- Welcome From The Chief Editor

1. Netflix On Your PCLinuxOS System

2. Quicker Tipper: Getting Your Netflix Fix

3. And The Walls Came Tumbling Down

4. ms_meme's Nook: Big PCLOS

5. Shellshocked? Maybe, Maybe Not

6. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

7. Inkscape Tutorial: How To Create Puzzle Pieces

8. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: JohnW_57

9. Game Zone: Blockstorm

10. GIMP Tutorial: An "Out-Of-The-Frame" Effect

11. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

12. Screenshot Showcase

Welcome From The Chief Editor

Halle-freaking-lujah! Some may be tearful, but not me. Adobe announced that it was pulling the plug on support for the Linux version of Adobe Reader. Can I have an AMEN?! I seriously doubt that Adobe Reader will be missed on Linux. In fact, I seriously doubt that Adobe Reader would be missed on ANY platform, should it disappear entirely.

There was a time when Adobe Reader was the ONLY way to view PDF files. But those days are long, long gone. Today, there are enough programs to fill a country bushel basket full that can read PDF files. Granted, this is largely due to Adobe making the PDF format an open format. But in the end, it has made Adobe's own PDF viewer irrelevant.

The other part that made Adobe Reader irrelevant is Adobe Reader itself. I guess you could make an argument that Adobe's decisions regarding Adobe Reader might also be responsible. Throughout its history, Adobe Reader has been riddled with as many security vulnerabilities as Windows has been. At least under Windows, it went through a very long period where it was bundled with every piece of crapware and malware known to mankind, or at least it seemed. It wasn't a good situation trying to get rid of the browser hijackers and other *ware that was being forced down your throat.

The only thing that would make me happier would be to see the painful and inevitable death of Adobe's Flash. Thankfully, it's looking like it may be on its way out, as well. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when HTML 5.x supplants Flash as the predominate means of streaming video content. When that day comes, the death bells will toll for Adobe Flash, and it will be relegated to a sour footnote in computing history. That day cannot come fast enough.

On a more positive and upbeat note (and it's hard, from my viewpoint, to be any more positive than witnessing the death of an Adobe product), YouCanToo has come through again for the PCLinuxOS community. He has started a live IM service called PCLOS-Talk. You can access it via Kopete or Pidgin. We'll cover it in a LOT more detail in the December 2014 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Meanwhile, you can sign up for an account by heading over to http://pclostalk.pclosusers.com. The list of online services YouCanToo provides for the PCLinuxOS community is hard to keep up with. Let's see ... pclosmail ... myphotos ... LinFX ... the magazine server ... the master repository for PCLinuxOS ... the PCLinuxOS Knowledge Base ... and I'm certain that I'm leaving something out of that laundry list.

I think I can speak for the PCLinuxOS community by saying thanks, YouCanToo, for all that you do for our favorite Linux distro. Somehow, just saying thanks doesn't seem like near enough.

Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity and prosperity.

Netflix On Your PCLinuxOS System

by YouCanToo

Up until now, watching Netflix on PCLinuxOS meant you had to jump through hoops. For some users, it worked, and for others, there was no joy! Now all PCLinuxOS users can enjoy watching Netflix on their system.

Let's begin by installing some software.

Using Synaptic, install both of the following files.

1. NSS - This is the Netscape Security Software libraries that support cross platform development applications.

2. Google-Chrome-Stable

Now we have everything installed that we need to enjoy watching Netflix.

To watch Netflix, simply enter the following command in a console window.

google-chrome --no-default-browser-check --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2114.2 Safari/537.36" --user-data-dir=/$HOME/.config/netflix --app=http://netflix.com/

Note: Just recently, Netflix stopped requiring a specific user agent code to use their service. You can abbreviate the command to google-chrome --no-default-browser-check --user-data-dir=/$HOME/.config/netflix --app=http://netflix.com/ to view Netflix. Also, you can place " &" (without the quotes) at the end of the command line to free up your console window. We're leaving the original command included, just in case there are some users who find that they need it in order for Netflix to work on their system.

If you are like many others and don't like using a console window, you can make a link to Netflix on your desktop. This is for KDE, since that is what I use. Creating a shortcut on other desktops may vary, but the process will be similar to how it's done on KDE. So, let's get started. Just right click anywhere on a blank area of the desktop. In the popup dialog box, select "Create New," and then select "Link to Application." A window like the one shown below will appear:

Under the General tab, enter Netflix. If you want an icon, then click on the icon box just to the left of where you entered Netflix. This will open a dialog box to let you select an icon or to search your machine for an icon to use. In my case, I used Google to search for an icon and saved it to my system.

Now click on the "Application" tab. In the Description field, I entered Netflix, and then in the Command field, I entered the same command we used above, in the console:

google-chrome --no-default-browser-check --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2114.2 Safari/537.36" --user-data-dir=/$HOME/.config/netflix --app=http://netflix.com/

If you used the newer, shorter version of the command in your terminal program -- and it worked -- then you can substitute the newer, shorter version of the command here (without the user agent string).

At this point click on the "OK" button at the bottom right corner of the window. The box will close and a new desktop icon will be created.

Now, just click on your newly created desktop icon to start your Netflix experience. To view Netflix full screen, press the F11 key.

Now just sit back, relax, and enjoy Netflix on your PCLinuxOS Machine!

I want to thank fraterlinux and all the other PCLinuxOS forum members that helped sort out how to watch Netflix on your PCLinuxOS installation.

Quicker Tipper: Getting Your Netflix Fix

by loudog

I am well aware of the early days when the frustration of trying to get Netflix to work on PCLinuxOS was not easy. Believe me. Actually, it was a real pain in the butt, to be honest. I personally just resorted to using my Android device or PS3, as I could never get it to work quite right on a consistent basis in Linux. It appears that those days may be over, with many reports of Netflix being used quite satisfactorily on PCLinuxOS recently in the forum. I will be using an example from the "Tips & Tricks" section on the forum for this writeup and all credit goes to our beloved (mostly anyway) forum members.

I have not tried this yet, so all you readers get to witness everything that transpires basically in real time. Reading through all the reply posts, I see a particular tip that suggests to make a graphical shortcut on the desktop. Hey, that is exactly what I would like, a little icon that I just click on and Netflix starts. Wooohooo! So let's roll up the sleeves and give er' an ol' PCLos try, ay'? Whaddaya' say, friends? It appears from reading the post that the first thing we need to do is install the NSS library from Synaptic. Easy enough, click the Synaptic icon aannnnd... What the heck??? Arrggg, just my luck, Synaptic won't open from the launch icon. The update notifier icon doesn't seem to be working either. Pesky updates and new kernels anyway ... delays, delays. Oh well, these things happen from time to time. I will have to check into the cause later. For now, I will just launch it from the shell (I hope).

Yep, that seems to work every time. I will scroll down to the nss heading, and we see that it is already installed. Cool beans.

We are now instructed to install the latest Google Chrome browser package. I have this installed already so no need to go back into Synaptic for me. If you do not have it installed, do so now. The next step is to create an application launcher icon on the desktop. Easy enough (I hope I'm not going to regret saying that). I will right click on the desktop and select: Create New > Link to Application.

This will bring up the application link configuration window. Select the application tab. Add the name and a note. The post reply says to type the command "google-chrome --no-default-browser-check --user-data-dir=/$HOME/.config/netflix --app=http://netflix.com/" into the "Properties" box, but I do not see a "Properties" option in the window.

I can be kind of lazy sometimes when it comes to typing in commands, and this happens to be one of those times. I will just copy the command from the forum post and paste it into the box that says "command" and hope it works. Yep, I fly by the seat of my pants much of the time. It makes life all that more exciting (all PCLinuxOS users do to a point). OK, now that we have those items done we will click on the "OK" button. I now have a rather plain looking icon on the desktop that says "link to application" and if I hover my cursor over it informs me that this is "test".

I would personally prefer an icon that denotes TV watching, so I will change this to something more fitting. To do this, we will need to go to the icon on the desktop launcher (the question mark icon), right click it and select properties. This will bring up the application launcher window again. Clicking on the icon in the window will now bring up the icon selection window. Note: You can change most all icons on your computer in this manner. I will expand the window to get a fuller view of all the available icons to choose from and also check the different types before deciding on one. I personally do not require a Netflix icon. Just a simple TV will be enough for me to remember what it is. I like this little happy face TV, so I will click on it. (After all, it does say "Pick me").

I now have my selected icon on the desktop, and it looks great. Now that we have all the configurations from the post implemented, it is time to see if our little project worked and if it does??? I will be watching the last season of Walking Dead with my wife on the 42" 120hz 1080p display I purchased for my computer for this very reason. Ready??? Set??? Click!!!

Yesss, my friends, it works. After signing in, we enjoyed the one service that used to be such a pain to get to work on our beloved distro (or most any other Linux distro for that matter). Yes, PCLinuxOS continues to shine brightly, and all those points of light that are our fellow users, supporters, developers, maintainers, tippers and posters come together as one brilliant beacon in the darkness we know as proprietary software. I'm Lovin' Linux.

And The Walls Came Tumbling Down

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

If you want to learn how to view Netflix on your own PCLinuxOS computer, please check out YouCanToo's and loudog's articles, elsewhere in this edition of The PCLinuxOS Magazine.

Someone pinch me. I must be dreaming. Netflix is viewable natively in PCLinuxOS? And not just only PCLinuxOS, but all Linux distros? Like many other Linux users, I never thought this day would come. Like many other Linux users, Netflix's lack of support for Linux has kept me from being one of their customers. Now, that whole mindset is changing. With support for Linux, I'm now considering becoming one of their customers.

The lack of Netflix support has often been cited as a major reason for not switching to Linux by many potential new Linux users. In fact, for the longest time, Linux seemed to be the last bastion of users to finally receive some "love" from Netflix. Netflix was available on Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS and even Blackberry. So, for many users, the lack of Netflix support for Linux has hindered wider adoption of Linux. I wonder what will happen, now that this barrier has been removed. Every Linux distribution in existence stands to benefit from an increased number of new users with access to their beloved Netflix accounts. Users who cited this as the primary obstacle to their adoption of Linux as their main operating system can now proceed with the transition.

Sure, lots of Linux users would/could run a copy of Windows in VirtualBox, but I didn't want to go through all of that hassle. I also didn't want to put up with the poor video performance that historically has plagued VirtualBox clients. Even though today's VirtualBox has much improved video performance, that hasn't always been the case, and I still didn't want to run Windows just to watch movies. Running Windows in VirtualBox ran counter to the reasons I switched to Linux, and it makes me feel "dirty" every time I launch Windows in VirtualBox.

So what's responsible for Netflix's change of heart? Well, it's primarily due to Netflix dropping Microsoft's Silverlight as its main means for applying DRM -- which excluded Linux users, en toto. Instead, Netflix is now switching over the the proposed HTML 5.1 standard to stream content. Yes, the proposed HTML 5.1 has DRM, inserted at the insistence of content providers. But the DRM in HTML 5.1 is platform independent. All that is necessary is to use a browser that is compliant with the proposed HTML 5.1 standard. So Linux users -- and users of other "less popular" operating systems -- are no longer excluded (or shouldn't be excluded) by content providers use of platform-specific DRM modules.

This next bit may just be my perspective, but I really don't think so. As more and more people get tired of the bigger and bigger mess that Windows has become -- increasingly so with virtually every new version -- more and more people seem to be discovering Linux. The popularity of Linux has definitely been buoyed by the emergence of Linux as a powerful gaming platform. The release of Valve's "official" Steam client for Linux in September 2013 has certainly put some steam into the adoption of Linux (sorry for the pun). Valve even has a Linux based gaming OS in the works, called SteamOS, which is currently in open beta testing.

Bit by bit, the walls and barriers -- whether real or perceived -- that prevent users from adopting Linux are being torn down. Those of us who have already made the transition from the commercially available operating systems to Linux years ago have become covered in cobwebs waiting for these events to materialize. But finally, our long wait is being rewarded.

At long last, the walls came tumbling down.

ms_meme's Nook: Big PCLOS

MP3           OGG

Shellshocked? Maybe, Maybe Not

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

On September 24, 2014, a security vulnerability was discovered in bash, the Bourne Again Shell. Bash, the default in PCLinuxOS, is the basic, text based command interpreter that allows a user to interact with their computer from the command line. It is commonly referred to as a shell. Bash is the default shell in many Linux distros, and is the default shell in Mac OS X.

Well, OK. You might be. Shellshocked, that is. You are, if you haven't kept your system up to date. But if you have maintained your updates regularly (as you should), your system should be patched and immune from the most common vulnerability.

Users of Windows, Android and iOS are not typically affected, at least directly. On the latter two OS's, there is a risk only if the user has installed a version of bash. For example, there are several versions available in the Google Play store on my LG2 Android phone. While it isn't clear by reading the descriptions if those versions of bash are affected, it would be a safe bet to assume that they are. The release dates for most of the versions are from August, 2014, which was before the discovery of the Shellshock vulnerability.

Bash came about in 1989, originally written by Brian Fox for the GNU Project as a free replacement for the Unix Bourne Shell. It's POSIX compliant, and also incorporated features from csh, ksh and sh. It is suspected that the newly discovered vulnerability has been there since the beginning. Other accounts place the vulnerability going back to version 1.13. Nonetheless, bash is now up to version 4.3.2, so the vulnerability has been around for some time now.

Basically, the vulnerability allows a function to be exported as an environment variable to another instance of bash. That function can easily include malicious code. In fact, by the end of September, more than 1.5 million exploits of the vulnerability were being tracked. Those exploits ranged from DDoS attacks to "command and control deployment" attacks.

It's not difficult to find a very wide assortment of topics discussing the Shellshock vulnerability, more formally known as CVE-2014-6271. The best -- and most understandable -- discussion of Shellshock I found was at Wikipedia. Another excellent discussion was found at troyhunt.com. ZDNet has also published an excellent FAQ about Shellshock. So, I'm not going to go into an in-depth discussion about how it works. I cannot even come close to doing justice to the topic that the excellent resources I've mentioned here have done, as well as all of the other thousands of similar sites doing the same thing.

How Serious Is Shellshock?

If you were to rate vulnerabilities on a scale from one to ten, with one being the lowest level of vulnerability and ten being the highest, most severe vulnerability, Shellshock rates a 10. In fact, the National Vulnerability Database, sponsored by the DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security) National Cyber Security Division and National Institute of Standards and Technology, rates the Shellshock vulnerability a 10.

Shellshock Timeline

The timeline is interesting because it shows how quickly the open source community rallied to fix the Shellshock vulnerabilities. Here is a condensed timeline that hits the highlights. You can read the entire timeline here.

September 12, 2014: First report of discovery of the initial vulnerability.

September 24, 2014: News of the bash vulnerability released to the public.

September 24, 2014: First patch of bash is deemed incomplete.

September 26, 2014: Second patch of bash is also deemed incomplete.

September 27, 2014: Official patch (4.3-027) is released that eliminates Shellshock vulnerability.

Three additional patches were released between September 27, 2014 and October 5, 2014. For most users, the 4.3-027 patch fixed the issue. The additional patches fix additional possible vectors for exploitation. These vectors typically represent special cases that are not common to the average user, and that are effectively eliminated with the 027 patch.

Who Is At Risk?

Well, just about anyone who's still running a vulnerable (unpatched) version of bash carries a certain level of risk. As a "regular" user, your risk is minimal. But why chance it, especially when the "fix" is easily obtainable and available? As an individual, your risk is heightened by the use of untrusted networks, e.g. public wifi hotspots.

Those most at risk are those running servers. The bash vulnerability is most easily exploited from those using CGI scripts to launch another instance of bash, complete with malicious functions exported to the environment variables stack.

If you use ssh, you are also at risk. All it takes is some hacker looking for an open ssh port, and when it finds one on your system, it's pretty easy for the hacker to execute malicious commands that will wreck havoc on your system after executing an elevation of privileges.

Besides elevating privileges on the affected systems, Shellshock can and has been used in DDoS attacks. There are other potential threat vectors associated with Shellshock, and reading the aforementioned resources will fill you in on those.

How To Tell If You're Vulnerable

Thankfully, the test to see if your version of bash is vulnerable to the two most common exploits is pretty simple.

First, open a terminal session. At the command line, type the following:

env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"

If your system is vulnerable, you will see the following output:

vulnerable this is a test

If you system has been patched (e.g., you've kept your system updated), you will see the following output:

this is a test

Summary

It's amazing that this vulnerability has been around in bash for over 20 years, and security experts have never noticed or realized the problem. It's not entirely clear how long hackers have been exploiting it, either. All that computer security folks can do at this point is speculate and wonder.

One thing is for certain: once word about the vulnerability came out, the hackers were quick to exploit it. Fortunately, the two most prevalent vulnerabilities were fixed in a very short time. However, systems remain(ed) vulnerable until the updated/patched version of bash was installed. The fix (an updated bash) was posted to the PCLinuxOS repository within a few days. This illustrates why it's so important to regularly apply updates on your system.

Although Windows users weren't directly affected (bash does not run natively on Windows), any user who connects to the internet is/was at risk. Seeing how the vast majority of network servers run Linux, all of their private information was just as at risk as a user who uses one of the OS's where bash runs natively. And these days, it's rare to find a computer that isn't attached to the internet.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

Cheater Korean Beef

Ingredients

1 pound lean ground beef

1/4 - 1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 Tablespoon sesame oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced

1/2 - 1 teaspoon crushed red peppers

salt and pepper

1 bunch green onions, diced

Options: Replace ground beef with either thinly sliced chicken or beef.

Directions:

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and brown hamburger with garlic in the sesame oil.

Drain most of the fat and add brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, salt and pepper and red peppers.

Simmer for a few minutes to blend the flavors.

Serve over steamed rice and top with green onions.

Inkscape Tutorial: How To Create Puzzle Pieces

by Khadis

Do you like playing with puzzles? I do. What about making a puzzle and then challenging your friends to solve it? It might be fun and entertaining. So, in this tutorial, I would like to show you how to make simple puzzle pieces.

1. Open up your Inkscape and create a rectangle of any size and any color. Convert it into a path from Path > Object to path (Shift + Ctrl + C).

2. Create a circle (or an ellipse). You can make it any size and any color, but I recommend you to create a circle that is smaller than your rectangle. Duplicate the circle three times using Ctrl + D until you finally get four circles. In the illustration, I have a green rectangle and yellow circles without stroke.

3. Put one circle on the left part of the rectangle. You may place it randomly. This means you do not need to put the circle perfectly vertically "justified" to the rectangle. But please note, that if you want to make this puzzle playable, you may want to consider to "justify" the circle into "center on vertical axis". The same height of rectangle with the same puzzle's "hole" position will fit each other.

4. Do a "union" operation by selecting the circle, hold down your Shift button, then click on the rectangle. Press Ctrl + + or access the union function from the Path > Union menu.

5. Now, put the second circle on the right part of the rectangle. Place the circle so that its bigger part is inside of the rectangle.

6. Do a "difference" operation by selecting the circle hold down your Shift button, then click on the rectangle. Press Ctrl + - or access this function from the Path > Difference menu. Now, your rectangle should look like this:

7. Repeat steps four through six, by putting the third and fourth circles on the top and bottom part of the rectangle. The final result may look like either of these:

8. Of course, you can explore the way you place the circles to produce cooler pieces of puzzle.

9. To give a "final touch", you can convert the puzzle into curve and modify it into smoother shape. You can use Edit path by nodes tool (F2) and use the available modifying tools or modify your nodes manually.

10. As I mentioned in step three, to make these pieces of puzzle playable, you should create the same "distance" of circles placement and flat rectangle. But, if your imagination flies further and you want to create a curved puzzle, as in the step nine above, then you should totally modify the other pieces of your puzzle.

11. Duplicate your curved puzzle piece, then place the new piece close to the first one. Hold the Ctrl button while moving your object so that it can move straight. By using Edit path by nodes tool (F2), adjust the size or even the position of your first puzzle's hole and puffed part.

12. Or you can do this simple trick: select the first puzzle, and then remove the right hole's nodes and return the curved side into a flat side.

13. Put them "stuck to" each other, then do the "difference" operation. Your second puzzle will be removed. Duplicate (Ctrl + D) the first puzzle again, and stick the second one to it. Give them different colors.

14. Now, it's your turn, to create your own your very own puzzle creation.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: JohnW_57

as told to Smileeb

This month, we get to learn more about JohnW_57.

How old are you?

56.

Married, single or what?

Single.

Children, grandchildren?

No.

Retired or working and for how long and at what?

Still working since 1977.

Are you handy with your hands and have any hobbies?

A bit, home-built computers.

What is your education level?

Moderate.

Do you like to travel, go camping?

Not really.

What caused you to try Linux and join this forum?

(See at: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,121862.0.html)

I started using computers in 1982 with the Commodore VIC 20 and C64, and later with a C128 with a bit using the CPM OS on that machine. I also had a MSX computer (the 1st MS OS), and a little bit later my 1st x8(8)6 computer with MS-DOS 2.11 with the Word/Calcstar and DBase on a green/black monitor (with the Hercules video card).

After using MS Windows 3.11 and 95/98(SE), I did my first try with Linux with Red Hat 6.4 with a simple WM as the desktop (I had to start it with the startx command), and using devices with mount and umount commands. I also tried a few Suse installs (now OpenSuse).

A bit later, I installed Mandrake 7 from a linux computer magazine, and updated to the paid versions later (the Internet was slow then, with 28K/sec).

I broke with Linux for a few years for Windows 2000 and XP until October 2004, when I saw a PCLinuxOS preview 0.7 on a torrent site with the nvidia driver ISO. I burned it onto a cd and tested the LiveCD, and a bit later on the hdd. The first install was without problems, but met a few issues which were solved with preview 0.8 (one issue was playing mp3 files correctly).

With preview 0.93, I did the first install with MiniMe (Junior and Big Daddy were released a bit later). The reason why I used Minime was to localize PCLinuxOS in the Dutch language. It was less work than with Junior and Big Daddy. I then wrote a how-to on the PCLinuxonline forum. I had to modify the rpm macro file and reinstall a lot of packages while searching with Kpackage to discover which rpm packages have no files for translation.

PCLinuxOS 2007 was and is still a big highlight for PCLinuxOS. I installed all testing installs. I think 2007 is still the biggest success in PCLinuxOS history!

The year 2009 was a bit difficult (some users and devs know why), but a positive point was addlocale (an easy localization feature). However, I'm still using PCLinuxOS in 2014 as a user and tester. I built a new rig with the latest Intel hardware (Haswell), and PCLinuxOS 2014 does fine on it.

Thanks go to all the devs, packagers, testers, moderators, PCLinuxOS Magazine Crew....

Also for me:

Bill Reynolds, aka Texstar

Jim Jensen, aka Exterm (IRC)

TheDarb (IRC)

Pinoc (Localization, KDE4 and LO manager)

N1PTT (IRC and testing) posthumously.

Joble (Packager and Moderator) posthumously.

Wow... 11 years goes fast!

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight is an exclusive, monthly column by smileeb, featuring PCLinuxOS forum members. This column will allow "the rest of us" to get to know our forum family members better, and will give those featured an opportunity to share their PCLinuxOS story with the rest of the world.

If you would like to be featured in PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight, please send a private message to smileeb in the PCLinuxOS forum expressing your interest.

Game Zone: Blockstorm

by daiashi

About The Game

Blockstorm is a FPS game set in a world made of destructible blocks. The voxel nature of characters and maps and the in-game editor allows you to fully customize your game and quickly share your experience with other players. You are free to create your own maps and characters from scratch, or to customize existing ones. All maps and characters included in the game are made with the same tools that are available to the public. Weapons range from precise rifles to heavy machine guns, or even explosives capable of destroying hiding places and creating tactical advantages. You can pick out your own load out, choosing between a set of weapons configured by the creator of the map. You can build everything in Blockstorm, and you can destroy it.

Blockstorm is available on Steam Early Access.

Features Include

- Destructible environment

- Game modes: Deathmatch. Team Deathmatch, Assault.

- Map Editor

- Characters Editor

- User created content can be shared with other players.

System requirements:

Fully updated PCLinuxOS and Steam

Hardware:

Minimum:

OS: PCLinuxOS

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT

Network: Broadband Internet connection

Hard Drive: 200 MB available space

Additional Notes: With the minimum configuration, disable dynamic shadows and effects

Recommended:

OS: PCLinuxOS

Processor: Intel Core i3

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 ti

Network: Broadband Internet connection

Hard Drive: 512 MB available space

About The Company

GhostShark Games is a development studio founded in Rome by talented and experienced developers sharing their passion for games. They gained a strong experience in game development, especially with Unity3D, both on desktop and on mobile platforms. We are currently developing our own IPs, but we also can provide game development services for hire.

Some Gameplay Screenshots

Getting It To Run

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 the game. 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/322010

GIMP Tutorial: An "Out-Of-The-Frame" Effect

by Meemaw

I saw this tutorial a while ago and thought it was interesting. Your finished product gives the effect of your subject emerging from a photo.

You want to start with a photo of something that is moving toward you. Since I went to a parade recently, I have several photos of trucks and cars taken from the front. For this you will also need an image of a picture frame. I downloaded a framed painting image from Wikimedia Commons and cut the photo out, leaving the frame. You can also make a picture frame using the method from my earlier tutorial in Inkscape. Now you are ready.

Open your photo in GIMP. You can resize it to approximately the size you want your finished image to be. Using the lasso tool, outline the object you want to bring out of your photo. In mine, it is the red truck in the foreground. I grabbed part of the shadow, too.

While that is selected, click <CTRL> + C (Copy), but before you paste it, create a new, transparent layer and paste it there (<CTRL> + V). Also, create a new layer filled with a light grey (or whatever background color you think might look good) and send that layer to the bottom.

Select your layer which contains the original photo, and open the photo frame graphic. Copy and paste the photo frame onto your original photo, resizing if necessary. This might be a good time to save your project.

Still on that layer, click on the Perspective tool, then click on your picture. The Perspective tool will cover it with gridlines.

I am going to grab the left side of my photo and move it in, making that side of the photo look like it is farther away. You might have to move it around a bit to make it look like you want it, but until you click Transform in the window that pops up, you will be able to manipulate it. If you click Transform, and discover you don't like it, you can always undo it (<CTRL> + Z). Don't let it fool you either. As you move your photo, you will see the image in its original position behind the one you are moving. When you click Transform, it will disappear.

Check your project carefully as you may have to move your out of bounds layer a bit to cover the original photo of the same thing. I had to move the truck a bit to cover the other image in the original. It might even be necessary to clone background colors over something that you can't cover. If your lasso tool was off at all, you might just use the eraser tool (in one spot in mine, I erased a bit of background I had selected by mistake to make the front end of the truck look smoother).

You might need to crop your photo if you moved the one level around very much. Save your work, merge your levels down and export your project to your preferred graphics format.

This one was fun, too, but gives a little different effect. I went to Monument Valley in 2012 and took the original photo. I just moved the rocks and the ground outside the frame.

I have also seen this wallpaper, which is also very interesting. I downloaded it from deviantart.com. I'm sure it was made in much the same manner. Deviantart has several similar designs.

Let your imagination go, and I'm sure you can make something wonderful!

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here

Scrappler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here

PCLinuxOS Crossword Puzzle: November 2014

Autumn

Download Puzzle Solutions Here

Autumn Word Find

Download Puzzle Solutions Here

Screenshot Showcase

Posted by Crow, on 10/17/2014, running KDE.

Posted by Dalapane, on 10/03/2014, running KDE.

Posted by ff103, on 10/06/2014, running KDE.

Posted by Ika, on 10/13/2014, running Xfce.

Posted by jogurtmen, on 10/12/2014, running KDE.

Posted by OrionH, on 10/21/2014, running Xfce.

Posted by Taco, on 10/24/2014, running Openbox.

Posted by tbschommer, on 10/03/2014, running KDE.

Posted by weirdwolf, on 10/18/2014, running LXDE.

Posted by Yankee, on 10/17/2014, running LXDE.