PCLINUX 2007

It has been over a month now that I have been using PCLINUXOS 2007 on my machine. My daughter has been running TR4, but, I left here there until I was comfortable with the new version. It has been running solidly on this machine without a glitch, almost.

The only problem I had was with the Palm M130. The application JPILOT would not make a connection to /dev/ttyUSB1 or /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/pilot no matter what I did. I checked out the forums at PCLINUXOS, but, everyone who were posting didn't have a fix at that time. Two days ago I did a google search on the problem along with the error message and I found a message on the UBUNTU forum where a person had the same problem, and the solution! The fix was to change the preferences serial rate for both jpilot and the PALM itself to 57600. Shut down jpilot and then you then initiate the sync on the palm first and then press sync on jpilot. The fix worked and all of my hardware is working. As long as you start the sync on the Pilot first jpilot will work properly.

I also found a note in the forums about SYNAPTIC and go into settings, repositories and add 'KDE' to the sections. Basically the sections should contain 'main extra nonfree kde'. I did this and KlamAV was there and I installed it on my system. I use KlamAV as I do bring work home and I like to scan the documents on a regular basis.

My next job this weekend is to update my daughter's machine and then my wife's machine will be upgraded. My wife also wants me to install SCRIBUS on her machine so she can play with it. The only application in Windows on her machine is MSPUBLISHER and she is looking for a good replacement for that application so she can be running everything from Linux.

It has been quiet

The nice part about Linux is that it just runs. No worrying about viruses, trojans or other nasties getting in the system like I do with my Windows laptop for work. Not that I don't patch and secure my Linux boxes, I do keep them up-to-date. I do get people trying to hack in to my Linux FTP server, but, they have not got passed the security to-date. I keep the Linux virus scanner up-to-date so I can scan the USB memory sticks that I use on the Windows machine. It does not hurt to have multiple ways of verifying that your files are clean.

My wife is now starting to use Scribus more and more and she is starting to like the package. There is a learning curve there and we needed to 'unlearn' what we do in MS Publisher. She is now starting to push the machine and is doing things that I wasn't sure how to do in Linux. She is comfortable enough to explore and play knowing that she won't totally hose her system like she can do in Windows.

Now that Mandriva 2007 is out I will let it 'mature' a bit more before seeing about upgrading my wife's machine. I figure a couple of months will allow Mandriva to find and fix any of the quirks before I upgrade.