My Experience with Pardus 2.1

There isn't much press about Pardus lately.  Well, there hasn't been since Pardus got included in the sad list of dormant distros, some years ago.

Then, Pardus came back...but not without controversy.  Instead of the old, independent distro it used to be, it came back with a Debian base.  Some of its former fans got disappointed and said the revived Turkish leopard was nothing but Debian with Pardus icons and logo.  I, for one, did notice several elements in the new Pardus (like GRUB Customizer), that were not originally in Debian's repos.  

Before Pardus went to Debian, I used to like that Pardus a lot.  In fact, I still have Pardus 2011 installed on my netbook, where it is still working happily, even if it's outdated.

Then, the Anka Team was formed with the goal of keeping the uniqueness of Pardus alive, and their efforts have given birth to Pisi, which soon will see the light of day.  I have a beta version of Pisi installed on my laptop and it is great!

But I feel at ease with Debian, too.  Most of my favorite distros have a Debian base.  Thus, I gave Pardus 2012-13 Debian a try.  It became the host of all my games and of my Steam client.

Then, I decided it was time for a bold experiment and upgraded it to Pardus 2.1 Beta.

Bad idea!  The upgrade rendered my system unusable.  Well, that's what happens when you try to upgrade an old system the rolling-distro way.  I knew it wasn't going to work, but my curiosity was stronger.

Then, I went the traditional way:  I performed a fresh install of 2.1.  I did notice several issues while running the live, maybe the biggest show-stopper was that I could not see my other partitions and I couldn't mount USB drives.

Still, I went ahead with the installation.  Pardus 2.1 is fully updated; it even sports KDE 4.11!  I had to see what it looked like installed.

Well, it was the same as with the live session: I couldn't see or mount my other partitions no matter how much I tried with my limited knowledge.

Then, I noticed a big amount of updates.  I figured that they would correct my problems, so I installed them...and went back to where I was when I upgraded Pardus 2013 to 2.1:  the sound was broken, KDE was unstable, and I got a nasty message that my user was not recognized...

That means Pardus 2.1 needs more polishing, without a doubt.  As a result, I went back to Pardus 2.0, which is not so up to date, but it is pretty recent.

And then, the enormous batch of updates showed in my system tray.  You'd have to be crazy to install them, especially because it was about 1 Gb of downloads.

Well, call me crazy:  I did perform the download and installed the updates.  I got several warnings that my system was broken...what a surprise!

But the real surprise was that after the process, I booted into a Pardus 2.0 with a shiny KDE 4.11.5 and updated packages!  That was great!

And a little later, around 200 new updates popped up.  I knew I was not a good idea to install them (I had been incredibly lucky after my previous downloads), but I had to see for myself what happened...

I proceeded with the updates...and got to a broken Pardus 2.1 that could not see my drives.

I finally settled for 2.0 and updated KDE and the other packages later.  However, I did not download again the 200 or so downloads that break the system. In other words, now I have a Pardus 2.0-2.1 hybrid.  I find this as a better solution than having either Pardus 2.0, which worked fine but was a bit outdated, or Pardus 2.1, that is not yet ready for prime time. 

That's the beauty of Linux!  You have lots of choices and the freedom to experiment.  Also, you lose that horrible fear of breaking your system.  After all, when things went wrong, I could install Pardus 2.0 again in less than 20 minutes!  That's why I kept pushing my limits in my experience with Pardus 2.1.

 


 
 

What a Start, 2014!

These first two weeks of 2014 have been---how to put it?---intense!

There have been good moments:

People at the Mepis forum are buzzing with activity.  They are preparing a little surprise of which I cannot say much now, but they let me be part of the process, even with my very limited skills.

Jetpack 2, the sequel to Jetpack, the cult game that kept me busy some years ago, is advancing.  I tested the beta on GalPon MiniNo, Mepis 8, 11, and 12 and it is working.  My brother tested it on Mageia, too.

Firefox OS tablets, even if they are kind of proof of concept, have already landed at Mozilla for developers to test. 

I added LXDE to antiX on a Toshiba NB-525 netbook.  It worked like a charm! That antiX install is making the one on my laptop envious.

There are rumors that 2014 will see the birth of Pisi Linux.  I'm waiting for it!

Now, the not-so-good moments:


My plans to advance in the world of tablets got somehow interrupted when I dropped my ZaTab ZT2 and damaged its display.  Some people say it's unlucky to drop a tablet...if it is yours, it will bring sadness to your life...if it is not yours, then it brings you calamity!

Two days ago, I tried to boot a distro from CD.  It didn't work.  It turns out that my DVD drive broke down.  Not a big deal now that one can boot from USB, but still...it is not good to have a broken drive.

Yesterday, experimenting recklessly, I broke my Pardus 2013 install.  With it, my Steam games were gone!  At the end, I decided to download and install Pardus 2.1Beta, but it is having trouble seeing my other partitions.  I tried to edit fstab to no avail.  I guess I'll then take a look at Pardus 2.  At least I could see on Pardus 2.1 that Steam keeps records of your stats and achievements, so I technically did not lose my gaming progress.

What's next?  Will it be good or will it be bad?

As my French teacher once said, "On commence bien comme  ça!"

Latin America Prefers Android

Image taken from vilaingeek.com

According to an interesting piece of news in a local newspaper, Android dominates in my country (68,73%), mainly thanks to smartphones from Samsung and Motorola.  Apple's iPhone is second with a 17,51% market share.

What about Windows Phone?  It's far below with just 4,81%.

The figures show similar trends in Latin America:

Android: 61,27%
iphone: 28,07%
Windows: 4,93%
BlackBerry: 3,31%. 

Among the countries in the region that prefer Android, one can count Panama (80,62%), Bolivia (74,97%), and Argentina (74,61%).  The countries with the weakest use of Android are Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Dominican Republic, with percentages from  47%  to 51%.

What does this mean?  

It means that, as new generations are more and more exposed to Android, Microsoft's relevance will be questioned.  If kids can do many things with Android (yes, gaming included!), how will Microsoft convince them that they need Windows and nothing else?  With Windows 8?

If schools here start buying Chromebooks (as it is happening in other countries), MS Office will have a tougher time, for I feel it is its office suite what makes many educational institutions believe they need Windows.  

PC Plus?? Something's Wrong Here...

I read this article on Hot Hardware about OEMs trying to unveil a new form of computer, the PC Plus, which will be able to run Windows 8.1 RT and Android.

The article mentions that this could be accomplished either by virtualization or by dual booting.

That is the part that caught my eye.

Let me see if I understand it.  These new devices are called "PC Plus" because of their ability to use virtual environments or to dual-boot?

If that is indeed the case, something is wrong.  Something is very wrong here.

I mean, I have been able to dual boot since I met Linux, three years ago.  And I've been able to use virtualization way before that, during my Windows times.  WOW!  I've been using PC Plus devices all this time!  In fact, my Toshiba NB-100 netbook is then a Super PC Plus because it runs 5 different OSes!

How come PCs are now called PCs PLUS when OEMs add features that PCs had all the time?

Oh, is it because the concept of current PCs did not include dual-booting? (restricted boot, for instance, could be a good explanation.)

And now that, after more than a year in the market, Windows 8 has proven its worth (although I keep hearing "it's too early", now applied to 8.1, too), OEMs want to trumpet old PC features as the new big thing?

People do seem to have a very restricted access to their memory!

Well, leaving that aside, I also have some questions about PC Plus devices running Windows 8.1 RT.

Wasn't it true that OEMs were required not to allow unrestricted boot (understood by some as "not to allow turning secure boot off")--and thus blocking users from running anything but Windows on those devices--in order to opt for RT licenses?

Was the whole restricted boot circus simply about not opening the booting sequence to allow users boot the OS of their choice, but now that Windows failed OEMs, they are looking for an alternative?

How will OEMs circumvent this restriction?  Will they pay Microsoft for a key to allow their devices boot Android with restricted boot enabled?

Another question: Will Microsoft offer PC Plus devices, too?

Let's wait and see...

GNURooting Android on a ZaTab ZT2

Little by little, I am learning how to use my ZaTab ZT2 the way I want.
I think I managed to handle Android, but I want to push my limits and learn to do what most people won't do with their Android device.  Why following everyone's path if one can make one's own path?  True, this path may lead me to my doom, but walking it will be more interesting than staying in the comfort zone without learning anything new.

Thus, I am set to booting Linux (another distro, that is, if you count Android as a penguin) on my ZT2.  I have absolutely no idea how to do it, but I'm determined to figure it out.

Thus, in the meantime, and as a learning exercise, I used GNURoot to expand my Android horizons.

GNURoot is not a rooting tool, to begin with.  But it does give you some interesting ideas on how to proceed if you want to boot several GNU/Linux distros: Aborigin, Debian Wheezy, or Fedora.

Well, although I took a Fedora-based course online, I chose Wheezy because the download was smaller.  I didn't want to wait for a long download just for the sake of experimenting.

What did I get?

Yay!  A Linux console, alright.  That's Wheezy without a GUI.  Cute, isn't it?  The best part is the # telling you something that means the Promised Land, right?  I felt encouraged by that and tried an apt-get update.  Could I access Wheezy's repositories?  YES!  I could!  Apt-get works, as advertised.

What should my next move be?
I thought about installing something light, like Abiword.  But that wasn't light at all.  All dependencies included, my download soared the 200 MB.  Too much for this first test.

 I thus knew what to try.  Quickly, I typed "apt-get install sl."  That's a very small, must-have application, after all.  Surely enough, Apt did its thing and installed sl.

It was time for the last stage of my experiment: testing sl.  If sl worked, it would mean I was indeed using Linux.  I then typed "sl" and...

THERE YOU GO!  THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE OF SUCCESS IS ALIVE!!!!

For my next experiment, I'll try downloading and running something more complex, maybe a GUI.  But that will have to wait until I recover from this X-mas flu.

Getting to Know Android through ZaReason's ZaTab ZT2

I am a proud owner of a ZaReason Alto 4330 laptop.  I really like it and it has worked great during its first year.  I bought it by this time last year.

I learned this year that ZaReason is making a tablet, the ZaTab ZT2.  What caught my attention was that this tablet is easily hackable, unlike others.

I thought this device could teach me about an OS that I've barely touched: Android...and if in the process I learned how to load ROMs or making my own to load them to this tablet, that would be great.

Thus, I bought it.

So far, my experience has been fine.  As I'm not into tablets, I don't know exactly how good or bad this one may be. I think it does not have anything different from other tablets besides its root access (which I haven't been able to figure out.)

Today, after an app installing/uninstalling frenzy, I got the infamous Android bug "the process 'android.process.acore' stopped." I thought I had managed to brick the device and thus set a new computer-breaking record, but (after trying other solutions without success) I found my way to restoring its factory settings. It is working fine now.

That's as far as I have gone with this tablet.  Now I'm getting to learn about Android.

ZaTab ZT2 (photo from zareason.com)

Another December as a Full-time Linux User

2013 is almost gone.  I've been away from my blog because my job and family issues have kept me busier than ever.  Little by little, things seem to be settling down.

Now that it's a little less than a month to start a new year, I always remember that December always meant a ritual never to be missed:

a- Backing up all my information
b- Formatting my HD
c- Reinstalling Windows
d- Installing drivers
e- Installing A/V, firewalls, etc.
f-  Installing my everyday software
g- Loading the information back to my HD.
h- Realizing that I forgot to back up something

Since I became a full-time Linux user, December means just making my monthly backup.  If I weren't so busy, I could die of boredom nowadays!

I guess that's why I ordered a hackable tablet from ZaReason.  When I finally have some free time, I'll have something to break!