Happy New Year!!!

Before 2016 ends, I want to wish all of you a joyful and prosperous year 2017.  Thanks for everything!!!

MX-16: Persistence and Frugality could Bite...

I made a MX-16 (64 bit) bootable USB pendrive to test it.

MX gets better and better!  Since I was swamped with work at the time of the development, I could not help much with testing or translating.

Unfortunately, the translation in my language has evident errors and needs more polishing, but that is not a show stopper, is it?

MX has actually gone a long way from the way its first release (MX-14) was.  I am amazed at the growing collection of handy tools its new MX comes with.  The devs are indeed working hard to simplify tasks without dumbing the distro down.  I do appreciate that!

The first big change I noticed was the GRUB Menu.  Before, I had to press F2 to change the language and the timezone.  Thus, I pressed F2 when I saw the menu... but nothing happened.  I went to advanced settings but there was nothing there about locales.

Thus, I booted the distro in English.  Checked the manual and it did say that you had to press F2.  I guess there was a change that the documentation team could not have ready for the release.  Or maybe I did something wrong.

To try again, I restarted the laptop.  No, F2 didn't do anything. Wondering what to do next, I realized there was another booting option for personalizing the boot up.  I tried that one and bingo!  There I found the options to change language and time zones.

But then, I was asked about persistence and frugality.

I had a vague idea of what persistence is, but frugal installs were to me the same as an amargasaurus: I had no idea what they were!  :P

Still, the options looked quite tempting.  Trying to be witty, I chose the options that looked less dangerous to me.  After all, I was not going to install anything yet.

The distro booted and I played with it to my heart's content.  After that, I turned off the laptop and removed the pendrive.

This guy could have helped me!

My surprise was when I turned the laptop on again.  As soon as GRUB2 loaded, I was welcomed by a loud beeping and the bootloader took a long time to start.  That happened every time I turned the machine on, but the beeping was shortened by pressing F2 or enter, apparently.  Booting with the pendrive did not cause the obnoxious sound.

After repairing GRUB, messing with its files, reinstalling it, googling for possible solutions, and forum checking to no avail, I decided to boot the pendrive and hitting "e" to edit the booting options.  Then, I removed the part of persistence.

That took care of the problem.  Boy!  What a relief! :P

Next time, I'll do my homework before acting cocky.  After all, I am an eternal newbie in the world of Linux!

By the way, for those of you who wish to know more about persistence and frugal installs, here you have some information:

1-  Persistence (courtesy of Pendrivelinux)

2-  Frugal installs (courtesy of Puppy Linux)

Metamorphosis with MX-16!!

MX-16 was released some days ago.  I just downloaded the 64-bit version and right now I am downloading the 32 bit one.  Then, I'll make the live USBs from the ISOs.

What's different this time?  MX comes with a lot of custom tools:

MX Original Apps to make common tasks easier

Live

Create Live USB
Remaster tool
Snapshot

Maintenance

Boot repair
Flash manager
Menu editor
User manager

Setup

Broadcom manager
Codecs installer
Default look
Panel orientation
Select sound
System sounds
Welcome

Software

Apt notifier
Check Apt GPG
Debian Backports installer
Package installer
Repo manager
Test Repo installer

Utilities

Find shares
Switch user
USB unmounter

One-click Extras with Package Installer

Children: Preschool, Primary, etc.
Graphics: ImageMagik, Inkscape, etc.
Network: Skype, Dropbox, etc.
Office: GnuCash, Adobe Reader, Calibre, etc.
System: KDE, LXDE, MATE, etc.
Audio: Audacity, DeaDBeeF, Pithos, etc.
Video: DVDStyler, MPlayer, OpenShot, etc

Advanced LiveUSB

Many new Live boot options
Run in Live mode in 10 languages
Easy Live-remaster to make a custom LiveUSB or your own version to distribute as an ISO
Three forms of Live persistence (i.e., what files are kept on the LiveUSB)
Easy "frugal" installation option
Simple creation of custom snapshots (as easy as: add/remove packages, change settings, take a snapshot)
Automatic check of LiveUSB file systems for integrity
Live kernel installer
Live usb maker

I am eager to install and test this new release!

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!

Open Source Is not an Unknown Concept Anymore

I remember when, several years ago, Mechatotoro and I started to use Libre Office and moved to .odt for all our word processing needs.  Some colleagues did try to force Microsoft file formats on us in spite of the university's approval of ODF.

But slowly, more people have come to understand that open source is here to stay and that closed source is neither better nor safer. At the end, most of the complaints by closed-source defenders can be reduced to the following:

1- They are used to X and don't want to learn anything new.

2- They want to use open source but are locked into closed source.

3- They think closed source is better because X has more features. [Which, by the way, most people don't know about or don't really care for because they don't use such features and probably never will.]

4- They had a negative past experience with open source and did not care to update their knowledge.

5- They don't really know what they are talking about but pretend they do. 

6- They simply prefer closed source as a personal choice.

In spite of all that, I've noticed that more students know about ODF and some of them are using Libre Office themselves nowadays.

An interesting case happened a few days ago: a student who wants me to direct her thesis is interested in using Twine, an open source tool for writing interactive texts.

The world is changing.  Many just don't really see how it is doing it.

Microsoft does not Need Windows Anymore? Interesting idea...

Eric Knorr of Infoworld published an article in which he claims that Microsoft, moving its focus to the cloud, does not need Windows any longer.  Apart of trying to portray Microsoft as an open company (which it clearly is not), that idea makes me think of several interesting questions:

1.  If Microsoft does not need Windows anymore, why is it pushing Windows 10 so aggressively and in many cases using deceitful means?

2.  If Microsoft does not need Windows anymore, then users don't, either.  That's some happy news!  :D  Users should ditch that platform that its producer does not need nowadays. 

3.  If Windows is about 10 percent of Microsoft's revenue, there must be something hidden behind the aggressive Windows 10 push.  Microsoft wants something worth much more than that 10 percent.  What could that be?  :P

4.  Why would someone want to paint Microsoft as an open company that does not need its flagship product?

5.  If Microsoft does not need Windows any longer, does that mean that this time it will actually produce something innovative instead of simply buying popular software?

I guess the problem with Surface Pro 3 and the market share decrease of Windows 10 last month might be related to this idea of painting Microsoft as a problem-free company.

Three Concepts Many Tech Journalists don't Seem to Understand

When I read articles about technology, I notice that journalists seem to confuse some concepts, take others for granted or are plainly biased about them.  These three seem to be the most common examples: 


1.  Computer malware

Whenever they write about an Apple virus or a Linux one, they are very specific about the OS.  However, when it is a Windows problem, journalists usually call it "PC" or "computer" malware.  Why not calling it what it really is, a Windows-related issue? This complaint is not new; although it has been repeated over and over, these tech journalists don't seem to learn.


2.  Linux vs commercial software

Without getting into the GNU/Linux naming debate, it seems that many journalists make the distinction between Linux and commercial software. Does that mean Linux is not commercial software?  There is nothing in free software preventing it from being commercial. In fact, many businesses are carrying out their commercial activities thanks to Linux.  Why don't these journalists also say "restricted" or "limited" software to refer to proprietary software, just to be fair?


3.  Fragmentation

I've read this word a lot of times in tech articles when writers are talking about Linux.  However, isn't Windows "fragmented" as well?  How many versions of Windows 7, 8, and 10 are there?  What about MS Office?  Is Windows 10, with its versions Home, Pro, Enterprise, Enterprise LTSB, Education, and mobile not fragmented by the same principle? Who can defend the idea that MS Office 2016 with its multiple versions:

• Microsoft Office Home & Student
• Microsoft Office Home & Business
• Microsoft Office Standard
• Microsoft Office Professional
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus

does not represent fragmentation?  Why don't these tech writers complain about the unnecessary differences and confusion that so many versions cause to the consumer?  The many versions of Linux have never caused me confusion: I call that "variety"!  :P

I really wish tech journalists were a bit less biased (or at least more precise) whenever they publish their articles.  Maybe I'm asking for too much.

Are there any other frequent misconceptions in tech articles I missed?  Feel free to tell me in your comments.  Thanks!