Where Was I at this Time Last Year?

 My job, thanks to all this Covid craze, has kept me busier than ever. While I miss the free time I had in the past, I am indeed glad that I still have a job. Many people have lost theirs and life, in general, has become really tough.

Since my inspiration has left me and I seem to catch the latest news in Tux Land when they are not news any longer (for example, MX-21.1 has been already released and I had no clue!), I haven't been writing much here.

Thus, I decided to do a little retrospective exercise. Where was I at this time last year, for example?  What did I write about?  Did write anything at all in April last year?

I went to check and found only one entry in April: This one. 

What was it about?  Amazing!  Windows updates! What a weird coincidence!

 

This month I spoke with a colleague who had to borrow a laptop from our university to do her online work.  She has a small Linux laptop, but Zoom was not very stable on it.  I recommended my colleague to make sure that Windows updates were already done on the borrowed equipment.

Some days later, she told me that at the end she used the Linux laptop.

I asked her the reason, of course.

"Windows updates simply did not let me use the laptop when I needed it!" was her reply.

As I said before, it is a very strange coincidence that, after a whole year, people keep experiencing the same nasty situation with Windows updates.

Or not?

Time for a Little Update on this Blog

 It has been a long time since I last posted something here!

All this Covid-19 situation and my shift to online work have taken a toll on my available time.  This year has been especially time consuming!

Still, I have to report that my Linux computers are all working seamlessly.  I have applied all updates.  In fact, I am applying 50 MB of updates right now as I type these words.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend last weekend.  She told me that she (a Windows 10 user) always has problems when Windows 10 updates.  Her solution has been delaying them for as long as she can, but with that system you cannot stop them unless you pay more.  Sooner or later they will come and hit her box, unleashing all sorts of problems.

What does she do?  Well, apparently she takes the PC to a technician every 6 months to do a resetting or something so that she can keep using the computer.

Wow!  I am glad I am not caught in that situation.  I especially do not have the time for such a fun activity!

Cheers!

MX-16 Metamorphosis RC1 Is Out!!

This is the release announcement by Anticapitalista:

Ahead of schedule, MX-16 release candidate 1 is available for further testing.
We have quashed many bugs and added improvements since the first public-beta1.
eg Horizontal panel now defaults to the bottom rather than the top.
The dev team hopes that, with additional feedback, the final should be ready very soon.
Please help us by testing and reporting any issues that crop up.

Get it here:https://sourceforge.net/projects/antix-linux/files/Testing/MX-16/

Torrents here:

64 bit - http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=1aea41cd87e786fe332c5c524e1336c33f035c03

32 bit - http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=ab64a00e3d97d4f1bfd0def28acb735b8c86317f

It is built on the reliable and stable Debian Jessie (8.6) with extra enhancements from the antiX live system and up to date applications provided by the MX Linux packagers.
Just like previous versions of MX, this release defaults to sysVinit.

Available in 32 and 64 bit.
The 32 bit version ships with 2 stable 3.16 Debian kernels (pae and non-pae), while
the 64 bit comes with the more recent Debian backports 4.7 kernel to cater for newer hardware.
All kernels have been patched against the Dirty COW exploit.

Both iso files weigh in at around 1.2GB in size.

What does MX Linux ship with?

Applications:
* Xfce4.12 is the desktop environment.
* Latest Firefox 50 for browsing and Thunderbird 45.5.0 for email.
* VLC 2.2.4 caters for videos and Clementine 1.3.1 for playing and managing your music.
* Full LibreOffice 5.2.2 suite
* Shotwell 0.24.1 digital photo organizer
* Pepper Flash Player - browser plugin
* Chinese and Japanese fonts included on the iso
* gimp 2.8.18
* grub-customizer 5.0.6
* gscan2pdf 1.5.1-1 GUI to produce PDFs or DjVus from scanned documents
* mx-clocky attractive desktop-agnostic analog clock
* mx-debian-backports-installer
* openjdk-8
* samba shares
* smtube - watch youtube videos without using a browser - ideal for low-powered laptops.
* Security: Passwords and Keys 3.14.0

Further improvements and enhancements to running Live from a usb stick or frugally from a hard drive.
New! - live-kernel-upgrader - as it says, upgrade the kernel and remaster a running Live system
live-usb-maker - new cli tool to install a full-featured live environment to USB device that boots legacy and UEFI!

I Upgraded to Pisi 1.2 without Noticing It!

Thanks to Mechatotoro, I realized that the release of Pisi Linux 1.2 was officially published on Distrowatch.

Apparently, I've upgraded all the way from 1.0 to 1.2 without even knowing about it.  The only problem I found was with the package Fotoxx, which caused an error whenever I wanted to update it.  The issue was solved by deleting the package and then reinstalling it.

So, what's new with Pisi Linux 1.2?

Linux Kernel: 3.19.8
KDE: 4.14.3
Mate: 1.8.0
Firefox 38.0.5 Firefox 39 (The newest version was part of a new batch of updates I applied today)
LibreOffice: 4.3.5.1
GIMP: 2.8.14
Calligr A: 2.8.7
Clementine: 1.2.3
Qt: 4.8.6
Qt5: 5.4.1 * New
glibc: 2.20
binutils: 2:24
coreutils: 8.23

So far, I've found no problems.  I'm posting this from my recently upgraded Pisi install. Pisi 1.2, the last one of the Pisi 1 series, is doing great.

Thanks to all the devs for their hard work.

Pisi Linux...Still Alive!

Yesterday, I found lots of updates for my Pisi Linux install.  I applied them to see if everything went fine after a total 200~MB download...

Well, to be honest, apart from Firefox 38.0.5 (still one release behind), my untrained eye did not catch anything.  And that's great because if something had gone wrong, I'm pretty sure I'd notice it!

I'm happy that Pisi is still with us.  It has become too silent and almost secluded, but I still hope Pisi does not go extinct.

Updating to Pisi 1.1!

I was surprised to learn that Pisi Linux released a 1.1 version.  My Pisi 1.0 has been working pretty well, but I wanted to see if I could go to the new version through the updates.  As instructed by Groni, I opened a terminal and typed

sudo pisi up -dy

Soon enough, I was presented all the packages that were about to be downloaded and installed.  The process seemed to go well, but at the end I got an error.

I rebooted my computer and realized that both GRUB and the kernel had been updated.  However, the rest of the updates didn't seem to be installed.

I opened PiSi (the package manager) and saw around 70 packages to be updated.  I proceeded with the update (which was surprisingly fast thanks to PiSi's delta features), hoping to be lucky at the end.

Unfortunately, when applying the changes, I got a weird error:

"it is a folder /usr/share/appdata"

I noticed that the issue happened as soon as the package Fotoxx was to be installed.  Thus, I deselected that one and tried to update once again.

Success: the Packages Installed Successfully as Intended!  :P

Just to double check, I selected Fotoxx and tried to update it.  Yes, I got the error again.

Now I have a Pisi 1.1 system, albeit my old version of Fotoxx.

Everything's Fine...Shall I Try an Update?

While several of my colleagues and students are having a great time fighting viruses and malware or trying to get their mainstream, highly-reputed systems to work again, both my mutant penta-boot netbook and my grotesque hepta-boot desktop have been working fine. Thus, more out of boredom than for any other reason, I decided to check for and install their corresponding updates. Since it had been a few months since my last update, I thought things could get complicated and thus I could join my colleagues' frustration...let's see:

A- My penta-boot netbook:

1. Mepis 8.0 (main OS): it is up to date.
2. Mepis 11: 17 packages needed to be updated...nothing bad happened after the update.
3. Mandriva One 2010 Spring: 5 packages needed to be updated...no issues after installing them.
4. Pardus 2010: Up to date.
5. Windows XP: I don't boot it anymore, so no need to update it.

B- My hepta-boot desktop:

1. Mepis 8.0 (main OS): it is up to date.
2. Mepis 11: 17 packages needed to be updated...everything went smoothly with the updates.
3. Mandriva One 2010 Spring: 5 packages needed to be updated...no problems after the installation.
4. Pardus 2010: Up to date.
5. AntiX m11: Up to date.
6. MiniNo: Up to date.
7. Windows XP: Same as with my netbook.

OK, no luck! My multi-headed computers are updated and running normally...hehe! That didn't help me with my boredom but it's much better to be bored this way!