The ERACC Web Log

This press release is to announce that for the month of July 2010 ERA Computers & Consulting (ERACC) is following the idiomatic phrase, “Put your money where your mouth is!” when it comes to our Linux PC sales. What do we mean? Read on.

For every PC purchased from us in July 2010 with any Linux distribution preinstalled ERACC will donate 5% of the sale to the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) project of your choice. As with most such offers there are caveats. These are:

• The PC must be ordered and paid for within the month of July 2010.
• The PC must be configured with at least the minimal configuration to have a working PC (case, power supply, motherboard, cpu, ram, hard drive, video adapter and operating system). You can choose to use your existing monitor and input devices.
• The PC must be preloaded by ERACC with a Linux distribution.
• Multi-boot systems configured with Linux and one or more additional operating systems do qualify.
• The 5% does include all hardware, labor and additional software purchased on a single order.
• The 5% does not include shipping fees and taxes on a sale.
• The PC must be kept past the date it can be returned for a refund.
• We only ship our systems to locations in the USA, Canada and Mexico.

That is it. Figure it up, purchase of a $500(US) PC will generate $25 for your favorite FOSS project. So, if you are in the market for a new PC with Linux preloaded then July 2010 is a good month to get that PC from ERACC and help out an open source project of your choice. You can get started by filling out the form for a quote on our shopping site. Then when you check out, be sure to indicate in the comments area the FOSS project you want to sponsor.

For full disclosure about orders from ERACC please read our Quote Addendum: ERACC Quote Addendum (PDF)

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Edit Fri Aug 27 17:58:12 UTC 2010: Fix the URL to the quote form to point to our new form.

We are proud to announce that here at ERA Computers & Consulting (ERACC) we have researched the parts needed to build Mini ITX, Tiny PC, systems and are offering a quote option on our sales site. Each of these Tiny PC systems is built to end-user specification. We build these with or without a hard drive and with or without an operating system. The only operating systems we will install on these are all Linux. If you want something other than Linux then we will build the Tiny PC with an empty hard drive for self-install.

What are typical uses for such a system?

• Point of Sale Station
• Diskless Workstation (Network Bootup)
• Controller for Manufacturing System
• Dedicated System for Statistics Gathering
• Extremely Small Footprint Desktop PC
• Extremely Small Footprint Server
• Use Your Imagination …

A quote costs you nothing, so please look over the options on the sales page and let us quote you a Tiny PC from ERACC.

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Edit Fri Aug 27 17:58:12 UTC 2010: Fix the URL to the quote form to point to our new form.

Will this “Linux on the cloud” thing with Google, et al take wing and soar like an Eagle or is it just another Dodo Bird, destined for the dustbin of time? For general personal use I think it is going to be a Dodo … or at least be rare, like a California Condor.

I like having control over my “stuff”, it is one of my defining traits. Having control over my total computing experience is one of the reasons I gravitate toward FOSS and Linux. I can decide what I want to do with my own digital life and do not have to answer to any DRM maven or follow some TOS/TOU for my personal system usage. I have a full-sized desktop tower system custom built by my own hands using commodity parts. It has a large monitor for my aging, 50+ year old eyes. It runs whatever FOSS operating system I choose to run (For now that is Mandriva Linux). I have a used Compaq laptop that originally came with some other operating system when I bought it off of a client. That laptop is now also running Mandriva Linux. The old Dell PC beside my desk is now a Linux firewall / router for my SOHO LAN. If I need to access a document on my SOHO PC from some other location I have the ability to do so using remote access over the internet from my laptop through my own firewall that I control. Or I can carry said docs on a USB flash drive with my laptop and access them that way. See a trend here?

On the other hand, the tablet PC systems I see so far are limited to control by some folks other than myself. You see, for now these are closed consumer devices that do not allow me to install or choose my own operating system and only work best when connected to “the cloud”. The tablets by Apple come with all the restrictions that come with any Apple system, only worse in this case. The tablets from Google are at least supposed to use an open source operating system. But still, Google’s dedication to “cloud computing” puts their tablet in a questionable light as far as control over “my stuff” is concerned. At least with a laptop, notebook or netbook PC I can still have a local disk installed with my operating system of choice, a complete set of productivity applications installed and full control over my own data. No access to the ‘net? That is no problem with a device with local storage where I can keep my data and work on it with locally installed applications.

I am not an “average PC user” by any stretch of the imagination but I am likely not much different from Mr. or Mrs. Average User when it comes to control of personal data and computer usage. The idea that I would store my “stuff” on a “cloud” somewhere, a “cloud” under someone else’s control, gives me the heebie-jeebies. After all, the social networks like Facebook are basically “cloud” resources. We have seen how such sites have problems respecting an end-user’s privacy and rights. This could happen with any “cloud” based service. There is no magic online name that will keep a service from ever exploiting end-user’s stuff. We should not ask for governments to step in either. That is just asking for worse remote control over our “stuff” than what the entrepreneurs of the “cloud” have already. What do we do? I recommend strictly limiting use of publicly accessible cloud resources and continuing to rely on one’s own resources to keep up with one’s own data.

While “cloud” resources like Google Docs are an interesting idea and useful in some sense, I do not intend to trust them with my important data. In actuality I would only use them under protest if a client insisted on it. I can see a use for setting up a personal “cloud” since I have basically done so by giving myself remote access to my SOHO systems. I can see the benefit to a company setting up a private “cloud” for sharing documents and data company-wide and/or with clients. I do not see a big benefit to public clouds harking back to the days of the mainframe where everyone used a “dumb terminal” that only had access to data when connected to the mainframe. That is where I see tablet computing heading and I am not interested in that.

What I will continue to do is keep using a complete, full-sized desktop PC at my SOHO and carry a laptop or notebook or netbook for use when I am out and about. I suspect the majority of PC end-users will want to do the same. Feel free to share your thoughts on “cloud computing” or point out where I have it wrong in a comment below.

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This article has been bounding and jumping around in the nether regions of my mind for quite a while now. It decided today that it needs to be set free.

Everyone of us has heard or read some form of the old phrase, “You get what you pay for!”. The gist of this phrase is basically if something is “free” or low cost it is probably worth nothing or very little. However, is this true when applied to Free Open Source Software (FOSS) and Linux? Looking at my usage of both I would have to say a resounding, “No!”.

As an advocate for using FOSS in general and Linux in particular I have pondered this apparent conundrum for a long time. With FOSS and Linux I get “free” software and it is worth quite a lot to me in terms of usability and function. Frankly, both would be worth quite a lot to anyone who used them. The fact that the software is free of a monetary cost in most cases does not make it worthless.

You see, one also “pays” for something with time, effort and energy. Each of us has a limited life-span. The time we choose to “spend” on anything is gone forever. No matter how much we may desire it we cannot get that time back. Therefore our most precious commodity is our personal time. I have taken the time, effort and energy to familiarize myself with FOSS and Linux, so I have “paid” for it in those ways. The more time, effort and energy I apply the more I get out of FOSS and Linux. At this point I am very comfortable with Linux on my desktop and FOSS for my work and play.

I also spent time, effort and energy learning about Microsoft products, IBM OS/2 (now eComStation) and SCO Unix systems. In all of those cases I had to spend money as well. Basically I had to “double invest” in those products. Why do I say “double invest”? Well, I also had to spend time, effort and energy to earn the money that I spent on these products that I then had to spend more time, effort and energy to learn. With FOSS and Linux I only have to invest once, not twice.

Now we come to a corporate reason to switch to FOSS and Linux. One which many Pro-Microsoft FUD spreaders dismiss out of hand. A corporation with several dozens to thousands of Microsoft desktop systems has to also spend money as well as time (more money), effort (more money) and energy (more money) to get up to speed on new, likely expensive, closed source software and the hardware for same in the case of Microsoft Windows 7. With FOSS and Linux these same corporations have the option to bring all their support in-house and only spend time, effort and energy to get fired up on FOSS and Linux. The mythical idea that IT managers want a “throat to choke” when things go wrong is a red herring here. If one wants a choke-able throat at hand what better one than in-house support? Some people on staff that have a clue about installing, using and fixing FOSS and Linux is the better choice than some people working for some other company at the other end of a phone number.

Some may ask, “What about those stock holders in a company? Won’t their dividends suffer in a switch that is possibly as disruptive as a switch to FOSS and Linux on the corporate desktop?” Sure, in the short term, a corporation may spend less to stay with proprietary, costly, closed source software and keep dividends up for stock holders. But anyone with the ability to think ahead and plan for long term results can see that down the road switching to in-house support using FOSS and Linux will mean significant savings for a corporation in the long term. It could also mean more dividends for stock holders, those people that Microsoft FUD mongers try to point to as blockades for moving off of Microsoft. Any company that I hold stock in should be thinking in the long term and should be switching to FOSS and Linux.

So, what will it be for you? Will you keep paying twice for your software in both money (earned with your time) and personal time (more precious than money) for learning? Or will you choose to switch to FOSS and Linux on your desktop and only “pay” for the software once? I will just keep paying once, thank you.

Need a new computer with Linux? Get one from ERACC with your choice of Linux distribution already installed and ready to use! Or get one from Dell, system76, ZaReason, or find a local system builder near you.

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Edit Sun Jun 20 14:17:10 CDT 2010: Fix URLs and edit comments for same in the last paragraph.

The short answer: Updates are worthless if one does not apply them.

Once again I find myself cleaning malware off of a home user’s Microsoft based notebook PC. Once again, while it has anti-virus software installed it was infected by a “drive-by attack” from a web page. It was infected with the Antispyware Soft fake anti-malware nag and FUD software. The installed Norton Antivirus, which is up to date, did nothing to stop this attack and was then disabled after the malware got on the system. What happened?

As I type this article the notebook PC’s Microsoft system is downloading and applying updates. Many updates. At least a couple of years of updates. Maybe more than that. The IE browser was pre-IE8 and was not patched with security updates even then. The Firefox browser, which is set as the default, was also not up to date. If the system had not been infected and given into the care of my company to clean up it would likely never see another software update applied. Even though the system was set to download and apply updates automatically, the scheduled time was set for 3:00 AM. A time when this notebook PC owned by an older lady will never be on.

Unfortunately, on consumer desktop and notebook PC systems we in the IT community that services this market often find that software updates are not applied. This includes all software updates, not just those that apply to security flaws in software. It seems that in general people with home computers fall into these categories:

• Ignorant that updates are needed to protect their PC from malware and fix known bugs in the software. These people never apply updates even if notices are popping up to inform them of updates. If the PC is infected they may be blissfully unaware they are using an infected PC.
• Aware that updates are needed but lackadaisical about applying them. These folk put off updates for many reasons, but mainly because it is inconvenient to apply updates.
• Aware that updates are needed and apply them regularly.
• Absolutely fanatical about making sure updates are applied as soon as they are available.

It appears from my experience that the majority of non-technical end-users who end up with infected systems fall into the first category. The second category is a smaller group that have just been lucky to not yet have an infected PC. These two categories of users are almost all Microsoft operating system users. The latter two categories are the small group of users that are more technical and/or security conscious. The more security conscious but non-technical are usually those who have had to deal with a prior PC infection. The latter two categories rarely or never see an infection. The Open Source community of Linux users is generally more technical at this point and thus more likely to take updates seriously.

The main problem as I see it is one of education. A lack of training that emphasizes the importance of getting and applying software updates as soon as possible. Ignorance rather than sloth. There is no government required training course or license to use a PC as there is to drive a car. But I am not calling for government regulation because most government regulations are already too invasive and burdensome. The world needs less government and more personal responsibility, not more government oversight. The answer does not lie in some government regulation.

What can we do about this problem? I can think of at least two.

• Those of us who sell to consumers PC systems with popular operating systems installed could take the time to explain to our customers the importance of software updates. We can make that part of the sale (Are you listening Dell? HP? Best Buy? WalMart?) instead of just “selling” Microsoft, Apple or Linux based PC systems and leaving the end-user ignorant. Instead of selling anti-malware as the answer to all malware woes we can be honest and admit that no software is able to make a PC perfectly safe (especially not Microsoft’s operating systems). Then emphasize the importance of getting and installing software updates as they become available. Inform the customer that security is a process, including an awareness of the need for security updates, not a product. Sure, there are still those consumer end-users who will not “get it” and will still not apply updates. But more people being made aware of the importance of software updates will mean more people are likely to take updates seriously and apply them.
• Automate all updates by default in software on systems expected to be purchased and/or used by the average consumer. Even major updates like XP Service Pack 3 (do not change the original license terms thus requiring end-user agreement, Microsoft, and you can do this too). Then setting such automated updates to apply at some time when the computer is likely to be on. Perhaps default scheduling of the updates to start after the system has been on for half an hour instead of some fixed time in the wee hours of the morning when most home PC systems are off. With FOSS systems that use online software repositories this would mean almost all the software would be updated. The exceptions would be software that the user got outside the repositories. Yes, make this the default but leave options for the user to schedule updates or disable updates altogether. The user that has no clue will be a bit more protected by this proactive approach. The user that already is aware of the need for security processes will be able to handle this just fine.

Oh yes, if an automatic update that applies every update is selected we can be sure there will occasionally be hiccups in the process. The end-user should be informed of this probability up front. Not unpleasantly surprised after the fact.

If any of you have some interesting ideas about making average end-users aware of the importance of applying updates please feel free to post a comment. Comments that average end-users are all “morons” are unwelcome. Try to be a bit more thoughtful than that.

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I am unashamedly an advocate for Open Source software. I run a small business that offers custom built, inexpensive computers with Open Source software preinstalled. I urge my clients to move to Open Source software whenever it makes sense for them to do so. This includes full systems such as Linux distributions and cross-platform software such as OpenOffice.org Office Suite. However, recently I have been disappointed by a test install of OpenOffice.org for a charitable organization client of ours.

You see, this client is trying to find ways to reduce costs. One method of cost reduction I always recommend is to evaluate free, Open Source software as replacement for expensive, proprietary, Closed Source software. This client, like many others stuck in the proprietary software upgrade loop, is going to have to move off of Microsoft XP Professional sometime before 2014 when it will no longer be supported. Their computers will almost all have to be replaced to be able to run Windows 7 well if they decide to stick with Microsoft. Of course I am asking them to evaluate Open Source, and they are. One of the decision makers has been running a Linux distribution on his new home PC with a VirtualBox install of Microsoft Vista for about two months now. He volunteered to do this so he could be well informed for making a decision about the future direction of the charity’s software needs.

During a recent reinstall of one of the charity’s office PC systems following a bad Microsoft Patch Day that only affected that PC it was decided to install OpenOffice.org on the XP Professional system rather than the expensive, proprietary, Closed Source software that had been on there. I gladly did this and put on the latest release of OpenOffice.org at the time, which was version 3.1. There were some complaints from the user as it did not do what her previous office suite did. She had taught herself to use key bindings in that other software to do things faster. She did not know how to do these in OpenOffice.org and of course the similar functions are not bound to the same keystrokes. However, this is merely a retraining problem that can be solved easily with some hands-on training time.

One problem that did crop up though was one I had never seen before while using OpenOffice.org on Linux. When this user tried to save some of her Calc spreadsheet documents she was getting an error:

Error saving the document filename-goes-here:
Write Error.
The file could not be written.

This had never happened with her other office suite. I thought perhaps this was a problem writing to a network share. I suggested saving to the local drive. Nope, the error persisted. The only thing she could do was close the document without saving it. She was able to copy the spreadsheet information to the clip-board first, then a subsequent Calc document did save it. So the data was not lost, but this was a regularly occurring problem. When OpenOffice.org 3.2 came out the user downloaded and installed it on my suggestion that bugs would be fixed and new functions would be available. I was correct about new functions, but this bug was still there.

This was now a serious concern and a broadside against my recommendation of OpenOffice.org for this client. I know Microsoft has deliberately made competitor software not work well in the past. I began to suspect this was an attempt by Microsoft to kill OpenOffice.org on the Microsoft desktop because we all know Microsoft is very concerned that its cash cow will be killed by OpenOffice.org. With some research I discovered I was wrong, this problem is not Microsoft perfidy. It is unconscionable, but none the less true, that this is perhaps a long standing bug in OpenOffice.org itself:

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=69993
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=88318

I actually found references in the bug Issue 69993 to this exact error message going back to 2006(!). Now, I am aware that this error message may be triggered for several different conditions. One suggestion in the OpenOffice.org forums is a full temporary directory is the problem. But the temporary directory is not full in some of the cases. However, the fact remains that some people cannot on the first try save files to perfectly good file systems with a temporary directory that is NOT full. The fact also remains that these exact conditions have persisted for more than two years through several versions of OpenOffice.org. This problem does not just show up on Microsoft systems. It also rears its ugly head on Apple OS X and I saw at least one reference to this on a Linux system.

Understandably, we advocates for Open Source cannot have this type of long standing bug and expect to be taken seriously. A company that was relying on its software sales to make money and pay employees from those sales would have to fix a problem like this or go out of business. In Open Source we are not relying on sales to make money so some things that would be a software killer in expensive, proprietary, Closed Source software is allowed to continue under Open Source software. The voluntary nature of Open Source development means that in some cases unless someone cares enough to solve a bug then that bug will languish in the source code unfixed. It is not like one has to worry about being fired if one does not fix bugs in OpenOffice.org or most other Open Source software.

Yes, I know that much of Open Source development is now done by folks in paid positions in companies like IBM, Intel, Novell, Red Hat and so on. However, these paid programmers are working for the interests of their company, not the interest of free, Open Source software itself nor the Open Source community of users. While we should appreciate the efforts to develop Open Source by these companies we should also be aware they they do this work out of self-interest for their own benefit. Our benefits from their work in the Open Source community are just side benefits. It is still up to those of us that are voluntary programmers to take charge of bugs, own them and fix them as quickly as possible.

No, I am not a programmer and I do not have time to become one, so suggestions that I fix it myself are not welcome. This is true of the greater majority of software end-users.

Where am I going with this? What is my goal? Actually, I wrote this article as I thought it out. I did not outline it nor come up with an end-game goal for it. I simply wanted to air out what I see as a problem with “free” software development and perhaps get some people motivated to take action in cases where the software bugs are persistent but difficult to reproduce. In this case with OpenOffice.org, perhaps there is finally a resolution for this bug:

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=108374

But we will have to wait for OpenOffice.org 3.3 to find out. It cannot get here soon enough in my opinion. If OpenOffice.org 3.3 does still have this bug then my client will likely see that as a reason to stop considering Open Source. That will be tragic because they really do need to cut costs and free, Open Source software can definitely help with that. But should the bug persist a “No” will be unavoidable in this case.

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Edit Mon May 10 18:34:12 CDT 2010: Clarify the sentence about temporary directories by splitting it into two sentences with more detail.

Old Unix hands already know this, but new Unix (Linux) users may be asking, ‘What is a “watchdog script”?’ Basically it is a bash or other script that is run via cron periodically to check on a persistent service. The watchdog script takes actions based on the state of the service it monitors.

There are other examples of watchdog scripts on the internet. Just search for them using your favorite search engine to see them. Following is a watchdog script we created recently for a client to monitor an e-mail to pager system my company wrote for the client. Here is the script (with sensitive bits changed to protect the innocent):

#!/bin/bash
#
# watchdog
#
# Run as a cron job to keep an eye on what_to_monitor which should always
# be running. Restart what_to_monitor and send notification as needed.
#
# This needs to be run as root or a user that can start system services.
#
# Revisions: 0.1 (20100506), 0.2 (20100507)

NAME=what_to_monitor
START=/full/path/to/$NAME
NOTIFY=person1email
NOTIFYCC=person2email
GREP=/bin/grep
PS=/bin/ps
NOP=/bin/true
DATE=/bin/date
MAIL=/bin/mail
RM=/bin/rm

$PS -ef|$GREP -v grep|$GREP $NAME >/dev/null 2>&1
case "$?" in
   0)
   # It is running in this case so we do nothing.
   $NOP
   ;;
   1)
   echo "$NAME is NOT RUNNING. Starting $NAME and sending notices."
   $START 2>&1 >/dev/null &
   NOTICE=/tmp/watchdog.txt
   echo "$NAME was not running and was started on `$DATE`" > $NOTICE
   $MAIL -n -s "watchdog notice" -c $NOTIFYCC $NOTIFY < $NOTICE
   $RM -f $NOTICE
   ;;
esac

exit

In case you are a new Linux administrator and are virgin to all things Unix-ish we will explain what this script does.

First of all, if you want to run a script unattended in cron then the first line with “#!”, called a “shebang”, tells whatever is calling the script what to use for processing the script. In this case we want to use bash so the line is “#!/bin/bash” for that. If this were a Perl script then the shebang line may look like “#!/usr/bin/perl”, depending on where the Perl executable resides on your system.

Following the shebang line are several lines of comments, which should be self explanatory. Then the variables used in our script are assigned. These too should be self explanatory. If not please post a comment to ask about them.

The “NAME=what_to_monitor” line is quite important for our purposes. This is the actual name of the program or script that would show up in a process list. We use that in the script to check if that shows up in the process list in the line:

$PS -ef|$GREP -v grep|$GREP $NAME >/dev/null 2>&1

Yes, we could actually try to find a process ID number (PID) for the application we want to monitor. However, as long as the application has a unique name in the process list the method used here will work just fine. There is more we could do to see if the application is hung even though it shows up in the process list. In the case of this particular process we are monitoring it will not hang but may die for some reason or another. If it dies then it will immediately, or nearly immediately, disappear from the process list.

The “$START 2>&1 >/dev/null &” line in our watchdog actually starts our process using the original process script itself from the service’s home directory. This could instead call the “/etc/rc.d/init.d/startupscript” for the script or program that is run as a service. The NAME variable, START variable and line to start the service would then look something like:

NAME=startupscript
START=/etc/rc.d/init.d/$NAME
…
$START start 2>&1 >/dev/null &

Presuming the startupscript uses the word “start” to start the service.

Once we have our script written we want to use it in cron. We use root’s cron for this but one could use any user that has the ability to (re)start system services. We save the watchdog script under /root/bin/watchdog, set it to be executable with “chmod 700 /root/bin/watchdog” and call it from cron using the following crontab line:

* * * * * /root/bin/watchdog

This causes the watchdog to run every minute so it checks the service as often as possible. One can modify the crontab line to run the watchdog whenever one needs it to run. But for persistent services that need to be running we always use a once per minute cron job for our watchdog scripts.

In this script we redirect the majority of our output to /dev/null because we do not want to inundate root’s, or the calling user’s, e-mail with cron job messages every minute. The default in cron is to mail the output from cron jobs to the calling user’s e-mail account. We do want to notify someone when a problem occurs causing our watchdog to trigger. So the NOTIFY and NOTIFYCC variables are set to the local or remote e-mail addresses of the people who need to be notified. Then these lines handle the notification message:

NOTICE=/tmp/watchdog.txt
echo “$NAME was not running and was started on `$DATE`” > $NOTICE
$MAIL -n -s “watchdog notice” -c $NOTIFYCC $NOTIFY < $NOTICE

Please feel free to post comments with pointers to other watchdog scripts or to “fine tune” what is shown here. Questions are also welcome.

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For some time now I have watched Canonical grab headlines touting its ‘buntu releases, such as Ubuntu and Kubuntu, as “newbie” friendly. Much of the IT press goes along with this marketing scheme. Quite frankly, I am happy to see Canonical get attention for Linux in general. Getting more positive exposure for Linux is always good. Even “unfriendly” or “negative” exposure is good for Linux if one looks at it as simply more exposure. The people spreading Fear and Uncertainty through Disinformation (FUD) about Linux are simply helping to spread awareness of Linux. Good for them! Let us all pray they keep doing that. Not everyone hearing or reading FUD is going to take it at face value. Those that do not take anti-Linux FUD at face value are more than likely to become Linux users in the long run. The fact that almost everyone in the IT press and in the IT industry is aware of Linux or talking about Linux is excellent. Much of this exposure is due to Canonical and Ubuntu.

But, all that said, is Ubuntu truly the “best” new user distribution? Well, no, not really. (Wait! Before you tar and feather me, read the rest of this article.)

What one can objectively say is that the ‘buntu lines are new user friendly. However, the word “best” is highly subjective when applied to any man made creation. I submit that there are several, equally good, new user Linux distributions. The other new user distributions I would personally recommend in my order of preference are:

1. Mandriva Linux (RPM based Package Management, independent development not based on any other distribution.)
2. PCLinuxOS (RPM based Package Management, derivative of Mandriva Linux.)
3. Linux Mint (DEB based package management, derivative of ‘buntu and Debian GNU/Linux.)
4. MEPIS Linux (DEB based package management, derivative of Debian GNU/Linux.)

I am sure many will have other new user distributions to recommend and may argue against my choices. Debate over distributions is one thing that is not in short supply in the Linux community. However, I am going out on a limb to state that Mandriva Linux is easily at the top of the list of new user distributions. I am confident that this assertion will hold up under scrutiny once I make my case.

The Mandriva team has put a great deal of effort into making Mandriva easy to install and easy to manage from a new user perspective. For a small walk-through of a Mandriva 2010 installation using VirtualBox see this article at ghacks.net. One may take my word for it that Mandriva 2010 is easy to install, or one may get a Mandriva Linux One 2010 Live CD ISO or a full Mandriva Linux Free 2010 DVD ISO and try it out for oneself.

Caveat: all Linux distributions are likely to have problems with some proprietary WiFi chips on some laptop and notebook PC systems. I strongly suggest you Do Your Research before trying to install on your own laptop or notebook PC.

One excellent feature of Mandriva Linux is the Mandriva Linux Control Center (a.k.a. MCC) which has an X GUI version for the true novice and a text mode command line version for the not so much a novice or the true novice that needs to fix a broken X. A novice Linux user may manage Mandriva fairly well just using the MCC GUI. Here are screen shots of the GUI version of MCC in Mandriva Linux 2010 (clickable for full size versions).

MCC Software Management Page

The software management page makes it extremely easy for the new Linux user to manage the software on his desktop PC. Yes, there is some learning involved in using this software management system. For one thing, the first thing I do and recommend on a new install of Mandriva is to remove the default package sources and add preferred sources from http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/old/ on the first reboot following installation. While this is not necessary in most cases, it does help when one learns which sources are updated faster than others and are more reliable.

The need to learn new things is true of any new operating system. I would include learning Microsoft Windows 7 in that list for those that are migrating from Microsoft Windows XP. If one is going to have to learn a new system anyway by a jump from XP to W7, maybe it is time to give Mandriva Linux a try.

MCC Hardware Management Page

The Hardware Management Page makes adding printers and scanners a snap for the new user.

MCC Network and Internet Management Page

Connecting to a LAN or to the internet is made fairly simple with the Network & Internet Management Page.

MCC System Management Page

I think the options on the System Management Page are self explanatory. If in doubt, install Mandriva Linux 2010 and look it over for yourself.

MCC Network Sharing Management Page

Need to share files in some of your directories? Need to connect to some shared directories elsewhere on your LAN? The Network Sharing Management Page is the easy choice for the new user.

MCC Local Disks Management Page

Disk management under Linux made easy. If you just installed a second hard drive that you want to use for data storage (Think of all those digital pictures you take.) then this page is where a new user can go to set up that new drive. The “Manage disk partitions” section is where the magic happens for that.

MCC Security Management Page

Want an easy way to manage the firewall on your Linux PC? Look no further than the “Setup your personal firewall” section of the MCC Security Management Page.

MCC Boot Management Page

While the MCC Boot Management Page is not likely to be needed often by new Linux users it makes managing the boot settings of a Mandriva Linux system extremely easy. Yes, one should know a bit more about boot setup before diving into this but this page still makes managing Grub or LILO a fairly easy task.

Here is a screen shot of the text mode version of MCC one can run from the command line:

MCC Text Mode Main Page

Mandriva requires that MCC be run as the root (administrator) user. Thus one must know the root password to access these controls. This means that the Mandriva distribution may also be easily deployed in a locked down state for business use where the end-user has no knowledge of the root password. A novice Linux user that installs on her own PC or purchases a PC with Mandriva pre-installed would need to learn to keep the roles of user and administrator separate with separate accounts, as the Unix gods intended.

Okay, I can already hear some of you Linux cognoscenti stuttering, “BUT… BUT … BUT this just teaches a new user how to use Linux the Mandriva way! They need to know The Linux Way!” I agree, to a point. Many a new Linux user needs a way to get started in Linux without needing to learn everything from the start. These graphical tools provided by Mandriva are one answer to this problem. Not all new Linux users are going to need to, or want to, learn the guts of Linux and how to do everything The Linux Way. These folks will learn the Mandriva tools and probably stick with Mandriva. The ‘buntu users will learn the ‘buntu tools and probably stick with ‘buntu. This is okay with me. It should be okay with you too. After all, we tout “choice” as one reason to use Linux. Therefore we should honor the choice of these users to do things as easily as possible, for them.

In any case, the Mandriva distribution provides an easy to use graphical interface for the novice Linux user to manage her Mandriva Linux PC. I know, I know, I know, other Linux distributions have similar systems. In my subjective opinion, the Mandriva Control Center is the most well done of those I have seen personally. This places Mandriva at the top of my list for new user Linux distributions. If you are a long time Linux user and disagree then please feel free to post a polite comment with your reasoning. After all, you deserve to be heard as much as I do on this matter.

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You have a relatively new PC with your favorite Linux distribution installed. You are content and all is well with the world. Then you discover that your motherboard needs an update to the BIOS to allow some new hardware to work properly with your PC. Alas! Your almost new PC, which has an on-board floppy controller, was shipped with NO FLOPPY DRIVE. The BIOS update procedure, of course, requires a bootable floppy with (Egad!) Windows 98 DOS or higher. What the heck do you do?

I recently ran into just this problem with a ~2 year old Mandriva Linux based PC that my company built for a client. Of course, I have floppy drives I could use temporarily in this PC to update the, unfriendly to Linux, BIOS. But as I was pondering the situation I wondered what would I do if I did not have a floppy drive to use? Then I realized almost every PC made in the last 10 years or so has at least a CD drive from which one may boot a “Live” OS. This PC is no exception as it has a DVD±RW drive installed, actually two of them. One can create a bootable CD with a Windows 98 floppy image and load a BIOS update from a virtual disk created from that same boot.

While I do have a “legal” copy of Windows 98 I do not have that copy of Windows 98 installed anywhere at the moment. Also, my Linux work PC does not even have a floppy controller in it. So, I began to look around the internet for a bootable Windows 98 image and found one at the Boot Disks web site. Then I needed to get the BIOS update utility and the BIOS update image onto that ISO before burning a CD with the Windows 98 ISO image. A little bit of research with my current favorite search engine turned up ISO Master. I checked my Mandriva 2010 packages and there it was, waiting for me to install it:

Mandriva 'urpmq -i isomaster' Results

I installed ISO Master and opened the Windows 98 ISO file with it. I then used the ISO Master file browser to find the BIOS update software I had previously extracted from its “zip” file and dragged those to the file list in the ISO. Using the Save As option from the ISO Master File menu I created a new ISO file with the new files included:

ISO Master - New ISO Image

I then created a bootable CD-RW disk from this new ISO using k3b from my fluxbox menus. I used CD-RW so I could update the disk image later as needed and then reuse the CD. I then booted the system needing a BIOS update using the Windows 98 bootable CD-RW disc. The Windows 98 DOS complained about the partitions on the hard drive, but I just ignored that as I already knew it would not “like” the ext3 partitions. The ISO image I chose at Boot Disks creates a RAM disk with the contents from the image in that disk. I switched to that RAM disk, started the BIOS update program with the switches needed to update the BIOS and watched as the update completed successfully.

I then removed the boot CD and rebooted the PC. The motherboard complained of a BIOS checksum error, which was also expected, and asked me to press “F1″ to continue and load the BIOS setup screens. The BIOS settings were back to factory default so I changed the ones that needed changing, mainly the boot order. Then I saved the BIOS settings and rebooted again. No errors this time and the Mandriva 2010 Linux installation booted without a hitch. I checked to see if Mandriva 2010 now saw the new hardware. Yup, there it was.

So, if you find yourself in the same predicament maybe this article will help you get your BIOS update done. A comment to let us know this helped you would be appreciated!

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Edit Mon Apr 5 11:21:50 CDT 2010: Remove URL to Boot Disks site per Frank’s comment.

I often see the sentiment expressed that desktop Linux is “too hard” for the average PC user. Yet the qualification for “too hard” is usually that it is too hard to install Linux or too hard to fix problems on Linux for the average user. These arguments seem to completely overlook the fact that an average PC user will never install his own operating system. Also overlooked is the fact that the average PC user will never diagnose and fix her own system. An average PC user is taking a “sick” PC to a local computer repair shop, or to Geek Squad at Best Buy or calling a geek friend to come fix it. An average PC user is buying a PC with an operating system preinstalled and not changing it for something else. Those average PC users would have zero problems using desktop Linux. I have proof.

I am no average computer user. I run a computer consulting and sales business and I steep my brain in computer related news, technical documents and computer trivia on a daily basis. I am the guy that people call on when they do have computer problems or are looking to buy a new PC customized just for them. The fact that I use desktop Linux every day to run my business and for personal use is not remarkable.

On the other hand my friend Chuck is an average computer user. Chuck needs to send and receive e-mail, use Flash based web sites, connect and copy music to his MP3 player, create and print documents, use Instant Messaging to talk to friends and play a few games to pass the time. Chuck does all this on Mandriva Linux and has done so ever since I built him a PC with Mandrake Linux, now known as Mandriva, preinstalled in 2004. When Chuck needs to upgrade Mandriva he calls me and pays me to do it, he does not do it himself. When Chuck has hardware problems he calls me and pays me to fix the PC, he does not do that himself. This is what average PC users do.

Chuck is my average user desktop Linux success story. He has been so for about six years now. Chuck does not want to go back to Microsoft operating systems as he sees no benefit to that. He does see some negatives to going back though. He would have to go back to buying and installing anti-malware software and keeping that up to date. He would have to go back to worrying about malware infections through e-mail or cracked web sites. Certainly if Chuck were using a Microsoft operating system I would do all I could to secure his PC for him. But I could not guarantee Chuck would never get malware “owning” his PC in that case. I am not there to watch over Chuck every time he opens an e-mail or browses web sites. With desktop Linux Chuck and I both know that he does not have to worry about those problems. Chuck is happy to use Linux as an average PC user.

I asked Chuck today, after finishing upgrading his PC to Mandriva 2010, if he considers himself an average PC user. He did not understand the context so I explained what I meant. Chuck agreed that he would never attempt to install his own operating system nor would he attempt to solve problems on his PC himself. He would call an expert for those every time. Just like he calls on an expert when he needs his home sprayed to prevent infestations of termites. Just like he calls on an expert when his SUV needs an oil change, new tires or some repair done. Chuck is very much an average PC user. Yet, Chuck uses desktop Linux on his home PC every day to do the things he needs to do. I asked Chuck if using Linux is hard. The answer? “No”.

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