Being an old-school computer user, I have come to expect that certain things work a certain way. Like Alt+F4 to close the current application. Even though that originally was a feature of Windows, my Linux Mint desktop comes with that key combo enabled by default, because Linux developers are cool like that.
I have a Lenovo laptop with Windows 8.1 on it. I only keep it around for cases where I have a hardware peripheral or software application that wants Windows. Today, I was finished using one such application, and I hit Alt+F4, and the volume slider went up. No, that is not what I wanted.
So I looked for an answer. On Lenovo's community site, basically you have to change this setting "Hotkey Mode" in the BIOS. But if it is not in the BIOS, you need a piece of software called either "Lenovo Settings" or "Lenovo Vantage". Well my BIOS does not have that mode, so I looked for the settings program, supposedly available in the Windows store.
For some reason, I cannot find this software, so I called Lenovo support. Or I wanted to, but the Lenovo site is very well designed to hide their phone number. I guess that is because they don't really care about helping their customers. Anyway, I found their number by ducking it. (DuckDuckGo's verb) There are websites who catalog customer support numbers for companies that don't want to talk to you.
Well, long and short of it is, after talking with two inept Lenovo representatives, both who first told me the solution was to replace my keyboard at a repair centre, I did a BIOS flash to the latest version, which did not make the hotkey mode option appear, and I was told that there is nothing I can do to make this work because the laptop is out of warranty and their "Lenovo Settings" software won't work on it.
I thought at this point, if I really wanted to get this simple yet infuriating mode to be changed, I'd have to download a custom BIOS from a BIOS hacker community, hope that it gives me that option, and that it doesn't brick the laptop. But would you believe I didn't have to do that. I found a post on a StackExchange forum that says all you gotta do is press Fn+Esc!!!
Okay, so that is a major fail on the part of Lenovo phone support. And this toggle actually survives reboots too. Amazing.
I wanted to comment on that StackExchange post that it survives reboots, but while I do have a StackExchange account, I am not able to write the comment because I need a bunch of other members to think I am cool first. That is a piss-off because I want to help people to know that this answer works, and it works great. I understand that spam is a problem, but this is just insane. I can't even truly vote-up the answer because of the lack of "reputation" points.
In my experience with forums, the spammer is pretty easily caught after they make their first 2-3 posts, so having to earn that much respect can't be about spam. It seems like a bit of elitism or something. I mean, I could be over-reacting but I felt like being blocked from writing my comment would could help others was harmful to the community, and I that I was not valued enough to speak.
Unless the community would rather not have anybody from "outside" contribute, and just stick to those who have earned their way up the social ladder. Whatever. I'm not into being part of a clique. I will just treat those sites as references, and I won't contribute. Their loss.
Thursday 12 July 2018
Monday 11 June 2018
Wanting to pay for digital content, but in dispair
When I tell people that I believe in the goals of the Free Software Foundation, they might assume that means I love to download pirated media. Actually, that is incorrect. As best I understand it, believing in protecting freedom means avoiding content that was intended to restrict our rights.
So the most strict way to follow that is to boycott all music, tv and movies with restrictive licensing (that's pretty much everything ever produced). That means that even if I can obtain the content in a way that violates the copyright, such as torrenting, it makes no difference as the license doesn't change when downloaded that way. It is still restricted by its license even if I have it on my computer and can watch it.
As you can imagine, avoiding all entertainment with a restrictive license gets close to living under a rock. So sometimes I do want to enjoy a film or song, and that means I have to begrudgingly accept that the license is objectionable. I also love the idea of supporting artists and creators, who often didn't have a choice over how their publisher licensed their work.
But as a user of a mostly free OS (Linux with drivers), I find that it is EXTREMELY difficult to actually pay for copyrighted works. Not because of the license, but because of the locked-down software that vendors use to prevent piracy at all costs, known as DRM. It is the most widespread and most dangerous threat to software freedom today. As such, I totally refuse to use it.
A few months ago I listened to a song on Youtube that I really liked, and I wanted to send a little 'Thank You' to the artist by buying the song as a digital file, probably an mp3. I could not. I only found it available on Amazon US, and Apple iTunes store. Living in Canada, the Amazon offering was not even available for purchase to me, let alone the issue of whether DRM would be involved. Apple is a lost cause for somebody like me. You would think in 2018 that I could just make a payment to a vendor of music and get the song file. Nope. I ran in circles on the iTunes website, ended up calling Apple and a representative, who was a little bewildered that I don't own an Apple device, said that I simply cannot purchase the song unless I run the iTunes DRM software. Well I tracked down an email to ask the artist directly if I can pay them for the song. No reply. Maybe one day I'll hear back.
Today, I found a really funny movie from a decade ago that I really want to watch again. I decided to look into my options for making a payment to watch it, however once again, I hit the DRM brick wall. I can't watch it on Amazon Prime, that would require a restricted streaming player such as Microsoft Silverlight or a Chrome, a DRM-encumbered web browser. I don't even know if an old movie like this one would be available on a service like Netflix, but that also refuses to work without DRM so it doesn't even matter. I found with a sigh that it is on Apple iTunes also. The "Microsoft Store" has it, but I can't see that working without SilverLight installed.
So I have emailed the company who licenses this particular movie, and maybe they will allow me to watch the film without DRM. I also mentioned to them that DRM backfires for all the people who care about their digital freedom, and instead of protecting profits causes losses.
I will now have to think about whether to choose to live with my values and just miss out on the movie, or to access it the only way I can without the threat of DRM - to download via bittorrent.
Perhaps I will get a positive response from the company about making a payment for the film to watch it without DRM. I'm not holding my breath, but let's wait and see.
So the most strict way to follow that is to boycott all music, tv and movies with restrictive licensing (that's pretty much everything ever produced). That means that even if I can obtain the content in a way that violates the copyright, such as torrenting, it makes no difference as the license doesn't change when downloaded that way. It is still restricted by its license even if I have it on my computer and can watch it.
As you can imagine, avoiding all entertainment with a restrictive license gets close to living under a rock. So sometimes I do want to enjoy a film or song, and that means I have to begrudgingly accept that the license is objectionable. I also love the idea of supporting artists and creators, who often didn't have a choice over how their publisher licensed their work.
But as a user of a mostly free OS (Linux with drivers), I find that it is EXTREMELY difficult to actually pay for copyrighted works. Not because of the license, but because of the locked-down software that vendors use to prevent piracy at all costs, known as DRM. It is the most widespread and most dangerous threat to software freedom today. As such, I totally refuse to use it.
A few months ago I listened to a song on Youtube that I really liked, and I wanted to send a little 'Thank You' to the artist by buying the song as a digital file, probably an mp3. I could not. I only found it available on Amazon US, and Apple iTunes store. Living in Canada, the Amazon offering was not even available for purchase to me, let alone the issue of whether DRM would be involved. Apple is a lost cause for somebody like me. You would think in 2018 that I could just make a payment to a vendor of music and get the song file. Nope. I ran in circles on the iTunes website, ended up calling Apple and a representative, who was a little bewildered that I don't own an Apple device, said that I simply cannot purchase the song unless I run the iTunes DRM software. Well I tracked down an email to ask the artist directly if I can pay them for the song. No reply. Maybe one day I'll hear back.
Today, I found a really funny movie from a decade ago that I really want to watch again. I decided to look into my options for making a payment to watch it, however once again, I hit the DRM brick wall. I can't watch it on Amazon Prime, that would require a restricted streaming player such as Microsoft Silverlight or a Chrome, a DRM-encumbered web browser. I don't even know if an old movie like this one would be available on a service like Netflix, but that also refuses to work without DRM so it doesn't even matter. I found with a sigh that it is on Apple iTunes also. The "Microsoft Store" has it, but I can't see that working without SilverLight installed.
 | |||
| Firefox is trying to be 'popular' with DRM offerings, but I'm sorry, I won't use that because I care about my freedom. |
I will now have to think about whether to choose to live with my values and just miss out on the movie, or to access it the only way I can without the threat of DRM - to download via bittorrent.
Perhaps I will get a positive response from the company about making a payment for the film to watch it without DRM. I'm not holding my breath, but let's wait and see.
Sunday 1 April 2018
[2013] Toronto: Strange Behaviour of Future Shop Salesperson Explained
(I am sharing this now as I thought I already published it. Turns out all I did was email it to the FSF. So, finally, here it is)
I was at a Toronto Future Shop outlet looking for a netbook that was on sale, in the lower price range. The salesman who was helping me said that a tablet might be cheaper then the netbook, if I was after the lowest cost computer.
I told him that I wasn't sure if I could get Linux onto the tablet, so I would hold off for now. All of a sudden, the salesman went cold and told me that he wouldn't talk with me anymore if that was what I was going to do.
Stunned, I asked him why he would say that and risk losing a sale, he fudged around a bit, then offered a story where another salesman had sold a laptop, the user failed to install Linux on it and then was angry because the store wouldn't accept the return with an erased windows partition.
So I'm thinking, that's a BS answer, all he has to do is tell me that it voids the warranty and make a sale, but that he would threaten to stop talking with me because of my personal OS choice, well that's extremely rude! And he'd lose a sale to Future Shop just because of I said the word "Linux" with him?
Now I'm rather upset, I demanded to speak with the store manager, and the three of us had a discussion about this on the sales floor. The manager confirmed that it would be rude and not per Future Shop's policy to outright refuse to talk to a customer because they prefer Linux. I offered a better way to handle Linux inquiries. As long as Future Shop salespeople tell the Linux users that it voids the warranty and complicates the returns process if the user wipes out Windows, that properly informs the customer and is probably already in the fine print somewhere. Salespersons at Future Shop aren't liable for what a customer does with their computer to void the warranty.
There is NO reason to just stop talking with a customer, and basically walk away from a sale! Linux users are just as valuable customers as anybody else, and the way that salesman acted completely devalued me as a customer.
Finally after the chat with the manager, I went to get the netbook off the shelf. As I was on my way to the cashier, the salesperson in question finally told me the truth: he used to work as an Apple technician at an Apple store. His rude behavior came from Apple's fascist policy about user's rights and he was making Future Shop look bad by carrying forward that terrible attitude.
Hopefully he realized he doesn't have to treat Linux-wielding customers like crap at Future Shop.
I was at a Toronto Future Shop outlet looking for a netbook that was on sale, in the lower price range. The salesman who was helping me said that a tablet might be cheaper then the netbook, if I was after the lowest cost computer.
I told him that I wasn't sure if I could get Linux onto the tablet, so I would hold off for now. All of a sudden, the salesman went cold and told me that he wouldn't talk with me anymore if that was what I was going to do.
Stunned, I asked him why he would say that and risk losing a sale, he fudged around a bit, then offered a story where another salesman had sold a laptop, the user failed to install Linux on it and then was angry because the store wouldn't accept the return with an erased windows partition.
So I'm thinking, that's a BS answer, all he has to do is tell me that it voids the warranty and make a sale, but that he would threaten to stop talking with me because of my personal OS choice, well that's extremely rude! And he'd lose a sale to Future Shop just because of I said the word "Linux" with him?
Now I'm rather upset, I demanded to speak with the store manager, and the three of us had a discussion about this on the sales floor. The manager confirmed that it would be rude and not per Future Shop's policy to outright refuse to talk to a customer because they prefer Linux. I offered a better way to handle Linux inquiries. As long as Future Shop salespeople tell the Linux users that it voids the warranty and complicates the returns process if the user wipes out Windows, that properly informs the customer and is probably already in the fine print somewhere. Salespersons at Future Shop aren't liable for what a customer does with their computer to void the warranty.
There is NO reason to just stop talking with a customer, and basically walk away from a sale! Linux users are just as valuable customers as anybody else, and the way that salesman acted completely devalued me as a customer.
Finally after the chat with the manager, I went to get the netbook off the shelf. As I was on my way to the cashier, the salesperson in question finally told me the truth: he used to work as an Apple technician at an Apple store. His rude behavior came from Apple's fascist policy about user's rights and he was making Future Shop look bad by carrying forward that terrible attitude.
Hopefully he realized he doesn't have to treat Linux-wielding customers like crap at Future Shop.
Saturday 14 October 2017
What if I Want to Mirror End-of-Life CentOS?
I wanted to make a local mirror for some personal systems running CentOS 5. It is now EOL, and I didn't mirror it before that happened. It is easy to mirror an EOL release from Debian or Ubuntu, but CentOS doesn't make it easy. In fact it seems impossible, but I don't know if that was the intention.
The CentOS team keeps EOL releases at vault.centos.org. But unfortunately, that is the same server that worldwide mirrors connect to for current releases. And according to https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/CreatePublicMirrors, you cannot sync from that server because they have restricted access to only the known public mirror IP addresses.
Well, fuck. I can't use vault.centos.org and I can't use any of the worldwide mirrors - because they don't keep EOL versions. So, for anyone wanting to create their own mirror, it's up to luck. I guess today I was lucky. I found a site that keeps older releases AND which lets me rsync (there are only a few and most do not support rsync access). It is at kartolo.sby.datautama.net.id/Centos/.
Well I am thankful for the existence of a 3rd-party mirror, but it really bugs me that CentOS has locked people out of mirroring their own official source for EOL releases. I might complain if I feel like it. But if they don't fix this bug, I shall make sure to grab the next current release before it goes EOL.
The CentOS team keeps EOL releases at vault.centos.org. But unfortunately, that is the same server that worldwide mirrors connect to for current releases. And according to https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/CreatePublicMirrors, you cannot sync from that server because they have restricted access to only the known public mirror IP addresses.
Well, fuck. I can't use vault.centos.org and I can't use any of the worldwide mirrors - because they don't keep EOL versions. So, for anyone wanting to create their own mirror, it's up to luck. I guess today I was lucky. I found a site that keeps older releases AND which lets me rsync (there are only a few and most do not support rsync access). It is at kartolo.sby.datautama.net.id/Centos/.
Well I am thankful for the existence of a 3rd-party mirror, but it really bugs me that CentOS has locked people out of mirroring their own official source for EOL releases. I might complain if I feel like it. But if they don't fix this bug, I shall make sure to grab the next current release before it goes EOL.
Thursday 5 October 2017
Checkinstall is Unmaintained and Broken - How Could That Happen?
While I have been a Linux user for a number of years, I have been slow to adopt good policy regarding the management of a Linux system. When it comes to installing software, I rarely ventured beyond the use of my distribution's repositories. When I did, I would almost always find that the procedure was to compile from source using the traditional "./configure", "make" and "make install" commands.
During the past few weeks, I have been installing the latest version of a program that isn't in the repositories. It is available as source code, and as usual, is compiled using the above three commands. Only I became more aware than I did in previous years about the disadvantages of that method. Primarily, there is no guaranteed way to uninstall the software, as various files are distributed all over the filesystem without keeping any records of what went where.
I remembered the first time I read about this disadvantage on a Mageia Wiki page. It taught me that not only do you have the difficulty of uninstalling, you also risk making your system unstable. From that wiki, I remember clearly their advice:
My first systems on which I used Checkinstall were two Ubuntu 14.04 systems. It was in the repositories and I used it without error. Then I went to a Debian 8 system, and installed my program there using Checkinstall as well. It was great. I found a sane way to install any program from source code without losing track of which files went where, and I also avoided any potential instability of my systems.
So then I went over to another system that was running CentOS 7, and found that Checkinstall wasn't available in the repositories. This was strange, I thought. So I searched https://pkgs.org for any third party repositories that might have it. I could only find an RPM package for the old CentOS 5. Okay fine, I said, I will just have to install Checkinstall from source.
I found the home page of the Checkinstall project, and I was happy to find after reading the documentation that there was a way to use Checkinstall on itself after installing so that it would be entered into the package management database.
But then I saw that the last release was in 2016, and there was no news or updates for this year. That was worrisome to me. Anyway, I went ahead and downloaded the source archive and proceeded with the unpacking and preparation steps to configure and make on my CentOS system. Only it didn't make. It threw a ton of errors which I am not skilled enough to solve.
So I searched for a possible solution to get Checkinstall working on CentOS 7, only to find more and more bad news.
Checkinstall uses a utility called "Installwatch", which, according to Wikipedia, has not been functioning completely right for the past 10 years.
After learning all this, I gave up trying to find a way to get Checkinstall to work on my CentOS 7 system and just ran the untidy "make install". But I was really pissed-off. Why is it that a piece of software like Checkinstall, which seems to be the most sensible way to achieve and maintain a sane and stable Linux system when installing from source, is so terribly neglected? What the fuck is going on?
Maybe there's a newer project out there that replicates that functionality, but I have yet to find it. My question is, in 2017, what the hell does a Linux user have to do to get a source software package installed cleanly? Does it require learning to build DEB and RPM packages? I don't know what that entails, but it probably is a lot more complex than running one command.
I do hope that we're not at risk of losing a traditional way of doing things. I know that there is a lot of design and skills needed just to create a source software package that works with the configure/make/make install trio, and one day I will have finally learned to code and I will know how to set up the source package to configure and compile in this manner. Maybe I will even become the maintainer of the Checkinstall software. It seems to me like a very important project in the realm of Linux. I just wonder though, why isn't anybody else doing this job?
During the past few weeks, I have been installing the latest version of a program that isn't in the repositories. It is available as source code, and as usual, is compiled using the above three commands. Only I became more aware than I did in previous years about the disadvantages of that method. Primarily, there is no guaranteed way to uninstall the software, as various files are distributed all over the filesystem without keeping any records of what went where.
I remembered the first time I read about this disadvantage on a Mageia Wiki page. It taught me that not only do you have the difficulty of uninstalling, you also risk making your system unstable. From that wiki, I remember clearly their advice:
"The golden rule is, never bypass the rpm package database, if you can possibly help it..."It offered a way to install from source that was more sane: use Checkinstall instead of "make install" and it will not only keep track of the files installed, it will enter them into the RPM or DEB database and produce a package for you to install anytime in the future without having to recompile.
My first systems on which I used Checkinstall were two Ubuntu 14.04 systems. It was in the repositories and I used it without error. Then I went to a Debian 8 system, and installed my program there using Checkinstall as well. It was great. I found a sane way to install any program from source code without losing track of which files went where, and I also avoided any potential instability of my systems.
So then I went over to another system that was running CentOS 7, and found that Checkinstall wasn't available in the repositories. This was strange, I thought. So I searched https://pkgs.org for any third party repositories that might have it. I could only find an RPM package for the old CentOS 5. Okay fine, I said, I will just have to install Checkinstall from source.
I found the home page of the Checkinstall project, and I was happy to find after reading the documentation that there was a way to use Checkinstall on itself after installing so that it would be entered into the package management database.
But then I saw that the last release was in 2016, and there was no news or updates for this year. That was worrisome to me. Anyway, I went ahead and downloaded the source archive and proceeded with the unpacking and preparation steps to configure and make on my CentOS system. Only it didn't make. It threw a ton of errors which I am not skilled enough to solve.
So I searched for a possible solution to get Checkinstall working on CentOS 7, only to find more and more bad news.
Checkinstall uses a utility called "Installwatch", which, according to Wikipedia, has not been functioning completely right for the past 10 years.
After learning all this, I gave up trying to find a way to get Checkinstall to work on my CentOS 7 system and just ran the untidy "make install". But I was really pissed-off. Why is it that a piece of software like Checkinstall, which seems to be the most sensible way to achieve and maintain a sane and stable Linux system when installing from source, is so terribly neglected? What the fuck is going on?
Maybe there's a newer project out there that replicates that functionality, but I have yet to find it. My question is, in 2017, what the hell does a Linux user have to do to get a source software package installed cleanly? Does it require learning to build DEB and RPM packages? I don't know what that entails, but it probably is a lot more complex than running one command.
I do hope that we're not at risk of losing a traditional way of doing things. I know that there is a lot of design and skills needed just to create a source software package that works with the configure/make/make install trio, and one day I will have finally learned to code and I will know how to set up the source package to configure and compile in this manner. Maybe I will even become the maintainer of the Checkinstall software. It seems to me like a very important project in the realm of Linux. I just wonder though, why isn't anybody else doing this job?
Saturday 29 July 2017
Debian priority for packages exim4, mailutils etc. just got set to optional
I'm pissed-off. Maybe it's just because I don't cope well with change.
I'm not a veteran Linux user by any means. I'm pretty much one level above newbie. I just don't like change because it makes learning harder when I don't know what to expect.
So two weeks ago I installed Debian 9 from the "Net Installer" into a VirtualBox VM. Then two days ago I created another VM and did the same install, using the same ISO image, and making the same selections as before.
Only this time, I discovered that the resulting system was missing packages that I expected to be there. The packages were related to mailing on the local system, and consisted primarily of exim4 and mailutils.
After much painful searching (and putting up with unfriendly skeptics on the Debian forums) I finally found out that the reason these packages are no longer installed is because sometime in the past fifteen days, they changed the package priority from 'standard' to 'optional', causing the Net Installer to no longer download or install them.
What the hell? I thought that having a 'mail' command was a standard thing. Well, not anymore, in the world of Debian. They are changing the fundamentals of the system that I got used to. But I guess that's what they want to do, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. The change to systemd was the first major indicator of Debian's new plan.
Well I guess I can't rely on Debian to include the features that a standard *nix system should have anymore. Not that I'm experienced enough to know all the features that rely on mail. I do know that I won't get any output from cron jobs now. But if I file a bug report on that, they'll probably just say "fuck it" and pull cron from their default install as well...
My post to Debian Forums that only got replies from unfriendly skeptics:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=134079
My Debian bug report that nobody will care about:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870030
Debian people discussing "cutting some cruft from priority:standard":
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/09/msg00480.html
I'm not a veteran Linux user by any means. I'm pretty much one level above newbie. I just don't like change because it makes learning harder when I don't know what to expect.
So two weeks ago I installed Debian 9 from the "Net Installer" into a VirtualBox VM. Then two days ago I created another VM and did the same install, using the same ISO image, and making the same selections as before.
Only this time, I discovered that the resulting system was missing packages that I expected to be there. The packages were related to mailing on the local system, and consisted primarily of exim4 and mailutils.
After much painful searching (and putting up with unfriendly skeptics on the Debian forums) I finally found out that the reason these packages are no longer installed is because sometime in the past fifteen days, they changed the package priority from 'standard' to 'optional', causing the Net Installer to no longer download or install them.
What the hell? I thought that having a 'mail' command was a standard thing. Well, not anymore, in the world of Debian. They are changing the fundamentals of the system that I got used to. But I guess that's what they want to do, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. The change to systemd was the first major indicator of Debian's new plan.
Well I guess I can't rely on Debian to include the features that a standard *nix system should have anymore. Not that I'm experienced enough to know all the features that rely on mail. I do know that I won't get any output from cron jobs now. But if I file a bug report on that, they'll probably just say "fuck it" and pull cron from their default install as well...
My post to Debian Forums that only got replies from unfriendly skeptics:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=134079
My Debian bug report that nobody will care about:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870030
Debian people discussing "cutting some cruft from priority:standard":
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/09/msg00480.html
Tuesday 12 January 2016
Upgrade Fedora 17 to 18 (End-of-life releases)
I couldn't find any information about upgrading End-of-life fedora versions. Here is what I learned, as somebody who never upgraded Fedora before.
Comment out the line:
This solves the boot image problem.
NOTE: I had found there were 404 errors running this command, but after I removed everything inside /var/tmp/fedora-upgrade/, there were no more 404 errors.
Setting repositories to the fedora EOL archives:
In order to install anything on an end-of-life release, you need to change the files in /etc/yum.repos.d. You only need to change the repos who have by default, "enabled=1" in the section.Comment out the line:
mirrorlist=...And uncomment "#baseurl=..." and change it to:
baseurl=http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/$releasever/Everything/$basearch/osNow you should be able to install the fedup package.
Running fedup:
I have found that the simple command "fedup --network 18" failed with the message "Downloading Failed: couldn't get boot images". This is because the archives store the boot images under a different path. So I ran:fedup --network 18 --instrepo "http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/18/Fedora/x86_64/os/"(replace x86_64 with i386 for 32bit installs)
This solves the boot image problem.
NOTE: I had found there were 404 errors running this command, but after I removed everything inside /var/tmp/fedora-upgrade/, there were no more 404 errors.
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