Welcome From The Chief Editor

Happy 11th Birthday, PCLinuxOS!

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: agmg

Inkscape Tutorial: Sunset With Stars

Pick The Right Tool For The Job

ms_meme's Nook: Who

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Ground Beef & Sausage Manicotti

October Is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Game Zone: So Many Me

Inkscape Tutorial: Smiling Jack-O-Lantern

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Ghostery Makes Ghosts Of Third Party Trackers

Screenshot Showcase

Welcome From The Chief Editor

I don't think there's a computer user on the planet that doesn't realize that the mascot for Linux is Tux, a cute little penguin. When I see a penguin, the first thing I think of is Linux. It's been that way since before I ever was a Linux user.

There's a new project on Zooniverse to help tag and classify pictures of penguins in the Antarctica. If you're not familiar with Zooniverse, it's a "collection of web-based citizen science projects that use the efforts of volunteers to help researchers deal with the flood of data that confronts them." Currently over 125,000 volunteers from around the globe are helping sort through mountains of data in various scientific endeavors related to space exploration, nature, climate and biology.

More specifically about the Zooniverse penguin project, called Penguin Watch, you can help find the reason for the recent decline in the Antarctica penguin population. Specifically, here are the contents of the email I received recently:

Today we welcome a new project (and a new species!) to the Zooniverse. Penguin Watch asks you to tag penguins in amazing images from around Antarctica. Find the project at www.penguinwatch.org

Penguin populations are declining but the harsh conditions of the Antarctic make monitoring them logistically challenging. Researchers from around the world have established a remote camera network to monitor penguin colonies across the Southern Ocean. By tagging images from these cameras on Penguin Watch, you can help scientists understand how and why penguin populations are declining -- and how to best protect them.

Penguins play an important role in the Antarctic ecosystem and are considered sentinels of change -- any variations in penguin dynamics may reflect larger changes to the environment. Climate change, fisheries, disease, and pollution are all prime suspects in driving penguin population decline. Penguin Watch will help the researchers understand more.

To take part, visit www.penguinwatch.org and follow the short tutorial to get going with your first image. You can discuss images at talk.penguinwatch.org and you'll find the project on Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks,

Rob and the Zooniverse Team

Gee ... what Linux user wouldn't want to help preserve and protect the living, breathing versions of Tux? I left all the links intact, just in case some of you out there want to lend a hand.

Paul, Ryan and Laura at Ryan's first Kansas City Royals baseball game, September 2, 2014.

Meanwhile, an invasion of "mites" have invaded the PCLinuxOS forum in September. Thanks to ms_meme, who started a post, users started changing their forum user names to celebrate the mighty mite. For a while, it was hard to tell just who was who. Others were too "snarky" and changed their user names to reflect the snarkiness of their persona.

Also, September saw the magazine's website experiencing a slowdown. Some of the slowdown was related to bots and crawlers indexing the site. Unfortunately, they hammered away at the magazine's home on the web at the first of the month -- right when everyone is trying to get the latest version of The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Thanks a lot, Google and Yahoo! But also caught poking around in the nether-regions of the site were hackers from China and Russia (don't these fools have anything better to do?). YouCanToo, who hosts the magazine's home on his servers, had to block some fairly significant ranges of IP addresses If you were caught up in the blockade by having your IP address inadvertently blocked, please accept our apologies. Send us a PM in the forum, or send us an email, with your IP address so we can attempt to get you reconnected and off of the list of blocked visitors. Everything should be (and seems to be) running well now.

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

Happy 11th Birthday, PCLinuxOS!

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

Unlike some other Linux distros, PCLinuxOS thrives as a community distribution. It doesn't have multimillionaires and/or billionaires funneling cash into its coffers, and it doesn't have the backing of any corporation. Rather, a dedicated group of volunteers keep PCLinuxOS current by developing new programs unique to PCLinuxOS, packaging and updating the repositories, or by donating their services for various tasks that need to be done -- and that make PCLinuxOS truly unique among Linux distros.

Although we've run it before, I don't think any PCLinuxOS user ever gets tired of hearing the story of how their favorite OS came into being. If you're relatively new here, you might want to familiarize yourself with how PCLinuxOS came to be.

What Is PCLinuxOS?

PCLinuxOS is a Linux distro, just like Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, Mepis, Knoppix, Debian, Slackware, Arch and about 600 others. Probably the best way to describe PCLinuxOS is to provide a brief history from the founder of PCLinuxOS, Texstar -- a.k.a. Bill Reynolds (pictured below).

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

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

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

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

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

While the above was written a few years ago, PCLinuxOS has continued to thrive and evolve. Shortly thereafter, MiniMe was released. MiniMe represented a barebones KDE installation, with little else than the bare desktop and core Linux OS files. Designed for more advanced users, MiniMe allows users to install only those applications that they want. Even though this distro uses the "rolling release" update method, new Live CDs were released every year (and recently, even more often) so a user wouldn't have to download a huge number of updates after installing to make sure they had the most up-to-date system available.

In 2009, several developers left PCLinuxOS to start their own distro. While this happens in many other distros, PCLinuxOS hasn't suffered from it, and is still one of the top distros. In the wake of their departure, others stepped up to fill the vacated developer roles. Several other users stepped up to create the various "flavors" of PCLinuxOS. Today, there are several "flavors" of PCLinuxOS available to users, each presenting PCLinuxOS users a choice of which desktop environment to use.

To this day, the KDE desktop is still employed in the "main" PCLinuxOS release. However, all of the other desktop versions utilize the exact same Linux core, as well as the same repositories.

Following the rolling release design, improvements are always being made, and things evolve. First Texstar, followed by the PCLinuxOS development team, expanded their focus a bit, and a much-wished-for 64-bit edition of PCLinuxOS has recently been offered. Requiring a rebuild of all of the applications in the repos, the 64-bit repo now features over 9,000 packages, while 13,000+ applications populate the PCLinuxOS 32-bit repo.

Best Wishes From PCLinuxOS Users

I've invited some veteran PCLinuxOS users to express their "birthday wishes" for PCLinuxOS's 11th anniversary, and share their PCLinuxOS "story." The responses are presented in the order in which I received them.

I started with Linux back in 1999 where you had to reboot MS-Windows 10 times per day to keep it working. A friend showed me his Red Hat system, and I was well impressed with the stability, diversity of free applications, and the availability and full access to programming languages and debugging tools. After testing many other Linux distributions, I quickly became a die-hard KDE-fanboy and a loyal SuSE user for many years, until they made a big mistake in November 2006.

A couple of distro tests later, I found my new home with PCLinuxOS because it had the best implementation of KDE. Then, my brother became interested in Linux, but needed a German system, so I started to look into the steps required to convert the English-only PCLinuxOS into a German-localised system, and summarised these steps in a script for ease of use.

Once that worked, I did the same for my Italian friends, then looked at the systematic setup and found these steps could be applied also for another four languages; this became the first version of addlocale. About a year later, addlocale covered all other languages and desktop environments available in PCLinuxOS. Then I learned how to package and added some other scripts to facilitate using PCLinuxOS.

Tex's implementation of KDE, the fantastic teamwork with him and all other developers, and the desire to promote PCLinuxOS outside the English-speaking community via addlocale still are the key points for me contributing to this distro.

      -- pinoc

PCLinuxOS remains as the distro hopper stopper after all this years. It is the most friendly, easy to use and install distro available. The hardware support out of the box allows it to work on an impressive amount of hardware you might encounter. It is the distro that won't force you to reinstall every six months, or every time that something just dies and refuses to boot.

The forum of PCLinuxOS is another big part of the distro. There are so many forum addicts on it [grin].

I have been using PCLinuxOS since 2007. At that time, I was using Mandriva Linux, which was a distro with releases each year. Then it began crashing, or forcing me to reinstall constantly. I began searching for a similar distro to the one that allowed me to learn the basics about Linux.

My search began on the internet and on forums. Quickly, the name of an RPM based distro was mentioned on multiple sites.

PCLinuxOS was the distro. I visited the PCLinuxOS website, found that there was a LiveCD, PCLinuxOS 2007 TR4 if i remember correctly, which, at that time, was the last test release version previous to the final version.

I used it on LiveCD, and found that it was really similar to Mandriva, but it worked perfectly on LiveCD.

I installed that TR4. It worked perfectly until the final version was released, and I moved to that version, for at least four years.

PCLinuxOS keeps working strong on my machines. It remains as my one and only Linux distro.

      -- µT6

I've been asked to recount my history with PCLinuxOS for the PCLinuxOS 11th birthday magazine article. Those who are regulars on the forum already know most of this, but for those new to PCLinuxOS, or not members of the forum, I will comply with the request, and try to keep it brief. (Not really much chance of that.)

Before there was a PCLinuxOS, Texstar independently produced replacement packages for Mandrake that were far superior to those produced by the official Mandrake packagers. I used the Texstar packages for Mandrake, so when Texstar stopped making those, due to some arguments with the official Mandrake packagers, and created the first LiveCD image for PCLinuxOS, I downloaded it. I've used that, and every PCLinuxOS official released version since.

That first image had no installation application, and was meant to be used as just a live session disk. I was so impressed with it, I figured out a way to install it to a hard drive partition. It didn't work from the hard drive immediately, due to a lack of some configuration files, so I copied those from my main SuSE installation to the PCLinuxOS installation, and added a boot stanza for PCLinuxOS to my SuSE /boot/grub/menu.lst. I think I also had to manually run mkinitrd to build a proper initrd image for the installed system. Eventually, I got it to boot and run pretty much flawlessly, and used that installation as my main multimedia installation for as long as I could keep it running through numerous hardware upgrades and rebuilds. Eventually, all the hardware was too new for the kernel on that installation to even boot, and it (the entire installation) was replaced, on that partition, by the final 2007 PCLinuxOS release.

I was never a forum type guy, (I always preferred newsgroups) and only registered with the PCLinuxOS forum to help get a hard drive controller I had on my motherboard properly recognized prior to the 2007 final release. I found the developers very easy to work with, and tested all their proposed methods for getting my hardware properly recognized, until we had a proper solution to that particular problem.

While waiting for each new proposed solution, I noticed there were some forum help threads going unanswered that required a greater depth of Linux knowledge than what seemed currently available from the general forum community at that time. I assumed that the developers could offer that help, but were otherwise busy with getting the new release ready. Since I had added to their burden, I thought it only fair to offer what help I could on those unanswered threads. I chose the thread that seemed to have the most difficult solution as my first target. The person asking for the help was very new to Linux, so I had to explain everything we were about to do, in depth, prior to each step in the process, provide actual examples from my own machine, and continue step by step until the solution process was complete.

Most of the work involved working in terminals, using the command line. Once the problem was solved, I was inundated with PMs, (Personal Messages) ranging from kudos to administrative warnings that the command line was not the PCLinuxOS way to solve problems. A significant number of the PMs were requests for help from others that had open help threads that were going unanswered. In those, I was specifically asked to provide the same type of help they had just witnessed while following the previous thread to its successful conclusion.

I had not expected that reaction, because the successful thread had been an uninterrupted one on one interaction between just the two of us. I was totally unaware that the entire process was being closely observed by so many other forum members. I became a victim of my own success, and responded as best I could to help those that had requested my personal intervention. Seven years later, I'm still here, doing what I can to help, and hopefully teaching by example.

When Texstar had to take a leave of absence, I had the rare privilege of working closely with the interim team of community volunteers that maintained the existing 32bit releases during that absence, and completed, and brought to term, the first 64bit PCLinuxOS release in history. What a rush that was. That experience raised to even higher levels the respect I already had for Texstar, and his creation of PCLinuxOS, to begin with.

It wasn't all peaches and cream either. It was tough; frustrating at times, moments of despair and anger at other times, followed by that rush of joy when a particularly hard task was finally conquered. Sometimes harsh words were traded between individuals, then apologized for later; personal drama was a luxury we simply couldn't afford. We lost a few of our volunteers along the way, due to the stress involved, but their contributions still remained. I regret their loss, but will always be grateful for those contributions. We all had to learn on the job, and somehow each person found his own niche where he could be of most use when most needed. The glue that kept it all together was the group commitment that failure was not an option. The cause was worth the commitment and the effort, and every person that contributed to that effort has my undying respect.

I've grown to love PCLinuxOS, and this forum community; to me they are inseparable. There are so many gifted people here, willing to help, share their knowledge, and contribute their time and effort to improve PCLinuxOS and the whole of the PCLinuxOS experience. There is truly a feeling of family here, and this is our home on the Internet.

With great pride in being allowed to be a part of all this. I can only add:

Happy 11th Birthday PCLinuxOS. May there be many, many, more!

      -- O-P (a.k.a. Old-Polack)

Back in 2003, when I first studied GNU/Linux, my first Linux was Conectiva 8. It was a Brazilian distro that rocked! Light, fast, stable...

Then, in 2005, Conectiva was absorbed by Mandrake, and Mandriva was born. First, I thought it was great. All the good things from Conectiva and the financial backing of Mandrake. What could go wrong?

Well, it went wrong. Mandriva only got the talent from the deceased company and Mandriva was bloated, slooooow and heavy on resources.

In 2007 I came across PCLinuxOS. I discovered a Brazilian community. I entered that community, downloaded the KDE version (it was KDE 3.5.something back then) and fell in love once again (and that time it was like my first love, back into my life. I felt it was like Conectiva reborn). Everything that made Conectiva great was present in PCLinuxOS: fast, small, light and very well-thought-out.

That was the first Brazilian community. By 2009/2010, that community was dissolved and we, here in Brazil, were orphans of a native community and forum.

In 2010, I entered the international community. Here in my country, we were still without a PCLinuxOS community. In 2011, a good friend of mine came to me with the idea of a local community, different from the previous one, with committed fans of PCLinuxOS. Then, with only love, passion and goodwill, we started www.pclinuxosbrasil.com.br , first without a domain and in a free forum site. Later, we got the domain, a community site made in XOOPS and a national repository, hosted in one of the most respected educational institutions in Brazil (UFPR - Universidade Federal do Parana - Federal University of Parana). By 2011, I started to learn how to package. In 2012, I started to make localized Brazilian PCLinuxOS versions, and that strengthened the Brazilian community and PCLinuxOS in Brazil. We did not have millions of dollars from a rich godfather, but we could also give the Brazilian people a very polished distro, in Brazilian Portuguese. PCLinuxOS is an example of the world I want to live in: Many persons around the world (Germans, British, Filipino, Americans, Brazilians) gather together to work on an operating system, improve that OS and go beyond, without a wealthy benefactor or a company to back it up. Instead, it was just ordinary people, cooperating to make a better computer experience, and, the whole world benefits from that cooperative work. How I wish our world be more like the PCLinuxOS community: mutual help, cooperation and improvement for everyone.

Ahh, btw, I like the style of our captain, William "Texstar" Reynolds. He always has the last word, but gives us enough room to be creative and improve his baby (PCLinuxOS). So, he's the real benevolent dictator. And, I would like to compliment all our community colleagues: Archie, Daniel, O-P, Mr. Neal (who I miss a lot; he was my Obi-Wan Kenobi in PCLinuxOS packaging), Just_17, Pinoc, parnote, JohnW_57, Tele, and Ghostbunny, among others.

      -- Agent Smith

I stopped using M$ (98gold) back in late 2005. I tried a few Linux LiveCDs using my IBM Aptiva (2153-E3U) and got stuck using DSL, as it was the only thing I could get to run on it reliably. Then, I bought a new computer online (Out Post.com GQ3151 $129.00 new, and I'm still using case and HDD) preloaded with "Linspire" on it. That lasted for eight to nine months, before I was fed up with Linspire. I started looking for something better. I tried a few (six to seven). I "settled" on a different distro (Sidux, I did like it), and was getting ready to install it when I happened to hear about something called PCLinuxOS over at the GRC Linux Newsgroup. I tried out Junior and liked it a lot. Then, 2007 came out and that was that. I really liked how the PCC (PCLinuxOS Control Center) tied things together and, it did "just work" for me.

      -- weirdwolf

I started with PCLinuxOS BigDaddy, as this was the first Linux distro that installed without a hitch on my then Windows only box. There it was, my first ever dual boot, and I fell in love with the distro.

It's not that I never had problems, but all could be resolved.

I have continued to use the 2007 version: it has been my workhorse, as my primary system, including transfer/copy to a new(er) box -- without reinstallation.

Since I was interested, and because of an extra 1T HDD, I also installed the 64 bit version from day one, to which I switched later as my main OS. But the 32bit from 2007, updated as of today, is still alive and kicking on the original 160G HDD in this machine.

For testing and as a kind of help desk function, the 1T HDD contains also WinXP, Win7, Mint and a spare partition for distro hopping, empty for quite a while now.

Then I have two notebooks since 2009 and 2010, both doing W7 now, but PCLinuxOS from the beginning.

The 2009 notebook contains, for a few months now, the LXDE 32 bit for education purposes to demonstrate to the computer club XP-to-Linux actions.

All of my computers are updated once per month, with an eye on the forum for special announcements, as kernel and video updates.

Both notebooks had the ATI update problem, but the notification from Texstar for installing a new kernel and the other forum info kept them alive.

So if you are the "forum watcher" in your family, you should inform your "clients" maybe twice a year for a "special" update.

At the computer club, I am Mister Linux now, with some converts always wanting me to do the monthly updates.

It's easy to do, and it's not time consuming as M$es

Greetings from the Netherlands!

      -- DeBaas

Happy 11th Birthday PCLinuxOS

A friend online pestered me for a year about 'Linux' and how great it was. He made it sound so complex, I thought I have enough problems. Then I found a 'Live Disc' with PCLinuxOS in a magazine, and thought I'd try the Live session before I went further.

Before using PCLinuxOS, I was what my friends called a Window's Super User, so the simplicity of what I chose to install, KDE MiniMe, has been a true Godsend.

(I've been able to easily add what programmes I want, and wish to test without having a whole bunch of stuff I'd not use.)

Like everyone, I had problems initially with some small issues, but people at the forum are fast to help. Once I stopped dual booting with XP, it was a lot simpler again.

I know much less about Linux than Windows, but with each day the bias changes for the better towards PCLinuxOS. It was my first distro, but I'm still in love with PCLinuxOS almost six years later.

The most positive reason I could give someone to try PCLinuxOS is the support, safety, and even more importantly, the time it gives you to explore the Internet. I'm hooked!

      -- Tony

It was 1998 when I found my way to Linux. I had already read a lot about it, and my employer used Unix/Linux servers for Oracle databases. So when I was able to buy a larger hard disk (8GB), I put Linux on a second partition.

I started out with SUSE 5.1 (the most popular distro in Germany at the time), using it for several years. When I had gotten familiar enough with the system, I decided to dive deeper into Linux, so I installed a source-based distro. For over a year my PC was compiling software all the time (software installations always include local compilation). I knew my way around somewhat, so it was time for something simpler and more stable.

It was around 2007 when I read a glowing review on PCLinuxOS and decided to install it (no easy virtual installations then!).

Holy cow! I immediately fell in love with it. All hardware was detected, the software simply worked. Updates came almost every day. When a problem was reported, a fix was almost immediately available. Awesome!

Since June 2008, I'm a proud member of the PCLinuxOS forum family. I've had the chance to help a member or two, and am always happy to help test new stuff. I feel like there's hardly another community like this one -- friendly, helpful, and sometimes totally nuts! Yeah, we had a few rough times, and once I was so frustrated with the forum that I even wanted to cancel my membership, but some guy with a Polish background wrote me out of it. Thank goodness!

I started my semi-retirement on May 1st of this year, and I'm beginning to find more free time. Time I'd like to use to try and help out more with PCLinuxOS.

So, after all these years, I'm happy to say Happy 11th Birthday, PCLinuxOS!

      -- tbschommer

I first tried Linux back in the days of Redhat 5.0. I found it too hard to work with, so I came back trying Mandriva, for several versions.

Debian back then totally sucked. It featured an all console install.

I even tried FreeBSD. But its updates were slow.

Then a funny thing happened. A friend called "beginnings," who I had introduced to Linux, told me about a "big-daddy" version of Linux that I should check out.

I downloaded it and installed it. This baby was way more than I had gotten from any previous version of Linux. I fell in love with it!

Yeah ... like most of us, we still will try some other distro ... BUT PCLinuxOS will always rule.

You're KDE preference, your continual updating, the awesome forums. I could spend a lifetime commenting on the greatness of the forums.

The fact that Texstar, the main guy, takes the time to even comment on the everyday forums is exceptional.

There are so many people that have made this OS the success that it is. I have PM'd OP, T6, parnote, even Texstar once or twice. What I'm saying is this ... this community helps one another.

      -- sammy2fish

First of all, my best wishes for the next 11 years to my favorite distribution. It is the distribution I've stayed with the last four or five years, and it was quite a long time ago when I started with it. I also do not intend to change this, because the system runs and runs and runs. I never had big problem and I hope it stays that way.

As I mentioned before, my PCLinuxOS story started four or five years ago after some distro hopping between Mandrake and ArkLinux. At this time, there was a German PCLinuxOS forum which offered localized ISO files. So I installed one, and it was amazing how well it was working. But after a short period, the German forum was closed. My main support was gone because of my more or less bad English skills. I didn't take the step to the English forum. Surprisingly, there appeared a new German forum to replace the old one, so I had a new home. This forum was small and not so active, but there I managed to become an ISO maintainer for one of the localized German ISOs they offered. This was quite amazing for me. But finally the new forum also closed, and I permanently changed to the English "Mother" forum, where I registered some time before the second German forum was closed. In the "Mother" forum, I got in contact with some friendly guys. They told me a bit more about PCLinuxOS, and how some things work. This led me to learn how to write bash scripts and how to package packages, and that's what I 'm still doing in the community.

      -- ghostbunny

For several years, my computing experience comprised roaring in rage at the computer for interfering in everything I wanted to do. If i wanted to show off something to a friend, I had to bore it (the friend) silly while I took care of some housekeeping.

When I started on dial-up, most of my online time was taken up in updating. Update the system. Update the malware protection software - four different applications. I could hardly get to know that there was an internet.

Broadband speeded the process and allowed me to do some surfing, but the operating system was always getting in the way. Any time that a reinstall became necessary, it was a marathon session of time especially allotted, usually eight to ten hours, to first install the operating system, and then each application individually. It was dragsville++.

Then I chanced upon a Linux magazine with a Mandrake DVD giveaway, and I was on the road to freedom. After a fair chunk of distro hopping, I at last made it to the now famous "distro hopper stopper" that is PCLinuxOS.

Over the years, I have used the terminal to set up twinview and other processes. I have found that this is less and less necessary, as Texstar and Co. add ever more ease of use to the operating system and the included applications.

PCLinuxOS has become ever easier to use, and I have forgotten many of the procedures I once found essential. These days, it's install, open application, use and enjoy.

These days, I leave evangelizing to my younger friends, but if anyone mentions having problems with their os, I suggest PCLinuxOS and offer a disk with a nearly current version.

Linux exists because of the generosity of the human spirit, and PCLinuxOS exists because of the generosity of Texstar and his band of willing helpers, whom I envy because I can't be one; I'm too technically challenged.

Happy anniversary, and may there be many more.

      -- jaydot

Writing about my experiences as a PCLinuxOS user turned out to be very problematic indeed, and the reason was that this distribution has always been so unproblematic. How can you say anything interesting about something that has always worked well?

Well, almost always. When the KDE developers stopped supporting KDE 3, I wasn't happy -- not because KDE 4 wasn't a better desktop environment, but because it was more or less forced upon us before some programs written for it worked at all. I had used Kaffeine for watching digital television, and suddenly I was forced to search for alternatives -- and it took a very long time before Kaffeine worked well again. The same could be said about the PIM packages.

But this was not a problem with PCLinuxOS; it was a KDE problem, and PCLinuxOS actually offered alternatives to KDE.

For a decade, most bugs have usually been fixed before I've become aware of them.

Once I did stop posting to the forum for several months, simply because one of the administrators made me so angry. But that didn't mean that I stopped using PCLinuxOS (and that administrator is long gone).

I didn't come to Linux from Windows. I came to Linux from OS/2, which I would probably still be using if IBM hadn't let Windows 95 take over the market. Even before that, I didn't run MS-DOS. Instead, I ran DR-DOS (with 4DOS as the command interpreter), and my dislike of Microsoft actually began when the company artificially made Windows 3.1 incompatible with DR-DOS. (The feeling has, of course, grown stronger over the years, and with better reason.)

Then I tried Linux. I did so out of curiosity, not because I thought that all proprietary software was evil. (I'm not quite convinced even today, although I've become more and more suspicious of commercial software.)

My first Linux distribution was Slackware. I bought it 20 years ago in a local bookstore as part of a package consisting of three distros and a book. I had considered simply downloading it, but that was not really a practical alternative for me: at the time, my Internet connection was such that just to download a new kernel could take over 24 hours -- after which one had to configure and compile it.

The kernel was smaller that today, and configuring it from scratch didn't take that much time. But having to compile almost everything did, so when that same bookstore a year later offered a package of Red Hat Linux, I was naturally interested. It seemed that Red Hat came with something called RPM files. That is to say, with precompiled packages.

And even better: some other distributions also used RPM packages.

I soon realized that this didn't mean that I could freely install SUSE packages on my Red Hat box without messing it up completely, but a little later I discovered Mandrake. After switching distros once more, I really could install quite a number of Red Hat packages on a Mandrake system. It was even possible to "upgrade" Red Hat to Mandrake without doing a complete reinstall. And I preferred Mandrake over Red Hat, as it came with the KDE desktop as default, and was optimized for newer processors. Red Hat came with that Gnome thingy.

Then, around eleven years ago, I started to look for a Live CD. Even in the early 'nineties some distributions would run from a CD, but at the beginning of this millennium the only distro that came on live CDs seemed to be the Debian based Knoppix.

Or so I thought. Until I stumbled upon an Internet page where Texstar announced his new distro. Now, I recognized the pseudonym Texstar, as I had used his excellent KDE packages for Mandrake, so I immediately decided to try out his new live CD. Within a week, I had installed it on my hard drive, and within two weeks I had uninstalled all other distros. (Not because I didn't like them, but I liked PCLinuxOS more, and the space on the drive was limited.)

I had a young relative, whose ancient PC I had kept in working order for several years, ever since I had convinced him to install Linux on it. So I also informed him that I had found a better version of Linux.

"But I don't need it", he said.

"Yes, you do", I said. "It's more stable, and it's a rolling release, so it's easier to maintain ..."

"But I don't need Linux", he said. "I've got a new computer and it's a real Windows machine."

And there it stood.

"But I can still install this new version of Linux on it", I said.

"But this is a real Windows machine", he said. "I can even watch videos on it."

"But you could watch videos on your old computer too", I said.

"But not without lots of dropouts", he said. "And now I have a Windows machine."

"Your new machine is ten times more powerful and has twenty times more RAM."

"Yes", he said. "I'm so glad that I finally have a Windows machine."

You can't win them all. Needless to say, I haven't kept his Windows machine in working order. These days, I only try to help people running PCLinuxOS.

And myself -- I've tested dozens of other distros, but I haven't found any reason to switch.

      -- Bald Brick

I first came across Texstar some time ago. I was trying to use Linux, and making a bit of a mess of it. My early attempts to install Linux were farcical. I think I managed to install Debian once, but never got past the command line. One day, I got Mandrake from a Magazine cover, and not only installed it, but managed to get to a desktop. It came out at 800x600, and looked like the sort of desktop on a child's toy computer, but I soon discovered the benefits of linking up with the community and learned how to get the resolution right and change the appearance.

I was making progress. I seem to remember doing an update through urpmi, including an updated kernel, which totally borked it! Meanwhile some selected programs and updates had to be paid for, and at that time, I was not committed enough to part with cash. I discovered an "unofficial" repository, called "Texstar." I didn't even realise that Texstar was a person. I thought maybe it was another business, but what I did find is that I could get programs from there. I soon joined his WebSite, pclinuxonline, where I had a few little exchanges. I remember Texstar announcing that he had other plans, and would not be creating more updates for Mandrake.

At this point, I tried Gentoo. Strangely enough, although it took a very long time to install, with stuff being built from scratch and the computer often being left overnight to complete tasks, it wasn't as difficult as Debian or others, just time-consuming. It was a little while later that I created a spare partition and decided to have another go at Mandrake. Apart from Gentoo, it was the only one I could install and get to a graphical desktop!

Anyway I did a search for Texstar, and instead of doing 3rd party packages for Mandrake, he had started his own distro, PCLinuxOS. I think it was about version 0.80a or 0.81 when I first tried it. I have to say that one of the things that tempted me to try Gentoo was the speed promise, that a distro compiled for my exact processor should go faster than a general purpose one. Compared to Mandrake, the difference was huge. But then I installed PCLinuxOS from a LiveCD, and I could not see any speed difference between it and Gentoo. Wow! Also, as for the graphics ... I did spend a while stealing wallpapers and themes and copying them to Gentoo, before one day deciding -- what's the point in all the waiting around with Gentoo, when PCLinuxOS goes just as quickly, and for a fraction of the effort. I've been using PCLinuxOS ever since.

One of the old bylines of PCLinuxOS was "The distro-hopper stopper" and, for me that has proved to be the case. I've tried to keep up with trends, having a look at Mint and Ubuntu on a spare partition. Ubuntu invariably makes me nervous -- worrying that it might overwrite my data partition. You're never sure what it's going to do. Mint took forever, and I wasn't too impressed. It's the updating. How complicated can you make Synaptic, and why do you need other programs working alongside it?

Over the years, I've seen a few changes. People coming and going. Some of the team have been marvellous, but a few have brought in their own nostrums and prejudices about certain programs and matters. Yes, "Smart" might be a more powerful update and install manager than "Synaptic", but you need a degree in rocket science to use it! Even during some difficult times, Texstar has kept the project on an even keel.

I remember starting a temporary website, when the official one went down. The naysayers were lining up saying that PCLinuxOS had died. The truth was that PCLinuxOS had made itself very unpopular with the company hosting the forums. It had made itself rather too popular with too many other people, and the service provider couldn't handle the traffic.

I've done some time as a moderator, though not any more. Fine by me, I don't visit the forums like I used to. I very rarely have the problems that other people do, and therefore I really don't know how to fix them. When I have a problem, I usually find the answer either on the forum or elsewhere on the net (not all problems are down to PCLinuxOS; some are down to the actual applications). I very rarely need to though. I might not show myself a lot these days, but I am using PCLinuxOS exclusively now. No other Linux on any of my computers, and I've left a space for Windows but never installed it. There is only one program I need it for, in any case, which runs on wine, but involves communication with a remote control handset through the parallel port. Unfortunately, recent kernel changes seem to have messed that up a little. So maybe in a year's time, if I change my TV or something, I might need to go install Windows for that purpose only! I wouldn't connect to the net with it, that's for sure!

I've got a few friends whose old-ish laptops have been rescued using PCLinuxOS with the LXDE or XFCE desktop. I generally put a panel at the top or left of the screen, with the programs they actually use, so they rarely need to use the Menu. They don't get adverts thrown at them. Their computers are not slowed down by time-crippled, computer-crippling products from Norton or McAfee. Free software, setting their computers free, too!

PCLinuxOS, still radically simple after all this time!

      -- DaveCS

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: agmg

by agmg as told to Smileeb

How old are you?

On October 27th, I turned 36.

Married, single or what?

Married since 2006 with my wife, Georgia.

Children, grandchildren?

I have two sons, Emmanuel, 7 yrs old and John, 5 yrs old.

Retired or working and for how long and at what.

I work for a big wholesale company as a Graphic Designer/Photographer. I've been there for 5 years now. Before that, I was employed on a clothing decoration company, working on embroidery and strass design.

What is the area you live in like. Weather, Quietness, Scenery.

I live in Thessaloniki, Greece's second biggest city. I rent a small house away from the city's center, in a quiet neighborhood, close to my sons' schools. This house has a small yard for the children to play, and it's cozy and warm. I like living a quiet life, so this house is perfect for me. The weather is mostly warm and sunny, although at times too humid.

Are you handy with your hands and have any hobbies.

I would say that I'm good at sketching and drawing, although I don't really practice that skill any more. Computers are my hobbies, and I wish I had chosen a profession that is more computer-related. I'm not complaining, though, because I like to create and experiment with new stuff, and that is what Graphic Design offers me. I'm also a big movies fan.

What is your education level?

I've finished high school and then studied Graphic Design for two years in a private institution. Right after that, I started working.

Do you like to travel, go camping?

I like to travel but unfortunately my finances don't allow me to do that very often. My parents live in a small island in Cyclades, so we get to visit them for summer holidays, almost every year. I hope that we will have the chance to travel more often in the years to come (and my sons have grown a little older).

What caused you to try Linux and join this forum?

The main reason that caused my to try Linux was curiosity. Since I like messing with computers and learning new stuff, I wanted to see what this alternative OS was about. My first experience was back in 2010 with Ubuntu and GNOME 2.32. After a lot of distro-hopping, and as I was getting more familiar with Linux, I was intrigued by the rolling-release feature that some distros offered. That's how I installed PCLinuxOS on my laptop, sometime around 2011. I wasn't a big fan of KDE at first, but I've grown to like it, and it has become my favorite desktop environment ever since. Once I've met PCLinuxOS, I was hooked. I had never seen another distro working so great and trouble-free, and no other community was so warm and helpful as the one we have. I still try other distros occasionally, but PCLinuxOS is my number one and the OS I use 99% of my time. I wish I could be completely Windows-free, but I still need it for a couple of Graphic Design programs that I can't do without.

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

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

Inkscape Tutorial: Sunset With Stars

by Meemaw

We did a sunset project earlier, but the stars in this one use a different process, so we'll do it anyway. This month's magazine cover was made using this same method.

For this project I downloaded a free clipart image (the elephants) and will export that into the project pretty soon.

With Inkscape open, start a new drawing. I used US Letter size in portrait orientation (990 px tall and 765 px wide). Create a rectangle the same size as your page, with no stroke and blue fill (just so it's visible, because later we will change it). Create another rectangle the same width as your page and about 1/3 the height, filled with black.

Using the Pencil tool, draw an uneven shape across the black rectangle and around the bottom of your page, connecting back to itself. This will make the land.

With your irregular shape chosen, hold down <SHIFT> and select your black rectangle. Go to Object > Clip > Set to form your ground silhouette.

At this point, I imported the silhouette clipart, resized it and placed it into the picture. Now would be a good time to save your work.

Now, we will work on the sky. Since the sun is setting, we'll need to illustrate this with a gradient. Click on your blue rectangle, make sure you have your Properties window open, and change the fill from solid color to linear gradient. In the properties window, click on Edit, then click on the Add Stop button twice so you can make four colors. From top to bottom it will be dark blue (so dark it's almost black), a lighter blue, yellow and orange. When you get your colors set, close the gradient editor and click on the Gradient tool at the left side of the program window. You can choose whatever colors look good to you, but the colors I used in the image below are as follows;

dark blue 1a1a2cff, blue 425495ff, yellow c2a908ff and orange c33b06ff

You will want the dark blue at the top, so grab the handle at the left and move it to the center of your picture towards the top. Then grab the handle on the other end and move it towards the bottom of the picture. Mine is below. You can move the handles wherever they look good to you. When you get it the way you want it, save your work.

It's time to do the stars. Rather than duplicate them a hundred times and then have to move and resize them all, we're going to use a different command. First, though, we have to make one star. Using the Star/Pentagon tool at the left of your screen, create a star you want to use. I did a six-pointed star with a small circle in the center. I did it by creating the star, six-pointed with the spoke ratio around .08, then the circle, and made sure the fill was white on both (and no stroke). Then I selected them both and, using the Align and Distribute tool, centered them both ways, then grouped them.

When yours is created, change the blur to 5, and reduce the size of the star, placing it near the top left corner of your picture. Save your work.

Now we are going to make a bunch of stars. With your star still selected, click on Edit > Clone > Create Tiled Clones. A window with many tabs will appear.

Each of these tabs will affect your group now, depending on the settings. I will give you the settings I used, but I will try to explain a bit along the way.

In the first tab, Symmetry, we want to designate how we want them to be spread. The default is P1: Simple translation, and I'm going to use that. Other choices are possible. Then below, we need to indicate how big our group of clones will be. We can use columns and rows of clones or we can use a width and height measurement. I will use a width of 700 and a height of 250. Notice at the bottom of the window we see three buttons: Remove, Unclump and Create. With those three buttons we will be able to change our settings and see the results very easily. If we click Create now, with no other settings, this is what we will get:

At this point all our stars are exactly alike and are lined up like soldiers in formation, and not like real stars at all. Click Remove. Next, we will change some numbers in the Shift tab. I am going to change Shift X - Per column to 60%, then Shift Y - Per row to 60%, then make both Randomize settings 100%. Clicking Create again, I get this:

Well, that's better. It looks more like a random scattering of stars. If you don't like the one that appears, you can always click Remove and then click Create again, and the Randomize setting will make it look different. However, all the stars are the same size and brightness, so we will have to do something about that, so go to the Scale tab, and set both Randomize settings to 50%.

Let's do one more thing. Click the Blur and Opacity tab, and set Fadeout - Randomize to 100%.

When you get it the way you want it, close the Create Tiled Clones window. As a last thought, if you think your stars are still too bright for a sunset, you could click back in the Fill & Stroke window and set the opacity down to your liking. Save your work, then export your page.

Pick The Right Tool For The Job

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Let me give you a tip: match the task you want to complete with the "most capable" computer you have.

If you're trying to use, say ... OpenShot, to merge video clips (as was my case) or otherwise create a video, plan ahead and try to avoid doing so on a computer with a single core processor. Egads!

Oh, it's not that it won't work. It will. Eventually, it will get through the task. Eventually is the key word here. But man, is it P-A-I-N-F-U-L-L-Y slow. Let me tell you!

I have a Toshiba Satellite L305-S5957 laptop. It was given to me by its solitary previous owner -- my day shift team leader at the hospital where I work. It originally ran Windows Vista, but that copy went belly up (as a lot of Windows installations tend to do), and the recovery partition on the laptop's hard drive was also corrupt. This laptop has an Intel Celeron processor. A single core Intel Celeron processor.

Of course, he hadn't made the re-installation disks (as many Windows users fail to do), so I installed PCLinuxOS with the Xfce desktop on it for him. I kept it updated for him for about a year, but he briefly left the hospital where I work to pursue other opportunities. When he left, he still hadn't quite gotten the hang of performing the updates himself on a regular basis. It simply wasn't a task that was within his "comfort zone." So, he checked on getting Windows 7 installed. With the cost of the operating system, they wanted $300 (U.S.) to install it and get it all running.

His response was to simply buy a newer laptop with Windows 7 already installed -- for the same amount of money. He then offered me his "old" laptop. All I had to do was purchase a new power supply (only $8 on Amazon.com). Of course, I accepted.

When I brought it home, I reinstalled PCLinuxOS from Ika's awesome Xfce remaster. I now use the Toshiba fairly regularly. It's a fine computer. I'm usually fairly aware of the limitations its single core Celeron processor imposes. Due to the fast clock speed of the processor (2.2 GHz), it performs most tasks without even so much as a blink. It serves many of my purposes (checking email, writing magazine articles, laying out magazine articles for the PDF in Scribus, etc.) quite well.

But then there's the problem of processing video. I'm very aware of how processor intensive a task it is to work with video files.

Sure, I have several multi-core computers around here. A few with dual core processors, and my custom desktop that I built, which has eight cores. So, without even thinking, I transferred the videos from another of my laptops (an IBM Thinkpad T42) with an even slower single core processor (an Intel Centrino running at 1.7 GHz), via gsshfs (installed on all of my computers so I can easily share files between the various computers running throughout the house). The videos were ones that had been sitting on my T42 since last year, from the birth of my son. I finally decided to put them all together into a DVD, but knew I didn't want to do that from the T42. It simply isn't up to the task, as much as the other computers I possess.

So, I installed OpenShot from the PCLinuxOS repository on the Toshiba. I must not have given much of a thought to the Toshiba's single core Celeron processor when installing it. Now, a task that would only take a matter of minutes on my eight core desktop (which I should have used), is now taking well over an hour to complete. In fact, I wrote this entire article on the T42 during the time that the Toshiba was processing the video, and still had time to watch the start of a Kansas City Royals baseball game.

Oh, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with a computer with a single core processor. Especially, if that's all you've got. But if you have a "more capable" computer, one that is capable of getting the job done in much less time, save the frustration and just use the more capable computer.

Mea culpa. Lesson learned. Match the task at hand to the computer most capable of handling the task. I already knew how processor-intensive video processing is, and I fell short by not using the most capable computer for the task. I paid the price with time. Next time, I'll plan ahead to use the more capable computer.

ms_meme's Nook: Who

MP3                     OGG

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Ground Beef & Sausage Manicotti

Ground Beef and Sausage Manicotti

Ingredients:

    1 (8-ounce) package uncooked manicotti shells
    1/2 pound hot Italian sausage
    1/2 pound ground round
    1 medium onion, chopped
    1/2 cup dry white wine
    2 cups whipping cream
    1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1/2 teaspoon pepper
    1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic,
    and oregano, drained
    2 cups (8 ounces) shredded mozzarella cheese
    3/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Cook pasta according to package directions; rinse in cold water. Drain. Place in a single layer on a wire rack; set aside.

Remove casings from sausage, and discard. Cook sausage, ground round, and onion in a large skillet, stirring until meat crumbles and is no longer pink. Drain and set aside.

Add wine to skillet, stirring to loosen browned bits; bring to a boil. Add whipping cream and the next three ingredients; reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often, 15 minutes or until thickened. Remove from heat; cover and set aside.

Combine meat mixture, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. Spoon mixture evenly into 12 manicotti shells; arrange shells in a lightly greased 13- x 9-inch baking dish.

Bake, covered, at 350º F for 20 minutes. Uncover and pour cream mixture evenly over shells; sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake, uncovered, at 350º F for 10 more minutes. Broil, 5 1/2 inches from heat, for two to three minutes, or until cheese is lightly browned.

October Is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

by Meemaw

I am one very lucky lady. When I started reading the facts on breast cancer, and thinking about all the people I know who have been stricken with this terrible disease, I decided that I was blessed because I have never had to battle it.

An average of 122 per 100,000 women in the US will develop breast cancer, and worldwide, the number varies from 18 to 95 per 100,000 depending on country. Of the 122 US women who develop cancer, 23 may die from it. Let's be clear, though: breast cancer can strike men as well. I read an estimate that in 2014 there would be 2,360 new cases of breast cancer and 430 breast cancer deaths in men in the US. While that looks really small (1.3 new cases per 100,000 and 0.3 per 100,000 deaths), it is still a significant number of men who will have to fight. This is such a devastating disease, I think that even one case is too many.

I started looking at some of the facts, and found this list at the Susan G Komen site of Kansas City, MO, USA.

Breast Cancer Fast Facts

1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.

The most significant risk factors for getting breast cancer are being female and getting older.

An estimated 232,340 new cases in women and 2,240 new cases in men of invasive breast cancer are expected to occur in the U.S. during 2013.

Breast cancer is second, only to lung cancer, in cancer deaths among women in the U.S.

About 39,620 women and 410 men in the U.S. are expected to die from breast cancer in 2013.

One case of breast cancer is diagnosed every two minutes, and one woman will die of breast cancer every 13 minutes in the U.S.

African American women have higher rates of distant stage breast cancer than white women and are more likely, in the U.S. to be diagnosed with larger tumors than white women.

Although men are diagnosed at a much smaller rate than women, their chances for being diagnosed with breast cancer also increase with age. In fact, most cases of breast in men occur between the ages of 65 and 67.

There are 2.9 million breast cancer survivors alive in the U.S. today - the largest group of all cancer survivors.

About 80-90% of breast cancers in women without symptoms in the U.S. will be detected by mammography.

Only 53% of women 40 and older in the U.S. reported having a mammogram in the last year.

Cancer treatment varies from person to person, just like treatment for other conditions. The most common are chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. All of those have been used by friends of mine. Many treatments are a combination of those I just mentioned, along with supplementary treatments like pain management, dietary changes, stress management and counseling.

One of the most recent developments in combating breast cancer is using the patient's own immune system to combat the cancer cells. There are at least eight different studies currently going on in just the United States that are looking to leverage the immune system in combating the cancerous growths, by way of vaccines.

While breast cancer has not been typically viewed as an "immunogenic cancer" (a cancer that can be fought by the body's immune system), recent advances suggest that the body's own immune system can be used to fight the cancer cells. It does this largely by exploiting the differences between cancer cells and the body's healthy cells, giving the immune system something to target. In a way, it's as if the body is using those differences to paint a target on the cancer cells, so that the immune system can zero in on them, and eliminate them. One research facility has developed a vaccine that fights a protein found in 80% of breast tumors. It is presently in the testing phase.

Although the studies are in early stages, they are showing promise, and they are giving oncologists new strategies for fighting breast cancer. Although technical in nature, you can read more about the ongoing research here.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than half of all cancer deaths could be prevented by making healthy choices like not smoking, staying at a healthy weight, eating right, keeping active, and getting the recommended screening tests. I am trying to do all of that to lessen my chances, now that I'm older.

Find out more information at any of these sites (or Google to find more sites):

http://ww5.komen.org/

http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/

http://www.cancer.org/research/cancerfactsstatistics/breast-cancer-facts-figures?ssSourceSiteId=null

Chief Editor Paul Arnote (parnote) also contributed to this article.

Game Zone: So Many Me

by daiashi

About The Game

So Many Me combines puzzle-solving platform gameplay and the careful resource management of classic games like Lemmings!

You play as an unassuming green blob named Filo who has an incredible ability: to control his many, many clones -- referred to as the "ME". These clones possess all sorts of fun abilities that can be used to solve puzzles throughout the game. As you progress further through Filo's adventure, you will find a variety of new types of clones. Understanding and harnessing their unique powers are key to your success.

Discover new transformational abilities as you progress through each chapter. Learning to master these forms and using them in sequence is key to solving the game's many puzzles.    

Filo's endless adventures take you to a wondrous world of color filled with delightfully intriguing characters.    

Ride massive and powerful creatures. Utilize their unusual abilities to solve special puzzles and to smash through pesky obstacles on your way to the goal!    

Boss monsters, each with their own distinct characteristics, will try to eliminate you. Challenge and overcome them.    

Earn your rewards when you have solved the puzzles! Dozens of adorable costumes, ancient artifacts, and bonus levels are waiting for you!

Awards & Recognition

"Top 10 Family Game of E3" - Yahoo    

"IndieCade E3 Showcase " - IndieCade/OUYA    

"Unity Showcase" - GDC/China Joy/Tokyo Game Show/Korea Games Conference/G Star Global Game Exhibition

System requirements:

Fully updated PCLinuxOS and Steam

Hardware:

      Minimum:
            OS: PCLinuxOS

            Processor: 1.7 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

            Memory: 2 GB RAM

            Graphics: Intel graphics 3000

            Hard Drive:1 GB available space

About The Company

Extend Interactive, also known as Extend Studio (x10) is an independent development house, based in Thailand. A closely-knit team of designers, programmers, artists, and business individuals, Extend Studio strives to create high quality, fun to play titles. We are a development team behind the award-winning A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda (Steam/XBLA) and Jigsaw Mansion (iOS).

Some Gameplay Screenshots

Getting It To Run

Install Steam (if you don't have it installed already), then start it. You will need to create a new account, if you do not already have one. Once you have Steam up and running, go to the store tab. Click on the Linux tab if you wish and search for So Many Me. Click on and download the demo. If you have updated your system, including graphics drivers, you should be good to go.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/260530/

My Thoughts

To me, the game is a lot like Nintendo's Kirby. Same for the gameplay. I found it fun to play through, but with some annoyances from constant bubble pop ups as the characters interact. Then again, I am an adult. For a child, this game would be hours of enjoyment, with no hack and slash and bad languages to worry about. If you have children and they are into gaming, give this one a try.

Inkscape Tutorial: Smiling Jack-O-Lantern

by Khadis

Halloween will quickly arrive to knock at our door. Most people in my country don't celebrate it, actually. But I am interested in participating in cheering up this moment, at least, by helping some Inkscape newbies to create a simple Halloween mascot: Jack-O-Lantern.

Step One: Open up your Inkscape and create an ellipse. I used 8.5 cm x 7.5 cm in size. You may use your own size, of course. Give it fill color R: 240, G: 138, B: 2, A: 255, and no outline.

Step Two: Now, create a triangle using Stars and Polygons tool (regular polygon with 3 corners). Give it fill color R: 80, G: 45, and B: 22 without an outline. Resize it to meet your needs.

Step Three: Convert it into "path" by accessing menu Path - Object to Path (Shift+Ctrl+C). Later, don't forget to make the left side into a curve using Curve tool (F2). Duplicate this triangle using Ctrl + D, flip it horizontally, and put it in the right side.

Step Four: Make another triangle and make it smaller. We will use it as the "nose" of the pumpkin. You can duplicate one of the previous triangles and rotate it.

Step Five: Now, create the mouth using Bezier tool (Shift + F6), and modify it using Curve tool (F2). You can click on any part of "the mouth" to add more nodes. Those nodes then should be modified as the teeth. See the picture below:

Step Six: Keep using the Curve Tool (F2) to get the perfect shape. You may need to resize. Make the curve smoother or symmetric.

Step Seven: Give it the same color as the eyes and nose.

Step Eight: Now, create the stem. You can always rely on the Bezier tool for this part. Create the stem using any shape, add more nodes, and bend it. Give it color R: 0, G: 97, B: 0, A: 255, and no stroke/outline.

Step Nine: Now, we need to create the shadow to give lighting effect. You can duplicate the great orange ellipse and by using Curve tool (F2), and then you can modify the ellipse. Don't forget to convert it into path before using Curve tool (F2), and change the color into R: 169, G: 91, B: 11, and A: 120 or 200. You can set the Alpha value (A) lower or higher to get nicer effect. And you can also locate the shadow under the eyes and mouth by pressing Page Down button on your keyboard.

Step Ten: For the final "touch," put some text under the Jack-O-Lantern. I used "Grunt Reaper" font. You may want to find your own "scary" font.

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Sudoku

Find Puzzle Solutions Here

Scrappler

Find Puzzle Solutions Here

PCLinuxOS Crossword Puzzle:October 2014
Halloween

Find Puzzle Solutions Here

Halloween Word Find

Find Puzzle Solutions Here

Ghostery Makes Ghosts Of Third Party Trackers

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Every time you fire up your web browser, you are at risk. No, you're not at risk for viruses, like you are when you run Windows. Hey, you are a Linux user. More specifically, you're a PCLinuxOS user.

But what you are at risk for is leaving a trail of "breadcrumbs" that reveal your browsing habits, the types of things you view, and a whole host of other information that can then be used by advertisers to send targeted advertising to you. Especially at a time when your privacy is under attack more than ever, these "trackers" reveal more about you than you might realize.

Fortunately, there is a browser extension that works with Firefox, Chrome/Chromium and Opera that will help you take back control of your privacy, and control who actually has access to your browsing habits. It is called Ghostery. How fitting it is that we're covering this browser extension in the October issue of the magazine, with Halloween coming up at the end of the month.

How It Works

Ghostery shows you the invisible content of the web, such as cookies, tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons. In total, over 1900+ gatherers of your personal data and online activity are in the Ghostery database. Each of the 1900+ companies have a profile in the Ghostery Knowledge Base, allowing you to learn more about them, including their privacy policies. You can then choose which of these trackers to block or allow. You may want to block only some of them, or you may choose to block them all.

The settings of Ghostery allow you to block trackers and/or cookies. There are a handful of cookie monitoring add-ons that Ghostery is not compatible with, and you will have to disable them before being allowed to block cookies with Ghostery. Those "other" add-ons are Beef Taco, Cookie Monster, and Google Opt-Out.

Clicking on the Ghostery icon in your browser toolbar (Ghostery was running in Firefox in these images) will open the Ghostery popup window. Unless you've gone through the Settings screen (by clicking on the gear in the upper right corner of the Ghostery popup window), all trackers and cookies will be allowed. Clicking on the slider next to the tracker or cookie monitor will toggle the settings for that particular tracker or cookie monitor.

Ghostery will also display a popup window when a page is loaded or reloaded, displaying a list of trackers and cookie monitors "hidden" on that page. The default value is to display them for 15 seconds. The image on the right is with all trackers allowed, and the image on the left displays the list of detected trackers, with the disallowed ones crossed out.

Under the settings page, there are five categories of trackers that you can choose whether or not to block. Those are advertising, analytics, beacons, privacy and widgets. The advertising category should be self explanatory. The analytics category is a tracker that provides research or analytics for website publishers. Beacons are trackers that serve no other purpose other than to track your activity. Items that might compromise your privacy fall into the privacy category. Widgets are trackers that provide functionality for things like social media buttons and comment forms.

Under cookies, there are four categories of cookies that can be blocked. They are advertising, analytics, beacons and widgets. The category definitions are the same for the cookie categories as they are for the tracker categories.

If you categorically block certain types of cookies and trackers, but decide that you want to allow them on certain sites (like the PCLinuxOS home page), you can add the site to the whitelist category. Then, when you visit that site, the cookies and trackers will be allowed on the whitelisted sites, and allowed to do their tasks.

Another aspect of Ghostery is called Ghostrank. Here's the explanation of the Ghostrank feature, from the Ghostery website:

When you enable Ghostrank™, Ghostery collects anonymous data about the trackers you've encountered and the sites on which they were placed. This data is about tracking elements and the web pages on which they are found, not you or your browsing habits.

Online marketing companies need better visibility into real-world applications of their technologies and those owned by their competitors. Ghostrank data is sold as reports to businesses to help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties, and comply with privacy standards.

Ghostrank data shared with businesses never includes data about Ghostery users.

We also publish our own research and provide data to privacy researchers, analysts and journalists. Additionally, organizations like the Better Business Bureau use Ghostrank data in the enforcement of privacy standards like the DAA AdChoices program.

Participation in Ghostrank is voluntary, and turned off by default. This is why Ghostery is free; they make their money from selling data (but NEVER anything that can be traced back to you) to companies who make their living from trying to sell you all of those things you really don't need.

Summary

I think it's odd that a company who makes its living from selling analytical data about trackers and ads, also makes a browser add-on that blocks those trackers and ads. But in a way, who would be better to know exactly how to block those intrusive elements that many consider to be the scourge of the internet?

Still, Ghostery works. It works very well. If you're the least bit concerned about your online privacy, Ghostery is an excellent choice to help protect your privacy. Now, if only someone had an add-on to protect us from overly intrusive government spying on our online activities.

Screenshot Showcase

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