Debian documentation that already exists.
LXF028 – Hoyt mail
Hoyt Duff’s column in April issue (LXF26) says: “Mail clients that can’t handle HTML are simply broken”. I can’t agree with this. I use Agent, which doesn’t render HTML mail, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. HTML mail is conveniently shown as a blank mail, with an HTML attachment, making it easy to recognise and delete. Most HTML mail which I receive is spam and I don’t like the idea of the renderer following the IMG tags (which often have identifying strings attached to the URL via a ?, thereby telling the spammer that I have read the mail). If I receive
HTML mail from a known or wanted source, I reply asking them to use plain text as well as or instead of the HTML. If they’re incapable or unwilling to do that, well there’s always the phone.
Jim Hatfield
Nick Veitch said…
The majority of the HTML email I get is spam also. Actually, come to think of it, the majority of all the mail that I get is spam. Your point about the mail agent following links which can indicate you have read the message is a good one, and I guess we should ensure that where an HTML client is used, you can stop it accessing such URLs.
some of the Linux-compatible game demos on the DVD? The new Wolfenstein game for instance, would give many people a boost and is practically impossible to download on a dial-up connection (it’s about 250MB).
Another suggestion for an article would be on getting ADSL up and running on Linux. I’ve always used dial-up at home and cannot justify £28 per month for true broadband, but nowadays some ISPs (Tiscali for one) are offering things like 150K connections for £16 per month.
Mick Scully