Why I don't Like Microsoft and Windows

I'm not one of those Linux fan boys who loves to hate Microsoft and its bloated, over-rated and over-priced OS.... okay, I lied, I'm one of those Linux fan boys who loves to hate Microsoft and its bloated, over-rated and over-priced OS. Why do I hate  Microsoft and Windows? For one, because of Microsoft's shitty business practices, and for another because their OS sucks the bag.

Why Arch Is Not For Me... Or Maybe It Is?

Okay, time to eat humble pie. I recently wrote two blogs; one was about how I thought the Evo/Lution-AIS "distro", AKA Architect, was not user-friendly, and the other one was about the flood of invective I received over it. I was wrong. My opinions were not based on proper research. First, it's not a distro, and second, it's way more user-friendly than I first thought. 

I have removed to offending blogs for the sake of unity in the Linux community and for the sake of fairness to the dev who worked hard to make Arch easier to install and for the sake of those who love and defend it. Now to the main subject of this blog.

Netrunner Linux: Two Versions One Vision

Early Wednesday morning, I couldn't sleep past 06:00 hrs, so I decided I'd give Netrunner a try, a Linux distro based on Manjaro Linux, which I had downloaded the previous evening. Netrunner has two versions based on two different distros. One is the stable version, based on Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, the other is a rolling distribution based on Manjaro 0.8.10 "Ascella", with KDE. In short, Netrunner offers one desktop, KDE, in two different editions... two versions, one vision. 

Elementary My Dear Watson

The first thing you notice when booting Elementary OS, called Freya, version 0.3 Beta 1, is how pretty it is. It's a beautiful piece of work, with a light gray and whitish modern interface and an eye-pleasing bitmap for the background, called "Blueprint".

You have a dock at the bottom which you can configure, but not extensively. It works very well and can be resized and made to look white, dark, or transparent. You can easily remove icons by right-clicking them and un-checking them to make them disappear. If you make a mistake and make the wrong one disappear, you can always use the menu, on the top left of the screen, to restore that icon by dragging it back on the dock. The doc also acts as a task manager, with a pointer below the icons to show which program is sunning. All-in-all, well thought out design.

Evo/Lution Linux: Another Try

N.B. This post has been completely re-edited. 02-Nov-2014.

About one hour ago, I decided give Evo/Lution-AIS (Evo) another try; after all, some of my assumptions about it had been wrong from the get-go, so I owed that piece of software another go.

I plugged in my USB thumb drive, re-started my system and booted into Evo. I followed the instructions and installed a bare-bones KDE desktop. Once I got that done, I re-booted into a brand new pure Arch install and into KDE.

Then, as per a tip from a gentleman named pjhalsi, I added a repo, typed in 'sudo pacman -Syy" and then installed yaourt, which permitted me to download Octopi, which permitted me to install a fully functional KDE desktop. So far I'm loving it. Stay tuned, because I'm going to give Arch some time to see how it works out for me. I get the feeling I'll be keeping this install.

My thanks to the Evo team.

grgaud
Peace

Brother DCP-7030 Driver Configuration

The following instructions are meant for Arch Linux and derivatives, but I've had success with them with various Ubuntu flavours, such as Gnome, Unity, Kubuntu & Xubuntu.
 

Installation
Install the correct printer driver for the Brother DCP-7030, as well as the scanner driver, whose file name is brscan3, from the Arch User Repository, or whatever your distro's repositories are. If you can't find these in your distro's repositories, then go to the Brother support website and manually download the aforementioned drivers.

Next, blacklist the usblp module in order to make the printer visible in web-interface. Do this by creating a file named blacklist-usblp.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/  Write the following in the file:

# Blacklist for Brother DCP-7030 USB printer
blacklist usblp

Next, add a rule to udev, by going to /etc/udev/rules.d and creating a file titled 10-usbprinter.rules, then write in, or copy/paste the following, as you see it here:

# udev rule for Brother DCP-7030 USB printer
ATTR{idVendor}=="04f9", ATTR{idProduct}=="01ea", MODE:="0664", GROUP:="lp", ENV{libsane_matched}:="yes"

Install the CUPS package for printing and sane package for scanning from official repositories, whichever they are. Install GUI for scanning if necessary – xsane or simple scan, for example. Now,
enable service cupsd.service or cups.socket by typing the following in a terminal:

sudo systemctl cups.service (or cups.socket)

Then, if your software can't use the scanner, open a terminal and type in the command lsusb and note the output. It could be something like the following:

Bus 006 Device 003: ID 04f9:01ea Brother Industries, Ltd DCP-7030

Then type in the following at the command line:

sudo chmod a+w /dev/bus/usb/006/003

(Note that “bus” and “device” from the last command output, are the equivalent to the “bus” and “usb” sequence in the command you issue to give write permission to users.)

Go to http://localhost:631 and setup your printer. All settings there is very simple, the main thing you must check - paper size set to "A4". Make sure you check for the exact printer driver, the DCP-7030; it should be there. If not, you can always use DCP-7020, or DCP-7025. Another way is by using the Gnome Printer utility.

Trouble shooting
The unit will print, but will not scan when plugged into a USB3 port, so use a USB2 port for the printer, or disable USB3 by blacklisting the xhci_hcd module, if necessary; although I don't know why someone would waste a USB3 port on a printer, when USB2 is quite sufficient for printing duties.

I can't print anything from LibreOffice
If you can print a test page from http://localhost:631, in the CUPS interface in your web browser, but can't print anything from LibreOffice, try to install a2ps, which stands for "any to post script".

Acknowledgments
For all of the above, I am grateful to the Arch Linux wiki. I happened to check this wiki out in the hopes of solving a long-time problem with this printer's scanner, and this solution worked, not only for Manjaro, but also for various Ubuntu flavours. I think it will also work on pretty much any distro.

I have only slightly modified the instructions; the body of this how-to is basically the same. I simply wanted to share this with those who use other distros and have not had any luck installing a Brother printer/copier/scanner.

For those who would like to see for themselves what's on the Arch Linux wiki page, the following URL will take them directly there:

<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Brother_DCP-7030>

23-Oct-2014

Manjaro Cinnamon, Part Deux

Well, here we are with more comments on the Manjaro Cinnamon edition, a few days after install. It's a very nice modern interface. If you like the ol' school look, which I do, it can do that too. It uses modern controls, such as Adwaita, which I dislike,, except in the Dark mode which is nice. Of course, you can install a slew of other controls from places like gnome-look.org.

As I write this, Firefox is open, with three tabs, and the gnome system monitor is telling me the system is using 1.1 gigabytes of memory; not exactly a lightweight, but still a bit less than Windows 7, 8, or 8.1, which typically ran 2 to 3 hundred megabytes more.

Confessions Of A Distro Hopper

Picture a meeting where several people are seated in a circle, in silence. One man gets up and says "Hi, my name is GR Gaudreau, and I'm a distro hopper." The people seated around him clap and say "Hi!" You've seen seen the first meeting of DHA: Distro Hopper's Anonymous, and the speaker is yours truly .

Yes, I'm a distro Hopper. Every time I see a new distro in the Linux world, I feel a strong urge to try it out. The problem is that for years, I have not been able to settle on one distro. I'd get the itch whenever I'd visit DistroWatch, or SoftPedia Linux, and I'd feel the thirst coming, the relentless urge to install a new distro.

Manjaro Cinnamon 0.8.10

I started using Manjaro Cinnamon 0.8.10, this morning, October 18^th 2014. The installation was a breeze using Manjaro's installer. It resembles the one Ubuntu uses, with a few minor differences. One of the things I don't like about it, is that it doesn't ID my location automatically. No biggie. On the other hand, it has an option which permits me to see my password when I'm keying it in. I like that. And the installation was fast.

I have two 120 Gig SSDs in my box on which I run Cinnamon and KDE. The install for both DEs went flawlessly, which is what I am accustomed to with every Manjaro desktop I tried. Manjaro has supported GPT and EFI since 0.8.8, if I'm not mistaken, so using EFI boot and GPT on my SSDs was no problem. Their wiki explains GPT & EFI, and how and why to use them on install, so I won't go into it here.

About Manjaro Linux

Some of you will have noticed that the subject of this blog has changed dramatically; it used to be about religion, specifically Christianity, but I've lost much of my interest in this subject in the past few months, and have decided to change the focus of this blog. Having said that, I know turn my attention to the primary subject, i.e., Manjaro Linux.

This Linux distribution (distro from now on) originated with three young men, as far as I know: Roland Singer, Guillaume Benoit & Philip Müller. These gentlemen, I believe, all hail from Europe, though I welcome being corrected if I'm wrong.