Table of Contents

- From The Chief Editor's Desk

1. Short Topix: Dropbox Scales Back Linux Support

2. LibreOffice 6.1 Released

3. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

4. Gmail, Dropbox Team Up

5. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: duskull

6. GIMP Tutorial: Editing Your Vacation Photos

7. ms_meme's Nook: The OS Of My Dreams

8. Easy Voice Recognition in PCLinuxOS

9. Testimonials: Hello, There!, A Vote Of Appreciation

10. Photopea: Replacement For Photoshop?

11. PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner

12. Repo Review: Bitwarden

13. ms_meme's Nook: One Hundred Cheers

14. Tip Top Tips: British English On An American Keyboard And Other Tweaks

15. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

16. Screenshot Showcase

Every now and again, we are all forced to update our equipment. The laptop I'm using to write this is a Lenovo G530. It was purchased new in 2008-ish, and has a 160GB HD, 3GB RAM, running on a dual core Intel processor. It originally came with Windows 7, which was quickly replaced with PCLinuxOS KDE 4. It now runs PCLinuxOS Xfce fairly well. But, after 10 years, it's really starting to show its age.

Yes, I do tend to "push" things a bit. Currently running on this laptop is Firefox Quantum with 16 open tabs, Scribus for the magazine layout, HexChat, Thunar with three different tabs, xfce4-terminal, and Dropbox ... and that's just the things you can see. There's a whole host of other programs running in the background, or things you might not think to include, like the wireless interface, pulseaudio, data and time panel plugin, battery monitor, clipboard, a CPU load monitor, and all the files necessary for the Xfce desktop. All said and done, that isn't too bad for a 10 year old laptop with only 3GB of RAM. Every once in a while I'll push the laptop too hard, and things will start to crawl when too much data is written to the swap partition and has to be swapped into and out of physical memory.

One of the things I've missed on this laptop for all those years was a memory card reader slot. Whenever I need to use a card reader, I have to pull out my USB memory card reader, and hook it up via a USB hub (the USB ports are placed too close together to be able to use the USB memory card reader with my wireless USB mouse receiver). It's not a perfect laptop, but it has served me well for nearly a decade. Plus, at the time that I bought it, it was at the upper limit of what I could afford at the time. The sale that Newegg.com had on it helped, too.

Well, by next month's issue, that will all change. I've managed to buy a "newer" laptop. It's pretty much the same laptop that Meemaw purchased last October, and you can read her new laptop story here. Just like Meemaw's, it's a Lenovo IdeaPad 320 with a quad core AMD A12 processor, 8GB RAM, a 15.6" screen, and a 1TB HD. Plus, it has a memory card reader slot! It also has Bluetooth 4.0, and a number keypad (I've never had THAT on a laptop before!).

I purchased it on Ebay from a college student who claimed that it "wasn't fast enough to run some of the programs he needed to run." My translation of that statement was that he played games and the IdeaPad isn't designed to be a gaming laptop. I also knew if my 10 year old laptop could do all that I've asked it to do over the years, the IdeaPad would be more than sufficient for my needs. Plus, Meemaw has had no problems or complaints with her laptop.

I lucked out and won the bid on the IdeaPad, getting it for a $295 winning bid (only $5 less than my "max" bid). On that particular day, Ebay put out a 15% off coupon, good for any one item purchased that day. So, in the end, I ended up paying only $255 for the laptop, after applying the coupon. It also helped that shipping was free. It wasn't supposed to arrive until September 5, but ended up arriving on September 1. Great job, U.S. Postal Service!

It came with Windows 10 on it, which the college student and previous owner spent most of a day restoring before shipping it to me. I did boot into it, but after more than a decade running Linux, Win10 just wasn't for me. Some things were just laughable in the way they were implemented, other things "felt" like the same ol' Windows, and yet other aspects of it felt very alien and foreign.

So, I've installed the community remaster of PCLinuxOS Xfce, produced by Ika. Windows 10 is a distant memory on the IdeaPad. Admittedly, I used Meemaw's article as a guide, since I had never dealt with UEFI and Secure Boot. I also remembered she had some "tricks" to get the wifi going. Just as with Meemaw's laptop, my touchpad does not work. But, since I hate touchpads (and avoid their use as much as possible), I'm OK with it not working. I much prefer a wireless USB mouse, anyways.

But, since my old laptop is still working, I had to transfer all my "important" files to the new laptop, 16GB at a time. All I had available was a 16GB SD memory card, so I'd fill it up, then transfer those files to the second data partition on the new laptop (I set up a 30GB root partition, a 16GB swap partition, a 275GB /home partition, and two additional 275GB partitions, named data1 and data2) by moving the SD memory card between the two machines. Then, repeat that process until all of the files are transferred. Rinse, lather, repeat. Rinse, lather, repeat.

The slow part of that process is writing the files to the SD card on the old laptop, using the USB memory card reader and USB hub. Transfer speeds were rather slow. The fast part of the process was moving the files from the SD card to the new computer. The card reader built into the new computer is much, much faster than the combination of the old USB memory card reader and USB hub on the old computer, by a factor of at least three times faster.

So far, I've only done minimal customizations to Xfce on the new laptop. It's going to take me some time to get everything like I like it. That includes setting up scripts and Thunar custom actions, getting my layout environment setup like I like, and all the other tweaks I like to perform with Xfce to create things just the way I like.

Pleased with the new laptop would be putting it mildly. The new laptop is more than noticeably faster than the older laptop it is replacing. Plus, with 8GB of RAM, I should find myself trapped in the swap partition bottleneck a LOT less. With the 1TB hard drive, I shouldn't ever (or at least for a long, long time) be worried about running out of storage space.

By the way, this month's cover (designed by Meemaw) commemorates the 115th birthday of the ice cream cone, invented in 1903. Although the history of the ice cream cone is debated as to its origins, all of us can agree that it's hard to pass up this tasty treat during the heat of summer. Here's Wikipedia's entry for the ice cream cone, if you want to read up a bit more about it.

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

Short Topix: Dropbox Scales Back Linux Support

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Spyware Installed By Over 11,000,000 iOS, Android, Chrome & Firefox Users

In today's abundant landscape of multiple app stores, it can be quite difficult for the security-conscious user to find apps and browser extensions that are trustworthy enough to be installed on the devices we use to access the internet. Couple that with companies that often use purposely designed sound-alike names, and it becomes even more challenging. On another front and creating yet another challenge, users can circumvent app store restrictions, and install apps and extensions from outside official app stores. Top that off with app stores that are improperly policed (if at all), and you can quickly have a nightmare situation.

Some "companies" use obfuscation to keep their true identities and affiliations in the shadows. And that is exactly the case in this instance. As reported on the AdGuard blog, one company, Big Star Labs, has recently acquired several apps and extensions that phone home to a server run by its developers with the exact address of every web page visited. Assigning a personal identifier to each user when the app or extension is installed, amassing a list of each web page every user visits (by storing it under each individual's personal identifier) can reveal a lot of information about that user, including their actual identity.

In the interest of maintaining transparency, AdGuard "sells" ad blocker software for iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS. Because AdGuard blocks ads in apps outside of the web browser, you won't find their app listed in the Google Play store, nor the Apple iOS App store. Blocking ads outside of a browser seems to be a huge no-no under both ecosystems, where that ad revenue is protected like a walled garden. To install the AdGuard ad blocker under iOS or Android, you will have to visit their web page here, and select "Purchase" at the top of the website window.

Don't try, for example, searching for Big Star Labs in the Google Play store. You likely won't find it. You're likely to find the same situation in the Apple iOS App Store. Instead, you have to read the privacy policy (and how many times do you think users do that before installing an app?). All the apps in the Google Play store have privacy policies similar to this one. That appears to be the only place the name Big Star Labs shows up in a textual form. All other references are typically in images, so their name cannot be searched for with any reliability.

So, here is a list of the apps and browser extensions that AdGuard has found sending user information to the Big Star Labs servers, spying on its users activities:

- Block Site. Privacy policy.

- Android app with 100,000+ installs.

- Chrome extension with 1,440,000+ users.

- Firefox extension with 119,000+ users.

- AdblockPrime. Privacy policy. An ad blocker for iOS. It's hard to estimate the users count as it is not distributed via App Store.

- Mobile health club apps. Privacy policy.

- Several popular Android utilities.

- Speed BOOSTER - an Android app with 5,000,000+ installs.

- Battery Saver - an Android app with 1,000,000+ installs.

- AppLock | Privacy Protector - an Android app with 500,000+ installs.

- Clean Droid - an Android app with 500,000+ installs.

- Poper Blocker. Privacy policy.

- Chrome extension with 2,280,000+ users.

- Firefox extension with 50,000+ users.

- CrxMouse. Privacy policy.

- Chrome extension with 410,000+ users.

If you have any of these apps or extensions installed, and if you value your privacy even a little bit, you might want to immediately uninstall them from your mobile devices and computers ... or, as soon as you can.

EU Competition Commissioner Sets Her Sights On Apple

Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition commissioner, has become a thorn in the side of Silicon Valley tech companies. One month after fining Google $5 billion for anti-competitive tactics linked to its Android operating system, Vestager is now targeting the lack of standardization among phone chargers. In particular, this could spell trouble for Apple, with its proprietary Lightning connector.

Granted, there are a lot of people who shun Apple products due to the closed Apple ecosystem. There are a lot of proprietary things, including charging adapters, in the Apple system. Undisputedly, Apple makes a sizeable fortune just from the sale of those items, either directly or through affiliates who have licensed the rights from Apple.

But in 2009, Apple, along with Sony, LG, Nokia, and 10 other manufacturers, all voluntarily agreed to standardize their phone chargers. Apple, however, continues to use iterations of its Lightning connector, even expanding its abilities recently to include connecting headphones to the Lightning port, via an adapter. To date, no Apple product has ever been released with a microUSB port for charging or any other use. Further complicating the issue is the subsequent release of mobile devices that now use USB-C connectors for charging, as well as fast-charging protocols that use higher amperage to charge batteries much more rapidly than was envisioned in 2009 when the agreement was signed.

Vestager is investigating this issue again, because nine years after signing onto the voluntary agreement, Vestager feels that not enough progress has been made towards fulfilling that agreement. The tech companies all assert that there is no reason for additional regulations, and that they are "making progress" towards standardization.

Maybe I'm naive, but nine years seems like more than enough time to achieve standardization of smartphone chargers.

:

Firefox Add-on Could Steal Your Browsing History

Web Security was an add-on for Firefox that came with Mozilla's recommendation. However, that recommendation was based on a) over 220,000 installations, and b) a rating of 4.5 stars out of five. Had Mozilla looked a little deeper, it probably wouldn't have made the recommended add-ons list.

Shortly after being given Mozilla's recommendation, uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill posted to a Reddit board, stating "With this extension, I see that for every page you load in your browser, there is a POST to http://136.243.163.73/. The posted data is garbled, maybe someone will have the time to investigate further." Hill posted his initial finding on August 10, 2018. On August 14, 2018, popular German blogger Kuketz posted an article about the same behavior. In just a matter of hours, a user on Kuketz's forum posted that he had managed to decode the "garbled" data. That garbled data revealed that the URL of every page visited was being sent to a German server.

Within about a day or so of the discovery, Mozilla removed Web Security and 22 other add-ons that sent user data to remote servers. Spurred on by Hill's Reddit post, Mozilla Browser engineer took a look at the source code for Web Security and other Firefox add-ons. The add-ons were removed because they either sent user data (including the URLs of sites visited) to a remote server, or because they allowed the execution of remote code.

If you have this add-on installed, you might want to remove it completely from your computers and devices that might be utilizing it.

Dropbox Will Support Only "Clean" ext4 On Linux

Are you a Linux Dropbox user? If so, this bit of news is for you. Come November 1, 2018, Dropbox will only support a "clean" ext4 file system on Linux. Thus, if you use reiserfs, btrfs or any other file system that is available under Linux, you will be out of luck. As in, you will be unable to use Dropbox.

An "official" announcement was made on the Dropbox forum, by Jay, a community moderator.

Hi everyone. On Nov. 7, 2018, we're ending support for Dropbox syncing to drives with certain uncommon file systems. The supported file systems are NTFS for Windows, HFS+ or APFS for Mac, and Ext4 for Linux.

We've updated our desktop requirements accordingly here.

A supported file system is required as Dropbox relies on extended attributes (X-attrs) to identify files in the Dropbox folder and keep them in sync. We will keep supporting only the most common file systems that support X-attrs, so we can ensure stability and a consistent experience.

If you received a notification, but are running one of the supported file systems, it's possible that you may have recently had a computer linked that was running an unsupported file system but have been since upgraded, or that computer is no longer being used.

Hope this helps to clarify matters!

A week later, Jay posted a follow-up post.

Hi all, just a brief update regarding encryption on ext4.

If you're running ext4 and eCryptfs and receive a notification about moving the Dropbox folder, then it's because eCryptfs isn't supported.

However, contrary to @JinHadah's post here, I can confirm that ext4 with full disk encryption (e.g. LUKS) is supported. We're sorry for the confusion in that chat.

If I have any further information to share in the future, I'll let you know.

Then, on August 23, 2018, I received the following email from Dropbox regarding the upcoming change to Dropbox.

This fall, we're changing the system requirements for the Dropbox desktop app for Linux.

Beginning October 15, Dropbox is ending support for Ubuntu 13.10 and below, and Fedora 20 and below. You must be using glibc 2.19 or higher to continue using the Dropbox desktop application. Please update to a supported Linux operating system (Ubuntu 14.04+ or Fedora 21+) or meet the new system requirements.

As of November 7, the Dropbox desktop app for Linux will only support the ext4 file system. Dropbox will continue to sync with supported file systems that are encrypted via full disk encryption (e.g. LUKS). Please note that ecryptfs is not supported. To ensure your files continue to sync, your Dropbox folder will need to be on a hard drive or partition that meets the new file system requirements.

Devices that do not meet the operating system or file system requirements will not be able to use the Dropbox desktop application.

Don't worry--your current files aren't going anywhere. In addition to supported Linux operating systems, you can still access files from Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android apps, or through dropbox.com.

What to do next:

You can find more information about updating your operating system on the Ubuntu and Fedora websites.

To move the location of your Dropbox folder to a supported file system or for more information, please visit our help center.

Below are some devices you might need to update:

- localhost.localdomain, pclinuxos, unknown version, unknown file system

You can see a full list of your connected Dropbox devices at the bottom of your account's security page.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. For additional information, please see our help center.

Best,

The Dropbox team

It seems that, according to the Dropbox developers, there are only two "versions" of Linux: Ubuntu and Fedora. They really need to get out more.

Fortunately, PCLinuxOS has the PCLOS-Cloud available to PCLinuxOS users. If you're affected by the new Dropbox change, or are just tired of their "games," you can always make the switch to PCLOS-Cloud. You can read all about it here, in an article from the December, 2014 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Dropbox will only give you 2 GB of storage space. The PCLOS-Cloud will give you a generous 15 GB of storage space, with purchase of additional storage space for a ridiculously low extra charge.

New Chrome Feature Coming That Claims To Speed Up The Entire Internet?

I'll admit that there are a LOT of fans of the Google Chrome web browser (I am not among them, however). That is easily ascertained by Chrome occupying the top spot for the most popular/most used web browser. Market research firm Net Applications lists Chrome as having a 62% browser market share (as of July, 2018), with Microsoft's old Internet Explorer having a 12% browser market share, followed up by Mozilla Firefox's browser market share hovering around 11%.

So, how does Chrome plan to speed up the internet? Well, as it is currently, all browsers pretty much work the same. The entire web page is loaded when you visit. That means all the text, as well as all of the images. If that page makes particularly heavy use of images, that can slow down the loading time for that web page significantly.

However, some web pages are set up to use a technique called "lazy loading." With lazy loading, all the text of a page is loaded (which is typically a small download), and only the images at the top of the page are downloaded and displayed initially. Then, the downloading of the images further down on the page are downloaded in the background before you can scroll down to them.

According to the BGR website, Google Chrome developers are looking to add this lazy loading feature to every webpage that Google Chrome displays. GHacks reported on the new feature on its August 14 post, as well. The latter has the better explanation of the lazy loading feature.

While there is no timetable for lazy loading's appearance to the general public, the feature has appeared in Chrome Canary, the cutting edge development version of Google Chrome. Just as with all experimental features, lazy loading can be withdrawn at any time, without warning. Heck, Google does that even with "approved" features.

If you're running the experimental Chrome Canary, you can access the new feature by pointing your Chrome browser to chrome://flags/#enable-lazy-image-loading in the address bar.

Hacky hack hack: Australian Teen Hacks Apple Servers

An unnamed 16 year old Australian teen, enamoured by all things Apple, managed to hack into the Apple servers many times over the past year before being caught and arrested. Unnamed to us, this Australian teen, who lives near Melbourne, Australia, is reported to be well known in the hacking community.

During his forays into Apple's "secure" servers, he downloaded and accessed about 90 GB of files. He downloaded them to a folder called "hacky hack hack" on his own Mac laptop.

While Apple claims that no customer data was compromised, but The Age (previous link) has reported differently.

Apple responded to the breech with the following:

"We vigilantly protect our networks and have dedicated teams of information security professionals that work to detect and respond to threats.

"In this case, our teams discovered the unauthorised access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement.

"We regard the data security of our users as one of our greatest responsibilities and want to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised."

Apple noticed the breech, and immediately notified the FBI. The FBI, in turn, notified the Australian Federal Police, who conducted a raid on the teen's family residence. There, they discovered and seized two Mac laptops with serial numbers matching the devices used to access Apple's servers, along with a mobile phone and a hard drive.

The teen is said to have boasted about his exploits in WhatsApp messages. Reportedly, he broke into Apple's servers because he was a huge fan, and he dreamed of working there some day.

Amazingly, no one reporting on this incident indicated if the release of three year old Apple source code on GitHub this past February is related to this breech. I certainly wonder if this teen is the one who acquired the source code files that were posted on GitHub ... and that Apple forced its removal from GitHub shortly afterwards.

LibreOffice 6.1 Released

by Meemaw

Wow! The LibreOffice developers have been really busy. We just saw LibreOffice 6.0 in January, and reviewed it in March. Last month, they released 6.1. The release was announced on Aug 8, and on Aug 16th, they announced that there had already been 373,758 downloads.

Let's see what new items we can find in the release notes.

Writer

Basic list styles have been added to the Styles submenu. This was actually in version 6.0.5 but appears in the version 6.1 release notes.

They have added Insert Page Number and Insert Page Count options to the header and footer menus.

Signature Lines

It is now possible to generate a signature line in a document using Insert > Signature Line. This window will appear:

Filling it out and clicking OK has this result:

After that, you can sign the signature line using a digital certificate, if you have one.

EPUB export has been improved

From the release notes, "6.1 has improved link support, table support, image support and font embedding, cover image support, improved metadata support, footnote and image popup support and support for fixed layout."

The window that appears is below. As you can see, there are numerous choices, and the export seems to work nicely.

Mail merge

The Mail merge toolbar is now automatically shown for files that have mail merge fields in them. You can see in the image below that since I opened a letter that had mail merge fields in it (the address at the bottom), the Mail Merge toolbar was already there (outlined in red).

Calc

Anchor types have been reworked There are now three choices:

- Anchor to cell -> Image will just move with the cell (new)

- Anchor to cell (resize with cell) -> Image will move and resize with the cell

- Anchor to page -> independent of any cells

When resizing images with the cell, the aspect ratio is now considered. This only works when the image fits into its cell. If it's larger than the cell, the start and end cell are always kept, and moving may not work correctly. Inserted images are again anchored to cell by default. By default they only move with the cell, and don't resize.

There's an option to set image anchor type in the insert image dialog.

When copying/pasting cells, the cell anchored images are copied with the cell.

User Interface

Highlight color customization - there seem to be more categories for highlight colors now.

Context Menu

The Merge Cells dialog shows supportive images now, and the three choices for handling the cell contents.

Data

Sheet > Link to External Data supports Text/CSV files to insert their content as data and update.

Draw

The menus in Draw have been reorganized and a new Page menu has been added.

There are some new drawing styles and they cleaned up some of the legacy styles.

GUI

Background images in Gallery and Area Fill dialog completely reworked

They have changed the standard color palette.

Backgrounds has a new set of default gradients.

They have introduced a new set of app icons.

The different Notebookbar implementations have gotten many improvements and bugfixes. They are still in experimental mode but they say the UI is stable. I use the Tabbed Notebookbar part of the time.

There is a new icon theme as well, Colibre, which is the default under Windows. The Colibre icons are available in 16px, 24px and 32px. The Elementary theme is now the default on Gnome based desktop environments. The High contrast theme is now Sifr. Legacy theme hicontrast is available as an extension. The icon themes Industrial and Oxygen were removed because they haven't been maintained, but have been made available as extensions. The Karasa Jaga icon theme has been added, heavily inspired by (and derived from) the Oxygen icon theme, which has been discontinued. I've been using it.

Breeze icon set - there is also a Breeze Dark: it is the Breeze set made light grey so you can see them on the dark theme.

Colibre icon set

Karasa Jaga icon set

Sifr icon set

Performance

Writer

Many of the dialogs have been changed, and some have just been cleaned up.

Find & Replace

Edit Style, Hyperlink Dialog, Special Character Dialog, Index Entry, Character, Paragraph

Bullets & Numbering

Table properties dialog, Spelling & Grammar dialog

Word Count dialog

Change tracking management, Insert header and footer, Column formatting

Column/Row Grouping

Did you know you could group your columns and rows in a spreadsheet? (For some reason, I never needed to, so I didn't.) Suppose you have a spreadsheet of addresses and your sales manager wants to see data from only one town (or two), Simply highlight the rows you don't need (you can do this more than once), choose Data > Group and Outline, then choose Group.

At the left side of your spreadsheet, you will see an extra column with a line (below, left). The addition in this new release makes it possible to collapse or expand any group of columns or rows with a simple click. See the minus sign at the top of the line? It's the collapse button. (Notice the row numbers, below, right, now that it's collapsed.)

Groups are organized in levels and a levels header (for both column and row groups) is available in the top-left corner of the outline. By clicking on a levels header entry, groups belonging to the relative level are collapsed or expanded altogether.

Impress

Some object & shape dialogs have been added: Position & Size, Line and the Area dialogs.

Overall, many dictionaries have been updated. There are many more changes listed in the release notes. I hope any change you wanted has been implemented.

LibreOffice 6.2 is due for release early next year

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

Caramelized Chili Shrimp

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher (coarse) salt

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/8 teaspoon chipotle chili powder or ground red pepper (cayenne)

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 lb uncooked large shrimp (21 to 30 shrimp), peeled with tails left on, deveined

1/4 medium fresh lime

Directions

1. Heat oven to 500F.(260C) Line 15x10x1-inch pan with foil; spray foil with cooking spray.

2. In resealable 1-gallon food-storage plastic bag, mix all ingredients except shrimp and lime. Add shrimp; seal bag and shake to coat with sugar mixture. Arrange shrimp with sugar mixture in single layer in pan.

3. Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until sugar is caramelized. Remove from oven. Using pancake turner, turn shrimp; squeeze juice from lime over shrimp. Place on serving platter; serve immediately.

Tips:

To keep your guests from getting sticky fingers, serve these shrimp with toothpicks.

Kosher salt has larger grains than ordinary table salt and contains no additives.

Gmail, Dropbox Team Up

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Gmail and Dropbox have teamed up to make it easier for Gmail users to access their Dropbox accounts from within Gmail.

Now I know that there are a lot of users who have a deep "dislike" for either or both of those services. And, if you are among those who dislike either or both services, then this article isn't for you. But it remains that many other users use both services, so this is something those users will want to know about.

To get started, you will need to install the Dropbox add-on from the G Suite Marketplace. Go here to download the Dropbox add-on. Click on the "Install" button (mine says "Installed" because I've already installed it). Next, enter your credentials and grant it the permissions it requests.

The Dropbox icon will only show up when you open an email, at this point. Notice the Dropbox icon will be the fourth one down, after the Calendar, Keep and Tasks buttons on the right side of the Gmail window.

The first time you click on the Dropbox icon, you will need to log into your Dropbox account, using your Dropbox login credentials. Once you've done that, open an email. If that email has attachments, you should see a window similar to the one below. Click on the file listed in the Dropbox popup window, and that file will be saved to your Dropbox account.

Dropbox also partnered with Microsoft a few years ago to seamlessly integrate Dropbox into Microsoft Office. Currently, you can only save email attachments and Dropbox links to Dropbox via the add-on in Gmail. But, according to the Dropbox blog report, "you'll be able to share links through a Gmail compose experience later this year."

Of course, you can still drag and drop any file into your Gmail compose message window by opening up your file manager, dragging the desired file to the compose message window, and dropping it there. Or, you can always just attach a file in the normal, "old fashioned" way, too.

For those of us who find ourselves using both services, despite their perceived or real problems, this partnership will help streamline some tasks. The nice thing about using the Dropbox add-on in Gmail will be that you won't have to worry about file size restrictions for your attachments. That is something you will have to worry about when attaching files in the normal fashion. With the Dropbox add-on in Gmail, you'll be able to get a link to your file (stored in your Dropbox account) and just share the link.

You could do that now, but you'd have to first open your Dropbox account, find the file, copy the link, and then paste that link into your Gmail compose message window. Once the service expands later this year, that whole process should be streamlined considerably by the Dropbox add-on for Gmail. When it rolls out, you should be able to get the Dropbox link to any file stored in your Dropbox from right within the Gmail compose message window.

So, once its fully functional, it will eliminate the need to switch between two services or apps just to share a link to a user's Dropbox file. Instead, it will all be available from within Gmail. The add-on works on PCs (including mine, running PCLinuxOS), as well as the Android and iOS platforms.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: duskull

As told by YouCanToo

What is your name/username?

My name is Anton. Most people call me Tony, though. The username is duskull, a digital creature that I adore since my childhood.

How old are you?

I'm 26, and pretty happy that I'm still young.

Are you married, single?

I'm single for now, still waiting to meet my significant other one day. Patience is the key.

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?

I'm absolutely in love with cats, all of them. I had a cat as a pet at home, but she died recently. Her name was Ed. She was a very loyal and very cute cat. I also love to feed and play with cats on the streets (because we have many here in Bulgaria). I try to help in any way I can so that cats feel comfortable and happy. My dream is to see more organizations taking care of homeless cats so that more people can own them as pets and streets won't be so full with cats.

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

I work as a receptionist in a hotel, which is located around a small town called Tsarevo, located at the Black Sea Coast. I love my job for many reasons, like meeting many people from all around the globe, learning different languages, making people feel happy, having enough free time to go to the beach (and being close to it), having access to cutting edge hardware and some others. While this is my main job, from time to time I help a good friend of mine repair computers, reinstall operating systems and creating small networks. My dream is to move to the IT sector soon. That's is my true passion, and I see a good future for it.

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

I'm from Bulgaria and I live in Burgas, the fourth biggest city in Bulgaria. Some say that this is the best city for living in my country, and I personally believe that.

View from my balcony

The weather here is rather warm the whole year (from -4 to 40 °C). In the winter, the wind is very strong, but snow is very rare to see. We do have beautiful mountains, beaches, forests and rivers. I'm including some photos of the places I like.

Black Sea Coast

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

I finished university in Burgas, tourism profile. Since then, I did a course about Linux System Administration, and I'm planning to do Cisco Networking next.

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

In my free time I like tinkering with electronics at home (Raspberry Pi, Odroid), listening to music and reading books from time to time (be it digital or on paper). I like 8-bit retro games and (MMO)RPG games. When it comes to outdoor activities, I like to explore caves, mountains and deep forests. In the summer I try to go to beach as often as possible, I enjoy swimming and diving activities.

Why and when did you start using Linux?

My first encounter with Linux was in 2009, where I first met Xandros Linux. It was preinstalled on my Asus EEEPC 901. I remember that I was in a hurry replacing it with Win XP (7 was just too much for it), so I can run my favorite software freely. After a few months of using XP and trying to optimize it for speed and lightness, I decided to give Linux a try. After not much reading on the net, I met Slax Linux, my first official Linux distro. At first, I was only using it with a USB stick, so that I can keep my other OS and data. I was impressed that Linux could read both Linux and Windows partitions, not to mention the huge choice of open source software available. After realizing how open Linux is, I started to play with different DE's so that I could lower memory usage even more (just imagine how I felt with just 512MB of RAM). Because Slax is a portable distro I decided to remove Windows completely and give Debian a try, and it was my main OS for the next two years. Nowadays, I like to test almost every distro out there, as soon as it gets a new release (be it on bare metal or VirtualBox), but my main distro is PCLinuxOS.

What specific equipment do currently use with PCLOS?

I'm a fan of Dell machines. My main PC is a Dell Latitude E6500, while my travel machine is a Samsung N145P netbook.

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

Well, the answer here is centrally yes. Often many people ask me "what's this version of Windows?" or "is that Mac or something?". I'm used to it, and it even makes me happy. I'm always open to share my knowledge about Linux with everyone, and I can proudly say that some of my friends are using Linux because of me. I'm trying my best to help the community to grow. Still, sometimes I'm facing the compatibility factor from which some many people are scared. They just want to stick with Windows, no matter what (games, business software). I live with the idea that better days will come. Linux may be able to beat Windows in some countries, including mine. And about family - of course they use Linux, again because of me.

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

It must stay systemd-free, independent and up to date. I see a good future for it, but it is important that the community stays strong and tight. It will be always be that different distro that has its unique features and tries to be friendly. My personal opinion is that some improvements are needed regarding the PCLinuxOS Control Center - more options, better look and feel. Everything else is great.

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.

GIMP Tutorial: Editing Your Vacation Photos

by Meemaw

Everyone takes vacation photos, and I'm sure yours are wonderful. We've seen some really great photos in the forum as well, and I'm sure that yours are among some of the great ones. If you don't think they are, and you're wondering how to make improvements to some of them, I'm going to show you a few things you might do to make your photos "pop."

In the July, 2015 issue I did a short tutorial about editing photos. This one expands on that a bit and gives you more choices. In the earlier tutorial, I used a photo I took at Monument Valley in southeast Utah. I'm going to use a different one this time. This one was taken in Colorado from an ATV trail.

The first thing you can do is adjust the Levels. Click on Colors > Levels and you'll get the histogram showing the color graph.

As you can see there is a low spot on each end of the histogram. Start by moving the arrows underneath the histogram inwards towards the spot where the curve starts extending upwards. This helps to even out the light and dark areas of the picture. Then, move the center arrow left or right until you are satisfied with the result. This changes the midtones. If you will check "Split view" at lower right, you can see the changes in the left half of the picture with the photo's original appearance on the right half.

That has brightened up the colors a bit.

The next thing we want to do is edit again using Colors > Curves. When the window opens, you will see the histogram again, but it doesn't look quite the same because you've already edited a bit. On top of the histogram is a straight line from bottom left to top right. You can use this line to fine tune the areas of your photo. Pulling down on this line will darken things and pushing up on it will lighten things. Depending on which end of the line you move and which way you move it, you can change the darkness and lightness more than you would if you quit at editing levels. Also, when you click on the line, it will create a node which will stay when you release it. Now you can click elsewhere and move your line again to edit other aspects of your photo. Lightening dark areas and darkening light areas may improve your photo greatly. (Check "Split view" to see what's happening.)

As you can see, my line ended up as an "S" shaped curve. My photo looks a bit better, too.

The next thing you can do is adjust any color you think shouldn't be there. This uses Colors > Color Balance.

In this one, you can edit three different ranges: Shadows, Midtones and Highlights. You might have to study your photo to see if your colors are the way you want them. This is especially helpful if you think your photo is too red or green (or if your photo is old and has turned that reddish brown that some of them turn). Again, click "Split view" to see what you are doing.

I wanted just a little more green in my photo, so I increased the green.

Saturation is the intensity of the color in your photo. If you click Colors > Saturation or Colors > Hue-Saturation, you can adjust the colors so they are more intense. If your photo is dull, this is one of the best ways to enhance it. Using Saturation is easier because there is only one slider, but to fine tune things, you could use Hue-Saturation as there are many different settings. If there is a certain color you want to emphasize, you can do it there.

I used Hue-Saturation and set the saturation up to 30.

One last thing you can do is use Sharpen or Unsharp Mask to sharpen your photo, being careful not to go too far, as your photo may end up with little white halos on the edges of things. This is Unsharp Mask that has been taken to excess:

In an article I read, it was summarized as follows:

1. Adjust the dark/bright Input Levels sliders relative to the histogram edges to improve contrast. Adjust the mid-tones slider to settle on the overall brightness.

2. Apply a subtle curve adjustment (Curves) to enhance any areas along the brightness scale we're still not happy with.

3. If you think there's a nasty tinge to your image, balance it out using the Color Balance tool.

4. Increase the master saturation and also adjust the Saturation for any other colors you want to emphasise further (or de-emphasise).

5. Apply some Sharpening, being careful not to make edges look too 'spikey'.

My mountain photo looks better, in my opinion.

It might be too green for you, but as I remember the trip, everything was very green and lush.

Oh, my Monument Valley photo from the last article? I did it again and I think it looks even better. I'll show both so you can compare.

Before

After

I can tell you that when you are there, the colors are vibrant like in the second photo.

Following these steps has helped me immensely! I hope they help you edit your photos like they helped me. Your photos will look awesome, too!

By the way, we have a new version of GIMP as well, version 2.10.6. Some people have told me that while editing photos, their systems have slowed down a lot. While it hasn't happened to me, you could experience some slowdowns. Some of it also depends on your system capabilities (memory, CPU), the size of your photo (bigger takes longer and uses more resources), and what steps you are performing. If you are just cropping your photo or resizing it, you should be fine, but if you are using some heavier filters, it may take a while. Also, the status bar shows a completely different number than your image size: it shows the amount of system memory used by your image. I was working on an image that had a file size of 2MB, but the status bar showed 47MB! That's the memory my system is using while I edit the photo. I'm sure if the GIMP developers get complaints, they will address it quickly. I know there have already been a couple of posts on our forum. Hang in there, guys, I know they'll fix it.

ms_meme's Nook: The OS Of My Dreams

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Easy Voice Recognition in PCLinuxOS

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Speech recognition is one of the most interesting aspects of computing. Great strides have been made in recent years. These advances have been passed on to personal computing. That is, what was achieved with Research on voice recognition technology, reached the home users.

Speech recognition is a feature that can be used to improve accessibility, or even when you're tired of typing very large texts. Yes, being able to rest your hands after entering many texts is extremely comfortable.

Users of other operating systems can enjoy voice recognition easily. In Windows there is Dragon Naturally Speaking. On Mac, Dictanote and WordQ SpeakQ. But what about Linux?

In Linux, we have several mechanisms of speech recognition. However, usually they are extremely complicated to make work. Generally, these are solutions that need pocketsphinx, which is a speech-recognition and text-to-speech engine.

But do not be afraid, because voice recognition technology has come a long way thanks to Google (now the Alphabet Company), and we, PCLinuxOS users, can take advantage of these benefits from the largest Internet search engine.

The Google Voice Voice Recognition Infrastructure, Google cloud voice API

Google has unveiled its new Cloud Speech API - announced at the NEXT event in San Francisco - for a limited preview for developers in 2016. This speech recognition technology has been developed and has already been used by various Google products for some time, such as Google's search engine, where you have the option to do voice search.

The ability to convert speech to text is based on deep neural networks, and state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms have recently proven to be particularly effective for detecting patterns in audio and video signals. The neural network is updated as new speech samples are collected by Google, so that new terms are learned and recognition accuracy continues to increase. This technology from Google is what powers Ok Google, Android, Google Chrome and Google Virtual Assistant. With its cloud-based speech recognition technology, Google intends to rival Nuance, maker of the old Windows Dragon Dictate (now Dragon Naturally Speaking).

Voice recognition in the cloud

Speech-to-text features are used in a variety of cases, including smart wizards controlled by voice on mobile devices, home automation, audio transcription, and automatic classification of phone calls.

Now that this technology will be accessible as a developer's cloud service, it will allow any application to integrate speech recognition into text, representing a valuable alternative to the common Nuance technology (used by Apple's Siri and Samsung's S-Voice, for example) and challenging other solutions such as the IBM Watson Speech to Text and the Microsoft Bing Speech API.

Now, how do we benefit from Google Voice Cloud Recognition?

It is possible to enjoy the advantages that Google integrates with its products, since several sites offer the service of voice recognition, through the Google cloud voice API.

To take advantage of these services, you will need an internet connection, a microphone attached to your computer, and use the Google Chrome browser. The following is the analysis of some of these services.

https://speechnotes.co

Speechnotes is a powerful, speech-enabled online notepad designed to empower your ideas by implementing a clean and efficient design so you can focus on your thoughts. The website staff strives to provide the best online dictation tool, involving state-of-the-art speech recognition technology for the most accurate results technology can achieve today, as well as incorporating internal (automatic or manual) tools to increase efficiency, productivity and user comfort. It works totally online on your Chrome browser. No download, no installation and no registration required, you can start working immediately.

My rating: It supports Brazilian Portuguese and more than 40 languages, saves to Google drive, and if you subscribe to the service of the company, you can access your documents from any machine logged into your account. I've used it, and voice recognition is fast and accurate. It works on Google Chrome and with cell phones too.

https://www.speechtexter.com/

SpeechTexter is a professional online speech to text converter designed to simplify and speed up your work. The company wants to provide the best online transcription experience using innovative speech recognition technology with high precision results. This technology is only supported by the Chrome browser for computers. Other browsers have not yet implemented speech recognition. No registration is required, so you can get to work immediately.

My rating: Supports Brazilian Portuguese and more than 40 languages, saves as TXT, prints or copies to the clipboard. It has no registration, so that means it can only be used on one machine at a time. In my tests, it was a bit slower than Speechnotes.

https://www.textfromtospeech.com

This utility is a text to speech/speech to text service. What does that mean? This means that you can simply dictate text, and it will be written without lifting a finger. On the other hand, you can type text and the service provided by site will read it loud.

You have the following features:

- Free and online

- No download, installation or registration. Multiplatform

- Supports only 7 languages (and Brazilian Portuguese is not one of them)

- You can pause or stop dictation (it saves the position of the last word)

- Recognizes voice commands to enter punctuation: for example, say "Comma" and type ","

- Smart capitalization

- You can save, copy, print, or send dictation text.

My rating: Since it does not support Brazilian Portuguese, I have not tested it. But, it seems to be the service with fewer resources among those evaluated.

https://dictation.io/

Dictation.io can recognize and transcribe popular languages, including English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and more. The full list of supported languages can be checked here: https://dictation.io/languages You can add new paragraphs, punctuation marks, smileys and other special characters using simple voice commands. For example, say "New line" to move the cursor to the next list or say "Smiley Face" to enter smiley :-). It has a list of supported commands.

My rating: Allows to perform several actions with the text that was recognized: Copy to the clipboard, save as .TXT, send as Tweet, send by email, print or export as PDF, or have the computer dictate the text you dictated previously. In terms of speed, it resembles Speechnotes.

Thus, there are even more options than these four analyzed, but would require more research time for their analyzes. What matters is that if you need to dictate lengthy texts, PCLinuxOS can help you accomplish the task. Regarding speech recognition, Linux is no longer a second-class citizen.

I hope you enjoyed it, and, this text was produced with the help of Speechnotes and, edited in LibreOffice later.

Enjoy these new capabilities, and see you next month! Look ma! I entered text with no hands!

Testimonials: Hello, There!, A Vote Of Appreciation

by Jeane

If it isn't the friendliest community in the whole linux land, huh? Hi there! [My] name's Jeane, after going through many, many, many distros. There has always been one who would be like "Oh this works great... then I find it does this, and it kinda breaks down the experience," be it the resolution, be it the xorg config, be it the drivers, be it that I plugged in something and my PC would start to do weird sounds, etc.

PCLinuxOS, on the other hand, never gave me any trouble on my main PC at all. In fact, it was quite... boring. A little tedious when changing languages, but otherwise, everything worked well! Resolution was an easy fix. I could choose the updates and packages I could upgrade, without W10 forcing it down my throat. It is stable, and it always ran well on my systems.

Admittedly I am bit skeptical when it comes to rolling releases, since I [would] rather maintain something stable over things that break. But, I know the packagers of this place do a great job at keeping that everything is in order, and it gives me a peace of mind the likes no others.

I am aware of the current situation with Tex, and I hope he is able to recover from cancer. He is the rare example of someone who consistently maintains and improves a distribution that has stood stable, and with no forceful changes. [This is] in opposition to many, many distros that have taken brand changes, went on a complete tangent and related (Tex is kind of like Volkerding but with a different mindset).

Well I am here now! Hopefully, you don't mind someone under 20 to join the ranks. (Hope there's also young people in here!)

A Vote Of Appreciation

by Treedragon

So I have been using PClinuxOS for quite a few years now, since version .92 from around late 2003. I was a late starter in the computer world debuting with Windows 98, and learned how by pressing the Start button and making mistakes, fascinated by it but not impressed... I started to fiddle with things especially the visual aspect and also discovered the world of "free" software but... well yes, it was Windblows based and somehow all over the place...

Then I tried Xandros briefly which, after reading between the lines here and there, led to PClinuxOS because in total the feel of it all it was and is, just simply right.

So for many years now I have been a quiet participant of the PCLOS world pursuing a personal flow of what I chose in looks, rootling through the software offered, learning at least just a little in what feels like a one step forward two steps back sort of way and knowing that it would just work. Sure very occasionally there were glitches and then there weren't, they were just fixed, sorted, dealt to, and the flow continued.

A flow I don't doubt that allowed so many to pursue their computer vision/experience with an OS that could be counted on. I and so many others just know that it will work especially with the help of the family, the forum members, willing to help if there were issues. What is most magical of all to my mind and sense of being, is how one person's dream/vision/ and maybe a touch of "Nah! stuff that, I'm doing it this way" (sort of thing)…... has created such a rare beast of immense value.

To this eye anyway, it is an aspect of much valued expression to individuality that by it's focus of purpose alloyed with strivings of quality and commitment that is a lesson to some of us. All this despite those times when that drive may have been a bit thin on the ground with degrees of angst and thoughts of "I'm to old for this sh**". Provision of an OS that allows for others to express themselves, built with degrees of dedication in the process all the while drawing in a community that simply astounds in this day and age of.... well the less than an ideal from some viewpoints.

Soooo... these words they are a Thank You to Bill Reynolds, your helpers and the ongoing dream, and maybe also just a reminder to self what a blessing it is to have an important aspect of daily life that simply just works, and as the advert says "It's Priceless". There are very few days going by that I don't give thanks for Bill's creation.

THANK YOU.

Photopea: Replacement For Photoshop?

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

One of the "heavyweight" programs available on Windows and MacOS is Adobe's Photoshop. In fact, most of us have met people who refuse to migrate to Linux because it would mean losing their ability to use Photoshop, since Photoshop is generally not available to Linux users. Their "attachment" to Photoshop is somewhere up there with their attachments to breathing, eating, drinking and having a pulse.

Never mind that most Linux distributions have one of the most powerful graphics tools available for installation (or, in a lot of cases, preinstalled) with GIMP. Their argument is that it isn't Photoshop. Yes, GIMP is different from Photoshop, and as such, it works differently than Photoshop. But, you can perform the vast majority of graphical tasks in GIMP that you can perform in Photoshop ... if you know how. These people have learned the Photoshop way (no, they didn't come out of the womb knowing how the "Photoshop Way"), and they refuse to take the time to learn a new method ... the GIMP way.

On top of that, the last "full" version of Adobe Photoshop will set you back $700 (U.S. dollars, MSRP), and a cool $1,000 for the "extended" version. That would be for Adobe Photoshop CS6. But that was released in May, 2012. It is no longer supported, and there are no further updates (security or otherwise) available for it.

Starting in 2013, Adobe Photoshop switched to a "subscription" based plan where, just like your rent, you pay a monthly fee to continue to use your copy of Adobe Photoshop (there is an annual subscription, but there is no discount for paying for a year at a time ... just take the monthly fee and multiply it by 12). The designation changed from CS to CC, which stands for "Creative Cloud."

Today, most users who want a fully capable and installable version of Photoshop opt for the trimmed down Photoshop Elements. In the process, they save themselves over $500, as Photoshop Elements can be obtained for under $100, in many cases. And, for most users other than graphic artists, Photoshop Elements is more than powerful enough for their use.

Photoshop Elements can use all of the Photoshop 8bf filter plugins (and there are a ton of them), and most limitations of Photoshop Elements, when compared with the full version of Photoshop, can usually be worked around by familiarizing yourself with the many Photoshop tutorials available on the internet. If you're interested, here's a good place to start. This isn't, by far, an exhaustive list of available Photoshop tutorials. There are also some GIMP tutorials mixed in at the aforementioned link (such as this one ... and there are other ones), but most target Photoshop users. Some tutorials are very general in nature (related to graphics editing, such as this one, or this one ... there are many others, too.), and may be applied to any program.

But still, even Adobe's Photoshop Elements isn't supported on Linux, as there is no Linux version. What if there was a way that Photoshop's diehard fans could switch to Linux but not lose access to their favorite graphics editor? Wouldn't that tear down the barrier that these users have for switching to the infinitely more secure and stable Linux?

Enter Photopea

You may not believe this, but Photopea aims to be an online web application that will serve as a replacement not only for Photoshop, but also GIMP and Sketch. Talk about ambitious! The project is hosted on GitHub. As a webapp, this means that even Chromebook users will have access to a potentially powerful graphics editor.

Above is the Photopea work canvas when you first visit the site. Truthfully, it looks an awful lot like Photoshop. From here, you can start a new project, open an image file stored on your computer, or view a demo on how Photopea works.

In the screen capture above, I've loaded in an image from my computer. From here, it's ready for editing, using the tools along the left side of the webapp window.

Clicking on the red "Account" button in the webapp's menu bar, you get another window that opens, detailing the plans. Yes, Photopea is free, and appears to be fully functional. You can "elevate" your Photopea from "free" to "premium" by paying either $9 per month, or $20 every three months. Premium members get to use Photopea ad-free, and get to help improve Photopea. Since I run uBlock Origin as my ad blocker, I have yet to see an ad on the Photopea page.

It's nice that Photopea is able to open not only Photoshop PSD files, but also native GIMP XCF files and SKETCH files from SketchUp. This will make Photopea invaluable, since you won't have to have versions of each program installed on your computer. I can't tell you how many times I've run across files (drawings and schematics) created in SketchUp, only to find that I didn't have the necessary software to open the SKETCH files.

As functional as it might be, Photopea does look like a "work in progress." But it does seem to be, nonetheless, functional. When I loaded an image into the workspace canvas, the only filter that appeared to be available to me was "Liquify," and clicking on it didn't seem to do anything to my image.

However, everything is not as it initially seems. The menus in Photopea open and appear very short ... that is, until or unless you close the top part of the window shown in the first Photopea graphic. So, to see all the options, you have to close that top part of the window (click on the large "X" at the top right), or otherwise you have to scroll through the list of available options with the scroll wheel of your mouse. This "feature" was not immediately evident to me, and it wasn't until Meemaw pointed it out to me that I "discovered" the other menu items that were available. To be honest, I never closed out the top part of that window. Similarly, and just as "saving" a file in GIMP saves the image as a GIMP XCF file, just saving an image will save the file as a Photoshop PSD file. You have to go to the "File" menu, and select "Export" to be able save the image as a PNG, JPG or SVG file. In the interest of full disclosure, I only tried Photopea in the Firefox Quantum web browser.

Summary

I didn't explore Photopea deeply. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Photoshop user. That was one piece of software priced way out of my reach, regardless of how much I desired to use it. It remains that way, to this day. Of course, I'm a Linux user now, so running Photoshop isn't even a possibility for me, anyways. The closest I ever came to Photoshop was the old (and much more affordable) JASC's Paint Shop Pro, which (by the way) was able to utilize some Photoshop 8bf filter files. (On a side note, and just for grins and giggles, JASC stood for "Just Another Software Company.")

As such, I'm not at all versed in the "ins and outs" of using Photoshop. Anything I would have been able to do in Photopea would be basic graphic tasks, like cropping an image, adding text, adjusting brightness and contrast, etc. Of course, I also sometimes struggle with complex tasks in GIMP, unlike our Assistant Editor Meemaw, who is at least two or three leagues above me with her GIMP abilities.

For many users, Photoshop was way out of their price range. Just purchasing Photoshop alone wasn't the end of your cash expenditures, either. There are a LOT of third party 8bf filter files, and you could spend a small fortune on buying them alone. With Photoshop, a lot of people got a "piece of the pie" from software purchasers.

Photoshop users, however, may be intrigued enough to follow Photopea's development. Having another graphic editor available and at your fingertips is never a bad thing. Even on Linux, I sometimes use other graphics editors over GIMP. Some tasks just seem to be too simple and small to launch GIMP, and can be done more easily and with less overhead by using a smaller, simpler graphics editor.

I do wish that the GIMP developers would make it possible to use the Photoshop 8bf filter files. That alone would add a whole level of attraction to GIMP that would be hard for some Photoshop users to overlook. Since JASC once added such support to Paint Shop Pro, I do wonder why the GIMP developers have never done so, and it's a question that I have asked myself many times over. As it is now, GIMP scripts are difficult to write -- at least from where I sit.

Perhaps Photopea will develop to the point where there are a LOT more filters that at least mirror the functionality of the famous/infamous Photoshop 8bf filter files. If that happens, then Photopea will be a very powerful tool in any user's toolbox of graphical utilities.

PCLinuxOS Bonus Recipe Corner

Tortilla Casserole

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound lean ground beef

1 small onion, chopped (1/4 cup)

1 1/3 cups hot water

1 cup Chunky salsa

1/2 cup milk

1 package Hamburger Helper™ cheeseburger macaroni

6 Flour tortillas, 6 inch

1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (6 oz)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oven to 350F (176.6C). Cook beef and onion in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until brown; drain. Stir in hot water, salsa, milk, uncooked Pasta and Sauce Mix. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat; cover and simmer about 7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until pasta is tender.

2. Cut tortillas in half. Spread 2 cups beef mixture in ungreased rectangular baking dish, 11 x 7 x 1 1/2 inches, or shallow 2-quart casserole; top with 6 tortilla halves and 3/4 cup cheese. Spread with 2 cups beef mixture; top with remaining tortilla halves. Top with remaining beef mixture and cheese.

3. Bake uncovered 15 to 20 minutes or until hot and cheese is melted.

TIPS:

Store leftover tortillas in a resealable plastic food-storage bag or in plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

Like it hot? Use hot salsa and shredded Monterey Jack cheese with jalapeño peppers.

Repo Review: Bitwarden

by CgBoy

The desktop client for Bitwarden was recently added to the repository, so I thought I'd write an article about it. Bitwarden is an open source, online cloud-based password management service. There are native clients for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, as well as plugins for a variety of popular web browsers. There is also a completely web-based vault. However, for this review I'll be focusing on the Linux desktop client.

As I mentioned, it is entirely cloud-based, so the password database is stored on cloud servers. The password entries are encrypted before they're even sent from your computer to the cloud servers. Bitwarden uses AES 256 bit encryption and PBKDF2 for encrypting the data.

Although Bitwarden is open source, there's an optional $10.00 per year Premium membership. This offers 1GB of encrypted file storage ($4.00 per extra GB a year), more options for two-step login, and priority customer support. But for this review I just used a free account, so I can't comment on those extra features.

The interface has a very modern and clean look to it. On the left side of the program is where you can choose to display all the entries, favorite entries, certain types of entries, or entries stored in specific folders. The password entries themselves are listed in the middle of the program, with a search box. On the right side is where you view and edit the contents of the currently selected entry.

You can use Bitwarden to store normal login usernames and passwords (which is what most people will use it for), credit card information, identity information, and secure notes. Adding a new entry is really quick and easy.

All types of entries can be assigned to folders, and can have notes and custom fields attached.

Bitwarden also comes with a handy random password generator. You can set how long the generated password will be, and what types of characters to include. When you've chosen a password, Bitwarden can check it against a known passwords database to see if it's been exposed before.

Bitwarden supports two-step login using an authenticator app, YubiKey (premium account only), Duo Security (premium account only), FIDO U2F (premium account only), or through email. Two-step login has to be set up from the web vault. And make sure not to lose your recovery code just in case!

If you've been using a different password manager and now switched to Bitwarden, you can import password databases from a variety of popular password managers such as LastPass, KeePass 2, KeePassX, 1Password, and many more. However, password databases can't be imported from the desktop client, you have to use the web vault.

If you don't like the idea of your passwords being stored in the cloud, you can actually host your own Bitwarden server. I did not have the time to try out this feature, but there's plenty of documentation available on their website.

Another feature I didn't have time to try out was Organizations. According to the Bitwarden website “A Bitwarden organization is an entity that relates users together that want to share logins. An organization could be a family, team, company, or any other type of group that desires to share logins in Bitwarden.”, but like I said, I didn't have time to try it out.

Summary

Compared to other password managers I've tried, I found Bitwarden fast and easy to use. I have to say that I'm not really a huge fan of Bitwarden being cloud-based, but I'm sure it makes it much easier to sync with multiple devices. While I myself don't actually use any password managers outside of the one built into my web browser, I would recommend Bitwarden to anyone looking for a good free, cross-platform password manager.

ms_meme's Nook: One Hundred Cheers

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Tip Top Tips: British English On An American Keyboard And Other Tweaks

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 keep reading "reviews" on Ebay and Amazon UK that British people are buying keyboards online, only to find that they are American. The main problem they have is that the keyboard does not have a Sterling sign (£) on it, the quotedbl (") and at sign (@) are swapped over. The key that produces hash and tilde has backslash and pipe on it, backslash and pipe are no longer available, as there is one key less on the US keyboard! Everything will appear in the same place on the keyboard as they did before, but the legends on the keys are wrong.

If you switch to the US keyboard layout, everything will match up to what is on the keyboard, but you won't have access to a £-sign. So what to do?

There is a directory, /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/, that holds many keyboard maps, and the British one is "gb". If you look at it, you will see a number of sections. The first one is "default", and looks like this:

// based on a keyboard map from an 'xkb/symbols/gb' file

default  partial alphanumeric_keys

xkb_symbols "basic" {

// Describes the differences between a very simple en_US

// keyboard and a very simple U.K. keyboard layout defined by

// the SVR4 European Language Supplement and sometimes also

// known as the IBM 166 layout.

include "latin"

name[Group1]="English (UK)";

key     { [         2,   quotedbl,  twosuperior,    oneeighth ]    };

key     { [         3,   sterling, threesuperior,    sterling ]    };

key     { [         4,     dollar,     EuroSign,   onequarter ]    };

key     { [apostrophe,         at, dead_circumflex, dead_caron]    };

key     { [     grave,    notsign,          bar,          bar ]    };

key     { [numbersign, asciitilde,   dead_grave,   dead_breve ]    };

key     { [ backslash,        bar,          bar,    brokenbar ]    };

include "level3(ralt_switch_multikey)"

};

Let me explain a few lines. The one that says include "latin", means that stuff is read in from another file, called "latin", in the same folder. That's a generic European key layout, which is basically the same as the American layout, but with four symbols shown on many keys instead of two. You might want to look at that file too.

Another very important line is include "level3(ralt_switch_multikey)". This enables the Right-Alt (Alt-Gr) key to act as a shift to the third entry for each key, and together with Shift, to access the fourth entry. So, we can fix the key moves by deleting some of them. If we delete the entry for the "2" key, it will restore the "latin" definition and put back the "@" sign. Deleting the keys , and will also put those keys back to the symbols on the keys. The key isn't present on a US keyboard so we can delete that too. The "4" key is left alone, so it will produce both "$" and "€". That leaves the "3" key. We need the "£" on that which we can access through Alt-Gr. Best is to swap the third and fourth positions on that key.

So your new layout will look like this:

// based on a keyboard map from an 'xkb/symbols/gb' file

// edited for UK on a US keyboard

default  partial alphanumeric_keys

xkb_symbols "basic" {

// Describes the differences between a very simple en_US

// keyboard and a very simple U.K. keyboard layout defined by

// the SVR4 European Language Supplement and sometimes also

// known as the IBM 166 layout.

include "latin"

name[Group1]="English (UK)";

key     { [         3,   numbersign, sterling, threesuperior ] };

key     { [         4,     dollar,     EuroSign,   onequarter ]    };

include "level3(ralt_switch_multikey)"

};

Don't edit the file in place, copy it somewhere else and edit it, and also keep a copy of the original to put back in case of error. When you re-install, or sometimes after an update, you will need to copy the file back over the top of the "official" one.

Going through the "latin" file, you might not be happy with many of the defaults. For example, Alt-Gr and q makes an @-sign, which is already on the keyboard. So you might want to put in a line as follows:

key { [ q, Q, infinity, Greek_OMEGA ] };

NOTE: Do not edit the "latin" file. This goes in the gb file. The less files edited the better! Of course, there is nothing to stop you copying a line from the "latin" file, pasting it into the gb file, then editing it. This will produce the infinity sign "∞" on Alt-Gr q. You don't need to know the name of the key you want to substitute, you can use the Unicode number (if 4 hex numbers) U221E, or for Unicode numbers above FFFF, you can use 0x1 followed by the 6-hex figure code, so, the infinity sign would be 0x100221E. You can redefine the third and fourth level keypresses for a number of keys if you wish. I have!

Just remember to keep the original just in case, and to back up the edited version so that you can restore it should the system overwrite it on an update.

Finally, if you're like me, you will have the CAPS LOCK key defined as the compose key, for 2 reasons. One is to get a compose key, and the other is to prevent you putting on CAPS LOCK in error. You can do this from the Control Centre in KDE, but with other desktops you can't. To put it right in the "gb" keyboard definition file, just add this line:

key { [ Multi_key ] };

Hope this helps someone!

----

Now that I have my keyboard, it is a mini- type and there are no keys for F11 and F12. However, there are two keys I really don't need: NumLock and Pause/Break. The thing is to go into BIOS and turn off startup numlock. Then into the PCLOS Control Centre, and turn off the NumLock background service. Finally, into your desktop settings and ensure that it turns NumLock off at startup.

Now set your keys in the "gb" file we discussed before:

key   { [  F11  ] };

key   { [  F12  ] };

Overall, the main section of the "gb" file will look like this:

// based on a keyboard map from an 'xkb/symbols/gb' file

// edited for UK on a US keyboard

default  partial alphanumeric_keys

xkb_symbols "basic" {

// Describes the differences between a very simple en_US

// keyboard and a very simple U.K. keyboard layout defined by

// the SVR4 European Language Supplement and sometimes also

// known as the IBM 166 layout.

include "latin"

name[Group1]="English (UK)";

key  { [ Multi_key ] };

key   { [  F11  ] };

key   { [  F12  ] };

key     { [         3,   numbersign, sterling, threesuperior ] };

key     { [         4,     dollar,     EuroSign,   onequarter ]    };

key     { [         q,          Q,           infinity,  Greek_OMEGA ]    };

include "level3(ralt_switch_multikey)"

};

And that, folks, is how Linux enables you to control your machine, and not the other way around!

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Scrappler

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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!

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