Steam client crash in OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 Fixed!

After fixing some boot problems (due to a careless update of another OS), I discovered that Steam is now working in OpenMandriva 4.1.

Great!!

Honestly, I do not know if it was fixed or if my installing of GRUB editor (which was removed in the new OpenMandriva) did the trick.

Whatever the case, Steam is now working!

Steam client crashing on OpenMandriva Lx 4.1

I downloaded and installed OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 and the OS looks good.

The main problem with it right now is that Steam is not working properly: even though the client starts, downloads updates and unpacks the Steam runtime, it crashes right before login.

There was not much I could do about it.  Apparently, this problem has already been reported.

So, I have to wait...

Mixed thoughts

Elive 3
In a bout of insomnia, I booted my laptop with Elive and discovered that it had been updated with a feature to notify me if my HD has a problem.  Wow!  Plus, this live wallpaper is simply gorgeous! The Elive signature live wallpaper changes depending on the time of the day.  I hope I don't have to be up at 1AM to be able to see it, hehe.

 


OpenMandriva Lx
After installing OpenMandriva Lx 4 Beta (and accidentally erasing my home partition in the process), I decided to re-install OpenMandriva Lx 3.03.  The process took some time because of the updates, but it was worth it.

PCLinuxOS and iBus
I discovered yesterday that PCLinuxOS can now use iBus as the IME.  That was great because I had been using SCIM so far and it is complicated to enable.  Now I can use iBus for Japanese.  Yay!

Mageia 6
My daughter had been sad because, on her desktop, the Steam client running on WINE was not working properly.  That was a problem because one of her favorite games is a Windows-only game that could only be played with WINE... Not even Proton could run the game.
Well, I ran the Steam client in WINE and the issue was rectified.  Now my daughter can play her game after a long wait.

Fedora 30
I still do not get the reason why the root partition gets full so fast... I need t keep looking.

Using a Gaming USB Headset on Linux (OpenMandriva, Mageia, PCLOS, Fedora and Elive)

I bought a new headset for my laptop two days ago.  Since the store did not have many options available, I went for a Combat Argom Tech piece that is more expensive than the headsets that I normally buy.

However, I did not pay attention to one detail: this headset does not have a plug to a standard headphone jack, but has a USB connection.  When I plugged it to one of the USB ports of my laptop, which I booted with PCLinuxOS, the computer speakers reproduced sound but I could hear nothing with the headphones. I looked at the audio icon on the task bar, where there was an entry for "Multimedia headset [Gigaware by Ignition L.P.] and noticed that I could listen to sound by sliding the volume control, but there was no audio from YouTube videos and audio players.  So, I clicked on the audio settings and selected the Multimedia headset option as default.  This simple action solved the problem both on PCLinuxOS, Mageia 6, and Fedora 29:

Settings on Plasma--PCLinuxOS

Settings on Plasma--Mageia 6

OpenMandriva Lx 3, however, required no action from me because the headset was working out of the box.

Settings on Plasma--OpenMandriva Lx 3

With OpenMandriva, the headphones were also functional for playing on Steam without any intervention from me.

On Fedora 29, I had to change to Windowed screen in each game individually to be able to tick the box in Plasma like this:

Plasma settings for Steam game "Melody's Escape"--Fedora 29

UPDATE:  Fedora 30 was released two days ago.  Just as with OpenMandriva Lx, the headset was fully functional for Steam games.

I could not do this on Mageia, so no sound for Steam games on that OS.  UPDATE: Almost a week after I posted this, I booted Mageia and ran Steam.  The headset is working perfectly now and I did not do anything.  Steam is not available on PCLinuxOS, I believe, so I did not try on that OS.

As for Elive 3, to enable the headset, one has to go to the sound configuration from the menu:

After doing this, you might need to logout and log back in to listen

Once completed the process, the audio players can send sound to the headset

I do not run Steam on Elive, so I do not know if this process can work for that particular purpose.

Melody's Escape, An Entertaining Game

Megatotoro gave me a nice gift today: it's a Steam game titled Melody's Escape.

This is a simple time-killer in which you have to control Melody as she runs and avoids obstacles, but those obstacles are created according to a given music track.


This is a simple idea that combines the coordination of those dancing games in which you have to step on a direction arrow while the tune is played, but it has two nice features.  The first one is that you can change the character and environment.  The second one is that you can play to your own favorite music!

Go, Yandere-chan!

Regular game, right Mordecai?

Alice Angel, from Bendy and the Ink Machine

Thanks, Megatotoro!

Changes in 2018 (Part II) Games in PS4 vs Steam

Some of the greatest changes that I have undergone in 2018 involve the use of the Playstation 4 as opposed to playing on Steam.

Steam, in my opinion, has done a great job to bring games to Linux.  However, sometimes game updates render some titles unplayable for a while (as in the case with Bendy and the Ink Machine.)  Even so, I like playing Steam games better than playing on the console.  Maybe it's just that I prefer the computer because some of the Steam games are also available on the PS4, but I find them more enjoyable on Steam.

Whatever the case, I had to use the PS4 more because I was writing an article for a research project on games like Among the Sleep, Fran Bow, Violett, and Beyond Two Souls.  Eimi, my daughter, seeing the games on the PS Store, found Minecraft, and asked me to buy it.  I really saw no point because I had already installed it to her phone and did not like the MS game, so I refused.  However, my wife bought it for my daughter as a reward for all her effort in school this year.

When my daughter started playing, I understood why this game became so successful.  Pretty soon, both my daughter and I were playing together building structures, mining ore and feeding cubic animals.  The mash-up packs were Eimi's delight, in particular the Chinese Mythology one.  We explored the land, forged tools and, when outnumbered by monsters in the city, fled and fortified ourselves against them inside of a gigantic Buddha statue.  We created a hideout inside the sculpture's belly and connected it with a secret observatory inside the Buddha's head.  I must admit that finding Romeo's secrets (my daughter's fantastic quest in the game) kept me busy and entertained for quite a while. Oh, and the music is pretty relaxing, by the way.

Our stronghold against monsters

Yes, I am a Linux user and I still avoid MS products.  However, I guess I have to thank MS for this game that has made me spend such a good time with my daughter.  That's only fair.

Install, install, install! The dance of panic!

In 2011, I wrote about my bad day installing ZenWalk...  I described how a graceful dance can morph into a hectic aerobic string of contortion after contortion, an accurate metaphor to remember my weekend activities. 
Yes, I used this last weekend to fix some installation problems I had.

1. PCLinuxOS.  Three days after I fixed my Fedora broken screen locker, I updated PCLOS.  After finishing, unexpectedly, the system would not allow me to log in.  I am not sure what went wrong because I update my system regularly... Or maybe I forgot to update in a long time and my OS fell a victim of a false memory of mine?  Whatever the case, I downloaded the June 2018 iso and installed it without formatting my /home partition.  That took care of the problem.  I had to struggle a bit getting my Epson XP 231 scanner to work, though.  That was funny because PCLOS was the only distro that picked it upon install when I bought the all-in-one printer, but this time was different.  I  could not get screenshots with the PrtScr button.  I also discovered that it was because Spectacle had been removed in the installation, so I simply put it back and, presto!

2.  Mageia 6.1.  My Mageia 6 has been working great and, after updating to Mageia 6.1, everything when fine on my laptop.  My daughter's Mageia 6 desktop, however, has been a nightmare and I don know if I should blame the hardware, the UEFI maze, or a defective install media.  The thing is that, one good day, I discovered that the Mageia Control Center would not open and I could not install packages either via GUI or CLI.  The release of Mageia 6.1 was a great opportunity to reinstall and fix that once and for all.  The installation process went well, but the complication was after I dicovered that WINE was not allowing the Windows Steam client to download my daughter's current favorite game.  I reinstalled several times, changed the drivers, tinkered with the WINE configuration to no avail.  And this problem took me to my greatest installation failure: PicarOS Diego!

3.  PicarOS Diego.  My daughter's desktop dual-boots Mageia and PicarOS Diego, a great MiniNo GalpON respin for children.  Since the game she likes is neither running with WINE on Mageia 6.1 nor with Windows Vista, I tried to run it on WINE in PicarOS.  The packages were old, so I updated the system.  Big mistake!  In the end, I was left with an up-to-date  MiniNo that removed all the special tweaks for children and, to add insult to injury, the game would not run at all!


Oh, but the best part was that MiniNo removed the Mageia entry from the GRUB.  So I lost my access to Mageia as well.

Thankfully, in my dealings testing Elive betas, I learned about Super Grub2 Disk, a tool that becomes real handy in cases like that one. With it, I could get back to Mageia once that I had reinstalled PicarOS Diego.  So, in the end, all of my OSs are back to normal.

But I could not solve the issue of the game.

I guess I can let her use my laptop to play her game on Mageia or Fedora.

Or I can use the Windows 10 iso that I downloaded to upgrade Windows Vista on her laptop and see what happens.

Summary of Seven Days

This is a quick post to list the latest events.

1.  Mageia 6.1 was released six days ago (Oct 6).  I was sick and busy and, because of that, I missed the announcement.  I do not need to install it on my computers, but I will download it to install it on my daughter's machine and fix the problem with the MCC.

2.  Google+ is being killed (Oct 9).  That marks the end of my 3-year experiment with this social network.  Wow, excluding Blogger, that was the only social network in which I have been active for more than a year... I tried Tagged, Hi5, Facebook (before it became so popular here), and YouTube. Right now, I have been looking for a replacement and tried MeWe and Pluspora... MeWe is too Facebooky for my taste.  Pluspora feels like a merge between Facebook and Twitter with limitations and a really geeky flavor.  I guess I will continue my test drive in Pluspora for a while.

3.  Microsoft and the patents (Oct 10).  Megatotoro shared this article with me.   I was confused.  Either Microsoft is changing its position or it is a masked move that, in reality, does not help Linux at all.  Which one will be, I wonder?

4.  My Fedora acted weird (Oct 11).  As I was attempting to update Fedora, some WINE-related packages were not found because the repos were absent.  I updated without them and the screen locker got broken.  I had encountered that before in OpenMandriva, so I switced to a virtual terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F2, logged in with my user and password, and then executed loginctl unlock-session 5.  Then I switched back to the running session with  Ctrl+Alt+F1.

5.  The Forest on Steam via WINE ate up my home space (Oct 12).
I was playing this Windows game on Fedora using the Windows Steam client via WINE.  It works fine, but then the system told me that I was running low on space.  I checked with Dolphin and I had only 340Mb free!  After a while, this number went down to 467Kb.  When I finished the game, I rebooted and my free space came back.

Bendy and the Ink Machine, [Fixed] (Thanks to the Ninja Pizza Girl)

The game Bendy and the Ink Machine (BATIM) has been a headache for players who use Linux and Steam.

Following the release of chapter 3, an update broke the game.  However, there was a fix on the Steam forum.  One had to add this line to the properties of the game for it to run again:

-screen-fullscreen 0

But then, for Halloween 2017, the developers released a patch for a fun crossover with Hello Neighbor and, when they released the rollback to normal, the game was broken again and, this time, the trick to fix it was useless.

So, BATIM remained unplayable unless you installed the Windows Steam client and ran it with Wine.  Then, the game was playable, but the performance was not the same and there were some other problems, too.

I visited today the BATIM forum on Steam and discovered that the community is anxious because the release of chapter 4 was delayed to April 30.

Of course, I was not really excited, but I read a forum post with a new fix:  one has to copy four files from another game made with the Unity engine.

 libCSteamworks.so and "libsteam_api.so"--->/BATIM_Data/plugins/X86 and
libCSteamworks.so and "libsteam_api.so"--->/BATIM_Data/plugins/X86_64

I remembered that I had a game called Ninja Pizza Girl, so I looked for the files and copied them to the corresponding folders.  Sure enough, that fixed BATIM at last!

After playing for a while, I played the Ninja Pizza Girl... I didn't know that the game was about bullying among teenagers, inspired on the life of the daughter of the developers, who has Asperger's syndrome.  Wow!

In this game, Gemma, a 16 year old girl, must deliver pizza orders in a dystopian city.  As she jumps, climbs, runs, ducks, and slides to get to the client's house on time, she has to face the most nightmarish adversaries that a teenage girl can have: other teenagers!

I personally loved the fatherly advice given after each delivery.

Bendy and the Ink Machine Chapter 3: A Roller Coaster on Linux

Although I am not a gamer, I like to play games occasionally.  To do so, I I run Steam on my Linux computers.
 
One day, I stumbled upon a title that happened to be interesting: Bendy and the Ink Machine.  It is a horror game that relies more on the ambience than it does on jumpscares to create its effect.

The first chapter is free, so I installed it and played it.  I liked the experience, so I bought the second chapter. It was good.

I joined the crowd that was waiting for the third chapter and, when it came available on September, I bought it.

The problem was they released an update that broke the game on some Windows machines and, for what I could see, prevented Linux users from running the game.

After a while, somebody came up with a solution and posted it on a forum.  One had to add this line to the properties of the game: -screen-fullscreen 0

With that, I could play the game again on Linux.

The company wanted to surprise the user base.  So, they released an update that combined Bendy and the Ink Machine with another game, Hello Neighbor.  It was a Halloween gift.

However, the new update broke the game on Linux again.  This time, not even the magical line helped.

Today they released another update.  The game started, but crashed.  Understandably, many users are not very happy about it.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

**************************************
In a moment of desperation, I discovered that the game runs on Linux via WINE if one uses the Windows Steam client.

But that is not a solution... 

Those good surprises...

Yesterday I decided to update PCLinuxOS on my ZaReason Strata laptop. 

PCLinuxOS has always remained a reliable OS to work and, as the update included Lomanager, the distro's method to update LibreOffice, I couldn't delay.

Although the update was fast,  LibreOffice was taking a considerable time to finish.  Yes, I must thank my ISP for that: my connection has been unstable for over a week, with a speed sometimes down to a crawl.

Speed was abnormally slow.  I became a bit restless.

That was when I saw the Steam icon on my desktop...the round icon that had not been clicked on since October 2015.

Back in 2014 or so, PCLinuxOS was, among my OSs, the one that best worked with Steam; all of my games ran like a charm.  However, due to a mysterious problem that I could never solve, the Steam client refused to work after an update.  I read the forums and tried suggestions to no avail.  My Steam on PCLinuxOS was broken.

By then, Steam in Mageia and Openmandriva was going good, so I didn't worry much.  Later, I also started playing on Fedora.  It was not a real loss.

Yesterday, I don't know why, seeing that the LibreOffice install was slow, I clicked on the Steam icon without actually expecting anything to happen.  A window displayed the hopeful message, "connecting to your account."

And, before my eyes, Steam came back from the dead!

I don't know for how long the issue has been fixed.  That's, in my opinion, unimportant.  Shame on me for giving up and not staying on top of the matter.  I learned a lesson here.

Thanks, devs and community members!

Getting Cozy with Fedora

As Fedora Workstation 25 (KDE spin) is the first system in which I got everything running, I decided to decorate it a bit.

Modified version of a FNAF Foxy wallpaper by Gold94chica

I installed the ghost theme/window decorations, activated the effects, and changed the Plasma 5 home icon for a fedora icon.  I need to change the trash icon, too. 

Here is how you install Steam on Fedora (tutorial by Nick Congleton).
And Aaron Kili's page helped me a lot with his 25 suggestions about what to do after first installing Fedora 25.

Progress Report

This table shows my progress working with several problems on my four main Linux distros.

After a lot of effort, I made significant progress with the Epson XP 231 in PCLinuxOS.  Today, I managed to get it to work as it should.  Some people are reporting my same problem with Steam on that OS, though...

OpenMandriva Lx 3.1 pretty much does everything, except that Insync, which I believed was running, must be reinstalled every time to get it to work. You close the session and it's gone.  Bad.

Mageia 5.1's problem is the scanner.  XSane reports that the usb port where it is found fails to open the device.  I originally thought it was the file epwoka.conf at /etc/sane.d, but it does not seem to be the problem.

And then Fedora 25 weirdly refuses to print, but I suspect it is because I installed Fedora two days ago and noob is too short a word to describe me.

But I will keep trying.  At least, I could solve the printing/scanning problem in PCLinuxOS by using what I learned in Fedora about the installation of packages via shell.

UPDATE: I finally solved the problems with the printer on Fedora 25 and installed Steam.  Hence, Fedora is so far the first system in which I managed to get everything running.

Steam woes in OpenMandriva.... Again!

Steam updated today and, as a nasty surprise, I hit the same problem I had before with it.

I tried the solution here, but it was not working this time: the code reverted to its original form, preventing the Steam runtime to work.

Then, I realized that I was including the brackets in the code.... Stupid mistake. 

>tar --blocking-factor=${BF}  -xf "$2" -C "$3" |
>zenity --progress --auto-close --no-cancel --width 400 --text="$1"

I removed them and, voila, Steam unpacked the runtime and opened the user interface.

tar --blocking-factor=${BF}  -xf "$2" -C "$3" |
zenity --progress --auto-close --no-cancel --width 400 --text="$1"

Steam crashing in Openmandriva LX 3.0? Try this solution

I have been using Openmandriva LX 3.0 for some time now and I am very happy with it.  Since I installed it, this distro has fulfilled most of my requirements as a non-technical Linux user.

I did find a big problem, though.  The Steam client refused to work, complaining about Steam runtime not working and missing dependencies.  Even when I located the missing dependencies, nothing worked.

Yes, I know that some would call this a show-stopper.  However, I decided to go to the forums to ask for help.  The community is the power of Linux.

My cry for help was received promptly and courteously.  They suggested me to file a bug, and so I did.

Today, I got a response with the solution.  Now, Steam is working again!  This is how you do it (thanks to drosdeck for the help):

1. First, one has to make hidden files visible. Open Dolphin and go to the menu View.  Check the box "Hidden files".
2. Go to the hidden folder .local.  Once inside of it, move to "share" and "Steam".
3. Locate the file steam.sh and right click on it.  From the pop up menu, select Open with / Kwrite (root).
4. The system is going to ask you for your root password.  Type it and Kwrite will display the contents of the file.
5. Use the menu Edit and select Find from the drop down menu. In the search space, type tar -- 
6. You will be taken to a section that reads:

   >tar --blocking-factor=${BF} --checkpoint=1
   >--checkpoint-action='exec=echo $TAR_CHECKPOINT' -xf "$2" -C "$3" | zenity
   >--progress --auto-close --no-cancel --width 400 --text="$1"

7. Carefully delete the above section and paste this instead:

   >tar --blocking-factor=${BF}  -xf "$2" -C "$3" |
   >zenity --progress --auto-close --no-cancel --width 400 --text="$1"

8. Click on the icon Save and close the program.  That is all.  If the problem you had with Steam was like mine, the client should be working now. 

Big thanks to the guys at Openmandriva for taking the time to help me with this.  You all rock!

Playing on OpenMandriva LX 2014.2

I reinstalled OpenMandriva LX 2014.2 today.  Last time I did, I had some problems updating: many packages were not found but, even so, I proceeded with the upgrading.

The OS was working perfectly except for the performance of games on Steam.

Today, I followed what I learned yesterday and, when I hit the first problem, I stopped the update and deleted all the repos. Then, I retrieved them again (they were marked as phosphorous 2014.0, which I believe was the previous version), but the update went on smoothly and I got the most recent packages, like Firefox 44.

With that, my problems with Steam disappeared: the games that I play are working perfectly now, yay!

But the best part is that I can now play Never Alone Kisima Ingitshuna, one of the most beautiful and enlightening games I have seen.  As the official site states about the game:


"Inspired by the rich art and imagery of Alaska Native cultures, Never Alone brings the atmospheric and compelling world of Iñupiaq stories alive."

As you play, you can learn about Alaska Native cultures, which is simply AMAZING.

Once Again, Dell Disappoints

Back in November, when they announced that Dell was taking Steam machines to stores, I was very happy.  I really wanted to try the Alienware Steam machine.

Granted, I am not much of a gamer, but my gaming experience on Linux improved drastically thanks to Steam.  So, I visited the closest Dell store and ask about the Alienware Steam machine.

They offered me the Alienware Alpha instead. 

I made it very clear that I wanted a Steam machine, not a Windows computer with a Steam client.  I want to run Linux games.

So, they got my email and promised to notify me about the availability of Steam machines.

I thought I was never going to hear from them, but they wrote to me in a matter of two days... to offer me the Alienware Alpha AGAIN!

I then wrote back, telling the Dell representative that my lack of interest on the Alpha was exclusively because it had Windows.

The guy wrote promising to give me the info in December.  Well, it's December 16 already and nothing has been heard of the Alienware Steam machines...

Why isn't Dell selling Steam machines here?  Is it because they want to help Microsoft boost up numbers of Windows 10?

How funny... Dell has not figured out how Microsoft treats its "valued" partners yet.
 

And so I Won...!

I woke up early today with all the intention of tackling my morning jog, but I lacked the energy.

What to do?

I could go back to sleep or... play LIMBO.

Somehow, I knew I was very close to finishing it.  I mean, with all those gravitational spins, how much crazier could that creepy game become?

As an additional motivation, I reminded myself that I had not won any game on Linux.

So I opened Steam and played.

It took me less than one hour to finish LIMBO.

LIMBO:  The end sequence

Just like T.S. Eliot's Magi would have said, the ending was... satisfactory! ;-)

Interestingly, I experienced certain emotion (joy, a sense of achievement/completion?) from winning this game, something that resembles what one feels after finishing a jog.

I sort of understand gamers better now.

Game On!

Although I am not much of a gamer, I enjoy good games when I get some free time to play them.

I wanted to try World of Goo and This War of Mine.  Luckily, The Humble Bundle offered The World of Goo and other interesting titles (ZenBound, Limbo, and Braid again), so I bought the bundle and decided to play them on Steam.

Steam, for its part, had This War of Mine at discount price.

I could not resist and bought it, too.

So, I resumed my playing of To the Moon, Nihilumbra, Braid, and started This War of Mine (to add to the assortment of painful games).

A screenshot from To the Moon

As an emotional relief, I also played Limbo... CREEPY!

Limbo... a platform game with an oppressive atmosphere

Of course, keeping all this joy for myself is just not right.  I had to share the happiness and thus sent the games to Megatotoro.

I have to admit that the gaming experience on Linux has become a lot more enjoyable thanks to Steam.  I might even get a Steam machine later.

I will try to play on Desura one of these days, too.

On my new laptop: ZaReason's Strata 7440

When Mageia 4 was released, I migrated the two desktop computers in my house.  I also wanted to install Mageia 4 to my HP Pavilion laptop, but it had a hardware malfunction that prevented me from using it at all  (it would not start at all... apparently a chipset/display problem).

I took it to a repair shop I trust and they had to send it somewhere else to find out if the machine can be saved.  This means I had to wait for a month.

But I cannot wait for a month.

So, I decided to buy a new laptop with Linux pre-installed.  As my brother Megatotoro had a very positive experience with ZaReason (and I envied his Alto laptop, to be honest), I went for this beauty: the Strata 7440. 

The Strata arrived this week and its performance is truly great: all the KDE desktop effects could be activated and used without any major impact on the laptop's responsiveness.

However, I wiped the Mageia install to install the OS myself... mainly because ZaReason configured the user account for my brother and I dislike the partitioning they used.

I wanted also to make room for other possible installs.

Getting Mageia 4 on the laptop was no big deal.  In fact, I used the 64 bit version of the OS and everything worked, even the Japanese IME with iBus.  

Then I tried to get PCLinuxOS and, unfortunately, had problems with the display.  I need to see if I can get to correct the problem later.

The other OS that I installed to the Strata was OpenMandriva 2013.  The only problem was the lack of Wifi connectivity... It was solved easily adding the appropriate packages.

But then I discovered that the webcam on the machine is not detected.  Neither Mageia nor OpenMandriva Lx can see the webcam.  I tried a live Linux Mint 16 DVD and it was the same.  I hope this is caused by a lack of drivers rather than by a hardware issue.

I am not extremely bothered by the webcam issue because I don't use it much and, interestingly, this machine can run practically all the games I have purchased in Steam and Desura.  The list includes:

A.  Steam Games

1. The Bard's Tale (real funny)
2. Revenge of the Titans
3. Worms Reloaded
4. Snuggle Truck
5. Hero Academy
6. Cogs
7. Osmos
8. Violett 

B.  Desura Games

1. Braid (I love the concept of this game!)
2. Nihilumbra

It seems that the only game that I lost in Desura is Machinarium... because it is a 32 bit game and would not load.

So, the balance tilts more into the positive side than into the negative.  I only need to figure out how to solve the webcam thing...