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!

From Junk to a Security Station; How Mepis Gave New Life to a Discarded Computer

Last week, a project that had been brewing for quite a while became a reality. 

We wanted to set up a basic security camera for the office where I work but, as the University is short of budget, all we were given was a webcam.   With that contribution, the whole idea was pretty much a long-term goal (or a dream, to be more honest, given the circumstances).

However, I learned that they were discarding some "old equipment", which included computers.  I asked for one of those machines marked as "not-working" and could get a computer in which Windows XP ran so slowly that you could literally age before being able to type a letter with it.

With that poor wreck of a system, the webcam, and Megatotoro's help, we could make the security system dream a reality.

First, Megatotoro wiped out the HD and installed Mepis 11 to it.  Boy, what a difference a good OS makes!  The computer started performing decently.  To use an analogy, it went from snail speed to that of a marathon runner. 

Second, as the webcam was a Logitech model, Mepis recognized it instantly, without the pain of go driver-hunting.  Ah, and since Mepis has VLC, everything was ready for starting the security cam project.

The streaming capabilities of VLC made it easy to capture video from the webcam and store it as a local file.  I learned how to do this by accident a while ago and the process is rather simple:

1.  Under the menu FILE, I clicked on streaming.
2.  In the window that opens, I selected the tab CAPTURE DEVICE
3.  Now, this is the interesting part.  In the line SELECT DEVICE, I typed /dev/video0, and then clicked on STREAM.  A new dialog (Streaming output) opened and I clicked "next".
4.  Then I selected "show locally" and used the drop-down menu to select VIDEO THEORA+VORBIS (OGG)
5.  Finally, I clicked STREAM and voilà, the webcam started showing and recording video!

The humble computer is now there, working non-stop, like a true champion...And the rest of the workers became interested in Linux when they saw what it can do.

After all, who would have said that a discarded computer was going to resurrect as a modest, but effective security station? And for a total cost of $0? All thanks to Linux, free software, and people who know that the Windows paradigm is not the only reality that there is.