Table of Contents

- From The Chief Editor's Desk

1. Happy 14th, PCLinuxOS

2. Feeling Safe With Your Webcam & Microphone?

3. Inkscape Tutorial: Draw A Cartoon Turkey

4. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Fettuccini With Chicken & Sun Dried Tomato Sauce

5. ms_meme's Nook: The Birth Of PCLinuxOS

6. LyX: A Visual Approach To Typesetting In TeX

7. MultiCD: Finally, A Multiboot That Works

8. Repo Review: Converseen, A Batch Image Processor

9. Pause, Then Resume, A Process On Linux

10. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: wyohman

11. Tip Top Tips: Mass Removal Of The Executable Attribute From Files

12. PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner: Carmel-Apple Upside-Down Cake

13. ms_meme's Nook: PCLOS Bound

14. Security Breach At Equifax & Lessons To Learn From It

15. Google Maps Tips

16. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

17. Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk

As hard as it is to believe, summer in the Northern Hemisphere is giving way to fall. The hours of daylight are becoming increasingly and noticeably shorter. Temperatures, especially at night and during the early morning hours, are becoming brisk and cooler. Leaves on the trees are starting to turn colors and fall. Before long, it'll be time for cool weather jackets that will eventually yield to warmer winter jackets, in most Northern Hemisphere locales.

Ryan, Paul and Lexi riding the carousel at the Kansas City Zoo

Sadly, Rudge's trusted four legged companion, Molly, departed her human family recently. I know we've all had pets that are special to us, but Molly's exploits were retold over and over again in the PCLinuxOS forum by Rudge. Molly was, in a way, a special member of the PCLinuxOS family. Molly's photograph even graced the cover of this magazine in July 2013. Our pets are a very important part of our human families, and when one of them takes their leave from us, it leaves a deep and sad hole in our lives. Our thoughts and hearts go out to Rudge and JRex as they work through their loss of Molly.

Meanwhile, just as we (me and Meemaw) started to do the PDF layout for the October issue of the magazine, Meemaw's laptop developed problems (the AC/charging port was loose and would no longer keep her laptop powered up or her battery charged). She ended up buying a new laptop, replacing her seven year old one. Now, she's trying to wrap her head around GPT, UEFI, EFI and all the other "new" things that have come along in the past seven years, just so she can get PCLinuxOS installed on her new laptop. Just as I'm writing this, she was able to finally get PCLinuxOS installed on her new laptop, with some help and reassurance from a PCLinuxOS forum member who wishes to remain anonymous. I'll let her tell you all about her new laptop (along with her adventures in getting PCLinuxOS installed) in a future article.

It's easy to become somewhat complacent about our trusted equipment. Under Linux, especially PCLinuxOS, it just keeps working and working without any issues. Things just run and run, without any noticeable slowdown. There are no ever-expanding anti-virus definitions to show things down. Of course, there's little to no worry about viruses, either. In fact, things run so well that we rarely think about the "newer" technologies that we might be missing out on. Instead, we trudge along with our trusted computers that continue to perform, day in and day out.

But then, that trusted computer dies ... or becomes seriously "ill." At that point, we usually have a decision to make -- fix our trusted computer, or look among a now-foreign sea of new equipment with new features that weren't available when we purchased our last computer. It can be overwhelming, to say the least -- and Meemaw had to confront it head on.

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

Happy 14th, PCLinuxOS!

by Meemaw

Amazingly enough, it's already another birthday! PCLinuxOS was created in October 2003, so everyone's favorite distro is 14 years old this month!

From the PCLinuxOS homepage.

If you're new to PCLinuxOS, you might be wondering about the origins of PCLinuxOS. If you're a PCLinuxOS veteran, few tire of hearing this story again.

It began on October 24, 2003. PCLinuxOS Preview .4 was released as a fork of Linux Mandrake (Mandriva) 9.2. Since that time, PCLinuxOS has matured into its own independent Linux distribution. Just uttering the all-still-too-common line that PCLinuxOS is still a fork of Mandriva may cause sparks to fly. While PCLinuxOS may have been originally forked from Mandriva, it also borrows from openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Knoppix, Mepis, Debian, Slackware, Arch and just about any/every other Linux distro around.

Our favorite packager, Texstar, says it best. In Texstar's words:

In the summer of 2003, I became interested in Live CD technology after looking at Knoppix and a fresh distribution from a fellow named Warren, called Mepis. I was interested in helping Warren with Mepis at the time, but I had no clue how to build DEB files. Coming from 5 years of packaging RPMS and not really wanting to learn a new packaging system, I happened to come across a South African fellow by the name of Jaco Greef. He was developing a script called mklivecd and porting it to Mandrake Linux. I, along with Buchanan Milne (Mandrake contributor) and a few others, began working with Jaco to help debug the scripts. I got an idea to make a livecd based on Mandrake Linux 9.2, along with all my customizations, just for fun. I had previously provided an unofficial 3rd party repository for the users of Mandrake for many years, but had since parted ways. Since Mandrake was a trademarked name, myself and others decided to name the Live CD after our news site and forum, pclinuxonline, thus PCLinuxOS.

Preview .3 was my first attempt to make a livecd. I distributed it initially to about 20 people to get their reaction and feedback. Everyone who tested it loved the livecd but there was one thing missing. There wasn't a way to install the thing to the hard drive! srlinuxx from tuxmachines.org came up with a novel way to copy the livecd to the hard drive and posted it on our forums. Jaco utilized this information and inspiration from the Mepis installer and wrote a pyqt script to make the Live CD installable, thus the birth of a new distribution.

On October 24, 2003, PCLinuxOS Preview .4 was released as a fork of Linux Mandrake (Mandriva) 9.2 utilizing mklivecd scripts from Jaco Greef, a multimedia kernel from Thomas Buckland (2.4.22-tmb) and a customized KDE (3.1.4-tex). Preview .5 through .93 were built upon on previous PCLinuxOS releases. After three years of updating one release from the other using the same gcc and glibc core library, we found too many programs would no longer compile or work properly against this aging code base.

In November 2006, we utilized a one time source code snapshot from our friends at Mandriva to pull in an updated glibc/gcc core and associated libraries. We spent the following 6 months rebuilding, debugging, customizing, patching and updating our new code base. We pulled in stuff from our old code base, utilized patches/code from Fedora, Gentoo and Debian just to name a few. This is why you will never see me distro bashing, as it would be hypocritical to do such a thing. We are still dependent in many areas on other distros development processes due to our limited but hard working volunteer development team.

Texstar

On May 20th, 2007, we felt we had reached a pretty stable base and released PCLinuxOS 2007. It utilized our own kernel from Oclient1, KDE built by MDE developer Ze, updated mklivecd scripts from IKerekes & Ejtr, a heavily patched Control Center, graphics from the PCLinuxOS beautification team, and many application updates from Thac and Neverstopdreaming. Development continues as work is being done for a Minime release and an international DVD. A future release of PCLinuxOS will feature an updated kernel, KDE 4, fresh Xorg server and all the latest applications. All in all it has been a great ride and we have made many friends along the way. Some have gone on to other distributions and many are still here from our first release. As I've always said, we're just enjoying Linux technology and sharing it with friends who might like it too. We hope you have enjoyed the ride as well.

Since then, of course, we've seen many changes. People have come and gone, and the distro continues to evolve and improve. The forum, as well, continues to be a place where anyone can get the help they need in a family setting.

Logo from 2009

Over the years, the offerings for desktop environments has evolved. PCLinuxOS started off with KDE 3.x. Over the years, PCLinuxOS has featured the following desktop environments: KDE 4, KDE 5, LXDE, Xfce, Mate, Enlightenment, Trinity, Cinnamon, Gnome 2.x, WindowMaker, IceWM, Fluxbox, and Openbox. Some of these have fallen by the wayside, either no longer being offered, or having moved on in development. Many of these are still available for installation from a PCLinuxOS LiveCD. Most of the others are available for installation from the PCLinuxOS repository, installing parallel alongside of another desktop. There are also other less common desktop environments available for installation besides the ones we've listed here. Whatever your likes, and whatever your tastes, you are sure to find a perfect fit for your needs.

The default desktop environments are KDE 5 Plasma and Mate, but we have some wonderful community members who have remastered LXDE, Xfce and Darkstar (a stripped down version of KDE 5), with some available in more than one language.

PCLinuxOS Pinwheel from 2006

Everyone loves to see positive comments, and the people at PCLinuxOS are no different. We recently got to read a wonderful review from the site http://www.linuxandubuntu.com (shortened by Meemaw)

The first thing that we all search for a distro to have is a rock solid stable system. PCLinuxOS is a very stable system. I tried copying files, playing songs, watching movies on the system and all worked great. Running 6 apps together didn't crash my system nor installing new packages. The overall system is really stable as I experienced last 2 days. The system uses rpm packages which are not hard to find and install. The system also supports APT commands which are great to manage apps via terminal. There are also 3 themes pre-installed which you can customize.

There are a nice set of pre-installed apps. I think this is the 1st distro I encountered till now which has really good selection of apps pre-installed. Do you want to play media files? VLC is there. The online streaming of music, Spotify got your back. Kdenlive is there to edit videos and LibreOffice to handle documents. Bleachbit to clean junk while Virtualbox to try a new distro. Chrome to surf internet and Thunderbird to read emails.

There is the control center to get your hands on system control. I think this is cool because control center seems to ease your control related work. There are vast options which you can freely roam after installation. I would like to mention that settings are separate from Control center. Many people will think control center is settings but it is not. Both are different. This is a great way to keep complex tools out of settings and ease out many tasks. The best feature according to me in the whole distro.

As almost every Linux distro, you can also live boot in this distro and customize options you would like and try to use before installation.

PCLinuxOS is one of those distros which people really don't know much. I felt that it is not getting that name which it deserves. A rock solid system, nice selection of apps, a lot of customizations and small in size and fast. This is what any user will want from an OS.

Try it, I think it won't disappoint you. You got my words.

DistroWatch has reviews under the distro information, and I saw some there that really made me happy as well:

Absolutely the best Plasma desktop I've seen yet!

AND:

This is a superb Linux OS. It is easy to install with a very intuitive install guide. Once loaded onto your hard drive it's a breeze setting up networking through its settings and configuration manager. Of cos, all the usual software is installed LibreOffice, Google Chrome web browser, and Thunderbird email. The system is fast and stable and has not locked up on me yet which nearly all other distros have done.

It is very pleasant to use and has an excellent software center to download any apps that are not installed. This is a pleasure to use and should be number 1 in the distro ranks not mint. It has Kdenlive as a video editor and Zulucrypt for encrypting a hard drive or folders.

Fast and good looking a great free OS that actually works and not buggy, brilliant job guys.

Then, on the Everyday Linux User site, the reviewer summarized with this:

PCLinuxOS was the first Linux distribution that really made Linux useable for the masses...

It has to be said though that this is a really nice distribution for the Everyday Linux User and I can happily recommend using it as I did the last time I reviewed PCLinuxOS.

Dobie logo

Many of us "old-timers" have used PCLinuxOS since it's early days and have witnessed all the ups and downs of the distro. Through it all, this wonderful distro has thrived, and continues to be "So cool, even ice cubes are jealous."

Feeling Safe With Your Webcam & Microphone?

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

With what I'm going to reveal, everyone will know that I don't "get out much." In the past four years, I've been to a movie theater once. We just don't go. Having a one year old infant and a four year old toddler puts the proverbial kibosh on trips to the movie theater. We're not the kind of people who will drag a screaming infant to a movie theater, only to ruin the movie-going experience for everyone else. In fact, the only other time we've been to a movie theater in the past four years is when Cars 3 came out. My son is a HUGE Cars fan (one of his favorite movies, in fact), so his first experience going to a movie theater was to watch Cars 3 the night it opened in theaters. My daughter, yet too young to take to a theater, stayed with my wife's aunt.

So, with all of that in mind, I just got around to seeing the 2016 Oliver Stone movie "Snowden." It was airing on the Showtime movie channel, which we get as part of our cable TV package. The most disturbing aspect of that movie is the breadth and depth of the spying by the three and four letter government agencies. And not just the NSA, but also the FBI, CIA, GCHQ, and all the others that make up the alphabet soup of agencies that are charged with the task of our "security."

But another part of that movie that scares me is how underhanded and "slick" they are about it. One aspect in particular describes their purported ability to turn on a webcam without activating the camera's activation light (if it even has one). If you have a smartphone, then assume your camera is always on -- even if your smartphone is "turned off." The same ability exists for the internal microphone of your laptop and smartphone. Unfortunately, it isn't just the alphabet soup agencies you have to worry about, either. Numerous hacking exploits have leveraged the webcam and internal microphone to blackmail users over the years in a similar manner.

You are pretty much at "their" mercy when you use a smartphone. There are exceptionally few options available to you, other than switching to a basic flip phone. Even then, there are no guarantees that the camera and microphone of your flip phone isn't doing the same thing. If you have a phone where you can remove the battery, that would be the best bet to prevent any illicit use of your camera or microphone. Unfortunately, there is a huge proliferation of phones -- especially smartphones -- where the user cannot access/remove/ change the battery. Also, removing the battery kind of goes counter to the reason you have a cell phone in the first place.

Just to be sure, this isn't about whether you "have anything to hide" or not. This isn't about whether you are doing anything wrong or not. This has everything to do with being secure in your daily activities, and about your privacy. Through your monitored activities, "they" can get to know the intimate details of your life -- your likes, your dislikes, who you talk to, what you talk about, how long you talk, what you do, when you do it, where you do it, how long you spend doing it, who you do it with, etc. You, therefore, have nothing that remains private and personal. In most jurisdictions, "they" don't have a right to have such unfettered access to those private details of your life.

So let's focus on your laptop with the built-in webcam, and your desktop computer with an external webcam attached ... running PCLinuxOS, of course. Let's take a look at what steps you can take to help protect yourself from the hackers and the alphabet soup agency privacy invaders.

External webcam

We'll talk about this one first, because it's typically the easiest one to thwart unauthorized access to. Quite simply, if you can (that is, if your webcam is hot pluggable and isn't required to be plugged in when you boot your computer in order for it to be recognized), unplug it from the USB port. Problem solved. Plug it back in whenever you need it.

But, if your webcam is not hot pluggable, then you can put something over its lens. You can use a sticker, opaque tape (like plastic electrician's tape), masking tape, duct tape, a Post-It note, etc. to cover the lens. You could just cover the webcam with something, like a folded up handkerchief, a towel or washcloth, an old sock (or other article of clothing), or just about anything else that will block the lens, thus preventing an image from being viewed.

Internal Laptop Webcam

If you recall from last month, my trusty, clunker Toshiba laptop fritzed out on me (and since repaired by replacing the faulty AC power supply), forcing me to renew the usage of my Lenovo G530 laptop. Well, there's one other difference between the two computers. The Toshiba doesn't have a built-in webcam, while the Lenovo does.

There are a myriad of ways to disable the webcam when it's not in use. You could "blacklist" the webcam driver. But that would preclude you from using it ... ever (unless you "un-blacklist" the driver ... for most users, neither action is a frivolous matter). Some business class laptops allow the disabling of the webcam in the computer's BIOS. The chances that you have one of these laptops is slim to remote. You could have a repair shop physically remove the webcam. Then NO ONE can use it -- not even you. Plus, you'd have a bill at the repair shop to pay. But probably the simplest and most effective way is to cover the webcam with tape or a sticker. In fact, this is the method employed by Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg. It's also the method employed by former FBI Director James Comey.

EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) sells stickers that you can use to cover your laptop's built-in webcam. The cost is a meager $5.00 (U.S.). They have a low-residue adhesive, and each order comes with two different sizes. You'll have the satisfaction that your proceeds will go to a worthwhile organization that is diligently fighting for everyone's digital rights and privacy.

Of course, the easiest (and cheapest) way is to simply use a child's sticker, a small piece of black electrician's tape, a small Band-aid, or anything else you can stick over the lens to prevent the Peeping Toms from taking a peek. Be mindful of the adhesive your chosen "blind" uses. Duct tape, while it will work, will also tend to leave behind a considerable "adhesive trail." The black electrician's tape tends to be sticky enough to do the job, but leaves behind very little adhesive when removed (and when used at lower temperatures, such as the use advocated here). Plus, black electrician's tape tends to blend in with the black screen bezel that's common on many laptops. If you don't want to look at a "glob of tape" on your laptop's screen bezel, then use a hole punch to punch out a small disk of tape that you can then center and stick over the webcam's lens.

Microphone Security

This one might be a bit more complicated than a webcam, as astounding as that sounds. Yes, there have been instances where the privacy invading alphabet soup agencies have used the built-in microphone in computers (and smartphones) to record entire conversations.

Chances are high that your laptop includes a built-in microphone, especially if it includes a built-in webcam. Look closely, because it might be difficult to find.

See that tiny, tiny hole, just a little off right center of my F9 key? You guessed it. THAT is the microphone on my Lenovo G530 laptop. Being so small, it's incredibly easy to overlook. In fact, on my Lenovo, I had to search hard for it. Even after owning this laptop for several years, I still wasn't sure just where the microphone was located -- at least until I went on a search for it.

Yes, you should be able to "mute" your internal microphone. But any surreptitious user who might try to access the internal microphone on your laptop can just as easily un-mute that same microphone.

Things might be a little more secure by going into the audio mixer controls of your computer and setting the record level to zero for the internal microphone. It would/should be a bit more difficult for an interloper to change that level.

One other non-permanent choice might be to plug in a dummy 3.5 mm phono plug into the external microphone jack. On many laptops, plugging in a 3.5 mm phono plug into the external microphone jack will disable the internal microphone. Do not trust this method, however, until and unless you put it to the test. If you don't have a dummy 3.5 mm phono plug, you can buy them at any electronics supply house for very, very little money. You could also go the cheapest route, and just cut off a 3.5 mm phono plug from a pair of broken headphones. It should be enough to cause the internal microphone to be disabled, if your laptop is setup to do so.

A more permanent solution exists, but only if you fancy yourself to be rather handy with being able to take apart your laptop -- and get it back together again. If you open the case of your laptop, you can find the wires leading to the internal microphone and cut them. From that point forward, the ONLY access you (or anyone else) will have to a microphone will be through the external microphone jack. Of course, if you aren't handy or comfortable taking apart (and putting back together) your laptop, there is always the local computer repair shop. I'm sure they'll accommodate your request, for a fair price.

Summary

In today's environment of governmental spying agencies and hackers, the responsibility for protecting your privacy exists only with you. As much of a cat and mouse game as it is, you can't be too careful in protecting your privacy. For sure, they don't have any concerns for your privacy. They are only interested in collecting all the data they can about you. YOUR data is the currency of the times. Each snippet of data might seem to be insignificant and innocent, but put together with other little snippets, it can be more revealing than you can imagine.

I've said it in the pages of this magazine before, and I'll say it again: just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Those who are hell bent on collecting your data have never heard this maxim. Thus, the entire responsibility for protecting your data and privacy rests completely with you.

Inkscape Tutorial: Draw A Cartoon Turkey

by Meemaw

I found a fun tutorial the other day, and since Thanksgiving is coming up soon for many of us, I thought it would be fun to do a turkey. I'm sure you have done something this easy already, but we'll use some of the skills we've learned over the years.

Open Inkscape and a new canvas, and start by creating a couple of circles. Make the fill brown with a darker brown or black stroke. You can create the first circle and then use <CTRL> + D to duplicate it. After you do that, make one of the circles smaller than the other. Open your Align & Distribute window and align the two circles vertically. Now you have your body and head.

Now draw two circles with white fill and black stroke for eyes. Also, add a black circle to each. Use Align & Distribute to line them up as well.

For the beak, draw a small triangle with a shade of yellow fill and black stroke. I also grabbed the top line and curved it a bit.

Turkeys have a "beard" or snood under their beaks. I drew this with the Bezier tool, moving the nodes to edit it the way I wanted it, but you could use the Pencil tool as well.

Also, for wings, create a zig-zag with the Bezier tool. Choose Path > Object to Path, and curve the lines until you have 3 smooth curves. Fill and stroke it with the same colors as the body.

Rotate them around and duplicate once for the other side, then place the wings.

If you have the body and face the way you want them, you could choose them all and Group them (or not), but be sure and save your work. Now let's get busy on the feathers. To create the feather shape, start with a long oval. When you get it drawn, choose Path > Object to Path.

Now use the Nodes tool again to add a couple of nodes to one end so we can make it a bit different.

For the finishing touch, use the Pen tool or Bezier tool to draw a simple line down the middle of the feather. I made mine a shade darker than the feather color. Group these two when you're finished, and also move the point of rotation to the right side of the feather.

With the feather group selected, we're going to Edit > Clone > Create Tiled Clones.

Now, change the following settings:

- Shift X Per column to -100%

- Scale X Per column to 5%

- Rotation Angle Per column to 10 degrees.

- Rows, columns to 1 and 11

When the settings are set, click Create. You should get the following:

Now, select the bunch of feathers, and group them. Duplicate the group and flip the duplicate horizontally. You can do this as many times as you need to, in order to make the feathers as full as you want. I think I made extra, but I like the result. You will have to rotate them and line them up in the center, then position them behind the body.

For the feet, simply use the Pen tool and draw a few lines to make feet. Group them and duplicate, then flip the duplicate horizontally. Position them at the bottom.

We need to do some shading to finish. Draw a couple of circles, or ungroup and duplicate one of the ones you made for the head or body. I made one just a little darker than the turkey color.

We need a circular wedge to use for shading, so position them as shown below. Select both of the circles choose Path > Difference.

The shape you'll get is a wedge that can fit at the bottom right of the face. Give it an Opacity of about 50%. Make sure the beak and snood are brought in front of the shadow.

Do the same to the body. You can also add a drop shadow to the grouped, finished turkey.

If you want to, you can add a background. I hope you like the way yours turned out.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Fettuccini With Chicken & Sun Dried Tomato Sauce

Fettuccine with Chicken and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

1/4 cup coarsely chopped sun-dried tomatoes (not oil-packed)

1/2 cup chicken broth

4 ounces uncooked fettuccine

1/2 cup sliced mushrooms (1 1/2 ounces)

2 medium green onions, chopped (2 tablespoons)

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 TBSP dry red wine or chicken broth

1 tsp vegetable oil

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1 pound)

1/2 cup milk

2 tsp cornstarch

2 tsp chopped fresh or 1/2 teaspoon dried basil leaves

Directions

1. Mix tomatoes and broth; let stand 30 minutes.

2. Cook and drain fettuccine as directed on package.

3. While fettuccine is cooking, cook mushrooms, onions and garlic in wine in 10- inch nonstick skillet over medium heat about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms are tender. Remove mixture from skillet; set aside.

4. Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Cook chicken in oil 3 to 4 minutes, turning once, until brown. Add tomato mixture. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until juice of chicken is no longer pink when centers of thickest pieces are cut. Remove chicken from skillet; keep warm.

5. Mix milk, cornstarch and basil; stir into tomato mixture in skillet. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir l minute. Stir in mushroom mixture; cook until hot. Serve over chicken and fettuccine.

Tips:

Prepare this recipe using spinach fettuccine in place of the regular fettuccine for a pretty presentation.

Cut tomatoes with kitchen scissors before re-hydrating in broth.

ms_meme's Nook: The Birth Of PCLinuxOS

OGG                                                   MP3

LyX: A Visual Approach To Typesetting In TeX

by phorneker

Up to now, we have used TeXmaker for editing TeX/LaTeX documents. While TeXmaker is a great editor for typesetting documents, there is another application in the PCLinuxOS repository that takes typesetting to the next level of simplicity.

LyX takes a WYSIWYM (that is What You See is What You Mean) approach to typesetting. That is, when composing and editing documents, you get an idea of what the document is going to look like (without having to rebuild the document to see the changes). This is simpler than TeXmaker in the sense that you are editing the document without having to learn the TeX/LaTeX language.

When installed from the repository, LyX is launched from the Office menu inside the main menu (or Applications menu depending on what desktop you are running). When launched for the first time, you will get an introduction to LyX (which is itself editable).

First, LyX is not a word processing application similar to AbiWord, Focus Writer or the word processing component of LibreOffice. It is instead a visual development environment for TeX and LaTeX in the sense that when you edit a document, you immediately see the changes to the document, whereas when you make changes to a TeX document in TeXmaker, you need to rebuild the document to see the changes in the preview panel.

As I mentioned in the Introduction to TeX/LaTeX article, TeX was designed as a typesetting language. This means that you as a writer and publisher can focus more on the actual content of the document and less on the details of formatting the text in the document.

As we scroll through the Introduction, we can see some things that differentiate LyX from typical word processing applications, starting with this one:

The highlighted foot * indicates that there is a footnote attached and that footnote will appear at the bottom of the page when printed. Clicking on the footnote reveals the following:

In this case, it is a reminder that there is a mailing list for the LyX Documentation team. The hyperlink provides a clickable link on the PDF version of the document when that document is published.

Clicking on Table of Contents here, will open a left side panel providing you with an outline of the document you are publishing.

There is a section, namely 2.3 The Manuals, that contains a listing of the documentation included with the application.

It is really a good idea to actually read the documentation that comes with LyX, especially the Introduction, which should already be on screen when you launched LyX for the first time.

Section 2.3 of the LyX Introduction contains a list of the included documentation, and those documents are accessed through the Help menu.

Be sure to read at least the Tutorial and the User's Guide so you get an idea of how LyX works and what you can do with it.

At this point, we should close this window (by holding down Control and then pressing the F4 key or by selecting Close from the File menu).

This is what we normally see when we launch LyX (after the first time). LyX comes with some templates that you can use to start a new document, or you can simply start with a blank document.

Holding down Control and pressing N will start you with a blank document. However, if you want to use one of the templates included with LyX, then hold down both Control and Shift, and then press N.

Templates are stored in /usr/share/lyx/templates and are available to all users of LyX on your PCLinuxOS installation.

If you want to write a letter, there are three templates for this purpose. The template named letter.lyx is intended for letters written in American English (or Canadian English), whereas lettre.lyx is intended for letters written in other languages (including British English). The frletter.lyx is intended for letters written in French (including Canadian French).

Each of these templates is self documenting as to their intended usage. For example, let us look at DocBook_article.lyx.

The template definitely looks like something used to format articles for publication. There are places to enter the title, date, and author as well as an abstract of what the article is about.

Here is an example of the visual approach to typesetting. In LyX, you are using TeXlive to build the document, yet you do not have worry about TeX commands or statements. Those are kept internally within LyX. You simply focus on the content.

Documents in LyX are saved with the .lyx extension rather than the traditional .tex or .ltx extensions normally found in TeX and LaTeX documents.

This is one way to distinguish documents that were created with LyX from documents created with another editor such as TeXmaker.

,br> Also, it is a good idea to store LyX documents in a separate (preferable empty) directory to keep your work organized in your user space on your PCLinuxOS installation.

You can hold down Control and press S to save documents in LyX.

To use this template for your documents, you will need to give your document another name. To do this, select Save As... from the File menu, or hold down the Control and Shift keys and press S, then type in a new name for the document and click on OK.

Then, within the document, replace Title with the title of your document, replace Date with the date of the document (usually today's date), and replace Joe Doe with the author's name (usually yours).

The instance of Abstract just above where it says First Section is where you replace the word abstract with the actual abstract of the document you are about to type. The instance of Abstract just below the author's name should be kept as is as this is the header we use to tell the reader that the following is an abstract of what the document is about.

File Types that can be imported to LyX

In addition to creating a new blank file by typing Control-N, and creating a new file from a template by typing Control-Shift-N, LyX can import existing TeX/LaTeX documents, spreadsheets, and plain text files.

Select Import from the File menu to get this list of file formats supported by LyX for importing.

The CJK LyX 1.4.x formats refer to documents written in Chinese, Japanese and Korean using LyX 1.4.x.

LyX will import Excel, Gnumeric, and LibreOffice spreadsheets (with the OpenDocument spreadsheet) format as well as databases and tables saved in CSV format (for Comma Separated Values).

Existing LaTeX documents can be imported by itself, or pasted from the clipboard (copied from the source document with another program).

Plain text can be imported as well. The Join Lines... option allows for lines of text in the source file to be read as one line in LyX until a blank line is encountered, at which time, a new line in LyX will begin. Remember that TeX treats one whitespace element (such as a blank space or a return carriage character) the same as a thousand whitespace elements. Without the Join Lines... option, the plain text is read in verbatim, and the result could be a mess for you to clean up in LyX.

For those of you not familiar with the CSV format, CSV is simpler than it appears to be. It is simply a representation of a table where each line in the CSV file is a row, and each cell in the row is separated by a comma (and a blank space following). Usually, the contents of each cell are enclosed in quotes.

Let Us Use Last Month's Example

In the last article, I brought in Mathematical Approach to Photography for a sample document. Since this is a LaTeX document, we can bring it into LyX with the File → Import command from the main menu.

As we can see here, we are going to need to clean up this imported document as there are a few elements missing here that were in TeXmaker, such as the title that was in the original document.

For starters, we need to replace the \maketitle command embedded here to the actual title of the document. Let us highlight \maketitle, delete it and then replace it with the actual title of the document.

<-p> The toolbar has a pull down menu that allows you to quickly select document elements. Fortunately, this menu has a Title element we can use here (in addition to the Author and Date fields).

We simply make the appropriate replacements.

Looks better, doesn't it? We could place an abstract later if we wish. Now let us scroll down to the section called How Big is That Photograph? to find out what happened with the import.

The lines around the table are still there, but there is a LyX notation indicating the amount of whitespace used between the text and the table. Hence, the import here was done correctly. The LyX notations will not appear in the printed version of this document. They are there to remind us of the formatting of this section.

Also note the presence of a footnote. Click on that footnote to see the contents of that footnote.

Now, let us scroll down to the Focal Length section. Remember the formula we typeset in the last article? Here it is in all its glory already typeset in LyX.

...and here is the formula itself.

...and finally, the graphic we used in the article appears in LyX as expected.

Now, we can just type Control-S to save the document as we have it here.

The Toolbars

LyX has some toolbars that are feature packed.

This toolbar is located directly below the main menu of LyX. The first item here is a popup menu to quickly select often used document elements such as sectioning, titles, dates, and chapters.

Next, we have the customary New Document, Open Document and Save Document buttons, as well as the spell checker buttons, undo and redo buttons, cut, copy and paste buttons, and search document buttons as expected of any editor or word processing program.

The A button with the accent toggles the emphasis attribute on highlighted text (usually italicized). The button next to that is called the Toggle Noun button (Why? I'll never know). The third A is called Apply Last and refers to styles of text (such as boldface, italics, and font change) that were previously applied to text in the document.

The Sigma character next to that toggles the Math mode and Math Mode is needed to typeset mathematical formulas.

The button next to that is used to insert graphics such as the one we used towards the end of the document.

Next to that is the button to (visually) insert tables into the document.

The last three buttons are used to show the outline, the math toolbar and the table toolbars, with the latter two appearing at the bottom of the application window.

This toolbar has some important functions that affect the document. The first is a document preview. LyX uses Okular for the document preview.

The next button updates the resulting PDF without the preview.

Larger TeX projects involve a master document. This document not only contains content local to that document as well as commands for TeXLive to include (and process) associated documents. The function here is similar to the function of the #include statements in C and C++.

The next two buttons update the master document. Icons with the eyes on them launch Okular for the document preview, whereas the icons with the arrows simply update the master document.

The next icon with the one arrow and a smaller document icon toggles between forward and reverse search in LyX for the current document being edited.

The last two icons update are similar in function to the first two icons. The difference here is what command LyX uses to typeset the pages. The default for LyX is to use pdflatex, that is direct typesetting of the pages to a PDF file.

The Update Other Formats and Preview Other Formats commands in LyX refer to the output format for the document.

Besides PDF, LyX can output to DVI (using the latex command), PostScript, HTML (either through standard HTML or optimized so what appears in the web browser is similar to what appears in LyX itself), OpenDocument or Rich Text Format.

PDF file is generated with the pdflatex command by default. LyX can, however, use the standard latex command to produce PostScript first, then use the ps2pdf to generate the PDF file.

The main difference here is that pdflatex optimizes the TeX output for PDF rather than just translating PostScript to PDF, resulting in a better quality PDF document. It may not be apparent for simple TeX documents, but for more complex TeX documents, the difference will be clear.

This toolbar is for inclusion and formatting of lists in your document. From left to right, the first button reverts highlighted text in a list back to plain text (that is no formatting).

Next, this button creates a numbered list with each line in the highlighted text being an item in the list. You can also start a numbered list with this button by placing the cursor where you want to start the list, then click on this button.

The button next to that does the same thing, only the list is bulleted (with a round bullet) instead of a number for each item.

The next button creates generic lists, that is items are simply listed without any type of bulleting.

Then we have a button that creates lists intended for terms and their definitions.

The last two buttons are used in creating multi-level lists. Items to be placed in sublists are highlighted and the buttons move the items into or out of the sublists.

Finally, this toolbar contains buttons that allow you to work with tables, graphics, footnotes, hyperlinks, cross references, labels, citations, indexes, and even attach other documents.

The first two buttons insert floating graphics and tables into the document. Elements in LyX that float in the document can be shown or hidden within the LyX editor, and show up when the document is being typeset.

The third button is for placing labels in the document. Labels here are nothing more than bookmarks that are kept internal to LyX and are referenced when necessary.

The next button is for making cross references within the LyX project. Here is one application for labels in LyX documents and projects.

Next to that is the button to include citations in your document. Citations are needed to include sources used in production of the document, (i.e. the sources from which you paraphrased or quoted the text in your document so that the said text is legal for use).

The next button is used to insert an index entry so when the document is built, there will be a index page typeset within the document.

The following button inserts a nomenclature entry in your document. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines nomenclature as follows:

Definition of nomenclature

1.   name, designation ... the changing nomenclature of her streets is even more baffling ... -- Cornelia O. Skinner

2.   the act or process or an instance of naming nomenclature ... is at its simplest the task of assigning a name to each distinct species -- R. I. Smith

3.   a system or set of terms or symbols especially in a particular science, discipline, or art the nomenclature of inorganic chemistry : an international system of standardized New Latin names used in biology for kinds and groups of kinds of animals and plants

To define a nomenclature entry, place the cursor on the word being defined and click on that nomenclature button. Type in a description of what that particular word means in the sentence and click on OK.

Next to that is a button for insertion of footnotes in your LyX document. Footnotes appear as a symbol in your document, but are typeset when the document is typeset for publication.

The button next to that does the same for margin notes. Margin notes appear in small type between the margin of the document and the edge of the paper closest to the margin. Here is another reason why TeX documents have a default two inch margin for printed pages.

The button next to that is for general notes that are maintained within the LyX document. These are readable only in the editor and are similar to comments embedded in documents on Google Docs (except for the fact that they do not get e-mailed from within LyX).

The button next to that creates a box where you can enter text to be enclosed, not unlike the table style I use in these articles. Boxes can be enclosed within other boxes.

The button following that inserts a hyperlink. This is normally used for documents that are going to be published in PDF or HTML format.

The button with the abc on it allows you to change the style of text highlighted, or the style of what you will be typing in.

Here is one place where LyX has an advantage over TeXmaker. Text Style allows you to set parameters to text that you are going to insert, or have already highlighted.

Clicking on Apply Changes Immediately and then clicking on Apply allows you to see your changes before making the commitment to those changes in your document.

For fonts, you can choose between Roman, Sans Serif, or Typewriter (for monospace text), or you can reset the font in the text to plain (i.e. default font) text.

Series allows you to select between Medium (or normal for most of us) and Bold for boldface type.

Shape allows you to select Upright, Italic, Slanted, or Small Caps. For some fonts, such as Times New Roman, there is a big difference between Slanted and Italics. Slanted simply slants normal text, whereas Italics provides the truly italicized version of Times New Roman.

...and as we can guess, Color and Language effect just that, Color and Language. For the Color, we get the standard set of sixteen colors in which to color text.

Note: This cannot be easily done in TeXmaker unless we have the right LaTeX package that provides color support. Herein lies an advantage of LyX over TeXmaker.

Let us go back to the toolbar. The button with the paragraph symbol allows you to set parameters for the affected paragraphs.

Here, we can choose the spacing between lines in the paragraph (Single, 1.5 lines, or Double), whether to indent the paragraph or not, and how the paragraph is justified.

What I just showed you is the basics of LyX as a development environment for TeX/LaTeX documents without having to learn a line of TeX code.

The real power of LyX comes when we actually use LyX to edit documents like last month's real world example.

Feel free to explore the templates that come with LyX, and explore the documentation that comes with the LyX package.

MultiCD: Finally, A Multiboot That Works

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Having several ISOs, several distros, whether Linux or even Windows installation disks, all combined in a single ISO, always been something very sought for us, PCLinuxOS users.

But, to find a software that could do this was, ahh, a major challenge.

Options abound, but finding one that works …

I tested Yumi, from Windows, via Wine, but it doesn't work (corrupts the ISO when closing the session), then I tested MultibootCD, and the part of making several ISOS does not work and does not give an error message. For one ISO only it works fine, however. I also tried unetbootin, which recently stopped working in PCLinuxOS. Then, in my research on how to make an ISO with multiple distros, I came across MultiCD, at URL: https://multicd.us

I was pleasantly surprised. A simple script that does what it promises, without any problems and easily.

What is the MultiCD?

It is a shell script designed to create a multiboot CD image containing various distributions and/or different Linux utilities.

How does it work?

MultiCD has a collection of plugins, scripts that help to identify the iso's that will integrate the project, and build a resulting ISO that works.

Currently, 108 ISOS are recognized among Linux distros and some Windows installations. More plugins are added over time, so to always have the updated script is the best practice.

More than one type of ISO of the same distribution can be integrated into the resulting project. In PCLinuxOS, for example, four different ISOs are recognized by the script: PCLinuxOS KDE, Mate, LXDE and generic iso pclos.iso. For all supported ISOs click here.

Creating a multiple ISO, with several Iso's / distros

To create a multiple ISO, the instructions are as follows:

First, download the MultiCD script, at this link: https://github.com/IsaacSchemm/multicd/archive/master.zip You may want to place the downloaded file in its own directory.

Second, unzip the zip file. It will automatically create a multicd-master folder in the location where the zip file was downloaded.

Now, you should put in that folder the ISO's you want to use to mount the multiple ISO, copy them to the folder, or, if you're low on disk space, put symlinks to these ISO's.

You now need to give execute permission to multicd.sh script (chmod + x)

Now, just type ./multicd.sh and the script will begin its work.

The whole process is automatic.

After a few minutes, the resulting ISO will be ready, inside the /build folder, within the folder multicd-master.

This ISO will be called multicd.iso, and is ready to be burned to a blank DVD, or with the DD-Copy program (or DD command) be installed on a USB stick, and it certainly will work.

Floppy disk images and hard disk images are also supported (.img or .imz extensions).

Limitations

The script does not create images compatible with EFI boot, so you must set the machine to boot legacy/BIOS, and the image will work.

The image created does not allow writing in the same media (if it's a DVD, no problems, but if it is a USB stick/external hard drive, the multicd.iso renders it read-only, the whole disk/usb stick).

Conclusions

The script did not work with me the first time I used, it gave an error at the end, when the script accessed the isohybrid program to create a bootable ISO on flash drive and DVD. I contacted Mr. Isaac Schemm, the creator of the script, and 24 hours later he fixed the problem, creating a new version that works perfectly in PCLinuxOS, creating bootable ISO's in any media (CD, DVD, USB key, etc.)

This is one of the benefits of free software: access to developers, which brings together users and creators, improving interchange between those who use and those who create. I thank here Mr. Isaac Schemm, he promptly changed the script to make it work in PCLinuxOS. Many thanks.

And now there is an option that actually works to create multiple ISO's in a only one CD/DVD/USB key on PCLinuxOS.

Now, enjoy MultiCD booting in PCLinuxOS!

Repo Review: Converseen, A Batch Image Processor

by CgBoy

This month I'll review a program in the repository called Converseen. Converseen is a batch image processor. It allows you to resize, rotate, flip, and convert many images at once. It could be very useful if you had a whole lot of images that needed resizing or converting into a different format.

When you add images into Converseen, they'll appear in a box on the right of the window. There you can check or uncheck the images you want to change. A preview of the currently selected image is on the left, along with some information about the image size, format, etc.

Converseen can convert images into over 100 different formats. These would of course include the most popular formats, like .jpg, .png, .gif, etc. There are some compression settings as well. If you have some semi-transparent images loaded into Converseen, you can then change the color of the transparent areas.

At the left side of the window, below the image preview, are the image scale, resolution, and rotation settings. When changing the image scale, you can set it to keep the aspect ratio of the image. The images can be rotated 90 or 180 degrees, and flipped vertically or horizontally. Below those settings are the image saving options. From there you can set the output directory, or just use the same location as the images. And you can choose to rename the images, or just overwrite the original files.

Converseen can also import a PDF file, and load the images embedded in the document. Converseen is supposed to be able to import .ico icon files, but for whatever reason, it would cause the program to crash every time I tried. I'm not too sure how useful these two features are though.

Summary

So, what do you think of Converseen? I think that it could be extremely useful for easily converting many images at once, or scaling them down so they'll take up less disk space. It's well designed and easy to use. Whether or not I actually have any use for the program, I don't know. But for those who do, I recommend it. Oh, and I apologize for this article being so short; there just isn't that much to say about a batch image processor!

Pause, Then Resume, A Process On Linux

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

If you've spent any amount of time on the command line, I'm certain that the following has happened to you. Let's say you start a "process" that tends to take up a lot of time. That process also consumes a lot of resources. But, you also have other things you need to get done, and you need those resources, at least temporarily.

You could just let the lengthy process continue until it is finished. But, you can also temporarily stop that process, and resume it after you've finished the other things you need to get done. Keep in mind that this only works for the current session, and will not transfer between a reboot or restart.

The best way to explain how this works is to provide an example. Let's say that we used the wget command to download the LXDE Mini PCLinuxOS community ISO (entered all on one line, of course).

wget http://pclosusers.com/communityiso/LXDE/community-pclinuxos64-LXDE-mini-2017.09.iso &

We put the "&" at the end of the line to force the wget command to execute in the background.

Now, run the ps command.

[parnote-lenovo@localhost ~]$ ps

PID TTY          TIME CMD

6464 pts/0    00:00:00 bash

18983 pts/0    00:00:00 wget

19015 pts/0    00:00:00 ps

Note the PID of the process for wget. We will need the PID to pause the wget process.

At the command prompt, enter the following:

kill -STOP 18983

The "18983" parameter is the PID for the wget process, which we noted when we ran the ps command. You will get a confirmation message that the wget process has been stopped. You can check in your graphical file manager by highlighting the incomplete download, and you will notice that the filesize is no longer increasing.

When you are ready to resume the wget process, enter the following command:

kill -CONT 18983

The wget process will graciously pick up right where it left off, and complete as if you never paused it.

This probably isn't going to work very well with GUI processes. As you might notice, GUI processes never even showed up in the list produced by the ps command. GUI processes will show up though, if you issue the ps command with the -A flag (ps -A). I wouldn't be eager to try it however, as this method works primarily with tty processes.

Isn't it nice to be able to have full and complete control over your Linux machine? Now, you can pause those lengthy processes, then resume them when you are ready.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: wyohman

As told to YouCanToo

What is your name/username?

My real name is Bill Yohman. My forum name is wyohman.

How old are you?

52 years old.

Are you married, single?

Married.

How about Kids, Grandkids (names and ages)?

I have two kids: Mikhail, 28 and Jasmine, 25 and one granddaughter - Ellie, 3.

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?

I have two cats and a dog. I'm more of a cat person.

Are you retired, still working and if working, what do you do?

Retired from the Air Force (26 years) but I'm currently a Cisco network engineer for a Managed Services Provider.

Where do you call home? What is it like? IE: weather, scenery

San Angelo, TX - Semi-arid, West Texas desert.

Where did you go to school and what is your education level? Born and raised in East Texas, but received my Bachelors in Electronics Management from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

What kind of things you like doing? hobbies, travel, fishing, camping?

I have expensive hobbies: cars, guns, bicycles and computers.

Why and when did you start using Linux?

I've been using Linux since mid-1992 before kernel 1.0 (Yggdrasil, Slackware, etc). Full time Linux user since 2000 (Mandrake/Mandriva/PCLinuxOS).

What specific equipment do you currently use with PCLinuxOS?

Shuttle SH170, 32GB, Samsung 950Pro

Dell 6540 laptop, 16GB

What would you like to see happen within PCLinuxOS that would make it a better place. What are your feelings?

Support for new hardware and repo status are my main areas. I like to see new package requests & updates put in the repo on a timely basis. I think they do a pretty good job.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight is an exclusive, monthly column by YouCanToo, featuring PCLinuxOS forum member. 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 youcantoo, parnote or Meemaw in the PCLinuxOS forum expressing your interest.

Tip Top Tips: Mass Removal Of The Executable Attribute From Files

Editor's Note: Tip Top Tips is a monthly column in The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Each month, we will feature -- and possibly even expand upon -- one tip from the PCLinuxOS forum. The magazine will not accept independent tip submissions specifically intended for inclusion in the Tip Top Tips column. Rather, if you have a tip, share it in the PCLinuxOS forum's "Tips & Tricks" section. Your tip just may be selected for publication in The PCLinuxOS Magazine.

This month's tip comes from PCLinuxOS forum member dm+.

I have lots of files coming from DOS/FAT/NTFS etc. filesystems which are marked with the 'executable' attribute.

The following command will process the file system sub-tree starting at the current directory and will remove the 'executable' attribute from all files (in filesystems where this is supported, like ext2, ext2, ext4).

find . -type f -print -exec chmod -x "{}" ';'

Note that if you remove the 'executable' attribute from a folder (directory) entry, the folder is no longer accessible. The above command will only affect 'regular' files (-type f option).

pags added:

Bear in mind this is not changing the files while they are still on the DOS/FAT/NTFS etc. filesystems. This is after they've been moved to a filesystem that supports the attributes (ext2/3/4, btrfs, jfs, xfs, etc… ).

PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner: Carmel-Apple Upside-Down Cake

Caramel-Apple Upside-Down Cake

INGREDIENTS

Topping

1/4 cup butter or margarine

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 medium apples, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch wedges

Cake

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup milk

Whipped Cream

1 cup whipping cream

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Heat oven to 325 F/165 C Spray bottom and sides of 8- or 9-inch square pan with cooking spray.

2. In 1-quart saucepan, melt 1/4 cup butter over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Stir in brown sugar. Heat to boiling; remove from heat. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Pour into pan; spread evenly. Arrange apple wedges over brown sugar mixture, overlapping tightly and making 2 layers if necessary.

3. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and the salt; set aside. In large bowl, beat 1 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 cup butter with electric mixer on medium speed, scraping bowl occasionally, until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until smooth. Add vanilla. Gradually beat in flour mixture alternately with milk, beating after each addition until smooth. Spread batter over apple wedges in brown sugar mixture.

4. Bake 55 to 65 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on cooling rack 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in medium bowl, beat whipping cream on high speed until it begins to thicken. Gradually add 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, beating until soft peaks form.

5. Run knife around sides of pan to loosen cake. Place heatproof serving plate upside down over pan; turn plate and pan over. Remove pan. Serve warm cake with whipped cream. Store cake loosely covered.

ms_meme's Nook: PCLOS Bound

OGG                                                  MP3

Security Breach At Equifax & Lessons To Learn From It

by phorneker

I first heard about the network breach at Equifax from watching the September 8 episode of CBC's The National on YouTube. My first thought was "this could not be happening", especially in the era of news where distinguishing truth from fiction is difficult. Then yesterday, I got an e-mail from my bank regarding the breach. Then, I decided to investigate this for myself.

The rumors were confirmed true with a visit to Equifax's website. (Source: http://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com)

Before Equifax transitioned its credit reporting services to an online only operation (starting in 1998), one could go to a local credit bureau and get a credit report. Back then, you could pay $8.00 for a copy of your Equifax report, and if you had been denied credit in the past sixty days, that report was free.

From 1993 to 1998, I worked in one of those local credit bureaus, first as a data entry clerk in charge of public records, as well as having been the Information Technology person for the local bureau.

Among things I accomplished here was the development and maintenance of credit reporting software (as a stand alone application, and as software to report data from customer databases).

When I first came to the local bureau, our setup was a network of 3270-compatible terminals manufactured by Harris Technologies (the 9100 series) connected to a hub where the configuration of the 3270-compatible terminals and the hub was stored on a single 5.25 inch floppy disk. The hub communicated to the Equifax network through a dedicated phone line and a 56k modem. There was also a line printer connected to the hub, and was about the size of a vanity fixture for a small bathroom (cabinet included). The paper (11 x 17 inches) was fanfold and was fed from underneath the printer.

In 1996, that setup was replaced with a 75Mhz Pentium machine for the hub, running OS/2 2.1, and 50Mhz 486 systems for the workstations, all equipment IBM branded with the workstations running PC-DOS 6.3 and custom 3270-emulation software. The machines had Windows 3.11 installed, but Windows was never used. The printer was replaced with a standard IBM branded printer that had a wide carriage. That printer was connected to a workstation where consumers came in to get their credit reports.

At that time, my home machine was a Compaq Presario 425 running OS/2 Warp 3.0, and this was two years before I started using Linux (with Red Hat 5.2).

The bureau where I worked was also a collection agency, and the computer setup there was a Digital (now HP) PDP-11 running Digital UNIX for the operating system and FACS for the collection software. Users interacted with it through Televideo terminals (VT-100 compatible). In addition, there were two internal networks running Netware 3.x. One of those was for general business use with various 486 machines running Netware 3.x on Windows 3.11, and a single HP Deskjet 870cse for shared printing. The other was a single server, an AcerFrame 500 running Netware 3.x with three workstations connected to it for processing of mortgage applications. The workstations were 386 machines that I rebuilt with the operating system and networking software on a single floppy. (This was an early version of the thin client concept for networking computers.)

When the office closed down, I got the AcerFrame 500 and the DeskJet 870cse as part of my severance package. It was this machine that I rebuilt from a mortgage processing server into a Red Hat 5.2 workstation. (I had to install a CD-ROM drive in order to install Linux.)

...and that was my working relationship with Equifax.

Today, I checked out the job offerings in their IT department and learned that Equifax deemphasized the IBM mainframe and focused more on Web technologies, using a combination of Oracle (for Java and OracleDB) and Microsoft products (specifically the .NET framework).

In my opinion, the Equifax system was far more secure back in the 1990s when credit files were stored on IBM mainframes and accessed through custom software, than the solutions implemented by Equifax today. Knowing the reputation of C# and the .NET framework, using C# was quite a risk itself in terms of security, let alone stability.

We have Java in the PCLinuxOS repository, and it is quite secure and stable, so we can rule out Java itself as a factor in what happened with the security breach.

Then comes the question of how often Equifax's IT infrastructure is kept up to date. In the past few issues of this magazine, we have emphasized the importance of keeping our systems up to date and secure (including the advice discouraging third party software installation).

The mainstream media emphasizes purchasing and keeping Windows up to date, (as well as making sure the copy of Windows is registered with Microsoft.) The fact that we are using PCLinuxOS is proof enough of how ignorant the mainstream media is when it comes to keeping our information technology infrastructure working properly.

A more famous example of what I am talking about is what happened with a UK health care facility when their entire network of machines became infected with the WannaCry malware. This was a result of indifferent management and indifferent policy when it comes to IT maintenance.

Credit files (as well as medical records) contain personally identifiable information that should always be kept confidential and revealed only to those with a legitimate need for that information. One would think that security would be the main priority when it comes to the IT infrastructure. Knowing that the Windows philosophy was always built on convenience rather than security, it is up to the people in charge of IT to do what they can to make the infrastructure as secure as possible, even if it means additional costs for added security.

The articles about security in the past few months of this magazine are examples of what we can do as users of PCLinuxOS to make our systems as secure as possible, and they do not cost a thing to implement.

I cannot say what Equifax does, or more specifically what their IT department does, to keep their infrastructure up to date and secure, but I do know that the closure of local bureaus has saved Equifax millions of dollars in expenses over the past twenty or so years.

But at what cost?

Implementing an online only solution to credit reporting was a good idea at the time, but with it came some inherent risks and costs.

First, placing any data as sensitive as credit information on the Internet comes with the inherent risk of data breaches, as the technology to access data is constantly evolving, and that no security mechanism is perfect no matter how old that security mechanism is.

Second, there is a cost of consumer trust and confidence in credit bureaus. When Equifax maintained local bureaus (the same applies to TransUnion and Experian), people had face to face contact with the credit bureau as there were people staffed in the office ready to help the consumer right there and then. Dispute cases were opened on site and processed on site. One could put trust in the credit bureau to help solve credit problems, because people were there to solve these problems.

Now, with the online presence, relations with the consumer could not be more distant or faceless. What a price to pay to save a few dollars.

When we think about it, the same could be said for social media in general. A CNN report not too long ago was about a generation of people who are so addicted to social media and the smartphones used to access that social media, they may be standing next to one another and yet be so isolated as if they were thousands of miles apart.

While we have the PCLinuxOS Forum to interact with one another, it is more important that we take a break often and actually live in the real world. PCLinuxOS will still be there and (if funded properly) will be there for the next generation of Linux users.

Editor's Note: If you are worried that your data may have been a victim of the Equifax data breach, you can securely check to see if your data was involved here, at Equifax's TrustedID site. Just enter the requested data, and you will immediately receive an answer.

Google Maps Tips

by Meemaw

I saw this list in a newsletter that was sent to me by my local printer. It's called printer@work and I read it online. I'm sure they get it from a service that provides it to printing service companies. Anyway, I thought this was a great list, so I thought I would share it. The italics are the actual article. As much as many of us use Google Maps, I hope you find a useful tip you didn't know before. I know I did! (Note: The phone images are from an Android smartphone.)

Google Map Tips

If you've only used Google Maps to get directions or locate an address, you're missing out on many other useful features. Here are just a few examples of other things you can do with Google Maps:

•     Find available ride-sharing services (such as Uber) that are available at your location. After entering your destination in Google Maps, swipe right on the transportation options on the top of the screen and click the stick figure holding a briefcase. This will prompt a pop-up screen on the bottom showing price estimates and wait times.

You can use it to find bus stops as well (circled below). However, in the two towns I have searched, and on my laptop and smartphone, I haven't been able to find the menu choice they are describing.

•     Add multiple stops on your journey. Start by entering your starting point and final destination. Then, click the three dots in the top right corner and "add stop."

I have used this many times, especially if we are going to a certain town and want to stop somewhere in between. On my laptop, the "Add Stop" is at the bottom of the blue directions window. Generally Maps will show you the most direct route, but if you don't want to go that way, you can add on your stop in between. You can add stops at the end and re-order them as well, simply by clicking and holding your mouse on the one you want to move and dragging it into the position you want.

On your smartphone, the circles will turn into circles with letters when you get to 3 places: you simply touch the letter in front of the place you want to move and drag it into place.

•     See a street view image (where available). Search for a place or drop a pin. Click on the thumbnail image to enlarge and rotate your view.

This helps if you are going somewhere you've never visited before. I recently had to visit a hospital I've never been to, and used the street view to see what the building looked like so I would know it when I got there. This is my phone. If I touch the small picture at bottom left, it will open to a photo of the place, and show a 360 degree view.

•     Search for things nearby. For example, type in "pizza near me" to see the closest options, or enter "pizza near XYZ" to find something near your upcoming destination.

Wow, we use this all the time… getting to a town and wanting to go to a certain store or restaurant, you can put in the store or restaurant name and Maps will show you if there are any close to your location. Harbor Freight Tools seems to be a popular store, so we search for the closest one in some of the towns we visit. As you can see, there are 4 near Kansas City.

•     Edit your directions by dragging and dropping any part of your route to go around or through specific locations.

So, I got my route, but noticed the highway construction that I don't want to go through. I will use a different highway, so I just drag that part of my route to the other highway.

•     Access Google Maps offline, which is great for limited or non-existent coverage. Go to Google Maps menu (in the upper left) and choose "Offline maps" to get started. Remember, offline maps expire in 30 days, so you'll need to update them if you have it downloaded longer than a month.

Honestly, I've never used Offline Maps, but I've been in a couple of places where I could have! On your smartphone, from the menu, choose Offline Maps.

•     Remember where you parked. After parking, tap the blue dot of your location to prompt a pop-up screen, and you can mark your parking location on the map.

I'll have to admit, I've never used this, but I can see how it would be useful in a huge parking lot (like at a sports stadium or shopping mall). It would be easy to get turned around and not know which way your car is, especially if it's a place you aren't familiar with.

•     Share your location. Click on the Google Maps menu, and choose "Location sharing".

Traveling with someone and get separated? This is an easy way to get back together. If you click on Location sharing, you will get several ways to share: Messaging, email, Google Drive and others. You also have to choose the people to share it with. You can also set a time limit for your share.

•     Easily save your home and work addresses under the Google Maps menu, so you don't have to type them in every time you want to navigate around them, find local restaurants, etc.

If you have saved it on your computer, it should sync to your phone. I have "Home" and "Work" saved, and could save several other locations if I wanted. You can save places, visited places or specific maps. From the map, mark a location you want to save. On my phone, I can swipe up from the bottom (or touch "More Info") and get the option to Save, Share or Download.

I don't know about you, but I use Maps all the time. My husband has gotten used to saying, "Pull up your map and find out where (insert store or restaurant name here) is located and how to get there..." It also helps to find where the current road construction is, so it can be avoided. It's really pretty handy, especially driving through unfamiliar places. While the ones above are familiar to me, you might have problems finding your way around. I hope some of these tips will help you out the next time you use Google Maps.

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Scrappler

Possible score 224, average score 157.

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Crossword

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

WordFind

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Cryptograms

From the computer of ms_meme:

Everyday I work the daily crosswords and cryptograms in the paper. I like the cryptograms as they are wise/silly sayings of famous people.

The magazine article about secure passwords made me think of the cryptograms. We have people in the forum who are always posting famous/wise/silly sayings.

I have made a few into cryptograms, and hope our readers will enjoy them.

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Screenshot Showcase

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