Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 05:23:39PM +0000, sindi keesan wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Dec 2006, Lee Forrest wrote:

I've fixed the top posting. But I won't do it often. And I've
already blocked one person on this list from my mailboxes
for doing it chronically.

It _stinks_. 

> >>A friend just paid $50 for a laptop for his 9 year old and
> >>wondered if it were new enough to do email! I promised him
> >>a 28.8K modem and BL3. He wants to be sure she cannot view
> >>porn, so we could put on a text only browser and maybe
> >>webmail, unless Lee wants to set up a script even a 9 year
> >>old can use for POP mail. We also have 60 DOS games that
> >>teach you to type and add etc.
>
> >A script for retrieving mail from a popserver with basic
> >authentication (no SSL/TLS, etc.) is easy enough. Append each
> >mail to an mbox.
> >
> >A 3-year old could use it. After filling in the variable
> >arguments at the top of the script (server name, user name,
> >password), it would just be a matter of aliasing the script to
> >"fm" (for fetchmail) It would use netcat. But what mail client
> >are you going to use? Seems like mail/mailx (50K or so) would
> >be a good choice. But it's pretty basic. It won't handle MIME
> >or attachments or anything like that. Not without some serious
> >help.
>
> I don't know if people will be sending photos to the 9 year
> old. She probably won't be attaching things for a while.
> Sylpheed sounds easier. With Xvesa or VGA X server.
>
> >I guess you could use that SMTP script of mine to send the
> >mail off to their ISP's MTA, if only basic authentication is
> >required. (often, none is)
> >
> >I don't know sylpheed, but if it does everyhing above, and can
> >deal with attachments and such, it is a better choice.
> >
> >On Sat, Dec 16, 2006 at 05:30:03PM +0000, sindi keesan wrote:
> >
> >>A friend just paid $50 for a laptop for his 9 year old and
> >>wondered if it were new enough to do email! I promised him
> >>a 28.8K modem and BL3. He wants to be sure she cannot view
> >>porn, so we could put on a text only browser and maybe
> >>webmail, unless Lee wants to set up a script even a 9 year
> >>old can use for POP mail. We also have 60 DOS games that
> >>teach you to type and add etc.
>
> He is coming by in three days to work on it with us. I asked
> him what software is on it now. If it has XP, is there some
> easy way to add BL3? I used qemu in BL to run DOS (badly) -
> would I use qemu to run BL in XP?
>
> If it has ME I can run loop linux. If it has 2000 we have the
> CD so I can risk shrinking it, but how do I shrink an NTFS file
> system?

I first ran linux by reinstalling XP and leaving enough space
for linux to run on, and booting from a floppy. (Could be
a CD, of course.) You could also use an app like partition
magic to shrink the windows partition, but I hear they are
risky.

If your friend doesn't have enough commitment to do that he
should just run one of the live CDs, like slax or knoppix.

BL would not be for him. This is definitely a hacker's distro.

Lee