Happy 12th Anniversary, MandrivaChronicles!

On May 2, 2010, I started this humble blog as my personal project to record what I was learning regarding Linux.

Back then, I never thought of the many changes that would occur in the world, in the Linux landscape, and in me as a person.

Due to COVID-19, my ever-increasing workload has kept me away from posting.  Also, health issues in the family and my daughter's return to to in-person school classes required my attention.  All this has kept me away from here.

It is time to pause, then, and revisit the blog.

This is a quick summary of the major events:

1.  The university where I work decided to roll back and ditch LibreOffice to favor MS Office.  This is sad, but expected, mainly because the personnel's recalcitrance to use LibreOffice.  Interestingly, this same recalcitrance was at place when we were required to telework using Zoom, a paradigm change that many professors hated.  Now the complaint is that, after investing more than two years in Zoom, they will have to learn how to use MS Teams.  This feels full Samsara...

2.  My country has been under intense cyberattacks.  The generalized security-uninterested attitude in which people use their Windows computers has finally came back to bite them.  Now we see the "recommendations from experts to protect yourself against cybercriminals"...

3.  My telework comes to end tomorrow.  The Windows office computer is going to be watched closely.  The institution will  operate on the assumption that the university is a target and that our computers are vulnerable.  I guess that is correct.  The good news?  They offered both my brother and I to install Linux to our workstations.  I must admit that cheered me up!

4.   After the migration from Windows 10 to Windows 11, my daughter's laptop was fine.  Then another batch of updates came and broke it.  Good job, Microsoft!  I had to fix it and it took me two days to have the system operational again.

5.  I have been working all this time from a desktop with Mageia and a laptop with Mageia, Openmandriva Lx, PCLinuxOS, Elive, and MX Linux.  I switch OSs and computers to disrupt my patterns of work.  It's good brain exercise, hehe!

6.  Mental health-wise, I have kept a consistent exercise routine that includes jogging, body weight movements, and QiGong meditation.  This has been beneficial both for my body and mind.

7.  This last week, I created a USB stick with MX Linux to plug it to the office computer and work from there.  I will cover the process tomorrow.

Overall, I feel satisfied and calm with everything.  Let us see what this new stage brings!

December Distro Upgrades and Headaches

This month, I have been trying to fix certain weird issues that ocurred after upgrading Fedora 26 to 26.

The first problem was that, because of space, I had to do a fresh install, so my Mageia GRUB2 was replaced.

Luckily, the problem was not that hard to solve.  Getting my scanner to work was more complicated, but I solved it by getting the iscan bundle from Epson.

*********************

OpenMandriva is giving me headaches with some packages that have an invalid key signature or something... Because of that, LibreOffice is not working properly, I guess..

I reinstalled the distro several times and, when I try to update the packages via OMV control center, the first error message I get reads:
 "Sorry, the following packages cannot be selected:
- gdb-headless-8.0.1-2-omv2015.0.x86_64 (due to unsatisfied urpmi-debuginfo-install)"

I tried to avoid that package and then I get a more worrisome message saying that the package systembase-minimal has an invalid key ID signature.

I have also tried upgrading using the CLI with no luck.

Discover alerts me of 469 packages that must be upgraded.  I will try upgrading from Discover to see what happens this time.

*******************
UPDATE:
Discover installed 177 packages, but stopped. Let's try again with the pending 269...

No luck.  We go back to 469 packages to install.

On LibreOffice and the Challenge to Install Linux to the New Office Computer

The University where I work declared the use of .odt as an institutional interest in 2011 but, unfortunately, the migration took a long time to reach my faculty.

However, the presence of LibreOffice is becoming more visible this year:
1.  At the School meetings, you see that the computers now run LibreOffice.
2.  LibreOffice substituded MS Office in all lab computers. 
3.  The School acquired new computers, which where placed in the professors' offices.  I was not hoping those machines to run on Linux, but it was good to see that they come with Windows 7 (not the 8 disaster) and it was great to see that LibreOffice was included.
4.  Yesterday, at a meeting, the speaking professor delivered her presentation using LibreOffice Impress, not PowerPoint.
5.  Occasionally, one .odt document hits my institutional email mailbox.

So, there is hope :)

Now, regarding the new office computer... It has Windows 7 professional and UEFI.  My brother Megatotoro activated legacy boot so that we could run Linux distros on that machine and yesterday, he presented me with a challenge:  to install a Linux distro.

I was hesitant because I only had an OpenMandriva Lx USB and I had never installed it as a dual boot with Windows 7.  I remember having installed Mageia to a Win7 UEFI desktop as a dual boot, but I was not sure this was going to work.

Anyway, I took the leap of faith and proceeded with the installation.  OpenMandriva Lx worked like a charm: it took care of the partitioning (interestingly, it said "Moondrake" instead of "OpenMandriva" :D) and installed itself in less than 10 minutes.  When we booted the machine (expecting a catastrophe, if I must be honest), none of our visions of doom panned out.  GRUB2 picked up Windows 7, that OS was fully operational, and OpenMandriva also launched (desktop effects included, yay!).

So, my brother pimped it up with the Ghost desktop theme and window decorations, we updated the distro, installed some packages, and got ready to enjoy Linux on that office machine.

Yes, I am feeling happy ;-)

The LibreOffice Migration Finally Reached My Workplace :)

The University where I worked determined that it was in the best interests of the institution (and the students) to migrate to LibreOffice.  This happened in 2011, but the process was slow.

In the school where I work, the migration stalled, mainly because of the resistance of professors.

An email from the direction of the school made my day today.  It read that the migration was in process and that all computers in the labs (and the laptops) had been migrated to LibreOffice.

I cannot be happier.

Microsoft SkyDrive and Open Document Files

We are living pretty interesting times.

I remember that, when I first tried SkyDrive, the only available format to save your documents was the infamous .docx.   Consequently, I ran away from Microsoft's crippled cloud offering.

After all, I was not willing to accept this company's antics to impose an unnecessary standard that, in reality, was only directed to generate incompatibility so that Microsoft Office users had to buy Office 2007.

However, I visited SkyDrive earlier this year and, to my surprise, I saw that you could choose between .docx and .odt to save your documents.  I remember Megatotoro's bewilderment when I told him about it; the news was difficult to digest.  Odt seemed to be winning the arm wrestling.

There was a catch, though: you could save a file as an .odt with the Word Web App but, to be able to edit it, you had to run MS Office 2013 on your computer.  Again, Microsoft was pushing users of SkyDrive to buy a newer version of the Office suite and install it locally to do something that, obviously, people wanted to do in the cloud... a poor compromise that revealed that the company, instead of offering solid cloud solutions, was more concerned with protecting its old model software franchise.

Today, I gave SkyDrive another try.   Only expecting the "you cannot edit this file, blah, blah, blah", I tried to open a stored .odt and... Word Web App opened, only displaying the classic warning about compatibility issues that a desktop install of MS Office spits out when you try to work with an Open Document Format file.

I was dumbfounded.  For a moment, I thought the whole thing had been a product of my imagination, a crazy dream triggered by last night's bout of insomnia.  But no, the only word contained in the document was there on the screen: "Freedom".  I started to modify the file and renamed it "Hello World(1).odt":

The .odt created with Word Web App in SkyDrive

Word Web App did what it was supposed to, without complaining about my need to have MS Office 20XX installed locally on my desktop.  I am sure I was not running any version of  MS Office on my computer as I was using a Mageia Linux desktop.   Still in disbelief, I downloaded the file to open it locally with LibreOffice:

My first .odt file edited on SkyDrive using a Linux computer an MS cloud software

Sure enough, LibreOffice opened the file without a glitch.

Then I uploaded the file to Google Drive to see how Docs would work with it:

Although Google Docs inserted a blank page before my content showed and moved the picture a bit to the right, it was pretty much the same file.  But I was appalled: Microsoft was actually offering BETTER compatibility with LibreOffice than Google Docs was!

Is this perhaps a less publicized example of another backtrack that Microsoft has undertaken?  Maybe.  After all the mess with Windows 8's start button and the XBox One, it seems possible; the company might be trying desperately to correct its own wrong-doings.  Of course, they do it to keep cash coming, not for the sake of costumers, but still...

Now what Microsoft needs to do to utterly baffle me is to name one of these three candidates as the company's next CEO instead of Elop or the Ford guy:

The world is changing. 

Those unexpected regressions...

A while ago, I read Ken Stark's delicious rant because of a kernel regression.

Ah, those regressions can be real bothersome in the world of FLOSS.  Even so, I had never experienced one.  Therefore, the whole thing remained pretty much an abstraction to me... until two days ago, when I found my original thesis presentation and understood the frustration of those regressions.

Let me explain.  When I was a student, computers were not as popular as they are today, let alone laptops.  Thus, delivering a presentation meant that you had to  borrow somebody else's laptop.

Those were my Windows days.  Although I had a desktop computer, my Microsoft Office version did not include PowerPoint.

Fortunately, my brother had won a set of CDs with a collection of programs that included some free software and demos.  In one of them, there was StarOffice, which allowed me to create my presentation.  When finished, I saved it both as an .sdd file and a converted .ppt file.

That was a long time ago.  I thought I had lost the presentation forever, but I found an old CD containing only the original .sdd thesis presentation.  Logically, I wanted to see it.

I had seen LibreOffice deal with .sdd files before, so, when I got the dialog asking me for a program to open the ancient presentation, I knew that something was wrong.

There was simply no way to open it.

I browsed the web and found that LibreOffice dropped .sdd files support since version 4.

So, there I was, with a document that I was dying to see and no software that could perform the magic to open it.

To make matters worse, it seems that OpenOffice can deal with the files, but I cannot install it without having an office suite dog fight on my modern Linux systems.  It seems that the days in which I could keep OpenOffice and LibreOffice side by side are gone (last time I could do that was with Mandriva 2010.2).

Luckily, my wife's Asus Eee PC 901 is still operational and it comes with Xandros Linux and StarOffice!  I used it to convert the file to .ppt and later to .odp.

Who would have thought that the tiny netbook was going to save the day?
  

How to install LibreOffice 4.1.0 in Mageia 3

Let us assume that you are a newbie running Mageia 3 (like me, I guess). You know that Linux distributions have differences; for example, while Debian uses packages named .deb, Mageia requires packages known as .rpm.

You also know that Linux distros have a different release schedule. If you check Mageia's here, you will have to wait February 2014 to get a new version of the distribution with a new LibreOffice if they do not update the package later this year.  But you want Libre Office to run in your Mageia 3 system right now, so you go to the download section of LibreOffice and, if everything goes right, you will see the packages that you need for your distro and language.  You can confirm if you are getting the right RPM packages because you know how to read (something you learned as a child and have been practicing ever since).  So you download the main installer, the language translation, and the built-in help in your local language.

So, you download the files... now what?

Installation of LibreOffice in Mageia 3

You need: The installation files, your root password, and self confidence.

Once you have the file, you right-click on it and select "extract here, auto detect subfolder". Then you get inside the newly created folder and go inside a sub folder called RPMS.

WARNING: the following step is not for the faint of heart as it requires use of the TERMINAL!!

Yes, the above is sarcasm. I've read too much about how complicated and inconvenient it is to use the terminal...well, not in this case. I could do it and, believe me, I have no training in programming.

Once inside the folder RPMS, go to the window menu and click on "tools". Select "open terminal" to deal with the friendly black screen.
1. Type su
The terminal returns: password:
2. Type your root password (you have it, don't you?)
The terminal returns: [root@localhost RPMS]#
3. Type urpmi *.rpm and relax while the computer does its own thing. You will read many messages, but do not be afraid.  Let the computer handle the installation.  Once it's over, you will see the same prompt ([root@localhost RPMS]#)
4. Now, close the terminal (Boy, that didn't hurt, did it?)

Perform the same operation with the language file: right-click on it and select "extract here, auto detect subfolder". Then you get inside the newly created folder and go inside the sub folder called RPMS.  Once inside this folder, go to the window menu and click on "tools". Select "open terminal" to deal with the charming black screen. YES, AGAIN! But you are not afraid, are you?

1. Type su
The terminal returns: password:
2. Type your root password
The terminal returns: [root@localhost RPMS]#
3. Type urpmi *.rpm and wait for the computer to finish its thing. When it's over, you will see the same prompt ([root@localhost RPMS]#)
4. Now, close the terminal (Boy, that was enlightening, wasn't it?)


Then do exactly the same for the help file.

After this, your OFFICE menu in Mageia will display icons for LibreOffice under the section MORE.

By the way, having both LibreOffice 4.0.2 and LibreOffice 4.1.0 does not imply that the two office suites fight like cats and dogs within your computer, in case you are wondering. UPDATE (Jul-27-2013): Today, the update to LibreOffice 4.0.4.2 hit the repos.  When you update LibreOffice, your system will only call LibreOffice 4.1 regardless of which version you choose.  That is OK, (unless you want to type in Japanese).

My only complaint about LibreOffice 4.1.0 so far is that I haven't been able to use iBus (the input method editor) to enter text in Japanese. That's a big concern for me. I hope to find a solution soon. In the meantime, I'll keep the previous version for that purpose... or Abiword.

(For those readers that might thinking about having experienced Déjà Vu --or Déjà Lu ;P --, let me clarify that this is a slightly modified re-post of an entry I wrote before.  It was for Mandriva 2010.2 when the first version of LibreOffice was released.  The original is here.)

Wintel, Office 365, education, and other observations

I just read this feature on HP's position about committing to using only Windows and Intel chips.  As it seems, the marriage between the computer maker and Wintel is going sour.

It might be too late for HP.  Maybe they still have hope.  Whatever it is, it's clear by now that Windows 8 did not help computer makers boost up their sales and, given the fact that Microsoft is not making a big splash in the mobile (phone/tablet) industry, I guess HP is right to try other options.

Some people have argued that Microsoft will have it hard this year because they cannot use their market position to leverage the shortcomings of their software concerning performance and, thus, justify the price they charge for Windows and MS Office.  Microsoft must prove with the performance of its software that it is worth using and paying for.  That is not easy, especially when people do not seem willing to keep paying for newer versions that incorporate newer problems.  Take, for instance, the shortage of sevice in MS Office 365 last year.  Microsoft issued this apology , which became memorable for the irony it contains.  As it turns out, instead of being produced with a MS solution, it was produced with... Google Docs!

It is a fact that people have not been dying to upgrade Windows 7 (and, in some cases, Windows XP!).  What's more, where I work, most people still use MS Office 2007, which means that Microsoft has failed to motivate them to buy Office 2010.  Therefore, for Microsoft, it will be even more difficult to get them to jump on the Office 2013 wagon.

I doubt that many users here will like the idea to "rent" their Office and pay monthly, especially now that it is well known that you can produce documents for free with LibreOffice or other options.

So, the argument of business productivity might not work for Microsoft now as it used to. I guess that this company's greatest hope to remain relevant will be to appeal to the sector where, sadly, the most technology-ignorant people are found: education.  It's already happening.

It's sad to say it but, unfortunately, teachers are the easiest prey for companies like Microsoft because educators normally lack information about free software and they are brainwashed to accept blindly that technology enhances learning.  In addition, most teachers are the product of a monoculture in which "technology" is equivalent to "Windows".

However, I doubt that Microsoft can stop the quick disintegration of its monopoly... even if devices running their questioned Windows 8 OS flood certain schools, for many, Android and iOS are friendly neighbors, whereas Windows 8 is a suspicious stranger.

Typying in Japanese with Firefox: SCIM in Mandriva 2011/Mageia 2

Yesterday, I shared how to get SCIM to behave correctly to handle Japanese typying in PCLinuxOS 2013.02.  Thanks to that discovery, I learned the way to enable SCIM when using Firefox in Mandriva 2011/Mageia 2.

First of all, let me say that while iBus does the same and can be installed fairly easy in both Mandriva 2011 and Mageia 2, the problem is that it ruins the keyboard accents in Spanish for those people who work in that language with LibreOffice.  Therefore, SCIM is a better option.

I am running Firefox 19.0 at the moment, but this trick works with previous versions of the browser and future ones, too (Aurora and Nightly).

To activate Japanese IME (SCIM) in Mandriva 2011 or Mageia 2, the following packages are needed:

1. Japanese fonts (Use MCC to get them)
2. Scim (and all of its dependencies)
3. Canna (and its dependencies)
4. Anthy (and its dependencies)
5. UIM (make sure that the bridging packages are included)

Once all the packages are installed,open the terminal Konsole and use SU to log in as root with your password.

Then go to /etc/sysconfig by using
cd..
cd..
cd etc
cd sysconfig

once there, activate Kwrite by typying
export $ (dbus-launch)
kwrite

The idea is to modify a file called i18n.
When Kwrite is functional, using the open icon, and locate the file i18n to open it. Once it is displayed, append the following lines to the end of the file and save it.

GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
QT_IM_MODULE=scim
XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

Close the terminal and then go to usr/share/X11/xdm
Once there, open Konsole and type su and the system will ask you for your root password.  Enter it and then type
export $ (dbus-launch)
then type kwrite (to start Kwrite and edit a file)

Once Kwrite appears, open the file Xsession with it. You have to append the following lines before the line that starts with exec

SCIM working with Firefox in Mandriva 2011

 
export XMODIFIERS=@im=xim  
export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim-bridge
export QT_IM_MODULE=xim
export XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"

Save and log out and back in to your session.  That's the end of the show.  From now on, your browser will accept Japanese input for searches, or searches in other languages (Korean, Thai, etc) as long as you have the fonts for those languages installed.

The good thing about this method is that it also enabled SCIM for LibreOffice 4 (which is not in the official repositories of Mandriva/Mageia yet).

SCIM working with LibreOffice 4 in Mageia 2

Personalize LibreOffice with Firefox Personas

Reading www.tuxmachines.org, I found this article that describes a new feature in LibreOffice 4: the possibility to decorate LibreOffice by using Firefox personas.

Yes, I know that some LibreOffice users might find this feature trivial or silly.  I, for one, appreciate the idea and the effort of the developers Kendy and Oliver.  The way I see it, anything that contributes to make my computer (and the applications I run) feel my own, the more productive I become.

To use an analogy, a coworker told me that she once worked in an office in which it was forbidden to personalize the working environment.  Thus, family pictures, computer wallpapers, and even personal mugs were all out of bounds.  She described her time there as "nightmarish".  I understand what she meant.

Eager to try the new feature, I downloaded the LibreOffice 4 pre-release and, following the process I described here, installed it in Mageia 2.  Although I was expecting the previous and new versions of the office suite to engage into a ferocious dogfight, they decided to coexist peacefully.  I even got separate menu entries for both versions.

Then, I started playing with the personas.  It seems that light colors work better than dark ones.  So far, my favorite look for my LibreOffice install is the persona called "Tux Foxkeh Metal".

The only problem I detected is that I cannot use SCIM for Japanese input in LO version 4 because of the lack of the libreoffice-gnome-integration package, I suppose.  However, as SCIM works perfectly with the previous version, I do not worry.

A problem with iBus in Mageia 2 and Mandriva 2011

I just found an interesting problem in the way Mageia 2 handles typing Asian languages with iBus, the Input Method Editor (IME) that is configured easily during the installation of the distro.

For work reasons, I need my computers to be able to handle Japanese (and for fun, Korean and Thai).  You can do this with iBus (a more modern IME) or SCIM.  I chose iBus because you can install it during the installation process of Mageia. 

I had not seen this situation before because I have installed iBus only to computers that have an English keyboard.  However, since my main desktop computer has a Spanish keyboard, when I opened LibreOffice, I discovered that iBus was preventing the keyboard to display the accents ("tildes") of Spanish and those of French.

After using the SU command and inputting my root password, I wrote this in the terminal:
cd /etc/sysconfig

export $(dbus-launch)

kwrite

Then, when the graphical interface of kwrite came up, I opened the file i18n and found these entries related to iBus:


GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
XIM_PROGRAM="ibus-daemon -d -x"
XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus

I played with them a bit and the only thing I achieved was to break the IME, which slowed down the session start in Mageia.  Therefore, I tried to install automatically good old SCIM from the locale administrator in the Mageia Control Center.  It told me that there was no scim-tables packages, but I restarted the session anyway to find that SCIM was, effectively, not working

No problem.  I went to the file i18n in /etc/sysconfig again and saw that the following lines had been changed to make SCIM work instead of iBus:


GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
QT_IM_MODULE=xim
XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

The problem was the second line.  It has to read
QT_IM_MODULE=scim

so I changed it.

The next step was to remove the libreoffice-kde4 integration package.  After doing that, SCIM started to work and I could type the correct Spanish accents.

Mandriva 2011 shows the same problem with iBus if you have a Spanish keyboard.  However, although the locale manager installs SCIM with the missing scim-tables package, it took me more time to get SCIM to work.  It so happened that Mandriva did not install several important dependencies (scim-bridge-gkt, scim-bridge-qt4) and libreoffice-gnome, which were needed for the IME to work (provided you remove the package libreoffice-kde4).

Busy weekend with Mageia, LibreOffice, and Liberté

After an intense week, I decided to forget about work this weekend and have some time for my hobby, software testing.  So, I downloaded Mageia 2 RC, LibreOffice 3.4.5, and a Linux distro that I had never heard of: Liberté 2012.1.

Mageia 2 RC
I upgraded my Mageia 2 Beta 3 VirtualMachine and... absolutely nothing happened.  Before some hasty conclusions, I mean NOTHING BAD happened; all my software works, even the Japanese IME with iBus. I guess I will wait until they release the final version to try it on real hardware and to see if my netbook works better with Mageia 2 or if I should keep the previous release.

LibreOffice
I had a previous version, so I upgraded it to have the cool OpenGL effects.  However, I was impressed the most by the great PDF editing feature: with an office suite that can edit PDFs as easily as any other ODF document, MSOffice looks like a real software dinosaur.

The only drawback is that I have not figured out how to enable SCIM to work with it, so I must keep OpenOffice in my Mandriva 2010.2 box to type in Japanese.

Liberté
I must confess that I felt a little anxious about downloading a distro that is so anonymous that even its origin remains undisclosed in DistroWatch.  However, as it is 210MB, I gave it a try.  It enabled Tor and booted without any problem.  Web browsing is done with Gnome Browser.  Liberté includes Abiword for document production and Pidgin as the IM client.  There was no GIMP for image-editing software, which is logical because the purpose of this distro is private communication.  The best part for me is that this distro boots an IME in live mode that includes Anthy for Japanese writing and it works flawlessly with Abiword.  Vive la Liberté !

In my humble opinion, the three of them are promising.

Now I'm downloading the final release of ROSA Marathon...

Some reflections on Mageia 2 Beta 2

As a non-technical user of Linux, and after reading several posts about the battle between developers and users who feel neglected by them, I could not prevent myself from worrying a bit about the soon-to-come release of Mageia 2. You know, maybe Mageia also jumped on board that train that takes you to DumbOSland, where you "use-your-computer-as-if-it-were-a-cellphone".

So, I downloaded the beta2 to have a preview of what Mageia offers to users of Linux who are not computer gurus by any standard, but who like computers to behave as what they are.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a technical review, so I'm not getting into codecs, Flash, boot-time, and the like. As a simple computer user, I wanted to check on the progress made by Mageia and I saw both positive points and negative ones. This is what I found on the negative side:

1. The artwork needs some, er, work!

I am inclined into thinking that OSs must keep a balance between efficiency and beauty. While I do not find myself necessarily annoyed by the color scheme or login screens of Mageia, I do believe that lack of consistency might make potential users to refrain from using a system because simple users, when seeing an inconsistency in the booting process, tend to think of it as "a problem". The graphical screen of Mageia 2 Beta 2 overlaps the text screen and it looks strange. Of course, that is not going to make a computer blow up, but still...

2. A hideous bug crawls through Mageia Control Center/ RPMDrake

Although the installation was smooth, when I opened Mageia Control Center to start adding programs, it told me that RPMdrake had to be updated. That is normal, so I marked some packages for install and waited.

The installation was successful and so was the updating of RPMdrake. The latter was the problem: after the updating, RPMdrake became unusable, which prevents you from performing any further software install operations.

Now, this is what I really call a problem. I presently ignore if it is a localized issue or many users experienced it, but this is not good. I tried three different combinations and all of them led me to the same dead end:

a. Install Mageia, select no upgrades, refresh repos (leaving DVD), install software from MCC=locked RPM db

b. Install Mageia, select upgrades, refresh and select some additional repos, install software from MCC=locked RPM db

c. Install Mageia, select no upgrades, refresh repos (unselecting DVD and selecting some additional repos), install software from MCC=locked RPM db

However, this worked:
Install Mageia, select no upgrades, refresh repos (unselecting DVD and keeping the default active), install software from MCC. I suppose this problem is going to be taken care of with the RC.

3. Japanese IME with iBus: Dekiruka, dekinaika?

This is perhaps the most technical requirement I have for selecting an OS: I need a free and efficient way to write in Japanese. There are many functionalities I can live without (games included), but my computer has to accept Japanese character input.

Mageia 1 Beta2 astonished me when I saw that iBus worked flawlessly out of the box, something I could never achieve in Mandriva 2010 regardless of all my efforts (iBus works perfectly in Mandriva 2011, though).

Since Mageia 1 Live CD removed this functionality (I must use SCIM for Japanese IME with that version of Mageia), I was a bit concerned of whether or not iBus will work in Mageia 2. I tried the beta 1 and, to my disappointment, although iBus seemed to be activated, all the languages were shown in light gray, the "conventional" color for unavailable features in a menu.

iBus in Mageia 2 Beta 2 showed the same. However, I discovered that, although they were displayed in a lighter color, if you click on the arrow preceding each language, a tree opens and you see the possibilities... Wheeee! My bad, really. After my battle with MCC, I downloaded all the packages to get Japanese working (Anthy, ibus-anthy, Japanese font) and tried iBus. It works... sort of. Now, although you see the ibus keyboar in the taskbar, you must restart it to get Anthy running. And you must install the java packages for LibreOffice, too. Interestingly, iBus works in LibreOffice even if you do not uninstall the Libreoffice-kde package. Another issue: it does not seem to work with Firefox.

Mageia 2 beta 2 で、日本語のIME、できるか、できないか？できそう。

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On the other hand, Mageia 2 Beta 2 brings onto the table some tempting features for simple computer users like me:

1. New KDE
I really like the way in which Mageia 2 is working with KDE 4.8.1. Let me say this and, please, computer experts, do not feel offended. I simply do not care if KDE is a resource hog or not. I mean, KDE runs perfectly on my 2GB RAM, 500GB HD, even if I have several programs open (including Firefox with 6 tabs). It also looks beautiful with all the eye candy and plasma widgets. People can get systems with twice the horsepower of mine to run another OS that requires a ridiculous amount of resources and they are happy that way. So, to be honest, I find KDE's demands reasonable (again, I am a simple computer user, not a technical expert). Stability? Well, I haven't experienced a single KDE crash in a very long, long time. Yes, maybe it's because I do not use each and every KDE application, but I use the ones I find indispensable. That being said, I think that the prize KDE obtained was well deserved and using it is fun.

By the way, now the bottom panel marks with indicators the programs that are active and it also offers you an instant full-screen preview of the applications that are running. Some people I know are going to be crazy about these new features...

2. A satisfactory assortment of programs

Mageia 2 Beta2 packs LibreOffice 3.5.1.2, KOrganizer (I cannot live without it!) Okular (another gem), Scribus, Amarok 2.5.0, which nows incorporates the Amazon Store... I don't care because it works in some countries and mine is not included), Kdenlive, the players Dragon and Totem, and Gimp 2.7.4 with its new "export as" instead of "save as" dialog and image transformation tools.

3. Solid translations

As a Linux user, I cannot emphasize this point enough. Linux distros that provide only a couple of languages or inconsistent translations might not realize it, but they are reducing their possibility of adoption. Not all computer users speak English.


I believe that Mageia wants to offer a nice usability/freedom blend. Yes, I know that many Linux distros use the same motto, but they do not deliver; some say "We are the easiest computer experience", but then they switch your desktop for something you had never seen before and you are stuck with a desktop that that you simply don't understand. Mageia developers seem to understand that non-technical computer users need an OS that works with them, not against them. Thus, instead of "dumbifying" the user interface to the maximum, which is rather popular lately, they are following KDE's progress while keeping the same installation process. For computer users who lack technical training, that is certainly the right approach: I can follow the same steps and obtain a familiar, more polished desktop in the end. I can use it in my own language; it has the appropriate tools, and it requires little effort to use as I am not expected to relearn everything.
...A desktop that tells me I'm using a computer, not a gigantic cellphone. Thank you, Mageia!

Japanese in PCLinuxOS? Of course!

After having installed PCLinuxOS 2011.6, I must say that I am very pleased with it. Differently from Mandriva 2010.2, I can see videos and listen to MP3 files out of the box and I don't need to fiddle with the system to mount the partitions where my other Linux distributions are. It seems that everything works as expected. Great!

But I still had one concern. Although I'm not a power user, for my work, I require a feature that is not very common: a Japanese input method editor. That's one major area (of the many) where Windows 7 fails miserably; you are expected to pay more to obtain a Japanese-capable system, which is a rip off because regular XP did include a Japanese IME. Oh, well, we are familiar with the "Less-is-more" philosophy underlying Windows...Too bad it doesn't apply to your pocket ;-)

On the other hand, many Linux distros can handle Japanese typing, either via SCIM or iBus, working with either OpenOffice or LibreOffice. For example, while Mandriva 2010.2 can accept Japanese IME (SCIM + Open Office), the newly born Mageia 1 handles Japanese typing via both iBus and SCIM with LibreOffice. I know that Mepis 2011, Fusion 14 and Zenwalk 7 also let you type in Japanese.

The question was, could I activate either iBus or SCIM in PCLinuxOS 2011.6? I mean, I've only been using PCLOS for less than a week. Besides, this distro works with LibreOffice and, because of my repeated failure making this suite and IMEs work in Mandriva, I was not very confident.

Anyway, I first tried with iBus. After downloading all the packages and their dependencies, differently from what happens in Mandriva 2010.2, iBus started. The problem was that, despite I downloaded Anthy, iBus did not detect any typing method. I checked the dependencies and the reason was simple: the iBus-Anthy wrapper is missing in the repositories.

I tried SCIM then. I followed the same steps to activate SCIM in Mandriva and failed again. I then undid my changes and went to the Forums for help. I read an explanation here. Thus, I realized that I was missing some dependencies, so I downloaded those and, after following the relevant indications (because the thread is for a situation other than mine), absolutely nothing happened.

I was back to square 1, but not discouraged. With all the dependencies already installed, I decided to follow the process to activate SCIM+Open Office in Mandriva:

1. First, I looked for i18n in /etc/sysconfig.
2. After seeing that the structure is the same, I fired up Konsole. I typed su then my password.
3. Once as root, I typed CD.. to get to / and then CD /etc/sysconfig
4. I typed Kwrite, opened i18n with that application and appended the following lines to the end:

GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
QT_IM_MODULE=scim
XIM_PROGRAM=”scim -d”
XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

After saving, I logged out and then back in. Nothing happened, apparently. But you must remember that different systems work differently, so I pressed CTRL+Space and voilà, er, できた！PCLOSで、私はだいたい日本語を書くことができるよ。方法もあまり難しくない、すばらしい！日本語、PCLOSで？もちろん！

So, that's the way I found to type Japanese in PCLinuxOS with SCIM and LibreOffice. I couldn't be any happier with this system now :-)

UPDATE
After a new install, LibreOffice started behaving differently and would not respond to the above process. To make SCIM work with it, you also have to open Konsole and, as root, type

cd /usr/share/X11/xdm

then type kwrite to fire up the editing program and open a file called Xsession, to which you will append the following lines before the line that starts with exec

export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim-bridge
export QT_IM_MODULE=xim
export XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"

and, after a log out/in, that does the trick.

Document Exchange: The World Has Changed, Billy

In the movie "Dad", there is a scene in which old Jake Tremont, thinking about the past, shares the following words with his grown-up son, John: "The world has changed....you wouldn't believe how the world has changed". John, some time later, repeats exactly the same sentences to his son, Billy, amazed at the generation gap between him, a professional in his forties, and his teenage son.

I was thinking about that movie today when I tried to access one of the administrative web pages of the university where I work. Do you still remember that world in which people thought that there was ONLY ONE operating system? Two at most (Vista and XP)? Do you remember when all documents where exchanged using a proprietary format that, one good day, was arbitrarily changed and this act generated confusion when users couldn't open documents?

Well, when I started using Linux, practically NO ONE knew of the existence of the .odt format. Professors, students, and administrative staff were all mindless zombies who would send documents in proprietary formats assuming that the person receiving the information was going to able to open those letters, memos, essays, you name it. This is no longer the case: in two years, people have realized that they have to think about the receiving end, so they are using .pdf and compatibility mode to exchange their documents.

This might not not seem like a great change, however, as I got to the administrative page looking for some forms, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that they are offering two links: one for the traditional .doc format and another for .odt. In some of the links, the downloads for .odt exceed those of .doc files.

I had heard of the university plans to dump Microsoft Office in favor of open alternatives, but I personally did not have high expectations. Today I saw it: now they are not taking for granted that you use Word and you are satisfied with it.

Microsoft, for its part, needs to change some of its stances concerning open source if it wants to remain a big player in this new world that we see everyday. FUD campaigns are not working; users are gradually opening their eyes to see that they are suffering from the abusive policies of a company that lies to them. Some of them have already seen Linux computers which make their own Windows 7 PCs look like outdated dinosaurs that offer them the same problems found in computers a decade ago.

Steve Ballmer is delusional if he thinks that young people, those mobile phone-thumbing individuals, belong to the recalcitrant, almost extinct user base that yells "Windows or nothing!"

Bill Gates knew that the success of Windows depended on the ignorance of computer users. However, the world has changed, Billy... You wouldn't believe how the world has changed...

Arguments against Linux and the opinion of a non-technical user

First of all, let me clarify two points. One, I'm no power computer user: I know nothing about programming; I neither speak Java nor make my living analyzing data that go through routers and I certainly cannot assemble a computer from scratch as if it were a 30-piece jigsaw puzzle. Two, as an educator, I believe that the human mind is capable of learning when the subject is willing to participate in the process of knowledge acquisition. That being said, let me review some of the arguments that I have encountered against Linux, which, in my humble opinion, manifest some subjective reasoning that is used as an over-generalization.

1. Linux is not ready for simple computer users
From my experience and from my observations of the people who run Linux around me, this is FUD. As I said, I am a simple computer user and both my desktop and netbook have been running Linux for two years. In comparison to my 10+ years as a Windows user, I have found Mandriva Linux liberating, more stable, and definitely more reliable than Windows. So has my wife, who had no problem adapting to to the Penguin OS and begged me to remove Vista from her laptop. My brother, who runs Mepis, shares our opinion. And my mother, who was terrified of computers until she discovered Pardus, also agrees. A student of English, who runs Ubuntu and its new Unity-thing, loves his OS. In general, those people that embraced Linux expecting it to be different from Windows migrated successfully. Who says that to run Linux you have to run avant-garde software that requires compiling the kernel?

2. Windows just works and Linux will fail at a critical time.
Just two weeks ago, during a school meeting, I saw a colleague getting embarrassed by Windows 7 in front of everyone. This is so common that people have just stopped paying attention, I think. This time, she was supposed to deliver a presentation and the greatly acclaimed child of Microsoft decided to install several updates before getting to the desktop. It took so long that my poor colleague had to go get another Windows 7 computer. However, to her despair, there was a momentary blackout and the second computer decided to lock itself. In the end, she had to forget about her presentation. In comparison, last time there was a power shortage, Linux came back instantly when the power was restored and remembered everything I had open.

3. Linux is poor for games.
I can't deny than playing a game is a great source of pleasure for many. However, this argument does not make sense in a corporate environment, where computers are supposed to be tools for working, not playing. I don't know of any boss that selects office computers for the staff because of their amazing capability to play World of Warcraft.

Now, if you are talking about your personal machine and you are a heavy gamer, that's a different scenario, but I personally don't have any problem with Linux games. Nor many simple computer users I know. They use their machines mainly to type documents, send email, and browse the web. Did you know that many adults who use computers do not actually care about games? How about your teen child? I bet s/he will rather have a console than having to take turns with you to use the computer.

4. You cannot run Tax software or Netflix in Linux
Oh really? I'm going to dump Linux! Wait... I don't live in the U.S.!
In my country, Netflix or tax software are not problems: we don't use the same tax system and Netflix is not offered, either. This is applicable to many of the other countries where Linux can be and is used. Let's get into a more universal argument, shall we?

5. FLOSS names make it difficult for the user to find applications
This makes me laugh in disbelief. What a pedestrian argument! I guess people who said this can never travel, for they are completely unable to identify objects or places. Yes, if those people go to London, poor them! They have to go up and down stairs all the time because they never find "elevators", only strange doors called "lifts". Let alone going to a country where people speak a language other than English... You can expect things to have different names there.

So, you don't know what GIMP does? Well, do what I did: you open it, use it for a while, and you are good to go. Simple and painless.

The real problem is not about ease of identification, but custom. Did you know that this silly argument about names also applies to Windows? I remember I first typed my documents with an application called MS Works. All of a sudden, it was gone! Did I stop typing letters? No, I simply saw MS Word. When I saw Word in the menu, I thought it was a dictionary. Yet, I opened the program and started using it. So what's the big deal about names? The human brain has a memory. You use a new program for a while and your brain creates an association. The result: you never have the same problem again. That's the first stage of learning. Even children can do it, so why do people think this is a problem?

6. The appearance of Open Office/Libre Office is different
Yes. So what? So is MS Office 2007 different from MS Office 2003. Users had to adapt to the change and they simply bore and grinned. What's more, you occasionally have to undergo the same process every time there's a major update of a program you use in Windows, say, Nero, Audiocatalyst or any other. When I dumped Windows, I discovered Open Office and, to the best of my knowledge, I did not die learning the rules. I've heard people say that those rules or processes are impossible to master. That's flattering because then they are implying that I'm a genius! Am I? Nah, I'd rather go for a different explanation: they are lazy whiners. I wonder if they complained the same upon transitioning from MS Office 2003 to 2007 or to the trumpeted new bar of Windows 7...

Now, if the complaint is about functionality, before they give me the same arguments based on custom, let me say that I generally expect a more expensive product to offer more. MS Office is more expensive, but handles LESS file formats. Paying more for a product that offers less is a rip-off in my view.



Linux has been great for learning about new useful applications and discovering how my computer works. I value learning. It's good to be able to invest my time learning about my machine instead of using it to keep myself updated on how to protect a fragile OS from viruses, malware and all sorts of threats.

Testing Japanese IME in Mageia 1 Beta1 (with Libre Office!)

UPDATE:
After filing a bug report, the Mageia team fixed the problem in Mageia 1 Beta 2 Cauldron. Now Anthy works perfectly fine with SCIM. You also get the option of using iBus for Japanese IME, which is a lot simpler. Read about it here.

So, here I am, typing this entry from Mageia 1 Beta1.
Since I haven't encountered any problems so far, I decided to live dangerously and pushed my luck: how about testing the Japanese IME with SCIM? That works flawlessly in Mandriva with Open Office, but I haven't managed to make it work in Libre Office in this OS.

Given the fact that Mageia ships with Libre Office, I thought it would be a nice experiment to see if I can follow in Mageia the same process to activate Japanese input in Mandriva and type both in kana and kanji.

For those of you who might be interested, I described the procedure to follow in Mandriva 2010 here. However, Mandriva 2010.1 created some problems (that I could circumvent and described here).

So, I downloaded all the packages that are available in the Mageia repositories (I noticed that there was no SCIM-ANTHY, so I predicted problems).

Then, after using the SU command and inputting my password, I tried to add the required lines in the i18n file by using gedit, but the program wouldn't run:

[root@localhost sysconfig]# gedit
**
GLib-GIO:ERROR:gdbusconnection.c:2279:initable_init: assertion failed: (connection->initialization_error == NULL)
Abortado
[root@localhost sysconfig]#

Thus, I tried Kwrite, which has never worked for me in Mandriva for this particular purpose and I got another bash problem:

[root@localhost sysconfig]# kwrite
kwrite(4738): Session bus not found
To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)

KCrash: Application 'kwrite' crashing...
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/drkonqi from kdeinit
sock_file=/root/.kde4/socket-localhost/kdeinit4__0
Warning: connect() failed: : No existe el fichero o el directorio
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib/kde4/libexec/drkonqi directly
drkonqi(4739): Session bus not found
To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)

[root@localhost sysconfig]#

Discouraged, I was about to give up, but decided to read the information that the terminal was giving me... and I saw that it was giving me the solution!

To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)

So I typed
export $(dbus-launch) kwrite

and this was what I got:

[root@localhost sysconfig]#

I typed krwite and this is what happened:

Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kbuildsycoca4(4901)/kdecore (services) KServicePrivate::init: The desktop entry file "/usr/share/applications/kde4/trash.desktop" has Type= "Link" instead of "Application" or "Service"

kbuildsycoca4(4901) KBuildServiceFactory::createEntry: Invalid Service : "/usr/share/applications/kde4/trash.desktop"

After which, kwrite launched and I could append the lines to the i18n file.

Then I proceeded and removed the Libre Office kde integration package and, after restarting the session...

やった！マジェイアは にほんごをかくことができますよ！

The problem:

Anthy is not working, so I'm using Canna...which is fine, but I cannot get Canna to change kana into kanji (this feature works in Mandriva/Open Office).

Oh, well, but I achieved something, didn't I?

How to install Libre Office in Mandriva 2010.2

Mandriva (the distribution) comes with Open Office and, apparently, the company behind it has not voiced its support toward Libre Office, as many other Linux companies already have (including the Mageia project) (Read here the list). Of course, the similar circumstances that triggered the existence of both Libre Office and Mageia might be a little embarrassing for Mandriva (the company) to admit right now.

That is, nevertheless, of little significance for the end user and, if that end user happens to be a Linux beginner, those internal tensions within the Linux world are pretty much incomprehensible.

Let us assume that you are a newbie running Mandriva 2010.2. (like me, I guess). You know that Linux distributions have differences; for example, while Debian uses packages named .deb, Mandriva requires packages known as .rpm.

You also know that Linux distros have a different release schedule. Therefore, you have to wait until mid 2011 to get a new version of the distribution and to find out if Libre Office will replace Open Office. But you want Libre Office to run in your Mandriva 2010.2 system right now, so you go to the download section of Libre Office and are greeted by many different links. As you know how to read (something you learned as a child and have been practicing ever since), the many links do not scare you away: you discover that you need to locate first your language and the appropriate packaging (for Mandriva, you definitely need RPM.

So, you download the file... now what?

Installation of Libre Office in Mandriva 2010.2

You need: The installation file, your root password, and self confidence.

Once you have the file, you right-click on it and select "extract here, auto detect subfolder". Then you get inside the newly created folder and go inside a sub folder called RPMS.

WARNING: the following step is not for the faint of heart as it requires use of the TERMINAL!!

Yes, the above is sarcasm. I've read too much about how complicated and inconvenient it is to use the terminal...well, not in this case. I could do it and, believe me, I have no training in programming.

Once inside the folder RPMS, go to the window menu and click on "tools". Select "open terminal" to deal with the friendly black screen.
1. Type su
The terminal returns: password:
2. Type your root password (you have it, don't you?)
The terminal returns: [root@localhost RPMS]#
3. Type urpmi *.rpm and relax while the computer does its own thing. Once it's over, you will see the same prompt ([root@localhost RPMS]#)
4. Now, close the terminal (Boy, that didn't hurt, did it?)

Double click to open the folder called desktop-integration.
Once inside this folder, go to the window menu and click on "tools". Select "open terminal" to deal with the charming black screen. YES, AGAIN! But you are not afraid, are you?
1. Type su
The terminal returns: password:
2. Type your root password
The terminal returns: [root@localhost RPMS]#
3. Type urpmi *.rpm and see what the computer does this time. It might give you a warning about some dependency-requirements not met. Before you freak out, READ. It's about SUSE and Red Hat. You are using Mandriva, so just say yes to continue and relax while the computer does its own thing. When it's over, you will see the same prompt ([root@localhost RPMS]#)
4. Now, close the terminal (Boy, that was enlightening, wasn't it?)

After this, your OFFICE menu in Mandriva will display icons for Libre Office.
No, having both Libre Office and Open Office does not imply that the two office suites fight like cats and dogs within your computer, in case you are wondering.

My only complaint about Libre Office so far is that I haven't been able to use SCIM (the input method editor) to enter text in Japanese. That's a big concern for me. I hope to find a solution soon. In the meantime, I'll keep Open Office for that purpose... or Abiword.