How to fix bash: warning: setlocale: LC_COLLATE: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8): No such file or directory

 It is a very common error faced on Arch Linx , here are easy steps to fix it 

Check Available Locales

locale -a

Generate the Locale

• Edit /etc/locale.gen:

  sudo geany /etc/locale.gen

• Uncomment the line:

  en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

• Save the file and run command

  sudo locale-gen

---

3. Set System-Wide Locale

• Edit /etc/locale.conf:

  sudo geany /etc/locale.conf

• Add the following (adjust if needed):

  LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
  LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
  LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

• Save the file.

---

4. Check User-Specific Configuration

Ensure no conflicting locale settings exist in your shell config files (e.g., ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile). Remove or comment out lines like:

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

---

5. Apply Changes

• Log out and log back in, or reboot:

  reboot

   

  Example .profile file  

  
  

  # ~/.profile: Executed by Bourne-compatible login shells
  
  # Add user-specific binaries to PATH
  if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
      PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
  fi
  
  # Set default editor (change to your preference)
  export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct
  export EDITOR=geany
  export BROWSER=firefox
  export VISUAL=nano
  
  # Set pager with colors
  export PAGER="less -R"
  
  # For Xorg: Start your window manager/DE from login shell
  if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
      exec startx
  fi
  
  # Source bashrc if using bash (optional)
  # [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ] && . "$HOME/.bashrc"
  
  export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
  export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
  

  
  

  set its permissions to 

  
  

  chmod 644 ~/.profile  # -rw-r--r-- in linux terminal 

  
  

The Linux Setup posted my interview recently

Recently Steven Ovadia from About My Linux Rig sent me an email to fill a questionnaire for his The Linux Setup.

Here is the link to the interview  The Linux Setup - SaleemKhan, Physician . 

 They are collecting a good collection of interviews from all walks of life across the world. Hope everybody likes their efforts .

10 easy steps to convert Manjaro Linux installation back to native Arch Linux

After my previous review of Manjaro Linux Manjaro KDE! An unpromised Release with promised breakages !! things have changed a lot on Manjaro side and it is a much mature project with a huge users numbers and many more release and different versions. The project is much stable and is getting better everyday. I installed the MATE version and used it for a couple of days and it was fun but then I decided to get back the base to native Arch Linux keeping the skeleton designed by Manjaro team as it is.

Here is how I did it and it worked for me perfectly.

1 . Before doing anything else just change the pacman.config settings as below, you can copy/paste these settings if you like to

#

# /etc/pacman.conf

#

#

# GENERAL OPTIONS

#

[options]

SigLevel = Never

LocalFileSigLevel = Optional

HoldPkg = pacman glibc

SyncFirst = pacman

Architecture = auto

Color

CheckSpace

ILoveCandy

#

# REPOSITORIES

#

[core]

Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[extra]

Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

[community]

Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

2 . Change pacman mirrors to these, again you can copy/paste these settings if you like to keep these mirrors for you

# Arch Linux repository mirrorlist

Server = http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

Server = http://archlinux.polymorf.fr/$repo/os/$arch

Server = http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

3. Open /etc/ with a file manager as root ( I did it as thunar root ) . Manually change these files contents and make one file back as given below

a ) /etc/manjaro-release.bak

b) pacman-mirrors.conf.bak

c) /etc/os-release : change conetnts to these

NAME="Arch Linux"

ID=arch

PRETTY_NAME="Arch Linux"

ANSI_COLOR="0;36"

HOME_URL="https://www.archlinux.org/"

SUPPORT_URL="https://bbs.archlinux.org/"

BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.archlinux.org/"

d) /etc/issue : change conetnts to these

change conetnts to these

Arch Linux \r (\l)

e ) /etc/lsb-release : change conetnts to these

LSB_VERSION=1.4

DISTRIB_ID=Arch

DISTRIB_RELEASE=rolling

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Arch Linux"

4 . Do # pacman -Syu and deal with the dpendencies if any arise accordingly , I did not meet any so I did a full upgrade of all the packages without any issue.

5 . Install Arch Linux stock kernel and its headers files

# pacman -Sy linux linux-headers

You have to deal with any dependencies if arise manually yourself.

6 . Install nvidia and its dependencies if any if you are on Nvidia Graphic card like me. Again you would know how to deal with the dependencies if you get any issues.

# pacman -Sy nvidia nvidia-utils

7. Search manually for all Manjaro related packages and remove them.

8. Do # pacman -Syu once again and you will get warnings that some packages installed are newer than the available on mirrors/repositories , you can reinstall them or live with them , I personally removed all those packages and reinstalled them from Arch Linux repositories.

9. You might end up with your mouse freezing up , I tried to know the reason but could not find one but did find a fix which works

a ) Installing the tlp package

b ) $ sudo tlp usb

10 . Remove all Manjaro related wallpapers and eye-candy effects , icons,buttons and you are ready to reboot and enjoy your Manjaro Linux fully converted back to native Arch Linux.

How to build obmenu-generator for Debian Linux

 obmenu-generator generates a menu with icons for openbox

These are the steps that need to be followed:

1) Dependencies: perl-linux-desktopfiles and perl-data-dump

A) How to download, compile and install perl-linux-desktopfiles:

$ wget http://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/T/TR/TRIZEN/DesktopFiles-0.08.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf DesktopFiles-0.08.tar.gz
$ cd Linux-DesktopFiles-0.08/
$ perl Build.PL
$ ./Build
$ ./Build test
$ sudo ./Build install

B) How to download and install perl-data-dump:

$ wget http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/community/os/i686/perl-data-dump-1.22-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
$ sudo tar -Jxvf perl-data-dump-1.22-1-any.pkg.tar.xz -C / --exclude=.PKGINFO --exclude=.MTREE

Then you need to run the following command to find obmenu-generator Data:

$ sudo cp -av /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/Data /usr/local/share/perl/5.14.2/

If the command fails repeat it after installing obmenu-generator.

2) obmenu-generator

How to download, build and install the deb obmenu-generator:

$ mkdir obmenu-generator
$ cd obmenu-generator/
$ mkdir DEBIAN
$ nano DEBIAN/control

Copy paste these contents

Package: obmenu-generator
Version: 1.0
Section: custom
Priority: optional
Architecture: all
Essential: no
Installed-Size: 1375
Maintainer: Daniel Șuteu
Description: Menus generator for OpenBox

Save and close it with Ctrl + O and Ctrl + X

$ mkdir -p usr/bin/
$ wget -nv http://trizen.googlecode.com/files/obmenu-generator
$ chmod +x obmenu-generator
$ mv obmenu-generator usr/bin/
$ cd ..
$ dpkg-deb -b obmenu-generator
$ sudo dpkg -i obmenu-generator.deb
$ dpkg -l obmenu-generator
$ obmenu-generator

For generating a static menu, use:
   obmenu-generator -i -s

or dynamic menu:
   obmenu-generator -i -p

and reconfigure the Openbox, by executing:
       openbox --reconfigure

Reincarnation of Kitty the Pisi | ex-Pardus Linux is Pisi Linux now !

I remember it . I have a very vivid memory of my first hand experience with first version of Pardus Linux . It was fun and excitement to use a unique operating system with a package manager named Pisi.

Since I have always liked linux distributions which are different , not used by common home users Pardus Linux was my favourite along with Arch Linux both on my desktop and laptop for years . I am still using Arch Linux . Pardus Linux was “ forced to die” due to some unknown reasons ( Turkish government stopped funding the project ? ) and a new Pardus with debian under the hood was created . Pisi and the uniqueness behind this distribution was left to rot and a sweet dream died for many like me.

Recently some guys ( I really don`t know who they are) Anka-Team a voluntary developers team of Pisi Linux ( thanks to erdinc gultekin for the info ) lead by project leader Serdar Soytetir ( thanks to Richard de Bruin for the info ) , ex-Pardus fans who sticked to the Pisi dream and had the potential to rise the kitty from ashes created a new distribution with the name of Pisi Linux . More detail information about Pisi Linux and the development team can be found on this link from Pisi Linux WORLD . Worth to mention here is that although Pisi Linux main website is offered in Turkish language only but Pisi Linux WORLD is English language based and contains all the news, updates , download links and forum for Pisi Linux .

There were news about this new project and even Distrowatch added this distribution to their database but then something of mysterious nature happened and this neonate distribution was condemned , treated as a step child and the project was blamed to be immature.

 Addendum:

I want to understand the reason why Pisi Linux has been treated as a foster and step child since its day of inception . We daily see so many forks of forks distributions with nothing pure and original , all such forks just add eye candy to an existing distribution and re-invent the same wheel again and again . Pisi Linux is uunique and original . It does not arise or depend on any other distribution . Everything on Pisi Linux  is made from scratch up . Even its predecessor Pardus Linux was not a forked distribution. So why is Pisi Linux received in such an un-welcome way? Just because  someone labeled this project as immature all the hard work and efforts to run this project has become baseless??

Please comment and let me know the real side of story if it looks like I am missing something . Ok I read about it and I think it was some kind of flame war lit by some unfortunate misunderstandings,so let`s forget it  and move on with how Pisi Linux is serving me so well this time.
 

Out of curiosity and having an association with Pisi through ex-Pardus I kept on following this project to see their progress since they sounded to be resilient and persistent despite the initial unfortunate incidents happened to their project . Honestly they were sort of slow and it looked like this distribution will suffer an infantile demise . But recently I noticed some new developmental events going on at this project when they released beta version to their first release but I was still skeptical to try out their work . Last night I noticed they have come up with an RC version . This was the time to mess up with the reincarnated kitty so I downloaded and installed it on my desktop and it was a wonderful experience .

I am not going to reveal what is my experience with Pisi Linux , I think I will share something that works so perfect . I just installed openbox , the default packages available on repositories were installed in few minutes and from KDM I could log in to an openbox session with tint2 and conky running . Openbox installation was just perfect with openbox menu set already , so it was almost an auto magical task .

I want others to test and know for themselves . But I have no reluctance to say that I have no regrets to try it and I am going to use this new Pisi Linux since it really impressed me totally. There are going to be issues since its still an infant project but why not test and see what are these people trying to do in this project ??

Manjaro KDE! An unpromised Release with promised breakages !!

Today I tested the newly released Manjaro 0.8.0 KDE i686 . I know this distro for quite some time now : the last time I used it that was their  XFCE version. Then it was quite acceptable and even that there were problems it was still working.

But this release is a total disaster as far as KDE version is concerned : they have released their classic XFCE version once again and GNOME also.

Since I tested KDE I will mention the disasters I faced on this version.

It is a live DVD : Boots fine and you see a plain KDE Desktop.

I kept looking for their installer and contrary to their XFCE version they did not bother to place an icon on desktop so one can launch the installer : I kept searching for it in K Menu and after good five minutes I finally managed to locate the installer.

About the installer : It is the same old ArchBang Installer which these few newly forked arch based distros got adopted and works well on others but totally fails on Manjaro.

All the steps on installer apparently went smooth till GRUB2 installation : I opted to default i.e MBR and GRUB2 failed to install : I retried and this time I opted to install to the partition where I was trying to install Manjaro and as expected GRUB2 failed once again. So feeling fully pissed off I opted not to install GRUB2 and planned to boot it with my Arch Linux .

Once I had manually entered Manjaro kernel enteries into my Arch Linux GRUB2 I finally managed to boot Manjaro and more disasters were waiting ahead .

KDE being fully installed should present  KDM to login to Manjaro but there was no KDM : just plain text based login prompt : with grim heart I issued my username and password and weirdly I could see my password visible . I issued startx and X tried to load but crashed in few moments leaving me at login prompt again .

I looked for nvidia drivers and they were already installed : looked for inittab to check if KDM was enabled there and to my amazement there is no inittab file present !

One more missing file offered by Archbang installer normally was rc.conf file so I had no idea what was autoset for my system by Manjaro during installation.

After these apparently visible disasters I lost my all excitement to probe anymore into this distro and I promptly formatted it without any hesitation.

In my humble opinion and with my brief but futile experience with Manjaro KDE I have no regrets to say that it is a total waste of bandwidth and time. Other than a polished new  website and  being accepted by DistroWatch added to its distributions list it seems to be poorly tested and rushed for release only .

This project was quiet for many months and suddenly it comes to surface with a bright new website : three different types of isos and lots of apparent attraction but on real test it failed like a hobbyist distro. And to reassure I had perfectly burned media : no bad download : no wrong md5sums etc.

Contrary to Manjaro , Bridge Linux , Nosonja and ArchbBang all work out of box and I have never faced any issues with any of these distros while installing them on numerous machines.

If Manjaro team wants to be more successful they have to release at least some test releases for public testing and bug fixing before they commit to a new release with broken wings as this  0.8.0 release. 

Best wishes to Manjaro, see you next time when you can at least walk on your feet .

Regards

Fbpanel Configuration file for Arch Linux

 Recently I installed Openbox on Arch Linux : everyone has choice to use any panel or no panel : some like tint2 : I personally like Fbpanel .

So I spent some time to create a working Fbpanel settings for Arch Linux openbox session and I will put it here for quick reference .

Please find the following location in your file manager in super user mode (root )

~/.config/fbpanel

This directory contains a file named as "default" : that is our target file to configure to that we can run a neat and tidy fbpanel on Arch Linux .

This file contains default settings for an fbpanel : you need to modify it so it can work for your Arch Linux Openbox session . Open it with a text editor e.g geany

Just copy paste these conents into this file removing the default settings first 



########################################
## fbpanel configuration file         ##
########################################
Global {
    edge = bottom
    allign = center
    margin = 0
    widthtype = percent
    width = 100
    height = 25
    transparent = true
    tintcolor = #000000
    alpha = 200
    setdocktype = true
    autohide = false
    heightWhenHidden = 0
    roundcorners = false
    setpartialstrut = true
    setlayer = false
    layer = above
    roundcornersradius = 0
    maxelemheight = 0
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
        size = 2
    }
}
plugin {
    type = menu
    expand = false
    padding = 0
    config {
        image = ~/.config/fbpanel/arch.png
        systemmenu {
        }
        separator {
        }
    menu { 
        name = Computer
        icon = computer
           
        item {
        name = Terminal
        icon = terminal
        action = lxterminal
        }
            item {
                name = Lock Display
                icon = gnome-lockscreen
                action = slimlock
            }
            separator {
            }
            item {
                name = Reboot
                icon = gnome-session-reboot
                action = sudo reboot
            }
            item {
                name = Shutdown
                icon = gnome-session-halt
                action = sudo shutdown -h 0
            }
            item {
                name = logout
                icon = gnome-session-logout
                action = openbox --exit
            }
        }
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
        size = 12
    }
}
Plugin {
type = launchbar
config {
button {
icon = file-manager
tooltip = File Manager
action = pcmanfm
}
button {
icon = terminal
tooltip = Terminal
action = lxterminal
}
button {
icon = web-browser
tooltip = Web Browser
action = firefox
}
}
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
        size = 15
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = wincmd
    config {
        icon = gnome-fs-desktop
        tooltip = Show Desktop
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
        size = 15
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = pager
    config {
        showwallpaper = true
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = taskbar
    expand = true
    config {
        ShowIconified = true
        ShowMapped    = true
        ShowAllDesks  = false
        tooltips = true
        IconsOnly = false
        MaxTaskWidth = 150
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
       size = 15
    }
}
plugin {
    type = tray
    expand = false
    padding = 0
    config {
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
        size = 10
    }
}
plugin {
    type = volumebutton
}
# Digital Clock
Plugin {
        type = dclock
        expand = false
        padding = 0
        config {
        ShowSeconds = false
        HoursView = 12
        TooltipFmt = %A %x
        Color = #1068a0
        ShowCalendar = true
    }
}
Plugin {
    type = space
    config {
        size = 10
}
}
separator {
}
Plugin {
type = launchbar
config {
button {
image = ~/.config/fbpanel/exit.png
action = /usr/bin/oblogout
}

# 'icons' plugin lets you customize window icons.
# these changes apply to entire desktop
Plugin {
    type = icons
    config {
        DefaultIcon = /usr/share/fbpanel/images/default.xpm
        application {
            icon = gnome-terminal
            ClassName = XTerm
        }
        application {
            icon = gnome-terminal
            ClassName = mlterm
        }
        application {
            icon = gnome-terminal
            ClassName = URxvt
        }
        application {
            icon = gnome-emacs
            ClassName = Emacs
        }
        application {
            icon = mozilla-firefox
            ClassName = Firefox-bin
        }
        application {
            icon = mozilla-firefox
            ClassName = Firefox
        }
    }
}
---------------------------------------------------

Install "oblogout" from AUR so you can use the Exit button on your panel .The Exit button 

icon is given on this post : place it in 

 ~/.config/fbpanel 

direcotry along with "arch.png"(arch.png will work for your menu button set for Arch Linux ) so your fbpanel picks them according to the settings in "default" file pasted above .

You are all set to use Fbpanel on your openbox session now .



Two Rolling Release Distributions

PCLinuxOS .92

I am using Arch Linux and PCLinuxOS for past many years with PCLinuxOS dating back to V.92 and Arch Linux since early 2010 . I also used Sabayon Linux , ALT Linux , Chakra , Fuduntu and Unity Linux for different periods of times in past but never settled down with any of these for a daily usage due to many different reasons ranging from instability to facing many problems at different levels.

I prefer using a Rolling-Release Distribution and when I searched on google I found out that Arch Linux and PCLinuxOS are the commonly used Rolling-Release Distributions.

 In recent years LinuX Mint Debian Edition ( LMDE) , antiX and
siduction ( Debian based Rolling ReleaseDistributions ) have gained much popularity as well and I tried them at different stages but did not use them for much longer time periods . Worth mentioning here is semplice ( sid with openbox ) which I still like but have not tested it well enough as yet .

 Out of my perosnal experience I find both the Arch Linux and PCLinuxOS as one of the best Rolling-Release Distributions till now : they are stable, reliable,easy to configure and use and work on almost all common hardware.

I use them on daily basis and promote them to my friends , family members and to those who want to try a Linux Distribtution as a replacement for Windows. Of course I urge them to use PCLinuxOS at first and later switch to Arch Linux when they are more experienced and comfortable in handling routine Linux computing issues in command line.

PCLinuxOS Desktop Screenshot

My freshly cooked PCLinuxOS Desktop sporting KDE 4.8.3 with all the latest software packages .

Arch Linux Openbox Installation & Configuration

Smaller the better , better things come in smaller packs but it takes lot of efforts to make smaller delicate items .

I am an Arch Linux user for many years now and the simplicity of Arch has always fascinated me .But this is simplicity needs basic core knowledge and unless you subject yourself to manual editing of important files and make yourself familiar with commands in terminal you will face lot more difficulties than you expect . Plainly speaking Arch Linux is not a point and click Linux , it demands you to know what you are doing and why .

Openbox obsessed me recently and I refused to install and use available forks of Arch Linux with preconfigured openbox since it goes against the will to submit yourself to Arch`s simplicity as I mentioned above . Yes, I did consult these Arch Linux + Openbox forks to see what is hidden underneath the beautifully crafted desktops on these distributions and I admit that I learned a lot.

Next place is #archlinux@freenode , lot of devoted people are always there to help and I gained more core knowledge about openbox on arch Linux . Worth mentioning here are Arch Wiki and forum , they are loaded with information.

So after almost 2 weeks struggle and efforts I managed to install and configure my openbox and I want to put all those steps here stepwise .

1 . You are expected to know how to install and configure Arch Linux core installation or else this post is useless for you .
2 . You can install openbox with a simple pacman command and for more help you can consult arch wiki .
3. I will just mention the main steps I used to configure my openbox , there are many options , you can choose whatever suits your liking and requirements.

a) Panel : I use lxpanel , I find it easy to configure . You can use tint2 , fbpanel and even xfce4-panel

b) Slim : It is simple and it solved my issue of mounting all the partitions on my system . You can simply use startx , lxdm , lightdm , gdm-old or any other DM you like .

c) .xinitrc file

It should have these contents

#!/bin/sh

export BROWSER=firefox

export DE=openbox

exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch openbox-session

d) openbox autostart file

It should have these contents

(sleep 3 && /usr/bin/nm-applet --sm-disable) &

lxpanel &

conky -q &

volumeicon -b &

nitrogen --restore &

openbox-menu &

xcompmgr -CcfF &

e) openbox environment file

# Set system-wide environment variables here for Openbox

# User-specific variables should be placed in $HOME/.config/openbox/environment

# To set your language for displaying messages and time/date formats, use the following:

#LANG=en_CA.UTF8

# To set your keyboard layout, you need to modify your X config:

# http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+set+keyboard+layout+xorg

f ) “ /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/55-myconf.pkla “ file

[Storage Permissions]

Identity=unix-group:storage

Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-eject;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-detach;org.freedesktop.udisks.luks-unlock;org.freedesktop.udisks.inhibit-polling;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-set-spindown;org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal

ResultAny=yes

ResultActive=yes

ResultInactive=yes

Once you have all these settings as mentioned above your Arch Linux openbox will work without any issues. The rest of tweaking of the system is mainly cosmetic and you can do it according to your taste and needs.

This post shows the core of everything that works for me, it is not a replacement for Arch Wiki or forum at all , but it works for me and I am sure it will work for everyone .

Best of luck and welcome to Arch Linux + Openbox !

Arch Linux " A nightmare for "'n00bs"' , Well, not anymore !

There was a time when I was desperate to install Arch Linux like many other home users and I kept failing in doing so because I apparently lacked the core knowledge of "DIY" and "KISS" needed for Arch Linux . There was "godane" and others who tried to teach me how to get over this nightmare of installing an Arch Linux based system but I surely failed every time. It literally took me four years to overcome this nightmare of my computing life. Ever since then I have managed to install it not less than hundreds of times on many computers for my friends , colleagues and in my office.

Then came the time of Chakra , ArchBang Linux , CTKArch and KahelOS , distributions which made installing Arch Linux peanuts for everyone . But Chakra was the only one Arch forked distribution that ever impressed me.

I often ask myself : where were these talented people running relatively new but tantalizingly impressive projects like Nosonja and Bridge Linux when I was dying and striving to install an Arch Linux based system?

I was already in deep love with Bridge Linux when today I came to know about this new beauty called Nosonja !

I will not try to advertise these distributions here in my post , rather I wish that those who want to taste something real and still want to be a pure Arch Linux user must explore these two distributions, I assure them they will not be disappointed at all .

I don`t need to get these two installed because I am already running Arch Linux on my computers but since I am so impressed by both these projects in true sense that I am going to install both of these distributions on my computer to enjoy the great work of both these amazing projects.  

Bridge Linux | A Linux Distribution for New Archers

 Bridge Linux is a stable , easy and nicely created new Linux Distribution for those who want to install Arch easily without the "scary" Arch text based installer.

Here is the DOWNLOAD PAGE for all the available version of Arch Linux Distribution .

There is an upcoming Bridge Linux LXDE version  which is expected to be released to the public in near future. I am sure it is going to be as exciting as the XFCE , GNOME and KDE versions.

My PCLinuxOS Gnome3 Desktop

This is my newly cooked PCLinuxOS Gnome3 Desktop I built on latest released Zen-Mini x64 ISO.

It is working like a charm and if I can manage I will try to remaster it and upload an ISO somewhere .

An eye on simpleLinux GNU/Linux

I am closely following the development of this interesting project from Malaysia known as simpleLinux GNU/Linux  , it has interesting news on its development page about their forthcoming release of the version known as SAKURA which is based on Tinycore . The news are exciting and I am patiently waiting what they will release soon as they are promising .

How to Change Mirror for PCLinuxOS LO manager from default to a faster one

PCLinuxOS uses LO manager script for downloading libreoffice directly from download.documentfoundation.org and then installs it for you . Somehow the default mirror for libreoffice has a snail walk like speed and it becomes painful to install libreoffice from it .


I followed these steps to change the mirror to a faster one for me .

1 ) Open the script file called lomanager located in /usr/bin as a superuser mode in a text editor

2 ) Located line 93 and change it from default to this one as shown here

Default line 93

httpsource="http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/3.4.3/rpm/"$sysarchdir"/"  # http-source

Change it to

httpsource="http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/tdf/libreoffice/stable/3.4.3/rpm/"$sysarchdir"/"  # http-source

Save , exit and reload LO manager.

You can choose mirror that works faster for you as in my case ftp.heanet.ie always works perfect for me . 

Multi-mixed repositories on Fuduntu

Running multiple repositories on a distribution is sometimes problematic and ends up in conflicts regarding different packages . But for those packages which are missing from Fuduntu`s native repositories due to legal matters you can enable third party repositories at your own risk and expertise level of how to handle problems that might arise at some stage due to the third part packages.

ATrpms is one such repository that I enabled to get packages I needed and missing from Fuduntu`s native repositories.

This is what I did :

1 ) Opened /etc/yum.conf file as super-user in a text editor ( leafpad : my favourite ! ) and copied these lines into it

• [atrpms]
  name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
  baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/f$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
  gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
  gpgcheck=1

So it looks like as below

[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum/$basearch/$releasever
keepcache=0
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
exactarch=1
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1
plugins=1
installonly_limit=3
color=never

#  This is the default, if you make this bigger yum won't see if the metadata
# is newer on the remote and so you'll "gain" the bandwidth of not having to
# download the new metadata and "pay" for it by yum not having correct
# information.
#  It is esp. important, to have correct metadata, for distributions like
# Fedora which don't keep old packages around. If you don't like this checking
# interupting your command line usage, it's much better to have something
# manually check the metadata once an hour (yum-updatesd will do this).
# metadata_expire=90m

# PUT YOUR REPOS HERE OR IN separate files named file.repo
# in /etc/yum.repos.d

[atrpms]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/f$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1

Save and exit

2 )

Executed this command to refresh packages list

saleem@home-pc ~ $ sudo yum check-update

3 ) Installed the packages I needed as

saleem@home-pc ~ $ sudo yum install rar libdvdcss libdvdcss2

4 ) Disabled  ATrpms from Yumex which is very easy by unchecking it from the list .

It is important to keep in mind that if you have rpmfusion repository enabled also then the packages from it and ATrpms will conflict with each other and you will  have to manually diable rpmfusion repository for time being . It is also important not to keep ATrpms repository enabled all the times but only when a package is needed from this repository . 

All Gstreamer Plugins on Fuduntu

I like Totem Movie Player using GStreamer for playing all kind of media files . It is a bit hectic to install all totem`s plugins one by one so I prefer installing them with one single command .

Fuduntu does not offer rpm fusion repositories added by default so I enabled both free and non-free repositories from rpmfusion and installed all gstreamer plugins with one single command as below

1) To enable rpmfusion I followed these links

http://fedorasolved.org/post-install-solutions/yum-config

http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

2 ) For Installing all gstreamer plugins I ran this command

saleem@home-pc ~ $ su -c "yum install @sound-and-video gst\*{bad,ras}"

This installed all plugins I needed . Totem plays almost all media formats without any problems.

Fuduntu is seeking freedom?

I never liked Ubuntu and Fedora . Not because they are bad distributions but due to a personal reason that both of them normally force you to reinstall after every new release unless you try their upgrade option which failed for me on both distributions on many occasions . I like to install and configure a distribution according to my needs and then keep upgrading the packages on routine basis and never worry about reinstallation unless some major disaster strikes my system and kills everything .

My choice of installation is commonly known as "rolling-release" and Arch Linux is the best example of a such a concept .

Fuduntu has recently joined the rolling-release distributions list and I was tempted to install it .

Things are smooth on Fuduntu except for the nvidia free driver which did not work for my GT240 Nvidia card as usual so I had to use vesa .

For Nvidia non-free driver I followed these steps

1 : su --- > root

2 : yum update & yum install akmod-nvidia

3 : open file manager as super-user and go to /etc/X11

there you will find 2 files

a )  xorg.conf

b ) nvidia.xorg.conf

Open the nvidia.xorg.conf file with a text editor and copy all its contents into file xorg.conf replacing the contents of file xorg.conf

Add following lines into the  xorg.conf and now it should look as below

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Videocard0"
    Driver      "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Delete the file nvidia.xorg.conf and reboot , and nvidia non-free driver will work fine for you as it it for me . I think I am going to use Fuduntu for a while and see how better it gets as a rolling-release distribution with time as the Fuduntu development team promises. 

nVIDIA Driver issue on ALT Linux Sisyphus latest upgrades

With the release of ALT Linux 6.0 lot of updates are pouring into the Sisyphus and this is the time when X issues arise most commonly .

I did usual upgrade and upon reboot I noticed an error and X crashed .

================ WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING ================
This server has a video driver ABI version of 7.0 that this
driver does not officially support.  Please check
http://www.nvidia.com/ for driver updates or downgrade to an X
server with a supported driver ABI.
=================================================================
(EE) NVIDIA: Use the -ignoreABI option to override this check.
(II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
(II) Unloading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
(EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module requirement mismatch, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

Upon google search I found a simple fix by adding the following section to     /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "IgnoreABI" "True"
EndSection

Upon reboot things were back to normal, X worked fine and I could login back to KDE desktop through KDM without any issues .

Unity Linux | You did not die !

I wrote a post about Unity Linux " Why Should I use Unity Linux ? " back in April 2010 when this distribution was in its prime trying to stand upon its feet . I will not go into the history of the inception of this project because everybody knows about it . 

Things were exciting and promising and the Unity team was in high spirits willing to contribute as much as they could to this new distribution .This project was backed up by good team members pouring in from various former PCLinuxOS derived sister distributions .  Many good projects came to surface with remasters based upon Unity Linux core . Two well known were HUMANity (e17) and Synergy (KDE4).

I am a big fan of remastering my installed system and "mklivecd" on Unity is a perfect tool for doing that . I made numerous successful remasters based on Unity Linux with KDE4 . Smart package manager is one of my favourite package manager after Arch`s Linux pacman and Unity Linux was my favourite distribution for offering Smart package manager.

As a home user I was quite happy with Unity Linux not caring or worrying lot about behind the scene events going on with this project because it was doing well for my daily home and office computing life . But then there are some unfortunate days for every linux project and something started going terribly wrong with Unity Linux.There were frequent system breakages , missing dependencies and rare updates to various packages . I was still clinging to this distribution in hope that things will get smooth but by the end of 2010 I was totally disappointed with Unity Linux and I gave it up and my attention got drifted towards Arch Linux . But I used to visit their website and #unitylinux@freenode.net off and on to see what is going on .Things were mostly quiet and kind of dormant.

Last month I was at their IRC room out of usual curiosity when I was told that things were getting better . Since I was constantly in touch with Unity Linux team I knew many of the developers left the project due to reasons I am not aware of and things were closer to that Unity Linux might have died before reaching any peak . So the news that things were getting better and then a newsletter from one of the developer "devnet" that they are restructuring Unity Linux and going to use Mandriva repositories ware very encouraging . 

It was time that I wanted to give another try to this distribution and instead of trying "cli" ISO I grabbed one of the  HUMANity ( e17 ) full release ISO and installed it . HUMANity ( e17 ) is one of the sole surviving and one of the faithful sister project based on Unity Linux maintained by OnlyHuman . He is a big fan of Unity Linux and e17 and eversince the inception of Unity Linux I always saw him present at #unitylinux@freenode.net and on Unity Linux users mailing list . I tested few of the HUMANity ( e17 ) releases in past and they were professionally crafted with everything working out of the box . But since I am a KDE user I did not use HUMANity ( e17 ) on my computer on regular basis .

Installation went smooth this time without any problems . I reloaded smart and first installed all the available updates and later installed KDE 4 and completely removed e17 . Everything worked perfectly  and I was greeted by a nice though an older version ( Platform Version 4.6.4 (4.6.4) ) of KDE4 but without any issues as I once faced on Unity Linux almost 9 months back . So gladly the news about the change were correct and evident from a stable and responsive system I have from my currently Unity Linux installed . 

I was planning to write this post earlier today when I read a news about Unity Linux on DistroWatch.com " Development Release: Unity Linux 2011 Alpha 2 " this evening . So things are actually happening at Unity Linux once again and in a positive direction .

I do not know what unfortunate events happened to Unity Linux in the background and why it was deserted by those who were once so enthusiastic about it . Neither will I probe into that because its none of my business as an end user. I also do not know who are the people who have taken the responsibility on their shoulders not to allow this project drown like many other good projects into obscurity . Sure I would love to know about these saviors of Unity Linux. 

There are many good projects out there and one of my favourite is Arch Linux. It was a sweet surprise for me to know that Unity Linux development team have decided to adopt " Arch-Linux-Like approach to things with future releases ". This is a great step ahead towards greater achievements in future in my humble opinion with the fact that Unity Linux will use Mandriva repositories in future. This will allow the development team to spend more time on making a stable core than spending time on packaging and releasing a weak core as I saw in past releases . This step is also important because I was told that since the number of current developers are literally not enough to maintain the packaging so it was a compulsion to adopt this strategy .

I really did not want a " Youth Demise " to be Unity Linux`s fate and I was sad seeing Unity Linux dying and decaying slowly . But with current steps taken by the Unity Linux team once again reassure me that this project will survive longer and will grow with every passing day. I wish best of luck to Unity Team and request others to contribute to this project in whatever way they can .