This is interesting. Previously, if I want to change a computer, I will (re-)install the OS and other software on the target computer. Then only move the data.

Since Arch Linux is a minimalistic distro, and installation only available with network connection. This will be exhaustive to install the OS on the target computer. Not only wasting time downloading, but also setup the configurations, such as web server, FTP server, hibernation, power save, etc. User’s configurations are easier, because I can just copy all the files in /home/$USER directory to the target computer. The only problem may be the differences of the owner ID and group ID. But that is not really a big deal. So, the main problem is the root (/).

Previously, I have made a post about extracting SHIFT_JIS filename encoding in zip file.

However, this method does not work when the filenames contain GBK (simplified Chinese) encoding. As a result, I found a general solution for the non-UTF8 encoding.

The method is almost the same, but more generic way.

Firstly, the problem we face is after extracting the files, the filenames are unreadable. Not only that, we cannot convert the filename even we are using “convmv”, “iconv”, or even “uconv”. This is normally caused by our OS locale setting. To make our OS (Linux) more generic to read almost any languages (East Asia languages, right-to-left langues, etc), our OS is normally has the UTF8 locale. It may be en_US.UTF8, ja_JP.UTF8, zh_CN.UTF8, zh_TW.UTF8, en_GB.UTF8, etc.

Again, choosing the Linux distro, based on different philosophies, we may choose a different distro, though they are all using Linux kernel.

I would like to use Debian to represent stable release Linux distros, Fedora to represent cutting edge Linux distros with scheduled release, and Arch Linux to represent the rolling release. If you visit DistroWatch.com, you can see the difference of the packages version (Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux), where Debian has very few green colour packages, Fedora has a lot of green colour with some red colour packages, and Arch Linux has a lot of green colour but no red colour packages. The green colour indicates the latest (stable) release version of the package; red indicates the beta version (development or testing).

Linux is something wonderful, which until today I am still learning. Not only the command-line, but also filesystem, distributions, philosophies, open source, packaging, Linux kernel, desktop environment, etc…

It is very interesting to know why there are so many Linux distros. As I was a newbie in Linux, I was thinking on how to choose the distros and what are the differences of these distros. Some users state that Linux is the kernel, not a Linux distribution. And even some users say that whatever Linux distribution, it can be customised until identical to the other distribution (interface only).

Recently, I found that Puppy Linux has a higher (visits of page) ranking than KNOPPIX in DistroWatch. Furthermore, Puppy Linux is also well-known for its old computer support. This is interesting.

Previously, I tried KNOPPIX, which I liked most is that it is able to save the user session. That means, if you installed any package or save the files in $HOME, reboot the KNOPPIX in the USB, those settings are still preserved. This is a feature which I didn’t found in other Live Media. I tried KNOPPIX because it is a distro targets on Live Media.

Recently, I was thinking about to use Puppy Linux with my old computer. Yet my computer is already installed with Arch Linux. I wish not to uninstall or replace the Arch Linux, because installing Arch Linux is time consuming and exhaustive.

Puppy Linux is a live media like KNOPPIX. The official website mentioned that it can be installed into the computer without affecting the original OS, that is, installed side-by-side. This makes me re-called side-by-side installation of Ubuntu and Linux Mint. I tried this feature before using Linux Mint installed in a computer with Windows. It works fine until I give up because of the upgrade problem.

I am using Arch Linux. Recently updated an old computer, the IBus from 1.4 to 1.5. As a result, there were two problems.

1. Cannot input anymore in any window, except Opera(?)
2. IBus Pinyin cannot change to “Full pinyin” mode, but only “Double pinyin” mode.

For the first problem, it doesn’t happen in my other computers. For the second problem, it happened in my other laptops.

To solve the first problem, I tried several ways. Deleting the “/.ibus”, “/.cache/ibus”, “~/.config/ibus”, and “.gconf/desktop/ibus”, none of them can reset IBus to the default setting (initial setting). I wanted to reset the configuration because I know that it should work well, because it does work well in my other computers. However, none of the directories is able to solve the problem, finally I chose to reset the GConf and dconf. (I personally think that dconf is the one storing the latest version’s setting).

I tried to escape from the Windows dependency problem. Wishing that all my devices can work without problem with Linux. But one of the greatest problems is that Canon PIXMA iP1600 does not have driver for Linux, except using iP2200 which is compatible.

Previously, I solved this problem with the virtualisation. This work perfectly to do my printing. However, it is still depending on Windows. Without Windows, the virtualisation is almost useless.

I always thought that Wine (or WINE, WINE Is Not an Emulator) is good enough for me to play Windows games and running Windows applications without using the virtualisation such as VirtualBox. However, this is not completed.

Recently, due to a giveaway from CodeWeavers, I downloaded and tried the CrossOver. Then I found the comparison of Wine and CrossOver, CrossOver contains some proprietary components, which makes Windows applications run smoother than Wine. I tried, yes, there are some differences. But I am still using Wine because of my own favour.

Preface

I am Arch Linux fan. Recently, I discovered a distro, Fuduntu, which stated that it is optimised for laptop and netbook use. This increases my interest due to battery draining problem for my old netbook. Though my old netbook was installed with Arch Linux using LXDE, the battery can only last for only 1 hour. That is why, I think I am going to switch to Fuduntu. However, after installation of Fuduntu, then I found some problems like missing the packages FreeFileSync and VisualBoyAdvance, and also failed to install Wine because of dependencies error. This made me regret to uninstall Arch Linux from my netbook, because installing Arch Linux is really exhaustive.