Backup time!

Yes, I'm making backups.  No, my hard drive did not suffer any strange virus infection; those times are over thanks to Linux.

No, I did not mess up with the system, either.

I simply figured it's time to back up my blog, something that, by the way, I've never done.

Everything that I have learned from Linux is written in this blog.  I will be in a serious pinch if I were to lose all these 200 entries and the insightful comments of generous readers who shared their knowledge with me.

I followed the process described in this fun article here and got a 2,5MB xml file, which I compressed in a beautiful tarball (473KB)and uploaded to Google drive and sent myself by email, just in case.

Of course, I do not get to keep the pictures, but still...

Some random thoughts while waiting

The wait for Pardus Anka has been long...and my expectations are high, especially when I saw Pardus Tubitak without PiSi.

At least, seeing the comeback of Elive has made the wait a lot more interesting.  I tried the second Alpha and all I have to say is that it is the best alpha I've ever seen in my life. 

And Mandriva, or OpenMandriva, or MoonDrake (or any other name that they end up calling it) is also on my list of awaited releases. Yes, I  know many people think that the Mandriva ship has sunk.  The fact is, OpenMandriva.org is buzzing with mail list activity underneath the Web site posts.

I am sure I will not be disappointed.  Even if the releases take long and are not what I had imagined, I cannot be worse off than those poor users who are going to be cheated by Microsoft's Surface Pro and its amazing 64GB 23GB of storage! I loved picturing the blank stare of consumers as they are told that they "will be able to free up additional storage space by 'creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition'" or that they can always extend the storage by buying additional hardware.  Nice!  That way maybe they can get to the promised 64GB :D

Can you imagine if Microsoft sold you a four-wheel drive car? 


I guess Surface Pro is going to make the 128GB iPad shine at its price tab of $1000.

 Which reminds me... Where's the Vivaldi Tablet?

My Encounter with PicarOS, a Great Linux Distro for Children

My 2 year old daughter is very fond of computers.  Therefore,  I have been searching for options to make her desktop environment more appealing for her.  After all, anyone can use Linux these days.  And there are options for children, too.

I tried Qimo and Doudou.  Unfortunately, despite their beauty and functionality, they are not what I was looking for.  I wanted a OS that supports Spanish flawlessly.

Anyway, I saw a video about KidBox, a full-screen Urugayan browser that supposedly takes children to a safe environment online, where they can play and learn.  The idea sounded interesting, so I visited their website only to be slapped on the face with this discouraging message:

"LINUX. 

We are working on a version of Kidbox for your platform.

We will inform you when it becomes available!

* Currently available for Microsoft Windows"

Well, so much for KidBox...

Then, my brother Megatotoro called me in a frenzy, urging me to watch a video in YouTube about a Linux distro that he desperately wanted and could not download, so he wanted me to get it for him.  Without understandig his sense of urgency, I looked for the video.

That's when my jaw dropped.

It was PicarOS 2012, a spin of GALPon MiniNo especially tweaked to produce a child-friendly OS.  As I saw the video, I got more and more impressed by the interface and the software collection.  This is the video about PicarOS, uploaded by Introlinux:



However, I could not download the .ISO, either.  Apparently, the torrent and the magnet were not working.  But Introlinux was very kind and provided a direct link.  When the download finished, I burned the DVD and, literally drooling, tried PicarOS.

Everything I saw in the video was there but, more than that, absolutely everything was working out of the box!

The following day, I gave a copy of the DVD to my brother (read his review here) and my mother called me, asking me for another one.

"My daughter will appreciate this OS," I thought.  Therefore, I decided to install it to her desktop computer, which runs Mageia 2.

Installation of Picaros as a dual-boot with Mageia 2

Introlinux also gave me the installation instructions, so the process was not difficult.  What was painful was the discovery that Mageia could see PicarOS at boot.

So, it took me a day of trial-and-error frustration to configure the Mageia grub correctly, but I eventually achieved it.  Basically, one has to go to /boot/grub with Dolphin and, once there, open a Konsole.  Then you have to type
SU (and your superuser password when the system requires it)
export $(dbus-launch)
kwrite

When the GUI of Kwrite appears, you use its menu to open the file menu.lst and add the following:


title PicarOS (GALPon MiniNo)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-3-686-pae root=/dev/sda1 ro  splash quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-3-686-pae

Edited:
That's because I had PicarOS installed on the first partition (sda1).  You must edit the GRUB entry depending on the partition that you installed the system to.  For example, I installed it in a partition sda13 on my laptop.  The entry was like this:

title PicarOS (GALPon MiniNo)
root (hd0,12)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-3-686-pae root=/dev/sda13 ro  splash quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-3-686-pae

Then you save it and close everything.  When you reboot, you see that the new entry is in GRUB.

I booted PicarOS and, sure enough, got everything in place.
 

Default desktop in PicarOS 2012 (GALPon MiniNo)

I then added some things to make the browser look as the one my daughter is accostumed to seeing:

Firefox running the Scribblies Brite 6 theme

 After this, I installed PicarOS to the laptop that my daughter Eimi received from her grandmother for Christmas.  It is a Lenovo 3000 N100.  I chose the "basic-automatic" installation and the process was absolutely painless: PicarOS picked up the Wifi and configured everything without any input of mine.  It can even display the VGA video to a TV screen.

These days, in which companies see our children as marketing targets for consumerism, it is refreshing to see how Linux gives us options for our children to learn in a free environment.  And PicarOS is certainly a great choice for people in Spanish speaking countries.

I just want to see Eimi using her new computers...

SOME NOTES:
The name of the OS is a pun (The Spanish word "pícaros" means, in a positive sense, "rogues").
Despite being targeted to children, as Introlinux accurately asserts, "because of its packages, PicarOS can perfectly be the desktop of choice of any home user".  To illustrate, I was surprised to see the GIMP and LibreOffice in the software collection...and then I saw Blender.  I hope my daughter can teach me how to use that program one day ;-)
The desktop environment of Picaros is LXDE, which makes the OS lighter than other distros for children.
Finally, I posted this from PicarOS and, while I worked, I did not experience any crash or performance problem.  It can actually be the desktop of choice of a home user! 

I opened the time capsule

Yesterday, I bought this handy organizer and decided to put inside my CD and DVD collection taking advantage of some free time I had [Yes, it's nice to have free time once in a while ;-)].

I knew the task was not going to be finished until I actually opened The Chest.  You see, The Chest is an old Canon Pixma iP1000 printer box that has been sitting in my office for seven years.  I packed old notebooks, CDs, and DVDs inside and closed it with duct tape.  Time erased from my memory whatever was inside of it, for the last occasion in which I opened it was perhaps five years ago.

So,  I cut it open, expecting to find more old notebooks than CDs or DVDs.  However, the contents of the box were only two notebooks and lots of removable media.

I was surprised; I did not remember having so many CDs and DVDs inside The Chest and gradually examined the lot.  That's when The Chest turned itself into a Time Capsule!

There were some movies that I forgot I had.  But the most interesting thing was that the bulk of the media was made up by backups of documents and programs...many of which I, one day, regarded as absolutely indispensable for my computer activities: there was, for instance, and old installer of AVG antivirus 6, Blaze (a powerhouse all-in-one media player), and my installation media for Windows 98 (Wow!), ME(Awww!), and Vista (yuck!).  I even had the Windows ME start floppy and one of those promotional CDs that you got even inside cereal boxes with a copy of the "brand new" Internet Explorer 3.

Seeing all that made me think.  There was a time in which IE was the only browser I used and trusted.  In 2007, Firefox changed the landscape.  There was also a time in which my computer using experience was dominated by anxiety and fear, so I made all sorts of backups (my Master's thesis was erased by the hideous virus Sircam and that taught me a lesson).  In addition, crashes were so problematic and common that I could not live without installation CDs.

Last time I experienced a crash was... boy, I don't remember.  I haven't made a document DVD backup in more than two years.  On Dec 21, 2012, when I migrated my desktop from Mandriva 2010.2 to Mageia 2, I used the same /home partition and haven't had any problem.  Yet, there I was, holding backups from 2008, 2003, and 2001, the silent witnesses of a past computer experience that I am not familiar with any longer.

 Truly, the old times are not necessarily "the good old times".

The comeback of Elive

"The world has not ended, so... now be Elive!"
This is a catchy phrase in the release announcement for those of us who, after seeing one of the most beautiful Linux distros go dormant, are now excited at the release of a new alpha of Elive.

This is not a review, only a quick image-test run.  Even so, one can see that the excitment is justified.

How does Elive behave in a VM?

The booting process is both fast and intuitive.  The first screens that you see let you choose your language and keyboard.

Then, you are asked if you want to have a mobile interface (I went for desktop), the size of the text and the behavior of the effects.  After answering, you see the default desktop:


 

You can access the menu by left-clicking on any point of the desktop.

The network was not enabled by default, but one can set it easily in two clicks:

Then you see the indicator that the network is up. 

You can close it and you can still browse the Web, which you do with Chromium, not Firefox :-( 

You can watch YouTube videos out of the box:

 Concerning software, it was gratifying to see GIMP, LibreOffice, and Audacious!


You can customize the pager to have less desktops (I normally work with only four) and add different wallpapers on each desktop.


The system was responsive and beautiful.

Then I tried the mobile interface.  I must say that it was responsive but, as I am not a fan of those things, I did not find it appealing.

For an alpha, this is a great-looking and promising release. We have to see the final version which, judging from this, will be amazing.

For more on the awakening of Elive, read here.

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.

Happy New Year!

Thank you to the developers, moderators, and friends of these wonderful Linux communities for a year of learning.  May 2013 bring you joy, peace, health, and success.

Thank you, Megatotoro, for letting me modify the original image :)

Happy New Year from Openmandriva.org

The New Year is about to begin.  And some great news to start it is that openmandriva.org is trying to put things together concerning the information about Mandriva (the distribution).

You can visit the newly born site here.  Be aware that it is work in progress.

(And the penguins are there, too!  I wish they were in my Mandriva 2011 GRUB, as in the Mandriva 2012 Alpha releases...)

Happy New Year!!!

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).

Migration stories 3: Good Bye, Mandriva 2010.2!

MIGRATION STORIES, part 3

While my wife's migration was very successful, mine was not a smooth process.  But I know that is bound to happen when you change OSs.  

A.  Mandriva 2011
The day was yesterday.  I've been using Mandriva 2010.2 (Xmas) as the main OS of my desktop.  However, now that I finally reconciled with the Rosa SimpleWelcome, stack folders and rocket launcher, I decided that I wanted to try Mandriva 2011 as the replacement.  To this end, I looked for my Mandriva 2011 DVDs.  The Mandriva 2011 Desktop Live DVD has given my some performance issues in the past, so I settled for the PowerPack edition.

Inspired by my recent success with Mageia 2, I decided that I was not going to format my /home partition.

But this time the change did not go as smoothly as I had expected; I got a message indicating that one installation transaction was not complete.  I continued with the process anyway and, after installing the new distro, I saw that Mandriva 2011 would boot in a sluggish way.  I assumed that it was because of the indexing of all the files I had accumulated in two years, but I knew something had gone wrong.  First, for indexing, the user has to activate Nepomuk once the desktop loads and I hadn't gotten to my desktop yet.  Second, once the log in was complete, there was a bad problem with the graphical server: I had no visible desktop.  It seems that my previous user configuration (Kwin effects) and the new one were overlapping, so the Rocket bar was a real mess.

I gave it another try wiping everything this time.  That solved the problem of the misbehaving graphical server.  I tested sound, video, and the printer; everything seemed fine.  That was until I tried to activate the desktop effects: Mandriva 2011 would not refresh the desktop, so it was basically impossible to work.  I checked the graphical server and found out that, despite the proprietary drivers for my video card were installed, the card was not working correctly.  So, that was my option: Mandriva 2011 was fully operational without desktop effects...which I happen to be very fond of.

I tried the whole thing again using the Mandriva 2012 TP "Bernie Lomax".  Of course, I  know that using such a system as one's production OS is far from advisable, but I wanted to see it running on real hardware.  It ran beautifully, but the problem with the effects persisted.

B.  Mageia 2
Since Mandriva 2011 was not working with me, I placed a Mageia 2 installation DVD on the tray and began the installation.  As usual, this distro did everything it was meant to and in a matter of 45 minutes Mandriva 2011 had been replaced by Mageia 2.

I tested the effects.  They were working, but not to their full power.  For example, when one manually rotates the cube, it gets stuck. Grrr.

 But some effects looked better than no effects, I concluded.  However, I discovered one unexpected problem: the multifunctional printer.  My Epson Stylus TX200 was recognized as a printer, but not as a scanner.

Mandriva 2011 had no problems seeing it and configuring.  Mageia, on the other hand, lacked the drivers for scanning with it.  So, I had to go online to hunt for the appropriate drivers from the manufacturer's page.  That is not a great deal, but it reminded me of my Windows times.

Finally, I got the scanner working and looked at my new Mageia 2 desktop.  I still felt some nostalgia for the gone-too-soon Mandriva 2011 system...


And then I installed Mandriva 2011 back using another partition.  You see, that's the beauty of Linux: you can work with multiple systems if you feel like it.

So, right now I'm using the following OSs:
Desktop: Mageia 2, Mandriva 2011PowerPack, Pardus 2011
Laptop: PCLinuxOS, Mageia 2, Mandriva 2011 Desktop
Netbook: Mandriva 2010.2, Mepis 11, Mageia 2, Mandriva 2011 Desktop, and Pardus 2011.

I'm still waiting to see Mageia 3 and the new iterations of Mandriva and Pardus.  I just gave Rosa Desktop Fresh a run and I must say that it is very good, by the way.

Migration Stories, Part 2

Some Windows users that I know (not power users in any sense) state that they do not migrate to Linux because, as they say, "the OS is different".  Of course, they never consider that they had to adapt from XP to Vista and then to 7...(One wonders what they will say after buying a computer with Windows 8).

They also claim familiarity problems about the software that they use to create documents, chat, or, in extreme cases, to log into their Facebook accounts (?!).

Basically, all these arguments can be reduced to a sigle issue: adaptation.

However, I believe that there is more to it.  Adaptation, in the case of using a computer, requires an act of will; the user must be willing to abandon the comfort zone and begin to learn. This challenge, far from reducing one's productivity, increases it in the long run because intellectual numbing does not make you a better worker.  It only gives you an illusion of efficiency. 

I have two cases to support my observations.

1.  A tale of a PC and a phone
My mother, who is in her sixties, took Windows courses hoping not to be left behind in the digital divide.  However, much to her distress, very little that she learned was applicable once MS Office 2007 replaced MS Office 2003.  The learning curve was pronounced thanks to the Ribbon interface, but, in truth, her real problem was viruses: she was terrified to use the computer because it got infected thanks to her friends' USB drives, emails, etc.

When my brother Megatotoro replaced Windows XP with Pardus 2009, she started using the computer freely.  Then she bought a new, more powerful machine and now uses Pardus 2011.  I haven't heard any usability complaints from her.  In fact, she proudly tells me of her new records in the games she likes.

In addition, she recently bought a new cell-phone after having used the same one for almost 15 years.  This new phone has Android, which replaces the old, familiar buttons with-- a tactile interface!  

Yes, she got freaked out a little.  However, I'm sure her determination and her previous experience switching OSs will help her master her droid.

2. A laptop and its OS
My wife loved her Toshiba Satellite laptop running Mandriva 2009 but she got a bit sad when she asked me about using Skype to have video conferences with friends.

I told her that, even if she had to forget about Skype, there was still Google Talk for that particular purpose.  The problem was that Google Talk did not run in her old OS.  The solution: migrating to Mageia 2.  

This is no trivial change: after booting and updating, you have a new version of KDE (4..8.5), different icons, different names for things and there's even that Activities thingy that obviously did not exist in KDE 4.1.2....

Yesterday, I saw her working with her laptop, a rather familiar sight, so I went into my office to read.  After an hour had passed, I remebered that she was using a completely new OS!

I stepped quickly into the room where she was to offer assistance.  Interestingly, all the normal body cues that manifest human frustration were absent from her; she seemed to glide as she was working and turned to me with a smile when she noticed my stare.

---------------------------------------------------------

From these two experiences, I conclude that adaptation is not the problem.  The real issue at stake is the lack of will to adapt; both my wife and my mother learned how to use their devices because they wanted to use them.  And they wanted it badly.  It had nothing to do with the complexity/ applications/ interfaces.

I guess that also explains why my brother and I, two heavy Windows users, migrated to Linux so successfully by ourselves, despite no one ever introduced the OS to us or helped us ease the transition.