My successful PCLinuxOS 2010 Remaster

PCLInuxOS 2010 has been released and is once again shinning at its best. Mylivecd is the new customized format of previous mklivecd and I wanted to give it a spin to make a remaster of my installed system. Though many report failure with remastering I managed to do it on my second attempt.

Here are the basic rules I followed.

1 : Installed all the needed packages and removed unwanted.

2 : Installed the latest Linux Kernel  2.6.33.3 from synaptic.

3: Fully upgraded my system

4 : Removed the old Kernel.

5 : Installed Wallpapers & Icon themes of my choice.

6 : Ran Bleachbit both as a user and root to clean all unwanted files and junk

7 : Reboot time 

8 : Opened  /etc/fstab as root in leafpad through pcmanfm & commented this line as

 # tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 

 and then rebooted so tempfs would not mount.

9 :  Removed --lzma from remasterme as root in leafpad

mylivecd --md5sum --nodir ^/tmp --lzma --bootloader iso pclinuxos-2010.iso

--lzma makes remastering process painfully slow on my system so I always take it out but Texstar recommends to have it so you can keep it .

10 : Executed command " umount -a " as root 

11 : Executed command " remasterme " as root and the remastering process started and made a new ISO for me.

12 : Burned the newly made ISO  to a blank DVD at 2 X speed and later confirmed the md5sum of the burned DVD with the original ISO, both were exact match .

13 : First attempt on booting the system as Live failed but on the safe boot it successfully got booted on my system.

14 : The screen resolution was not proper and by running the command 

[root@localhost saleem]# nvidia-xconfig   got it fixed for me. Previously it was fixed at 640x480 while the required one is 1024x786 for my monitor but the above command fixed everything. I logged out and upon re login it was proper resolution. 

15 : Headed for the installation process and that went smooth also with no major issues.

Mylivecd has some minor issues which are being fixed but it still works fine as it did for me. I am sure others might have also succeeded in making working remasters now. For further reading please refer to this thread  on PCLinuxOS Forum .

Leafpad made my Linux Life much easier !

I very clearly remember one incident in the early days of my linux based computing life when I wanted to have multimedia repository enabled for my Mepis Linux and one of my online friend asked me to open sources.list as root with Vim on shell and uncomment the line for debian multimedia. It took me a long time to understand what he wanted me to do and still at the end I messed up my sources list . I will not blame him for why he asked me to go through all those incomprehensible steps just to do something which was very minor and routine for him but not for me because I was a Windows rescuer who was exploring something totally different.

But I don`t remember when and how I discovered leafpad , but definitely things became very easy and simple once I got familiar with this simple text editor. Currently , no matter if its KDE , Gnome , LXDE or E17 the first thing I want to grab from repositories is leafpad . As I often stress upon , people like me , those who don`t want to face Windows related problems and still seek an easy and basic but linux based secure home and office computing will prefer easy to handle packages than technically smart and more complex ones.

I love leafpad and I will be more than happy if  a seasoned linux user at any IRC Help room  asks a newbie to uncomment his/her sources.list in leafpad than Vim :)

Thanks for reading my posts , I am off to bed now , good day to all of you ! 

Why Should I use Unity Linux ?

There is a huge list of different types of linux distributions available today with choice to choose any one according to one`s need . Some distributions purely suit home users and others do not at all . Every linux distribution presents variety of problems times and again . To overcome these problems every linux distribution developers offer some sort of support offered through forums,documentations and IRC help/support rooms.Those projects which offer any kind of support to the end users get more loyal users and survive for longer times as compared to those who do not bother to offer any help.

The success of a support system offered by a linux project depends on how well  organized and systematically maintained it is and then delivered to the end users. It  also depends on how best targeted it is according to the users demands and knowledge level . Another key point is the easy access of users to such help system and the quick response of the support team to emerging issues with easy and adoptable solutions.

Communications skills of the support team is of the highest importance because home users are not linux experts and gurus and they easily get discouraged if the support team treats them unprofessionally or ridicule them for matters which may be of little value for the developers but of great importance for home users.

Saying all this I will leave aside the good and bad things of Unity Linux at this moment and talk about its help and support system briefly. Unity Linux is a relatively new project and still at RC level of its development . But it has established a growing number of users because of its solid, stable  & systematically maintained  help & support system . Unity team members and developers try to help users at their level of knowledge and understanding without posing as "I know everything" .

As I said above if a linux development team follows simple rule of caring for their products users and does it in a methodical way there is no doubt that such project grows and have a long life. Unity Linux team has realized this core concept and if they stick to it I see this project as a potential Best Desktop Linux Distribution (DLD ) for home users of all times.