December Ends...

The last month of 2014 is reaching its end, and with that, I can't help listing some of the events that came along with this year to my micro cosmos:

1.  The people at my workplace have realized (finally) that the university is indeed migrating to free software.  I'll stick with .odf and now they won't have any excuse against it.

2.  MEPIS has fell out of DW's top 100 list of Linux distros and is slowly going the way of the dodo, but MX is quickly rising.

3.  I haven't been able to write much here, but that pretty much means that, unlike some of my coworkers, I haven't had viruses havoc or malware slowing down my productivity.  Actually, my computers have been working without problems: I even managed to publish a book (yes, I used Libre Office to type it) and I am waiting to see how people will take it. 

4.  My participation with Mechatotoro at the International Conference held by our school went pretty well, even if we experimented again with some technologies for our presentations.  Of course, Windows was not part of them.

What will 2015 bring?

I've no idea.

December Starts!

...and it seems I just compiled a package from source for the first time.

I had been having problems with Wine (not the drink!) on Pisi Linux.  Apparently, I was not the only one.  Fortunately, a forum member by the name of poyraz76 kindly posted a solution on the forum.  I tried it and boy!  I had no idea what was going on!

The process took quite a long time, but at the end Wine started running the programs it did not run before (I especially needed JWPCe and Kanji Gold.)

I'm glad it worked.  Things are falling into place.  Now I have to do my homework and learn in more detail what happened. 

Also, I have a new challenge: teaching my mother how to create memes!

What a Month!

This November has been my busiest month ever!  I am glad because my computers have been up to the job thanks to Linux.  I still hear people complaining about viruses and about the misbehavior of their OS.  What can I say?  :P  I don't miss those times!

Although I've been away from forums and such, I've managed to help translating MX Linux into my language.  I've helped a bit with antiX, too.

But there's more work to do.  Mechatotoro and I are planning our two lectures for our university's international congress next month.  Of course, we will use Linux.  PCLOS or Mageia this time?  Mechatotoro's computer will have the last word!

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.

KDE Desktop Effects Woes? Try any of these Approaches!

Recently, a fellow Mepis 12 user had problems with a computer.  Some of the desktop effects stopped working after an unknown update.  Thus, I had to try all I knew to fix the problem:

1.  su -c 'update-alternatives --config libGL.so.1'

and chose #1 in the nvidia/diversions.

I also ran

su -c 'update-alternatives --config libglx.so'

and chose #1.  But that had no effect.

2.  su -c 'cd /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions;ln -sf $(ls -1 libglx.so.*) libglx.so'

and then restarted the x session.

...It didn't work.

3.  I tried to see if there was anything blacklisted in the file
.kde/share/config/kwinrc

...But  there was nothing blacklisted there.

4.  Dedoimedo had this easy tutorial:

Basically, it tells you to move the file kwinrc located here:  .kde/share/config/kwinrc

If you do, next time you start X, a new file will be created.

I tried it...but it didn't work, either.

5.  Then, I read that for some Arch Linux users, that solution was pretty extreme.  According to one of them, all you have to do is opening kwinrc to look for this line:

OpenGLIsUnsafe=true

And set it to:  OpenGLIsUnsafe=false

But it turned out that the line was already set to false in the file.

6.  Finally, I tried something of my own.  I noticed that kwinrc on the damaged system was missing the line:

Backend=OpenGL

Thus, I asked the owner to add it, just to see what happened.

Who'd have thought! It worked!  :P  Now the system's effects are working again!

This is what I love of Linux.  You can solve problems if you are willing to learn and try.  You are not denied access to your system.

Busy Days...

Lately, I've been very busy with my work and personal projects.  Still, I managed to download and burn PicarOS Diego 2014 and openmamba Rolling Release 20141008 (64 bits).

Interestingly enough, the live CD of openmamba is too big to fit on a CD.  I needed a DVD for it.  The first thing I noticed was that the cute mamba logo (it resembled an "S" before) now looks like an "O".  Or was it because I was running the rolling version?  That circular new mamba rolled as soon as I booted the system!

I haven't been able to test openmamba much, but so far I'm very pleased with this little known Italian distro.  Unfortunately, the liveCD does not have much software to try.  I have to download the live DVD or install the basic CD and then download the packages I want.  Since I don't have much time, I'll try downloading the full DVD later.

PicarOS, on its part, is doing better and better.  Now they added a trashbin and a minilauncher of several applications to the desktop.  They got rid of Poisson Rouge.  The developers added a lot of interesting features to this children-oriented distro, but I'll have to try them and test them when I get more time in my hands.  As I see it, that will have to wait for a couple of months...

Boy!  So much to do and so little time!

Bye Pisi Linux World!

I learned today that Pisi Linux World and its great forum are being discontinued due to "unifying technical reasons."

So, from now on it will be its official Turkish site.  I must say I'm baffled by the decision...

Hope this is for the best.

Still, my sincere thanks to all those good people at Pisi Linux World Forum.