Table of Contents

From The Chief Editor's Desk

An Interview With Perberos, The Founder Of MATE

GIMP Tutorial: Six Awesome GIMP Add-

Tip Top Tips: Basic Sound Instructions for the Newbie

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

Welcome to PCLOS-Chat: Come on, Let's Chat!

ms_meme's Nook: Five Hundred Smiles

Clear YOUR History ... Completely

Dropbox's Latest Fiasco: Resurrecting Files Deleted YEARS Ago

Repo Review: Internet Radio Players

Too Long, Didn't Read

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: Andy

aTunes: A Lesser Known Music Player - The Basics

ms_meme's Nook: Gotta Be Moving On

AudioSauna: Creating Music In PCLinuxOS For Free

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk

Choice.

It's a great thing in life. We are presented with lots of choices in life. We have many choices about what car we own and drive. We are presented with many choices when we go out to eat at a restaurant. We typically date several members of the opposite sex so we can have a choice of mates. We can usually make a choice about where we live, how we get around where we live, what clothes we wear, the goods and services we buy, etc., etc.

When it comes to the commercially available operating systems, however, there isn't a lot of choice. On Windows, you have one choice for a desktop. It's pretty much the same thing on OS-X. Sure, you can change the wallpaper, fonts, colors of certain items, and other small things, but you're pretty much locked into one desktop configuration. OS-X has a few more choices, but those choices are rarely explored or used.

Linux users are lucky. There are no less than 20 different desktop environments that Linux users can choose from, with no less than 12 of those being found most predominantly on Linux users' desktops. They include KDE, Gnome 3, Mate, LXDE, Xfce, Trinity, Cinnamon, Openbox, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, ICE WM, Unity, and many more. Most of these (except for Unity and Gnome 3) are available as choices with PCLinuxOS.

Ryan points at the penguins during the Penguin March at the Kansas City Zoo, February 18, 2017.

But the choices under Linux don't stop with just a choice of which desktop environment to use. Take web browsers, as an example. There are currently around 20 different web browsers to choose from under PCLinuxOS. And let's not get started on the number of text editors that are available. It's the same issue with graphic editors -- numbering more than you realize. In fact, across the board, Linux is abundant with choices in virtually every software category.

Don't let anyone tell you "Linux can't do this," or "Linux can't do that." Chances are very good that not only can Linux do a particular task or thing, but you will also likely have choices to make about which program to use. Even in the past 10 or so years that I've used Linux, the choices have expanded greatly.

As more and more people get fed up with the lack of choices with the commercially available operating systems, Linux is poised for phenomenal growth. The same could be said regarding the increased costs of using the commercial operating systems, where you pretty much have to buy each program you want to use. With Linux, not only is the operating system free, but so are the vast choices of programs you use.

Sure, there are areas where Linux still has room to grow, but even those areas are quickly shrinking. Increasingly, software and hardware producers are realizing the purchasing power of the increasing ranks of Linux users.

Choice. Linux is all about choice. It's nice having choices.

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

An Interview With Perberos, The Founder Of MATE

by Ariel Torres
Translation and introduction by David Pardue (kalwisti) Interview reprinted in The PCLinuxOS Magazine with permission.

Introduction

PCLinuxOS users are fortunate to have MATE as a choice of desktop environment. MATE is a fork of the venerable GNOME 2, which was one of the most widely used Linux desktops for years. When its developers transitioned to the new GNOME 3 in April 2011, controversy arose and some users roundly criticized its interface, arguing that it was more geared toward mobile devices -- tablets and smartphones -- than PCs.

MATE aims to preserve the traditional desktop metaphor and provide a simple, efficient, stable DE which is light on system resources and can run on older, less powerful hardware. In Austin, Texas, Reglue (Recycled Electronics and GNU/Linux Used for Education, formerly known as the HeliOS Project) gives free Linux computers to underprivileged children and their families; a MATE respin is one of two distros they install on their refurbished computers.¹ This DE also appeals to enterprise customers who want a lean desktop for remote use cases, e.g., remote terminal services at scale using solutions such as X2Go.

Another project goal is to continually update the codebase, so it will continue to work on modern Linux distributions. This represents a challenge for a project with limited manpower and no wealthy corporate sponsors. However, MATE is finding new contributors and its future looks secure.

MATE has become an international project; its core team is composed of six developers from five different countries: Stefano Karapetsas (Italy)² Martin Wimpress (Great Britain); Wolfgang Ulbrich (Germany); Vlad Orlov (Russia); Clement Lefebvre (France); and Mike Gabriel (Germany). Amazingly, though, MATE began as a solo effort by an Argentine developer named Germán Perugorría.

In light of its South American roots, MATE is named after the South American plant yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis), a type of holly whose leaves contain caffeine, and the tea-like infusion made from the herb. Therefore the correct pronunciation of this DE is "mah-tay" rather than "mait." (Martin Wimpress coined the handy mnemonic "Enjoy your MATE with a nice mug of latte."³)

Top Image: The Yerba Mate pant, in its unprocessed form. Middle Image: Making a tea from the dried Yerba Mate leaves. Bottom Image: The sharing of the Yerba Mate tea among friends

Another indication of MATE's pedigree is that many of its applications have adopted Spanish names, such as Caja ('box', the file manager), Pluma ('quill, feather', the text editor), Atril ('lectern', the document viewer), Engrampa ('staple', the archive manager), Marco ('frame', the window manager), Mozo ('waiter', the menu editor).

The interview below originally appeared in La Nación, an Argentine daily newspaper, and was conducted by Ariel Torres⁴. I stumbled upon it while researching the history of the MATE project and thought it might be a worthwhile contribution to our community magazine. Although readers could get the gist of the original article by running it through an online service (such as Google Translate), as we know, automated translations can be inconsistent and of mediocre quality. My academic background is in Spanish/Latin American literature, so I felt confident that I could produce a more accurate, nuanced version than a machine translation engine. I am very grateful to both Mr. Torres and Perberos for granting me permission to translate this interview.

Interview

The MATE project founder is Germán Perugorría, age 30, who was born and lives in Cipolletti, in the Río Negro Province of Argentina.⁵ In the free software community, Germán is known by his nickname Perberos; in fact he used that nick earlier, because he had developed an online gaming platform when he was 23 years old. The first thing Germán said when I proposed an interview was that he preferred to not talk about himself, but about his project. However, as is often the case, his work reveals a lot about him, as we will see shortly.

At first I thought that MATE meant "dull."⁶ It seemed odd, because it is a very attractive DE. Why did you call it MATE?

Because of the philosophy behind preparing mate, its culture of sharing, and because of how primitive it is, yet at the same time its efficiency.

How did you start programming?

My vocation for technology began at an early age. I've always loved video games. I learned a lot from them, including English. I slowly got closer to the world of programming through sandbox-style creative and building games, music, painting. I've done a lot, read a lot, reviewed blogs, been active in forums, experimented, hacked, created.

Do you earn a living from programming?

Unfortunately, no, if you are referring to financial support. But it fuels my passion to create. Currently, my biggest obsession is programming in C; that is what helped me start the MATE project.

How was the project born?

It arose from my need to not lose the GNOME 2 desktop environment. I felt very sad to see it disappearing. Then I started collecting everything I could, and after six months I already had something solid.

When was that?

In 2011.⁸

And they designated it as the default Mint desktop environment in May 2012. Did they contact you?

Yes, in mid-2011, the founder of Linux Mint, Clem (Clement Lefebvre), contacted me; he was interested in the project. That's when, together with Stefano-k (Stefano Karapetsas), the website was assembled, the documentation, and all that. Many people helped--people with whom I didn't have the chance to speak.

You must have been excited when Mint contacted you, right?

Yes, I was very excited, although Mint wasn't the first distro to offer MATE. I think Salix was the first.

Tell me how you developed MATE, what tools you used, what is the process of creating something like that.

I must confess that I'm a hacker and I like the trial and error method. In the advanced stages of development, I always joked that I had no idea what I was doing, calling up solutions a bit like magic, without giving any details of that. Perhaps out of laziness (laughs).

What would a "magic solution" be? When you write code without fully knowing how it works, but it works?

Yes, or when you change the location of code and the program runs.

In any case, MATE must contain many lines of code, right?

MATE would be nothing without the GNOME project, which was written by thousands of people. I am very grateful to all those people.

Gnome 2 in particular.

Yes, the version before the one in which they changed their design, and geared it toward tablets.

What specifically was your contribution? MATE is clear, pretty and uses little memory.

That's exactly what I planned when I imagined MATE, and what I really did was take all the basic code needed to run a desktop environment, updated the code and adapted it to the new versions of the libraries. GNU/Linux is a fairly delicate ecosystem; if one library is broken, all the programs linked to it will also break.

You also created applications such as Engrampa (the archive manager) or Pluma (the text editor).

Pluma is a fork of Gedit, the default editor in GNOME, and Engrampa is a fork of Fileroller.

Did you change anything in those applications?

I'd be lying if I said "yes" or "no," because reading so much code causes one to forget certain things.

Was the goal of your project to save GNOME 2?

Partly yes, although one could simply choose to use GNOME 3's Fallback mode, or switch to Xfce 4. What upset me was that as the new GNOME evolved, backwards compatibility was lost.

What would you say is the difference between MATE and options as Xfce 4, KDE or GNOME 3 in Fallback mode?

Xfce is a strange environment that is too loosely coupled. Its CDE model⁹ is not very attractive. GNOME 3, for some reason, planned its release without a traditional mode, eliminating it, to stop developing it. And KDE is too heavy for my taste.

Your aim was to keep alive a desktop environment which is traditional, plain and simple.

Yes, I also wanted to learn what a DE was like on the inside, how it was compiled, how it was written, how it was designed.

Where did you write your code? Did you use an integrated development environment?

The funny thing is that I did everything within a console. I spent the first months without seeing X.Org.

Really? You wrote code in a terminal?

Yes, I used nano.

Why not something more user-friendly?

Masochism maybe? (Laughs).

How does one create a desktop environment for Linux?

I began to rebuild it from the bottom up.

What does "from the bottom up" mean?

As I progressed, I approached the graphical environment. Like when you construct a building, you see the pillars and with that as a foundation, you continue building.

What would the pillars be in this case?

The GNU tools, the Linux kernel and X.Org libraries, GLib, GTK, etc.. GNOME was the bricks and cement. In fact, MATE is currently suffering from the deterioration experienced by GNOME in its time.

In what sense?

I think it is software's normal life cycle, obsolescence.

What is MATE's future, then?

To adapt. I would also like to preserve backwards compatibility, but that is hard to tell.

Once you made the decision to create MATE, how long did it take until you had your first glimpse of the new DE?

One year.

How many hours per day did you devote to the project?

Between four and sixteen hours per day; inspiration or curiosity would not let me sleep (laughs).

Why did Clem tell you that he was interested in MATE?

Clem remarked that there was much dissatisfaction with the forced introduction of GNOME 3. So he used his team to package MATE. The results were seen a few months later: an environment like GNOME 2, fast and efficient. Productive. But in the following months there were issues with the Ubuntu project, which Mint uses as its base.

What sort of issues?

Because the Ubuntu project modified the libraries to suit their needs. There's nothing wrong with that, but it affected many third-party programs, including MATE. So I spent days searching for bugs (errors) where there was nothing, creating special conditions to detect Ubuntu libraries. A lot of hacking.

How many people worked with you to create MATE? By that I mean, once it appeared in various distros. Because at first you worked alone, right?

At first, yes; then I received corrections from thousands of people. Afterwards Stefano appeared, who told me he used MATE in his work environment and wanted to support it; he helped a great deal with creating the website, the forum, the wiki, and he contributed a lot of code.

When idle, MATE uses only 169 MB of memory. How did you achieve such a low RAM consumption?

I removed some incomplete components. I also like its low consumption, especially with the new Windows version using more than 700 MB of RAM without running any other programs.

Do you have any guiding vision for the next version of MATE?

It's tricky to think of something revolutionary; we could end up like GNOME 3 (laughs). No, seriously, I would like to make MATE more compatible with GTK 3, but without losing GTK 2, even if the code becomes spaghetti.

"Spaghetti code"? I'm not familiar with that jargon ...

Nested functions.

Oh, I see. What advantage do you see in GTK 3?

It has support for the latest touch-enabled computers. Although MATE will not be designed for touch screens, it could be used with a keyboard and mouse.

Do they know in Cipolletti that one of its citizens is famous in the free software world?

I don't know about that.

Why does a Japanese flag icon appear beside your name on MATE's website? There is someone in the forum complaining about that, who says, quite correctly, that you're from Río Negro, not Japan.

It's a joke that arose in the #mate IRC channel, because I wanted to learn Japanese.¹⁰

Did you manage to learn some Japanese?

Very little ...

----------------------------------------
Citations

  1. Ken Starks, "Respinning Linux: A Talk with Randy Noseworthy, the Man behind the Linux Respins on the Old Computers That Reglue Makes New Again," FOSS Force 19 July 2016 <http://fossforce.com/2016/07/respinning-linux>.
  2. The Linux Action Show devoted a segment of Episode #347 to an interview with Karapertsas: "Meet MATE's Mastermind" (12 Jan. 2015) <http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/75242/meet-mates-mastermind-las-347/>.
  3. Tos, "Interview with Ubuntu MATE's Martin Wimpress," [audio only] Total OS Today 10 Aug. 2015 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijybh8cyBsI>. Wimpress began to develop Ubuntu's MATE version due to his family's difficulty adjusting to the GNOME 3 interface; his first test users were his wife and his father-in-law.
  4. Ariel Torres, "Una ronda de MATE para el mundo Linux" ['A MATE Circle for the Linux World'], La Nación 16 Mar. 2013 <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1563613-una-ronda-de-mate-para-el-mundo-linux>.

 Torres is an award-winning Argentine journalist who has written for a variety of publications, focusing on humor and technology. Since 1994, he has been a columnist and editor of La Nación's "Information Technology" section. He is also author of the book Bit bang: viaje al interior de la revolución digital ['Bit Bang: Journey to the Interior of the Digital Revolution'] (Buenos Aires: Editorial Atlántida, 2009).
  5. The city of Cipolletti, known simply as "Cipo" by its residents, is named after Italian engineer Cesare Cipolletti (1843-1908), whose research on irrigation transformed the area into a center for apple and pear cultivation, despite its arid climate.
  6. In his first announcement of MATE, Perberos humorously referred to it as "a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users, using traditional computing desktop metaphor."
  7.Drinking mate is a tradition among people of all ages in the River Plate region (Argentina, Uruguay) and southern Brazil. The infusion is brewed in a hollow gourd (called mate, guampa or porongo in Spanish) and is slurped through a special metal straw (bombilla). Sharing mate is a ritual which follows customary rules. The brewer (cebador) gives the gourd to each person in the group, in turn; the recipient gives thanks, drinks a few mouthfuls and returns the gourd to the brewer, who refills it and passes it to the next person. In Paraguay, they even drink an iced version of mate, called tereré.

There is a wealth of information about mate and the culture surrounding it. For anyone interested in pursuing this topic further, I will recommend three online resources. Jasmine Garsd published an article in the NPR series "Tea Tuesdays": "Gift of the Moon, Bane of the Spanish: The Story of Yerba Mate" (17 Mar. 2015): http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/17 /393355841/tea-tuesdays-south-america-runs-on-yerba-mate.

BBC Travel writer Karina Martinez-Carter has an introductory article on the culture surrounding mate, "Drinking Mate in Buenos Aires" (9 Apr. 2012): http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20120405-drinking-mate-in-buenos-aires
< br> Mary-Fleur Tordjmann wrote about the Uruguayans' widespread use of mate in her article, "Mate: Sharing Is a Tradition" (30 Dec. 2010): http://soundsandcolours.com/articles/uruguay/mate-sharing-is-a-tradition- 3749/
  8. He first announced the project in the Arch Linux User Forums on June 18, 2011.

GIMP Tutorial: Six Awesome GIMP Add-Ons

By Meemaw

I have been visiting a site called Gimp Chat over the last year, and have discovered some VERY talented Gimp users. There's a family there as well (kind of like our forum family). Someone will post a photo or some artwork, and invite everyone else to try some editing. The results are amazing! Many of them are experts at writing scripts and plugins for Gimp. These scripts take the steps for a certain effect and roll them together so all you have to do is change some settings and get your desired result. I thought I might take this opportunity to share a few of them with you.

NOTE: These are small files that you place into your /home/<UserName>/.gimp-2.8 folder, either in the scripts or plug-ins folder. Since they only run when you activate them, and are only in your /home folder, they shouldn't cause any system problems. One member named GnuTux created the website called GIMPScripts and that is where nearly all these scripts are posted. In addition to Gimp Chat, many of the members have joined another forum called Gimp Learn. The same activity happens there, but with a slightly different set of members. GIMP Chat was closed for a while recently (server issues, I believe), so GIMP Learn was REALLY active for a while.

Some of the most fun I've had is with effects that have changed a photo of mine into some sort of abstract image, or use the text I have typed and make it truly fancy with very little effort.

Mosaic Lyle Style

A member of GIMP Chat known as dinasset created this filter, saying, "This filter has been inspired by Lyle's experiments on Mosaic creation, posted on Gimp Chat". One of the Gimp Chat threads was by a member named Rod, who experimented with the steps needed for the effect, and dinasset wrote the script. It takes your photo or drawing and converts it to a "Roman-style" mosaic. Here is a tulip I photographed on vacation, with the filter done on it.

Bling Text Logo

GnuTux created this one, saying, "Bling Text Script V2.0 allows you to create animated "Bling" (sparkle) text with an added drop shadow & background." The bling won't show up in the pdf or ebook versions, but viewing it in the html version of this article will show that the purple part of the text also has sparkles. This particular one of mine has no shadow.

Reflect on Ponds

Dinasset created this one as well, used to simulate a pond where the original photograph had none. This is a photo from a vacation in Colorado, and I added the pond to a grassy valley area. The filter adds the ripples and the reflection.

Chewed Text

Member Rod created this one. Depending on the patterns you choose, your text will look slightly uneven or "chewed" around the edges.

Jamack Sketch

This filter takes a photograph and creates one or three sketches from it. If you choose three, each has different characteristics: one is an almost colorless sketch, one emphasizes the darker areas, and one is colored closer to the original. This one is the nearly colorless copy of a photo of our wonderful editor and his beautiful wife.

Crazy Tone Map

Dinasset created a wonderful add-on that is very useful for enhancing photographs! You load your photograph into GIMP, and then apply this add-on. It has several settings so you might have to experiment to get the effect you want. So far I have found excellent results from this one! You can choose a low impact or high impact from your script, and choose different nuances to bring out the color you want. Here I just wanted to accent the vegetation a bit more.

The original is the top photo, and you should be able to see that the green vegetation is brighter in the second.

The forum is great because everyone helps by testing and using the add-ons and posting their result and comments. This always results in better versions of the add-ons. There is also one called Add Gimp Decor that will add a "Created using GIMP" text detail to your creation. I put one in the bottom right corner. Decor would be a valuable tool to add your own personalization. Oh, I also used an add-on called "Render Snow".

These sites are very valuable Gimp resources for me;

http://gimpchat.com/
http://gimpscripts.com/
http://bakon.ca/gimplearn/

Several of the members have posted sites where their artwork/creations are displayed. Feel free to see the awesome artwork!

Erisian
http:// www.showyourownartgallery.com/ShowArtist.php?ArtistId=2658

GnuTux
http://gimpscripts.com/

Griatch
http://griatch-art.deviantart.com/< br>

Trandoductin
http://griatch-art.deviantart.com/

Lots of really fun add-ons can be found on Gimp Chat! Take the time to register and visit often!

(Oh, by the way, this post on Gimp Chat contains directions to add new splash screens to your Gimp, if you want to. Some of the members have even shared some.)

Tip Top Tips: Basic Sound Instructions for the Newbie

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

This month's tip comes from PCLinuxOS forum member Bertha 1885.

This is a back to basics instruction for Linux Newbies who are having difficulty getting sound to work in their new install. (Editor's Note: BUT, this systematic information is sound for anyone having difficulties in setting up their sound on their new install.)

There are a large number of reasons as to why help at this very basic level has become necessary, but while that is outside the scope of this article, I consider it helpful to briefly explain a general scenario so that the reason for presenting this basic instruction in getting sound to your speakers is better understood.

When I first started dabbling with Linux and the many distros available, it soon became clear that those which worked 'out of the box' were the ones of most interest, and PCLinuxOS stood out as being the most complete and easily understood system. I had never regretted that choice until I installed the KDE 64bit version on my HP desktop machine, whereupon I had no sound to my two desktop speakers.

However, an oldish Dell laptop with the same 64bit OS installed at the same time, did have sound.

Then followed many frustrating months of reading, searching, asking and the more research I did, the more complicated and frustrating the situation became. Everything I came across was seemingly written for audiophiles or software developers or geeks who do everything in a Terminal.

The situation is further compounded by the fact that the process of getting sound from that music file on your hard drive to your speakers is controlled not by one program, but by no less that four programs that are all intertwined and interdependent upon each other. That subject alone could fill a book, but all we want is to get some sound from our speakers! The complexity of the four programs can, with complete confidence, be left to your Linux OS, that being its mission in life. The simplest way for a newbie to know what the programs are and how to use them is by seeing them in action, hence this pictorial presentation.

Thus far, I have used a general term "Sound." Now we need to be more specific, because it is the Program "PulseAudio" which is used in the majority of Linux Distros and (if you use a KDE desktop), this is the program that links the other three -- Alsamixer, Phonon and KMix -- which together, deliver sound to your speakers.

Here are the four programs opened on the KDE desktop.

KMix: The only program with a task-bar icon is KMix, opened by clicking the speaker icon (bottom right) and the lower right window is showing KDE Mixer -- Playback Devices.

Phonon: Right click on that same speaker icon and select Audio Setup, and you are presented with the Phonon Settings window (lower left) labeled KDE Control Module. (NB: opening KMix from the menu only shows KDE Mixer).

Alsamixer: Is opened by entering alsamixer in a (User) Terminal window, which then shows the Alsamixer GUI seen top left.

PulseAudio: This is opened by going to Menu -- Sound -- Pulseaudio Volume Control which then shows the window at top right which is showing Playback.

You will immediately see three of these windows have volume controls. Which to use!? Which indeed!

But let's not worry about such detail at this stage.

You will also see that all four programs are showing the sound card, which on this computer, is a SB Audigy 2 ZS. Since it is the only sound card in the machine, one should be able to assume that the system has recognized and will use the card. However, that is not necessarily the case.

The all important program here is Alsamixer, where we must check that the sound card is selected.

Fortunately all the alsamixer instructions are listed on the screen and items controlled by means of the arrow keys on your keyboard (it also helps if you are not colour blind).

To select the required Sound Card in Alsamixer, press F6, which then shows a list of your sound cards which can be selected by the use of the arrow keys and the Enter key. When you press enter, the screen may, or may not, change to show you all the inputs/outputs, etc.

However, the fact that you have selected your required sound card does not mean that Alsamixer will remember your choice over a reboot. To ensure that it does, we have to go to PulseAudio Volume Control and open the Output Devices window.

At the top of the window is listed the card, SB Audigy, and over to the right at the same level, the last button has a green centre with a checkmark. Hover the mouse pointer over this button and a drop down menu says Set as Fallback. Now on both my machines there is no indication that anything has happened when you toggle this switch. So the only way to know if your settings have been retained over a reboot is to -- reboot and check.

The next important setting is the Configuration Tab in PulseAudio Volume Control (seen above), where you select your required 'profile' to match your soundcard and speakers.

At the right hand side of the line showing the Profile is a small arrow. Click, and a drop down menu lists all the available profiles, click on that required and the menu closes automatically.

If, as in my case, you select the wrong profile (you might select Analog Out, whereas your speakers are physically plugged into Digital Out on the card), then PulseAudio will likely crash.

Never fear, it is easy to get it back by deleting the contents of two hidden folders in the user account.

Open your File Manager, check that it is set to show Hidden File, and delete the contents of /home/user/.pulse/ and /home/user/.config/pulse/. Now, even that is not so straightforward as it may seem. On my own two computers, I have to arrive at those hidden files in a different way, because for some reason I have not yet figured out, my desktop has user listed as being above Home! But, if PulseAudio Volume Control runs, the files will be there.

When you restart PulseAudio Volume Control, the files will be re-generated and the program will open.

Now open alsamixer again. Ignore the window that comes up and press F6, to again show the list of Sound Cards, and again select your card because alsamixer will likely highlight the Default. Once selected, the window will change to reveal all of your speakers and their volume controls, and it is in this window that you need to select the volume levels required.

Once set in this window, the levels will be repeated in all other windows showing volume controls.

You will likely now want to do a Speaker Placement and Testing check. This is found by righ clicking on the KMix speaker icon in your desktop taskbar and selecting Audio Setup/Audio Hardware Setup, whereupon you will be presented with this screen.

Having got this far and having seen all of the programs involved in getting sound to your speakers, you can now have endless fun configuring Sound in PCLinuxOS.

To learn more or to become much more confused read the following:

Helpful Reading

PulseAudio the Default Sound System
PulseAudio is the default sound system in many modern Linux desktop distributions, such as Ubuntu.

In PulseAudio, programs that play sound create playback streams (also known as input streams). For example, you might have VLC playing a video, and it's sound would be a playback stream.

To actually hear the sound, a sink (also known as output device) such as a speaker or headphones are needed. For example, you might hear the sound of your video from your laptop speakers.

The above is an extract from an article by Tero Karvinen and is of value because for over 70 years I thought that a sink was something to be used while washing! But more to the point is the fact that while searching the web for information it is essential to use the correct terms if you want to get meaningful focused answers. http://terokarvinen.com/2015/volume-control-with-pulseaudio-command-line- tools

The next article of considerable interest is from TuxRadar magazine (2010) -- but do read all of it, especially the comments by Anonymous Penguin. As I see it, the problems are not the complexity of the programs, but the way they are presented to the beginner, who, at first, is only interested in getting some sound out of the speakers. http://tuxradar.com/content/how-it-works-linux-audio-explained

Askubuntu has lots of information, if you are already very familiar with the command line, which is probably unlikely for many new converts to Linux. http://askubuntu.com/questions/403416/how-to-listen- live-sounds-from-input-from-external-sound-card

There is a comprehensive PulseAudio Troubleshooting Guide on Arch Linux, which is of value once you have reached a level of familiarity with the program. https:// wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio/Troubleshooting

Another troubleshooting guide with some practical and sensible suggestions, but again, the author presumes that the reader has fluency with use of the command line. http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/sound/ sound_troubleshooting.htm#the_steve_litt_diagnostic_tools

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner

Pizza Party Buns

Ingredients for Dough:

1 1/4 cups lukewarm milk
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 1/2 cups Unbleached AP Flour
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast or 1 package

Ingredients for filling:

1/2 cup of your favorite pizza sauce.
2 cups shredded mozzarella or Monterey Jack Cheese or the pizza cheese of your choice.
4 ounces (about 1 cup) chopped or shredded pepperoni or any meat of your choice that is cooked and chopped. IE: bacon or sausage

Directions:

Mix above items together -- by hand, using a mixer or in a bread machine -- to make a rough dough.

Knead the fought until it's smooth. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl. Cover and set aside in a warm draft free place. Let the dough rise until it's twice the size it started, which takes about 90 minutes, maybe a bit longer if your house is cool.

Deflate the dough and transfer it to a lightly greased work surface, a silicone rolling mat works well here.

Flatten the dough into a rectangle about 12" X 18". Try to keep the corners as square as possible.

Top the dough -- Spread the sauce atop the dough, then sprinkle the cheese evenly over the sauce. Top with the shredded pepperoni, or the meat of your choice.

Starting with the long edge, roll the dough into a log. Cut the log into 12 to 18 pieces, depending on how large you want the buns. Space the cut rounds on two parchment-lined or lightly greased baking sheets. Flatten each round gently till about 1" tall.

Let rise -- Cover the pans and allow the buns to rise for 60 to 90 minutes until they are nicely puffed. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350F

Bake and serve warm -- Bake the buns for about 25 to 30 minutes, until they are a light golden brown. Don't over-bake: it's better if they are soft and tender rather than dry and tough. Remove buns from oven and serve warm, with extra pizza sauce if desired.

Roll can be made ahead and will store well for a few days in the refrigerator. To serve them lay them on a baking sheet and tent with foil and reheat in a 350F oven for 10 to 15 minutes or until warm. Buns can also be frozen for up-to 6 months.

Welcome to PCLOS-Chat: Come on, Let's Chat!

By YouCanToo and Tuxlink

What is PCLOS-Chat?

PCLOS-Chat is an instant messaging (IM) and group chat server that uses XMPP protocol. PCLOS-Chat is freely available to all PCLinuxOS forum members. PCLOS-Chat allows you to chat with friends and other users from the PCLinuxOS Forum. You can chat in real time, even share files and photos with other users. Do you have a few friends or users in the forum you'd like to ask questions of? Even if you don't have any friends, this is a great way of making new ones and gaining any knowledge that you may need to assist in repairing anything with your PCLOS install or any other subject.

Maybe you haven't tried it yet. Maybe you think it is too hard to set up. What are you waiting for? Come and let me help you, from setting up Pidgin, to chatting for the first time using PCLOS-Chat.

Let's get started

First off you will need a PCLOS-Chat account setup. In most cases, if you already have a PCLOS service IE: PCLOS-Mail, PCLOS-Cloud or a Knowledge Base wiki account, you more than likely already have a PCLOS-Chat account. If you don't have a PCLOS-Chat account, head on over and sign up for a FREE account here http://pclosusers.com/services- signup.php

Hey, this is all great, but now what?

Well, you are just a few steps from chatting with fellow PCLinuxOS friends. We need to setup some client software to enable us to be able to make use of the PCLOS-Chat server. In this article we are going to be using Pidgin.

What is Pidgin?

Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on PCLOS-Chat, MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in an AIM chat room all at the same time. Pidgin runs on Linux, and other UNIX operating systems, and even on Windows.

Installing Pidgin

Pidgin should already be installed on your PCLinuxOS system. If it isn't, simply open synaptic, search for pidgin and mark it for installation. It will also want to install libpurple. Go ahead and accept the dependency, and then click "Apply" to install Pidgin.

Let's set up Pidgin

Pidgin can be found in the file menu. Click on the "PC" icon at the bottom left side of your screen. Then select "Internet" and then select "Pidgin Internet Messenger." Upon running Pidgin for the first time, you will be greeted with a few screens to help us set up Pidgin.

The Welcome screen.

Since this is our first time using Pidgin we need to click 'Add' to set up our PCLOS-Chat account.

Add Account Information.

In this window we need to change the Protocol to 'XMPP'. The window will change and you will see something similar to this.

We also need to add our PCLinuxOS forum Username and password and the Domain name. Pidgin can remember your login if you desire. To do this, be sure to check the 'Remember password' box. Once you have changed the protocol to 'XMPP' and have added your username and password, we need to enter the Domain field. In this box enter pclosusers.com. DO NOT add the http:// or www. to the Domain name field. You can ignore the Resource window. You should see something like the image below.

Of course, your Username will be different than the one shown in the above screenshot. Before clicking "Add", double check and make sure that you have the 'XMPP' protocol selected, and the username, password, and Domain fields are filled in. Now click 'Add'.

Now, two windows will open. The Buddy List and the SSL Certificate Verification.

Your buddy List window will be empty at this time.

In the SSL Certificate Verification window click on Accept. Once you have accepted the SSL Certificate, Pidgin will try to connect to the PCLOS-Chat server. Your Buddy List should now show that you are connected and 'Available'. It will look something similar to the screenshot below. Of course your Buddy List will be empty at this point, since you have no buddies yet. At this point, you can still chat in any of the available chat rooms.

First we are going to join a Chatroom. So in your Buddy List window, click on Buddies and then click on Join A Chat.... You will then see this dialog box below.

Of course you should see your 'Account' listed as yourusername@pclosusers.com/(XMPP) and your 'Handle' (username) as your own. In this article we are going to join the chat room called #chimpbox. If you wanted to see all the available chat rooms, you would click on 'Room list' to get a listing of all the chat rooms. So for now in the Join a Chat window. You will want to add #chimpbox to the Room field, and on the password field, you need to enter your password. Once you have finished you should see something like this.

Again, your Account and Handle will be different than the one in these screenshots. Once you have entered your information, click 'Join'. You should now be in the #chimpbox chat room, and you should see something similar to this screen.

Other people are in and out of the chat room all the time. So if no one is in the room when you log in, stick around for a bit, or come back and check in later. As you can see from the above screenshot, Tuxlink is the only one currently in the room. You can also see that there was a conversation with Tuxlink, Dockmackie and me (YouCanToo) earlier, if you scroll up. You can chat with any users in the chat room, at anytime.

You can join a chat room everytime you login to PCLOS-Chat. In your Buddy List window click on Buddies and then click 'Add Chat'. The Add Chat window will open.

We need to fill in the following fields:

Room
Password

Then check the Automatically join when account connects box.

When you have this information filled in, then click on 'Add'. Now when you start Pidgin, you will automatically enter the #chimpbox chat room. The same procedure is used for any chat rooms you wish to automatically join upon logging in.

Here is a list of the chat rooms that are currently available.

Congratulations, you have a simple chat room setup that is ready to use. But wait, there's more!

You can also chat with individual users even if they are not in a chat room. To chat with any PCLOS-Chat user you need to setup your buddy List with Buddies.

So how do we know who is online or is available to chat with?

Well, we can ask the Chat server for a listing of the users. In your Buddy List window, click on Accounts and then hover over your account name. This will open a selection box. From that box click on 'Search for Users'. It will then open the Enter a Users Directory.

Click on Search Directory. From here, I can search for all members, or from a partial username, or even from a known email address. In my screenshot below, I am searching for all usernames. Enter an asterisk (*) in the Search box and press return. You will then see a listing of all the users on the system.

Now find the Buddy that you would like to add to your Buddy List and highlight their username, and then click 'Add'.

You will then see the Add Buddy window. Here you can add an 'Alias' name for your buddy or even add them to a group to better organize all of your PCLinuxOS Buddies. Be sure to enter the group name to the Add Buddy to group field. When you are finished, click 'Add'.

Once you have a new Buddy added, there is still another step that needs to be completed before you can chat with them.

Upon adding a new Buddy, an automatic request authorization was sent to your new Buddy. Before you can chat with them your Buddy has to accept the request authorization first. This process might take some time, depending on how often your new Buddy logs into the Chat Server. The same process applies for anyone that adds you as their Buddy also. You will see a 'Request for Authorization' when someone adds you as their Buddy. You have two choices to either Allow or Reject. If you Reject the Authorization Request, the person that added you as a buddy, will not be able to chat with you at all.

Hope to see you all in the PCLOS-Chat rooms soon. Happy Chatting !

For a brief guide to setting up Kopete to use with PCLOS-Chat, please follow the setup guide at http://pclostalk. pclosusers.com/setup-kopete.php

<<br>

ms_meme's Nook: Five Hundred Smiles

OGG                                                   MP3

Clear YOUR History ... Completely

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Anyone who has spent any time at all on the Linux command line in a terminal session either knows about or has heard of the history command. With today's current fears about privacy (or more precisely, the lack thereof), you might want to erase your command line "tracks" by erasing your command line history.

Since the history command is part of bash's built in commands, there is a man page entry for the command, extracted from the bash_builtins man page.

history [n]
history -c
history -d offset
history -anrw [filename]
history -p arg [arg ...]
history -s arg [arg ...]

With no options, display the command history list with line numbers. Lines listed with a * have been modified. An argument of n lists only the last n lines. If the shell variable HISTTIMEFORMAT is set and not null, it is used as a format string for strftime(3) to display the time stamp associated with each displayed history entry. No intervening blank is printed between the formatted time stamp and the history line. If filename is supplied, it is used as the name of the history file; if not, the value of HISTFILE is used.

Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:

-c Clear the history list by deleting all the entries.
-d offset; Delete the history entry at position offset.
-a Append the ``new'' history lines (history lines entered since the beginning of the current bash session) to the history file.
-n Read the history lines not already read from the history file into the current history list. These are lines appended to the history file since the beginning of the current bash session.
-r Read the contents of the history file and append them to the current history list.
-w Write the current history list to the history file, overwriting the history file's contents.
-p Perform history substitution on the following args and display the result on the standard output. Does not store the results in the history list. Each arg must be quoted to disable normal history expansion.
-s Store the args in the history list as a single entry. The last command in the history list is removed before the args are added.

The bash history is stored in the /home directory for each user. It is a hidden plain text file, called .bash_history. Note the "." before the filename, which causes the file to remain hidden, unless you've selected to show hidden files.

The history command does have an option that usually will clear your bash history. That command is history -c. If all you ever have open at any one time is ONE -- and only one -- terminal window, this command works very well. But, if you have multiple terminal windows open at the same time, this command doesn't work nearly as well. It will leave items in your bash history. Plus, with almost all Linux desktops supporting multiple desktops, it's very easy to forget that you opened a terminal window on another desktop.

So, we need a more certain way to delete our bash history. A way that won't let us down, even if we have multiple terminal windows open. Of all the things that Linux users find appealing about Linux, one of those is that there always seems to be more than one way to accomplish the tasks we need to complete.

If you want to be certain that ALL of your bash history has been deleted, thus completely erasing your command line "tracks," regardless of how many terminal windows you have open, you should enter the following command:

cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history

This command will completely empty out the contents of your .bash_history file, but still leave the file in place.

You can automate this task by setting it up as a cron job to be ran on a schedule you decide. The cron job must be setup for each user's /home directory that you want to clear the bash history for.

Let's say that our assistant editor, Meemaw, wanted to delete her bash history once a week, every week, at 8 a.m. every Sunday. She would need to enter the following command:

crontab -e 0 8 * * 0 cat dev/null > ~/.bash_history

Now, Meemaw's computer will automatically clear out her bash history, on the schedule she chooses. This is, in all practicality, a "set-it-and-forget-it" solution.

Summary

Is clearing out your bash history bordering on paranoid? Maybe. But there are some users who go to such lengths as to hide even their bash history, so no one else can come along and track what tasks they were performing on their computer. And frankly, it really isn't anyone else's business what any other user is using their computer for, especially the three and four letter government agencies who like to snoop just because they can.

Plus, if you are a command line commando and perform a lot of tasks from the command line, the information in your bash history can be quite incriminating and revealing about your actions on the computer. Especially in that case, it might be a really good idea to minimize or eliminate your command line "tracks" periodically.

If you've never peered into the .bash_history file, you might be a bit surprised. Entire commands, complete with file names, are preserved. In some instances, those file names might reveal more than you realize, and more than you would ordinarily be willing to reveal.

An ounce of prevention provides a pound of cure.

Dropbox's Latest Fiasco: Resurrecting Files Deleted YEARS Ago

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

That some users might contend that Dropbox has become a beleaguered service could have a ring of truth to it, depending on your point of view. It would be an understatement to say that the service has had its fair share of trouble and controversy.

Founded in 2007 by Drew Houston, a MIT student who kept forgetting his USB thumb drive, Dropbox made its official launch in 2008 after obtaining "seed funding" to help it get going, via Y Combinator. Today, Dropbox touts having more than 400 million registered users. (Disclosure: yes, I am one of those users).

If you're one of those two dozen users on the planet who aren't familiar with Dropbox, it's a cloud based file sharing service. When you install it, it creates a Dropbox folder on your computer, and anything placed in that folder (or one of its subfolders) is automatically synced between all of your shared devices that are also running Dropbox, via the Dropbox server. Users of Dropbox Basic (that would be me) are given 2GiB of space to use, free of charge. Dropbox Pro users can access up to 1TB of space, for a fee.

Troubled History

In May 2010, Chinese Dropbox users were unable to access the service after the Chinese government placed Dropbox behind the Great Firewall. While no fault of Dropbox, it does stand as a testament to the early popularity of the service. But then, the Chinese government is also notorious for making all such popular services inaccessible by placing them behind the Great Firewall. Dropbox was subsequently (and briefly) unblocked from behind the Chinese Great Firewall in February 2014, only to be sequestered again in June 2014.

An early criticism from an independent security researcher was that Dropbox stored the answers to user authentication questions in a plain text format. That issue was resolved with the release of version 1.2.48 (Dropbox is currently at version 18.4.32). A software engineer with Dropbox also came out and stated that Dropbox's Terms of Service agreement and their Privacy Policy contradicted each other, and that Dropbox's famous claim that Dropbox employees are unable to access user files was a lie.

In May 2011, a complaint was filed with the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Commission) that Dropbox misled users about the privacy and security of their files.

In June 2011, TechCrunch reported that all Dropbox accounts could be accessed without a password for a four hour period.

In July 2011, an article in Neowin and The Digital Reader asserted that the simplified Terms of Service agreement allowed Dropbox to legally sell all of your files.

In July 2012, a Dropbox employee's account was hacked, which resulted in a number of Dropbox users being spammed. Another group of Dropbox users were spammed in March 2013, from July 2012 breech.

On June 6, 2013, The Guardian and The Washington Post publicized confidential documents suggesting Dropbox was being considered for inclusion in the National Security Agency's classified PRISM program of Internet surveillance.

In January 2014, Dropbox experienced an outage as a result of some issue that arose during routine maintenance of the Dropbox site.

In a July 2014 interview, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden called Dropbox "hostile to privacy" because its encryption model enables the company to surrender user data to government agencies, and recommended using the competing service SpiderOak instead. According to a September 2014 Wall Street Journal article, Dropbox had been considering switching to a model similar to SpiderOak's, where users have control over their encryption keys. However, this has not been implemented.

In August 2016, it was revealed that hashed passwords for 68,000,000 accounts, stolen in 2012, were published.

The latest round

All of this latest incident occurred during January 2017. First, the good news: Dropbox hasn't been hacked again. But the bad news is that old files that some users had deleted years ago all of a suddenly showed back up in their Dropbox folders (not all users were affected, so you might not have even known about this latest flub). Some of the restored files dated all the way back to 2009. That means they still existed on the Dropbox servers, despite being deleted by the user.

Dropbox's published policy is that all deleted files will be purged from the system 30 days after the user deletes them from their account. This allows users a 30 day "grace period" where files can be recovered, should a user change their mind about the file's deletion. A bug in Dropbox's software prevented some files from being purged.

The affected files that were thought to have been deleted were accidentally restored while Dropbox was addressing and attempting to fix the bug. A spokesman for Dropbox emphasized that it was Dropbox's mistake, and that no third party was involved. The blame was placed on "inconsistent metadata," which caused the deleted files in question to not actually be deleted.

The lesson in all of this

The lesson remains the same as it has all along, for all cloud storage services: don't upload sensitive data that you cannot afford to fall into the hands of others. When you store your "goods" in someone else's "house," you're subject to their rules. Expect your "goods" to be inspected. If you cannot dare afford just anyone "inspecting" your "goods," you probably shouldn't be storing those "goods" in someone else's "house" in the first place.

With that in mind, make your own frequent backups of sensitive data. Storage media does fail from time to time, so you will want to protect against that. For REALLY sensitive data, consider storing copies off site, away from the location where they will be typically used and accessed. A safe deposit box at a bank comes immediately to mind, but there are other choices, too.

Will I continue to use Dropbox? Yes, without any hesitation. But then, I'm careful to NOT store sensitive, private, personal data on the Dropbox servers. Each user will have to decide for themselves whether Dropbox merits their trust, as well as exactly what to store there. Undoubtedly, the decision will be a personal one, and each decision will be different for each user.

Repo Review: Internet Radio Players

By CgBoy

Internet radio is a great way to listen to music and news from around the world. There are tons of radio stations, but to listen to them, you need a good radio player. This month I'm going to review the various internet radio players we have in the repository. I have put these in the order in which I reviewed them.

Great Little Radio Player. This is a fairly simple radio player, but it can't record radio streams. It has a list of radio stations, which can then be sorted by country or genre, and added to favorites, for easy access. It also has a search function, in case you can't find the station you're looking for.

The program has a fairly good and simple interface. So, how well does it work? Pretty well, but it does have some problems. Some of the radio stations it comes with don't work any more, and it can't record radio streams. This is still a good choice if you just want a simple internet radio player.

Simple Stream. This is a rather simple internet radio player and ripper. It has a very simple interface, and seems to only be able to show eight stations at once. If you want to add your own stations, then you have to edit one of those eight stations and change the URL to whatever station you want to listen to. Like I mentioned earlier, Simple Stream is also an internet radio ripper.

So, is Simple Stream any good? It's okay, but not brilliant. I didn't find it very easy to use, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Click Radio. Click Radio is a media player with the ability to play and rip internet radio. However, the internet radio player part of Click Radio is virtually the same as Simple Stream, so I will not be reviewing this one. However, I'd actually recommend Simple Stream over Click Radio.

RRipper. RRipper is a powerful internet radio player and ripper. RRipper can, like many radio players, load lists of internet radio stations. It supports recording of multiple radio stations at the same time, which is quite nice. RRipper can also display the lyrics of the song you're listening to.

RRipper has some other features, but unfortunately, I just don't have the time to review every program in great detail. So, would you recommend RRipper? Yes, I would. I found it to work very well for recording and listening to internet radio.

aTunes. This is another media player that can play internet radio streams. aTunes can load a list of internet radio stations, but it unfortunately doesn't have a way to record them. The interface isn't too bad, and aTunes also has a search feature.

So, should I use aTunes? Although it worked fairly well, I wouldn't really recommend it. It just didn't have enough features, like being able to record radio streams.

Foobnix. Like aTunes, Foobnix is a media player with the ability to play internet radio. It, like others, can load lists of radio stations. But unlike aTunes, Foobnix can record the radio streams. However, the radio ripping feature is pretty terrible, as it just uses the microphone.

Like RRipper, it can also get the lyrics for the current song you're listening to. So, is Foobnix any better than the others? It's better than some radio players, but I still wouldn't really recommend it. It's recording feature, for instance, isn't as good as the others. But I still think Foobnix is better than aTunes.

Streamripper GUI. Okay, this is just a very simple program that uses Streamripper to record internet radio streams. You just enter in the radio station address, select the output location, and hit “Record”. I suppose if you need a quick and simple internet radio ripper, this would be a fairly good choice.

Streamtastic. Streamtastic is meant mainly for recording radio streams, rather than playing them. It does give you the option, however, to open the radio stream in a player of your choice. And like most radio players, it can download lists of internet radio stations. It also has a search tool, in case you can't find a station.

Streamtastic can record multiple radio streams at the same time. And radio stations can be added to favorites for easy access. So, what do you think of Streamtastic? It's reasonably good for recording radio streams, and also all right for listening to them. So this is a fairly good choice.

VLC Media Player. Now VLC is an awesome media player capable of a lot more than simply playing video and audio. One of the great features of VLC is the ability to play and record internet radio streams. VLC can also download a list of radio stations, like many radio players, and has a search feature.

So, is VLC a good choice? It's pretty good, but not amazing. It is one of the better media players with internet radio features. But I'd still rather use RRipper.

StreamTuner2. StreamTuner2 can, of course, load a list of internet radio stations, which are sorted by category. It also has a search feature. StreamTuner2's interface isn't too bad, and one can even bookmark stations. But I couldn't seem to find any option to add your own stations into the program.

So, how well does StreamTuner2 play internet radio? All right. Recording didn't work for me, and I'm not sure why. I don't think I'd really recommend StreamTuner2. There are better internet radio players to choose from.

TunaPie. TunaPie is meant for playing both internet radio, and internet TV. It has a rather simple interface, that isn't really very nice to use. It has a search feature, and a favorites section. It can load a list of radio stations, and has a cool recording feature that allows you to schedule radio stream recording for a certain date and time.

So, is TunaPie a good radio player? Yes, I suppose it is. It has its faults, but being able to schedule recordings is awesome! Overall, I found TunaPie to be better than StreamTuner2.

KStreamRipper. KStreamRipper is primarily meant as an internet radio ripper, but it can also play radio streams. It has a fairly simple interface, and the radio stations can be sorted into folders. And as usual, KStreamRipper can load lists of internet radio stations.

So, does KStreamRipper work well? It works quite well for recording radio streams, but not so much for playing them. You can only play them once it has started recording.

StreamRipStar. This is another radio ripper and player. Like just about all the radio players I've reviewed, StreamRipStar can load lists of radio stations to play. It can schedule them to be recorded at a certain date and time, like TunaPie.

So, what's your opinion of StreamRipStar? It is a good program, and a good choice. And I really like the option to schedule recordings.

Radio Tray. As the name suggests, Radio Tray runs in the system tray. Unfortunately it can't record radio streams. A left click brings up a menu of radio stations to choose from. They're organized by category, and are easy to access. A right click brings up a configuration menu. From there you can configure and add radio stations.

Although Radio Tray can't record radio streams, its ease of use makes it a great choice. So, if you just want a simple, easy to use internet radio player, this is an excellent choice. I see now why so many people like it.

TV-MAXE. This is both an internet TV player and an internet radio player. And it can record radio streams. By default it only has a small selection of radio stations. I think you can load more lists, though. But when I tried adding a new station, I was unable to. There appears to be some bug preventing you from adding a new station. This isn't really a very good choice. So, I wouldn't recommend it.

Kodi. With some plugins, Kodi can play internet radio. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to use it, and I didn't really have the time to review it. Sorry. (Editor's Note: Kodi has been reviewed by the PCLinuxOS Magazine, in a series from June to November of 2015, and most recently in the August 2016 issue.)

There were two other radio players (Clementine and Guayadeque) that for whatever reason would simply not open on my computer. So unfortunately I couldn't review them. Sorry again.

Summary
Well, we've certainly reviewed a lot of radio players. Some great, and some not so great. So, what radio player should I use? That really depends on what kind of player you want. If you want a good, powerful radio player, I'd recommend RRipper. If all you need is a simple, easy to use radio player, I'd really recommend Radio Tray. I now use RRipper as my main internet radio player.

Too Long, Didn't Read

by Peter Kelly (critter)

Learning to use a computer can be a difficult and frustrating experience. Modern point and click graphical interfaces have made things somewhat simpler than the original DOS or Unix text terminal interfaces. Surprisingly though, and to the horror of many Windows migrants, the text terminal is still used by many Linux users, and in some cases, it is the only way to resolve a problem.

Unfortunately learning to use the Linux 'command line' interface is hampered by the dated style and technical nature of the provided documentation which comes in the form of 'man pages' and the difficult to navigate but comprehensive info system. Most times you simply want a quick reminder of what to type and what options are available. What you get is often more confusing than enlightening. For example, The tar command is often used, sometimes in conjunction with a compression utility, to bundle several files together for purposes of backup or archiving. From the man page I get over a thousand lines of accurate, but confusing to most, instructions including paragraphs such as this:

DESCRIPTION
  GNU tar is an archiving program designed to store multiple files in a single file (an archive), and to manipulate such archives. The archive can be either a regular file or a device (e.g. a tape drive, hence the name of the program, which stands for tape archiver), which can be located either on the local or on a remote machine.

Yes, this describes what it does but do I really have to wade through reams of such text just to find out how to use one command? Not any more. There is now a real alternative in the form of a Linux community project called TLDR (an acronym meaning Too Long, Didn't Read - which is rather appropriate). Using this system we get:

$ tldr tar

tar

Archiving utility.
Often combined with a compression method, such as gzip or bzip.

- Create an archive from files:
tar cf target.tar file1 file2 file3
- Create a gzipped archive:
tar czf target.tar.gz file1 file2 file3
- Extract an archive in a target folder:
tar xf source.tar -C folder
- Extract a gzipped archive in the current directory:
tar xzf source.tar.gz
- Extract a bzipped archive in the current directory:
tar xjf source.tar.bz2
- Create a compressed archive, using archive suffix to determine the compression program:
tar caf target.tar.xz file1 file2 file3
- List the contents of a tar file:
tar tvf source.tar

That is the complete output from this command and is usually enough. There are currently over 500 tldr man pages and the project is currently still active.

Installation

The Distrowatch website recently carried an article describing tldr and has a link through which you can access the pages, but there are many other clients available to access this information. As this is most useful when in a bash terminal session, it makes sense to have a bash client which will display the information without leaving the terminal. Such a client has been produced by Ray Lee and is available on GitHub. Tldr is Linux distribution agnostic and setup is extremely simple. Open a terminal and type in the following lines.

mkdir -p ~/bin
curl -o ~/bin/tldr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/raylee/tldr/master/tldr
chmod +x ~/bin/tldr

The curl command does the downloading and is extremely quick. Now, in a plain text editor, add the following to your ~/.bashrc file. This may not be necessary depending on your setup but will not cause any problems.

export PATH=~/bin:$PATH

Restart the terminal and you should be good to go! Typing just tldr in the terminal gives this usage information

USAGE: tldr [options] <command>

[options]
    -l, --list: show all available pages
    -p, --platform: show page from specific platform rather than autodetecting
    -u, --update: update, force retrieving latest copies of locally cached files
    -h, -?, --help: this help overview

<command>
    Show examples for this command

The client caches a copy of all pages and the index locally under /home/{user}/.config/tldr. By default, the cached copies will expire in 14 days.

Note: {user} will be the name of the user where you created the bin directory above. If you want this to also be available when you are working as root (recommended) then you will have to install it again as root.

Now, when I can't remember the option for showing a long, sorted directory listing:

tldr ls
ls
List directory contents.
- List files one per line:

ls -1
- List all files, including hidden files:
ls -a
- Long format list (permissions, ownership, size and modification date) of all files:
ls -la
- Long format list with size displayed using human readable units (KB, MB, GB):
ls -lh
- Long format list sorted by size (descending):
ls -lS
- Long format list of all files, sorted by modification date (oldest first):
ls -ltr

And there it is, ls -lS.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: Andy

As told to YouCanToo

What is your name/username?
Andrzej (Andy) Palka

How old are you?
74 on Nov 14th.

Are you married, single?
Married, celebrated 50 years in June 2016.

How about Kids, Grandkids ?
2 daughters, 1 grandson and 1 granddaughter.

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?
We have 2 dogs, a Mini Schnauzer and a Pointer-German Short-Haired.

Are you retired, still working and if working, what do you do?
I'm retired, training my own dogs for agility and obedience, and helping others with problem dogs.

Please visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =6ipvCKR_zQI

Where do you call home? What is it like? IE: weather, scenery
We emigrated from Poland to Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1982. I love my new Home. It's a great country. Words will never describe its beauty.

Aurora Borealis - The Northern Lights above Regina

Where did you go to school and what is your education level?
Partial University (3 years) and Sports Instructor back in Poland. I now do industrial labour in Saskatchewan.

What kind of things you like doing? hobbies, travel, fishing, camping?
All of the above, and more.

Why and when did you start using Linux?
Since Mandrake/Mandriva became PCLinuxOS.

What specific equipment do currently use with PCLinuxOS?
Cell Phone and digital camera.

What would you like to see happen within PCLinuxOS that would make it a better place. What are your feelings?
The system is great! Yet, I wish support for my scanner were better.

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

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

aTunes: A Lesser Known Music Player - The Basics

by phorneker

When you installed PCLinuxOS from an official ISO, chances are that you got either Clementine (on MATE and KDE4) or Deadbeef (on the Plasma 5 preview) installed for a music player.

While these are great applications for playing music, be it streaming from a Internet source, or locally stored on your hard drive, there is another music player in the repository that will work on any desktop, and does not depend on Qt, KDE, or Gtk libraries to function. The only requirement is a Java Runtime Environment, which should have already been installed with the official ISOs.

aTunes is in no way related to the Apple product iTunes, though it can utilize any media player connected to your PCLinuxOS machine (yes, including iPods and iPhones), provided that the hardware player is supported under Linux.

aTunes is installable from Synaptic, and once installed, simply open the system menu, select Sound --> aTunes Music Client to launch. The following will appear.

The interface here is rather straightforward and reminds me of Amarok. The panel on the left is the music source panel, and right now, there is nothing to select. The center panel is the playlist. It is here where you drag and drop music to play. The right panel is the information center.

The music source panel has buttons that let you select from the local repository, a list of Favorites, a music player that is connected and mounted to PCLinuxOS, online music sources, and podcast feeds.

The first thing we should do is to import any music locally stored on your hard drive so aTunes can play that music. Simply click on Add folder to repository, and select the directory containing your stored music, usually in the directory that says Music. Click on Open to import all music stored in that directory, including any subdirectories contained within ~/Music.

The example shown here is on my laptop, and has been recorded from vinyl, cassettes and CDs that I actually own and have stored away. To select an artist, an album, or an individual song within the file, simply drag your selection from the music source panel to the playlist panel.

aTunes will fetch information about your selection(s) on the Internet after the selection is loaded into the play list. If multiple selections are added to the playlist, the information retrieved by aTunes will pertain to the current tune now playing on the Playlist. In this case, the first tune on the album, In The Stone, shows the lyrics to the song.

All the standard playback controls found in most media player applications are present at the upper left hand of the aTunes window (just below the menu). Presented here (in order) are Stop, Previous Track, Play/Pause, Next Track, and Mute/Unmute, with a volume control to the immediate right.

Pressing Play/Pause will start playing with the first track on the playlist. Alternatively, you can play any track on the playlist by double-clicking on that track in the playlist. Information on that track is retrieved while the track is playing.

What I just presented to you was just to get you started with aTunes.

As with other players such as Clementine and Cantata, you can configure online radio stations, hardware music players and podcasts, as well as create playlists of favorite tunes.

The Information Toolbar

Presented in order are tabs to Configure the information panel, view lyrics (if any), view album information, view artist information, view artists and albums similar to what you are listening, and related videos on Youtube.

If you are viewing an online resource, a radio will appear instead of the musical notes. Album information is available only if the online source provides that information in the stream.

aTunes uses Last.FM as its source for information regarding what is in the playlist. The good news here is that no account with Last.FM is needed to retrieve this information.

What appears in the menu when you click on the Configure tab depends on which of the other tabs is active. For example, if the artist information tab is active, the Configure tab will offer to create a playlist of top ten tracks from that artist (according to Last.FM).

The Music Source Toolbar

There is a Configure tab on this toolbar as well. Presented are tabs to view the local music repository (that is music stored on your hard drive), view tracks you marked as Favorites, view any hardware music players connected, view online music sources, and view podcasts.

These tabs can also be accessed by pressing the following on your keyboard:

Alt-1: The local music repository

Alt-2: Tracks marked as Favorites

Alt-3: Any attached hardware music players

Alt-4: Online music sources

Alt-5: Podcasts

When aTunes is launched for the first time, the local music repository is shown in the music source panel.

The Configure tab allows you to view the repository by artists, albums, genre, year of publication, and folder (directory), in addition to expanding and collapsing the view of what is shown in the panel.

In this view, I have the seeburg1000.com music feed properly configured, with the music feed playing (as background music) and similar artists showing in the information panel. What is showing here are artists that performed and/or produced the type of music back in the 1960s and 1970s.

I am surprised that Herb Alpert (with or without the Tijuana Brass) is not showing here as he was just as popular (if not more) as these artists were at that time. Come to think of it, neither was Percy Faith who was famous for this type of music at that time period. At least Herb Alpert is still active in this genre, with his cover of "Putting on the Ritz" getting 1.2 million hits on YouTube back in 2013!

Donations Wanted

Each time you launch aTunes, a dialog box will appear asking for donations. Like PCLinuxOS itself, the aTunes Project (https://www.atunes.org) relies on monetary donations for its continued development.

Usage Stats

Selecting Tools --> Stats brings you an interesting feature: the ability to track your actual usage of aTunes itself. The results are meaningless after you play your first album, but as you use aTunes for a while, you will be able to better track what music you often play, and how often. The following is what happens after you play one album for the first time.

You can also click on the tabs for more meaningless statistics, unless you want to track which songs off of which albums you play often.

Most of us are not going to care about any of this, but this gives you an idea of what really happens when you use the real iTunes product. Unlike iTunes, aTunes does not send any of this information to Apple without your consent. In fact, aTunes sends absolutely nothing to Apple. Since aTunes uses Last.FM as its source for music information, it will send these statistics to Last.FM only if you have configured aTunes to use your Last.FM account. Thankfully, a Last.FM account is optional.

Preferences

This would be a good time to show you aTunes Preferences dialog box. Select Edit --> Preferences to get this:

You can change the layout of the windows as well as the font displayed inside aTunes. Boxes in red indicate the music source filter, where artists and albums, as well as online music sources and devices are selected. Boxes in yellow are where you select the actual music track or online radio station to be played, copied to a playlist, or copied to and from a hardware device depending on which music source tab is active. Boxes in blue are the location where the current playlist is displayed. Finally, boxes in green are where the information panel is displayed.

Like Clementine, you can configure aTunes to display an icon on the system tray (as well as the color of the icon). This is of course dependent on the desktop you are using. By default, this feature is not enabled.

As with other applications such as DigiKam, aTunes comes with its own set of themes. You can change the overall look of aTunes by simply selecting another theme (of which there are some reasonably good choices). The change is immediate so you can see what aTunes will look like before you commit the change.

For those of you who love the Coffee themes that are available in the repository, there are CremeCoffee and DustCoffee themes you might like available in aTunes.

The Repository tab will allow you to configure the aTunes repository to include as many locally available directories containing music as you like with the option of executing commands before and after aTunes is finishing access to directories, as well as toggling the ability to read and write ID3 tags (for ratings) to music files.

aTunes uses Mplayer for music playback, which should already be installed with an official PCLinuxOS ISO distribution. The Player tab allows you to configure aTunes to start playing music at launchtime, to fade away when stopping playback, and cache playback of music files (useful on older machines but not really needed for 64-bit PCLinuxOS as machines that can run 64-bit operating systems are fast enough to run aTunes without having to cache anything).

The Navigator tab is for fine tuning what is displayed in the music source panel such as highlighting of titles, artists, and genre.

aTunes allows more than one playlist to be used, but only one can be active at a time. The Playlist tab allows you to stop playback when switching playlists, stop playback when clearing playlists, scroll the playlist automatically, and to enable display of the playlist selector allowing you to easily switch between playlists.

The OSD (or On Screen Display) configures notification of what track is now playing. By default, this notification is displayed at the lower right hand corner of the screen for two seconds, and in a window that is 400 pixels in width. You can change the location (choose from top left, top center, top right, middle left, dead center of the screen, middle right, lower left, lower center (not recommended for use with XFCE for obvious reasons), or lower right), the duration of the display (from 2 to 6 seconds), and the width (up to 800 pixels) of the displayed notification.

The Context Information tab is where you can configure what is displayed on the information panel. By default, lyrics are retrieved from LyricWiki and LyricsDirectory and similar artists are a simple Google search. LyrcEngine, Winampcn and LyrDB are also available. Unless you have a real need to use any of these three databases, it is best to leave the defaults as they are.

The Internet settings are for those who are accessing the Internet through a proxy, which is beyond the scope of this article.

Last.FM tab is useful if you have a Last.FM account. ,b>The use of Last.FM is completely optional. Enabling Last.FM will allow you to send and receive playlists as well as send statistics information to Last.FM. It is here you will need to supply your username and password of your Last.FM account before aTunes can use Last.FM.

As for the rest of the preferences, the defaults should be suitable for everyday use.

Online Music Sources

Online music sources can be configured three ways, through Tools --> Add Radio, Tools --> Add Podcast Feed, and Tools --> Radio Browser.

The Radio Browser is the easiest way to add online music sources. However, what you get is a rather limited selection of online radio stations. Select a category from the left panel and choose a station from the list.

Fortunately, Tools --> Add Radio is a better way to add online music sources.

The Label field appears in the top half of the music source panel as a filter selection. It is here that you would enter the genre of the music source being configured. This would be a good time to update you on the Seeburg Music Library.

Update on Seeburg 1000

A while ago, I did an article on accessing the Seeburg 1000 music library on PCLinuxOS. Since that article was written, seeburg1000.com changed the URL and introduced a sound clip identifier that plays each time you access seeburg1000.com.

The new URL for the Seeburg Music Library is:

http://50.7.99.163:11135/stream

Note that /stream must be included when configuring aTunes, Clementine or Deadbeef to play, or the URL will not work.

Podcast Feeds

Configuring podcast feeds is just as easy. Simply select Tools --> Add Podcast Feed from the main menu. The dialog box for adding podcast feeds has only two fields, namely the Name for labelling the podcast feed, and the URL for the (RSS compliant) podcast feed.

What's Next

There is much more to cover about this music player, but this should get you started with aTunes.

ms_meme's Nook: Gotta Be Moving On

OGG                                                             MP3

AudioSauna: Creating Music In PCLinuxOS For Free

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

AudioSauna is a fully featured digital audio workstation (DAW).

It enables using several advanced polyphonic synthesizers, samplers and live effects in real-time in the browser.

The computer keyboard is also used to create melodies. The available audio effects include delay and reverb. A mixer tool provides access to mute, levels, pan, solo and AUX1 and AUX2. A virtual analog synthesizer offers various kinds of filters, ADSR envelopes, distortion, chorus, bitrate and unlimited transposition, portamento, polyphony and more.

A frequency modulation synthesizer is also available. The advanced sampler lets users import MP3s and .WAV files. Users can also sample level, pan, fine tune and transpose.

And what is better, in the convenience of your favorite web browser. Yes, that's right, AudioSauna is a site that loads a Flash application that is a complete DAW software, no installation, no registration nor anything. For free, you will have a powerful DAW software without spending a penny.

Features

Save and open songs and export songs as audio files

Use your computer's keyboard to record melodies with AudioSauna

Sequencer with pattern arrange and piano roll modes

Mixer with level, pan, mute, solo and AUX1 and AUX2 levels

Built in aux effects: delay and reverb

Snap to grid

Virtual Analog Synthesizer

AudioSauna's virtual analog synth is a classic two oscillator subtractive synthesizer.

2 analog oscillators with amp envelope, SAW, SQUARE, TRIANGLE, SINE and NOISE waveforms.

Various filter types including LP and HP

Osc 2 can modulate the Osc 1 with true FM

ADSR envelopes for amplitude and filter's cutoff

LFO for amplitude and filter's cutoff with 3 waveforms

Built in effects: distortion, chorus and bitrate

Unlimited polyphony, portamento, transpose, 40+ presets

FM synthesizer

AudioSauna's FM-synth brings the classic 80's sound to the browser!

4 sine wave operators with amp envelope

8 FM algorithms (based on Yamaha's DX-21)

Various filter types including LP and HP

ADSR envelopes for amplitude and filter's cutoff

LFO for amplitude and filter's cutoff with 3 waveforms

Built in effects: distortion, chorus and bitrate

Unlimited polyphony, portamento, transpose, 40+ presets

Advanced Sampler

AudioSauna's sampler is the most advanced stereo sampler of all the online audio applications.

Import mp3 and wav files

Layering, key range mapping, auto-mapping

Normal and ping-pong looping, reverse

Sample start, sample end, loop start, loop end

Sample level, pan, transpose, finetune

Various filter types including LP and HP

ADSR envelopes for amplitude and filter's cutoff

LFO for amplitude and filter's cutoff with 3 waveforms

Built in effects: distortion, chorus and bitrate

Unlimited polyphony, transpose, 40+ presets

High quality interpolation

Workflow

With 10 tracks, the intuitive customizable synthesizers, samples, effects, etc and a less complicated interface, make AudioSauna a good program for the future composer / music editor. But, unlike many applications that work using a simplistic approach with drag-and drop, this application does not.

The application favors a realistic interface that gives the user the illusion of working with an actual mixer. Sleek silver dials shine beside simple slider buttons and numeric settings. Keyboard keys line the left side, above additional rows of silver dials and sliders. The experience has a modern yet realistic feel that works exceptionally well for the application’s intended purpose. The only downside is that new or inexperienced users may be intimidated until they get the hang of each function.

Basically, making music is setting the rhythm, the drums (the drumline), accompaniment (bassline) and the solo (the main instrument), functions that can be easily accessed with AudioSauna (Sampler, FM Synthesizer and Analog Synthesizer).

Verdict

Although there is a limit to the amount of preset sounds that are available, AudioSauna has potential to help you compose a good variety of music. In some aspects, composing the actual music itself may be easier in this application as opposed to others simply because of the note structure and the visual aid of the keyboard. Although it would be better to have a wider range of preset beats and sounds, you can upload your own sounds, in order to increase the application's functionality. As long as you are patient enough to learn the controls, AudioSauna may be valuable as a free alternative to electronic music creation.

Recording your music and exporting it as .wav can serve as a base, and, with the help of Audacity, you can record the voice track of the music and mix it later, thus having a reasonable production studio at zero cost.

There are several channels on Youtube with tutorials for beginners in AudioSauna, then there is enough material to help get started with the program.

URL: http://www.AudioSauna.com/studio Requirements: Web Browser with updated Flash plugin.

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Scrappler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Spring Crossword

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

PCLinuxOS Word Find: May 2017
Spring

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Screenshot Showcase

Posted by bones113, February 15, 2017, running KDE

Posted by Crow, February 2, 2017, running KDE

Posted by Gonzala_VC, February 10, 2017, running MATE

Posted by Hertz, February 3, 2017, running MATE

Posted by OnlyHuman, February 7, 2017, running e17

Posted by pirate, February 24, 2017, running KDE

Posted by tbschommer, February 3, 2017, running KDE

Posted by TerryH, February 14, 2017, running KDE

Posted by Tuxlink, February 20, 2017, running KDE

Posted by YouCanToo, February 16, 2017, running KDE