Running frugal install of Fossapup64 Puppy Linux 9.5 with Gnucash 4.6 on flatpak and Libreoffice 7.2.

I copied the following files from Fossapup64 iso to Fossapup folder on one partition of Hard Disk:

adrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, fdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, zdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, vmlinuz, initrd.gz

Then I created following boot entry in /etc/gub.d/40_custom:

menuentry 'Fossapup64 9.5' {

search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 1e364a7e-9e6d-468a-99a2-404936a14d59

linux /Fossapup/vmlinuz pfix=nocopy pmedia=atahd psubdir=Fossapup 

initrd /Fossapup/initrd.gz 

} 

and updated Grub: 

sudo update-grub 

I could boot into Fossapup64 Puppy Linux 9.5 Desktop. 

I installed flatpak with all its dependencies from Puppy Package Manager

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo 

and installed Gnucash: 

flatpak install flathub org.gnucash.GnuCash

and run it: 

flatpak run org.gnucash.GnuCash 

For Libreoffice there was Menu/Document/Get_Libreoffice_download_and_install_Libreoffice available on the Desktop.

Running Puppy Linux 9.5 fossapup64 from USB on my acer laptop.

I downloaded fossapup64-9.5.iso checked md5sum, copied it to USB and tried booting but it was not bootable on UEFI machine. Then I copied only following files from the iso at the root of USB: vmlinuz, initrd.gz, puppy_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, zdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs, adrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs and fdrv_fossapup64_9.5.sfs I created EFI/boot folder at the root of USB. Downloaded bootx64.efi and grub.cfg files. Copied bootx64.efi in EFI/boot folder and grub.cfg at the root of USB. I could boot into Puppy Linux 9.5 Desktop from the USB:

error: file ‘/boot/vmlinuz-5.12-X86-64’ not found on Manjaro grub after failed update.

 I am running Manjaro Linux since Sep 2020. There was a big update (larger than 1 GB) on 20th May 2021 and I left the Laptop after the update began.

After 30 minutes I found blank screen and could not even open a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2. I pressed the power button to shutdown.

After restart I got the error: file ‘/boot/vmlinuz-5.12-X86-64’ not found you need to load the kernel first and could not proceed.

I logged in Ubuntu 20.04 and posted on Manjaro Forum and was asked to boot from Manjaro Live USB open the terminal and type:

[manjaro@manjaro ~]$ sudo su -
[manjaro ~]# manjaro-chroot -a
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1.  Check your device.map.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1.  Check your device.map.
==> Detected systems:
 --> 0) Ubuntu
 --> 1) ManjaroLinux
==> Select system to mount [0-1] : 
1
==> Mounting (ManjaroLinux) [/dev/sda7]
 --> mount: [/mnt]
 --> mount: [/mnt/boot/efi]
[manjaro /]# rm -f /var/lib/pacman/db.lck
[manjaro /]# pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra                1910.3 KiB   498 KiB/s 00:04 [######################] 100%
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
 there is nothing to do
[manjaro /]# 
It did not work.

Then I was asked to do:

# mkinitcpio -P

error no presets found

Then I was advised to list the installed kernels:

# mhwd-kernel -li 
and install at least one kernel
# mhwd-kernel -i linux510
I could not install linux510 but could install linux512

# mhwd-kernel -i linux512

After that I could login to installed Manjaro system using linux 5.12

I could reinstall linux510 through the same command on installed system.

Running i3 Window Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 and enjoying it.

 I came to know about i3 Window Manager and decided to try it on Ubuntu 20.04. Installed it through the command:

sudo apt install i3

Logged out of gnome, selected i3 and logged in.

It asked me to configure or accept default, not knowing about configuration I selected default then there was blank screen and I did not know what to do.

I used my Mobile to know how to open Terminal on i3 and got the answer to press  Alt+Enter. On terminal I typed firefox and pressed enter and could open the browser.

Then I googled for how to get menu on i3 and was told to press Alt+d and menu opened on top bar.

I typed sol on menu bar and pressed enter and Aiselriot opened.

Then I googled for i3 User Guide and got the link

i3 User Guide

I learned to maximise a window by pressing Alt+f

In the next session I allowed Ubuntu to configure the i3 Window Manager it changed the Alt key to Win key.

I am learning to use the i3 Window Manager and enjoying it.

I could not open gnome-screenshot utility on i3, therefore I installed scrot

sudo apt install scrot

When I typed scrot and enter on the menu it took the following screenshot:

Which is the screen on Ubuntu configured i3 Window Manager

I added following lines to my i3 config file:

# Added by me to add Indian Keyboard Layout and adjust screen brightness on start up.
exec "setxkbmap -layout us,in"
exec "setxkbmap -option 'grp:alt_shift_toggle'"

exec "xrandr --output eDP --brightness 0.5"

Created Fedora 34 Gnome 40 bootable persistent Live USB and running it.

I wanted to try Gnome 40 and found that newest version of Fedora 32 Workstation has Gnome 40.

I downloaded the iso.

Checked sha256sum found ok.

In order to make persistent Live USB I downloaded

livecd-iso-to-disk script

made the script executable and kept it in the same folder as the iso

sudo ./livecd-iso-to-disk --overlay-size-mb 2048 Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-34-1.2.iso /dev/sdb1

to make Live USB with 2 GB for persistence.

It took lot of time:

Copying LiveOS image to target device...
squashfs.img
  1,896,591,360 100%    1.43MB/s    0:21:03 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)

Syncing filesystem writes to disc.
    Please wait, this may take a while...
Setting up /EFI/BOOT
Copying /images directory to the target device.
efiboot.img
     10,430,464 100%   70.83MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
macboot.img
     21,938,176 100%   77.37MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
initrd.img
     56,824,284 100%   11.06MB/s    0:00:04 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
vmlinuz
     10,580,240 100%   30.12MB/s    0:00:00 (xfr#1, to-chk=0/1)
Updating boot config files.
Initializing persistent overlay...
2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 2250.09 s, 954 kB/s
Installing boot loader...

        ATTENTION:
        Failed to find /usr/share/syslinux/ldlinux.c32.
        The installed device may not boot.
                Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl C to abort.


        ATTENTION:
        Failed to find /usr/share/syslinux/libcom32.c32.
        The installed device may not boot.
                Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl C to abort.


        ATTENTION:
        Failed to find /usr/share/syslinux/libutil.c32.
        The installed device may not boot.
                Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl C to abort.

Target device is now set up with a Live image!

I changed BIOS Boot to Boot from USB and here is Gnome 40 Desktop:

 

Filing India Income Tax Return for AY 2021-22 on Linux.

Prior to AY 2013-14 it was necessary to have Windows on your PC to use offline utility (Excel File with Macros) to prepare the Income Tax Return and I was using Windows just to file the return.

In AY 2013-14 a Java Utility was introduced and I wrote about it on the blog post:

Income Tax efiling utility and DSC working on Ubuntu Linux.

For AY 2021-22 the department has switched to JSON but providing only Windows exe file so far. I have already raised a Help Desk request to provide Linux Utility which has been replied as:

Currently the team is analyzing the request; we will get back to you shortly. 

I installed the Utility in Wine(Version 5.0) on Ubuntu 20.04 but it did not work.

On Manjaro I had Wine Version 6.5 on which the Utility worked but it was not accepting Keyboard input. So there was hope.

Then on Ubuntu 20.04 I added Winehq repo and installed
wine-6.6 (Staging).

The Utility is working.

The procedure to install this wine version as follows:

download and add repository key:

wget -qO - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -After importing the key, proceed to add repository.
sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main'

To install Staging Version:

sudo apt update 

sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging

After installing confirm Wine Version:

wine --version

 should be 6.6

You can now install the exe file of JSON utility and run it by clicking the shortcut on Desktop.

NB: I could fill up the Income Tax Return completely, verify it but at last stage when the output JSON file is supposed to be downloaded it does not work. It says "Download Failed".

 

Watching free IPTV Live channels on Ubuntu 20.04

 I came to know that Linux Mint has developed IPTV app called Hypnotix. I downloaded the .deb file from github and installed it on Ubuntu 20.04.2.

There are many news channels like Zee News Aaj Tak India TV, DD News on this app.

 

Signal messaging app on Mobile and Desktop/Laptop.

 As WhatsAppp is updating its Privacy Policy the downloads of other apps like Telegram, Signal etc have increased and people are trying these apps.

I had downloaded Signal app on Mobile and found that many of my contacts are doing the same. I had nice video calls with couple of them.

Today I installed Signal Desktop app on Laptop and imported the Contacts from the Mobile.

If I send a message through the Desktop app unlike WhatsApp there is no need to keep the Mobile app working which is a great feature. 

Enjoying Xubuntu Live persistent on Dell Inspiron N4010 P11G

I came to Hyderabad to spend winter. I borrowed Dell Inspiron N4010 3 GB model with Windows 7 Professional for personal use. Before leaving home I had uploaded required Gnucash Files and Libreoffice files to Drive.

I downloaded Xubuntu 20.04 64 bit ISO while working on Windows 7 and installed Rufus to make Live USB with persistence. Making Live USB on Rufus was smooth.

I changed the Boot sequence in BIOS to bring USB drive on top and and booted to Try Ubuntu Install Ubuntu Desktop and choose Try Ubuntu. To remove the Try Ubiuntu/Install Ubuntu option I removed Ubiquity.

After shutdown the system asked for removal of USB. I wanted to remove this irritant and posted on Ubuntuforums. I got the following solution

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo mousepad /etc/systemd/system/casper-no-prompt.service

I wrote the file and saved it

# see /sbin/casper-stop
[Unit]
Description=Casper no-prompt

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=touch /run/casper-no-prompt

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl enable casper-no-prompt
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/casper-no-prompt.service → /etc/systemd/system/casper-no-prompt.service.
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl start casper-no-prompt
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ sudo systemctl status casper-no-prompt
● casper-no-prompt.service - Casper no-prompt
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/casper-no-prompt.service; enabled; ven>
     Active: inactive (dead) since Sun 2021-01-17 15:04:41 IST; 20s ago
    Process: 23020 ExecStart=/usr/bin/touch /run/casper-no-prompt (code=exited,>
   Main PID: 23020 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jan 17 15:04:41 xubuntu systemd[1]: Starting Casper no-prompt...
Jan 17 15:04:41 xubuntu systemd[1]: casper-no-prompt.service: Succeeded.
Jan 17 15:04:41 xubuntu systemd[1]: Finished Casper no-prompt.
xubuntu@xubuntu:~$ ls -l /run/casper-no-prompt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 17 15:04 /run/casper-no-prompt

Now I can shutdown safely without removing USB.

I installed Gnucash and Libreoffice was already present.

Live Xubuntu 20.04 is very fast on this 3 GB machine.

Enjoying it.

I bought Smart TV and enjoying it.

 I had bought Philips LCD TV in 2012 which had 3 HDMI ports. Later on I bought Google Chromecast in May 2015 soon after it was launched in India and my TV became Smart even before "Smart TV" became available.

I was streaming youtube, ZEE, Hotstart, voot, Sonyliv using Chrome Browser on Laptop or Mobile through Chromecast.

HDMI ports on Philips LCD TV were not very good and use to give flicker for a couple of minutes after switching on the TV. The flickering problem increased with time and ultimately the HDMI ports were unusable.

I got the Motherboard of the TV replaced through local Delhi Technician and HDMI Ports were working.

Later on the volume was going up and down without any command.

I bought Cloudwalker TV on amazon exchanging the Philips TV and it was delivered on 4th Nov 2020.

 This TV is AOSP based on Android 8.0 Oreo and has Aptoide App Store pre-installed.

I enjoyed Zee5, youtube, Sonyliv, Amazon Prime Video directly using the apps on TV.

Since I have Tikona Broadband which has max speed of 40 mbps (generally I get 20 mbps) the voot app on TV did not work properly.

I connected the good old Chromecast in the second HDMI port and used the voot on the mobile and it works perfectly as before.

The Hotstar app on the TV had no free option and I can still use the mobile or Laptop Browser version through the Chromecast as before.

Today I was talking to my friend who was looking for an app to show the Google Photos on the TV and I found an app called Fotoo which can connect to your Google Photos account.

Because it is not Google certified Android TV (it is AOSP) I don't have access to Google Play Store but Aptoide App Store has thousands of apps and there is no need for google play store.

I can login in youtube with Google Account and can use Google Photos and yes Aptoide has Google Drive app too. This is sufficient.

Built My Stock Tracker on Libreoffice Calc.

 The other day I built mutual fund tracker on LibreOffice Calc. Today I built my Stock Tracker using LibreOffice Calc.

Suppose the Stock is HDFC Life whose symbol is HDFCLIFE.NS on Yahoo Finance.

Open a new Spreadsheet. Click on Sheet/Link_to_External_Data and enter the URL as https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/download/HDFCLIFE.NS and press Enter.

After a few minutes (may be seconds) the Data will come click Ok and Ok to CSV.all

The Data will come in two rows for the day.

You can select the third row and link another URL say for SBI as https://query1.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/download/SBIN.NS and press Enter.

The Data can be updated every day by selecting Edit/Links_to_External_Files and clicking on Update Button.

How to convert a password protected pdf to unprotected pdf.

 Suppose you send your password protected Bank Statement in pdf to some entity to show your financial capacity the other party can't read it without password.

You can convert the password protected pdf to unprotected pdf using pdftk.

pdftk /home/user/Documents/BankStatement.pdf input_pw password output /home/user/Documents/BankStatementcopy.pdf

Replace password with actual password.

The BankStatementcopy.pdf will be an unprotected pdf and could be opened by anyone and you can send it.

Built my own Mutual Fund Tracker on Libreoffice Calc.

 I had used android app for tracking my Mutual Fund investments. I can also track the Funds in MyCams app.

Today I decided to build my own tracker using Libreoffice Spreadsheet.

AMFI updates NAVs of all Mutual Funds from India every day and one text file is available for previous day's NAVs.

I opened a Blank Sheet and clicked on Sheet/Link_to_external_Data_Source and entered the URL.and hit Enter.

The text file got loaded on the sheet.

Next I added another sheet and entered Scheme_Code, Fund Name, Date of purchase, NAV, Units allotted in the columns and added columns for current NAV and Date.

Then I used VLOOKUP function to get the values of currurent NAV and Date for the first entry in row 2 as follows:

For NAV =VLOOKUP(A2,$Sheet1.A$1:F$18034,5, )

For Date =VLOOKUP(A2,$Sheet1.A$1:F$18034,6, )

VLOOKUP function looks for the row having the value in A2 cell on Sheet1and picks up the value in column 5 for NAV and column 6 for Date,

Simple isn't it?

Sheet1 Data can be updated every day and Sheet2 containing the Data for my funds gets updated accordingly.

You may like to use the Date obtained through the above VLOOKUP function for further calculation by subtracting the Date of investment to get the total days of investment and the output of Date difference may produce error. To solve this do the following Settings:

Libreoffice Tools/Options/Libreoffice_Calc/Formula
Detailed Calculation Settings
Custom (conversion of text to numbers and more)
Details
Convert also locale dependent
Reference syntax for string reference Calc A1 | Excel A1

Running Manjaro Linux 20.1 Xfce edition with Linux Kernel 5.8.6-1 on acre aspire3.

 I downloaded and installed Manjaro 20.1 Xfce edition and installed replacing Zenwalk 15 milestone. The Xfce version is 4.14 (same as Zenwalk) but does not have the bugs I encountered on Zenwalk.

I could add the in keyboard through Xfce applet and switch it and could set the illumination using Fn+<> keys.

Manjaro installed Linux Kernel 5.8.6-1 by default and showing options of installing following kernels:

Adjusting Screen Brightness, Adding amsynth and Hindi Keyboard on Zenwalk 15 milestone 2020 XFCE 4.14.

 As posted in previous post I am having trial run of Zenwalk 15 milestone 2020 on my acer aspire Laptop. After adding the required software through Flatpak I started looking for a Synthesizer. On netpkg (the Zenwalk Cli only Package manager) you can search on one source at a time. After changing the source from slackware64-current to shrepos/current I could install amsynth and try my newly acquired usb midi controller. It worked well.

Screen brightness could not be set through the XFCE Widget. I used the commands:

 xrandr -q | grep " connected"

eDP connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm

xrandr --output eDP --brightness 0.5

To reduce the brightness.

I need to use Hindi and Marathi on the Laptop so I added the indic keyboard but the Keyboard switching did not work. It seems to be a bug in XFCE Desktop.

Then I tried the good old command "setxkbmap -layout in" which resulted into following error:

Error loading new keyboard description

After googling I found that the culprit was the in symbol file in the newest version of xkeyboard (xkeyboard-config-2.30-noarch-1.txz).

I opened the file

bash-5.0# geany /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/in

and scrolled to line no 2329 =======

and commented out by putting # in front of it.

I tried the command "setxkbmap -layout in" once again and it worked.

Then I used the following to add the keyboard:

setxkbmap -layout "us,in"

and the XFCE Keyboard switcher also showed the two keyboards and the switching worked.

NB: XFCE 4.14 has a bug. I need to add the keyboard after every boot through the command:

setxkbmap -layout "us,in"

In a way it is good that I need to relearn the Linux commands to use Zenwalk Linux.

Running Zenwalk 15.0 - milestone 2020. It is Fantastic!

 I downloaded zenwalk-current-15.0-200703a.iso and installed it on a spare partition on my acer aspire3. It is based on Slackware and has Xfce 4.14 desktop and Flatpak support.

The distribution came with minimum applications but I could add Firefox, libreoffice, gnucash, aiselriot from Flathub and start the trial run of the distribution.

I am yet to understand the netpkg package manager to update but Zenwalk is light weight and great!
and more it has become rolling distribution.

Convert your QWERTY Keyboard into Accordion/Piano with VMPK.

VMPK is a wonderful Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard. There are 128 instruments (called Program) to play. It has its own Synthesizer SonivoxEAS, so you don't need any other. I have played a song on it and recorded on Audacity without starting Jackd.

I used following keys:
vbhq wrt6
to play the song
"Jane Kahan Gaye Wo DIN" using Accordion. You can also try.

 

Producing music is easier than playing music on a PC/Laptop.

As a child I learned to play Harmonium since there was one in the house. I also joined Vocal Indian Classical Music Class in the evening although there was a conflict whether to play in the ground (it was in front of our house) or go to music class in the evening. I passed Standard 8 of school and Intermediate level classical music at the same time but could not pursue music studies since there was a gap between the school closing and beginning of Music College and both were 3 Kms from my house and I could not walk the to and fro distance two times.

I used to play Flute in my College days (mostly Film Songs), directed College Orchestra, also bought Mouth Organ and Electric Guitar while working as a Trainee Enginner.

Recently I thought about converting my Laptop Keyboard into Midi Keyboard and the story begins.

As described in the last post I installed synthesizer played on it but it is not easy to play on QWERTY Keyboard compared to Harmonium, then connected my mobile phone through usb for Piano like keyboard.

Then I downloaded some Tabla/Drums wav files from Internet and played on their beats but did not like the quality of my music.

Finally I have discovered that producing music is easier than playing it on my Laptop.

I downloaded LMMS which was originally known as Linux Multimedia Studio but became cross platform for wider acceptance with the result that most popular plugin VST is based on Windows.

I searched for Tabla Loops and found free VST plugins.

I could not load VST plugins on LMMS installed on Ubuntu. Since I also have Windows 10 I installed LMMS on it and used the plugin.

Then I discovered that LMMS recommends that you install Wine on Ubuntu, download their AppImage from there website make it executable and run it on wine.

I find that it runs better on Ubuntu+Wine compared to Windows 10. I could load the VST plugin.

I made some preliminary music.
Yaman
Trital

Using amsynth Synthesizer on Ubuntu.

I installed amsynth synthesizer and jack-keyboard:
sudo apt install amsynth
sudo apt install jack-keyboard

I started QJackCtl
Clicked Setup/Settings/Midi_Driver/seq Advanced/Output_Device/hw:Generic, 0
Advanced/Input_Device/hw:Generic, 0 Ok
Then I clicked on Start

Then I started amsynth and Jacke-keyboard
On Jack-keyboard clicked on Connect/system:midi_playback_2

Selected BriansBank01 on amsynth

and started playing on Keyboard

V B N J Q W E R

which played the notes

सा रे ग म प ध नी सा

Next I need to record what is being played.

sudo apt install jack-capture
sudo adduser <username> audio
jack_capture -mp3

and I made first attempt to play a song and result is as follows:
Shared file on Drive.

Update 04 May 2020
Today I hooked up android midi keyboard to the Laptop:

Notice the Jack Connection:

Running Lubuntu 20.04 LXQt Desktop through USB

I was impressed with ExTiX LXQt desktop and decided to try Lubuntu 20.04 which has the same LXQt Desktop. I downloaded Lubuntu current image of ISO and prepared persistent USB using mkusb and booted into it. Here is how it looks:

The app for updating and installing additional software is called Discover:

 

 Since it was Live USB I had to select Locale: