I have been upgrading many client computers lately by replacing their old virus prone Win7 operating systems with a shiny new Linux one. I have been impressed with MX Linux lately, although I have also tested Ubuntu and Mint and  Lubuntu in past year  on my own assortment of computers.

For me, MX Linux is a great alternative to Windows. It is faster, more reliable, secure, virus resistant and readily installable on your well loved but now aging Win7+ laptop or desktop computers. It runs all the apps I need or provides a workable equivalent:  Firefox or Chrome vs Edge, Libreoffice or MS Office (online) or Google Docs (online) vs MS Office, plus provides access to all the social and online media I need. It does all this for free via open source community maintained source code.  Once installed, it  works and feels much like the old Windows .. just faster and nicer. I now recommend it to all my clients.

"But it's not windows! " you might exclaim. Nope .. but then neither is the operating system in your phone nor ipad nor in your car, webserver, tv box or smart  fridge.  It don't matter, as long as it truly and easily  gets the job done and the interface is easy to learn, eh. I have Window 10 on a few devices but dual boot those computers with Linux as well. Most any thing I own with an operating system before Win10 has now been upgraded to Linux and I am well pleased with the results.

Is it easy to install? I would say it requires an intermediate level of experience to create the bootable USB drive and to perform the actual install, but no more than Windows itself would require of you. To blast everything away and do a complete computer brain transplant is dead simple. Just run the install and  use all the default settings. But for instance, to dual boot side by side keeping all your old  photos and documents in place and accessible to both systems, you first need to make room on  the hard drive to allow somewhere to install the new MX Linux system. A very useful hard disk partition program (GPARTED) is provided, but you must be careful not to delete the existing windows partition and only resize it. You must also then be able to create the new partition, select the correct linux EXT4 format and set the label to '/'.  About then you will realize that it would have been a great idea to have backed up all that precious data somewhere safe in the first place, but that is sound advice for any system upgrade. Bottom line, my mom would need some hand holding to get the install done. Once installed, however, I am confident she will run the system with ease. Everything just works.

• https://mxlinux.org/mx19-features/
• https://mxlinux.org/download-links/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU6epLljVmo MX Linux 19: Blazing Fast 9:14
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ctJBLjOi-Q MX-19 Linux System Setup and Review 24:17
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xet0_wW2Icw MX Linux 19: The Best XFCE Distro? 27:19
  

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We 'cut the cord' a few years back.  First we lost our analog TV over the air (OTA) reception a few years back (about 2011?). For a while thereafter, we had cable bundled with our internet, but more recently we are on a fibre optic service (Axia). Kodi worked for a while, but now all the fun-ctionality has been lost there. We have tried a variety of Android, Android TV, laptops and other boxes, which work somewhat but always seem much more finicky. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just sit down in front of a big black box with a monster remote and never have to move all night .. like in the old days? 

Of course there is still Netflix, Amazon Primevideo, Disney+ and others that you can pay to replace that cable bill, but in my way of thinking that isn't really a 'cord cutting' benefit. It always irks me that just because we are 30 miles north of a border, we get zero or limited access to content available to our US counterparts. Bah!

Below is a list of Canadian and other networks that stream some shows for free online AND that that work for me here on my phones and/or Linux laptops:

• A & E - aetv.com/videos
• Bloomberg News - bloomberg.com/live/us
• BYU TV - byutv.org/programaz
• CBC - gem.cbc.ca/live
• Global News - globalnews.ca/national/programs
• HGTV - hgtv.ca/videos
• History - history.ca/shows
• MTV - mtv.ca/shows
• OMNI - omnitv.ca/on/en/shows
• ShowCase - showcase.ca/shows
• Tubi TV - tubitv.com
• TVO Kids - tvokids.com/school-age/videos
• USTvNow - ustvnow.com
• W Network - wnetwork.com/shows
• Youtube - youtube.com
• YTV - ytv.com/shows

When using a tv box, the apps to access the sites above are hit and miss. Youtube, HGTV, Tubi work there for me. However, even had trouble with Amazon and Disney+ (no sound) on these devices so they will be discarded. Google Chromecast is a work around that works for most anything that can be viewed on a handheld device, but I find using my phone as a remote awkward and unintuitive. Plex works for streaming my own video's and photos and viewing news feeds. 

Maybe one day I will find the ultimate old-school tv remote experience. It was just not today - yet.

It is new release time again! I have several laptops and older desktop computers I like to run Lubuntu Linux on. The new distribution was not available as an upgrade quite yet, so I downloaded the image file, 'burned' it to a usb stick and installed it on my various machines - after a quick backup of user files an data using LuckyBackup. I installed it to replace the old 19.04 partition. Of course on one computer the usb wifi adaptor continued to need a manual driver update.. If you remember, it is a Startech Mini-Wireless N I had floating around, small and wonderful, but based on a Realtek RTL8811au chip with no built in drivers. To install it, I just had to first plug the wired network cable back in and run these commands in terminal: 

Other than that, everything installs and works pretty much as before - but newer and shinier,

Got a 'new distribution available' upgrade message today on my Ubuntu Linux family/work computer (it was 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish and wants to go to 19.04 Disco Dingo), so of I course decided to update right away. Clicked OK and let it do it's thing .. it did take some time to download (presume everyone is updating today as well), but after a Sat afternoon nap and responding to a few config questions and a longer nap came back and found it all updated for me. The only thing not working right off was my usb wifi adaptor. It is a Startech Mini-Wireless N I had floating around. It is based on a Realtek RTL8811au chip. Google tells me that particular chip has no drivers online but that the RTL8812au does and should be compatible. To install it, had to first plug the wired network cable back in and run these commands in terminal: 

which worked fine .. the make script installed the newest version available and compiled it for the new 19.04 (Apr 2019 Disco Dingo) distribution. Apparently the command below would have worked also:

Everything else seems to be where it should be .. it even retained my desktop configuration settings. Nice!

Recently installed Lubuntu 18.04 LTS on an old eMachine Windows Vista computer. It works great (now)! 

Yes there was a bit of a learning curve for me, but here's what worked .. and yes, it sounds a bit technical and skips some of the incremental step by step install notes .. but this is mostly for me to remind me just what ending up working ..

1. Step 1 - Reloaded the Windows Vista to original 2009 specifications using the Windows Recovery Environment which had been preloaded on the eMachine hard drive (sda1) (computer was acquired from another family and no data was needed to be saved). Windows Vista system got 40GB drive c (sda2) leaving room for a small 4GB drive d (sda3) FAT32 transfer partition and 40GB (sda4) for the new Linux partition. I let windows update itself to Vista Service Pack 2, but since no modern browser is supported on Vista any longer and since the now defunct Internet Explorer (Vista) browser fails to load many current websites, I had to find an alternate method for software installs. Used a temp USB drive for this.  For example, ClamWin antivirus installed as a precaution, but had to download it on another system and copy the install exe program via USB drive to install.
2. Step 2 - Booting up the Linux install .. the old eMachine bios allows reading a USB disk but does not permit  booting from a USB drive, and I was too lazy to burn a CD (I have no blank burnable disks anymore anyways).  So since the normal USB LiveBoot install was not an option on this computer, we needed first a way to get started. I found a neat little program online called UNetbootin that allows creation of a bootable Live USB drive for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. Also had to download it on another system and copy the windows install program via USB drive to install on the eMachine .. from https://unetbootin.github.io/.  Ended up downloading Lubuntu LTS version (a light version of Ubuntu designed to work on older computer systems) from https://lubuntu.net/downloads/ even though there are newer versions available, the Apr 2018 version is the most recent Long Term Support (LTS) version and is supported through to Apr 2021. It is also the one that worked the best .. So from Vista installed and ran the UNetbootin program and selected to boot from hard drive c using the downloaded LTS image. It created a new windows boot entry called UNetbootin that loaded the newly created LiveBoot version of Lubuntu .. Rebooted and selected the new entry and voila! the Lubuntu LiveBoot system was loaded up!
3. Step 3 - Installing Lubuntu: just clicking the 'Install Lubuntu' icon at this point runs you through the install with just a few questions to answer - desired user name and password, keyboard and location options, etc. It's default installation operation was to erase the entire hard drive and replace with Linux .. but I wanted to keep the Vista for now as a dual boot option. So I selected 'Other methods' and created the 40GB sda4 partition formatted to ext4 with '/' as the mount point. Lubuntu then was installed there and a boot entry for the former Windows Recovery Environment and for Windows Vista itself in the new linux grub boot manager. I was connected to internet via Cat5 cable so selected option to download updates with the install and to include 3rd party software for movies/music etc. 
4. Step 4 - rebooting now allows me to boot to Lubuntu (on this system aka Ubuntu). Yay! The default grub entry is the Ubuntu (Lubuntu) item.  Can also reboot to Windows Vista if desired. Once there (in Vista) running the UNetbootin program again allows you to simply uninstall the now unneeded UNetBootin windows boot entry it previously installed. Back in Lubuntu, the files from Vista are viewable and modern internet browsers and software can be installed.  The basic default programs are ones that have minimal footprint - Abiword (word processor), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Firefox (browser), Sylpheed (email). I installed additional favorites - Libreoffice (word processing, spreadsheet, suite), Chrome (google browser), Homebank (financial), and some games. Online programs work well also - Youtube, Netflix, etc ..  Everything runs smoothly.

Addendum: Pleased to report that the install of printer drivers for the Epson Stylus ink jet NX420 was pretty much automatic. Printing and scanning worked as soon as it was plugged in and configured. Also needed to install a wireless wifi USB dongle - a DLink DWA-182. Just a little more involved install with first having to download the linux drivers from online site at https://support.dlink.com/ProductInfo.aspx?m=dwa-182 .. and then after downloading and extracting the driver files to a folder, I had to compile and install. Not too hard: First ran 'sudo apt install build-essentials' to install the necessary compiler program and then 'sudo sh ./install.sh' to run the provided script to do the compile and install .. and again, yay! Removed the wired cable and rebooted. The new wifi network card is also detected and usable.

Question: No More Custom Domain Name For Free Accounts ????
Answer: Currently we only allow domains to connect to free sites if the domain is registered through Weebly. If you are on a grandfathered account we allow the external domain to remain connected as long as the site address is not changed. Sorry again for the inconvenience. Please let us know if you have questions about our current plans. Source: https://community.weebly.com/t5/Domains/No-More-Custom-Domain-Name-For-Free-Accounts/td-p/94518

What does this mean? Well .. a few $100 bucks per website. I have used Weebly for the past several years to develop and maintain several local websites. The beauty of it is that once it is developed it can be turned back over to the user/owners for minor self-maintenance or tweaked on request as needed by me. The free version is most appealing to most users and for good reason - so easy to set up and maintain, and up until this year, the biggest included freebie was the ability to point a custom domain name like whatever.com directly back to that weebly site (a service called custom domain names). Thankfully they say this ability is grandfathered in for old 'free' sites. Going forward however they expect users to pay a monthly fee for this service - currently about $5US/mo on an annual basis or with exchange and GST about $90can per year (@Mar 2019) in addition to the $15-30/yr it costs for the domain name itself and whatever you had to pay someone like me to type it all in for you. This hit is much like the unexpected Alberta gas bills this year with the new Carbon Tax tacked on .. a bit bracing to say the least.

Of course, you could dispense with a custom domain name altogether if you had to, saving yourself $120/yr. Since Weebly still lets you use a whatever.weebly.com type name for free, you would still let everyone view your website but without the appeal of that custom website name. Or as a compromise, you could simply buy the whatever.com domain name and simply redirect it (ie point it) back to your free Weebly whatever.weebly.com site (saving $90/yr). 

Nevertheless, it was an unexpected hit that surprised myself and some of my unsuspecting clients. Just one more thing to consider. However, onward and upward. 

Working Notes: I was having a stubborn system error on my Linux test computer - initramfs-tools configuration error with it setting swap to wrong drive .. this page helped reset my system (but had to translate part of the text from Indonesian first ..) https://hantulab.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/debian-set-the-resume-variable-to-override-this/

How to remove 'Read-Only' error from hard drive/USB/SD card/external hard drive?If your storage device such as USB drive, SD card or external hard drive are write-protected now with 'Read Only' mark, don't worry. Here in the below, you'll find an effective method to remove write-protection and get rid of 'Read Only' error from your storage device ... 

Step A. Run CMD to remove 'Read Only' from hard disk/USB/SD card/external hard driveIt's quite simple to remove and fix storage device 'Read Only' error by applying CMD command. 
The only thing that you need to keep in mind is to be very careful while following the CMD guide steps to remove the ”Read Only” error from an SD card, USB drive, hard disk or external hard drive. 

• Connect the ”Read Only” storage device such as an SD card, USB, external hard drive  to your PC
• Open a Command Prompt by typing: command in the Search tab, click Command Prompt
• Type: diskpart and hit Enter
• Type: list disk and hit Enter
• Type: select disk 0 and hit Enter (0 will be the drive letter of your read-only hard drive/USB/SD card, etc.)
• Type: attributes disk clear readonly and hit Enter
• Type: exit and hit Enter to finish the process

Step B: After this, your storage device will be accessible again and you will be able to read and use the saved data on your SD card, USB or external hard drive. If you still cannot access the saved data on your storage devices or have lost some saved files/documents, don't worry.
​
​source: easeus.com/storage-media-recovery/fix-read-only-error-on-hard-drive.html

 :) so .. I got this in my mail inbox the other day ..

"Hello Magrathchamber.com Owner,

You can't think, even your website helps you to rise your revenue with so various errors. Many business holders get perplexed as their website isn't accomplishment well, while others are thriving. That's unsuccessful, but not your affluence! 

Now, I will show you SOME TECHNICAL ERRROS in your Magrathchamber.com. 

If this is something you are concerned in,Please let me know.

Regards,
Scot Walker. 
Marketing Consultant
(240) 489-2269
------------"

This originally caught my interest due to the blatant misspelling and typographical TECHNICAL ERRROS shouted out at me.  Obviously Mr SpamRobot is no english speaker and has some nefarious purpose for this communication. I find no obvious virus or malware links embedded in the email. A quick google search shows that this phone number appears in several random spam emails see https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-240-489-2269 over the past several years. The contact names and website affiliations vary on these many spam communications, with possibly only the phone number remaining the same, much like the Dread Pirate Roberts.  I presume if anyone bothered to call them back they would attempt to sell them the London Bridge or something similar. My concern? What happens when Mr SpamRobot learns to speak engrish and use a smell checker? How will we be able to trust what we read and see anywhere on the internet?  What then? Well, until then, "O be wise, what can I say more?" They say: 'Don't click links or download unknown programs. Don't take wooden nickels from strangers.' (I can't believe you clicked on that last link! aren't you listening here?) But then, again,  who ever listens to 'them'? Also, it would probably be best not to call that number .. again ..

So Dear Reader, 

When  you find yourself lost in a sea of broken website promises. If your computer has  been hacked and your financial information collected by pirates. If you need someone trustworthy to come rescue your sinking ship .. If this is something you are concerned in,Please let me know.

Regards, 
R Davies
Comptuer Consaltend
rdavies@ssdirect.com

Magrath, AB Magrath Lions

It is proposed that our annual Community food drive be held the week of Apr 20-28, 2018 with the flyers being distributed starting Apr 20th and the collection day being Sat 28 Apr, 2018. Thank you!

http://www.magrathlions.com/food-drive.html