Almost a month with Fedora...

I installed Fedora 25 Workstation (KDE spin) almost a month ago, as a desperate attempt to get my all-in-one Epson XP 231 printer working.

The experiment ended with the printer/scanner working on OpenMandriva Lx 3.1, PCLinuxOS and, later, on Mageia 5.1.  Oddly, although I could scan without any problems on Fedora, the printer was not operational.


I knew nothing about Fedora.  After some reading, however, I managed to get everything running, except the Japanese IME, which has eluded me.  I hope I will manage to get it to work soon.

It seems Fedora 25 has earned a place among my favorite Linux distros.

Temporary fix for Insync problem not running on OpenMandriva LX 3.1

After the Christmas update, Insync has refused to run properly on my OpenMandriva Lx 3.1 install.

When one first installs the package, it runs, syncs, and seems to be OK.  However, after closing the session, Insync is gone from the panel and nothing can summon it back.

To circumvent this issue, I uninstalled the package and, using the terminal, installed it again as root using the urmpi command.

After it synchronized and everything, I closed the session and it was gone again.  However, this time, one can bring it back from Konsole as root.  It is not the most elegant fix, but it is easy enough.

I guess this solves that problem for the time being...

Epson XP 231 vs Mageia 5... The Final Chapter

I was truly feeling like giving up on getting the Epson XP 231 to scan properly on Mageia.  I tried pretty much everything, even Megatotoro's solution, to no avail.

However, I discovered that the real problem was that, although sane-find-scanner would actually find the scanner, there was a permission problem.

I confirmed this when I ran xsane as root and could scan.  Of course, one solution was to chmod the file where the scanner was at /dev/bus/usb/003/, but that was temporary

The real solution was found here, at the Mageia forums.  I only had to add my user to the lp group.

Getting Cozy with Fedora

As Fedora Workstation 25 (KDE spin) is the first system in which I got everything running, I decided to decorate it a bit.

Modified version of a FNAF Foxy wallpaper by Gold94chica

I installed the ghost theme/window decorations, activated the effects, and changed the Plasma 5 home icon for a fedora icon.  I need to change the trash icon, too. 

Here is how you install Steam on Fedora (tutorial by Nick Congleton).
And Aaron Kili's page helped me a lot with his 25 suggestions about what to do after first installing Fedora 25.

Progress Report

This table shows my progress working with several problems on my four main Linux distros.

After a lot of effort, I made significant progress with the Epson XP 231 in PCLinuxOS.  Today, I managed to get it to work as it should.  Some people are reporting my same problem with Steam on that OS, though...

OpenMandriva Lx 3.1 pretty much does everything, except that Insync, which I believed was running, must be reinstalled every time to get it to work. You close the session and it's gone.  Bad.

Mageia 5.1's problem is the scanner.  XSane reports that the usb port where it is found fails to open the device.  I originally thought it was the file epwoka.conf at /etc/sane.d, but it does not seem to be the problem.

And then Fedora 25 weirdly refuses to print, but I suspect it is because I installed Fedora two days ago and noob is too short a word to describe me.

But I will keep trying.  At least, I could solve the printing/scanning problem in PCLinuxOS by using what I learned in Fedora about the installation of packages via shell.

UPDATE: I finally solved the problems with the printer on Fedora 25 and installed Steam.  Hence, Fedora is so far the first system in which I managed to get everything running.

Random Musings on the New Year and Changes

Change has always been viewed as an alteration.  For those who cherish the status quo, this alteration is a great source of anxiety, a life-disrupting experience that epitomizes the full meaning of the word problem.  Those who are dissatisfied with the current state of events, however, embrace change and preach that it is an opportunity to reach new heights, an open road leading to unknown happiness and fulfillment.

I suspect that we human beings have a misconception of change.  We tend to see it as something unexpected, an unforeseeable collision in our otherwise peaceful existence that forces us to adapt or succumb.  This is wrong; change is happening constantly around us: it is the normal condition of the universe.  We cling to the illusion of permanence and choose to reduce change to something that occurs randomly or periodically, as with the end of a year.

With the dying of my reliable Epson Stylus TX-200 printer, I was slapped by a

Epson Stylus TX 200

situation long-forgotten: Linux-compatible hardware is sometimes difficult to find.  My all-in-one printer had been with me almost since I migrated to Linux in 2009 and never did I think about what kind of replacement I had to get if it happened to fail.

True, replacing a printer is not a catastrophe, much less when the loyal device malfunctioned during vacation time, exactly two weeks after the work-related pressure had already dissipated.  So, after checking the availability of Linux drivers, I bought an Epson XP 231 as the successor of the venerable TX-200. Drunk with the wine of naivety, I expected the road to configure this new printer to be a smooth path.

Epson XP 231

I stumbled at each step.  While I can print in two of the three main distros that I regularly use, I had to battle and managed to get the scanner to work in one, OpenMandriva Lx 3.1.  No success in Mageia 5 or PCLinuxOS yet.

Although the printer tossed me into a tar pit, this post is not about printers, but about change... And change is happening, placing me in a position to make decisions on matters I had either postponed or refused to consider.  For instance, Mageia will have to release its 6th iteration one day, and this new version will feature Plasma 5, which I do not particularly like because it removed a feature that I grew to love: the ability to have different wallpapers on each workspace.  No, KDE developers, "ACTIVITIES" DO NOT FULFILL THE SAME PURPOSE!

Come Mageia 6 and I will have to wave farewell to KDE 4.  OpenMandriva has been training me on the ways of Plasma 5, so I will only have to forget about the wallpapers, just like I had to forget about GRUB when GRUB 2 came along.  Who knows, maybe a new secret feature of Plasma 5 will make me love the DE, just like when I grew to love the ROSA SimpleWelcome screen in Mandriva 2011...

Mageia 6 Sta1 has been on my laptop since September (for testing).  When Mageia 6 is finally released, I will have an additional partition on my HD if I replace my current Mageia 5 install.

Maybe, with 2017 knocking on the door, it is time to get a Fedora?

Those Meaningful Gifts... Thanks, OpenMandriva!!

Yesterday, I read an email coming from the mail list of OpenMandriva.  It was an announcement about an unexpected release: The community had been working on a surprise and released OpenMandriva Lx 3.01 as a Christmas gift.

News of the kind always stirs some excitement in me. How can I forget that it was Mandriva the distro that made me fully commit to Linux in 2009?

This time was a bit different, however.  Do not get me wrong; my interest in OpenMandriva has not waned over the years despite the fact that I also use Mageia 5 and PCLinuxOS daily for my computing needs.  What happened is that, exactly one week ago, my EPSON Stylus TX 200 all-in-one printer died and I had been on the market trying to find a good replacement.

I eventually bought an EPSON XP-231 because it is advertised to have full Linux support but, so far, I have not managed to get it to work properly in Mageia (scanner problems) and PCLinuxOS (both printer and scanner problems) because of the drivers.  Therefore, my investment on the new hardware was beginning to look like a relatively expensive mistake.

Then OpenMandriva Lx 3.01 came and saved the day.

The XP-231 was not easy to get to work, to be honest, but I eventually got it to print and scan appropriately in OpenMandriva Lx 3.01.

Oh, and I must add that this release also corrected a bug that prevented me to run Insync, a program that I became fond of.

All I can say is that I am thankful for the hard work of the folks at OpenMandriva, who gave me this wrappingless Christmas gift...

And wrappingless gifts, I have learned, tend to be the most meaningful ones! 

After a long wait, Mageia was released! Well, sort of...

I visited Distrowatch today and read that there was a new release of Mageia. 

This was not Mageia 6 with Plasma 5, but an updated version of Mageia 5, Mageia 5.1, which includes all the updates of more of a year's time.

I was not disappointed.  Mageia 5 works fine with my systems and, to be honest, I am not a great fan of Plasma 5...

Playing Terrordrome on OpenMandriva Lx 3.0

Today, as my daughter was watching YouTube videos, she found one about a fighting game called Terrordrome. This is a fighting game with a retro look that features several characters of horror films, such as Chucky, Pinhead, Jason, and Pumpkinhead.

I found it sort of cute and looked for it.  Much to my surprise, it is free and it provides a Linux installer via Wine here.

After downloading it (it is rather large, 1Gb), I installed it and played it.  It works perfectly.

Of course, my daughter came to play with Chucky, her favorite character, and won pretty much every single match against me.
 

It was fun because the game incorporates special moves based on the movies and there are sounds that come from the films, too (careful with Chucky's swearing!).

A New Tool for LibreOffice

Tony Get, my colleague, showed me an interesting tool available in Android: it's an app to turn your Android device into a remote control to work with your LibreOffice Impress presentations.  It is called Impress Remote and it is very easy to use.

Once downloaded, all you have to do is open an Impress presentation on your computer and make sure of two things:

1.  That the computer and the phone are paired (bluetooth)
2.  That the presentation can work with a remote (to enable this feature, go to the tools menu in Impress->options->libreoffice impress->general->enable remote)

That is all.  If the devices are correctly paired, you are going to see the slide on your cellphone and the notes (if any) and you can navigate the slides from the cellphone.

The app works perfectly with Mageia 5.




The app has some other options, such as the possibility to connect your cellphone to your computer using a Wifi connection.  I did not test that feature, though.

At last I meet you, OLPC XO!

Last Monday, I went with my wife and my 6-year-old daughter, Eimi, to an activity in a school.  The idea was to let parents know about this new educational optionl and its advantages for children who are about to start their elementary school life.

At the beginning, I was not very interested because we had already made arrangements for our daughter to go to an educational institution near home.

The principal was talking while the parents listened and the children made an effort to stay quiet.  I was growing tired, and so were the bunch of kids sitting on the chairs.  The principal was highlighting how they incorporate technology in the teaching of the subjects, but I was not convinced...

Then, she pulled out a little green laptop and all the children became alive again as if by magic. I have only seen technology cause such interest on children once: the day when my then 3-year-old daughter saw PicarOS for the first time.

I myself straightened my back when I recognized the OLPC XO laptop!

With that simple device, the principal captivated the audience; children and parents were under her spell as she described how the young students experience education for the future with a device designed exclusively for them.


It turns out that, in this humble school, children learn with Sugar OS, not just Windows.  And they also learn robotics.

One of the teachers tells the children about the OLPC XO laptop

After the tour and the activities, I asked Eimi what she thought about the school.  She was delighted and wanted to come to this new institution.  My wife and I agreed, so we did the paperwork and now Eimi will be going to a school that might be a bit further from home, but where she feels happier and my wife and I will be more satisfied.