And another year flies by! 16 anniversary?

 

The Linux landscape has changed a lot since I started this humble blog to record my experiences with GNU/Linux and FLOSS in general.

Today, I visited Distrowatch and CachyOS is distro #1. Ubuntu, which used to be the top dog back then, is #10.

Linux Mint and MX Linux, distros that once held the top position, are now #2 and #3, respectively.

Mageia, my main distro, is #51! I am using Mageia 9, which was released in August 2023. I can see that they have been busy this year as they released Alpha 1 and Beta 1 and there will be another general extraordinary assembly this coming May 7 because the required quorum was not reached to vote the constitution changes. I hope everything goes well this time. 

OpenMandriva sits at #94. They have been releasing more frequently (both Rock and ROME are now in version 6!). Unfortunately, when my pentaboot laptop died, I had to stop using that distro along with Manjaro and Elive.

Elive, by the way, released a new version at the end of March this year. I might try it, who knows? I really liked the last version of that OS... Thanatermesis really produces art with the OS. 

But where do I put it? Can I run it smoothly from a USB drive to work with it? 

The thing is that I do not want to buy a new laptop to run new distros. The prices they are charging are ridiculous for the specs that they offer.

I do not want to deal with the TPM chip nonsense, to be honest.

And then there is the age verification debacle and the controversy with LibreOffice!

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Even so, I can say I am happy I have been working all this time with Linux: MX Linux in classrooms and Mageia in my work and home offices.

That is good!

 

 

 

Happy Belated 15th Anniversary!

Wow!  Another year flew by! 

Yes, I have not been very active posting on this blog for some time now. In fact, the last post was precisely on the 14th anniversary of this humble space.

These are the major changes since last year:

1.  My ZaReason Strata laptop is dying

The system I purchased from the now gone ZaReason company in 2014 is finally on its last breath. The battery malfunctioned six years ago and there is no replacement, so I had to keep it connected to a backup battery to be able to use the machine.  However, because its speakers started producing strange noises, I have not used this machine since 2022. 

When I tried to use it last month, it would not start at all. I thought it was finally out, but then changed the power brick and the laptop booted normally. Manjararo, OpenMandriva Lx, Mageia, Elive, and MX Linux are still there, fully operational.

However, the lid is showing signs of wear and the cables of the screen are now showing in between the broken hinges.

Well, it is, after all, an 11-year old laptop. 

I remember how, during the pandemic of 2020, the ZaReason people issued a statement concerning their closing of operations. Those were troubled times and, the message, with an apology to clients, made me very sad.

Yet, your product is still here... Battered after a long time, but working.

No, ZaReason people. You did not disappoint me. 

2.  UEFI mayhem and portable Linux machines

Last year, I wrote:

In the university where I work, they did a suspicious full 180 turn and switched to Microsoft products.  However, that has not stopped me from using Linux for my work every day: I always use USB drives, which I made portable Linux machines, to stream my virtual lessons and teach in class as well.

As the classroom computers have low specs, MX Linux is my distro of choice.  In my office computer, I generally use Mageia 9.  If fact, I am synchronizing my portable Mageia machines right now following this old post here.

Well, turns out that, at the beginning of this year, the university decided to replace all HDDs for SSDs. This created a problem for me since all my portable Linux machines booted using legacy mode.

I had to reinstall all systems into the USB drives from the physical computer at the university office to make sure that no UEFI or secure boot setting prevented me from booting the devices.

It was a somewhat slow process, but everything worked. So, I am still doing all of my job from those portable machines.

3. The new laptops 

I had to find a Windows 11 laptop for my daughter since she needs Windows and office for a high school class.  I decided to get second-hand laptops and, thus, I bought an HP slimbook for her and an HP ZBook for me.

I dual-booted hers with Mageia 9 and wiped Windows from mine entirely to also boot Mageia 9. The two laptops work great, but I miss the wired internet connection.  I am posting this from the ZBook with Mageia.

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So, this is what has been going on.

I wish I could have more time to post, but family and work responsibilities keep me busier and busier every year.

 

My Linux journey has not ended!

 

 

14 Years?! Happy anniversary, Mandriva Chronicles!

 Yes, today is the 14th anniversary of this humble blog, which I created to register my experiences as a Linux user.

What has changed since last year?

1.  Stability and fewer posts

Well, the Linux distros I use have become so stable that I rarely face a challenge.  This has reduced my post quantity.

Plus, where I work, they have decided to keep people extremely busy, so free time is rare.

2.  Portable Linux machines: always reliable!

In the university where I work, they did a suspicious full 180 turn and switched to Microsoft products.  However, that has not stopped me from using Linux for my work every day: I always use USB drives, which I made portable Linux machines, to stream my virtual lessons and teach in class as well.

As the classroom computers have low specs, MX Linux is my distro of choice.  In my office computer, I generally use Mageia 9.  If fact, I am synchronizing my portable Mageia machines right now following this old post here.

3. The new exam notification system  

This week, they sent an email about a new oral exam notification system.  The funny thing was that they said that it only worked on a Windows computer and urged us NOT TO USE MACs.  Many of my colleagues are Mac users, so I grew curious and decided to test it from my Linux station.  It worked perfectly!

I then replied informing them that the system ran flawlessly from Linux, he,he.

4.  My laptop distros

I upgraded most of the distros and my old ZaReason Strata runs Mageia 9, OpenMandriva Lx 5.0 ROME, Manjaro 23.1, MX Linux, and Elive 3.

I do not use this machine often because the battery is dead and I could never get a replacement.  So, I must keep it plugged to UPS all the time.  

5.  A nephew's migration

My sister in law's son called me once because he installed Linux Mint to a laptop and ran into a problem.  I tried to help him to the best of my abilities and the piece of advice I gave them worked: he could solve his first Linux challenge.

6.  My wife's English course

My wife took an English course and she was very worried because all the software was Microsoft's.  Or so they said.

However, the platform was Moodle and she could work from my Mageia desktop.  Las Monday was her final exam. Everything went fine because Firefox played the audios for the listening exam without a problem.

And that's that.  My productivity has not been affected because of the stability of Linux this year.  So, I am focusing on my health, my daughter's high school matters, and my family in general.

All is good!

Using dd to clone my portable Mageia Linux desktop

Since I returned to the office in 2022 after the remote work mandate was lifted, I have been using portable Linux desktops that I made.

These are convenient USB drives with persistence that I boot and so I can circumvent the restrictions (not to mention the spying) in the Windows desktop.

Anticipating that the USB drive can eventually fail, I have made several copiesÑ I have two MX Linux machines and two Mageia machines.

Even though I synchronize document files using FreeFileSync, I need to make absolutely sure that all the settings of OBS studio are updated, and since I keep changing the configuration for the didactic live streams, the best solution is to clone the USB drive machine I have been using to the backup USB drive machine from time to time.

Doing so is very easy.  First, I plug the source USB and open the Mageia Control Center just to make sure which is the source device (I need this machine in dev/sdb).  After that, I plug the other USB drive, which is the backup.  This is the target USB (the system must identify the target device as /dev/sdc). 

Then I open Konsole in Mageia and type su and my password to be able to type this command:

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=1M status=progress

The status=progress part lets you see how things are going while dd is doing the copy, otherwise the command line gives no feedback and, since the process takes a long time, one might think that nothing is happening.

 

Virtualbox and USB support in Mageia 2

For those people who use Mageia 2 and like to test other OSs or need to keep another OS for work purposes, installing Virtualbox from the Mageia repositories might lead them to a disappointment.  The distro seems to only support Virtualbox OSE (as it is the only package in the repos), which does not allow one to enable USB support. Therefore, you end up with a Virtual Machine that cannot read your flash drive.

To solve this pesky problem, you must understand that the situation springs from having installed a Virtualbox version that does not do what you need or want.  You must, then uninstall it and grab the Virtualbox PUEL version package from the Oracle site here.

For Mageia 2, you need to use version 4.1.24 (it is the version that matches the kernel in the Mageia 2 repos), so scroll and clic on the link "older builds".

Download the Mandriva 2011 rpm package (VirtualBox-4.1-4.1.24_82872_mdv2011.0-1.i586.rpm) and do not forget to download the extension pack as well.

Then, click on it to install it.  You are going to get a warning about an invalid signature; just ignore it and proceed.  If there are some dependencies needed, the package manager will get them for you.  Make sure you also install the dkms-virtualbox package from the repos.

Once the dkms package is installed, you can fire up Virtualbox and create a virtual machine.  You will notice that USB support is still disabled.  To change this situation, you must do this:
1.  Open MCC and go to System and Manage Users.  Find your user and add it to the vboxsr and vboxusers groups.
2.  Install the extension pack you downloaded.  To do this, log out and back in and click on the file.  It will be installed automatically for you after you accept the license for public use evaluation.

Then, after you start your virtual machine, insert the USB stick and check its corresponding box in devices-> USB (You might need to mount the USB on the host system before it is displayed in the Virtual machine).

This performs the trick.

When formatting a flash drive doesn't erase a virus

USB viruses are very common and one of the solutions that Windows users resort to when facing one of those bothersome thingies is formatting.
Yes, the complete destruction of data on the device should be enough to get rid of any virus, right? After all, nothing can survive a nuclear bomb...except cockroaches, scorpions, and who knows what else.

Yesterday, a proud user of Windows 7 came to my office with an infected USB drive and, since he knew that Linux is more efficient to deal with those infections than Windows is, he used Mandriva to erase the virus and all the folders it created. However, when he tried to copy his files back into the drive, he got several error messages.

I took his pen drive and checked: some files were still masked and Mandriva would not let me erase them, so I opened Mandriva Control Center and formatted the drive as a FAT32 Windows partition. Yet, files still refused to be copied into this rebellious device, that was apparently clean, or should have been, as it had undergone a formatting operation.


THE VIRUS SURVIVED A FORMATTING OPERATION!

I suspected that the virus might have been hiding somewhere else. After all, there are computer viruses that allocate themselves in the boot sector, so you only waste your time formatting the HD to eliminate them.

I opened Mandriva Control Center again and reformatted the pen drive, but this time I did as a Linux EXT3 partition. When I finished,I could see a nice folder named "lost+found", which I tried to delete manually. I had no luck; the folder was locked.


THE TERMINAL: THE TRUE POWER OF LINUX!

I opened the terminal, typed SU, entered my root password and executed the command

rd --ignore-fail-on-non-empty lost+found

With that powerful spell, the folder was gone!


RESTORING THE WINDOWS PARTITION

After that, I reformatted the drive again as a Windows FAT32 partition and we got no problems copying information to it.



It's good to have the Linux terminal to handle viruses that resist GUI removal...

Sorry, we don't sell flash drives anymore

A rather curious phenomenon has been occurring near campus lately: vendors are refusing to distribute USB flash drives, those handy devices for storing data. The first time I got a "NO, we don't have USB sticks" as an answer, I thought that the vendor had simply ran out of stock. However, time passed by and flash drives were not available. Not even one. What was going on?

This responded to the wrong "my-hardware-is-defective" assumption that is so common in a Windows monoculture. I have seen flash drives "fail" countless times. The most common problems are:

1. Missing folders
2. Missing files
3. Impossibility to record data
4. Failure to erase some folders
   
5. Inexplicable virus alerts (with the subsequent affirmation "I scanned it with my anti-virus!")
   

I saw a young woman return her memory stick to a vendor that offered a warranty. She described some of the problems mentioned above. Of course, as Windows users never blame their OS, they have to blame this strange behavior on something and the poor hardware is the one that gets all the kicks. So they complain to vendors.

The vendor, inadvertently, falls into the trap. So, s/he either returns the money or replaces a USB drive that is perfect with a new one. This becomes a truly lousy business that, given the quantity of repetitions, was enough to show red numbers. Hence, the vendor decided not to sell that kind of hardware anymore.

With Linux, I have been able to show many USB flash drive owners that the memory stick is perfect and that the problems listed above are the consequence of virus infections. These infections happen thanks to the weak security of Windows and the ignorance of the user. To get rid of the problem, all you have to do is remove the pesky hidden files...which you achieve with two clicks in Linux. In Windows, well, you need to disable system restore, go to the registry, apply patches, reboot (can't do anything without rebooting, you know?)... You might also need a great deal of good luck and all the charms you can get.

I have a question. What will vendors do once that viruses become more common in, say, memory cards? Of course those will not be perceived as OS problems, either. Are those storage devices going to be banned as well? No wonder why Microsoft could come up with the stupid idea of banning infected computers from the Web...

My Linux Computer is Acting Weird

A few days ago, thanks to one student, I realized that something funny was happening with my Linux netbook.

He said that it was weird that I was unafraid of USB viruses when I used my computer. Because of that comment, as in a Joycean epiphany, I discovered that THERE MUST BE SOMETHING TRULY WRONG with my netbook. Let me explain:

Since I installed Linux, I haven't seen a blue screen of death--Not even a flash of the scary blue. That's WEIRD.

It is also very strange that my Linux system keeps showing me invisible files stored in USB drives. I am not talking of hidden files. I am talking of many folders that I haven't created; they appear spontaneously when I plug in my USB drive onto any Windows computer. Of course, in Windows, I have no problem because the hideous files remain unseen. What's more: the antivirus constantly tells me that my USB drive is clean. Yet, when I use the flash drive in Linux, I can see them: lots of folders, sometimes with cryptic names, sometimes executable files with the name of my real folders. They are viruses! How am I supposed to have peace of mind if this Mandriva Linux OS keeps showing me how infected my USB drive actually is?

Moreover, it's very weird that my Linux computer refuses to behave as a normal Windows computer. I can get rid of those viruses in two clicks. I do not have to disable system restore...I do not have to boot in safe mode, mess up with the Windows registry, nor run full scans that take forever. Why is Linux so strange?

But here comes the most remarkable thing: my computer, regardless of the quantity of viruses I store in my USB drive (if I decide not to delete those files, of course), keeps WORKING, unaffected by the frightening threats! Now, that is TRULY WEIRD. Why would a person want to have a computer like mine, that is invulnerable to the scourge of USB viruses?

I turned to my student and said to him: "You think that my keeping of the USB viruses is weird. Well, they are harmless in my computer. I believe it's weirder to know that these viruses can destroy your OS and you, as a meek sheep, simply accept to live with that condition".

I saw something sparking in his eyes as another student asked me to help him install Linux in his computer.

How to Boot Mandriva 2010 from a USB drive

UPDATE: You can follow the same process to boot Mandriva 2010 Spring or any other distro. Only download the iso.

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Live CDs are great tools. You can run Linux distros without having to install the OS to your hard disk. Hence, you can test compatibility with your computer's architecture, software, and take a glimpse at the distro's look and feel.

However, Live CDs have a disadvantage: you cannot normally use them on netbooks because the little machines do not have a CD drive.

The solution: You CAN set your computer to boot from a USB drive that has Mandriva in it and run Linux without having to make any changes to your hard disk.

To do this, you need to lose your fear and learn a bit about how your netbook works. You are going to need a 1 GB USB drive, the Mandriva One ISO, and Mandriva Seed.

Step 1: The Hidden BIOS
In IBM computers, BIOS is the Basic Input/Output System, the code that lets the computer recognize the hardware and prepares it for the software to use it. You can access it by pressing F2 or the key that the system indicates when you turn the computer on. Once there, look for Boot options and set it to read USB. Make sure you also set the computer to boot from USB before it boots from the hard disk. Then save and exit (by pressing F10 and then YES). Your computer is going to start normally and then you get into the OS to be able to get the Mandriva One and Mandriva Seed.

Step 2: The ISO Image
An .iso file is basically a disk image that you can burn to a CD as a single track. You get it from the Mandriva site at:
http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads/?p=linux-one
Keep it in /home

Step 3: Mandriva Seed
Mandriva Seed is a script to prepare the USB to boot and to copy the ISO to it. Once you use it, your USB drive will become a bootable device and, hence, you cannot use it to store information (that's why you should use a 1GB drive!)
To download Mandriva Seed, go to http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads/?p=seed


Once you have it, copy the file to your USB. Run it from the USB drive and wait until you see a window (graphical interface) that prompts you for the ISO (go to /home ) and, when the program detects your USB drive, click on "Create Live USB". Then wait until the process finishes and close the program.

By doing that, your Mandriva One Live USB will be ready. What's the practical application of all this, you say? Well, you'll find out next time your Windows system dies on you and you have something urgent to do, such as typing a paper or sending a vital email. Yes, your computer will come back from dead-chip land!

Of course, if you do not want to go through all this process, you can always buy the Mandriva One USB from the Mandriva site (www.mandriva.com). However, that defeats the purpose of learning about your computer... Now, if you think that you'd rather spend some money helping the company, buy the Mandriva Flash, not the Mandriva One USB, as the former gives you all the advantages of the latter plus it is a mobile Linux desktop. This means you can actually SAVE documents to the Flash drive!