How to Fix the "A Weird Start Job Is Running..." Delay on Pardus 2.0

I decided to upgrade my Pardus 2.0 system.  After a long time downloading and installing the updates, I booted my system into the new Pardus with its 3.16 kernel.

Everything went fine, except for one thing: while booting, I noticed a message I had never seen before.  It was something like:

A start job is running for dev-disk-by (a long string of numbers here,

followed by the time count: x/1min30sec)

Fortunately, it actually lasted the one minute with 30 seconds it announced, but that made my boot time longer than 2 minutes!

Thanks to this Arch Linux forum, I could find the answer.  Basically, I had to edit the etc/fstab file to make it accurately point to my swap partition.  In my case, /dev/sda2.  

That took care of the issue and now my Pardus system boots normally.

Oh, and the upgrade seems to have fixed Steam.  Now I can play Violett again!  :P

Time for openmamba!!!

I had been wanting to install openmamba for some time now, but I did not want to do anything funny to my computers during the most stressing part of the year.  Right now, I got some free time on my hands and thus proceeded with my openmamba downloads and installation.  I decided to try the rolling releases.  Why?  Because I am more a kind of fixed release guy and wanted to do something new.  I downloaded first the 64 bit version (live CD) and tested it on my laptop.  It worked great but, due to software constraints, I couldn't really test the system.

Then, I went for the 32 bit live DVD (KDE).  This one was pretty complete, but I didn't want to install a 32 bit system on my 64 bit capable laptop so I downloaded the 64 bit live DVD.

However, I made my mind and tried the 32 bit DVD on my desktop, which uses that architecture.  My desktop is quite moody, so if the Italian mamba could get along with it, I could install it on my desktop instead.

Contrary to what I expected given the awkward configuration of my desktop, openmamba ran almost flawlessly.  All I had to do was enter alsamixer to disable "automute" and thus have my soundcard to work (that's and old trick I have to use anytime I don't hear anything when I try a distro.)

Desktop effects ran out of the box.  So did my wired connection and browser videos. 
Since openmamba is a fully independent distro, its software variety is pretty limited, but it does not lack functionality. I must say that a couple of my favorite applications are missing on the DVD (kolourpaint firefox, and showfoto), but at least the first two are available through Apper, its application manager.  Firefox, though, is pretty dated: version 17.

There seems to be a glitch in the plasma notifications when you download new apps.  It does not give you much information and presents you empty graphs or download speeds of zero.

So far, things seem to be going fine.  I've also applied several updates (as a good rolling distro, it shows updates very frequently) and nothing bad has happened.  Apparently, the bite of this mamba is not lethal!

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.