Mageia Beta1 in pictures

After getting my desktop back, I picked up Megatotoro's challenge and installed Mageia Beta 1 to give it a short test drive. Instead of writing extensively about it, I will show you some screen captures.

1. Installation:


Conclusion:
It's very Mandriva-like. Should I say PowerPackish? Well, since Mandriva might lose many of its distinct tools and looks, it's good to have a distro that might be more Mandrivish than Mandriva itself.


2. Mageia's own flavor:


My comments:
Although the artwork needs some improvement, the installation read-ons are very nice. Actually, not many distros thank people for their interest (and the "We will welcome you" is more than a motto, as I reported earlier). Thanks to those messages of appreciation, the HUMAN SIDE OF MAGEIA, I am starting to fall for this distro.

3. Points of convergence: Mageia Control Center and the DRAKES!

(The message says that RPMDrake must be updated)


4. Testing installed software: Frozen bubble

Installation of software with Mageia CC works!


5. Firefox 4:

A visit to three of my favorite sites:

Firefox 4 is FAST!!

6. Productivity Suite: Libre Office


Final Question: Is Mageia Beta 1 a Go or a No-Go?

I would venture to say that not only is Mageia promising as a distro, but that it will also fulfill the dream of keeping the Mandrake/Mandriva legacy alive. I, for one, will save a partition for Mageia.

The inevitable...My return to Windows

Today I received a disappointing surprise when I turned on my desktop computer, which is a triple boot (Mandriva 2010.2 PwP, Pardus 2011, Windows XP SP3). It came as a cold shower after a day that started with gratifying experiences that skyrocketed...until I got home and tried to use the PC. But bear with me and let me describe how the day went, so that you grasp my tragedy in full form.

My day started with a class discussion on malware, lies, and false pretenses thanks to two texts that we read. It's a reading comprehension class and my students reacted with an awakened interest that you normally do not expect for a class that begins at 7 AM. After reading a poorly supported piece spreading misconceptions, we read Carla Schroder's post on FUD, which cracked a paradigm that many of us once failed to see. The session went great and was followed by a challenging task. Yes, two colleagues asked me to install Mandriva to their netbooks, a Toshiba and an Acer powered by that little gem of an OS that has prompted many to give Linux a try: Windows 7 Starter. I could have failed there had not been for the timely help I received from Megatotoro, who saved the day with his tactics to make Starter share the HDD.

The rest of the day was pretty normal until I went back home and turned my computer on with a fervent wish to post a festive entry. As usual, Mandriva started the computer, but there was something unexpected: the network applet, instead of showing a green check mark, displayed a red "X". Without caring too much, I clicked on the applet to launch Netdrake and fire off the connection manually. However, the X stood there, defying my clicks and laughing sardonically before my baffled eyes. "Mandriva is not working," I thought, after having checked the wires and realizing that everything was properly attached. "Well, there's always Pardus," I consoled myself, and rebooted the PC using the Turkish distro. But Pardus also told me that the connection was unavailable and a spiral of uneasiness ascended through my stomach. My two Linux distros had deserted me: only Windows was left, that long-forgotten OS that had rested unused for more than four months already. Windows was my last hope to connect to the Internet. I could not prevent it; I was shivering as I clicked the red button in Pardus and selected "Boot Windows".

Last time I tried to use Windows, there was a blackout, so I, logically, got a black screen asking me if I wanted to boot Windows normally, or with the last configuration that had worked, etc. I selected "normal" and saw with hope the XP logo...but the computer rebooted unexpectedly and threw me again to the same black screen. "OK, let's go 'last good config' this time," I mumbled and chose. And XP, for its part, chose to do something wonderful: it got me into a cute loop and refused to start. Isn't that wonderful? I have been using my PC all this time without even knowing that Windows XP had fried! Thus, my return to Windows was colored by the inevitable reminder of its many weaknesses.

Five years ago, this loop would have thrown me into a state of anxiety that easily justified my spending the whole night up reinstalling the darn OS. Right now, I just don't care. No anxiety build-up. The plain truth is that my computer works; Windows doesn't.

By the way, I realized that the problem with the net was because the hardware is malfunctioning. See, I'm posting this entry from the wireless connection. Tomorrow, I will get the hardware piece replaced :-)

Mageia's The Wizards Lair, a forum for convergence

Today I registered in the Mageia forums. I was a little self-conscious because of my limited technical knowledge and because I'm an active Mandriva user. To be honest, I was expecting a degree of rejection due to distro fanboyism.

However, my fears were unjustified: the forum welcomes everyone and I, in fact saw many of the familiar names in the Mandriva forums!

I really hope Magiea brings the two Linux communities together.

Installing Linux to a Gateway NV53 laptop, a trial for five distros

Today, one of my sisters-in-law came to visit and brought her laptop because she wanted me to install Linux to it. She is fed up with the never-ending (and increasingly costly) rituals of updating anti-viruses that seem to be always one step behind in the eternal fight against e-threats. Her laptop is a Gateway NV53, 4GB RAM, 320 GB HDD, pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium and, despite all the praises that Windows fanboys sing for this OS, she was dissatisfied with its reality: you are always vulnerable to viruses, malware, and a wide array of threats.

Coincidentially, Megatotoro was around and his expertise with dual booting this selfish Windows Vista-with-make-up was truly helpful.

Now, I had dual-booted a Windows Vista7 desktop before with some minor problems. I used Mandriva 2010.2 for that operation, so we tested my favorite Linux distro and...we hit a major problem this time: no sound! Mandriva would not produce any sound out of the built-in speakers, so we decided not to install it.

Then, we tried the next candidate, Pardus GNU/Linux. Again, there was not any sound coming from the Gateway laptop.

Next came Ubuntu Lucid Lynx and, although Canonical's flagship product enabled the sound, MP3s were not natively supported.

The following candidate was Simply Mepis 8.5. As Warren Woodford states, Simply Mepis just works. I might add that, in this particular case, it worked flawlessly, too. It picked up the wi-fi, enabled sounds, etc., much to Megatotoro's satisfaction (his grin couldn't possible be more evident: rarely is it that his distro of choice fails). It's just too bad that people do not know this nice distro. The downside was that the effects in this release are not very polished. Megatotoro, as many Mepis followers, is waiting for the release of Mepis 11. To be honest, I am also waiting (I even reserved a blank partition of my netbook's HDD for it). Megatotoro has installed the beta 3 of Mepis 11 and he is happy with it, but, ethically, he did not want to install a beta to a computer that is not his own.

Therefore, we decided to test one more candidate: Linux Mint Julia. We ran the Live CD and the elegant Irish distro not only enabled the sound, but it also previewed MP3s and dazzled the owner of the laptop with the Compiz effects.

We asked her which of the two finalists she wanted to keep as her first Linux distro and, after considering the options, she asked us to install Mint.

Not to run any risk (as none of us has ever used Mint to partition a Windows Vista7 computer), we used Mandriva 2010.2 to resize the Windows partition and create the new one for Mint. Then we ran the Julia Live DVD and, in 25 minutes, the computer had a Linux OS. This is what her new OS looks like:
(The wallpaper was downloaded from www. art.gnome.org and modified with GIMP)

As soon as we started explaining to the owner how Linux works, she realized that many of the things she has heard about computers are myths and she questioned what the point of spending more money in new Windows OSs is. After all, she reasons, they all have exactly the same vulnerabilities than previous releases do. Ballmer probably won't like to hear this, but she discovered that she can have MORE than what Windows offers for free.

So, even though she did not choose Mepis and Mandriva did not work for her, both Megatotoro and I feel happy. Linux is all about freedom and now my sister in-law has the opportunity to see what a computer can truly do.

Some statistics for the record
Windows 7:
Boot time: 58 s. Shut down time: 20 s.
Linux Mint:
Boot time: 48 s. Shut down time: 4 s. (Yes, that's right. Like a bullet!)
Hibernation: perfectly functional.
Compiz effects enabled.
WebCam enabled with Cheese
Wi-fi working
Function keys responding
Card and flash drive reader working
No issues with the GRUB seeing Windows 7

UPDATE:
The owner found a problem. The laptop refused to shut down. I've heard this before: Ubuntu computers that don't shut down...Well, Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro. Is that the reason? I've never had this problem in Mandriva, Mepis, or Pardus.

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...

Emergency at the University: A PC problem or an OS that is defective?

On Jan 20th, 2011, I posted an entry on my office network and, jokingly, put up a picture in which viruses were pawning the Windows computers. Well, that picture became prophetic: while the Windows 7 machine gradually collapsed, the XP one became a zombie that got the entire University Internet service in trouble for a whole week. However, my Mandriva box emerged pristine, completely unscathed. This is the account of what happened.

The main computer in the section is an XP system, which was later linked to the new Windows 7 computer that was bought. The computer I use was also an XP one. However, I installed Mandriva Linux to make it a dual boot and now I seldom boot it in Windows. After less than a year, the Windows 7 station started to show some strange symptoms: It would not start, the screen would flicker, or the machine would freeze. We asked the department technician to come to examine it and, as Carla Schroder said it back in April 2010 (read article here), the technician deemed the whole thing a hardware problem (he blamed it on the hard drive) and substituted the HD. I told him I had my reserves, but people in the office pretty much ignored me.

Last week, the Internet service of the University was in terrible shape. I wanted to go talk to the IT Manager of the Faculty, but it was not necessary because he stormed yesterday into my department. He was a rabid pitbull after something to bite and barked that a machine in my section was sending viruses non-stop and collapsed the University Internet service. His boss, therefore, gave him a furious call with an ultimatum: "Either you find the infected computer, or you pull the switch off for the entire Faculty". He went to my machine first, but I told him that I only run Linux on it, upon which he responded: "Linux? Then it's not yours!" and jumped to the other machines and found the IP of the culprit...it was the XP system. The result? The machine was unhooked from the network and will remain in quarantine.

But what happened to the Windows 7 box? I asked the technician in my section if he had actually checked the integrity of the hard drive to support his claim. I knew the answer already; he only supposed it had been a hardware failure, but never checked the disk! Carla Schroder was absolutely right: people assume that computer problems are necessarily hardware, not OS problems!

I asked him to put the disk back. He reformatted it and Windows 7 is behaving OK so far. I wonder if Windows does not check the integrity of the disk BEFORE install... Anyway, I installed Mandriva (no indication of disk problems whatsoever, by the way) and now that system is also a dual boot.

Maybe it's time for people to stop blaming computer problems on hardware and to begin seeing reality. In my office, there are three stations for three individuals who are not computer experts. The two Windows machines broke; the Linux one is still up to the job and has not failed, not even once, since its Penguin OS was installed.

As a simple computer user, what can I learn? Well, the lesson that I see is that if you want to have Windows as the OS of your computer, you must accept that its security is flawed by design, which eventually will cause problems for an user that is not an expert. You must then invest a lot of time to learn how to protect your system, how to correctly operate the antivirus, firewall, anti-malware, etc. You also have to refrain from downloading shiny animations and programs to enhance your desktop, as they can compromise your system. On the other hand, if you do not want to be bothered by common security problems, then you should use Linux. Thus, you will discover that many so-called PC problems are but Windows problems.

Names, responses, and FLOSS

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
(T.S. Eliot, "The Naming of Cats")

Funny as it may, this very same dilemma of naming is attached to the computer world. It generates multiple reactions, which range from amusement to irate responses sprinkled with prejudice, especially when addressing the interaction with FLOSS communities.

Let me exemplify. In numerous occasions, I have read the argument that one hindrance to the advance of Open Source is the name given to applications. The reasoning is that "geeky Open Source developers" give their applications "geeky names" that make it harder for the end user to be able to work with them, something that is said NEVER HAPPENS under the Windows environment. That names are always clear in Windows is slanted information: "Excel" and "PowerPoint" give very precise clues of what the user can do with them, don't they? Writer and Calc are more accurate than Word and Excel in that sense. But let us overlook that stone and approach the idea playfully. Once I read: "If I read 'Photoshop', I know it has to do with pictures. But what is GIMP for?" I laugh at this pedestrian position that rests upon laziness and ignorance. After all, the name "Photoshop" can be just as misleading if you have never seen the application (Photoshop is an application to buy pictures online, Photo-shop, right?). On the other hand, if the user looks up the meaning of the GIMP acronym, "GNU Image Manipulation Program" seems more accurate than Photoshop is to describe what the application does. Now, that aside, the argument is flawed in itself because it overlooks human linguistic capacities. You use a mop to mop, a brush to brush, but a broom to sweep and no one complains! What's in the word "mop" that tells you what it is for, other than a symbolic association cemented in our brains by constant reinforcement? Do I need to know what GIMP means to be able to operate it? What do we do when the technologies are not given a name at all? Remember TWAIN (Technology without an interesting name)?

Now, if developers have the right to call their application anything they like because, in the end, the user will learn by exposure and association, what's the big deal if developers name applications using references to literature (Scrooge) or culture (Banshee)? Or if they use words foreign for an English speaker(LibreOffice)? English speakers should remember that, thanks to the Norman Conquest, English adopted lots of French words, so let us be more realistic. A name does not make a technology better or worse, just as a name does not reflect on the nature of the person bearing it.

One interesting feature about names is that they do speak of hegemonic power struggles. In a sense, names manifest dominance, division, and impositions. Have you heard of the tug o' war name between Canonical and Gnome? The former was calling something "appindicator", whereas the latter went for "state message". It's not that they didn't agree on what to call it. Actually, the problem was that the two parties pushed for their own name of choice and that's different. If I call the bird "hawk" and you call it "falcon", there's not any problem provided that the convention has it that the animal can be referred to by the two tags. Yet, if I want you to call something the way I do, then we have a problem. Certainly, it is more one of power than it is of naming.

One great source of fun developers have in the Linux world is the assignment of names to versions. So, Mandriva 2010 became "Adelie" and 2010.1 went by the name of "Farman". Other distributions resort to a set of conventions that makes it interesting for developers to find a name. Linux Mint has, for example, a rule of giving the version the name of a woman using a sequential letter of the alphabet, but the name has to end with an "a". Since I remember, that gave us Felicia, Gloria, Helena, Isadora, and the now popularly acclaimed Julia. Ubuntu has a different formula for their code names: "letter X adjective + letter X animal". Consequently, from the moment I joined the Linux world, I have seen Karmic Koala, Lucid Lynx, Maverick Meerkat, Natty Narwhal and they just announced the successor, Oneiric Ocelot.

Of course, those codes give room for people to start playing with the patterns. Thus, they come up with very creative names of their own to bash the distro, as in this (troll?) comment posted in www.tuxmachines.org.

Naming is always a difficult enterprise and there will always be complaints. Eliot's cats, however, do not have such problem: They have a secret name of their own. Maybe applications are the same and they crash, under-perform or fail to launch because they are also lost in the contemplation of their "ineffable, effable, effanineffable/
Deep and inscrutable singular name".

How to add personalized icons to Kopete

My first experience with an IM (chat) session in Linux was through Kopete, the KDE IM client, but I stopped using it because I found it rather stiff and its interface was "too complicated". By the last statement, I should have said "too different from MSN Live Messenger" instead.

Anyway, I have been using Kopete for some time now because I was attracted back to it by its many functionalities and I have to admit that it is a remarkable IM client. It has lots of features, like handling multiple accounts, multiple IM services, and multiple identities. It's great that you can have Kopete manage your accounts in MSN, Yahoo, and Gmail because, thanks to KDE integration, you receive an immediate notification when a new mail hits any of your mail accounts.

However, the icon set that comes with it is rather limited, so for those who enjoy sending emoticons every other line or for whom "an image speaks a thousand words", Kopete might seem lacking.

If you are one of the people for whom emoticons are vital, you can always install more icon sets to use with Kopete. The process is very simple. First, do not look for a way to do it from the program (the "Windows way" of doing things!). There are just too many places to explore and one gets lost easily.

This is how you can retrieve emoticon sets and add your own (the Linux newbie way, that is):

Step 1. Look for KDE configuration options (Configure Desktop) in the lower panel. Click on the tools icon.
Step 2. A Windows opens. Click on the "Appearance" icon.
Step 3. Find the emoticon section. You will see it a the bottom of the new window that opens.
Step 4. Click emoticons (You are almost done!). This is pretty much what you see.
KDE 4 corresponds to the KDE built-in emoticon set. I installed the Kadu penguins, the onigiri and the qip sets.

To add new sets, just go to the options below, where it says "get new icon theme". You will be taken to the available sets. Click and add to your heart's content!

To add your personalized icons, put all the images or animated gifs in the same folder and make sure you don't move it later. Then, from step 4, select a theme other than KDE 4 (you cannot modify that one!) and go right, where it says "add".
A small windows opens:
The blank square corresponds to the emoticon you are about to add. Click on the blank square and find the folder where your emoticon is. Select it. It will replace the blank square. The dialog line next to it is for the trigger code. Type there the word or initials that will fire up the emoticon in an IM/Chat session, like this:
Then click "accept" and then "apply" and you are ready to go. I'm using Mandriva 2010.2, KDE, but the same tutorial should be applicable to any KDE-based distro with some minor changes.

2010 FLOSS Workshop Aftershock: An Unexpected Invitation

In a former post, I talked about how Open Source was becoming more visible in the university where I work. That post was followed by another one narrating our speech in a congress and the post about our workshop (described by Megatotoro here).

Well, I thought that had been all our contribution to raise awareness on the existence of multiple choices when dealing with computers. However, yesterday I got an email that startled me. It was a request from a project coordinator asking Megatotoro and I to participate as the main speakers in another workshop. The idea was to cover the following topics:

1. How to install Ubuntu/Mandriva (I'd like to add Mepis, Pardus and Mint, haha)
2. How to work with open word processors, spreadsheets, electronic presentations
3. How to save documents in compatibility mode (This one is funny. People still fail to see that incompatibility issues spring from Microsoft, not from open documents)
4. How to dual boot Linux/Windows.

This hands-on workshop is again addressed to professors. They chose us, it turns out, because both Megatotoro and I are not technical users, which proves that ANYONE can use Linux.

What does this say to me? Well, the more people discover that Windows is neither the only nor necessarily the best OS available, the closer we are to the end of the Windows era. Yes, when people see that they have choices, they begin to do what Microsoft has never wanted them to do: choose!

Plurality is always beneficial. It fosters innovation, cooperation (and competition, why not?) and guarantees freedom. Upon those conditions, a wonderful phenomenon takes place: it's called PROGRESS.

But don't panic, Windows fanboys: if more people start using Linux, maybe that is going to benefit Windows users in the long run, too. Who knows? Perhaps Microsoft will be forced to release an OS that can rival Linux security without all the bloatware, antivirus paranoia, etc. that actually makes users switch to Linux! That would be progress!

This is MAGEIA!

Well, OK, I am not a developer. My knowledge is not technical, so this Mageia Alpha 1 was not targeted to me. But who would blame me for trying it out?

This is what the installing sequence of Mageia looks like:

After the language selection (this alpha does include SPANISH!), the license, and the partitioning, all of them very PowerPackish, you see this:
Then, you type your root password and create your user account:
After which you create the GRUB and read a summary. Then you install updates, again, very Mandriva-style:
That's the installation: a real piece of cake. When complete, you read this message:

So, you boot the system up and you get to see this, the Mageia GRUB:

and the splash screen:


That's as far as I got.

As you can see, the alpha looks promising and, to be an early release, you can appreciate all the effort that has been put into the making of this new distro.

CONGRATULATIONS, MAGEIA TEAM! AWESOME WORK!!
¡FELICITACIONES, EQUIPO MAGEIA! ¡¡IMPRESIONANTE TRABAJO!!
マジアチーム、おめでとう! よくできた!!

Mageia .iso released!

The clock has just stricken midnight, so it's February 15, 2011. With the sound of the clock, magic is released...wait, let me rephrase it: MAGEIA is released!

Yes, the so-awaited .iso is finally here. It's the first alpha of Mageia, named "Cantine".

Right on time, and just as anticipated by Megatotoro...
こわいい！未来が見られますか？

Well, it seems that I have to download it and give it a test drive, too.
(Yes, I'm not crazy about the logo, either)