PCLinuxOS 2007.1 to Hit the Linux Desktop World Followed by PCLinuxOS 2008

Good news to Linux Desktop Users! Tex and Ripper Gang will offer PCLinuxOS 2007.1 soon followed by PCLinuxOS 2008. Now no more downloading of more than 400MB software after installing PCLinuxOS 2007.

PCLinuxOS 2007.1 will sport 2.6.24 kernel and latest stable packages from the repository. This release will have more drivers for the latest notebooks and desktops. The name "2007.1" does not seem fitting in the year "2008," but it is good as an update to 2007 release, and there will be a totally new 2008 version with much makeover and features.

It is due shortly, but don't ask when exactly. As they say it will be ready when it is ready. For more please read PCLinuxOS 2007.1 thread.

Back to PCLinuxOS - The Home Coming

Most of you must have read the story of "Prodigal Son." Actually I also had similar experience. Being a gadget freak I like bringing home latest notebooks and then complaining PCLinuxOS of not working well on that hardware, without realizing the colossal work going into making it rock solid and usable.

Lot of PCLinuxOS users do this only to come back to it after each distro-hopping. There are different kinds of people. Some complain and some find a way for them going to the extremes. Here is my example...

I had that base compaq presario c702 notebook which did not work well on pclinuxos 2007 for some hardware drivers. It started to work after I pulled in all the updates. In my office I had to access internet through wlan and unfortunately my broadcom wlan card did not work. Actually I never noticed it before because I was accessing internet by cable lan.

Time went by. I hopped to mandriva 2008 for a while. Every piece of hardware worked on it after a few tweaking. It is good distro, no doubt about it. But sometimes few problems showed up that never happened with PCLinuxOS. Then I though a while - what to do? I was so much nostalgic about PCLinuxOS that I sold off my latest notebook and brought home an HP notebook having only intel devices - wlan, ethernet, graphics, sound, and everything ensuring it works with PCLinuxOS. Now my notebook is an Audi - great looks, superb performance!

Moral of this True Story

Some people love pclinuxos so much that they can sell off their new hardware that does not work on pclos and get home a new machine confirming its compatibility with that great distro. Cases like this are rare as pclinuxos works fine on most of the hardware...

Plea to All those Distro Hoppers, Gripers and Grumblers

• Keep patience, look for workarounds instead of groaning.
• Thank Tex and the Ripper Gang. After all, if anything works in pclos it works the best, because it goes through much testing unforeseen on other distros.
• Or follow my path, brought home a machine that works just perfect on pclos.

OxygenOffice-2.4.1 Blues on Mandriva 2008 PowerPack

Enough Open XML and ODF battle for standards. The topic of "which is the better" apart, the bare truth is that many people have to deal with docx, xlsx and pptx files, willingly or unwillingly. Last night I got an xlsx file from my colleague at the last minute. By that time he had left for home. I was left with two options - surf the web for online Open XML converters or use that standalone OdfConverter (I extracted from one of the Novell's rpm). I choose the later with resulted in a shoddy conversion.

These incidents happen on a regular basis. Somebody told me to use OpenOffice 3 Beta. I dropped that idea after all it is in BETA. Then I hit on this OxygenOffice. Its enhancements over OpenOffice (though it is based on OOo) seemed alluring. Of all the features I liked its support for importing MS Office 2007 Open XML files to native ODF. Downloading was damn easy. The full suite was just 292 MB. The real struggle was installing. Because it did not have any setup shell script (like the one's presents in OpenOffice tar.gz files). All it had were a RPMS directory and some, may be release notes or other unusable information. It had no instruction for installation! Then I removed some unnecessary rpms and tried that old formula "rpm -Uvih *.rpm" inside that RPMS directory containing packages. It ran for sometime than asked for Java Runtime. Dear me! I had removed those Sun Java packages from my Mandy notebook (But OOo did run without those JRE). Why did it ask for JRE? Trust me I have no use of JRE, it just takes some moments to run OOo.

Anyways, I installed the Sun Java packages from Mandriva PowerPack DVD and issued that "rpm -Uvih" and it installed pretty well.

Now the real trouble. When I started OxygenOffice writer, it entered to document recover. What a hell! I never worked on any documents before, and it was just first-run. Well, I okeyed the document recovery, strangely after recovery the OxygenOffice freezed right after the splash.

Then after a little legging around I removed that .openoffice.org2 directory from my /home/user and rebooted the notebook. There was no such problem thereafter.

But this experience of OxygenOffice made me think the program is anorexic. However, it is good to use it till the big release of OpenOffice 3.

Mandriva 2008 - How to configure Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 02)

Mandriva 2008 is a big release in controversial ways. For mandy 2008 some people say it as the best release while many others deny. But I had a bad experience and I was waiting for my long beloved PCLinuxOS 2008. Why? Due to its problems in configuring Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 02) that came with my compaq notebook. But good heavens, it's all resolved and I am in no hurry for PCLinuxOS 2008. Well, it will be a candid release when it will release. For now Mandriva 2008 is the best release for me.

Problem

Let's go back to the problematic past. When I first installed Mandriva 2008 Powerpack at home I had no problem at all. It readily detected and configured my ethernet, graphics, sound and all that. The startup and shutdown also became blazing fast after shedding a little fat off installation. The real problem came at office when I had to connect either to Linkys WPA2 wlan or MTNL unsecure wlan. To my astonishment, though it shows it has bcm43xx module installed it did not move at all.

Then I tried to connect to web via: mcc>>network & internet>>setup a new network interface>>wireless, it asked for a firmware file and i pointed it to my windows driver (bcmwl5.inf) it did configured. But unfortunately it took too long to shutdown and/startup the system after installing this firmware. There the problem did not end. After each reboot I had to reconfigure the wlan.

Issue

Then I came to know from mandrivausers.org that actually support for some Broadcom wlan cards in Mandriva is not hassle-free, because the native bcm43xx driver does not work for this card but instead keeps interfering with the windows drivers (or any suitable driver that you pulled in).

Solution

Anybody who is using Mandriva 2008 and having this broadcom card should follow these steps to get their wlan card working perfectly.

1. uninstall bcm43xx-fwcutter
2. blacklist ssb and bcm43xx in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-compat
3. comment out bcm43xx in modprobe.conf
4. reboot the system
5. go to mcc>>network & internet>>setup a new network interface>>wireless
6. select bcmwl5.inf from your windows partition or from any other location
7. fill in your wireless internet access details

That's it. Now you can breath easy.

What Happened to PCLinuxOS 2008 and Red Hat Consumer Linux Desktop - Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD)?

We know Linux has enough potential to be a consumer desktop and we also know that Linux has less than 2% of desktop market share. Let's admit the truth. Linux enthusiasts may site a thousand reasons on why Linux does not sit on consumer desktops, or conversely why people are not ready to Linux even after Linux is absolutely ready.

Let me put my experience. I have been using Linux since 2000 and I am proud of it. Of course, I had undergone a phase of agony while using Linux. The problems I faced (and still facing sometimes, despite using linux for last 8 years) were related to wireless, gadgets, drivers and application software.

Everybody knows the modern linux kernel understands the system better than the aging windows xp (and vista). I have noticed PCLinuxOS 2008 manage the CPU, HDD and other devices of my notebook better than XP. But I still have to run Windows XP on another partition of my HDD. Reasons? I can't run Web CEO, Indicom Plug2Surf and Nokia GPRS internet connection on Linux. They run only on Windows. And it's an official compulsion that I have to use those software. Of course, at home I retreat to the safe abode of PCLinuxOS.

Well, at this junction I had little hope on Red Hat Global Desktop. It had made news way back in 2007. And like any other Linux Enthusiast I was happy on that news. But the latest update is that Red Hat has dropped its consumer desktop! The reason as the Red Hat spokespersons say is, "The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative. Of course, a growing number of technically savvy users and companies have discovered that today’s Linux desktop is indeed a practical alternative. Nevertheless, building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled or are run as charities."

Having said all that, now all hope is on PCLinuxOS 2008 and Mepis 8. Hope they will solve the wireless problems of my Compaq C702TU. So far I have tried Mandriva 2008.1, Ubuntu Hardy Heron and OpenSuse 11. But I could not get desired performance from my Broadcom wireless chip. But it seems PCLinuxOS 2008 will take at least a month or two to appear, and, alash! there can no guess on the release Mepis 8. May be it will appear after an year from now.

TinyMe instilled new life to my HP Deskpro, Thanks to PCLinuxOS Team

In my backyard that old HP Deskpro is still there. Decades back it came with windows 98 preinstalled. Then the time changed, so did computing. I could never get satisfactory performance out of this old box from on top of Windows 2000 or XP. I had installed GoblinX and AntiX; and it worked decently. But the latest TinyMe 2008 final really instilled life to it.

Here are the specs of my machine: It has an 8MB memory intel graphics card, onboard intel sounds, 128 MB RAM, 450 MHz PIII CPU, 10 GB HDD, Creative CD RW Drive and 14" CRT monitor. TinyMe installed in 15 minutes flat. I can't say whether it's fast, but after installation the boot up seemed quite surprising - just 50 sec.

This is fast stable version of TinyMe, a PCLinuxOS-based mini-distribution designed with approx. 200 MB that packs kernel 2.6.18.8, xorg-server 1.3 and a good selection of applications that you most frequently use in your daily computing. Besides, if you want more Synaptic is just a click away. The most pleasant experience I got from TinyMe is that it has a nice desktop environment. No other distribution can be as beautiful and responsive as TinyMe on Openbox and iDesk. I could not find any problem with the applications. Even I did some installation/uninstallation of application and some minor manual configuration, still it was felt rock solid. It is fast, sleek and beautiful! Need I say any more?

Here is the list of applications that comes with TinyMe 2008 final:

• AbiWord (Word Processor)
• Opera (Web Browser)
• Audacious (Media Player)
• GThumb (Photo Viewer)
• Asunder (CD Ripper)
• PCC (Control Center)
• Sylpheed (E-Mail Client)
• ePDFView (PDF Viewer)
• SciTE (Text Editor)

Download TinyMe

Why Linux is not popular - an alternative view

I found a very interesting blog that talks a different story about why linux is not popular desktop. While there is hue and cry about why linux userbase is mere 2% and some are blaming for lack of software and poor usability. He added one more point –
'There's one big factor in why Linux isn't popular on the desktop. Linux is free." It sounds true to me…

Here is the gist of his blog. Humans don't believe in things that come too easily or for free. Linux is having the same fate. For example, if one has brought a new computer and is getting ready to install an OS and he/she is not a techie, then he/she will most probably install Windows. Why???

Because:

• Linux is being offered for free. Good.
• He has access to pirated copies of windows. Also free. Good.
• But Windows is sold for over $300, while Linux is offered for free.

Desktop world is rampant with pirated windows copies. (And I am sure Microsoft will never take any strict action against it because piracy actually help Microsoft to rise in popularity) That's why though a user can get both windows and linux for free, he/she will turn to windows because it actually costs money but he/she is fortunate to get it for free. And there is generally belief that good things cost money.

We know that Linux is worth a lot but offered for free. But why will an Average Joe care about it. For him the deal is choosing a free product vs. a $300 product.

Please read the original blog here.

Desktop Linux should address these little annoyances

Users are right when they say linux is not ready for desktop. And they are right when they point to some rough edges of linux for it, such as: lack of device drivers, lack of good application software, problem to sync many portable devices, problem in wireless configuration, slow startup and shutdown, problem in installation/uninstallation of software, vast number of distributions and lack of uniformity among them, lack of a better desktop environment, etc...

I would like to add a small point that many others have missed out, and that is non-critical user annoyances. These annoyances actually don’t hamper computing in Linux but they do drive users away from Linux. I would request readers here that I am no way making a rant here. This blog only tries to make aware linux developers to take care of these things before pushing one release after another...

1. Windows XP is almost 7 years old but it still installs on any pc or notebook. The installation is almost smooth. After installation the users start hunting for device drivers and they always get them on the web and the job is done. Desktop Linux Distros despite improving rapidly after every release, sometimes don’t install on some PCs and Notebooks. It dies with a black screen! Of course, there are many way to land on a text terminal or change the boot options and resume installation, but why should a user care about it?

2. If you are a power user of Windows XP, you are probably aware of its event logs. After every session it dumps something to the event log, but very few general users are aware of it. Whereas in Linux most probably you will see a nautilus-debug-log.txt or xyz.core file in the /home/user directory. Some users really get scared about this. May be even after so many years linux lacks a good desktop environment or even if there are KDE and Gnome (and dozen others) they are never better integrated.

3. In Windows the situation is "either it works or it doesn’t". It’s straight forward. But Linux is full of workarounds. A user after facing some problem googles it and most probably lands on a forum. There if he/she is lucky gets a perfect solution, else a workaround. For example, if a user searches for a solution to get his/her xyz driver he gets some suggestions – do this and that and the driver will work, but it won’t deliver certain features, and so on... Who will love a workaround?

4. Desktop Linux comes with many unnecessary blots. Install Fedora 8 or 9 and you will know the situation. Make a default installation and you will see you are no way related to many those default applications. Sometimes many are just duplicates of others. But if you try to remove them you will know that you are loosing some applications that you really need. What an annoyance! Some of you know that it is because of modularity of linux packagement, but again why should a lay user care?

5. The worst annoyance of all in Linux is "rapid change". Before a component is stabilized another release comes up with another unstable version.

Why Wireless is a Mess in Linux?

While some people cried "Linux Desktop Year" as early as 5 years ago, it still lacks in many areas and it lacks badly in case of wireless configuration.

These days I am working at vikarta.com for their alwaysonvacation.com. We are a team of SEOs and content writers. SEOs need some windows based software for research and analysis. But the content team just needed an office suite, a web browser and a dictionary. In my view I had openoffice, firefox and wordnet to perfectly fit the bill. At this juncture I thought of deploying Linux for the content team but the wireless mess ruined everything.

I tried Mandriva Powerpack first on my notebook. The installation went pretty smooth and wired networks were detected automatically. But establishing wireless network was an uphill task. I struggled head on for quite long but still could not get it working properly. I have broadcom wlan card. Here I would request everyone to inform me if they find a linux distro that supports this card on the fly. No manual configuration.

First I tried with pulling the mandriva repo for latest drivers. Could not succeed. Then I installed windows drivers with ndiswrapper followed by configuration with iwconfig and ifconfig. Though it worked (not as good as it works in windows xp) like a lame the real problem was switching between wireless and wired interfaces.

Having told the whole story it is really difficult of individual hardware vendors (of wlan cards) to have supply a unified wireless driver stack owing to be multiplicity of distributions and consistency in installation of a particular driver across various releases of a particular distribution. I think the big complaint with migration to Linux is and has always been wireless compatibility.

Some people say Linux has better support for Intel wireless cards, but everybody knows Broadcom rules the race. May be the situation will improve with PCLinuxOS 2008 Full official release or Mepis 7 or Mandriva 2009 but that's a long way to go....

Break from PCLinuxOS to Test Mandriva 2008

We had PCLinuxOS 2007 final sometime in May 2007. It’s almost a year but the good thing is that the release may be anytime soon!

This uncertain delay has led many desktop users to try suitable alternatives such as Mepis, Mint and Mandriva. I have always liked PCLinuxOS but this time, I had it enough. I had to install PCLinuxOS 2007 on several of my friends’ notebooks and desktops on their request. Though installation of pclos on desktops was pretty smooth, it was really problematic while I tried to install on the latest notebooks. There were hiccups related mainly to device drivers and power management. And I did not like to tell every user to do a complete upgradation of their pclos notebook after installation and do some manual configuration each time. Therefore, I tried my hands on Mandriva 2008 Free DVD and it really came to me as a savior. It stood by me in every sorts of hardware across a variety of laptops and desktops.

Mandriva 2008 Free DVD includes a boatload of software alongwith the leading desktop environments such as: KDE 3.5.8 and Gnome 2.20, kernel 2.6.22 and Xorg 7.2.

Installation of Mandy 2008 was like a breeze. Whether I chose KDE or Gnome Desktop it took less than 20 minutes for a complete installation. In Mandy 2008 I noticed some great improvements enviable to many desktop wannabes. They are:

• Fast Booting: After removing some blots such as beagle, tracker, compiz, some unnecessary applications and disabling some system services, I found it boot in 40 secs even on base notebook and desktop models.
• Faster OpenOffice: OO.o in Mandriva 2008 seemed me the fastest of all. Just 4 secs and its up and running!
• Great Package Management: Trimming down an installation has been my passion. I just can't stand those blots, eye-candies and unnecessary apps. So after every installation on my system or on my friends’ systems I get on to uninstallation. Here Mandriva proved to be really rock solid whereas many desktop linux will just break if you do some extreme trimming of your distro (because of the modularity and interdependence between various packages).

I have no complaints against Mandriva 2008 wherever I have installed it. It has been stable, responsive and productive till now.