Table of Contents

From The Chief Editor's Desk

1. Things To Do With Your PCLinuxOS In The Quarantine

2. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Beef & Salsa Skillet

3. ms_meme's Nook: Eight More Gigabytes

4. Setting Up Your Nextcloud Client: Revisited

5. Short Topix: Plex Comes Under Fire From Pro-Copyright Group

6. Inkscape Tutorial: Create A Website Background

7. EBCDIC Handling Library: A Ruby Project

8. DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar Exposes Hidden Tracking

9. Game Zone: Last Chaos In PCLinuxOS

10. PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: mutse

11. Repo Review: VidCutter

12. ms_meme's Nook: Yes, We Have No Windows

13. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Homemade Apple Pie From Scratch

14. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

15. Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk

I have to admit, right up front: I haven't had as much time in the past month to work on the magazine as I usually have. These are difficult and trying times. We, collectively, haven't seen anything like this in over a century.

For those of you who do not already know, my full time job is as a respiratory therapist in the midwestern U.S. I have been a respiratory therapist for over 33 years. At least in the U.S., we are the ones who deal with/treat patients who have breathing problems, either because of asthma, COPD, congenital defects, pneumonia, trauma, or a whole host of other problems that negatively impact the respiratory system and make it difficult to breathe. I plan to retire in another two years and four (or so) months, and as far as I'm concerned, that amount of time cannot pass quickly enough.

We administer breathing medications via aerosol nebulizers to make it easier for patients to breathe, by relieving bronchospasm, decreasing inflammation, and treating infections. We draw arterial blood samples to ascertain how well a patient's lungs are functioning, and to see how well the patient is oxygenating. We administer oxygen to those who need it. We manage and run the mechanical ventilators for patients who are not able to adequately breathe for themselves. We help clear up patients' airways of accumulated mucus. We are members of the "Code Blue" team, responding to all resuscitation efforts in the hospital, maintaining the airway and breathing for those patients. We perform diagnostic tests that help determine any lung pathologies and the degree of impairment.

In my personal favorite role, respiratory therapists are present to help premature infants, whose lungs are not mature enough to support proper breathing, and other newborns suffering from some sort of breathing issues, to get over that initial challenge. In all honesty, if I could work ONLY with the premature and newborn infants, I probably would delay retiring at 62 years of age. But, the chances of that happening are somewhere between nil and none.

Then, the coronavirus global pandemic hit. With a vengeance.

Globally, the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has infected over 660,000 people (confirmed cases ... it's estimated that many more have been infected, but didn't receive testing) in 177 different countries or regions, and caused the deaths of over 30,500 people. You may also be more used to hearing it as COVID-19. It's one and the same. Those who come down with a SARS-CoV-2 infection are said to be suffering from COVID-19. As of the time that I write this article, and using the exact numbers available at that time, that represents a mortality rate of just over 4.6 percent.

With so many countries and regions represented by the global infections, the reaction by local officials and multiple jurisdictions has varied considerably. In Italy, one of the hardest hit countries, the mortality rate is running around 9 percent. But in Germany, the mortality rate is less than 0.5 percent. The U.S., which took over the dubious lead in the number of confirmed cases, currently has a mortality rate of right around 1.7 percent. Fully one-fourth of those are in New York City. In China, where the virus appears to have started, the mortality rate has been right at 4 percent. In the U.K., the mortality rate is running right around 5.9 percent. In South Korea, the mortality rate is running around 1.5 percent.

To slow the spread of the virus (to flatten the curve of the rate of infection, so that all the sick don't overwhelm the hospital systems by coming in sick all at the same time), most jurisdictions have limited gatherings of more than 10 people. It's called physical distancing, a.k.a. social distancing. In some areas, it's no more than two people at a time. Many jurisdictions have issued "stay at home" orders, encouraging people to stay at home and avoid intermingling. It's that close person-to-person contact that hastens the spread of the virus among members of a community.

To promote social distancing, schools have been closed. At least at my son's school, the teachers have made online instruction available via YouTube videos, and have made available virtual learning resource packets. The latter are full of worksheets for students to practice what they learned from the videos. Since my son is in kindergarten, his worksheets cover sight words, vowel sounds, and basic math (so far, just addition). Even though it has been reported that kids have much milder symptoms of coronavirus infection, they can act as viral reservoirs and aid in the spread of the virus to those who are much more at risk of a more serious manifestation of the virus (such as older adults).

Events that encourage a large gathering of people ... concerts, sporting events, trade shows, etc. ... have been canceled all over the world. Even the tech sector has been deeply impacted. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and many others have encouraged as many of their employees as is logistically possible to work from home. Even the Free Software Foundation's big annual soiree, LibrePlanet, was changed to a free, multi-day webcast event. Verizon Wireless is offering 15GiB of free wifi hotspot usage to their customers on their cellular network. Xfinity and Spectrum cable providers, by far the two largest cable providers in the U.S., are offering free wifi access via their wifi hotspots to everyone, whether they are a customer or not.

Elsewhere, non-essential businesses have been closed. Restaurants and bars have been ordered closed, or to offer drive-thru and take-out only. Only "essential" businesses, such as grocery stores, pharmacies, liquor stores, gas stations, etc. have been allowed to remain open to provide essential goods and services. Community centers are closed. Gyms are closed. Indoor shopping malls are closed. Automobile assembly lines have shut down their usual work (there are two in the Kansas City area, one Ford, one GM). MLS soccer games have been suspended. The NBA suspended the rest of their season. The NHL did the same. Opening day for MLB (baseball) has been postponed indefinitely.

Around my parts, finding many of those essential goods has become quite the adventure. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer is next to impossible to find. We have made our own from two parts alcohol (MUST be greater than 90%) to one part aloe vera gel (if you can find it). Add one tablespoon (15 ml) of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide to every 235 ml (1 cup) of the mixture (for a total mixture measuring 250 ml). Blend well and refill your empty hand sanitizer bottles. But, unless you are out and about, alcohol-based hand sanitizers SHOULD take a back seat to proper hand washing with soap and water, which is most effective in eliminating the virus from your hands. Only if you are somewhere that soap and water isn't available should you be using alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Obviously, if your hands are visibly soiled -- uh, dirty -- you should be using soap and water to wash them.

Toilet paper is just as hard to find. People are hoarding toilet paper out of fear that they might run out if they are forced to endure a two-week self quarantine, should they come down with a coronavirus infection. Also, because so many businesses are closed during the pandemic, those workers are staying home. That means that their toilet paper usage at home has gone up by 40 to 50 percent. People are also stocking up on canned goods, meat, bread, pasta, cleaning products, liquid hand soap, bottled water and just about every other item ... all out of that same fear that drives the toilet paper hoarding. I've never seen store shelves so bare and empty.

At the hospital where I work, all non-essential (elective) surgeries and outpatient procedures have been postponed. Visitors are no longer allowed, except in a very few limited and tightly controlled exceptions. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is in short, short supply. In response, the hospital has enacted PPE conservation tactics and plans that we wouldn't even consider during normal times.

Private industry has stepped forward to fill in the gaps in the supply chain. Distilleries across the country have converted from making alcohol for drinking to making alcohol-based hand sanitizer. This even includes InBev's Anheuser-Busch, who typically makes beer. Other businesses have stepped up to make N95 respirator masks. GM is leveraging its supply chain and distribution channels to help manufacture critical care ventilators, which are anticipated to be in very short supply in the not-too-distant future to accommodate the anticipated and expected surge of COVID-19 patients. Ford Motor Company is doing the same for another ventilator manufacturer. The owner of the My Pillow company is shifting his entire business to making masks for healthcare workers during the pandemic. Various restaurants (e.g., Jersey Mike's Subs) are providing free meals for healthcare workers. Hospital equipment vendors are also providing free meals. Donut shops are sending free donuts for healthcare workers. Lowe's home improvement stores have donated N95 masks, as has Harbor Freight Tools. The list could go on and on and on.

On the other side of that same coin, healthcare workers are being attacked while filling up their vehicles with gasoline, or if they stop to pick up essential items or food on the way home. Wearing your scrubs out in public is becoming dangerous. (We have to provide our own at the hospital where I work, which is not uncommon among hospitals around here). Ignorant members of the public think we're out "spreading the virus." In other instances, healthcare workers are having bleach splashed or poured on them

Most days, when I get home from a 12 hour shift at the hospital, I'm physically and mentally drained from the extra layers of vigilance that the coronavirus pandemic is thrusting upon us. I'm more drained than normal, which has eaten up my time for working on the magazine that I normally am able to perform. Add in the extra time it takes to track down and find essential goods and services, and that cuts into my "magazine time" even further. Then, there's the change of routine, since my son's school is closed until at least the end of April. We (his mother and I) have become his surrogate teacher during this time, guided by the virtual learning packages provided by his teacher.

Meanwhile, work is underway at a feverish rate to find an appropriate and effective treatment for the causative virus of COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. Some drugs have been identified as potential treatment options, but they must be studied for safety and efficacy. Work is also underway for a vaccine for the virus. In the U.S., the FDA has fast-tracked a possible vaccine, giving it to a group of patients. Just as with the drugs that have been identified, the vaccine must be studied for safety and efficacy before being released to treat a vastly larger number of patients.

To help prevent the spread of coronavirus, avoid large gatherings. Follow the advice of your local public health experts. Wash your hands frequently with soap and water. Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer for those times when you're unable to access soap and water. Cough and sneeze into your elbow. If you develop symptoms (fever, scratchy throat, dry hacky cough) or think that you have been exposed, or have a family member that has contracted the illness, contact your healthcare provider. If you have shortness of breath with the symptoms, seek medical attention. Most people will have milder symptoms, and get over it without any problem. Most will need to merely self quarantine for two weeks to help prevent spreading the virus to others who may be more susceptible to the more severe manifestations of COVID-19. If you're seeking additional information and want to stay up to date on the fighting of COVID-19, please refer to only reputable sources, such as the WHO, the CDC, and the live-tracking coronavirus map from Johns Hopkins University.

Eventually, life will return to normal. Just keep in mind that "normal" may be a few months away, and by then, our definition of "normal" may be slightly altered. This pandemic will definitely leave its mark on us in ways we haven't even begun to imagine yet.

Until next month, do your level best to stay healthy. I wish you peace, happiness, serenity, prosperity ... and continued good health.

Things To Do With Your PCLinuxOS In The Quarantine

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Well, since we are all quarantined, forced isolation, to prevent the proliferation of COVID-19, this does not mean that it is a frustrating and boring period. There are many things possible to do at home in those times.

Families, who did not see each other very often, will once again be able to strengthen their ties, talk face to face (and not via whatsapp). I believe that, in some cases, the flame of romance will be rekindled. Of course, for every family brought together by this pandemic, there are very ugly cases of domestic violence that can even get worse.

But, let's try to look at the positive side of it all, and, with these forced "vacations", let's try to spend time in the best possible way, with a great companion: PCLinuxOS!

What to do now in this isolation then? We'll see now!

Playing with your PCLinuxOS

Well, first of all, I would like to say that I am over 50. There is a prejudice against those who play, but this prejudice has to be undone: There is nothing wrong with playing with your computer. Many point a finger and say: A man of that age, playing kids' video games! Well then, collecting retro-games is on the rise right now (the way the games industry goes, it's no wonder). Metal Jesus, a YouTuber, is the living proof: he might be older than me, and he only has reviews of retro video games on his channel. Well, with that out of the way, let's look at the game options available for PCLinuxOS in this period.

GOG.com: Stay at home.

The well-known Polish company GOG.com (owned by CD Projekt Red), the creators of the Wytcher game series, has a promotion for people not to leave their houses: Several free games, for all of us, who are in this isolation. On its website: "Even though the sun is shining and the flowers have already started to bloom where you live, health and safety are on everyone's mind now. Closing the blinds and playing video games can be one of the good ways to relax and spend your time at home. We are here to help you choose your next big adventure with this selection of free games from our catalog and a huge Spring Promotion until March 30th." (Editor Note: Date may have passed but there are still many discounted games.)

The free games are at https://www.gog.com/partner/stay_at_home

E, its spring promotion is at: https://www.gog.com/games?page=1&sort=popularity&price=discounted

Game Jolt

Game Jolt (GJ) is a free and commercial video game hosting service (in the browser and via a downloadable client) with social functions. Co-founded by Yaprak and David DeCarmine, the initial website launched on January 1, 2004, and was created by David DeCarmine.

The website has several free games for Linux, at this link: https://gamejolt.com/search/games?q=Linux&page=1

itch.io

itch.io is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts almost 100,000 games and items in February 2018.

itch.io also allows users to host game jams of games, during which participants have limited time (usually from 1 to 3 days) to create a game. Some of the most notable game jams hosted on itch.io include Game Off and Game Jam from the Game Maker Toolkit.

Games for Linux are on this link: https://itch.io/games/free/platform-linux

A site that defies any definition

The Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining a multimedia archive of information. It was founded by Brewster Kahle in 1996 and is located in San Francisco, California. The Archive includes "captures" (or snapshots) of web pages. These captures are archived copies of the pages and may be available in more than one version if they were archived at different times. This allows you to observe its evolution. The archive also includes software, movies, books, and audio recordings (including recordings of live shows / concerts by bands that allow it).

The collection intends to keep a digital copy of these materials for historical consultation. The organization, to justify its mission, makes reference to the case of the Library of Alexandria. Because it has the objective of preserving human knowledge and making it available to everyone, preventing it from being lost for different reasons (as happened, tragically, in the case of the aforementioned library).

Its collection houses a large number of files of various types, such as audio, video and text, the vast majority of them in the public domain, with Creative Commons licenses or other licenses that allow free distribution.

Its collection is divided into:

- Wayback Machine: Keeps snapshots of internet sites, for archiving purposes.

- Book Collections: Contains collections of books in the public domain that have been digitized by the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive operates 33 digitization centers in 5 countries, digitizing around 1,000 books a day, totaling more than 2 million archived books.

- Open Library: Project that aims to create a page for each book already published: It already has records of 25 million books published.

- Media Collection: Consists of collections of: Audio collection, recordings ranging from 1800 to the 1960s, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn museum collection, New York, Images collection, consists of more than 880,000 items, magazine covers, images from NASA.

- Machinima Archives: films made in machinima (from game or video game engines or software such as Blender or Maya)

- Moving Image Archives: The Internet Archive contains a collection of approximately 3,863 feature films and other audiovisual files: newsreels, classic cartoons, pro and anti-war propaganda, The Video Cellar Collection, Skip Elsheimer's "AV Geeks" collection, Prelinger Archives.

- Programs: The Internet Archive has "the largest collection of online historical software in the world", covering 50 years of computer history in terabytes of computer magazines and periodicals, books, shareware disks, FTP sites, video games, etc. The Internet Archive created an archive of what it describes as "vintage software", as a way to preserve them. The project called for an exemption from the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow them to bypass copy protection, which was passed in 2003 for a period of three years. The Archive does not offer downloadable software, as the exemption is solely "for the purpose of preserving or reproducing in digital files published by a library or archive". The exemption was renewed in 2006 and in 2009 it was extended indefinitely, awaiting new legislation. The Library reiterated the exemption as a "final rule" with no expiration date in 2010. In 2013, the Internet Archive started providing abandonware video games that can be played in a web browser via MESS, for example, the Atari 2600 game ET the extraterrestrial.

Since December 23, 2014, the Internet Archive presents, through a browser-based DOSBox emulation, thousands of PC / DOS games just for "school study and research purposes"

So, in the Internet Archive you can have hours and hours of fun without spending a dime. URL: https://archive.org/

Free Online Movies

There are several sites on the internet where we can watch audiovisual pieces for free.

The Internet Archive, mentioned above, is one of them. But, we have more.

YouTube: TCC Channel - Timeless Classics Now in Color. Features classic films colorized by AI.

YouTube:Channel Maverick Movies. Movies by the independent American production company Maverick Movies.

YouTube: List of complete films on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/fullmoviesonyoutube/

Tubi.TV: Streaming site with several titles, which has already been covered by PCLinuxOS Magazine.

IPTV

The subject of IPTV has already been well discussed on the pages of PCLinuxOS Magazine, however, one more link doesn't hurt, does it?

On this site, on Github, there are playlists from several channels: https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv

And from this site, you should download the following playlist: https://iptv-org.github.io/iptv/index.country.m3u

With access to more than 800 channels worldwide. The playlist is updated every 16 hours, so there is no reason to download playlists continuously.

On the Github page, you can select lists according to the language, countries and genres you want to watch.

Music

There are several sites to listen to music for free on the internet. I will list some below.

Jamendo: Jamendo is a music website based in Luxembourg and an open community of independent artists and music lovers. A subsidiary of the Belgian company Audio Valley, and the Independent Management Entity (IME) since 2019. Originally, Jamendo was a music platform under Creative Commons licenses. In October 2015, Jamendo no longer presents itself as such, but as a free streaming service and free download for personal use. Jamendo's goal is to bring together musicians and music lovers, offering opportunities for artists to become better known and earn money through the licensing service.

Kevin MacLeod: born September 28, 1972, is an American composer and musician. MacLeod composed more than 2,000 royalty-free pieces of music and made them available under a Creative Commons copyright license. Its licensing options allow anyone to use his music for free, as long as he receives attribution (credit), which has led to his music being used in thousands of films. His music was also used in some commercial video games, such as the Kerbal Space Program.

The Mod Archive: The Mod Archive is a website dedicated to indexing and archiving playable MOD music files. It allows anyone to upload modules and provides graphics, reviews and ratings of music files based on a community effort. The formats covered by the website are MOD, IT, XM, AHX, MED, STM, S3M, MO3, MTM, 669, AMF, AMS, DBM, DIGI, DMF, DSM, FAR, GDM, IMF, J2B, MDL, MPTM, MT2, OKT, PLM, PTM, STM, ULT and HVL.

SoundCloud: is an European online audio distribution platform and a music sharing website based in Berlin, Germany, which allows its users to upload, promote and share audio. Started in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud has grown to become one of the largest music streaming services on the market, reaching more than 175 million monthly users worldwide. SoundCloud offers free and paid membership on the platform, available for desktop or mobile devices. SoundCloud influenced the music industry through the success of many artists who emerged from the music sharing service. Platform artists can distribute their work for free, which can be accessed by all users. SoundCloud has received support from many investors and other media platforms like Twitter, although the streaming platform itself has dealt with funding issues and laid off many employees to remain profitable.

Learn

We can use this time to learn new things, as there are several free online course sites.

Udemy is an e-learning platform, created by Eren Bali, for e-learning, so professionals can both study and teach. The content of the courses is very varied, with self-help courses, music theory and taking care of domestic animals to programming (from basic to advanced), data analysis, design, sales and others with a professional purpose, some free and others paid, with certificates or not. The platform, in the first half of 2019, had more than thirty million students, about one hundred thousand published courses and forty-two thousand instructors in more than fifty languages.

Free courses can be found at this link: https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=free%20courses&src=sac&kw=free

Udacity is a for-profit educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky. It was born out of an experiment at Stanford University, in which Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered the online "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" course to anyone, free of charge. More than 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled. It started operating in 2011. According to the company, its goal is to make cutting-edge education accessible to everyone.

Its free courses can be found at this link: https://blog.udacity.com/category/free-courses

So friends, there's a lot to do in this time of isolation. Have fun, play, listen to music, read, and even seize this time to learn new things.

So, don't stay still. Use your PCLinuxOS and we will spend this period in the best possible way.

Take care then. Stay at home. Stay safe. And most of all, stay healthy.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Beef & Salsa Skillet

Beef and Salsa Skillet

Ingredients:

1 lb lean (at least 80%) ground beef

1 jar (16 oz) Thick 'n Chunky salsa (2 cups)

1 can (15 oz) dark red kidney beans, undrained

1 can (7 oz) whole kernel corn, undrained

1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce

2 teaspoons chili powder

1 1/2 cups Original Bisquick™ mix **

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup shredded Colby-Monterey Jack cheese (2 oz), if desired

** See our homemade Bisquick recipe here.

Directions:

1. In a 12-inch skillet, cook beef over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until brown; drain. Stir in salsa, beans, corn, tomato sauce and 1 teaspoon of the chili powder. Heat to boiling; reduce heat to low.

2. In a medium bowl, stir Bisquick mix, remaining 1 teaspoon chili powder and the milk until soft dough forms. Drop dough by 6 spoonfuls onto simmering beef mixture.

3. Cover; cook for about 20 minutes or until the dumplings are light and fluffy inside. Sprinkle it with cheese. Cover; cook about 2 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Tips:

Make an equally delicious and quick meal by substituting ground turkey breast for the ground beef.

Complete this easy meal with a salad of sliced oranges, sliced avocado and red onion rings drizzled with your favorite vinaigrette dressing.

ms_meme's Nook: Eight More Gigabytes

OGG                                                               MP3

Setting Up Your Nextcloud Client: Revisited

by Mr. Cranky Pants - YouCanToo

A lot of things have changed since I first wrote the article about setting up your Nextcloud-client here.

Not only have we changed the client, we use and started using SSL connections. We have also updated the cloud server software along the way. We have grown from a few dozen users to well north of 450 users. We also have increased the amount of storage space from 15 GB to 25GB.

It has come time to rewrite the article on how to correctly setup your nextcloud-client to connect to PCLOS-Cloud server.

So let's get started...

If you haven't requested a PCLOS-Cloud account, do so now by filling in the simple request form here.

First make sure that the nextcloud-client is installed on your machine. Open Synaptic package manager and search for nextcloud-client. If it isn't already installed, check it and then install it. When it has finished installing, close Synaptic. You will find the newly installed nextcloud-client in your menu --> Internet --> Nextcloud desktop client sync as seen in the image below.

Once you have started the nextcloud-client, you should see the following page:

Click on "Log in".

In the Server Address field enter the cloud server address "https://pcloscloud.com". Make sure it starts with https://, not just http://. After you have filled in the server address, click "Next".

Click on "Re-open Browser". This is now how the cloud server will verify your account.

Your web browser will open and display the page above. You may find after this point that it asks for your username and password. You did sign-up for a cloud account didn't you??? If not, go sign-up for your free cloud account here.

When you see this window, you can safely close this browser window. You should see the following window.

You can use the default settings. Then simply press "Connect". Once it has connected and syncs any files that are in your Nextcloud folder, you should see the following window.

Congratulations... You have set up your nextcloud-client.

You can also access PCLOS-Cloud using the Dolphin file manager using the following address:

webdav://pcloscloud.com/remote.php/webdav

In Dolphin file manager, enter the above address.

It will then ask for your cloud account username and password. And then press "OK"

You should now be connected to your cloud account.

Short Topix: Plex Comes Under Fire From Pro-Copyright Group

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Cure For The Common Cold? Amazon Is Secretly Working On One.

It might seem odd talking about someone attempting to find a cure for the common cold when we're in the midst of a global pandemic from the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, but such efforts are underway. According to a report on CNBC, Amazon is doing just that through its top secret "skunkworks" program Grand Challenge, which aims to conquer big problems by finding solutions that have a big impact on humanity. The program isn't publicly acknowledged by Amazon, and works under the cover of Amazon's AWS division.

The specific project, called "Project Gesundheit," is Amazon's top secret project to tackle the common cold. In just the U.S. alone, the common cold is reported (in a 17 year old study, nonetheless) to cost just the U.S. economy $40 billion every year due to physician visits and lost productivity. By 2020, the cost is likely higher. The small team of scientists is hoping to be able to come up with a vaccine, while exploring multiple approaches to the problem of the common cold. The real problem is that the "cure" can have almost NO side effects, since most people are over most colds within one to two weeks.

About 75 percent of colds are caused by rhinovirus, of which there are 160 known types. Plus, rhinoviruses are very adaptable, mutating exceptionally fast to thwart new treatments or vaccines. This makes the job of finding a vaccine or effective treatment even more difficult.

Amazon isn't the only ones looking for a cure to the common cold, either. Researchers from Stanford and the University of California are exploring a different approach that involves temporarily switching off an intracellular protein that the cold virus(es) need to replicate. The Sanford/U of C effort is joined by the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his physician wife, Priscilla Chan. The researchers say they are very close to a possible cure utilizing this method.

He Rode His Bike Past A Burglarized House. Google's GPS Tracking Made Him A Suspect.

Imagine you're riding your bicycle back and forth to and from work. You enjoy riding your bike, and you install an app on your mobile device to track how many miles you ride. Then, you get an email from Google that your GPS tracking information has been requested by a local law enforcement agency. The email says that you have seven days to get a court order to block the transfer of the information, or the information would be turned over to the local law enforcement agency.

That is exactly what happened to one Gainesville, Florida restaurant worker, according to a NBC News report. Thus started his nightmare. Like many Android users, he used a number of Google services, and had his Google account linked to his phone.

A bit unnerved and scared after receiving the email from Google's legal investigations support team, he went to St. Augustine, Florida to talk with his parents. He was afraid to go to the police, afraid he'd be arrested on the spot. They discussed it over dinner, and they agreed to dip into their meager savings to help him hire an attorney to get a court order to block the transfer of information.

The Gainesville police department had used a "geofence" warrant, which basically sucks up all of your data like a Hoover vacuum on steroids. A geofence warrant is a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data -- drawn from users' GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections -- from everyone nearby. The only "clue" was that the email from Google contained a case number. The attorney searched for the case number on the Gainesville police department's website, and discovered that it was a one page burglary report from 10 months ago for some elderly lady's house.

Upon further examination of the data, he was able to determine that his client had passed by the elderly lady's home three times within the timeframe of a burglary ... all while he pedaled around the neighborhood on his bike.

The geofence warrants are used by police departments to help them solve crimes when they have no leads. But the problem with them is that they scoop up the data of EVERYONE who was around that area, even when they had nothing to do with the crime being investigated. This often occurs without the users even being aware. Even Google, who has a horrific track record in privacy matters, has described the practice as a significant intrusion on privacy.

After spending several thousand dollars on an attorney to insure his innocence, the victim in this case ... the guy innocently riding his bike ... finally cleared his name.

Plex Comes Under Fire From Pro-Copyright Group

Reprinted from TorrentFreak, CC BY-NC 3.0 license

Plex has become the latest neutral technology to get slammed for not doing enough to prevent movie and TV show piracy. According to pro-copyright lobby group CreativeFuture, which represents more than 560 companies and organizations, Plex - like Kodi - is a "dangerous digital media player" that has joined the ranks of "internet heavyweights who refuse to take responsibility for the criminal behavior on their platforms."

In days gone by, living rooms around the world could be found stacked with video cassette tapes full of films and TV shows. Some bought, others recorded at home, these copies would need to be waded through, to find whatever content the owner fancied watching that day.

With the rise of digital technology, however, such physical collections have largely disappeared, replaced by copies that occupy virtually zero space, with thousands of movies, TV shows, music tracks, and photographs effortlessly stored on relatively cheap hard drives.

Paper-based indexing systems, for those who cared to maintain them in the analog age, have now been replaced by software that not only does all the hard work but also makes collections a thing of beauty. While there are alternatives, Emby for example, the clear market leader is Plex. However, the company behind the software is now facing a backlash for failing to control how people interact with its creation.

According to CreativeFuture, a pro-copyright coalition of more than 560 companies and organizations, Plex -- which is basically a pretty media player -- is helping to fan the flames of piracy. While there are some exceptions which we'll come to shortly, people generally need to be in physical possession of movies or TV shows to watch them using Plex, with torrents providing the necessary material.

"[T]he problem now finds itself on a dangerous precipice where it could easily slip right back into becoming a crisis again, as it was in the mid-2000s -- before streaming was all the rage," Creative Future writes.

"Thanks to a rapidly growing media application called Plex, torrent-based piracy is back in vogue, and better than ever (for criminals who have no problem with profiting from content that doesn't belong to them, that is)."

To set the scene, that Plex is some kind of ‘rogue' application, CreativeFuture (CF) aligns the media player with another piece of software, one that has also suffered reputational damage as a result of its users' activities. The choice of adjective to describe both is particularly interesting.

"To understand what Plex is and how it functions, it is helpful to look at Kodi -- another dangerous digital media player that we have written about repeatedly here at CreativeFuture," CF notes.

The claim that Plex is dangerous is supported by an article published in The Verge, which reported on so-called 'Plex shares'. Without going into the minutiae, 'shares' effectively allow Plex users to access content on other users' Plex servers which, in some cases, could have been obtained illegally.

That some Plex users allow others to access huge libraries of pirated content is a fact, with some being targeted by anti-piracy groups such as BREIN. But, in common with so many piracy controversies in recent years, CF feels that if Plex users are doing something illegal, then the company behind the Plex software should be held responsible for their actions.

In this respect, CF claims that like "most" tech platforms, Plex is doing what it can to avoid accountability.

"In turning a blind eye to its piracy problem, Plex has joined the ranks of internet heavyweights who refuse to take responsibility for the criminal behavior on their platforms," the copyright coalition notes.

"With heightened scrutiny on the biggest platforms, lawmakers across the country, and abroad, have increasingly demonstrated less tolerance for tech companies that sidestep law and order in their relentless quest for user growth."

Quite what CF believes Plex should do isn't covered. If we take current industry strategies as a benchmark, we might guess that the organization would encourage the use of some kind of pro-active filtering mechanism, which would prevent Plex users from adding potentially infringing material to their own computers.

Of course, that would mean massive implications for end-user privacy, almost impossible calculations to determine who is allowed to add content to a library within the law in multiple jurisdictions, plus an inevitable backlash and migration to other platforms that reject such intrusions. It would also require the company behind Plex to get deeply involved and therefore acquire ‘knowledge' of infringing user behavior, something that raises all kinds of red flags.

The piece, which deserves to be read in its own right, also accuses Reddit of being a "notorious piracy-enabling outlet". What it fails to mention, and probably should've done, however, is that Plex is already making progress with various entertainment industry groups to tackle piracy in the best way possible -- providing users with easy access to licensed content.

In 2019, Plex announced it would begin streaming thousands of free movies, TV shows and music documentaries from within the app, after striking deals with relevant rightsholders. The content is ad-supported and the hope is to expand the offering in the future.

"Over time, we'll be adding more stuff from different studios and creators-- from Oscar-winning Hollywood movies to the latest from India, Russia, China, Japan, Africa, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe to really cool independent movies fresh off the festival circuit," the company said.

That Plex now finds itself in the firing line isn't really a surprise -- if Reddit is a "notorious" enabler of piracy, then any company with end users could find itself tarred with the same brush. TorrentFreak contacted the software developer for its opinion on the latest set of claims but at the time of publication, Plex chose to remain silent.

Linux Floppy Disk Driver Gets Improvements For 5.7 Kernel

When was the last time you used a floppy disk?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

When was the last time you could even buy a floppy disk?

Yep. Same thing.

As much as many think that it's time for floppy disk support to be stripped from the Linux kernel, it's instead getting a breath of new life, sort of. Several months ago, Linus was considering removing floppy disk code from the mainline Linux kernel. After all, who in the world used it any more?

At the same time, he challenged kernel contributors to update the floppy drive support. Well, someone answered the challenge. The new floppy disk support is supposed to roll out with the Linux 5.7 kernel. This isn't a few minor patches, either. According to an article on Phoronix, the code for Linux's floppy disk code has seen 586 new lines of code, and 613 deletions.

So, if during this period of self-quarantine you're cleaning out a closet and run across a stash of long-forgotten floppy disks, Linux will have your back ... provided you still have the hardware to read them.

I have to admit that I have quite a few floppy disks around (and know exactly where they are). I also have a USB-based floppy drive to read them with (which I'm not exactly sure where it's located).

Some things are just too difficult to give up, I guess.

27 Free Games From GOG

We're living through some tough and uncertain times right now. With many of us ordered to stay home to help promote social distancing during this global coronavirus pandemic, there are a lot of people who are or will be searching for something to fill up all of that time.

Well, GOG (Gallery Of Games) is promoting 27 PC games you can play for free, according to an article on ExtremeTech. They are also free of DRM. Actually, all of these games have been free for a long time. GOG just gathered them all together on one page to make it easier for you to find them, instead of having to search for them through its entire (and extensive) catalog of available games.

The collection of free games include some newer games, some old games, and some very old games. The oldest game on the list harkens back to 1979.

Here is the list of free games that are available:

- Akalabeth: World of Doom

- Alder's Blood Prologue

- Beneath a Steel Sky

- Bio Menace

- Builders of Egypt: Prologue

- Cayne

- Doomdark's revenge

- Eschalon: Book I

- Flight of the Amazon Queen

- GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

- Hello Neighbor Alpha Version

- Jill of the Jungle: The Complete Trilogy

- Legend of Keepers: Prologue

- The Lords of Midnight

- Lure of the Temptress

- Overload -- Playable Teaser

- Postal: Classic and Uncut

- Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves

- Shadow Warrior Classic Complete

- Stargunner

- Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius

- Teenagent

- Treasure Adventure Game

- Tyrian 2000

- Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar

- Ultima World of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams

- Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire

So, if gaming is your cup of tea, you're going to be very happy.

Inkscape Tutorial: Create A Website Background

by Meemaw

I saw this the other day. This tutorial uses Inkscape to create a simple website background using repeating stripes.

We're going to make it 200px by 200px. In Document Properties, on the Page tab, choose the custom size and enter 200px in height and width.

Select the Grids tabs and create a grid with the following settings. If you haven't done this before, you select Rectangular grid (it's the default) and click New. These settings must be default, because I didn't have to change anything.

We also need to activate the Snapping toolbar (View > Show/Hide > Snap Controls Bar) and enable snapping, snap nodes/handles, and snap to grids as shown below.

Now we'll use the Pen tool to draw some boxes. The snapping should make this much easier.

Continue the boxes as shown below. These have to be exact for the pattern to match up.

When you finish drawing all of your sections, select them all and remove the Stroke, but add a black fill with 6.0 Opacity.

That's it! You are finished, but for adding the color you want to use for your webpage background.

To see how it looked, I went to my seldom-used blog and chose the blue one as a new background. While it doesn't exactly match another item, I can see that the pattern is good and matches up wonderfully.

Hope this helps you design an awesome website!

EBCDIC Handling Library: A Ruby Project

by phorneker

As long as we are going to be cooped up with the current pandemic, and to keep my sanity going, I decided to revive a software project that was the basis for my development of credit reporting software, the ASCII to EBCDIC translator.

As long as I am going to revive this project, I may as well make a library of functions that handle data in EBCDIC with translations to and from ASCII. Of course, I would have to include UTF-8 and UTF-16 as these character codes did not exist back in the 1990s.

Why EBCDIC?

EBCDIC stands for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code and was the official coding used for storing data on IBM mainframes in the late 1950s and 1960s such as the System 360 and System 390. EBCDIC is still in use by IBM's Z-Series mainframes available today.

When I was developing credit reporting software in the 1990s, customers could report credit information on diskettes. The file created on diskettes is an emulation of the tape format used for the IBM mainframe applications, the customer did not need to worry about the format of the tape, nor about the encoding of the data for credit reporting. The software I created took care of that detail.

Part of the magic behind this encoding is an ASCII to EBCDIC translation library, and that is the subject of this project.

Each character is 8 bits long

One thing that EBCDIC and ASCII have in common is that each character takes up exactly one byte of storage. But that is where the similarity ends.

Standard ASCII is actually seven bits long and has numeric values ranging from 0 to 127 (or 0x00 to 0x7f in hexidecimal). So what happens to the eighth bit? Standard ASCII has no default action for characters containing the eighth bit (hexidecimal values of 0x80 to 0xFF.)

In practice, however, the eighth bit is typically used for displaying character graphics, i.e. symbols that are typically used to create things like windows on a text display, or large sized logos. This character set can be found on 8-bit machines like the Commodore PET/VIC-20/64/128, the Atari 8-bit line of machines, and even the IBM-PC models 5150, 5160 and 5170 (commonly known as the IBM-PC, XT and AT)

Languages such as Pascal and BASIC allow for display of the characters whose ASCII values range from 128 to 255. For instance typing in this quick and dirty program in Turbo Pascal (for DOS in DOSBOX):

The remaining end statement is used to indicate the end of the for loop. The trailing puts statement ensures the Ruby program ends output by placing the cursor on the next line ensuring readability of the output, and to make sure the command prompt does not inadvertently become part of the program's output shown below:

How does Ruby handle EBCDIC?

The encode method is normally used to convert between character encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16 and plain ASCII. When EBCDIC was developed, Unicode did not exist. Mainframes rather than clouds ruled the computing world. Sony at that time had exited the rice cooker and warmer business, and started manufacturing electronics. Their first home computers would not come into existence until the mid 1980s.

As a result, there is no support for the EBCDIC coding of characters.

That is where this project comes in.

The Differences between EBCDIC and ASCII

I have made some observations when comparing the two character sets with values from 0 to 255 (or 0x00 to 0xFF in hexidecimal)

Source: http://ascii-table.com/ebcdic-table.php

The following character codes are the same in ASCII as it is in EBCDIC, so no translation is needed.

- 0x00 (NULL)

- 0x01 (Start of Header) (SOH in EBCDIC, STX in ASCII)

- 0x02 (Start of Text) (STX in EBCDIC, SOT in ASCII)

- 0x03 (End of Text, ETX)

- 0x0B (Vertical Tab, VT)

- 0x0C (Form Feed, FF)

- 0x0D (Carriage Return, CR)

- 0x0E (Shift Out, SO)

- 0x0F (Shift In, SI)

- 0x10 (Data Link Escape, DLE)

- 0x11 (Device Control 1, DC1, XON)

- 0x12 (Device Control 2, DC2)

- 0x18 (Cancel, CAN, used extensively in EMACS to access certain functions)

- 0x19 (End of Medium, EOM)

- 0x1C (File Separator, IFS in EBCDIC, FS in ASCII) (IFS = Interchange File Separator)

- 0x1D (Group Separator, IGS in EBCDIC, GS in ASCII)

- 0x1E (Record Separator, IRS in EBCDIC, RS in ASCII)

- 0x1F (Unit Separator, IUS in EBCDIC, US in ASCII)

The following EBCDIC codes have different numeric ASCII equivalents:

(which should cover everything else not already mentioned.)

Planning the Ruby library

To build this library, we need to plan what functions will be implemented.

The first thing we need to implement are two character translation functions: One to convert ASCII to EBCDIC and the other to convert EBCDIC back to ASCII.

Given what I have just shown you in the last section, this is not going to be a simple task.

We can implement the functions for all ASCII characters that have EBCDIC equivalents. But, we need to consider that each conversion function will have a separate issues that need to be addressed, the most obvious being what to do about ASCII characters with no EBCDIC equivalents, and whether we should consider using only Standard (7-bit) ASCII or go with a 8-bit ASCII, and if so, what to include in the ASCII extensions.

For now, let us stick with the 7-bit ASCII.

For these functions, the case statement would be a logical choice, but how big are these statements going to be? Thankfully, the case statement is populated with when statements which can be populated with more than one range per when statement. The else statement serves as a fallback when nothing fits into the structure of the functions we are going to define. Finally, the end statement is used to indicate the end of the function definition.

Let us start with the ASCII to EBCDIC function. The naming of functions is important here, so let us choose a name that makes the most sense. We could call this a2e, but the problem here is that when we go back to look at the source some time in the future, we will be asking ourselves, “What does a2e mean?”, and if we decide to name another function with the same two letters, it will cause some confusion.

Likewise, we could call this ascii2ebcdic, but while this makes it obvious what the function does, it could prove to not be so productive when it comes to keeping track of the project.

Convention tells us to create meaningful names, and abbreviating ASCII and EBCDIC to say asc2ebc makes sense here. It is long enough that we know what asc and ebc mean, but not too long that it becomes unproductive to consistently type in the full words. Also, the chance of typographical errors is reduced when we use abbreviations such as asc and ebc.

When it comes to the actual implementation of the functions, we will have to examine closely the ASCII and EBCDIC tables and attempt to simplify the tables into something that can be easily implemented.

I chose Ruby for the language to use as this is the example project I promised you some months ago. This could be implemented in most any language, but since this is a Ruby project, it only makes sense to go with Ruby.

Also, the next Christmas release of Ruby will be Version 3.0 of the programming language, of which there are significant changes to how coding is done. Given what is happening in the world right now, I am not so sure the release of Version 3.0 will be on time.

But, from what I hear about Version 3.0, the transition from 2.x releases is similar to what happened when Python went from 2.x to 3.x.

DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar Exposes Hidden Tracking

Reprinted from the DuckDuckGo Blog

March 5, 2020

- DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar is a best-in-class data set about trackers that is automatically generated and maintained through continuous crawling and analysis.

- This data set is now publicly available to use for research and for generating tracker block lists. And, the code behind it is now open source.

- We use it ourselves to power the tracker protection in the DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser mobile apps and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials desktop browser extensions.

Using the Internet these days feels like being haunted by the ghosts of browsing past. The shoes or headphones you shopped for yesterday are following you around relentlessly today. These creepy ads are powered by hidden trackers, lurking behind most websites. And unfortunately, your shopping habits are just the tip of the iceberg of what they know and can exploit.

In addition to shopping history, trackers can pick up your location history, search history, browsing history and more, and from those infer your age, ethnicity, gender, interests, and habits. Companies collate this personal data into a detailed profile, continually auctioning you off to the highest bidders.

One of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to use a quality tracker blocker. While privacy protection is now important to a vast majority of people, our research on privacy behaviors finds only about 19% of people using tracker protection, and not necessarily of the highest quality. We are changing that!

That's why we built seamless tracker protection into our DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser mobile apps (for iOS/Android) and into our DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials desktop browser extensions (for Chrome/Firefox/Safari). They allow you to to seamlessly search and browse privately across all of your devices. They contain what we call the "privacy essentials" -- tracker blocking, private search, and upgraded website encryption -- all in one package.

When we set out to add tracker protection, we found that existing lists of trackers were mostly manually curated, which meant they were often stale and never comprehensive. And, even worse, those lists sometimes break websites, which hinders mainstream adoption. So, over the last couple of years we built our own data set of trackers based on a crawling process that doesn't have these drawbacks. We call it DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar. It is automatically generated, constantly updated, and continually tested.

Today we're proud to release DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar to the world, and are also open sourcing the code that generates it. This follows our recent release of our Smarter Encryption data and crawling code (that powers the upgraded website encryption component in our apps and extensions).

Tracker Radar contains the most common cross-site trackers and includes detailed information about their tracking behavior, including prevalence, ownership, fingerprinting behavior, cookie behavior, privacy policy, rules for specific resources (with exceptions for site breakage), and performance data.

- Individuals can benefit from it by using our apps or extensions, which has a block list based on it.

- Developers can use it to make their own custom tracker block lists.

- Researchers can use it to research the tracking universe.

Too many people believe that you simply can't expect privacy on the Internet. We disagree and have made it our mission to set a new standard of trust online. We are publishing Tracker Radar and open-sourcing its code in furtherance of this mission. Below is more technical information about how we generate and maintain it.

What is in DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar?

Tracker Radar is actually two compendiums of information:

1. A file for each third-party domain (usually associated with tracking, but not always) containing detailed information about it.

Each domain data file looks like this:

See the documentation for a full rundown, but here is a brief explanation of the major components captured:

- Prevalence -- How common this domain is in our crawl.

- Sites -- The actual count of sites this domain was found on in our crawl.

- Categories -- High level reasons for using this domain as a third party.

- Fingerprinting -- How likely this domain is to be using fingerprinting techniques as a third party.

- Cookies -- How often this domain was found setting cookies as a third party.

- Performance -- Impact of loading resources from this domain.

- Owner -- Parent entity.

- Resources -- Scripts, pixels, and other common resources this domain uses.

- Subdomains -- Subdomains these resources may be found on.

2. A file for each parent entity, associating it with domains.

An entity data file looks like this:

An entity file lists all the domains that an entity owns. These domains are found in our crawl and cross-referenced with domains and entity names found in WHOIS and SSL certificates. This list can be used to accurately determine when a tracker is being used in a third-party context.

For example, we found doubleclick.net on 29,758 of the sites in our current survey (68%). Since it is owned by Google, which has 479 domains in our data set, this means doubleclick.net is being used on sites not owned by Google ~98% of the time.

Taken together, Google-owned domains are referenced on 93.2% of the sites we surveyed. That is shown above as 'prevalence'.

What can I do with Tracker Radar?

There are three main things you can do:

1. For individuals, get a better tracker blocker.

If you want the highest quality tracker protection derived from Tracker Radar, it is built into our DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser mobile apps (for iOS/Android) and our DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials desktop browser extensions (for Chrome/Firefox/Safari).

2. For developers, make a custom tracker block list.

You can use the information in the data set to generate your own tracker block list.

While major browsers are making important strides to protect consumers from trackers, their current focus has been primarily on blocking trackers from setting cookies and limiting their access to browser resources commonly used for fingerprinting. However, they still don't block major trackers out right, which leaves the door open to many other types of tracking (e.g., exposing your IP address and recording your browsing history in the process).

Tracker Radar can improve this situation because it identifies the trackers that can be totally blocked from loading at all without breaking websites. That's what we do with our tracker blocker in our app and extension, and we hope others will follow. As such, we would love to work with browsers to incorporate Tracker Radar as much as possible.

3. For researchers, study tracking.

With all the detailed information in Tracker Radar, you can study web tracking more easily (and in the future, maybe other types of tracking). For example, the data set shows Google-owned trackers are on over 85% of the top 50K sites, Facebook on 36%:

How does it compare to other tracker data?

1. Most tracker data falls into two categories:

2. Block lists, which are almost entirely crowd-sourced and hand-maintained.

In-browser tracker identification, using heuristics and machine learning. Crowd-sourced data is subject to the priorities and bias of the contributors. As a result, it's sometimes unclear why individual entries exist, their importance, whether they are still relevant, how to test them, and whether they break sites. In 2018, Brave performed a study of EasyList and found that "[more than] 90% of EasyList appears to provide little benefit for common browsing cases, due to its large size and accumulation of stale (rarely used or even expired) rules."

Additionally, crowd-sourced block lists risk not being tested at scale, which can obscure many problems like the effect of adding a new rule, or rules that go stale as sites change. By contrast, we periodically crawl a large set of top websites so that we can be both comprehensive and up-to-date. Across the entire crawl, we look at how often a resource is used in a third-party context, how often it sets cookies, how it uses browser APIs, and how likely those APIs are used to identify individual users (fingerprinting). Looking at the full data set in this manner also makes it easier to discover new techniques.

In-browser tracker identification can suffer from similar problems to crowd-sourced data -- it is difficult to test at scale and is not comprehensive. And, if not done right, it also risks being abused itself for tracking because as it generates a list based on your behavior, and your behavior is unique, the list it generates can itself by used as a way to track you. Nevertheless, in-browser tracker identification is complementary to a well-done block list like one derived from Tracker Radar.

Of course, we know we aren't perfect either, and Tracker Radar is very much a work in progress. We hope to continue to expand and improve it in the future.

How do I get Tracker Radar data?

The data is publicly available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0. International license. The code we use to make the Tracker Radar is open source and available on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 License.

We welcome feedback and hope you find these resources useful. If you'd like to license our Tracker Radar data set for commercial use, please reach out.

Game Zone: Last Chaos In PCLinuxOS

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Welcome! The medieval fantasy world of Last Chaos awaits you! Choose from 9 different character classes and discover the war torn continent of Iris! Master your class by choosing a class specialization and become a hero!

- Find new friends in an active community, fight other players and even become a castle lord.

- Join other players at one of the many community events, organized by our community team.

- If you are an explorer, dive into the dungeons and raids and pick up some items.

- Or level up your pet, evolve it and ride into battle!

The choice is yours...

Well, so is the presentation of Last Chaos, a 3D fantasy and action MMORPG created in South Korea, by T-Entertainment, in 2006.

A little history

First launched in 2006, Last Chaos is a 3D fantasy MMORPG. It presents some of the typical aspects of an MMORPG, such as a breeding system, a companion / pet and PvP. In addition, there is the Chaos System, which allows you to join a Chaos Club that rewards players with titles and special items just for exploring the game world. Last Chaos is definitely one of the oldest MMORPGs available on the market. It has been in service for over 10 years and has stood the test of time.

Last Chaos has a somewhat complicated history. Launched in November 2006, it was produced by Korean developer T-Entertainment and was one of the first games published by Aeria Games Entertainment, a publisher of several games like Grand Fantasia and Scarlet Blade. Last Chaos is now owned and hosted by Gamigo. This change took place in December 2013, when Aeria decided to end Last Chaos and transfer the game to Gamigo. There is not much information on the reason for the change, other than Aeria thinking it was time to change and move on.

Now, let's explore several aspects of the game, starting with its plot.

The Story of Last Chaos

The game takes place in the fictional world of Iris, which, after the confrontation of the gods, was plunged into chaos and devastation. The player will decide which side to fight on: on the side of the world, supporting Apollo, or will he join the ranks of Eres and destroy Iris for his own benefit? Each player's action will leave a mark on the entire world, so the plot develops. Depending on the alliances created and the wars unleashed, the future is formed.

Main Features

- An additional dungeon system that the player can pass alone. There is no need to look for a group and act as a team to pass.

- It has a guild system. The guild has the opportunity to declare war on another guild, which creates many more PvP situations. At the same time, other players can bet on the winner.

- During battle, weapons hurt everyone in their path, regardless of whether they are from the same guild / faction or not. It is worth paying special attention to this and playing the game more carefully.

- The opportunity to participate in sieges of castles, where a large number of people participate. During sieges, one side tries to defend its castle and the enemy tries to destroy it.

- The player can not only purchase the items, but also create them for later use or for sale and obtain financial benefits.

- The cap (maximum level that can be reached) of the game is 185, which guarantees a good playing time.

The Last Chaos

The classes in Last Chaos are interesting because, when choosing a class, and when evolving your character in the chosen class at a certain level, it is possible to choose between two possible evolutions, and this can be done when you reach level 31 of your character's evolution.

Titan

Titan is a strong melee class, which can face several opponents at the same time and cause a lot of damage. He also has many health points.

Titans are powerful allies in the fight against the forces of darkness. They impress with their size and power and are particularly good in melee. In addition, they are powerful companions who defy all dangers. Their weakness is magic.

Upon reaching Level 31, the Titan can choose between two specializations: Warmaster or Highlander.

Warmaster: Warmaster is known for using the sword he uses to easily attack several opponents at the same time. He also has a lot of health and skills to support his allies.

Highlander: The Highlander chose the ax as his favorite weapon, which he knows how to swing with great speed, to take down several enemies. If his health points drop to a certain value, he can expose his full potential.

Knight

Knight has a very high defense as a Templar and knows how to protect his allies. He can also be very good as a royal knight.

The Knight is the protector of the weak and is characterized mainly by his high defense, through his heavy armor. He also has many useful skills to strengthen his allies.

At level 31, the knight can choose between the two specializations: Royal Knight and Templar Knight.

Royal Knight: The Royal Knight is known for his extraordinary two-sword fighting skills. He has good defense values, but he can also do serious damage to his opponents.

Templar Knight: The Templar fights with the sword and shield and therefore has a very high defense and numerous skills to protect his allies.

Healer

As a cleric, the healer knows how to keep her group alive. However, when she assumes the role of Damage Dealer as an Archer, she keeps her opponents under control with her bow. The healer is very light and wears light armor, which makes her very easy to attack. To compensate for this disadvantage, she has numerous healing and protection skills, which can also be applied to her allies.

At level 31, the healer can choose between the two specializations Archer and Cleric.

Archer: the Archer is a fragile elf who attacks her opponents from a distance. She has a high attack and knows how to put enemies out of action with her many skills.

Cleric: The cleric is a strong healer and magician. She can save her allies from harm or renew their lives. She also has many buffs for added protection.

This class has only the female gender.

Mage

Mage is perfect for dealing with magic and the elements. She knows how to throw powerful fireballs or force her opponent to kneel with terrible curses.

Mages are perfect for dealing with magic and use the strength of the elements on their opponents with strong attacks. This powerful force also makes them vulnerable to physical attacks.

At level 31, the wizard can choose between two specializations: Witch and Wizard.

Witch: The witch exposes her opponents with terrible curses, which deprive them of vitality to heal themselves. In addition, the witch may stun, blind or put her opponents to sleep to make them non-combative.

Wizard: Wizard chose the staff as her weapon with which she is able to harness the powerful force of the elements to use them in attacks against her enemies. The wizard has many skills that she uses to face several opponents at the same time.

This class has only the female gender.

Rogue

Rogue attacks quickly and with great damage from invisibility to neutralize her opponents. Rogues have speed and high precision.

Rogue is a master of camouflage and can become invisible to her opponents and then attack them from behind. She is very agile and can do great damage with her attacks. On the other hand, she prefers to avoid direct confrontations.

At level 31, Rogue can choose between the two specializations: Assassin and Ranger.

Assassin: The assassin attacks quickly and deliberately with her two daggers, which she can throw at a greater distance and therefore, do great damage. In difficult situations, she can also make her opponents unable to move or fake her death to fool her enemies.

Ranger: Ranger uses a crossbow to kill her enemies from a safe distance, sometimes even several at the same time. She has a high degree of accuracy and rarely misses the mark.

This class has only the female gender.

Sorcerer

The Sorcerer can summon powerful Elementals or transform oneself. Therefore, he has a variety of different attacks, which can be used depending on the situation. The Sorcerer is one with nature and the elements he created to use both for his protection and to attack.

At level 31, the sorcerer can choose between the two specializations: Elementalist and Specialist.

Elementalist: The elementalist can summon the spirits of the earth, fire, water and air so that they can support him in his struggles and he himself does not enter the trajectory. He also has useful skills to strengthen his allies.

Specialist: The specialist never fights in his own form, but uses the power of the elements to transform himself into a metal knight or a fiery demon. While the form of the knight has a strong defense, the form of the demon is particularly dangerous with its quick attacks.

Ex-Rogue

Ex-Rogue comes from the dark side of Ascadia and uses the skills of the night to her advantage to reach her opponents while she's covered by shadows and attack them from behind. She is a fast fighter with great attack power.

At level 31, the Ex-Rogue can choose between the two specializations: Ex-Assassin and Ex-Ranger.

Ex-Assassin: The ex-assassin uses daggers to attack her enemies in the dark, as well as numerous negative spells to weaken them in battle. She can also use the power of the night to heal her allies.

Ex-Ranger: Ex-Ranger attacks with the crossbow behind the protection of the dark. It has a very fast attack and a high accuracy and, therefore, should not be underestimated.

This class has only the female gender.

ArchMage

The ArchMage can become one with the elements and knows how to use them like no other against her opponents. She can easily keep many enemies under her power and keep them immobile.

The Archmage is dedicated to the elements and knows how to use them like no other to her advantage.

At level 31, ArchMage can choose between the two specializations ArchWitch and ArchWizard.

ArchWitch: ArchWitch lets the forces of nature rain on their enemies to weaken them and make them non-combative. She is skilled in dealing with the dark arts and knows how to defend herself better and make up for the disadvantages of her light armor.

ArchWizard: ArchWizard can summon ice and fire storms on a variety of enemies and force them to kneel down with their strong attacks. She is a master at dealing with the team and, especially, at effectively fighting multiple opponents.

This class has only the female gender.

NightShadow

NightShadow sucks the soul of his enemies and uses the stolen power to deliver highly damaging shadow attacks.

NightShadow comes from the dark sky of Ascadia and is a special character class. He feeds on the souls of his enemies and uses them for powerful shadow attacks, which can also attack multiple enemies at the same time. He is the only character class in the game that can fly and does not have to choose between two specializations.

NightShadow can only be created if a level 90 character already exists, as it already starts at level 90, that is, if there's already a character, in the server, at the level 90, one can create a NightShadow.

Another difference, for other classes, is that he does not start at Randol, but at Aaron in Egeha. In addition, the NightShadow is not specialized.

Only one NightShadow can be created per server.

Some technical details

A powerful graphics engine shows us the world of Last Chaos like you've never seen it before. With Bump-Mapping-Rendering technology that features models of more than 20,000 - 30,000 polygons, with only 2000 - 3000 polygons, it offers the game a new level of graphic details and interactions in the Last Chaos world. A filtering technology that produces glow effects and texture technology provides a more realistic atmosphere. Last Chaos is the first major online multiplayer game using this technology. The graphics engine of Last Chaos is the Serious Engine, the same engine of the games in the Serious Sam series, and was the only time it was used in MMORPGS.

How to make it work in PCLinuxOS?

Is not difficult. You will only need Play-On-Linux or Winetricks. Either works well. You will also need the Wine Launcher Creator.

You must install Directx9C, either with Winetricks or with Play-On-Linux.

Then, register an account on the website https://lastchaos.gamigo.com/. Download the installer, and install normally with Wine.

Here a gameplay video, of the game running in PCLinuxOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INx1J-oRKro

Detail: The game does not create an entry in the Wine menu, so Wine Launcher Creator should be used to create the game's executable icon.

I hope you enjoy it, and have one more option to spend time in this period of social isolation.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: mutse

I would like to start off by saying from all

YOUR PCLinuxOS Family,

We wish you a very Happy Birthday!

What is your name / username?

Maurice is my real name, mutse is my username on the PCLOS forum, and mutse (Maurice) on the Dutch forum section.

How old are you?

Currently still 66, but on April 9, 2020, I will be 67 years young.

Are you married, single?

I have been married (13 years) and am currently single (already 26 years). I have no relationship, I don't feel lonely, and I go wherever and whenever I want or feel like it. I am "free" and I want to stay "free." I only take care of my son Korneel, with whom I live together in the house he bought in 2018. I feel good in my being, and also consciously choose a life as a single person.

What about children, grandchildren (names and ages)?

I have four children, who are all now adults.

Michiel, the eldest son, turns 38 on June 21, 2020. He has a girlfriend with whom he lives, they have 2 children. Auke is the oldest daughter and turns 10 (she is my godchild and also a cute smart child). Meike, the second daughter, will be 7 this year (she is also cute but less clever than her sister). They sold their house last year and bought another one that is 200 meters away on another street (it is also more spacious and there is also a garden).

Korneel, the second eldest son, turns 36 on 28 June 2020. Korneel has an intellectual disability and is autistic, and works in a place that offers him suitable work. He drives a car, and last year bought a house that I can live in (at his explicit request). I also do a lot of carpentry, laundry, groceries, cooking and other, less visible things.

Lieven, the third son, turns 33 on July 2, 2020. Lieven, like Korneel, has a disability and works in the same company, with adapted work, as his brother. Lieven was with a friend, where he has two children (a boy, Iben, who turns 11, and a daughter, Imke, who turns seven), but is now alone. He has the children in co-parenting with shared costs.

Goele, the youngest, a daughter, will be 30 on 15 March this year. She is together with her boyfriend Bart. Also bought a house last year. They don't have any children yet, but they do have a very beautiful and sweet cat.

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?

I once had 14 cats (then lived on 'the outside,' meaning in rural areas just outside the center of the municipality (after my divorce, I was a bit on 'the dool'. I didn't know what I wanted, and neglected myself. What, was on the 'dork', but continued to perform my work correctly.

I also had two sheep with which I went for a walk, and after the move (around Roeselare, West Flanders), I did not want pets anymore. I was bitten by fleas a long time ago, and when I worked in the attic in the cottage of Korneel, I attacked by a whole nest of fleas ... and suffered from it for months and also reacted very allergically to it. As a 12-year-old, I was also bitten by a dog by my hand (not much, but the shock has been there ever since).

I like to see animals, but, NOW, preferably from a distance. I also had a horse (mare, seven years old) and did dressage with it. I worked hard to teach her to get the rein, because she wasn't really built for that - it was also a 'vluchter'. I only got them back "after two years of patient training." She (her name was Lis) became 19 years old, was never sick. When she nevertheless fell ill, she died of it. I was sad about it. I have had very nice moments with her, even though I had to work hard at it. She never let me down and did it with pleasure in dressage. My children learned to ride with her (she was very child friendly - but has a proud character - sometimes a bit bossy).

My horse Lis has been a favorite animal. I still miss riding, although I am already 66 (and now the granddaughters are also riding), I get those 'jitters' again.

Are you retired, are you still working and what are you working for?

Yes, I have been retired since 1 May 2013 (almost 7 years);

I still work, but then with my son Korneel in/at his house or I do many (carpentry) chores for the other children. Rest = rust!

Roof Renovation

The new look of Korneel's Home

Family celebration at Korneel's home

I also do gardening, but on a small scale, in square meters. I also do the laundry and the puddle, hang the laundry outside to dry and fold (I haven't been ironing for 26 years ...) then.

Where do you call home? How is it going? IE: weather, landscape?

Where I live NOW. It is currently cloudy, it is not freezing and the sun sometimes beeps between the clouds.

I live close to the center and yet it is almost whisper quiet here (there is no traffic here either), and only when the work cars of the municipality pass are there some engine noise. In the evening, (when it starts to get dark) I hear the roosters crow in the immediate neighborhood because they are already looking for their place to sleep in the birch trees. Now that the leaves have fallen from the trees, I can see them sitting nicely.

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

I come from a "large" working-class family. My father was a worker and my mother was at the "hearth" (housewife). I have 4 brothers still alive, all younger than myself.

I was a member of the Chiro (youth movement), later, after my military service, I became a member of the KAJ. (Catholic Workers Youth) During the school holidays, I started working (as a 12-year-old) on an abbey farm (one vacation) to help bring in the harvest and then with a gardener.

As a gardener, I did all kinds of work, learned to work with the draft horse, steered a tractor, harvested strawberries, clean leeks, wash carrots, wash and tie in bundles, go to the vegetable auction, learn to drive a car (with a Ford M16 and an old Ford Transit with fabric roof above the body - the gear lever was at the wheel and had to be operated in the opposite direction - unlike a normal manual gear lever) and gained a lot of life experience.

After primary education (1-6), I went to a technical school to follow a training course from Wood Technician and succeeded. I obtained the diploma (at that time it still existed --NU no longer - they are now talking about a certificate...) with 71%. - I was tired of studying and wanted to go to work.

After my secondary studies at a technical school (VTI-Bruges), I started working (July 1, 1970) in a family carpentry company. I also did one year of military service (1972 - 1973) (in Soest in Germany with the Grenadiers).

During the period from 1975-1978, I was also elected (twice) as chiefly responsible = chairman - of the Municipal Youth Council in Zedelgem. Unfortunately, the documents about the Municipal Youth Council ended up in the water during a flood. Where the archive was located (it was placed in the basement of the Town Hall), which, unfortunately, cannot be saved.

After 8 years of working at the family carpentry company, I exchanged that job for education (October 1978). I had to go back to school (because I was probably not smart enough) to follow a PHOKT course - Pedagogical Higher Education of the Short Type - to be allowed to teach. So I needed a Pedagogical diploma. That teaching was at the technical school where I was also a student (from 1965 to 1970)

I taught Practice Wood (1st, 2nd degree BSO and TSO), Technical Drawing (BSO and TSO - 1st and 2nd degree), ICT (2nd degree BSO) and the theory about growth, cutting down the tree, sawing the log, drying of the wood, processing, wood joints tool leather, handling woodworking machines, safety, etc. I had a lot of lesson plans, creating / developing courses, drawing work drawings (AutoCad and Inventor) for the papers and assignments that the students had to carry out, improving tasks and drawings of the students, taking tests, showing how to produce a paper (demonstrating) and which order they could follow in order to achieve a good result (= guidance), etc.

I also tried a lot of new things ... I didn't rest on my laurels, I was actively updating ...

At a certain point in time, I went down during the big vacation (2011). I got a 'Burn-out'. I didn't want anything anymore, didn't want to get up anymore, ate very little and didn't do anything at all, until I got into a conversation with a colleague who helped me get on top of it by making sure that I had carpentry on my hands again. Then I just started the new school year again as if nothing had happened.

I taught until the end of December 2012. I was officially retired on 1 May 2013. In that interim period, (1 December 2013 to 31 April 2013), I have taken a TBS (Temporary Availability Statement). So, I have made my contribution to society. It had been enough (was already working as a 17-year-old). I was entitled to an endless vacation and rest.

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

Gardening, carpentry, reading, computer use - especially Linux, laughing, walking (briefly), occupying myself with the grandchildren, occasionally doing some free drawing/sketching (that is less than before due to all the activities at my work) , photography, enjoying my life as a retired civil servant, visiting former colleagues, visiting family.

But, during my lessons, I enjoyed myself at the blackboard with the piece of chalk where I displayed my drawing. The most beautiful trees and sections of the tree were drawn/sketched. I drew on the blackboard and the students did not believe their eyes. Also in the Technical Drawing lessons, I showed my drawing talent in drawing the different perspective shapes, wood connections in 3D, with the compass drawing vertical lines, angles, tangent circles and tangent lines, parallel lines, angular divisions, polygonal constructions, etc.

I can't travel much (I don't have the money). I have done camping several times (in France, the Loire region, more specifically on a castle farm at Bois de Girault) with the children during the big vacation (July - August).

Why and when did you start using Linux?

I started with 'Linux' after reading a magazine with a DVD with a number of 'Linux distros' in it, after it was mentioned that Windows XP would no longer be supported and would no longer receive security updates. I also did so out of curiosity and as a new challenge, in my already richly filled career.

I "hopped" from one distro to another and then, by chance, ended up at PCLinuxOS. I then registered on the Dutch forum (pclinuxos.nl) where I got a certain name, A.J. Baudrez (Wamukota), discovered and also read that he lived in Bruges (also read in the PCLinuxOS Magazine). After I contacted Alain, I was invited to come to the "Brutux" meeting(s). That's how I 'rolled' into that Linux world. I still go there every month.

I am very happy that I have discovered PCLinuxOS (and Linux in general). I've already received a lot of help from DeBaas (both at the forum and personally in The Hague Netherlands, where he works as a volunteer in the computer club), also Alain and everyone here at the USA PCLinuxOS forum. Many thanks for that. I wish I had so much knowledge.

What specific equipment is currently being used with PCLinuxOS?

- One desktop i5 (compatible with Linux) and three laptops (one Pentium and two i3).

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

No, I have not, they are already used to me and I have no problems with their comments. They still come for advice and help. All my children now use Linux (I was able to coax them without pushing ...) on their computers.

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

That PCLinuxOS continues to go well the way it is now. I personally think it is excellent. I am being helped well. They sometimes dare to 'fool me', but that is fine (to tease someone is asking for love). Thank you to everyone who has already helped me.

I have read a lot about what is happening at the USA Forum and also a lot about 'Linux in general'.

I like it and already feel a bit like a member of the 'family'.

But, I still have to learn so much. I am still a "beginner". I hope more compatriots want and dare to take the step to work with a 'Linux-driven operating system' such as PCLinuxOS.

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

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

Repo Review: VidCutter

by CgBoy

VidCutter is a simple program available in the repository for performing very basic video editing tasks. It allows you to quite easily trim and split videos at multiple points, and also join video clips together without the need for a full featured video editing program.

The user interface is, for the most part, fairly well laid out. Below the video preview screen is a nice timeline with thumbnails. At the right of the preview is the Clip Index. When you start making cuts in a video, each new clip you split will be added to the Clip Index, where you can rearrange the order in which they will be joined. To begin editing, click Open Media and load in a video file.

To easily split the video file into separate parts, navigate through the timeline to get to where you want the clip to begin, and press the Start Clip button. Then navigate through the timeline again or play the media until you get to where you want the clip to end, and simply press End Clip. This provides an easy way, for example, to remove the commercials from something you may have recorded off TV. Accessible from the menu is also the BLACKDETECT filter, which splits and creates a new clip when it detects a black frame.

As I said earlier, the Clip Index on the side is where all the clips you split will appear. They will automatically be joined together without any transition effects when you save out the video. Along with the clips you cut, you can also load in extra media files into the index as clips. If you want, you can enable the creation of new chapters for each clip added.

Once you're done editing, you can adjust the audio volume if need be, and then simply hit the Save Media button and specify where you want the video to be saved.

Summary

I think I'm going to find VidCutter very useful in the future when all I need is something simple to quickly perform basic video trimming tasks, rather than having to use a full featured video editor, such as OpenShot or Kdenlive. It took me a little while to get fully used to how VidCutter works, but I can definitely recommend it.

ms_meme's Nook: Yes, We Have No Windows

OGG                                                                                 MP3

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Homemade Apple Pie From Scratch

Homemade Apple Pie From Scratch

This Apple Pie recipe includes both Gluten and Gluten Free crust instructions. I have a family member that has Celiac Disease and must eat Gluten Free.

Apple Filling Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar packed

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

or (Gluten Free All-purpose baking flour --

Bob's Red Mills 1 to 1 Baking Flour recommended)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

6 to 7 cups peeled thinly sliced tart apples

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Pie Crust Ingredients (Regular)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup cold butter cut into chunks

4 to 5 tablespoon cold water

1 teaspoon sugar

Pie Crust Ingredients ( Gluten Free)

2 cups Gluten Free all-purpose baking flour

(Bob's Red Mills 1 to 1 Baking flour recommended)

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup cold butter cut into chunks

4 to 6 tablespoons cold milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F (190.5C)

2. Combine pie filling ingredients in a large bowl and toss to coat, cover and set aside for later.

3. Prepare the pie crust by combining flour, salt and sugar in a medium size bowl.

4. Cut in cold butter with a pastry blender or fork until it resembles coarse meal.

5. Add water or milk 1 tablespoon at a time until mixture can be formed into a soft firm dough ball.

6. Divide dough into two equal portions, form into balls (wrap 1 in plastic wrap and refrigerate) lightly flour the work surface and roll the remaining dough ball into an approximate 12 inch circle, fold into quarters or wrap onto a rolling pin and gently place into 9 inch oven safe pie pan and trim edges.

6a. For Gluten Free Crust Roll out dough between two sheets of wax paper, remove top wax paper, invert into pie pan then remove remaining wax paper.

7. Add filling to pan containing bottom crust.

8. Roll out the remaining dough ball to form the top crust or cut into strips and form a lattice. Press together at the outer edge around the entire pie, brush with melted butter, sprinkle with sugar. If doing a solid top crust, slit the crust in several places for steam to escape.

9. Cover the outer edge with foil and bake for 25 minutes, remove foil and continue baking for 20 minutes or until the crust is lightly browned and filling bubbles.

10. Remove from the oven and cool for 30 to 45 minutes before serving.

Times: Prep 25 min. - Bake: 45 min.

Yield: 8 servings

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Scrappler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Crossword

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

WordFind

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Mixed Up meme Scrambler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Screenshot Showcase

Posted by dpascal, May 7, 2020, running Mate

Posted by mutse, May 5, 2020, running Mate

Posted by onkelho, May 12, 2020, running Mate

Posted by parnote, May 2, 2020, running Xfce

Posted by present_arms, May 2, 2020, running openbox

Posted by sammy2fish, May 6, 2020, running KDE

Posted by smileeb, May 5, 2020, running Xfce

Posted by tbschommer, May 9, 2020, running KDE

Posted by Ximru, May 10, 2020, running Xfce

Posted by Yankee, May 2, 2020, running Xfce

Table of Contents

From The Chief Editor's Desk

Things To Do With Your PCLinuxOS In The Quarantine

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Beef & Salsa Skillet

ms_meme's Nook: Eight More Gigabytes

Setting Up Your Nextcloud Client: Revisited

Short Topix: Plex Comes Under Fire From Pro-Copyright Group

Inkscape Tutorial: Create A Website Background

EBCDIC Handling Library: A Ruby Project

DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar Exposes Hidden Tracking

Game Zone: Last Chaos In PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: mutse

Repo Review: VidCutter

ms_meme's Nook: Yes, We Have No Windows

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Homemade Apple Pie From Scratch

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Screenshot Showcase

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