1. Welcome From The Chief Editor

2. Easy File Sharing with NitroShare

3. Xfce Power User Tips, Tricks & Tweaks: File Utilities (Part Two)

4. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

5. Undo Gmail's Latest "Enhancements"

6. Game Zone: Steel Storm: Burning Retribution

7. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

8. GIMP Tutorial: Masks Explained

9. ms_meme's nook: On Line

10. Running Multiple Commands From The Command Line Or A Bash Script

11. Friendship Day

12. LibreOffice Tips & Tricks: Part Two

13. Testimonials From Veteran PCLinuxOS Users

14. Screenshot Showcase

Welcome From The Chief Editor

Have you ever noticed how some folks sometimes make things W-A-Y more complicated than they need to be, even when they try to make things simple? That's what happened to the Gmail team in July, when they rolled out their latest "enhancement" to the popular online email service. It's almost as if they convince themselves that the simplest approach just can't be the best or right answer. Certainly, after expending all that energy making simple things complicated, how can it be resolved with a simple solution? Therein lies the problem.

Never fear. I'll show you this month, in the 'Undo Gmail's Latest "Enhancements"' article, how to uncomplicated your Gmail inbox and to effectively remove the Gmail team's ill-conceived and over-complicated "solution."

July also saw the release of new PCLinuxOS Live CDs that feature the newly added Mate desktop, along with quarterly updates of the LXDE and KDE Live CDs. OnlyHuman also released an unofficial community remaster of a PCLinuxOS Live CD that features the Enlightenment e17 desktop.

Don't forget: if you have an idea for an article, please let us know! Send an email to pclinuxos.mag@gmail.com, or send me or Meemaw a PM in the forum with your article idea. Even better yet, write it up yourself and send it to us. Don't worry if you consider yourself "not much of a writer." Meemaw, the magazine staff and I will put the final spit-and-shine polish on it. We will accept articles in whatever format you want to submit them. Annotated text files, AbiWord files, LibreOffice files, or Google Docs... they are all acceptable. We'll transfer them to Google Docs, which is the preferred platform used by the magazine staff when collaborating on articles and article editing.

Sometime during August, there should be the arrival of a new, future PCLinuxOS user in our home. It's getting quite a bit closer, and "mom and dad" are putting on the final touches as we await the birth of our first child. With our "due date" of August 25 (which also happens to be my birthday), I doubt I'll be around much towards the end of August. I'm sure I'll be rather preoccupied with getting mom and baby home and settled. As such, I suspect you'll see Meemaw stepping up to write the Welcome From The Chief Editor column for the September 2013 issue.

Until then, I hope for peace, prosperity, serenity and happiness for all!

Easy File Sharing with NitroShare

by Texstar

NitroShare is a network file-sharing application that makes sending a file to another machine on the local network as easy as dragging-and-dropping.

I have a laptop computer and a desktop computer, and wanted a hassle free way to share files between them. This is how I did it.

I installed NitroShare from the Synaptic Software Manager in PCLinuxOS to both the laptop computer and the desktop computer.

I started NitroShare on the laptop computer, and then started NitroShare on the desktop computer, so both programs were running at the same time.

I selected "Help Me Setup NitroShare."

I named the desktop computer "desktop," and I named the laptop computer "laptop." You can name them whatever you want.

Clicking on "Next" on both the desktop and laptop computers allows NitroShare to locate the computers on the network.

You can select how often you receive notifications. I left this "as is" and clicked next on both computers.

Almost done! I clicked on "Finish."

On my desktop computer, a box appeared called "Select Machine." I right clicked on it, selected the laptop, and clicked OK. I did the same thing on my laptop computer, and selected "desktop."

A second box appeared on my desktop computer called laptop. The same happened on my laptop computer, but it was called desktop.

Now, if I want to copy a file from my desktop computer to my laptop computer, I simply open a file manager (such as Dolphin), then drag and drop the file on the laptop box!

If I'm on my laptop and want to copy a file to my desktop, I do the same thing but drag and drop it on the gray box labeled desktop.

Finally, there are additional options available by right clicking on the NitroShare icon on the panel and selecting "Settings." I selected the options to "Load at startup," and under the security tab, to "Automatically accept all files." You can also specify a folder that will be used to save the files into if you don't want to use the default Desktop folder.

If you want to share files between your Linux computer and your Windows computer you will have to download and install NitroShare for Windows from the following location: https://launchpad.net/nitroshare.

Xfce Power User Tips, Tricks & Tweaks: File Utilities (Part Two)

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Last month, we took a look at a solitary file utility, and discussed why it should be a necessary part of every Xfce user's arsenal of tools. This month, we'll look at a collection of file utilities that make your life under Xfce easy and simple, and without having to remember a small collection of command line commands.

It only stands to reason that since Thunar is a file manager, there are a lot of file utilities that can make your interaction and work with files easier. As such, I'm going to break up the Xfce Power User Tips, Tricks & Tweaks: File Utilities article into three parts, just because of the sheer volume of useful file utilities that are available for use. We'll wrap up the discussion of file utilities that you can use from Thunar Custom Actions in next month's Xfce Power User Tips, Tricks & Tweaks column.

Open Root Terminal

How many times have you been poking around in Thunar, only to discover that you need to elevate your "privileges" to root to accomplish what you need to do? If you're anything like me, it happens on a fairly regular basis. Thanks to this Thunar Custom Action, a root terminal is only two quick clicks of the mouse away.

Give your new Thunar Custom Action a name and description. Enter "Open Root Terminal" as the name, and "Open root terminal window here" as the description. On the third line, enter the following command:

gksu terminal

Select an icon for your new custom action. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the "File Pattern" set to the default * value, and place a checkmark in front of Directories.

Now, simply right click your mouse on an empty space in Thunar (e.g., not on a file). Select "Open Root Terminal" from Thunar's right click context menu. You will then be prompted to enter the root password. Once you do, you will be presented with a terminal opened up on your desktop, opened to the directory that you were in when you selected the option in Thunar, as the root user.

Edit As Root

Sometimes, you simply need to edit a file on your system as the root user. For example, someone thought it would be cute to name GIMP as Gnu Image Manipulation Program in GIMP's *.desktop file. While the longer form is the full name of GIMP, my mind is looking for GIMP when selecting it to open a graphics file. To change the name in the *.desktop file (stored at /usr/share/applications), you need root privileges.

The easiest way to do this is to travel to the directory where the "GNU Image Manipulation Program" *.desktop file is stored (/usr/share/applications), and edit the file where it sits. (Hint: simply change the Name: line in the desktop file from GNU Image Manipulation Program to GIMP). This Thunar Custom Action allows you the opportunity to edit any text file on your system that needs root privileges to edit or change.

Enter a name and description for your new custom action. On the first line, enter "Edit As Root" as the name, and "Edit selected file as the root user" as the description on the second line. Enter the following command on the third line:

gksu -l mousepad %f

Select an icon for your new custom action. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, keep the "File Pattern" set to the * default value, and place a checkmark in front of Text files and Other files.

Now, selecting a file, then selecting "Edit As Root" from Thunar's right click context menu will prompt you for the root password. Once supplied, Mousepad will open with root privileges, allowing you to edit the contents of the selected text file. This custom action is useful for any text file you might need to edit on your system that requires root privileges. There are plenty around, since Linux's configuration files are typically text files of one kind or another.

Copy To and Move To

Two of the "installed" Thunar Custom Actions that came preinstalled on the old Phoenix Live CD (the former PCLinuxOS version of Xfce) are called "Copy To" and "Move To." These two custom actions allow you to copy or move selected files and/or directories to new locations on your computer's hard drive.

With both custom actions, a Zenity file selection dialog box is displayed to give you (the user) the chance to choose the destination folder where to copy or move the selection of files.

The command for the Copy To... custom action is as follows:

cp -r %F $(zenity --file-selection --directory)

I've slightly modified the original command from the Phoenix Live CD to include the -r command line switch, which tells the copy command (cp) to recurse any selected directories.

The command for the Move To... custom action is as follows:

mv %F $(zenity --file-selection --directory)

Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the File Pattern set to the default * value, and place a check in front of every file type.

Now, whenever you want to copy or move a single file or directory - or a group of files or directories - simply select the file(s) and/or directory(ies) you want to act upon, and select the appropriate custom action to carry out your desired activity.

Copy To with a pulsating progress bar

One of the problems with the original Copy To... and Move To... Thunar Custom Actions is that there is no indication for when the actions have been completed. One way to improve on this is to add a pulsating progress bar to the command.

Using the copy (cp) command as our example, enter the following on the command line of the Thunar Custom Action Edit Action dialog box:

(for I in $(seq 2); do echo $I; sleep 1; done; cp -r %F "$(zenity --file-selection --directory)") | zenity --progress --pulsate --auto-close

You can do the same for the move (mv) command simply by replacing the cp -r part of the command with mv.

Set up the "Appearance Conditions" tab of the Edit Action dialog box the same as we did previously, with the File Pattern set to the default value of * and a checkmark in front of every file type.

Now, you will have a visual indicator that looks like the dialog box above to indicate when the copy or move action has completed.

Copy Move

There is another way for us to copy or move a selection of files and/or directories using a real progress bar to indicate the progress of our selected action. First, copy/enter the following in a simple text editor (such as Xfce's Mousepad), and save it to the /Scripts directory in your /home directory. I call my copy of this script copy-move.sh. Don't forget to make the script file executable.

#! /bin/sh

n=1

corm=$(zenity --list --radiolist --column="Select" --column="Action"

--title="Copy Or Move" --width=200 --height=175 --text=

"Select which activity you\nwould like to perform:" TRUE Copy FALSE Move)

if [ $? == 1 ]; then

exit

fi

dest="$(zenity --file-selection --directory)"

if [ $corm == "Copy" ]; then

for file in "$@"; do

if [ ! -e "$file" ]; then

continue

fi

cp -r "$file" "$dest"

echo $(($n * 100 / $#))

echo "# Copying file: $file"

let "n = n+1"

done | (zenity  --progress --title "Copying Files..."

--percentage=0 --auto-close --auto-kill)

elif [ $corm == "Move" ]; then

for file in "$@"; do

if [ ! -e "$file" ]; then

continue

fi

mv "$file" "$dest"

echo $(($n * 100 / $#))

echo "# Moving file: $file"

let "n = n+1"

done | (zenity  --progress --title "Moving Files..."

--percentage=0 --auto-close --auto-kill)

fi

exit 0

Enter $HOME/Scripts/copy-move.sh %N on the command line for this Thunar Custom Action, provided that you saved the copy-move.sh bash file in the /Scripts folder, within your /home folder. Otherwise, be sure to provide the appropriate path information to where you stored your copy of the copy-move.sh bash file.

Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the File Pattern set to the default value of *, and place a checkmark in front of every file type.

When you select this custom action, you will see a dialog box similar to the one displayed above. Select whether you want to copy or move the selected file(s) or directory(ies), then select the OK button. You will then be displayed a Zenity file selection dialog box to allow you to decide upon the destination directory.

Once you've decided upon and selected the destination directory, a dialog box similar to the one above will be displayed, with a fully qualified progress bar to indicate the actual progress through the file copy or move action.

Create Soft Link

Sometimes, you might want to simply create a "soft link" to another file located somewhere on your computer, rather than making a second copy of the file. You could do this rather easily from the command line, but why drop out to a command line terminal when we can create the soft link from within Thunar even more easily?

Enter ln -s %f $(zenity --file-selection --directory) as the command in the Edit Action dialog box. (That's a small L, small N). In the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the File Pattern set to the default value of *, and place a checkmark in front of every file type.

Now, select the file you want to create a soft link for. When you select this custom action from Thunar's right-click context menu, a Zenity file selection dialog box will open, allowing you to dictate where the new soft link is created.

Copy Filename & Path

Let's see a show of hands - how many of you have wanted or needed to copy the full path information for a specific file into a document? I would be surprised if everyone's hand didn't go up. At some time in their computing history, everyone has had the need to do this. With this Thunar Custom Action, copying the full path and filename to the clipboard is only a two step process. To accomplish this, you will need to install xclip from the PCLinuxOS repository, if you don't already have it installed.

Enter echo -n %f | xclip -selection c on the command line of the Edit Action dialog box. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, keep the File Pattern set to the default value of *, and place a checkmark in front of every file type.

Now, when you right click on a file and select Copy Filename and Path from Thunar's right-click context menu, the full path and filename of the selected file will be copied to the clipboard.

We can very easily add a confirmation dialog box to this custom action, if you so choose. Just alter the command to include a Zenity information dialog box, as such: zenity --info --title="Filename & Path Copied" --text="Filename and path copied to clipboard:\n\n%f"; echo -n %f | xclip -selection c. If you wish to replace the word "and" with an ampersand (&) in the text field, you will need to enter it as &amp; or it will cause an error in the Zenity dialog output. And yes, all five characters are necessary.

Strip Spaces From Filenames

You've heard it before - over and over. It's bad form to include spaces in your filenames under Linux. It isn't that the Linux file systems can't handle spaces. Most every Linux file system handles spaces in filenames quite well. It's that spaces in filenames pose special problems when working with files using command line utilities. Typically, a space in a command line is a delimiter that signifies another command line switch is coming up.

I can attest to the difficulties that spaces in filenames pose. In writing the scripts that I've shared here in this article series, handling filenames with spaces in them has been especially problematic.

If you're like me, you avoid the use of spaces in filenames altogether. I'd rather avoid any unnecessary hassles in having to deal with the pesky spaces. Since filenames under Linux are case sensitive, I prefer to separate "words" in filenames by capitalizing the first letter of each "word." When that doesn't work, I prefer to use a dash as separator between "words."

Even as much as I might try to avoid having files with spaces in the filenames, invariably someone will send me a file whose filename is riddled with spaces. Until now, my sole option has been to manually edit the filename to eliminate those spaces. That is, until this Thunar Custom Action came along.

Enter for file in %N; do mv "$file" `echo $file | sed -e 's/ */-/g' -e 's/_-_/-/g'`; done in the command line of the Edit Action dialog box. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the File Pattern set to the default value of *, and check every file type.

When you select a file or a group of files and select "Strip Spaces From Filenames" from the Thunar right-click context menu, any spaces in the filename(s) will be converted to dashes. Thus, a file named "this is a sample file.txt" will be renamed to be "this-is-a-sample-file.txt."

Make File Executable

There are times - like when you are entering/copying the bash files I've included in this article series - when you need to make a file executable. Fortunately, this Thunar Custom Action makes it easy as two clicks of the mouse.

Enter chmod +x %f as the command in the Edit Action dialog box. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, set the File Pattern to

*.sh;*.py;*.pl and place a checkmark in front of Text Files and Other Files. If you have other types of files that you would like to make executable (e.g., files from other scripting languages), add them to the File Pattern list, separating each with a semi-colon.

Now, whenever you right click on an eligible file, you will be given the chance to make the file executable by selecting "Make File Executable" from Thunar's right-click context menu.

Disk Usage Utility

Sometimes it's not enough to simply know the size of a file, directory, group of files, or group of directories. Sometimes, you need or want to know how much disk space they consume - which is usually more than the actual size of the files. With this Thunar Custom Action, you can easily see how much space a file, group of files, directory, or group of directories is taking up on your hard drive.

Enter du -chs --apparent-size %N | yad --title="Disk Usage Utility" --text-info --width=300 --height=200 --window-icon="application-vnd-oasis.opendocument. chart" --button="gtk-ok" in the "Command" field of the Edit Action dialog box. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the "File Pattern" set to the default value of *, and make sure there's a checkmark in front of every file type.

Now, when you select a file, group of files, directory, or group of directories, a listing of each file or directory selected will appear, with the amount of disk space each file or directory occupies on your hard drive.

Make Backup Copy

Whenever you are editing a file, it's a smart move to always make a backup copy of the original file. It's great added insurance if things should "head south" at the speed of light. This Thunar Custom Action makes the creation of a backup file a simple, two-click process.

Enter cp --backup=t %f %f.backup into the "Command" field of the Edit Action dialog box. Under the "Appearance Conditions" tab, leave the "File Pattern" set to the default value of *, and place a checkmark in front of every file type.

This custom action will make a copy of a single file or directory, and append ".backup" to the end of the filename, placing it in the same directory as the original.

Summary

As you can see, there are a lot of file utility tasks that can be handled via Thunar's Custom Actions. Next month, we'll look at a special set of file utilities that help deal with ISO, IMG and md5sum files.

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

SUDOKU

Sudoku Rules:

There is only one valid solution to each Sudoku puzzle. The only way the puzzle can be considered solved correctly is when all 81 boxes contain numbers and the other Sudoku rules have been followed.

When you start a game of Sudoku, some blocks will be prefilled for you. You cannot change these numbers in the course of the game.

Each column must contain all of the numbers 1 through 9 and no two numbers in the same column of a Sudoku puzzle can be the same.

Each row must contain all of the numbers 1 through 9 and no two numbers in the same row of a Sudoku puzzle can be the same.

Each block must contain all of the numbers 1 through 9 and no two numbers in the same block of a Sudoku puzzle can be the same.

Tux Scrappler

217 points possible, average mark is 152

TUX SCRAPPLER RULES:

Follow the rules of Scrabble®. You can view them here. You have seven (7) letter tiles with which to make as long of a word as you possibly can. Words are based on the English language. Non-English language words are NOT allowed.

Red letters are scored double points. Green letters are scored triple points.

Add up the score of all the letters that you used. Unused letters are not scored. For red or green letters, apply the multiplier when tallying up your score. Next, apply any additional scoring multipliers, such as double or triple word score.

An additional 50 points is added for using all seven (7) of your tiles in a set to make your word. You will not necessarily be able to use all seven (7) of the letters in your set to form a "legal" word.

In case you are having difficulty seeing the point value on the letter tiles, here is list of how they are scored:

0 points: 2 blank tiles

1 point: E, A, I, O, N, R, T, L, S, U

2 points: D, G

3 points: B, C, M, P

4 points: F, H, V, W, Y

5 points: K

8 points: J, X

10 points: Q, Z

Optionally, a time limit of 60 minutes should apply to the game, averaging to 12 minutes per letter tile set.

Have fun! It's only a game!

GIMP FILTERS CROSSWORD

1. Makes a plain background look like fine woven cloth

2. Makes the edges of an object fuzzy

3. Makes an object more shiny

4. Draws graph paper lines

5. A frame

6. Makes a wavy pattern with an object

7. Makes a plain background look like a coarse weave

8. Makes an object look like it is raised above the surface of the drawing.

9. Colors spread randomly in the background

10. Changes a plain background into one with a tiled pattern

11. Puts an angled edge on an object

12. Changes your background to look like a maze

13. Can make a very bright star in your drawing

14. Changes an object's appearance to a 3-dimensional object

15. Changes the colors of an object and background to look like a neon sign

16. Overlays your image with a puzzle pattern.

17. The best image manipulation program out there!

GIMP FILTERS WORD SEARCH

GIMP            Blur            Pixelize                Gaussian

Enhance         Sharpen         Distorts                Emboss

Engrave         Mosaic          Noise                   Sparkle

Supernova       Artistic        Clothify                Weave

Glow            Decor           Bevel                   Border

Displace        Map             Warp                    Render

Plasma          Clouds          Pattern                 Nature

Flame           Fractal         Checkerboard            Waves

Grid            Jigsaw          Maze                    Chrome

Frosty          Neon            Glossy                  Textured

Download the Puzzled Partition solutions here.

Undo Gmail's Latest "Enhancements"

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

During July, Google rolled out "enhancements" to its popular Gmail service. Google now has Gmail setup

to "automatically" filter your email into several predefined "tabs" or "categories," completely

independent of any other filters you might have set up in your Gmail account. Google has a long

history of "fixing" things that were never broken. This definitely falls within that category.

Almost every reaction I've read about these "enhancements" has been negative. And it's not as if

Google really cares what its users think, anyway. Now, instead of just receiving your email into

one simple inbox and allowing the filters that you have set up handle the sorting of the email,

someone at Google it would be a good idea for you to have to search through multiple tabs to find

your email. Click on the "+" at the far right to bring up the settings dialog box.

Without even asking (or caring) if you want this "enhancement," Google just thrust it upon its Gmail

users. Thanks a lot, Google (not). Above is the "default" values that Google suggests for setting up

your Gmail Inbox. Google doesn't even give you the opportunity to define or name your own tabs. Your

only choice is to give them the default name that Google wants you to use.

To revert your Gmail appearance back to the "old," single Inbox look, deselect every message category,

except for "Primary." Voila! Now you have your "old" Gmail Inbox back. Also, so that these funky tab

labels don't show up in your list of Gmail labels, go into the settings for Gmail and set the labels

for Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums to "Hide." Even after turning off the tabs, Gmail will still

try to apply the labels, unless you turn them off (hide them), too.

Game Zone: Steel Storm: Burning Retribution

by daiashi

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution

About the Game:

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution is a top down action shooter with old school

spirit. It marks the return of top-down shooters with new twists. The game has

score oriented competitive gameplay, and is designed for people who like fast

paced action, hordes of smart enemies, destructible worlds and ground shaking

explosions.

The events take place in an alternative universe where you control an advanced

hovertank, packed with the most advanced and sophisticated weapons. Your task is

simple, but nevertheless not trivial. In the fight against extraterrestrial

invaders, you must prevail!

Key features:

- 20+ hours of single-player experience

- Pave your way to victory with the burning remains of your enemies through 25 different campaign missions

- Enjoy fast paced and streamlined gameplay

- Engage in online warfare with up to 16 players in any of the multi-player modes

- Co-op, Deathmatch and elaborate Capture the Flag multi-player modes

- Complete Challenges and unlock First-Person camera mode

- Create new missions or modify existing ones using the unique real-time collaborative mission editor and share them with the world

- Runs on NetBooks

About The Company:

Kot-in-Action Creative Artel is a small video game developer, a privately owned

entity dedicated to creating and producing fun to play and challenging video

games. They are a very small team. Headquarters of the company are located in

Del Rio, TX, USA and the current operation office is located in Austin, TX.

Before the company shaped up, most of the team members were modders of ID

Software's® games Quake® and Doom 3®, with various degrees of expertise. In

2008, Alexander "motorsep" Zubov, inspired by the indie movement in the video

game development industry, decided to make his own game, entitled "The

Prophecy." Teaming up with gifted game logic coder, Clay "daemon" Cameron,

Alexander was able to prototype "The Prophecy" within a month and present it at

QuakeExpo 2008.

After successful presentation of the game, Kot-in-Action Creative Artel was born

and the duo began working on their first commercial title called "Steel Storm,"

which was planned as an episodic series. The first installment of the game,

called "Steel Storm: Episode 1," was released in September 2010 as a shareware

game. The game became fairly popular, reaching 310,000+ downloads worldwide, and

taking a spot in the Top 100 of the Indie of the Year 2010 competition and

IndieDB Video Spotlight - September 2010.

On May 11th of 2011, Kot-in-Action Creative Artel released the continuation of

the series, titled "Steel Storm: Burning Retribution", which was released

simultaneously on Steam, Desura and Ubuntu Software Center, and has received

overall positive reviews.

After Clay "daemon" Cameron parted his ways with Kot-in-Action, the company put

together more experienced team to pursue Steel Storm 2, a spin-off first

installment of the game, using the idTech 4 engine which powered such hits as

Doom 3(R), Quake 4(R), Prey(R), ETQW(R) and Wolfenstein(R).

System Requirements:

- OS: Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Linux / Mac OS X 10.5.8+

- Processor: 2.0+ GHz Single Core Processor (Dual-Core Processor recommended)

- Memory: 1 Gb RAM (2 Gb or greater recommended)

- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT+ or ATI Radeon 2400+ HD with 256 Mb of VRAM (512 Mb of VRAM recommended)

- Hard Drive: 900 Mb

- Sound: Standard Sound Card

- Input: Keyboard + mouse or gamepad (XB360 or Logitech Rumblepad 2 recommended)

- Steam from the PCLinuxOS repository

Screenshots:

Getting it to run:

This is my first review of a game that runs natively in Linux, through Steam for

Linux. There is not much to it. No Wine needed here. You will need to fully

update your system, including your graphics drivers. After your update, search

for steam-launcher from your PCLinuxOS package manager.

Install Steam (if you don’t have it installed already), then start it. You will

need to create a new account, if you do not already have one. Once you have

Steam up and running, go to the store tab. Click on the Linux tab if you wish

and search for Steel Storm. Click on and download the demo. If you have updated

your system, including graphics drivers, you should be good to go.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/96200/

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Bread

Ingredients:

2 cups vanilla ice cream, softened

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Sprinkles

* substitute for self-rising flour

1 1/2 cups AP flour

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Mix to combine.

Cooking Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Combined the ice cream, flour, and chocolate chips in a bowl. Press the batter into a buttered 5x3 loaf pan and shake the sprinkles on top.

3. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the top turns golden brown. Allow to cool for five minutes in the loaf pan, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

GIMP Tutorial: Masks Explained

by Meemaw

We've used masks in several of our projects. Sometimes it's hard to understand

exactly what a mask does, so I'm going to try to explain it in this article.

A mask is a layer you can add to your project to affect certain parts of it.

However, instead of being another layer, the mask is attached to a layer and

affects the pixels on that layer. It's used to block or show the pixels on the

layer it is part of, so your project is changed in some way.

Basically, a white mask makes your layer show, but allows you to "cover" part

of it to show what's underneath, and a black mask makes your layer transparent,

so you see the next layer down, while allowing you to "uncover" any part you

want visible.

When we did the layer mask on the flower photo, we

created two layers, made the bottom layer grayscale, and configured the mask on

the color layer to be black, which blocked out the color. Painting a black

layer mask with white makes those pixels transparent, so we could see the color

in that layer. It just blocks out the layer it's attached to, so we could still

see the grayscale layer on the rest of the photo. This resulted in our flower

showing as color and the rest of the photo as grayscale.

On the infant

photograph, we also made the layer mask black. Painting with white makes the

mask transparent and the color in that layer shows through. That's also why we

had to make several layers, each with its own color. Each layer mask brings out

the color we configured on that layer in the areas we painted, while leaving the

rest grayscale.

If you have a color and a greyscale layer, you can put a white layer mask on

the color layer and paint with black to make the greyscale show through. On the

example below, I did just that.

One thing we haven't tried is using a shade of gray. If you paint on a layer

mask with 50% gray, then that portion of your layer will be 50% transparent. In

the example below, I chose a 65% gray and painted the leaves above and to the

left of the rose. You can see that there is color there, but it is not as

bright as the rose. Notice the layer section on the right. The layer mask now

shows the areas painted with white and gray on it besides the black part of the

mask.

With the right photo and a little imagination, you can make a very dramatic

image!

Let's try something else. I loaded this photo into Gimp:

In Gimp, I did the following:

Duplicate Layer, then using the bottom layer, click Color > Desaturate. Add a

Layer Mask to the color layer.

With the layer mask chosen, Blend with a BG to FG gradient (BG is background

white on the left of the button, FG is foreground black on the right).

Starting with the top of the photo, click and drag to about two thirds of the

way to the bottom of the photo.

Now we see that the top of the photo is still in color, but the gradient in the

layer mask  slowly changes the color to grayscale as you get lower in the

photo. You can see what is unmasked so the color shows through and what is not.

You can make either the color or the grayscale as big or small as you want

simply by changing where the gradient starts and ends. The farther down you

start makes more color and less grayscale in the photo. If you want color at

the bottom, simply start at the bottom of the photo and drag upwards.

Experiment with your photo to get the effect you want. To prevent overwriting

-- and possibly losing the only copy of your photo -- it's best to always work

on a copy of your original image.

ms_meme's nook: On Line

MP3           OGG

Running Multiple Commands From The Command Line Or A Bash Script

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

There may be times, when you are working in a terminal session or writing a bash

script that you want to execute multiple commands. Fortunately, and as you might

expect, Linux gives us multiple ways to do this.

command1; command2; command3

When separated by a semicolon, all of your commands will be executed, regardless

if they return an error code or not. This situation will probably satisfy a lot

of your needs. In the illustrative image above, I've executed the ls command (to

list the directory conents of my /home directory), followed by the cal command

(to display a calendar of the current month), and then "pinged" google.com three

times with the ping command. Each were separated by a semicolon, and each

executed in the order listed. While it may not be a very practical example, it

does illustrate the concept fairly well.

But, what if you wanted the subsequent commands to be executed only if the

previous command successfully completed, without an error code (other than

zero)? Linux has us covered for that eventuality.

command1 && command2 && command3

Using a && (two ampersands) to separate your commands will allow the second

command to execute only if the first command successfully completes without an

error, and the third command to execute only if the second command successfully

completes without an error.

Taking a slightly different path, we can also "chain" commands together to

execute only if the previous command failed or returned an error code (other

than zero). Instead of using the &&, we use two pipe characters (||), which is

the same as saying "or." While this can be a bit complex to wrap your mind

around, I'll try to explain.

command1 || command2 || command3

With this syntax, if the first command returns an error code, then and only then

will the second command be executed. If the first command and second command

return an error, then and only then will the third command be executed. If the

first command successfully completes, then neither the second or third commands

will be executed. If the first command is unsuccessful but the second command

successfully completes, then the third command will be ignored.

Summary

Many Linux users may find little need to use the command line, thanks to the

fantastically complete GUI desktops we have to choose from. Other Linux users

may be afraid of the command line. But sometimes, there are things you can only

do from the command line. Yet other times, using the command line is the fastest

way to get things done. Every Linux user owes it to themselves to at least learn

their way around the command line. You never know when you might find it helpful

and useful.

Friendship Day

by Meemaw

Having a good friend with whom we can share our feelings and problems will make

our world happy and worth living. Understanding, compassion and love are some of

the qualities a friend shows. They are the people who say silently, through

their words or actions, that we are special and important. We should thank all

our dear friends and tell them how much their support and friendship means to

us. Most of the time, we don't find or take advantage of an opportunity to

express our gratitude, or to tell them how important they are. Friendship Day is

the celebration of this wonderful bonding between two hearts and a very good

chance to say, "Hey, I value your friendship and wouldn't be the person I am

without it".

Every year, the first Sunday in the month of August is celebrated for the

beautiful bond between two people; friendship. The idea of honoring friendship

and friends began in the year 1935 in the United States. As the popularity and

the true reason behind the celebration spread, Friendship Day became an

international observation, and more and more countries started observing this

day. The first Sunday of August is celebrated in most countries as a dedication

of this day to friends all over the world. Each person has many other friends,

so Friendship Day is a celebration for everyone on earth.

This year, Friendship Day will be celebrated on the 4th.

To all my PCLinuxOS Forum Friends, I value your friendship!

LibreOffice Tips & Tricks: Part Two

by Meemaw

In this second part of our series, let's look at a few more things in LibreOffice that can make your work a little easier.

Add a Page Break

My association has a dinner every year for its members. To give them some helpful information, I usually make a program booklet. Each page has a certain kind of content, and I organize my document page by page. One page is the cover, one page is the agenda, and so on. Setting a Page Break helps to keep things organized. After positioning your cursor at the end of the text for a page, or at the end of the chapter if you are writing a book, click on Insert > Manual Break. Your next page (or chapter) will stay positioned at the top of the next sheet. This is nice if you redo your chapter and it turns out longer: LibreOffice will insert a page, if needed, and the next chapter will still start on the top of the next page.

Use the Navigator

Most of the time, LO has the Navigator in the toolbar as a default tool. I don't use the Navigator much, but I can see how it could be useful if you are doing a large document with many pictures, hyperlinks and tables. When you click on the Navigator button (most of the time it looks like a star), you will get a separate, resizeable window with everything listed. If you wanted to change or remove a hyperlink from your text, for example, you can open the Navigator and expand the Hyperlinks section. Double-click on the hyperlink you want to manipulate, and you will be taken to the spot in your document that contains it. From there, you can change or remove the hyperlink. As an alternative, you can right-click on the hyperlink you need to change (in the Navigator), and choose Edit from the dropdown box that appears.

Place Bookmarks

Another thing you can use for page navigation is Bookmarks. They will also help you navigate through a book if you have bookmarked each chapter. With your cursor placed at the desired location, click on Insert > Bookmark and you will get a window asking you to name your bookmark. It can be as simple as "Chapter 3", or as complicated as "Linux Financial Programs List". As you add bookmarks, you will see the ones you have already added listed in that window. To go to a bookmark, open the Navigator, expand the Bookmarks section, and double-click the desired bookmark. You can also right-click the page number indicator in the left end of the status bar at the bottom of the document. When you right-click it, all the inserted bookmarks will show in a list and you can choose the one you want. If you want to delete one, you can use the Insert > Bookmark command and click the one you want to delete, or open the Navigator, right-click it and choose Bookmarks > Delete.

Protect Your Document

Sometimes you want a little more security on a document you have just finished. Clicking  File > Properties > Security and then clicking on the Protect button will allow you to set a password so it can't be edited by anyone other than you.

Make a Table of Contents

If you have correctly formatted your document, LO can take your text marked as Headings and construct a table of contents from them. I experimented with a text file I keep from some of the magazine subjects parnote and I discuss. I have it sorted by date, which doesn't help me find anything in particular. I formatted each date as Heading 3, then followed the following steps:

1. Click Insert > Indexes And Tables > Indexes and Tables

2. Click the Index & Table tab.

3. Select Table of Contents in the Type box.

4. Select any options you want and then click OK.

LO will create a nice table of contents from the headings, even including the page numbers for you. Of course, I positioned my cursor at the top of page one so it would show up first in the document.

Still not very descriptive, huh? Then, I went back and reviewed the topics and placed a descriptive word with each date, so I can see what's there. So, now to update the table of contents, I do it by clicking Tools > Update > All Indexes And Tables.

The other good thing is that each entry in the TOC is a link, and by doing a <CTRL> + click on an entry, you are taken to that spot in the document. If I add more discussions to my document, I can always update it again.

Always make sure you save your work!

Different ways to move text

We all know that we can highlight text and click <CTRL> + X (cut), and then <CTRL> + V (paste). You can also click <CTRL> + Drag  or just Drag the highlighted text to move it just as easily.

Another thing I have wanted to do recently is to make a list of some information that comes to me in a spreadsheet. In an organization I belong to, the members are in a huge database that includes loads of information, but I just want to make a list of certain names and numbers. I searched the database to get the list I wanted, but it came in a spreadsheet, so I downloaded and saved it. However, I have only three columns (First Name, Last Name, Phone Number) that I want to save in a text document, just as a handy reference.

I highlighted the cells I wanted in the spreadsheet and pressed <CTRL> + C (for Copy) and then went to my text document and chose Edit > Paste Special (or you can click <CTRL> + <Shift> + V). A window popped up and asked what special thing I wanted. The choices will be different depending on what you copy, but one of the choices for me was "Unformatted text" which was what I wanted. The information was pasted into my text document without the table that usually appears when you copy from a spreadsheet, so now I have a simple list of names and numbers that I can use for reference. The list will have spaces, so you may want to edit it a bit, but it was much easier for me.

Fonts

I insert dates into many of my documents. In the date options, I set it to update when I open the document. That way when I want to send it out, the letter has the current date. However, I kept seeing that the font in the date wasn't the same as the font on the rest of the letter. to remedy that, I checked the Default fonts in Tools > Options, and set them all the same. If you have a certain font you use all the time, you might consider reviewing the settings.

Change the Icons

Bidder in our forum found an article about changing the icons in LO, which included another icon set called images_flat. You can get the icon set here

https://github.com/hotice/myfiles/raw/master/images_flat.zip

and they look like this:

Using Dolphin in superuser mode, he copied the file (intact- no need to unzip) to this directory:

/opt/libreoffice4.0/share/config/

He tried choosing the icons from within LibreOffice (Options > View) but they did not show up. So, he went back to

/opt/libreoffice4.0/share/config/

and renamed the file images_tango.zip to images_tango-ORIGINAL.zip

Then he renamed images_flat.zip to images_tango.zip (but you can choose the font you like the least and rename that one.) I like the Tango icons, so I backed up the icons called "High Contrast" and renamed the new ones as High Contrast. It's your system, so do what you want.

Starting up LibreOffice, he chose Tools > Options, then under LibreOffice > View > Icon size and style, set the icon theme to "Tango."

Summary

I hope this installment has helped you to become more organized and efficient! Part 3 will focus on LibreOffice Calc.

Testimonials From Veteran PCLinuxOS Users

Linux Superior To Windows, Definitively

by µT6

Years ago, I had to install a cheap, crappy tv tuner card because I didn't have a tv in my room.

At that time, I was migrating to Linux, so the whole process was a bit scary. But weird enough, the tv card worked on Linux, and Linux only!

I disassembled the machine that had the tv tuner card configured and working years ago, because I had a tv in my room again. So, I wiped files and configs from that time. I also put the tv tuner card in a box, just in case I might need it again in the future.

Thanks to recent events in my house, I needed a tv in my room again (thank you thief, thank you so much). So, I put that old crappy tv card to service again. I tried to make it work in Windows again, with new drivers I found. I succeeded, partially. It didn't produce sound, and it refused to change channels, so it was stuck on channel 63. It also didn't give me access to the RCA connector, so I couldn't use the cable box.

Thanks to a damaged video card on the new pc I assembled that won't work on Linux, I quickly installed the old PC I had stored, installed the tv tuner card and then installed minime. I configured the card through PCC, and then added TVTime to Minime.

The tv tuner card worked immediately, without questions, and I had access to both the RCA and cable inputs.

How is it possible that a tv card designed to work on Windows XP refused to work with their specific drivers and the specific app, but works almost out of the box in Linux where it is not supposed to work?

Well, PCLinuxOS to the rescue again!

Desktop Perfection

by ThirdOfSix

Sometimes, it takes me awhile to get to like a particular look. But it is just like family, I always end up liking each one.

I did not expect how I reacted to the latest (2013.04) release of LXDE.

WOW!

Every time I boot a machine with it, it just grabs me.

It is like being out in the woods and coming across a family of baby animals or seeing a particularly lovely lady smiling at you.

My monitors are old and somewhat dim compared to new ones, so a lot of visuals just don't work well with them.

This is the exception.

I rarely rave over anything. I really liked the new desktop for the 64 bit KDE release. I thought that it would remain my favorite for a while.

Then I installed the latest LXDE.

Again, WOW!

People using other distributions just have no idea what they are missing by not joining this community.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Life Is Good!

by exploder

Just one of those days when I switched on my PC and realized how good I have it. I may not have any money, don't have a very new PC, but here I am enjoying my favorite Queen concert on a computer that is running like a top! This computer spent most of it's life sitting under my desk because the main-board is a real piece of crap. Despite all of this PCLinuxOS MiniMe makes this thing very usable and fast.

This PC has a 2009 Foxconn main board that, at one time, would destroy a SATA hard drive in three times of booting up. I went through three or four hard drives before a BIOS update finally resolved the problem. After that, there were problems with the sound getting stuck in an infinite loop, and Plymouth always displayed huge and ugly. The computer was a total piece of junk in my opinion.

When my newer rig's main board failed, I had to make do with whatever parts I had available, and I thought the Foxconn system was better than nothing. I tried PCLInuxOS MiniMe because I knew PCLinuxOS had the very best hardware support out there. I was not disappointed. Also, I hate reinstalling my OS all the time and fighting with software to get things working.

I had seen people on other forums with really fast boot times, but I never had that kind of luck on any of my computers. PCLinuxOS gave me a fast boot, Plymouth displayed nice and everything just worked like it should. When I went in to tweak things for maximum performance, there really was not much to do. Just about all the tweaks were already in place right out of the box!

When I had my last eye operation, I had to run something else for a while because I just could not see well enough to read the text in the KDE menu, and I could not see well enough to go about making things the way I needed. I had to use something that had white text with a black background, and it was still a real struggle to do much. The only thing I could really use was the web browser with the text as big as I could make it, and even then, I had to have my face right on the screen to read anything.

People on this forum helped me to make the text in Firefox big enough to where I could see it. Forum members here also gave me the support and encouragement to make it through a really bad situation. They really cared, and it made a world of difference. I was so happy when I could finally see good enough to use KDE again!

My at the time my 7 year old son Trent helped me, too. Without Trent's help, I would not have been able to install updates or fix things with what I had to temporarily run until I recovered. I did not like the OS I had to use while I was recovering. It ran like crap, looked like crap, and I never trusted the updates that were offered. With PCLinuxOS, I knew the updates were tested, and also that if there was a problem, it would be fixed pretty darn quick.

The few times I have had problems with PCLinuxOS, people on the forum went above and beyond to help me. You just don't see that kind of support and dedication very often, but I see it here all the time. I really like the people in this forum, too. Around here, you feel like you really know the people you interact with. It really feels like they are an extension of your family and it is a pleasure participating on the forum.

I am sitting here right now listening to Queen Live at Wembley Stadium while I write this, and I was thinking to myself that before switching to PCLinuxOS, I spent most of my time fighting with the computer, rather than enjoying it. Now I have a pretty decent music collection, and I am enjoying it on a machine that I used to think was only good for spare parts.

I have written testimonials here before, but it never hurts to thank people again for doing so much to make things so good for others. I want to thank every single person here for everything they have done to make PCLinuxOS and this forum so good. I appreciate everything all of you have done, and I can't thank you enough for everything you have done for me.

You folks are the best!

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