Re: [aclug-L] word processor needed...

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jesse Kaufman <kaufmjes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> > You may be able to find it on ftp.stardivision.de.
> 
> ok, it IS free then?  i could never quite figure that out... their

You may download, and legally use, StarOffice for Linux for no cost
for non-commercial use only.  For commerical use, you must purchase
it (to use it legally).  Your Caldera copy may have a valid license
for commercial use, and so you may be ok with SO 4sp3 for commercial
use.

> website is in mass dissaray, and i couldn't find any info on

Unfortunately, their German site is much better than their English one 
(www.stardivision.de).  If you don't know German, it won't be of much
use though.  (babelfish.altavista.digital.com may be of some help.)

> which brings me to another small (i hope) question...  lets say i get a
> bunch of rpm's and .tgz's i want to burn to cd to keep from taking up so
> much space (or maybe burn the .tgz in un-tarred, un-gzipped format, for
> easier installation)... anyway, since i don't have a burner, i have 

OK, here's the story on this.

 ISO9660: Original format.  Permits DOS-style 8.3 filenames, not
 case sensitive, no extra permission information stored, etc.

 RockRidge: An extension to ISO9660 that permits case-sensitive
 Unix-style filenames.  RockRidge also records Unix-style permissions
 and symbolic links, so it is a lot more powerful than plain ISO9660.
 RockRidge discs can be read by DOS/Windows machines, but without
 the extra information.

 Joliet: Microsoft's proprietary CD-ROM extensions introducted
 with Windows 95.  Joliet is basically like ISO9660 but with longer
 filenames (it does not include all the features of RockRidge).
 Joliet discs *may* be readable in DOS/Windows 3.1 machines, depending
 on how they were created.  Linux now has native ability to read
 Joliet disks.

If you are going to burn your tarfiles in unpacked format, you *must*
use RockRidge.  Otherwise, you lose essential information about the
files contained inside that is often necessary for proper operation of 
software.  If you will leave them packed up, you may use any format
you like -- since all the extra information is contained in the tar
file itself, it doesn't matter what permissions (or lack thereof) are
associated with it on the disc.

> afriend of mine burn for me...he runs NT4sp3...  will the cd have to be
> burned in windoze format, or is there a seperate cd filesystem that is
> OS independant?  is that what that io9660 or whatever is?  my main

ISO9660 is designed to be OS-independant, but it is fairly limited
these days.

If you can, the ideal solution is to at least make an image on your
Linux box using mkisofs or mkhybrid.  (mkhybrid can make a disk
containing normal ISO9660, RockRidge, and Joliet formats --
simultaneously)

> problem now will be getting the files to him... once i finally get
> around to getting samba setup (no time yet), it *should* be pretty easy,
> i assume... or maybe i'll just copy to my win9x drive, and carry that
> mother over to his machine...  any bettter ideas?

If you have a Jaz drive, that's always a nice solution.  If your
friend's Windows-based CD burning software has a "raw" mode, use
that.  In that mode, you give the CD software a single file containing 
an ISO9660 (plus whatever extensions) image, which is then written
directly to CD.  This will allow you to use mkisofs from Linux to
generate a CD with RockRidge extensions and then burn it in Windows
95.

John

-- 
John Goerzen   Linux, Unix consulting & programming   jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade)       www.debian.org |
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