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.

Seven Days with Elive 2.9.26 (Beta)

If there is a distro release that I have been waiting for, that is surely Elive 3.0.


I had Elive 2.9.8 Beta installed, so I used the same partition for this upgrade.  After downloading the image of this new beta (2.9.26) and copying it to a USB drive with ROSA image writer, I was ready to test it.  I wanted to see if this distro is OK for a rather non-technical Linux user like me, who has not used the Enlightenment DE regularly.  I also wanted to see its Japanese IME capabilities.

When I installed version 2.9.8, I encountered a frustrating problem: There is an issue with my graphic card. The distro booted correctly, but, when I installed it, the DE froze and complained about Enlightenment crashing because of a module problem.  However, one can circumvent this by booting the distro using the "graphics problems" option, so, after it is installed, Elive works perfectly.  Although the Elive installer bypassed that situation this time because it remembered my settings (awesome!), Megatotoro, who performed a clean install, was not that lucky and stumbled with the issue. 

This is Elive 2.9.8, a previous release

Once in the DE, one can see the beauty of this distro.  It is fast and very stable and the live wallpaper and menu both look classy.

I added iBus IME with Synaptic to try the Japanese capabilities of this beautiful distro.  The results are more than satisfying!

iBus Japanese IME with Anthy

As promised, the clock is sitting on the desktop and one can re-position and re-size it. Clicking on it displays the calendar, as usual.  I resized the clock and moved it to a different position.  Then , I resized the pager (yes, Elive gives you 12 virtual desktops by default) and changed some of the wallpapers.  Contrary to KDE's Plasma, which ditched multiple wallpapers to favor Activities, Enlightenment lets you have independent wallpapers.

A significant detail is that, in Elive, you will not find a launcher button on the lower left corner.  As a matter of fact, you will not find it anywhere: it simply pops up wherever you click on the screen.

I could add the Insync application to sync files with Google Drive in a snap.  Adding the printer, however, was a different story.

Even when I got the drivers for the Epson XP-231, getting the multifunction printer to work was not easy.  Elive has a graphical printer administrator, but, after dectecting the USB printer and selecting the driver, the tool does not continue when you press "next."  To solve this, I added the printer using CUPS (with Firefox).

So, the printer worked, but, as in Fedora 26, I haven't been able to get the scanner to work yet. That and the fact that the GRUB fails to see some of my distros: Mageia, OpenMandriva, and Fedora.  It sees PCLinuxOS, PiSi, and PicarOS Diego. I suppose that is a problem derived from having a hepta-boot laptop.  Still, I recovered my other distros with Super GRUB, a nice piece of advice that Thanatermesis, the developer of Elive, gave me.  (Yes, the support of this distro is immediate with a chat room where the developer himself kindly helps you).  Aside from those two problems, the distro is working as a final release, not a beta.

I guess that one can also speak about the installer and how helpful it is.  I mean, while it basically does everything and tells you about the process in great detail, a window with a Mario game for you to play for a while opens... That is something I have not seen in any other installer.  You cannot play for a long time, though, because the installation is quite fast. 

One has to learn certain tricks, like adding users to a group with Terminology, the colorful terminal, or where files are stored.  Understanding what .edj files are will surely be useful, too.  But that comes later... First, one needs to play with this distro to see and enjoy all the possibilities.

This string of buttons is hidden in the border. I am still learning what the buttons do.

All in all, this distro is a keeper.  I will keep supporting it to see the final release.

Eelo, the Mandrake of the Mobile World?

Today, I visited the OpenMandriva site and found a piece of news that caught my eye.  It seems that Gaël Duval, the founder of Mandrake (later Mandriva) Linux, has started an ambitious Kickstarter project: eelo, a mobile platform that uses FLOSS and focuses on keeping user data on the hands of users.

In a way, eelo attempts to do in the mobile world what Mandrake wanted to do in the Linux world back then.

Duval explains in this way:
"I want eelo to be a non-profit project, a project 'in the public interest'. I think operating systems and web services should be a shared resource: as I explained a few years ago, they are infrastructures, like phone networks, rail tracks, roads.
Non-profit doesn’t mean nothing will be for sale. Probably some eelo smartphones will be for sale, and some premium services will be available for corporates. But profit won’t be the first focus of eelo.  Of course, eelo, as a community project, will welcome contributors."

It would be great that something like that could actually become a reality.  I really liked FirefoxOS, but we all know how difficult it is to enter the mobile realm.

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!

Not everything is happiness in the world of Linux

Before you start reading this post, let me say upfront that you will not find any complaints about technical flaws of Linux here. I want to write about events related to the human side of distributions, OK?

For people who enjoy tinkering with their computers, or those who like to see their systems perform actions that they never thought were possible, the freedom of Linux provides satisfactions, amazement, and joy. For example, KDE developers have a legitimate reason to celebrate because their efforts were acknowledged with the award of Best Desktop of 2011.

However, not everything is happiness in the world of Linux. Preceding KDE's award, the first trimester of this year was hit by three sad incidents concerning some notorious KDE distros: PCLinuxOS, Pardus, and Mandriva.


PCLinuxOS

Although you can use other DEs with PCLOS, it is eminently a KDE system that you can rely on. I have been using it both in a desktop and a laptop computer since version 2011.6 and I am completely satisfied by its performance.

User satisfaction is not a coincidence. Texstar, the founder of PCLinuxOS, puts a lot of effort in addressing bugs, polishing the distribution and, in short, making a Linux distro that you can count on for every possible task you want a computer to perform. In fact, he has worked so passionately that right now he is on a sick leave: he posted an announcement saying that doctors told him to rest.

This sad news, however, is not stopping PCLinuxOS. Wisely, while Texstar recovers, other prominent members of the community have taken the wheel.

Let us all wish Texstar a speedy recovery and a good ride to Old-Polack, Neal, and the others who are now in charge.


Pardus

It seems that Pardus was also hit during the first months of the year. Apparently, some developers are no longer with the project and Pardus 2011.2 was the last desktop version of the distribution. It is hard to confirm the information because the posts come in languages other than English.

So far, we know that there will be a Pardus workshop (March 23 &24) to decide on a roadmap. I hope everything goes well.


Mandriva

Mandriva's woes have not been new: the distro's year opened with a short post on Jan 17th stating the grim future of the Mandriva S.A. (the company), which was followed by a shorter post 10 days later.

There was a third post on the 30th promising more news to come in mid-February. Unfortunately, it is March 7th already and the company has not disclosed any information about its immediate future.


The common denominator here is that, in the world of Linux, developers and communities become more visible as they are: humans and groups of people who laugh, sweat, suffer, fight, succeed, and fail sometimes. Somehow, I feel honored to use an OS that reminds me of the people behind it instead of being used simply as a market good.

Let us see what news March brings...