UEFI and Mageia 6 RC Adventure

I had to replace my daughter's desktop computer because it fried during an intense storm. Fortunately, I could rescue the two hard drives and, thus, I did not buy a new hd with the new system.  One disk was a storage unit; the other one dual-booted with PicarOS and Mageia 6 Sta2.  Normally, it would have been a matter of stuffing the HDs and telling the BIOS to pick the one with the OSs.  The new PC, however, came with UEFI.

I expected no real problem because, having successfully replaced my own desktop two months ago with an UEFI machine, the system picked up the two disks and now dual-boots OpenMandriva Lx and Mageia 5. In addition, I had worked with Mageia on an UEFI machine before and had no problems.

My daughter's computer was different.  Since I wanted to replace the out-dated Mageia 6 Sta2 install, I booted the machine with a pendrive that contains the recently-released Mageia 6 RC iso, which detected UEFI and booted in UEFI mode.  Even when I disabled secure boot and everything, I got stuck at the partition stage during installation: the installer kept saying that I needed to mount a partition in /boot/UEFI. 

I read the Mageia install documentation because I did not want to lose PicarOS if I reorganized the partitions.  According to the guide, the best approach was to erase the Mageia 6 Sta1 partitions and later select "auto-allocate", so that the installer could take care of the partitioning using the empty space.

It did.  It created a 300 MB UEFI partition before /, the swap partition, and /home.  Before completing the process, I picked "Install GRUB2 on UEFI partition"  It was painless.  "Well, that went smoothly," I said to myself while savoring my easy triumph.

However, my smile vanished when I attempted to boot the system.  GRUB2 reported problems and, after changing options to tell UEFI to pick the correct HD, the machine simply refused to start.  To add insult to injury, the system no longer wanted to recognize the USB device as a legitimate bootable source.

After changing things again, the PC booted from the pendrive at last, so I decided to try to install once more, but this time paying careful attention to the disk or partition where I was going to put GRUB2 into.

At the partition stage, I deleted my Mageia partitions to free space and selected "auto-allocate."  I could not help but noticing that the installer did not create a UEFI partition this time. Weird.  

With no UEFI partition, I put GRUB at the MBR of the HD and finished the install.  I re-started the machine fearing the worst.

GRUB2, nevertheless, picked up PicarOS and Mageia.  In disbelief, I booted PicarOS.  Everything was OK there, so I booted Mageia next and, after a while, my daughter's new desktop greeted me with the Welcome screen of Mageia 6 RC.  The installation was a success.

I wish I knew what happened...

Definitely, I still have a long road to walk with UEFI.

Experimenting with Hardware

My desktop work station is an aging AMD system that I bought maybe four or five years ago.  With 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HD, it has been working and helping me despite KDE 4 seems to be way to heavy.

The other desktop computer in my house, a 500GB HD, 4GB RAM failed...Again!  Since I bought it, this system has been acting up, prompting me to send it to the repair shop at least once a year.

I am not sure what the problem was but, encouraged by my successful migration to Linux, I decided to venture-- for the first time-- into the unexplored world of hardware.

So, I opened the two boxes to put into my faithful AMD desktop some additional goodies, courtesy of the problematic box: a 2GB RAM, a new DVD writer, and (of course), a second HD.

The black box ready for transplant

For someone who has never opened a desktop to mess up with real hardware, the project was way too ambitious.

Yes, I can admit I was worried.  Perhaps my Swiss Army knife knows more about computer hardware than I do.

So, armed with the Swiss Army knife, a vague idea of what I wanted, and a million doubts, I started the operation.

Fortunately, the components were similar.  Nothing showed resistance.

Nevertheless, when I put back the power, screen, mouse, and keyboard cables, I was literally afraid.  I pushed the power button as if it were the detonator of a bomb.

The computer turned on with absolute disregard of my fears.  After pretty much the same lines that Linux shows upon start, my familiar GRUB2 greeted me, asking if I wanted to boot Mageia, PCLinuxOS, OpenMandriva, or Windows XP (the OS that I haven't booted in maybe three years).

I chose Mageia and the OS worked normally... only it felt snappier.  I checked and the additional 2GB of RAM were recognized.

I tested the optical media unit and it was working.  And the files on the other hard drive were accessible, too.

Despite all of my fears, my first hardware operation was a complete success!

Of course, in full honesty, Isay that Linux made it easy.  I cannot imagine doing the same and then hunting for drivers, licenses, and what not ....

I wonder if Windows XP will be able to boot at all now...

UPDATE:  PCLinuxOS and OpenMandriva also boot normally.  Windows XP also started normally, but failed to see the second hard drive.

Tomb Raider Chronicles: Those Unexpected Findings...

I have been experiencing problems to attach files larger than 200kb to emails.

I don't remember when this started happening but, since I normally do not work with files that large by email, the thing was nothing that a minor nuisance to me.

Today, when trying to find the root of the problem, I got side-tracked and ended up stumbling on a happy discovery.

You see, back in 2008 or so, I had to give up my favorite Windows game: Tomb Raider 4 "The Last Revelation."  This was not caused by my commitment to Linux (I did not start using Linux until 2009), but because a Windows XP update made the game crash.

Then I migrated to Linux and playing Tomb Raider again became a lost hope.

Until today.

I did not remember I owned a Tomb Raider Chronicles DVD.  Well, I installed it with WINE on my desktop with PCLinuxOS and, after changing some settings... I could play with Lara Croft again!

I never played Tomb Raider Chronicles on Windows.  Like I said, I did not even remember I had the DVD, so I was excited to hear familiar tunes and, like a child with a new gift, I did not worry about the playability of the game.

I will go back to the game on vacations.  Right now, and after all this time without playing Tomb Raider, I was satisfied with having Lara run around, walk, climb, jump, and shoot---on Linux!

Gotta work.  Er, wait.  Megatotoro is reporting that Pisi Linux is alive!  Wow, another unexpected finding!  :-)

Seen on Yahoo: Mageia a Great Desktop Distro

I saw this tonight.  It's an article that talks about good Linux desktops.

Two things caught my eye:

1.  The sheer admission that desktop Linux is on the rise.  This is something I have suspected for quite a long time, but sites like StatCounter and Netmarketshare have been denying it with their questionable numbers and that biased tech-journalists keep hiding/misinforming.

2.  When I read the article, I was surprised not to see the usual distros there: Ubuntu, Mint...

And then there's mentioning of Mageia!

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 ;-)

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.

Gdeskcal in Mandriva

Gdeskcal is a little desktop calendar (in Windows, like the one in Webshots) that lets the user specify events.

This program can be downloaded from Mandriva official repositories, but, after the installation, it won't run if you use the version ONE of Mandriva (it does in PowerPack).

To solve the situation, use Mandriva Control Center to install
gnome-python-gtksourceview and the program will run perfectly.

To launch the application when you start your session, you must go to the hidden folder home/.kde/Autostart. Once there, right click to create a basic link to the gdeskcal file on /usr/lib/gdeskcal.

To change skins, download the corresponding .tar files, unpack them and copy the entire folders into the folder "skins", located as a hidden folder in home (.gdeskcal). Use the View menu in Dolphin and check the box "show hidden files" to see it.

UPDATE:
I just discovered that this little program connects to korganizer, so your appointments are also logged there if you want fancier alarms. Great!

Así se ve mi escritorio

Estos son los cuatro espacios de trabajo en la PC de mi casa (animados como un cubo en KDE gracias a los efectos Kwin).

Trabajar así no solo es cómodo (no más desastre de iconos en el escritorio), sino que le da la posibilidad a uno de distraerse un poco, lo cual baja el estrés e incrementa la productividad ;-)

Activar los cuatro escritorios independientes me tomó bastante tiempo. En el RC de Mandriva Spring el proceso es mucho más sencillo. Ya subiré un tutorial en su momento.

La grabación y producción de este pequeño video involucró solamente SOFTWARE LIBRE y se llevó a cabo completamente en Mandriva Linux 2010.

Para capturar el escritorio: XVidCap
Para editar la música: Audacity
Para editar el video: Kdenlive

La composición musical se titula "Stories from Emona VI", del álbum Between Two Worlds, por la artista Maya Filipic,
quien distribuye su arte libremente en Jamendo (www.jamendo.com)

En este vínculo (en inglés) se puede aprender más sobre ella:

http://celticmythpodshow.com/Contributors/MayaFilipic.php