Table of Contents

- From The Chief Editor's Desk

1. The Tax Man Cometh

2. ShowFoto: DigiKam's Image Editor

3. ms_meme's Nook: Booting You

4. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Tilapia With Cucumber Salad

5. Inkscape Tutorial: Highlighted Text

6. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: µT6

7. Short Topix: Microsoft Sued Over Win10 Updates

8. You Still Want To Be A YouTuber? Keep With PCLinuxOS And You'll Get There!

9. Tip Top Tips: Monitoring Recording In Audacity

10. Hardware Review: Logitech M325 Wireless Mouse

11. ms_meme's Nook: Looking For Fun

12. PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner: Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie

13. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

14. Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk

Granted, my "reference frame" may be skewed a bit, since I live in the U.S. But it is what I have to work with, and I realize other areas of the world don't necessarily "work" the same way. Plus, I'm sure other places might do some things better, while yet other places might do some things worse.

Another thing that frames my point of view is the times that I grew up in. I'm a child of the 1960s, having actually been born in 1960. Some of you in the forum are older than me, and yet others of you are younger. I'm a product of an age that predates email, the world wide web, cell phones, VCRs/DVRs, and many other modern "conveniences." As the narrator guy (executive producer William Dozier, actually) said at the conclusion of every Batman episode, "Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel."

If you missed the show's original airing, too bad; you'd have to wait until the reruns were broadcast. If you wanted to talk to someone, you talked to them on a telephone constrained by a cord ... or waited until the next day when you could talk to them face-to-face. If you wanted to send a message to someone, you had telegrams if it was super important, or you would sit down and write a letter (and mail it). If you wanted information about something, you either went to the local library, or if your family was fortunate enough to have a set of encyclopedias, you'd look it up there (we had a set of Funk & Wagnall's Encyclopedias, and that was a HUGE purchase for my parents in the early 1970s).

I have not ignored or shunned these technological advances. I spend more time than I probably should sending emails or looking stuff up on the web. I have a cell phone, and do send text messages and calls from it. As a family, we benefit from the use of the DVR that comes with our cable TV plan, as well as programming on DVDs and BluRays, all of which we can watch at our convenience.

With all of these technological advances, there is a downside. That downside is that your digital communications and your personal data can be intercepted and read by others without you even knowing. "Back in the day," there was a pretty high confidence that our analogue landline telephone conversations weren't being listened in on or saved for who knows how long. If it was being done, we certainly weren't privy to it. Now, those actions are done in the open, and with the most cavalier of attitudes. "Back in the day," when you sealed up a letter and it arrived sealed to its addressee, there was a high level of confidence that its contents hadn't been tampered with or read, and the privacy of that letter was largely guaranteed.

Those assurances and guarantees are largely gone now, in the digital age. Your web browsing history is used to target you for advertising, and in some cases, may incriminate you for things you haven't even done yet (or may, conversely, link you to your crimes). Your emails, phone calls and text messages are routinely intercepted or listened in on, and the "metadata" (who you call/text/email, when you call/text/email, their associates, the topic of your calls/texts/emails, etc.) are saved for who knows how long by people/agencies/governments with no real need to "know" such intimate details. I'm sure that Comcast knows more about my television viewing habits than Nielsen and Arbitron, two prolific media "ratings" businesses in the U.S., and certainly probably better than I know my own television viewing habits in my own house.

My point is that there is more than enough "accidental" or incidental personal information floating around out there on each of us than anyone realizes. Not everyone has "good intentions" when accessing that data. Your personal information is the currency of the times. Your privacy is at stake. Your personal information can be -- and probably will be -- "weaponized" by some entity. "Back in the day," your private information and data were exactly that -- private.

Which brings me to the grand point of this month's column: Cambridge Analytica and the Facebook data breach. The dust hasn't even started to settle yet from this one. "Back in the day," access to all of this private information and data wasn't necessary for the police to catch the criminals. The crimes were still solved. "Back in the day," advertising wasn't directed at individuals on an individually tailored basis, yet companies were able to prosper selling their goods and services. And all of this was possible without knowing my likes and dislikes, who I associated with, my political leanings or ideologies, or any other private information that is raked in and cultivated from my digital footprint.

This has nothing to do with whether you have done anything right or wrong, or whether or not you have anything to hide. It's purely a principled matter. Why should anyone be able to have greater access to your private information and data than they would, for example, have to a letter you wrote to Aunt Midge? If we've gone throughout history -- and survived -- keeping such personal and private information and data private, then I suspect we'll survive the future just as well should we continue to keep such data private. I've said it here before, and I'll say it again: just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Just because you CAN access my private and personal information and data, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Shouldn't your private and personal information and data be kept private, regardless of its form or origin? I say unequivocally YES!

So, until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity and prosperity. Oh ... and guard your privacy vehemently and with purpose.

The Tax Man Cometh

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

If you're a U.S. based user, April represents one of the worst times of the year: income tax season. The annual filing deadline is April 15 (or you pay penalties and interest). Because you're a Linux user, you have mostly been forgotten when it comes to tax software. Too bad we can't just as conveniently "forget" about filing or paying income tax, huh?

Income tax software has been available for Windows and Macs for years. For Linux users, it has been nearly a score (a score is 20 years) since any tax software has been available for *nix users.

For many of the past 10+ years or so -- since I've been on Linux -- the income tax software void had been one reason I always kept a copy of WinXP running in VirtualBox. Then, last year, my favorite income tax software no longer worked on WinXP. Instead, it required a minimum of Win7 to run. I knew it was only a matter of time before software support for WinXP would run out.

Like most Linux users, I had to turn to web-based solutions to file my income taxes. Sure, I could have just filled out the paper forms and mailed them in, but that represents facing a real failure, to me anyways. After having filed my income taxes electronically for so, so many years, only a destruction of all necessary technology could get me to resort to paper forms and snail mail.

The answer to one question still eludes me, after 10+ years of using Linux: why didn't someone/anyone/just one of those software packages ever write their software in a cross-platform language, such as Python or Java? Why put out platform-specific, operating system specific software packages when one software package could be developed and used on any platform or operating system? That has been my perennial "suggestion" when I filled out the survey after filing my taxes with my preferred tax software/service provider.

The next best solution is to use the web based income tax software. Let's take a look at some of the major players in this arena, which are available to all users, regardless of their platform or operating system. Yes, they are available to even Linux users.

Before we get into the different online income tax filing services, be aware that virtually every single vendor promises to get you the "maximum refund" or to cut your tax liability to the absolute minimum. It is exactly what you think it is: it's all marketing. Who in their right mind is going to go with the vendor that doesn't try to maximize your refund or minimize your tax liability? Most people filing their income taxes don't require a lot of complicated forms and tax advising, which are included in the more expensive plans. Overall, most of the services are going to most likely net you comparable results, so you're either paying for their "name" and reputation, or for peace of mind.

The list of services below is not meant to be (and probably isn't) a complete list of the services available. Rather, the intent here is to examine some of the more common vendors so that you can make an informed choice. However, I have tried to cover most of the "major" vendors in this market.

Intuit TurboTax

TurboTax is one of the more "popular" income tax filing programs. It has a long history, available for years on Windows as a standalone program that folks rushed out to buy and install every tax season. I was never a fan. It was always one of the more expensive tax programs, and I never had the extra cash to be able to pay the premium price.

Don't let the blaring "free" (as in $0) headlines on their website fool you. This is a bare bones offering that is only available to those who file either forms 1040EZ or 1040A. If you have deductions (home mortgage interest, medical expenses, etc.), you're going to have to pay. How much will you have to pay? The "Deluxe" version will cost you $59.99, the "Premier" version will cost you $79.99, the "Self-Employed" version will cost you $119.99, and the "TurboTax Live" version -- complete with live advice from an accountant and a final review before you file -- will set you back $179.99. Every one of these paid plans charges extra to file your state income tax forms.

At these rates, TurboTax is one of the more expensive services in this list -- just as they always have been. Visiting their web page linked to above, selecting that I have a job and dependents (children), the website recommends the free option. But, the minute I select that I own my own home, it immediately recommends the $60 option. This is despite the fact that for the past several years, we (my wife and I) have only taken the "standardized deduction" because we didn't have enough deductions -- even with the interest paid on our home mortgage -- to qualify for itemized deductions (or the itemized deductions were less than the standardized deduction).

TurboTax was developed by Michael A. Chipman of Chipsoft in the mid-1980s. Intuit acquired Chipsoft, based in San Diego, in 1993. Chipsoft, now known as Intuit Consumer Tax Group, is still based in San Diego. TurboTax has had ample amounts of controversy surrounding their annual releases over the years.

TurboTax is magazine staff member phorneker's choice for tax software. For the past few years, he has used TurboTax successfully, and got his refund within a week after filing. Another reason why he trusts Intuit is that he found out that Intuit is a Red Hat customer. Hence, tax records and other information are stored on servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and to date, there has never been a data breach involving a Red Hat product.

This may have a "special" appeal for PCLinuxOS users, since PCLinuxOS is a distant derivative of Red Hat/Fedora. Mandrake/Mandriva was a derivative of Red Hat/Fedora, and PCLinuxOS was a derivative of Mandrake/Mandriva -- before becoming its own bona fide Linux distribution.

H&R Block

I actually used to use the installed software version of this service (back in the days when I was a Windows user). It is called Kiplinger's Tax Cut, and is still available for purchase -- if you run Windows. H&R Block is one of the real heavyweights in the U.S. income tax business. They've been around for a very, very long time. In fact, their corporate headquarters are in Kansas City, and has been since its inception by brothers Henry W. Bloch and Richard Bloch (hence, the H&R Block name) in 1955.

Amazingly, when I visited their website (link above), it actually recommended the "free" version of their service, even when I selected that I had dependents and was a homeowner. Immediately, I have to give H&R Block kudos for not trying to gouge my wallet just to make a profit. Not that the Bloch family needs it; they are one of the wealthiest families in the Kansas City area (where I live), if not the wealthiest.

As you might imagine, they do have fee-based plans. The prices were discounted at the time that I wrote this article, so the discounted price will appear first, with the "regular" price appearing in parentheses immediately after the discounted price. I do not know how long the discounted prices will be around, so I offer them both here. Their "Deluxe Online Tax Filing" plan costs $22.74 ($34.99). Their "Premium Online Tax Filing" plan costs $35.74 ($54.99), and their "Self-Employed Online Tax Filing" plan costs $48.74 ($74.99). With any of the paid plans, filing of state income tax forms costs an additional $36.99 per state, but are "free" with the free plan (if you qualify). Just as with Intuit's TurboTax, H&R Block has also had its share of controversies over the years.

Tax Act (Editor's Choice)

This has been my "go to" tax preparation and filing software for more than a dozen years. Tax Act has never steered me wrong, so I have a lot of confidence in their service. Even last year, when I discovered that the software would no longer work on WinXP (which I only run in VirtualBox, and usually only during tax season), I used their online service. Despite my anxiety about using the online service, I found it just as easy to use and complete as the installed version of their software, which eased the transition considerably. Business News Daily ranked Tax Act as the best free online tax software.

Tax Act was founded in 1998 by Lance Dunn, Cammie Greif, Jerry McConnell and Alan Sperfslage, and is based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A dozen years after its founding, in 2010, H&R Block offered $287.5 million cash to buy Tax Act. However, the U.S. Justice Department stepped in and stopped the acquisition of Tax Act by H&R Block, citing antitrust concerns, which were upheld by a federal judge in court. Both companies then mutually terminated the contract.

Yes, sure enough, Tax Act has an assortment of paid-level options (four, to be specific), in addition to the free filing option. Just as with the H&R Block plans, at the time that I am writing this article, there are discounted prices on the website. Thus, the current price is listed, with the non-discounted price in parenthesis immediately after the discounted price. The "Basic" level will cost $10.46 ($14.95), while the "Plus" level will cost $20.96 ($29.95). The "Self-Employed" level will cost you $41.96 ($59.95) and the "Premium" level will cost you $48.96 ($69.95).

Putting the website recommendations to the test (link above), selecting that I "have a job" recommended the free option. Selecting that I have dependents raised the suggestion to the "Basic" level. Since I'm a homeowner, the "Plus" level was recommended. Selecting "Audit Protection" increased the level all the way to the "Premium" level. Filing your state income taxes is free with the free level services, $11.90 with the "Basic" level services, and $25.90 with the remaining top three levels of services. Prices for the state income taxes are per state (so if you have to file in two different states, double the quoted prices).

We (my wife and I) filed our income taxes using the online version of TaxAct in the second half of March. While ours was relatively uncomplicated -- income taxes for federal and the state of Missouri, both with standard deductions -- it cost us $46.86. We were expecting a refund anyways, so the price we paid was less than 5% of what we got back. Definitely not too shabby, I think.

TaxSlayer

TaxSlayer is the second oldest tax software company listed here, after H&R Block. In the early 1960s, Aubrey Rhodes, Sr. started Rhodes-Murphy & Co., a full service tax preparation company that still is in business in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1989, they formed a subsidiary, called Rhodes Computer Services, with the primary goal of creating tax software for others to use. Four years later, in 1993, they started selling "TaxSlayer Pro" to accountants and tax preparers around the U.S. In 1998, they starting working on their website, TaxSlayer.com. In 2017, they reported over 10 million tax e-files, making them a major player in the online income tax services.

They do offer a free option -- if you file the 1040EZ form, along with a free "simple" state income tax return. They also have three levels of paid service. The "Classic" level will cost $17, while the "Premium" level will cost $35. The "Self-Employed" level will cost you $40. If you have to file what they call a "complex" state income tax return along with your paid service level, it will cost you $22 for each state return. "Simple" state returns are free.

Liberty Tax

Liberty Tax is probably best known for its guerilla marketing where they have some poor sucker dressed either as the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam dancing at the edge of the street, twirling a sign. I see them all over town, dancing around in front of Liberty Tax's brick and mortar locations/franchisees.

The company was started by John Hewitt, one of the founders of the Jackson Hewitt Tax Service after Jackson Hewitt was sold in 1997 for $483 million. With those proceeds, he bought a Canadian tax franchisor, and opened five offices in the U.S. the following year. From that start, the Liberty Tax brick and mortar locations were started by franchise. It is currently a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ stock exchange as Liberty Tax, Inc. (TAX).

Unlike the other services listed here, there doesn't appear to be a "free" option. Sure, their website says "Start for Free," but it appears you don't get to "finish" for free. They offer four levels of paid service. Due to a special promo that appeared to be going on at the time I was writing this article, the discounted price appears, with the "regular" price in parenthesis after the discounted prices. The "EZ" level, touted as best for simple returns, will cost you $11.96 ($14.95). The "Basic" level, for families, will cost you $23.16 ($28.95), and the "Deluxe" level, for investors, will cost you $35.16 ($43.95). The "Premium" level, for small business owners, will cost you $55.96 ($69.95).

Liberty Tax has also had its share of criticisms and legal actions.

FreeTaxUSA

FreeTaxUSA is one of the newest services on the block. As such, there's not a lot of information about them, other than what they provide on their website. They were started in 2001 by a CPA and a team of software developers, and is the online tax preparation website for TaxHawk, Inc. One of their emphasises is on being "budget friendly." They pride themselves on not having any hidden fees or costs involved at any stage of the process.

They offer only two plans: free and "Deluxe." The free version offers free federal tax preparation, and state income tax preparation costs only $12.95 per state. The "Deluxe" version is available for only $6.99, and provides live chat, priority support, Audit Assist, and unlimited amended returns. State income tax preparation for the "Deluxe" version also costs just $12.95 -- if you need it.

IRS Free File

This one isn't for the faint of heart. Yes, it's free, and it's offered by the IRS. But you had better already have an idea of what you're doing with taxes, since you're rather unlikely to receive much hand holding or assistance. Many of the other services listed here pretty much walk you through the process of filing your income taxes, but not so much on the IRS site.

Also, you are on your own when it comes to filing state income tax forms, if you're required to file them. Most people are going to view using the IRS website as a last ditch effort.

Summary

There's a saying that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. Thanks to the online offerings by these and other companies, fulfilling one of those certainties (albeit on an annual basis) has become a much easier task, especially for Linux users.

ShowFoto: DigiKam's Image Editor

by phorneker

As promised, this article is about DigiKam's image editor called showfoto. While it is installable and launchable by itself, it is best used when launched from DigiKam, as the editor was designed for and integrates well with DigiKam.

Here, we have DigiKam launched and I have selected a folder containing photographs I took in Las Vegas back in 2002. The photographs that have "LEAD Technologies" tagged are those that were scanned in 2003 with a HP ScanJet 1110 (a parallel port model) connected to a 75Mhz Pentium machine I rebuilt from an old Compaq which dual booted between MEPIS and Win95 (what I was running at that time).

Some of these photographs have been rescanned with the Epson Stylus NX-415 connected to my current laptop, and as we can see in the third row, the rescans came out much better than the original (600dpi on the rescans vs 150dpi on the original scans).

The photograph I have highlighted (and its greyscale version on the left) is a sample of what I would like to work with using showfoto as the image editor.

To launch showfoto, click on the button labeled Image Editor or simply press the F4 key.

Showfoto is a fully functional image editor that makes easy work of editing photographs. The right panel starts out with buttons for commonly used tools used in editing photographs. That panel can also be used to access the properties, metadata, color profiles, geographic tags and captions, as well as managing versions of the photograph you are working on.

The toolbar replicates many functions found on the main menu in showfoto.

As we work with Showfoto, you will be able to save new versions of the photograph, work on a copy of the original, export to other image formats, and when we are done, close the editor. (If any unsaved changes were made, we will be prompted to save those changes before closing, or, at our option, be able to discard changes made.)

Below is the actual photograph we shall be using for this article on showfoto.

"Las Vegas: A City That Never Sleeps", 2002

Camera: Olympus XA-2

Location: Street level looking north up the strip on Las Vegas Boulevard just north of Tropicana Boulevard.

I rescanned this photograph at 600dpi for a better quality scan. This was at one time part of my website's logo well before I gave the website its current name. The image was stored with a filename of streetlevel.jpg indicating that this is a street level of the Las Vegas Strip. The title here is now the official title of the photograph that I have settled on for the original version. Of course, there will be different versions of this photograph created as we are using this for the article.

In the same directory is a greyscale (black and white) version of the photograph (called streetlevel-gs.jpg). In GIMP, this can be accomplished by selecting Greyscale from the Image --> Mode menu from the window where the picture was loaded.

In Showfoto, the same can be accomplished by selecting Color --> Black and White from the main menu (or selecting Black and White from the Color section of the right panel. Unlike GIMP, Showfoto has many options that come with the black and white conversion. The changes on the photograph are immediate. Showfoto provides Before and After views of the image while you are making the changes to your photographs. Clicking on any of the OK buttons commits the change. The Before and After views are toggled simply by moving the mouse pointer over the photograph. Once the changes have been committed, the image reverts to a single view. Likewise, you can click on any of the Cancel buttons to discard changes made to the photographs.

For the Black and White tool, there are four major options you can choose from to fine tune your image. Film is used to simulate the film that would have been used if this photograph were taken with a film camera. Lens Filters simulate what filters would have been attached to the lens (if any) had they been used to take the photograph. Tone contains a number of other filters that would have been applied to photographs. Luminosity controls the brightness of the photograph. Tone contains a number of other filters that would have been applied to photographs. Luminosity controls the brightness of the photograph.

If you have ever used the Cokin filter system, this should be familiar to you. Over the years this system was developed, the company produced filters that did the very same thing the simulated filters in Showfoto.

The Cokin filter system is simple in design. Filters are attached to holders, which attach to the camera's lens through filter adapter rings, or with a specialized bracket (meant for compact point and shoot cameras such as the Olympus XA2. Filters can be combined for lighting or special effects.

The system was developed in the late 1970s and is still being developed today. The system works with both film and digital cameras. More information on the Cokin system can be found at https://www.cokin-filters.com.

Note that the Tools tab now reads Black and White. Clicking on either OK or Cancel will revert the tab to Tools. Let us select the Film tab.

The view of the photograph simulates the Generic setting, which is similar to what you get when you select Greyscale from the Colors menu in GIMP. Showfoto simulates the following black and white films:

- Agfa Pan 200X (the Agfa 200X setting)

- Agfa Pan 25

- Agfa Pan 100

- Agfa Pan 400

- Ilford Delta 100

- Ilford Delta 400

- Ilford Delta 400 Pro 3200

- Ilford FP4 Plus

- Ilford HP5 Plus

- Ilford PanF Plus

- Ilford XP2 Super

- Kodak TMax 100

- Kodak TMax 400

- Kodak Tri-X (ISO 400)

- Ilford SPX 200 (Infrared)

- Ilford SPX 400 (Infrared)

- Ilford SPX 800 (Infrared)

- Kodak HIE (Infrared)

As we select each one, note that there are slight changes to each of the images. This is no different with photographs taken on each of the films. Infrared films capture infrared light, that is, light generated from heat and that which is not seen with the unaided eye.

Ilford's XP2 Super is the only black and white film that is processed with the same chemistry as color print film.

This sample is generated from the Agfa 200X setting.

...and this one is from the Agfa Pan 25 setting.

...and this one is from the Ilford FP4 Plus setting.

...and this one is from the Ilford XP2 setting.

...compare that to this Kodak Tri-X Pan sample.

This is what happens when you take pictures with Infrared film. This sample is generated from the Kodak HIE setting (Kodak's Infrared film). Here is the entire picture with that setting.

...and the same picture with the Kodak Tri-X setting:

Clearly infrared films provide higher contrast and luminosity. The image streetlevel-gs.jpg was created with the Generic setting, but could well have been created with the Kodak Tri-X setting as the color film I used to take the original photograph had an ISO rating of 400, which is the same as the ISO rating of Tri-X film.

Another feature I would like to show you is the Auto-Crop found in the Transform section of the side panel.

This photograph has a white end on the right side of the scan. While this is used to capture the entire image for producing photographs, it is an annoyance that needs to be corrected if we are to use this as desktop wallpaper or in a LibreOffice presentation.

Where it says "10%" is a menu where you can select how much of the photograph you would like to see in relation to the actual size of the photograph in pixels. Select a value that allows you to see the entire image in the Showfoto window.

Then, using the mouse, select the portion of the photograph not containing the white edge, then click on Crop to Selection.

...and look what happened. The white edge that was in the photograph is now gone.

Click on Save Changes to save your changes to the current version of the photograph, or click on Save as New Version if you wish to create a new file containing the changes to your photograph.

For the next article, I would like to show you some other things that can be done with photographs.

ms_meme's Nook: Booting You

OGG                                                   MP3

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Tilapia With Cucumber Salad

Tilapia with Cucumber Salad

INGREDIENTS:

Dressing

1 TBSP honey

1 TBSP rice vinegar

2 tsp grated ginger root

1/2 tsp salt

Salad

1/2 medium cucumber, cut in half lengthwise, thinly sliced

1/4 red bell pepper, diced

3 green onions, thinly sliced

1 tsp chopped fresh cilantro

Fish

2 TBSP all-purpose flour

1 tsp lemon-pepper seasoning

1 cup panko crispy bread crumbs or plain bread crumbs

1 egg

4 tilapia or other white fish fillets (6 oz each)

4 TBSP vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS:

1. In medium bowl, mix dressing ingredients. Stir in salad ingredients to coat.

2. On plate, mix flour and seasoning. On second plate, place bread crumbs. In bowl, beat egg with fork. Coat fish with flour mixture. Dip into egg; coat well with bread crumbs.

3. In 10-inch nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat. Add 2 fish fillets; cook 3 minutes. Carefully turn fish over. Reduce heat to medium; cook about 3 minutes longer or until fish flakes easily with fork. Repeat with remaining oil and fish. Serve fish topped with salad

Tips:

Panko is the Japanese word for "bread crumbs." Unlike traditional bread crumbs, panko is made from the soft, tender centers of bread instead of the crust, which gives a light and crunchy texture.

Inkscape Tutorial: Highlighted Text

by Meemaw

The other day I was reading the on forum and came across phorneker's excellent post about redesigning his website. When I clicked on the link to go to his homepage, I thought his title text was very cool. This tutorial is to make something similar to his.

This is a quick tutorial, easy to do but very striking. You can make this any size or font you want, but it's easier to reduce the size than it would be to increase it (depending on the file format you are using). If you use it on something big, like a wallpaper, you'll want it big.

Open Inkscape and choose your canvas. I usually start with one the size of a piece of US Letter-sized paper (1056 x 816 px), but I know folks who start with a minimum of 1600 x 1200 px.

Start with a rectangle filled with black. It doesn't have to cover the whole page unless you want it to. Set it to the side, and change to the text tool. Decide on your desired text and enter it in the font of your choice. I used a font called A&S Speedway.

Duplicate your text and make the duplicate white. Put it behind the original, or put your original off to the side, and bring back your black rectangle.

Go to Filters > Blurs > Blur. When the window comes up change the blur radius on each to 3. Click Apply. Then close the window.

Now move your black text back, and make sure it's on top. Choosing the black text and the blurred text, use the Align and Distribute tool to center them both ways.

You're finished! You can group it all and export it.

This makes a wonderful image, and you can change it up by changing the font or the colors. Phorneker's had a smaller blur radius, so you could use 2 instead of 3, and it would be fine. This is a font called Patriot using blur radius 3, a red background and blue text.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: µT6

as told to YouCanToo

What is your name/username?

µT6,     John

How old are you?

37 years old.

Are you married, single?

Single.

How about Kids, Grandkids (names and ages)?

No kids, just nephews, 4.

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?

I like birds like parrots and small dogs, but at the moment, I don't have any.

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

Still working, in IT, support on site, PC maintenance, building and repairing PCs, as well as other electronic devices.

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

I live in Bogotá, Colombia. It's somewhat cold rainy weather, but some days are very hot. This is a big city, with all the good and bad a big city can offer (mostly bad is a city).

Bogotá is Colombia's sprawling, high-altitude capital. Elevation: 8,661' Population: 8.081 million

Where did you go to school and what is your education level?

I have a degree of PC Technician/IT, also a degree in Telecommunications Technologist.

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

I like to travel, and when I can, share with family and friends, if there is time. I also like video games, PC and PS3 games.

Why and when did you start using Linux?

Back in 1998, I wanted to see if the grass was greener in the other side of the fence, so I tried with Red Hat I think. That didn't worked well at all, then I tried Mandrake Linux, and found a new hobby.

What specific equipment do currently use with PCLOS?

At the moment, I'm using PCLinuxOS in two machines. A desktop PC with an AMD Athlon x4 860k, and a Lenovo B41 35 laptop.

Do you feel that your use of Linux influences the reactions you receive from your computer peers or family? If so, how?

With family, they know that I can wipe any virus or menace, so I am who can help. But on my job, Ubuntu is used alot, more than I like to!

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

PCLinuxOS as a forum, more hands helping, answering questions. The amount of questions I don't have an idea how to even dare to try to answer is big, and is sad to see questions without an answer.

Thank you!

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.

Short Topix: Microsoft Sued Over Win10 Updates

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Surprise! (Not!) Facebook Data Breach!

File this one under "who'da thunk it?" Facebook data and privacy breach? Hold it ... Facebook and privacy in the same sentence? What am I thinking?!

In a nutshell, Cambridge Analytica convinced around 300,000 Facebook users to install a "personality" app. As a result, not only was data collected on those 300,000 Facebook users, but also all of their friends. In the end, over 50,000,000 ... yes, MILLION ... users were caught up in the mass collection of private data.

Initially, it was reported that the Donald Trump presidential campaign accessed and used the collected data to help win his bid for the White House. But, it has also trickled out that former U.S. President Obama also used the same data to stump for donations from supporters.

In the aftermath -- five days after the story broke -- Mark Zuckerberg issued a less-than-heartfelt "apology" for the data collection. Over 3,000 advertisers -- including Mozilla -- are either pulling their advertising from Facebook, or are threatening to do so. Untold numbers of users are threatening to delete their Facebook accounts, or already have. Congressional investigators are calling for Zuckerberg to testify before a congressional committee about mass data collection. Legislators in the UK are asking for something similar. In other countries around the world, governments are inquiring into whether or not Facebook violated privacy standards for their citizens. The implications from this "event" are huge, and won't settle out for quite some time.

In a connected item with this "story," which also falls into the "who'da thunk it" category, a former operations manager for Facebook tells tales of previous data collections by third party apps that went mostly ignored or unpunished.

Stay tuned. This one will take quite some time to be sorted out, and I'm sure there's more yet to come.

Super Hero Windows User Sues Microsoft Over Forced Win10 Updates

On February 14, 2018, Albuquerque, New Mexico resident Frank Dickman filed lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Microsoft and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for a forced update from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The "update" borked his ASUS 54L Notebook computer, rendering it immediately non-functional.

Dickman characterizes his lawsuit as a "civil rights violation." As a remedy, he is asking for Microsoft to provide, via digital download and activation code, a copy of Windows 7 within 30 days of being served notice of the lawsuit. If they fail to provide him a copy of Windows 7 and its activation code within 30 days, he is asking for $600 million in damages.

While his monetary reward may be a bit excessive (and thus has about as much chance of being awarded as he does to walk on the moon naked), he isn't the first person to complain about Microsoft's overly aggressive push to upgrade Windows users to Windows 10. In July 2016, three Florida residents filed a class action lawsuit, claiming Microsoft coerced them into upgrading to Windows 10, borking their computers. In June 2016, a California travel agent was awarded $10,000 in small claims court when the Windows "update" borked her computer. In this case, Microsoft claims that it settled to minimize court and legal costs. There are many, many other Windows users seeking compensation for Microsoft's overzealous push to upgrade users to Windows 10.

Cellebrite Can Hack EVERY iPhone In The World

If you use any smartphone ... no, strike that. If you use any cell phone ... no, strike that, too. If you use ANY form of electronic voice communication in today's spy-infested, intrusive socio-political environment and expect any level of privacy, then you are living with your head in the same clouds that all your collected data is stored in. The three and four letter government sponsored agencies and the hackers have never heard the maxim "just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

Cellebrite is an Israeli company that is a fully owned subsidiary of Sun Corporation of Japan. They have, in turn, subsidiaries based in the U.S. and Germany. It markets a whole host of services geared towards breaking the encryption on, most of all, every available and in use mobile operating system. Their services are geared towards and marketed to law enforcement agencies. This includes iOS and Android. It is thought that Cellebrite is leveraging zero-day exploits discovered for iOS, some discovered by Cellebrite itself. As a result, Cellebrite is becoming a one-stop-shop for collecting the "hacks" and exploits that break the encryption on mobile devices. Thus, the world is just one hack away from having all of these exploits released into the digital wilderness.

The FBI, DHS, U.S. Secret Service, and many U.S. based law enforcement agencies are customers of Cellebrite. Recently, it was discovered that one U.S. law enforcement agency utilized Cellebrite technology to unlock an iPhone 8 -- which means that it most likely will work on iPhone X, when it's released. According to Cellebrite, they have the means to hack or bypass any security or encryption on iOS 5 through iOS 11. The same also applies to the Android platform, as well.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia that ought to scare the pants off anyone using any mobile platform:

In 2007, Cellebrite announced a line of products it called 'Universal Forensic Extraction Device' (UFED), aimed at the digital forensics and investigation industry. The UFED system is a hand-held device with optional desktop software, data cables, adapters and other peripherals. The UFED additionally has an integrated Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) reader.

Unlike its commercial counterpart, the UME, the UFED system is sold only to approved government and corporate organizations. Also unlike the UME, the UFED extracts mobile device data directly onto an SD card or USB flash drive. Another major difference from the UME is the UFED's ability to break codes, decipher encrypted information, and acquire hidden and deleted data.

The UFED has been named "Phone Forensic Hardware Tool of the Year" for four years running in the Forensic 4cast Awards.

Cellebrite claims the UFED has the ability to extract data from nearly 8200 devices as of June 2012. These include smartphones, PDA devices, cell phones, GPS devices and tablet computers. The UFED can extract, decrypt, parse and analyze phonebook contacts, all types of multimedia content, SMS and MMS messages, call logs, electronic serial numbers (ESN), International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) and SIM location information from both non-volatile memory and volatile storage alike. The UFED supports all cellular protocols including CDMA, GSM, IDEN, and TDMA, and can also interface with different operating systems' file systems such as iOS, Android OS, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm as well as legacy and feature cell phones' operating systems.

The UFED enables the retrieval of subject data via logical ("what you see is what you get"), file system (e.g., directories and files), or physical extractions (i.e.: hex dump, a bit-for-bit copy of a mobile device's entire storage). Physical extraction enables it to recover deleted information, decipher encrypted data, and acquire information from password-protected mobile applications such as Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp and browser-saved passwords. The UFED's physical extraction functionality can also overcome devices' password locks, as well as SIM PIN numbers.

The Wikipedia article provides us this scary tidbit, a little later on in the article:

On 12 January 2017 it was reported that an unknown hacker had acquired 900 GB worth of confidential data from Cellebrite's external servers. The data dump includes alleged usernames and passwords for logging into Cellebrite databases connected to the company's my.cellebrite domain, and also contains what appear to be evidence files from seized mobile phones, and logs from Cellebrite devices.

The data suggests Cellebrite sold its data extraction products to countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

Now that brief passage gives a couple of things to make users very, very afraid. First, Cellebrite has been hacked in the past, making the release of these "tools" into the digital wilderness a very real and scary proposition. Second, it appears that Cellebrite is available to anyone willing to pay the prices for the service.

I can't even imagine the horror for our personal and private data should these "tools" ever become available and widespread to privacy pirates around the world.

Energizer Releases Cell Phone With 16,000 mAh Battery

My own LG V20 Android cell phone has a 3,200 mAh battery. On most days, the battery lasts the entire day before needing to be recharged. Even the new Samsung Galaxy S9 has a 3,000 mAh battery to power it. The new and forthcoming iPhone X has a 2,716 mAh battery, for comparison. So now, Eveready ... yes, the battery maker ... is releasing its own Android phone with a 16,000 mAh battery (non-user removable). It's called the Energizer Power Max P16K Pro. The phone is manufactured for Eveready by Avenir Telecom, and it had all of the Mobile World Congress abuzz.

Projected out, that battery should power the phone for between five and seven days (depending on how much you use your phone, of course). Can you imagine being able to use your cell phone for an entire WEEK before having to recharge its battery? At our house, charging the cell phone(s) is a nightly ritual. Have some idle time at work? Plug the phone in to charge. Driving in the car? Plug the phone in to charge. I'm sure you know the routine. The P16K Pro also boasts a "standby" time of 40 days.

With a battery that has more than 3x the capacity of the Samsung S9 and iPhone X, the P16K Pro phone comes in at twice the thickness of the iPhone -- about 15.2 mm thick. Still, it comes with some pretty nice features. Take a look:

MediaTek Helio P23 chipset

2.5 GHz Cortex-A53 eight core CPU

6GB of RAM

128GB of internal storage

microSD card slot for expansion (64GB Max)

Dual nano SIM card slots for people who like juggling two numbers

Android 8.0 Oreo

5.99-inch 18:9 aspect ratio display (full HD resolution)

1080 x 2160 pixels (~403 ppi density)

Dual cameras

Front (16-megapixel + 13-megapixel)

Back (13-megapixel + 5-megapixel)

Rear fingerprint sensor below the cameras

Communications:

WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot

Bluetooth 4.2, A2DP, LE

GPS Yes, with A-GPS

Radio FM radio

USB Type-C 1.0 reversible connector (PowerDelivery 2.0)

Weight: 350g

Expected "fast charging" time: 90 minutes

NO Power Bank/Reverse charging

Expected price: US$738/€599/£528

It would be nice to see other features, such as water resistance or being waterproof, added to the list of features before it is released. If that single feature were added, I'd stand in line to get my hands on this phone. Also, the ability to be able to use the phone's massive battery to charge other devices would be a nice feature, but it appears that this will not be the case. Besides the screen -- which pretty much has to be glossy -- the glossy back of the phone is a real fingerprint and grime magnet. It would be nice to see a matte finish for those parts of the phone that don't require high gloss -- like the back of the phone case.

Of course, where my phone's battery (and every other phone's battery) struggles is in fringe reception areas. For example, when I'm deer hunting at my favorite spot, the ONLY place I can get enough intermittent service to send a simple SMS text is when I'm up in the tree stand. The service isn't consistent or strong enough to be able to send a MMS multimedia text message, much less make a call. During that time, I'm lucky if my cell phone's battery lasts until sunset, and that is only if I turn off all unnecessary, power draining features, like Wifi, syncing, Bluetooth, etc. I also have to turn down the biggest power consumer -- the display screen -- to only a 10% brightness. It would be interesting to see how this new phone would fare under such conditions.

Expect to see this phone hit stores this coming September.

"Internet of Things"

If you read any of the computer trade magazines, you have undoubtedly heard about the "Internet of Things." Basically, this is where everything and anything that can be conceivably connected to the internet, is connected to the internet. For those behind this trend and those willing to accept it, everything from your toilet paper roller to your refrigerator to your dog's collar gets connected to the internet. Probably the most popular recent products in this category include Google Home and Amazon Echo.

Every time I read the abbreviation for the "Internet of Things" ... which is IoT ... I can't help seeing an "ID" in front of it, and read it as such ... IDIoT. I must not be a part of their target market or audience. I have no need for my refrigerator to send a shopping list -- over the internet -- to my cell phone before going grocery shopping. I have no need for my toilet paper roller to serve as a radio. And I certainly don't need something like Google Home or Amazon Echo spying on my every move and monitoring my behavioral "patterns" just to target me with advertising or attempting to sell me more stuff I don't need. In my humble opinion, those pushing IoT are another group of people who have never heard of the maxim, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should." There's plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that the makers of IoT appliances might be in bed with their "brethren" from the three- and four-letter government agencies, who don't need any additional help. With the intrusions of computer, tablets and smartphones into our daily lives, I don't need to view my refrigerator with suspicious eyes over its nefarious motives about to whom else it might be sharing some of my most private activities of daily living.

As these devices multiply exponentially, it should be of little surprise that security is, at best, poor. A team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University recently purchased a variety of IoT devices off of the shelf. Their sole purpose was to see how easily they could hack them, and then use them to attack other similar devices over the internet. Within about 30 minutes of unboxing the items, they had discovered the devices' default password and the services they were running. Then they could use that information to take over other devices of the same make and model, creating a botnet that they could control.

Overall, they purchased 16 different items, including baby monitors, doorbells, cameras, and temperature sensors, and were able to discover the password for 14 of them. They took them into the lab and disassembled the devices, looking for debugging ports that remained on the circuit boards. Once found, they had full "backdoor" access to the devices. Then, once hacked, they had all the information they needed for all other devices of the same make and model. Some of these items have the potential to remain in service for decades. Some of these companies will go out of business during the service life of these devices. Thus, there will be no more firmware updates for these devices (despite the fact that consumers are not particularly good about applying firmware updates, anyway).

Illegal Spies Hiding In The Open

This couldn't have come at a more inopportune time. At a time when computer users are increasingly wary of government intrusions into our private lives, comes the revelation that employees of Best Buy's Geek Squad worked hand in hand with the FBI to ensnare computer users suspected of illegal activities. For over the past 10 years, Geek Squad staff and the FBI maintained a close "working" relationship at their Louisville, Kentucky repair facility.

When customer's computers would be sent there for repair, Geek Squad employees would actively search that customer's computer hard drive for data reflecting illegal activities. If suspicious activity or data was discovered, an FBI agent would come and take a look at the questionable data. If the FBI agent agreed with the Geek Squad employee's assessment, then the hard drive would be confiscated, and then sent to a FBI field office close to the customer's primary residence. Then, that field office would investigate further, and if necessary, petition the courts for a search warrant of the customer's hard drive -- even though the "search" had occurred before the acquisition of a proper warrant.

Best Buy has confirmed that no less than four Geek Squad employees received $500 payments -- a bounty, if you will -- from the FBI for turning over suspicious illegal activity "finds" via their illegal searches.

This revelation has come out of a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) filed by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) after a 2017 case where a California physician was arrested for child pornography. He had taken his computer in to Geek Squad for repair, and it was shipped to the Louisville, Kentucky repair center. Geek Squad employees allegedly found a child pornography image in an 0unallocated space on the hard drive. To do so would require more than a cursory glance of the images stored on the hard drive. Rather, such a discovery of images on unallocated hard drive spaces typically requires forensic software to find and retrieve. Thus, the Geek Squad employees would have had to have been actively searching for evidence of illegal activity.

The court documents for that case revealed a quite cozy relationship between the FBI and Geek Squad, prompting the EFF to dig a little deeper, thus prompting the filing of the FOIA request. EFF contends that these searches of customer's hard drives may have amounted to a violation of the customer's Fourth Amendment guarantee of protection from illegal search and seizure. The FBI has refused to confirm or deny whether it has other such arrangements with other computer repair outlets and businesses.

The question at the heart of the matter has nothing to do with whether or not certain customers engaged in illegal activity. Rather, it has more to do with whether customers were illegally deprived of legal due process and subjected to illegal, warrantless searches. This would, without failure, expose innocent customers to illegal warrantless searches, as they are swept up in the search for evidence of illegal activities.

There is some protection in having the technical savvy to do your own computer repair work. By doing your own repair work, you eliminate (or greatly diminish) the possibility of being deprived of due process and subjected to illegal warrantless searches.

Lastly, this case has only reaffirmed my personal decision about 18 years ago to never, EVER patronize Best Buy again. It's making my decision to take my business elsewhere one that has paid dividends -- and I have done nothing illegal!

This case represents a slippery slope: where does this end? Does it eventually expose people who have opinions or views that aren't mainstream or widely accepted, but if widely known, could be damaging? In the U.S., people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and are afforded protection from illegal searches and seizures.

(Another) Cryptojacking Exploit

This one seems to cross the OS lines, so Linux users need to beware.

Targeting Windows servers with the leaked NSA EternalBlue exploit (the same one that the WannaCry cyberattack was based on), the RedisWannaMine cryptojacking exploit targets database servers and applications servers. It appears to behave like a worm, increasing the infection rate and making more money for its "masters."

Recently, the cybersecurity site Imperva noted the discovery of the new exploit in its security blog. It appears to leverage a vulnerability reported in Apache Struts. Imperva's logs and sensors detected a stealth remote code execution, where it attempts to download an external resource using standard Linux package managers, like apt and yum. It gains persistence by making new entries in crontab, and gains access to a machine by making a new ssh key entry in /root/.ssh/authorized_keys and new entries in the system's iptables.

Everything the script needs is installed from the external resource, and does not depend on local libraries on a user's machine. Some of those installed packages are git, python, redis-tools, wget, gcc and make. It then downloads masscan, a publicly available TCP port scanner tool from GitHub, compiles it, then installs it. Then, it uses masscan to find and infect publicly available Redis servers. When it finds one, it then launches a tool to infect that Redis server. Once infected, it searches for a version of SMB (Samba) with a certain vulnerability, which it then uses to spread to Windows servers.

If nothing else, the RedisWannaMine exploit is complex, self-contained, sophisticated and elaborate. Once up and running, it will do two things. First, it will use the server to mine for cryptocurrencies, and fattening the wallets of its "master." Second, it will continue to seek out vulnerable Redis servers and spread to them, and then start the cycle all over again.

Don't you wonder what the software landscape would look like if these talented individuals or groups were to put their amazing programming talents into making better general use software for the masses? I know I do. This also illustrates why it's important to never run your computer as root, and to try and stick with the software in the official PCLinuxOS repository as much as possible.

You Still Want To Be A YouTuber? Keep With PCLinuxOS And You'll Get There!

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Continuing the series of Hatari.pngarticles on how to become a YouTuber, today I will address a few necessary (and useful) programs, real tools to produce gameplays and make your videos. We will see two computer emulators, and how to make videos of the programs running.

OpenMSX

OpenMSX is an excellent MSX emulator, which can emulate around 150 different machines (as long as you have the BIOS of the machines).

This emulator can capture both audio and video of the game/program running.

And, how to do it? You must start the emulator319 through OpenMSX Catapult, loading the game/program you want to record.

Then, pause the emulator.

Now paused, in the emulator window, press F10 to open the OpenMSX command console.

At the command prompt, type record start -Size of the screen (without argument, will record at 320x240, -doublesize will record at 640x480 and -triplesize will record at 960x720) and it will start recording to the file /home /~/.openMSX /videos/openmsx0001.avi

To stop recording, reopen the console screen (F10) and enter the command record stop.

And voila, your video will be in the .openMSX folder, /videos, in your /home. The video will be in ZMVB codec, the same from DOSBOX, being easily supported by any video editor in PCLinuxOS.

Hatari

Hatari is an Atari ST emulator, STE, TT and Falcon for Linux, * BSD, MacOS, Windows and other systems that are supported by the SDL library.

The Atari ST was a 16/32 bit computer system that was first released by Atari in 1985. Using the CPU Motorola 68000, was a very popular computer with a very powerful CPU at that time.

Hatari allows you to record audio and video of the application that is running on it, and how to do it is simple: just open a menu and click a button.

Two codecs are available Hatari.pngthat store the video, either using BMP images for each frame, uncompressed or compressed lossless PNG. The first option consumes considerable disk space; the latter allows the user select 10 levels of compression; the higher the level,more CPU time is required to process the video, which can lead to a noticeable slowdown of the emulator during recording. That is, to use the codec as PNG leaves the emulator very slow, perhaps even not playable. The sound is stored in 16-bit PCM codec (default WAV), and the two streams, audio and video are wrapped in an AVI container file.

The emulator has a status bar, with several indicators, which, in capture time can be distracting. To improve the capture, it's better to get rid of that status bar.

Open the emulator. When it starts loading its OS, press F12. This will open the setup/control screen of Hatari. Press the Hatari screen button, which will open the following screen:

In Indicators, choose the option NONE, as it is in the picture and press Back to main menu. Now we have to change the Hatari configuration, so that it will save the video in uncompressed BMP format. It can be done from the command line, but to do this for every game/program that is executed, is very laborious.

We will then change an option in hatari.cfg file, located in /home /~/.config/hatari With a text editor, look for the following section:

[Video] AviRecordVcodec = 2

AviRecordFps = 0

AviRecordFile = /home/~/hatari.avi

In the line AviRecordVcodec, put the value at 1 (2 is PNG, 1 is BMP).

Now, to start capturing video games gameplay footage, open the Hatari, load the disk image or cartridge and then by pressing F12 again, press the Hatari screen button, and press Record AVI, to start recording.

You must have enough disk space, since the output in raw uncompressed BMP is very big, but at least does not degrade the performance of the emulator nor the computer.

The resulting file, hatari.avi should be edited to a smaller format, with any video editor or a video converter (such as WinFF and many others).

Just to illustrate, a 10 minute capture generated an AVI file of 46 GB...

I hope you enjoyed, and in due course, I will continue this series of how to be a Youtuber.

Tip Top Tips: Monitoring Recording In Audacity

Editor's Note: Tip Top Tips is a semi-monthly column in The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Periodically, 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 DaveCS.

I don't know how many people have a similar setup to mine. With my old stereo system, I had a phono input for vinyl, and a Line Out which I wired around the room to my computer. When the amp had seen better days, I saw a real bargain to replace it. However, it had neither a phono input nor a line out. I was able to get a phono-preamp, but the only way I could feed it to my computer without loss of fidelity was to make a little switch box, feeding the phono-preamp output to either the main amp or the computer. As a result, there is no sound in the room when I am recording, so I can't hear if the record jumps or ends. So first I tried an Audacity setting, Edit > Preferences > Recording > Software Playthrough of Input.

I found this to be disastrous. When recording, the record button often didn't work, and when it decided to record, the program either exited after a while (Audacity v2.2.0) or just stopped recording for no apparent reason (v2.2.1).

How could I monitor what I was recording? The solution was in the PulseAudio settings. However, I needed to run an command in a terminal to make "Loopback" available, which would allow the line input to play through, and another to stop it. The commands are:

On: pacmd load-module module-loopback latency_msec=5

Off: pacmd unload-module module-loopback

It was a simple matter in Xfce, adding them as extra commands on the Panel Launcher for Audacity. Now I can hear what is coming in through the Line input without using Audacity playthrough. Thus, Audacity remained stable and I got the recording done.

One little thing. While it was monitoring and recording at once, there was a slight distortion (crackling) in the computer speakers, but fortunately this was not present when I played back the recordings.

I found the hint here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/263274/pipe-mix-line-in-to-output-in-pulseaudio

I hope this helps someone.

Hardware Review: Logitech M325 Wireless Mouse

by phorneker

Recently, I had to replace a wireless mouse for my laptop as the receiver for the mouse was starting to fail. The receiver would cut in and out forcing me to unplug and plug back in the receiver to one of the USB ports to get the mouse to function correctly.

Luckily, the local OfficeMax had a special on a Logitech M325 wireless mouse. On the old mouse (which was also a Logitech), the receiver was the size of a USB thumb drive. The receiver on the new mouse was small enough that I could plug it in to one of the two USB 1.1 ports on the right side of my laptop, and it would not get in the way. (There are also two USB 2.0 ports on the left side of my laptop, and they are used to connect my printer, music players and digital cameras).

The M325 worked the same as my old mouse, but with some new features that work with PCLinuxOS running the Plasma desktop. The wheel on the mouse functions as a middle mouse button so the entire unit functions as a three button mouse, which is normal for anything running on Linux.

What I did not expect was that the receiver on the M325 is functional enough to send a notification to the Plasma desktop when the battery in the mouse is low and needs changing.

The receiver on the older mouse did not do that. When the battery went dead, the mouse simply stopped functioning, so this is a real convenience.

When running Firefox or Chrome, tapping the wheel on the mouse to the left is the same as clicking on the Back button in the browser.

Now, to turn off the mouse when finished, I simply switch the mouse off instead of unplugging the receiver and sliding it into the port on the bottom of the mouse.

All this is powered by one AA battery (alkaline, rechargeable or lithium), and can be had for less than $20.00. Not bad for a wireless mouse, and Logitech at that.

ms_meme's Nook: Looking For Fun

OGG                                                   MP3

PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner: Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie

Easy Sloppy Joe Pot Pie

INGREDIENTS

1 pound lean ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)

1 can (15 1/2 ounces) original sloppy joe sauce

1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 ounces)

1 cup Original Bisquick™ mix **

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oven to 400F. Cook beef and onion in oven-proof 10-inch skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until beef is brown; drain. Stir in sloppy joe sauce. Sprinkle with cheese.

2. Stir remaining ingredients until blended. Pour over beef mixture.

3. Bake about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

TIP:

Before baking, sprinkle with a tablespoon of sesame seed.

** See our Bisquick mix recipe

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Scrappler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Crossword

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

WordFind

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

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

Posted by Agust, March ,4 2018, running KDE

Posted by jogurtmen, March 3, 2018, running Mate

Posted by Lifeless_user, March 16, 2018, running LXDE

Posted by Luikki, March 7, 2018, running KDE

Posted by Meemaw, March 20, 2018, running Xfce

Posted by Mr Cranky Pants-YouCanToo, March 5, 2018, running KDE

Posted by tuxlink, March 10, 2018, running KDE

Posted by mutse, March 5, 2018, running KDE

Posted by OnlyHuman, March 26, 2018, running e22

Posted by parnote, March 22, 2018, running Xfce