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!

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.

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.

What the Pro-MS Office video does not say

Microsoft released a video attempting to persuade people to use their proprietary office suite. It starts like this:
"Considering Open Office.org? Consider this."

Not surprisingly, there has been a wide reaction to it and some people even claimed that Microsoft had finally revealed its true stance concerning open source software. Although I think that the Redmond company has the right to attack competitors, the information that they used for advertising their flagship product should not be fallacious, as this post proves when discussing the academic productivity issue brandished in the video. Basically, the video's core point is that MS Office (2007/2010) constitutes the best office solution in the market because of two features: its new interface and its interoperability and functionality.

Concerning the former, "Ribbon", as this new user interface is commonly called, has its lovers and haters. What is more significant is that Microsoft is trying to patent it and, hence, the company is becoming "a grave threat to the future of software development", as Mike Gunderloy, a former MS Contractor asserted.

In regards to interoperability and functionality, the issues are not normally visible to the common user. However, those technical flaws represent a major problem for companies that require specific features: 1, 2. What everyone knows is that, by pushing users to save documents in .docx instead of the standard de facto .doc format, Microsoft wanted to create a vendor lock in.

In addition, Microsoft is also slanting information to favor adoption of its office solution. I have heard several times that .docx is an ISO standard, just like .odt. That is simply not true. Basically, ISO approved .docx if certain changes were made to the format. This format version is called ISO/IEC 29500 "strict". The reality is that neither Office 2007 nor Office 2010 can generate the ISO standardized "strict" format and Microsoft has not committed to implement it.

The format that the company is using today is the version known as ISO/IEC 29500 "transitional", which ISO determined was not to be used for the creation of new documents. In other words, it can never be the default format for saving new documents as it does not have the status of an international standard and, therefore, it should not be used for electronic transmission or storage of documents.

This distinction is significant because official documents produced by government institutions, such as schools, have to be created following a principle of interoperability, which Microsoft has admitted not to follow with its default-save .docx.

Of course, the video omitted that detail. I wonder if Bailey Mitchell, who claims having "heard a collective sigh of relief" when the schools in Forsyth County returned to MS Office, and who is last quoted in the video, knows about this and saves new documents in .odt format instead of mindlessly pressing the save button in MS Office and generating a questionable .docx file...