Table of Contents

From The Chief Editor's Desk

LibreOffice 5.3: New Feature Review

aTunes: More Customizable Than You Think

Linux & Earth Day: Made For One Another

ms_meme's Nook: Welcome To The PCLOS Forum

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Individual Beef Wellington With Gorganzola Cream Sauce

An Interview With Michael Natterer, GIMP Maintainer

Sort & Find Duplicate Photos On Linux

Repo Review: Password Managers

Inkscape Tutorial: Create Tiled Clones, Part Two

Experiments In Music With PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: jake721

ms_meme's Nook: Log Right In

Tip Top Tips: Chaining Sound Effects With Rakarrack

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk

Spring is back upon us. Thunderstorms, tornado watches, and tornado warnings are things that come with the annual arrival of Spring, at least in my neck of the woods. In fact, it's the same thing in Meemaw's neck of the woods too, especially since she lives about three or four hours away from me.

I keep looking at my yard, thinking about how I haven't even gotten around to doing my annual service routine on my lawn mowers, and the grass is high enough that it's begging to be mowed. Of course, I don't have as much time as I used to for such tasks. When I'm home, I'm Mr. Mom while Laura works. When Laura is off, she's home with the kids while I'm at work. That one day a week that we have off together ... one of us is on call at the hospital.

With the recent influenza epidemic, we've been getting called into work at the hospital on the only day each week we have for family time. It goes without saying that we're glad that we're on the downhill side of the influenza epidemic. Take it from someone who works in the hospital, the flu was very, very bad in our area this year. Now -- maybe -- we'll actually get some family time, with the hospital not demanding every waking moment of our lives.

I keep telling everyone at work that (as of April), I'm on the "8 and 3 plan." That is, 8 years, 3 months before I can retire. I plan to retire "early" at 65. I'll take the "penalty" for retiring two years early, just so I can stay home and raise my kids. Plus, once my house is paid off, my plan is to reduce to part time hours, just so we can have some family time. My house should be paid off within the next three to four years. By then, family time will be all that much more important to Ryan and Lexi, not to mention mom and dad.

At least, that's the plan. We also want to buy some land (around 10 acres) in the country. We want to put a small cabin on it, and we can go there to hunt and just get away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

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

LibreOffice 5.3: New Feature Review

by Meemaw

Each new update of most any program will present fixes, of course, but will also usually add new features. LibreOffice is no exception. Besides the new Notebookbar, which is getting mixed reviews, LO has added several new features. The release notes are here. Let's look at a few here. I must confess that a couple of these may have been present in LO 5.2.5, but 5.3 was released within two weeks of 5.2.5, so these may have run together.

Writer

Go to Page Dialog

Writer has a new dialog for quickly jumping to another page that is available through Edit > Go to Page or Ctrl+G. If you have a multi-page document, this will be faster and easier than scrolling.

The Styles and Formatting tool has a new addition: the tables format tool. If you add a table, then go to Styles and Formatting, the last icon across the top of the window is the tables formatting.

The Draw toolbox has an extended arrows section that even shows up in Writer and Calc. If you use arrows a lot, you can even use it as it's own toolbar or window.

Calc

There is a change in the format options available in Format > Cells > Numbers and in the Sidebar. You can format for fractions now, which I've never seen before, or for scientific expressions. You are reminded of the expected format at the bottom of the window so you can get things entered correctly. Shown below are the Format Cells window, and also (at right) the Format Cells section in the sidebar.

Impress

The draw functions have always been visible in Draw, but now you can access them in Impress as well. Just go to View > Toolbars > Drawing as usual. The draw toolbar can be placed on the top, bottom or sides of the window.

It is now possible to export to PDF only the notes pages of your presentation. You will have to use the File > Export to PDF menu to change the settings.

The Template Manager has a new user interface which looks easier to use.

Colors

The colors have been updated. From the release notes:

Fix recent colors

The custom palette is newly added, which allows colors to be added directly in the area style dialog,

Custom palette makes the manipulation of factory settings via Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Colors obsolete -- and hence we deleted this option,

The palettes gallery, web, cmyk, and scribus were removed because of the non-standard and rather arbitrary collections with inappropriate names,

Tango and html palettes received minor updates for labels and arrangement of colors,

The standard palette was also refreshed. The first row now starts with 12 shades of gray followed by 12 basic colors from the HSV color wheel. The next rows are variations of these basic colors in respect to saturation and luminance by 66%, 50%, and 25%. The final 12x8 arrangement fits perfectly into our color picker grid,

The palette breeze has been added to the default set. It comprises all values known from the KDE human interface guidelines as an alternative to tango,

Completely new is the tonal palette. It aims to provide a set of colors with the same luminance respective color contrast,

The palette freecolour-hlc based on the CIE LAB color model has been added. Its purpose is to provide a cross-media safe set of colors targeting expert publishers.

In short, some ineffective color palettes have been omitted, a few updated ones have been added, and the selection window has been changed, even in the toolbar, so you can use whatever palette you want.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can now appear in context menus and visibility can be set in Tools > Options > View > Menu.

However, so far, I have the shortcuts shown no matter which setting I choose.

Extension Manager

From the release notes:
Revamped the Extension Manager dialog; replaced the custom-implemented error-prone buttons and behaviours with compatible standard widgets and behaviours, and fixed various bugs in the process. The Extension Manager now provides a better user experience and accessibility.

Adding extensions seems a bit easier to me now. I remember having trouble with some of them. I don't use very many extensions, but a few of them are very handy.

There's one called GeoMap, which will insert a map into your Writer document for an address you list. I'm still playing with that one. I live in a rural area outside of my town, so many of the maps turn out almost blank, because there are less streets (and apparently less accurate addresses), so it is no help. If you live in the city (or at least in town) the map shows up well. You are given a GeoMap toolbar (which is only one icon, a compass, outlined in red below), and clicking on it, you see a window that contains several variables.

Input the address you want, change the height and width to the desired size, adjust the zoom from 1 to 17 depending on how close you want to zoom (1 is farthest out), and click preview. If it looks the way you want, click OK. As far as I can tell, you have to click Abort and start over if it's not how you want it.

Format > Page

This window has some changes as well, mostly in the Area Dialog.

This menu has had a redesign and expansion. When you open it, you will see buttons that say None, Color, Gradient, Bitmap, Pattern and Hatch. Clicking on one of them (None is selected by default) will open the menu for that area and allow you to choose what you want.

Customization Dialog

The Customization dialog has been updated, and is more user friendly. It has customization sections for Menus, Context Menus, Keyboard Shortcuts, Toolbars and Events. It seems much easier to use, and adding a command is easier than it used to be.

So far it works pretty well for me, except that it has crashed while searching the fonts list. It may be because it has removed support for a few my system still has.

Summary

As they add improvements to LibreOffice, I am liking it more and more. I like the optional toolbar setup, so one can use whatever they want. My computer at work has to have MS Office on it, but I have LibreOffice installed as well. I use LibreOffice by default because I dislike the "ribbon" in MS Office: it's actually one of the main reasons I continue to use LibreOffice.

aTunes: More Customizable Than You Think

by phorneker

In the last article, I discussed the basics about the aTunes music player. aTunes can be configured by selecting Edit → Preferences from the main menu. The Preferences provides ways to customize your experience with the aTunes music player.

General Settings: Here is where you can change the layout for display of panels in aTunes. I discussed this in the last article, but in case you missed it, the red and yellow blocks represent the music source panels. The blue block represents the track being played. The green block represents the information panel.

You can also change the language used by aTunes, as well as select a built-in theme. This example is the Raven theme, which is white text on dark (near black) shades of grey with glossy buttons.

There are options to show the player as it fits in the system tray (for KDE, MATE, and XFCE use), as well as an icon for easy access to aTunes from the system tray.

You can also change the typeface used by aTunes for text display.

Repository Settings: Here you can include the contents of multiple directories where music is stored into the local aTunes repository. There is an option to allow aTunes to store and retrieve ratings on music tracks in the local repository.

If any part of the local repository involves directories accessed on other servers, on removable media such as external hard drives or flash drives, or restricted access to directories anywhere, you can assign a command line to execute before accessing the directory, and a command line to execute after aTunes is done accessing the repository.

aTunes can automatically refresh the contents of the local repository in intervals of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes or 60 minutes from the time aTunes was launched. A value of zero minutes here disables refreshing of the repository.

Player Settings: aTunes uses MPlayer for music playback. Here you can configure aTunes to start playing music immediately after startup and fade out the music when you click on stop. If you have an internet connection with low bandwidth, enabling the cache option would be useful to you in terms of performance from aTunes.

Navigator Settings: This allows you to customize the listing of tracks in the navigation panel. Here you can also show (or not show) tracks you marked as Favorites, as well as whether to display on screen tool tips (useful when hovering the mouse over buttons).

You can allow aTunes to ignore (or to consider) the word “the” in titles or artist names, and to sort artist names by last name then first name, or first name then last name, as well as to consider (or ignore) case sensitivity when sorting.

Selections here depend on your preferences.

Playlist Settings: These settings customize what happens with music playback when you modify a playlist, or (if you have more than one playlist) change a playlist. By default, music playback stops when you clear the current playlist, but not when you change playlists. Also, tracks in the playlist scroll automatically (depending on the length of the playlist), and the playlist selector is not showing.

On Screen Display: aTunes can use notification systems available with Mac OS-X and with the GNOME 3 desktop. Since PCLinuxOS does not supply either of those notification systems, the Notification Engine setting is irrelevant here and should be set to Default.

aTunes displays a on screen notification of the next track playing at the beginning of each track. You can set the duration of the display to two, four or six seconds from the beginning of the track.

Notifications are 400, 500, or 600 pixels in width, and are aligned as follows:

Horizontal Left,
Vertical Top
Horizontal Center,
Vertical Top
Horizontal Right,
Vertical Top

Horizontal Left,
Vertical Center
Horizontal Center,
Vertical Center
Horizontal Right,
Vertical Center

Horizontal Left,
Vertical Bottom
Horizontal Center,
Vertical Bottom
Horizontal Right,
Vertical Bottom

The display is relevant to the current monitor aTunes is being displayed on.

Context Information: Here is where you enable Google searches for artist and track information, as well as for similar music by similar artists. You can also configure where to search for lyrics to the current track that is being played. LyricWiki and LyricsDirectory are enabled by default. You can also enable LyrcEngine, Winampcn and LyrDB as sources for lyric information.

Import and Export Files: To facilitate import and export of audio files with aTunes, you may customize formats for file and directory names. This is a matter of personal preference, and is useful if you have a consistent structure for naming audio files. For importing files, you have the option to review ID3 tags, apply any ID3 tag changes to the original files, set track number and title of the track automatically upon importing.

For most of us, we should leave the settings as is, and structures for music files could be another topic for another issue.

Internet Settings: This setting is used of you are indirectly accessing the Internet, i.e. you are accessing the Internet through a proxy such as a corporate or academic gateway. For most of us, this is not the case, and the default setting will work.

LastFM: If you have a (premium) account with LastFM.com, you will be able to use your login and password to allow aTunes access to your LastFM profile. As mentioned in the Basics article, LastFM is completely optional and is not required for use with aTunes. Also, it is best to leave the cache content setting enabled as you do not want to cause problems with the LastFM service with excessive number of requests for LastFM.

Anyone who has read the terms of service for LastFM knows the reason for this.

Device Settings: Here the location of your external device is set, be it a Second Generation iPod Nano, a Sansa Fuze, or the latest Samsung Galaxy phone. (I actually own a Second Generation iPod Nano and a Sansa Fuze.)

All other settings here are for the importing and exporting of tracks and/or track listings to/from aTunes similar to the other Import and Export settings. By default, aTunes allows for copying of the same song as it appears on different albums such as a song that appears on the original album and on a greatest hits collection.

Radio Settings: If an online radio station streams information as well as the music, that information is read into aTunes and displayed. For example, seeburg1000.com provides this information with the string “Best of Seeburg 1000” in the information panel as well as in the playlist.

Podcast Feeds: Podcast feeds are updated at intervals from three minutes to an hour. You may set a directory where podcast feeds are downloaded. By default, podcasts are downloaded and played from your local hard drive, and are not removed when the podcast feed no longer provides them.

Be careful about disk space usage as podcasts tend to be large in size (depending on the length and encoding), especially if you have limited hard drive space on your disk.

What we just discussed here is the Preferences available to customize your aTunes experience.

Next time, we shall discuss the various ways to get music into aTunes (besides setting up the repository and importing music from the local hard drive, which we have already done in the Basics article).

Linux & Earth Day: Made For One Another

by parnote & Meemaw

Earth Day in the USA is April 22. Many of the Earth Day organizations are committed to maintaining the planet, whether it be by reforestation, conservation of natural resources or turning back climate change.

I work for an agricultural organization, so we work to educate our local youths about conservation and agriculture by conducting an Earth Day celebration, where students attend presentations about agriculture, conservation and wildlife. We generally host over 800 fourth graders on a day near Earth Day, and they see how the farmers who grow our food also help care for the planet, get demonstrations of soil erosion to learn how it can be avoided, see many types of animals and plants and receive educational materials plus a tree to plant.

Linux users are making their own contributions to Earth Day by making sure that more older computers can still be utilized longer before finding their final resting place in a landfill.

In fact, that is part of what is behind the Reglue Project. This project got its start as the Helios Project, founded by Ken Starks, a long time Linux supporter. Here is the mission statement from Reglue, as displayed on their homepage:

So, they take in computers that might otherwise end up in the landfill, reload them with Linux, and donate them to eligible, underprivileged children. But they don't stop there. They also educate these children and their families to use their new Linux computers.

This isn't too much unlike what many PCLinuxOS users do. There are countless tales of how a PCLinuxOS forum user "rescued" a computer from prematurely landing in a landfill (often referred to as "curb side shopping"). There are just as many tales of friends and relatives looking to get rid of their "old" computer (often no more than a few years old) when they replace their "old" computer with a newer one because it had become "too slow." Those computers usually "slow down" because of overly burdensome antivirus definitions, actual viruses, or excessive amounts of spyware, malware or crapware. PCLinuxOS users usually get those for free or very little cash, strip off the commercial operating system by reformatting the hard drive, and installing PCLinuxOS.

Much of the time, there is little to nothing wrong with those computers, other than the original operating system's predisposition to hijacking by viruses, malware, spyware, crapware and other exploits. Once loaded up with a fresh PCLinuxOS installation (which usually takes less than 20 minutes to do), these recycled computers breathe a breath of fresh air, and usually run PCLinuxOS far faster than these computers ran their original, virus prone operating system. Coupled with the lack of a need to run antivirus software, the slowdown from overly burdensome virus definitions are also avoided.

In fact, it's not uncommon to find Linux users using computers that are as old as 10 years old -- and sometimes even older. Unfortunately, the demise of the availability of 32 bit Linux is going to hasten the trip to the landfill for some of these computers that only have a 32 bit processor. Personally, I have a few perfectly functioning 32 bit computers that fall into that category. Instead, I have the 32 bit version of PCLinuxOS installed on those computers, updated to the very last update available for 32 bit PCLinuxOS. I plan to keep them running for as long as possible before sending them off to become landfill fodder by manually updating the software as much as I am capable.

Ghanaians working in Agbogbloshie, a suburb of Accra, Ghana to recycle used, defective and out of date consumer electronics. Often times, these used items end up in third world nations where they are salvaged without regard for the environment. Source: WikiCommons.

By keeping consumer electronics kept out of the landfill for a longer period of time (which Linux users tend to do), the problems associated with those recycled electronics can be somewhat mitigated. If you're unfamiliar with the problems associated with the recycling of consumer electronics, check out this 2010 report from NPR (National Public Radio), and this current page from Wikipedia.

To do my part in helping to keep computers from prematurely ending up in a landfill, I'm much more apt to look for refurbished, used computers from resellers found on Ebay and Craigslist than to purchase a new unit. Not only can I get much more value (bang) for my dollar (buck), but I can keep these still-useful computers in use and out of the landfills. By doing just a little homework ahead of time to know what hardware works well with Linux (and most computers today work perfectly fine with Linux), I can find a perfectly good computer that will serve me well for several years to come.

ms_meme's Nook: Welcome To The PCLOS Forum

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PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Individual Beef Wellington With Gorganzola Cream Sauce

Individual Beef Wellington with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce

Ingredients:

2 Beef Filet Mignon Steaks
3/4 lb to 1 lb mixed exotic mushrooms such as Shiitakes, Trumpet Royale, Maitake, Oyster, Forest Naimeko (or more common ones like white, crimini or portobello)
1 large shallot (equal to 1/4 cup when minced)
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp finely minced thyme leaves (from a small bunch)
1 tbs finely chopped Italian (flat leaf) parsley
pinch of hot pepper flakes (or more if you like heat)
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
4 slices of Prosciutto
1 sheet of Puff Pastry (preferably Pepperidge Farm) defrosted overnight in fridge or for 40 minutes on the counter
1 egg, beaten slightly with 1 tsp of water

For the Gorgonzola Sauce:

1 cup heavy cream
2 oz crumbly Gorgonzola
2 tbs grated parmesan
2 sprigs of thyme
1 tbs minced parsley
freshly ground black pepper (1/4 to 1/2 tsp, depending on how much you like pepper)
kosher salt to taste

Directions:

Remove the Filet Mignons from the fridge a half hour before cooking and let them stand at room temperature. Season the fillets with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (about 3/4 tsp kosher salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper). Try to season them evenly, getting the sides as well.

Heat 1 tbs of olive oil in a heavy bottom pan (preferably cast iron) over medium high heat until just smoking. Add the filets and sear for no more than a minute on each side. You're just looking to get the brown crust, which gives the meat so much flavor. Leave them very rare, as they will have plenty of time to cook in the puff pastry. Remove the fillets from pan, turn off heat temporarily and set aside.

Wipe the mushrooms with a damp paper towel. You don't want to wash them because they will absorb the moisture and make the puff pastry soggy. Finely chop the mushrooms into uniform pieces.

Heat the same pan (don't add any oil, you want to evaporate as much moisture as possible) over medium heat until nice and hot, but not smoking. Add the mushrooms and sear until cooked through and golden brown. Don't stir the mushrooms initially so they get a little brown, about 4 minutes. Then, keep cooking and stir for another 2 minutes, season with a sprinkle of kosher salt and black pepper. Remove mushrooms from pan and set aside. And go ahead...taste their glorious umami ness! I love exotic mushrooms so much and make extra in this recipe so I can munch on them while I cook :)

Finely chop the shallot and garlic. Mince the thyme and parsley. Add 1tbs of olive oil and 1 tbs of butter to the same pan and heat on medium low until butter is melted. Add all the chopped aromatics and the pinch of hot flakes. Cook, stirring often, until shallots are soft. Don't burn! Keep the heat on low if necessary and stir often! Add the mushrooms to the pan and season everything with a little kosher salt and some fresh black pepper (just a few sprinkles) and add the fresh lemon juice. Remove from heat and set aside.

And yes, taste again. Because now the mushrooms have even more flavor!

Lay a piece of Saran large enough to wrap a filet in flat on the counter. Place 2 slices of prosciutto on top, slightly overlapping. Spread half of the mushroom mixture (or less, you don't want it to be impossible to wrap) evenly over the prosciutto and place one of the filets over the prosciutto to the side.

Starting at the short end of the prosciutto slices, carefully roll the cooked filet using the plastic wrap. It's ok if some of the mushrooms spill out a bit. Then roll in the ends, trying to push the mushrooms back into the prosciutto. Tighten the sides quite well, twist the ends and tuck them underneath. Place the fillets on a plate and chill in the fridge at least a half hour. In the meantime, defrost the puff pastry for 30 or 40 minutes on the counter if you haven't done so yet

Place defrosted puff pastry on a surface (preferably a cold one) and roll out slightly. Cut in half, so the pieces are big enough to enclose the fillets.

Lightly beat one egg with one tsp of water. Brush the egg wash around the border of the puff pastry. This will help the dough adhere more easily.

Unwrap the filets, use scissors if you need to, and place in the center of the pastry, aligning the long edge of the beef with the short edge of the pastry. Wrap one side of pastry over, roll the filet and tighten the seam.

Trim the side ends if they are too long, or the pastry will cook unevenly. You want the puff pastry to be pretty much the same thickness all around.

Fold the ends in (kinda like when you wrap a present) and pinch the dough closed.

Place the wrapped beef wellingtons on a sheet pan, with a sharp knife cut 3 or 4 small slits on the non-seam side. Lightly sprinkle with some flaky salt, like Maldon. Or kosher salt will do. Chill in the fridge for a half hour or up to 4 hours.

This is a great time to prepare the rest of the meal and set the table!

While the Wellingtons chill, make the sauce.

Pour the heavy cream into a small pan and add the thyme sprigs. Bring cream to a boil and quickly lower heat to a simmer. Cook until the cream is reduced to a thick sauce consistency as in the picture, about 7 to 10 minutes. It should leave streaks if you run a spoon through it. Remove from heat and add the gorgonzola, grated parmesan cheese and chopped parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat oven to 425 F. Place the sheet pan with the Wellingtons in the oven and cook until the pastry is golden and steaks are cooked to desired temperature. This will take a little bit of practice to master. Start by taking a peek at 20 minutes, but it could take up to 30 or more, depending on your oven. 25 to 30 minutes is usually what it takes for me. And try not to open the oven or the heat will escape, which slows the browning of the pastry. Let the color of the pastry be your main guide... a nice golden crust usually means the whole thing is done. It's also a good idea to use a meat thermometer to check the steak. 125 to 130 is medium rare. 140 to 145 is medium. 150 plus is well done. If you want it well done just cook longer but lower heat to 375.

An Interview With Michael Natterer, GIMP Maintainer

by Jehan
Reprinted with permission, and under CC by-sa license.
Original article appears here.

Editor's Note: Changes made only to insure certain language is more "family appropriate." Otherwise, no changes or edits were made from the original article.

GIMP is Free Software, but even before this, it is people: the ones who create it, the ones who create with it... We don't have accurate statistics and we take pride on not gathering your data. Yet we know (through other websites that have logged partial statistics over the years) that this is a widely used piece of software, by millions of people around the world. So wouldn't it be neat to meet some of the individuals who make this project come alive?

Some people think there's a huge company behind GIMP. This is not the case. GIMP has always been developed by a handful of random people scattered around the world. Most of them are volunteers and none of them work on it full-time. As an insider myself, I've wanted to launch a series of interviews with the many awesome people I've met since I started contributing. So who better to start with than our own benevolent dictator, GIMP maintainer, and the biggest code contributor: Michael Natterer, aka "mitch".

This interview was held on Friday, February 3, 2017 at around 3AM in front of a fireplace and after a day of hacking at Wilber Week. With us were several team members, including Michael Schumacher (schumaml (S)) and Øyvind Kolås (pippin (P)), who also asked questions.

Mitch. The man. The myth. The legend.
The reason your commit probably got reverted.

Jehan: Hello Mitch! In a few words, what's the close future of GIMP?

Mitch: In 2.10, there is the GEGL port. Then the GTK+3 port immediately after, which will go as fast as possible. We don't plan many features during the GTK+3 port.

J: What are your preferred features of 2.10?

M: High bit depth, on-canvas filter previews... I don't actually remember the features of 2.8 [to compare] because I never use it.

J: You use 2.10 instead?

M: Yes.

J: Do you use GIMP often?

M: Mostly for testing what I implement, and also for making postcards I sell in my family business. That's the only thing I use it for.

A maintainer

J: How did you start hacking GIMP?

M: There was this code that saved the user-assigned keyboard shortcuts for menu actions. The code had an escaping bug where you couldn't have a hyphen as an accelerator. So I wrote code for escaping the string. That was my first GIMP patch in 1997 or 1998.

J: How did you become the maintainer?

M: I killed the previous maintainer. He is now in my cave in boxes.

Schumaml: Have you ever met the original authors (Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis)?

M: No. Has anyone?

S: Have they ever contacted you?

M: Yes, they sent me a few plugins which I pushed. Neon, photocopy and cartoon. It was around 10 years after they left the project, one of them comes to me and says "Hey Mitch, I coded 3 plugins, here they are". Everything looked perfect so I just pushed them as-is, and they still exist.

These days, they've been reimplemented in GEGL, but the new versions give different results, so the old plugins are still in the menu.

J: Why do you continue working on GIMP?

M: That's a good question. (laughs) I don't know. You guys, perhaps? It can be really annoying sometimes. Why do you guys continue?

J: Me? It's fun.

M: It's fun yes but sometimes it's not fun and you do it anyway.

GIMPers at Montserrat.

J: Where do you see GIMP 20 years from now?

M: It will probably end up in a pile of bits rotting in some corner. I may have been thinking the same thing twenty years ago, though, so you never know.

A hacker

J: What do you think of Free Software?

M: It's the way to go, but you need to use the software which is available for a task, so for some tasks you have no choice but to use something that's not exactly free.

For example: [pointing to nomis trying to make a label printer work on a GNU/Linux distribution] if you were using the closed-source driver for that, it would work. *: (laughs)

J: What's your operating system, distribution, desktop...?

M: Debian Unstable, GNOME 3.

J: You often complain about all these though.

M: Because it's all sh*t. Just because you have the least sh*tty [software] doesn't mean it's not all sh*t. Like autotools. They are sh*t, but it's the best sh*t we have. There is no software that isn't sh*t, except perhaps the most simple of software which does one task.

J: What's your development environment or text editor of choice?

M: Terminal & emacs.

J: How do you like to hack?

M: It depends. Sometimes I need silence and sometimes a crowded room.

J: You are your own boss in a shop. But we see commits from you all the time. Are you hacking in your bookstore when you get free time and don't have to take care of your employees or customers?

M: Sometimes, but very rarely. I'm mostly hacking in the evenings, or I commit something during the daytime that I worked on the night before until 2AM. If I think "I better go to sleep before I push this", then I'll wait until the next day when I'm awake to check it once more before I do.

But I don't have time to do 5-hour long patches during working hours.

J: You don't sleep?

M: I don't really sleep, no.

S: What channels do you use to communicate on behalf or in the project?

M: IRC, and IRC.

pippin: What was the first computer you programmed?

M: It was a Schneider CPC, a variation of the Amstrad. At 15 or 16?

S: How did you write your first hello world?

M: In BASIC of course. My programming languages were BASIC, Assembly, Pascal, Modula-2, C, in that weird order. :) Plus some others at university nobody cares about. :)

J: Do you code under the influence?

M: Always! That's the only way to code.

Obligatory XKCD, by Randall Munroe (Creative Commons By-NC 2.5).

GIMP: present

J: So all software is sh*t, but in the list of sh*tty software, is GIMP not so bad?

M: I hope so, but of course it's sh*tty. We're just a handful of volunteers doing what companies with hundreds of (paid) people do.

J: But sometimes we do things not so bad, right?

M: Yes, but there is nobody to make sure of it. It's not often that someone spends the time and effort to make a plugin perfect. Sometimes it happens, but usually it gets dumped on us and that's it. Ten years later, we look at the code again and say "oh my god, this is complete garbage". Very rarely do people maintain their code long term and we cannot seriously expect that to happen with everyone being a volunteer here.

S: Is there something you'd like to do much more in the project, apart from coding?

M: In the project? No, coding is fun. I'm happy that I don't have to do that much administrative work.

S: When will 2.10 be released?

M: Oh go away! The answer is "go away!". Read my lips: "go away". When it's ready.

S: Do you expect it to be this year?

M: Yes of course.

J: So we have a promise!
*: (laughs)

GIMP: future

S: There was this thing that the UI should use Python and the core should use C.

M: Python for the user interface. Horrible! Why?

S: This is something we had discussed.

M: Yes but in the past people wanted to use JavaScript. The year before they wanted to use Java, the year before they wanted to use this, and the year after they want to use that. Now they're all gone.

Everyone who ever said "I want to use this or that", and "It's all sh*t, let's use JavaScript", none of them are still in the project, so...

S: So you don't see any big changes regarding GIMP in the near future?

M: In the near future definitely not because we need to get some releases out. Unless, of course, there is a well-done patch that doesn't need weeks of discussion and back-and-forth negotiations on how things should be done.

About using other languages: why not? There is Rust. There is maybe simpler stuff for doing user interfaces, but making such decisions for a codebase the size of GIMP is not something we can decide based on "the latest hot stuff".

I mean, look at this javascript mess. Is that really better? Just because it's easier? Easier just means that more clueless people can write code, and they are clueless enough already. So making is easier doesn't make it better. Arrogant but true.

S: Anything else you want to change?

M: Yes a lot of stuff as long as I don't have to do all the changes, because I really have enough things to do already (laughs).

You can be the maintainer of whatever subpart, please. Please. Take away the work from me. All contributors need to realize that if they do something really well, they will be in charge of that part.

J: That's a very good point.

M: If you do it right, then you'll be in charge of the part you are doing right. It always works like that.

S: They don't need a blessing from you, right?

M: I don't do blessings. (laughs)

J: GTK+ comes from GIMP. What do you think of GTK+ now?

M: They lost their minds, but they are also doing really good work. I don't really understand some of their decisions.

On the other hand, look at the mails we get. People say exactly the same about GIMP: "Have the GIMP devs lost their minds?!?". I was involved with GTK+ for a long time and people thought that I had lost my mind, which was (and is) probably true. Bottom line is that all is fine between GTK+ and GIMP, I just reserve the right to complain for myself.

S: So we will release GIMP 3 with GTK+3 or 4?

M: They just branched for GTK+ 4.x, so that's not going to happen overnight.

P: It won't hurt to suddenly have GIMP 4 instead of 3.

M: No it wouldn't. If they are done in a few weeks, we'd go for GIMP 4 right away. So why not. That would be cool. (laughs) Or GIMP 5!

J: GIMP 10?

M: GIMP X!

Various rants

S: If you happen to be in a conversation with people talking about GIMP, but they don't know that you are involved, do you come out as the GIMP principal developer?

M: Only if they start talking utter bullsh*t, or if things simply need clarification. It has happened, of course. A guy wanted to convert me to GIMP once and I had to tell him: yeah you don't need to. It was in a non-hacker situation.

J: Who is Wilber?

M: Nobody knows. Wilber is a GIMP.

S: What special device would you like to see GIMP on?

M: This cool Microsoft thing (Surface Studio PC) where they have this hyped video online, and it looks super slick with touch and everything. It's an ad like Apple used to do in the past and now Microsoft does it, which is a bit weird. The official Microsoft YouTube video makes you want to have one of these things.

S: What advice you would like to give to someone who would want to contribute? What to do and what not to do?

M: Listen to advice and be persistent.

Don't give up because somebody says "this patch isn't quite right", most of the time it won't be. My first commit to GIMP was reverted immediately.

S: I think you also reverted my first.

M: Yes, that's kind of a tradition. Everybody f***s up on their first commit and it gets reverted. That's a good standard.

S: So do not be afraid of errors?

M: Yes exactly. Unless they jeopardize the fate of humanity or something. That's unlikely.

*: Thanks for the interview.

M: You are welcome!

Images in this article are courtesy of antenne, and used by permission.

Sort & Find Duplicate Photos On Linux

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

If you're anything like me, you take and have thousands of photos. Many of those photos have been downloaded to my computer's hard drive. Thanks to the explosion of digital photography, it has caused us to take many pictures that we might otherwise have not shot when using film, due to the cost associated with having the film developed and printed into physical prints. Pocket cameras, cell phone cameras, digital SLRs, and a whole host of other tools now put thousands and thousands of digital photos directly at our fingertips.

Many people tend to shoot away, and edit later on the screens of their computers. Long gone is the cost associated with having to develop and print five or eight or 12 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm rolls of film after a vacation. Now, we can edit through all of those vacation pictures and birthday pictures and graduation pictures, and only print out the "good ones."

(For what it's worth, I do not advocate printing them out at home on an inkjet printer. Rather, you will get far superior quality by taking your digital prints to a photo finisher and having REAL photos printed out. It's far cheaper, too, since inkjet prints done at home can easily cost you more than $1 each, after you take into consideration the cost of the special photo paper and the extremely high cost of inkjet printer inks. Compare that to the $0.29 cost you can often find at a photo finisher. That's a whole separate topic from what we're going to be talking about here.)

However, what happens more often than not, in our haste to get out the door with our busy schedules, we end up just dumping the contents of an SD card onto our hard drive, leaving a mess of sorts to wade through later. This can often result in duplicate photos being stored on your hard drive. Once we get around to sorting through the SD card dumps, it's often difficult -- if not impossible -- to remember to check for duplicate images. In very short order, it becomes a very overwhelming task that is easier to just keep postponing.

Thankfully, there are a couple of tools to help us deal with situation this under Linux. Mind you, while we're primarily talking about photos here, this can also apply to any other group of files you might have stored on your computer. Finding and eliminating duplicate files on your computer frees up precious hard drive space.

As you might expect, a word of caution is in order here. Before doing ANYTHING with your precious photos (or any other files of importance to you ... and they must be important, or you wouldn't have saved them), make sure they are backed up (like to an external hard drive or large capacity USB thumb drive ... and verify that they are indeed backed up) before working on your original files! Imagine how heartbreaking it would be to mistakenly delete the only copies of the photos from your last vacation with grandma, taken the year before she passed away. I think you get the idea.

FSlint

FSlint (short for File System Lint) came installed on my 64 bit Xfce PCLinuxOS installation. If it is not installed on your computer, you can easily install it from the PCLinuxOS repository, via Synaptic.

The image above is what you will see when you first launch FSlint. I changed the search path (top fourth of the window) to only my ~/Pictures directory, since I only ever store images from my camera and phone there. Select the "Add" button, and select the directory where you store your photos. Then, highlight your home directory, and select the "Remove" button.

Once you have your search path set, click on the "Find" button at the bottom left of the window. Now, walk away for a bit while FSlint searches for duplicates.

When the search is complete, you will see a list of all the duplicate files. Under the "Find" button, it shows that I have about 3GiB of wasted space on my hard drive from the duplicate files stored there. Now, we could manually go through and delete all those duplicates, one at a time, but that would take quite a bit of time.

Fortunately, FSlint gives you some options that will speed up the process considerably. Click on the "Select" button, and you will see the menu choices shown above. Since FSlint collects and lists the duplicates into groups, you can select all but the first one listed, all but the newest, or all but the oldest. Then, once you've made your selection, select the "Delete" button to get rid of the duplicates.

From the command line ... fdupes

If you'd rather take care of the duplicate files from the command line, there is a tool for that, too. The only function of fdupes is to find and take care of duplicate files. It was not installed by default on my PCLinuxOS installation, but it is installable from the PCLinuxOS repository, using Synaptic.

[parnote-toshiba@localhost ~]$ fdupes -rS Pictures/

The "r" switch will recurse all the subdirectories in the search directory, and the "S" switch will show the sizes of the duplicate files. Issued exactly as I've issued the command above, fdupes will only produce a list of duplicate files found in the search path (Pictures/).

If you want to delete the files, provide the "d" switch. It will prompt you for which files to save, and delete the rest of the duplicates. It's just that straightforward.

For your reference, here is a complete list of the command line options (switches) you can use with fdupes, which is just about as long as the official man page:

[parnote-toshiba@localhost ~]$ fdupes -h
Usage: fdupes [options] DIRECTORY...

 -r --recurse     include files residing in subdirectories
 -s --symlinks        follow symlinks
 -H --hardlinks       normally, when two or more files point to the same
                      disk area they are treated as non-duplicates; this
                      option will change this behavior
 -n --noempty         exclude zero-length files from consideration
 -f --omitfirst       omit the first file in each set of matches
 -1 --sameline        list each set of matches on a single line
 -S --size         show size of duplicate files
 -q --quiet       hide progress indicator
 -d --delete      prompt user for files to preserve and delete all
                      others; important: under particular circumstances,
                      data may be lost when using this option together
                      with -s or --symlinks, or when specifying a
                      particular directory more than once; refer to the
                      fdupes documentation for additional information
 -v --version     display fdupes version
 -h --help        display this help message

The command will take a bit of time to run. On the computer I'm writing this article on (which happens to also be the one where I store most of my photos until they are backed up), I have just under 17,000 photos stored on the hard drive. Fdupes uses md5sum checksums to seek out duplicate files. It took fdupes approximately five minutes to produce the list of duplicate photos. So, once you start it, go make a sandwich. When you come back, it should be done ... or at least, almost done.

The nice thing about fdupes is that even though it is a command line tool, it does have a progress meter to show you how far it has gotten in its search for duplicate files. Thus, you won't be sitting there staring at a somewhat blank screen, wondering if it is working or when it might be done. Although I can't imagine many instances where you might want to do so (aside from calling it from a bash script or to run in the background), using the "q" switch hides the progress meter. With the exception of the two aforementioned cases, I would personally prefer to see the progress meter.

Sorting it all out ... ExifTool

Now that we've eliminated all the duplicate photos, we now need to sort our pictures. Sure, we could spend hours and hours doing it by hand, and if that's the route you choose ... well, you have a lot more time than I do. But, there is a better and easier way. Enter ExifTool.

When it comes to reading, writing, and managing the metadata stored in image files, there simply is nothing better than exiftool. Most people associate exif data with JPG files, but there is metadata stored in the header of many graphics files. And exiftool is exactly what you need when you need to work with any of that metadata.

Just running exiftool on the above image (of me and my son Ryan, during his first bicycle ride with mom and dad when he was 11 months old), using the command exiftool DSCF3269.JPG (run from a terminal session in that image's directory) yields 104 lines of metadata output.

Below are just the first 27 lines of that output:

$ exiftool DSCF3269.JPG
ExifTool Version Number         : 10.36
File Name                       : DSCF3269.JPG
Directory                       : .
File Size                       : 4.3 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2014:05:14 19:09:18-05:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2017:03:18 16:41:25-05:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2016:08:02 21:55:56-05:00
File Permissions                : rwxrwxrwx
File Type                       : JPEG
File Type Extension             : jpg
MIME Type                       : image/jpeg
Exif Byte Order                 : Little-endian (Intel, II)
Make                            : FUJIFILM
Camera Model Name               : FinePix S1500
Orientation                     : Horizontal (normal)
X Resolution                    : 72
Y Resolution                    : 72
Resolution Unit                 : inches
Software                        : Digital Camera FinePix S1500 Ver1.03
Modify Date                     : 2014:05:14 19:09:17
Y Cb Cr Positioning             : Co-sited
Copyright                       :
Exposure Time                   : 1/400
F Number                        : 5.0
Exposure Program                : Portrait
ISO                             : 64

While exiftool will give you much more information about your images than you probably care to know, we can leverage this information to help us sort our photos. To get a grasp of everything that exiftool is capable of doing, you can view the man page by entering exiftool -h on the command line, or by viewing the man page online, here. Be forewarned. It's quite a long (dry) read, full of technobabble.

So, let's just break it down to just what you need to sort your photos from one big amalgamated mess into something a little friendlier and easier to navigate.

exiftool -o '-Directory<CreateDate' -d newdir/%Y/%Y-%m-%d -r /olddir

-o tells exiftool to copy, instead of move, your images.

'-Directory<CreateDate' tells exiftool to make directories based on the image dates.

-d newdir/%Y/%Y-%m-%d tells exiftool to create the specified new directories, based on the year, with subdirectories based on year, month and day. The "newdir" entry could be called "sorted-photos."

-r tells exiftool to recurse directories when reading the image files.

/olddir tells exiftool where to find the images you want to sort and copy. If all of your images are stored in your ~/Pictures directory, then that is what you'd enter for the "/olddir" entry.

Using the "-o" switch is probably the safest way to use the command, keeping your originals in their original location and making a copy in the new destination directory. There may be a time, however, when you don't have enough hard drive space to have copies all over the place, at least until you have time to verify the copy and delete the original. In that case, you will have to move (rather than copy) the files to their new destination directory. To do so, just eliminate the "-o" switch from the command.

If you're one of those "command line shy" Linux users, there's little I can suggest to get you over your shyness. The exiftool is a powerful tool, and represents probably the best -- and fastest -- way to sort your photos. The command can easily be put into a very simple, barebones bash script, which can then be accessed from Dolphin's right click menu, or as a custom action in Xfce's Thunar, or as a Caja script in Mate, insulating you from having to drop to a command line every time you want to run the command.

Summary

If you take a lot of digital photos, you can see how quickly your digital photo collection can grow out of control, sort of like Medusa. Despite our best intentions to keep things organized, the lack of time in our busy and demanding schedules, coupled with the volume of digital photos that accumulate so quickly, we can find ourselves overwhelmed in a very short period of time.

Perhaps, with these tools, maybe you can at least tame the beast. Or at least beat it into submission. Seriously, if you were to do this periodically, I'd say you'd be ahead of 90 percent of us in keeping your photos organized.

Repo Review: Password Managers

By CgBoy

Passwords. We all use them. Some of us only use one password for everything. Others have many complex passwords that are hard to remember. Before I wrote this article, I just had a file on my computer listing most of my passwords. Very secure, right? Anyway, this month we're going to have a quick look at the password managers in the repository. I have put these in the order in which I reviewed them.

KDE Wallet Manager. First up is KDE Wallet Manager. Creating wallets is fairly easy. They can use Blowfish or GPG encryption. As I do not have a GPG key setup, I chose the Blowfish encryption method. KDE Wallet Manager can also import and export wallets as XML files. The user interface of KDE Wallet Manager is good and simple. It also has a system tray applet from which you can open and close wallets.

Other applications like web browsers can store and access passwords in KDE Wallet Manager. You can see all the applications authorized to access the wallet in the Applications tab. From there you can also revoke authorization for applications.

So, is KDE Wallet Manager any good? I'd say it is. It's easy to use, has a good user interface and it has some good features, so I'd say this is a good password manager.

KeePassX. (Note: This is version 2.0.3 of KeePassX, not the old version 0.4.4) KeePassX is often recommended as a good open-source password manager. For those of you who don't know, KeePassX is a fork of KeePass Password Safe. When you create a new password databases in KeePassX, you can choose to just use a master password, use a key file, or both. KeePassX uses either AES or Twofish encryption for its databases.

KeePassX has a good user interface, with the password entries organized in folders. When you create a new password entry, KeePassX can generate a random password for it. The entries can be given icons too. KeePassX can fill in login forms on websites without needing a web browser plugin. You just need to right click on an entry and click "Perform Auto-Type". It will then automatically fill in the form.

There are also Android and iOS apps that can use KeePassX databases, which means you can have your passwords with you all the time! So, what do you think of KeePassX? I think it's an excellent password manager. It's easy to use, has a good user interface, and I really like the Auto-Type feature!

Revelation. The last version of Revelation came out back in 2012, so it is a bit old. It has a nice simple user interface, and the password entries can be organized into folders. The password database is by default an XML file using AES encryption, but it can also use LUKS encryption. Revelation can also import from, and export password databases to many other formats.

Revelation also has a search function. There's a password generator, and a password strength checker tool. Unfortunately, Revelation does not have an Auto-Type feature like KeePassX.

So, how well does Revelation work? Although it's not as advanced as KeePassX, in some ways I like Revelation more. It has a great user interface that's easy to use. But I do wish that it had an Auto-Type feature like KeePassX.

Pass. Unfortunately, I had so much trouble trying to set up Pass, and trying to set up a GPG key, that in the end I couldn't get it working properly. So, I'm just going give you a basic overview of Pass. Pass is a command-line password manager. Instead of storing all the passwords in one database, it stores them each in separate GPG encrypted files. Those password files are then stored in a simple directory tree structure.

There are scripts that allow you to import passwords from other software into Pass, including scripts for KDE Wallet Manager, KeePassX, and even Revelation. There are also plenty of GUIs for Pass, and there are even Android and iOS apps. Unfortunately, there aren't any Pass GUIs in the PCLinuxOS repository.

There are even web browser plugins for Pass. Along with all that, Pass also has a built-in password generator. So, is Pass a good password manager? Well, I don't really know, as I couldn't get it to work right. It does appear to be a pretty powerful password manager, but at the same time, it doesn't look like it's very easy to use.

GNOME Keyring. I didn't even know exactly what GNOME Keyring was until the day before I had to submit this article. GNOME Keyring is a command-line password manager. And it uses AES-128 encryption. I actually don't know much about GNOME Keyring. I couldn't even figure out how to use it...

Other applications can access and store passwords in GNOME Keyring. And there are also GUIs available for it, but unfortunately there aren't any in the PCLinuxOS repository. Because I didn't have time do a full review of GNOME Keyring, I'm not sure if it's a good password manager or not. Sorry.

Summary

Well, we're at the end of the article already. So, out of these five password managers, which is the best? I think I'd probably say KeePassX was the best. It's a good program with some great features. However, my favorite is actually Revelation. I really liked its simple user interface. KDE Wallet Manager is all right, but it's not my favorite. I never could give Pass and GNOME Keyring full reviews, so I don't exactly know how well they work.

Inkscape Tutorial: Create Tiled Clones, Part Two

by Meemaw

In part one, I introduced you to the Create Tiled Clones window and a few simple things you can do with it. Now I will show you a few things you may have already seen with this tool. Many of the settings I report can be changed to suit yourself. Also, if you have clones and decide that you want to clone the same object again, you can use any of them. However, if you decide to delete some and delete a clone that you have used to clone more, all if its clones will be deleted as well. To find the original, all you need to do is choose one (in the status bar, it will say “Clone of Image (size of image)”, then press <CTRL> + C and you will see a line extend from your choice to the original.

OK, more examples:

In the 100th issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine, May 2015, our cover featured one of Georgetoon's awesome cartoon characters with a cake and confetti in the air. The confetti was made using the Create Tiled Clones tool.

First, I made some little confetti pieces... diamonds and squares, one of each in three different colors. Using each one alone, I opened the Tiled Clones window and changed the settings as shown below. All settings were entered in the Randomized columns.

Shift 85% - Scale 25% - Rotation 50% - Blur 30% - Opacity 40%

In part 1 of this article, I gave you rows and columns for the limits of the clones (bottom of the window) but on this, I used 7” x 5” width & height.

This also worked for the stars on the cover of the October 2014 issue. However, the settings were different.

The St. Patrick's Day, March 2015, magazine cover featured a mess of shamrocks. I started with a shamrock background (below, right), but I wanted more shamrocks, so I used a different, single shamrock and cloned it.

All Randomized ... Shift 85% - Scale 25% - Rotation 50% - Blur & Opacity 0%

I selected all and moved the clones over the shamrock background and added Tux and his hat (parnote always adds the panels with the article titles).

Also, the checkerboard mentioned in part 1? Do it this way:

Draw four squares, filling two with black and two with white, and all with a .25 black stroke. Depending on how you have your preferences, you can “snap” them together, or use align and distribute so that their edges are touching. Select all four squares and click Group. They should look as shown below.

Now, open the tiled clones window. The first thing you should probably do (if you've been experimenting) is reset all settings to zero by clicking the Reset button at bottom left. Now change the settings at the bottom of the window so you are making 4 rows and 4 columns. Leaving all other settings at zero, click the Create button. And, there you go....

In the next tutorial, we will experiment with clones that may not necessarily result in rows and columns.

Experiments In Music With PCLinuxOS

by phorneker

PCLinuxOS has an abundance of applications and tools for audiophiles, disc jockeys, musicians, music producers, composers and anyone else involved in working with music.

On my laptop, I have aTunes, Clementine, Audacious and Deadbeef for music players. For editing, I have Audacity (the gold standard in audio editing applications), Mixxx and ReZound. When installed together, anything is possible when it comes to audio production.

My music collection is quite diverse, not only in terms of genre, but literally spans decades (from the 1960s to the current decade).

The idea of remixing music to create new pieces of music is no different from creating a fork of an application running on PCLinuxOS, composing a new photograph by manipulating elements of one or more original photographs, or even creating a new entree from leftovers in the refrigerator. The success of Free and Open Source software and Creative Commons licensing is attributed to this very concept, and is also a reason why we need to keep this concept going long into the future. Vaporwave is a very short lived example of an idea of remixing music.

Vaporwave

According to Wikipedia, the genre of vaporwave is defined as:

"an electronic music subgenre that originated in the early 2010s and spread over the next half of the decade among various Internet communities. It is characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist fascination with entertainment, technology and advertising of the 1980s and 1990s, and styles of both corporate and popular music such as lounge music, smooth jazz and elevator music."

One could argue that vaporwave is a derivative of most music produced over the past century, in the sense that such music is manipulated in ways such that what is created is completely different from the original. But this definition can also apply to turntablism (which took its present form in the late 1970s), house music (which started in the early 1980s in Chicago), and chopped and screwed (which started in the early 1990s).

While vaporwave compositions are slowed down in nature, the term vaporwave is derived from the term vaporware, that is any commercial hardware or software products that once were concepts but were never made available to consumers.

Anyone can produce vaporwave compositions. All you really need is Audacity (or ReZound) and a way to get your music into your PCLinuxOS machine. It is must a matter of slowing down each track you include in that composition. It is also a matter of making the result as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Because vaporwave is derived from so many genres of music, you could arguably use most any composition created since music was first recorded. Much of what the vaporwave compositions I hear (through YouTube) is derived primarily from commercial (read copyrighted) music. In this sense, vaporwave is a strong criticism of the capitalist system.

I am no expert on copyright law, but there is an obvious issue here, namely that of copyright. However, I see where these artists are coming from, and their right to free expression. After all, there is a reason why we use PCLinuxOS in the first place.

When it comes to popularity, vaporwave is a short lived genre. Just as breakdancing came and went in the early 1980s (I used to breakdance at that time at the high school dance in 1984 and 1985.), vaporwave came and went just in the past few years of this decade.

My Experiments

What I have been doing with music, is quite similar, in the sense that it is free expression. However, I choose to use Creative Commons licensed music and sound clips (including those published in this magazine) to create my compositions. By using CC and other compatible licensed material (including public domain), I do not have to worry about the legal and/or ethical ramifications of using such material.

Some background regarding the experiments

Back in the 1970s, one of my curiosities was to see what a record would sound like if it was played at the wrong speed. (How many of you have had that curiosity back in the day?)

When playing a 33 rpm (or 45rpm) at 78 rpm, I called that "Chipmunk" music, named for the musical group The Chipmunks created by music producer Rostom Sipan "Ross" Bagdasarian (better known as David Seville), of which the voices were recorded at a slow speed then played back at normal speed.

In contrast, playing a 33 rpm or 45 rpm record at 16 rpm (the speed of a Seeburg 1000 record) produces a low and slow voice that I call "bear music" to simulate the "voice of a bear." However, playing a 45 rpm record at 33 rpm (and vice versa) can produce a better than intended effect on the music.

For example, playing Dolly Parton's "Jolene" (a 45 rpm record) at 33 rpm sounds like Neil Young singing "Jolene". Likewise, some DJs played Herb Alpert's "Rise" (the title track on 33 rpm) at 45 rpm, and it sounded just a great as the original (only faster).

Reel to reel, cassette decks, and 8-track recorders/players (for those of you who remember that far back) can and do eventually malfunction. When they do, playback of those tapes will produce unexpected effects ranging from tape playback wavering in pitch and speed, to the actual tapes wearing down and producing muffled sounds coming in and out, and in the worst case scenario, tapes being chewed up by the player.

To think that what was once tragic and expensive (and sometimes laughable) is now considered cool and artful. We can give thanks in part due to YouTube videos containing such content, and thanks in part due to new trends in music developed since the 1980s, where such trends involve repurposing of older music, in the form of remixes, scratching, beat juggling, beat matching, cutting, reversing, slowing down, speeding up, back spinning and chopping of music. Of course, this does not work for every piece of music, and to manipulate music in that manner at that time would lead to expensive repair bills on such equipment.

A notable exception can be found in the movie High School High, where in the school dance, the disc jockey scratched up Glen Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy. That song suddenly gained popularity because of the scratching.

Thanks to applications such as Mixxx, Audacity and ReZound available in the repository, the effects from such music manipulation can now be simulated without having to take your high fidelity equipment to the repair shop.

ReZound

This audio file editor is just as good as the gold standard (Audacity) and is available in the repository. There are some things you can do with audio files using this that are difficult to do in Audacity, namely:

Simulate a malfunctioning tape player

Start or stop a turntable with the needle still on the vinyl

Simulate a tape being chewed up

This editor has a function called Curved Change Rate, and is accessed from the Effects menu. With a sound clip loaded into ReZound, simply select Effects → Curved Change Rate, and a dialog box pops up with a graph. It is here where you graphically select points within the audio file where changes to the playback rate are indicated.

For this example, I have ms_meme's "PClololos" loaded into ReZound. The original published track was recorded as a 22050 Mhz mono track. I remastered this composition as a 44100 Mhz stereo track.

Now let us open the Effects menu.

As we can see here there is a good selection of effects we can use on audio files. Change Rate is used to manipulate the playback speed of the entire audio file, whereas Curved Change Rate provides a fine tuned method where parts of the audio file are played back at different speeds within the same audio file. It is here where the magic begins.

The graph in this dialog box affects the selection you are currently editing. Simply draw your graph inside the waveform shown. There are four buttons. The leftmost clears out the graph to a straight line. The middle two widen and lengthen the view of the selection respectively. The rightmost button automatically creates a smooth curve based on points you have selected in the graph shown below.

You may also save your selections as a preset (by clicking on Save), then reuse the selection (with Use, replacing what is already in the graph) on another selection or track.

The following below is an example of what you can do with Curved Change Rate.

You can simulate a malfunctioning tape player by varying the playback of the file in a way that the audio slows down and speeds up at random moments throughout the playback. This simulation is graphically represented (as shown here) by randomly placing points on the graph window representing the audio file so a random waveform is displayed. Click on the right most button to create the smooth curve used for the simulation. Then click on OK to warp the audio file.

Likewise, you can simulate starting up a turntable with the needle on the record by placing a point at the beginning of the graph representing a playback rate of zero. Then add some points in ascending order so you create a ascending curve that reaches the normal level.

Simulating stopping of a turntable is done by creating a descending curve from normal to zero in the graph.

The sharper the curve, the quicker the effect will be when the audio file is played back. Likewise, the longer the curve, the longer it takes for the effect to be produced. This is useful if you want to simulate gradual stopping of a record on the turntable.

If you create a waveform, and then end the graph with a zero point at the end of the file, you can simulate the tape player chewing up the tape.

...and if you want to look for subliminal messages in this file, selecting Effects → Reverse will reverse the audio file, so when you play the file, it will play backwards.

Change Volume and Gain options can be used to fine tune the playback volume of the audio file. Curved Gain allows you to adjust the volume on parts of the selection or audio file, rather than the entire selection or file.

Mixxx

Just what the name says. It is a virtual DJ console that does most everything the commercial product (read as expensive) Emulator 2 by Touch Innovations can do.

Mixxx can be installed from the repository, and once you start using it, you could imagine the possibilities of what you could do to your music.

Before we get further into Mixxx, let us define some terms about music manipulation.

Sample: A sample is a selection of audio generally short in length, but is used to define a sound as a musical instrument. That sound could be anything from a drum beat, to parts of Donald Trump's speeches, to cows mooing.

Scratching: The act of rapidly moving forward and/or backward digital audio while that audio file is playing, usually in a rubbing motion or sudden movement in either direction, the idea being to make that audio a musical instrument.

Cutting: The act of playing a sample on a turntable or CD deck, then pausing the audio at the right time. Usually, the audio to that turntable is cut off first, then the audio is reversed to the start point. At that time, the audio is restored, and the process is repeated. For example, I took a sample of Donald Trump saying "Great People" and morphed it into "Great People, Great People, Great, Great, Great People."

Beat Juggling: What you are doing when you have two turntables (or CDJ decks) with the same music track loaded into each, cued up to the same point. With the crossfader at one end, the sample is played. At the end of the sample, the sample on the other turntable is started while you quickly move the crossfader to the other side, at the same time reversing the first sample to the beginning. At the end of the second sample, the first sample is started again, and the crossfader quickly switched to the other side on the mixer. Switching the crossfader quickly simulates a switch between the two turntables (or CDJ decks). The result is only the samples play in a fashion that resembles juggling, hence the term beat juggling.

Backspinning: What you do when you quickly reverse a track while it is still playing. Likewise, quickly forwarding a track while the track is playing is called Forwardspinning.

Reverse Playback: While not an official DJ term, it is what is accomplished when you click on the reverse button (next to the Play/Pause button) while the track is playing.

Mixxx comes with the following features:

Two to four simulated turntables are available (with two turntables available being the default when Mixxx is launched)

Four sampler decks are available, not enabled by default.

Two preview decks (only available when two turntables are active, instead of four), not enabled by default.

Vinyl simulation is either Serato, Traktor or MixVibes style, and scratching is done with a DJ controller (simulating a turntable) or a mouse.

Skinned themes with different control positions. Default here is called Late Night and resembles the Emulator 2 product.

Ability to broadcast live through a Internet stream

Ability to record mixes

Configurable repository of music

For this configuration, I have two virtual turntables configured Serato style for turntablism, four samplers for adding looping beats to the mix, and a repository of music stored on the hard drive.

Music Sources

Freesound.org and ccmixter.org are two websites I like to visit for audio samples to use.

Archive.org has a large repository of music as well as audio clips. Think of archive.org as the public library on the Internet where you can access most anything that can be found on the Internet. (I have accounts with all three sources.)

Attention K-Mart Shoppers!

If you have ever been in a K-Mart back in the 1970s through 1990s, much of the background heard in the store can be found at https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers.

These digitized tapes average two hours in length, and is best downloaded to your local machine rather than streamed (especially if you have a low bandwidth connection). Downloading allows you to enhance the music for better enjoyment, as well as divide the track into individual tracks you can play separately.

Also, the licensing of the taped to K-Mart called for destruction of the tape after the time period for which the playback tape was assigned had expired. Thankfully, this directive was not followed, or the music would not be available for our enjoyment today.

Also included in this collection is a single tape (digitized from a reel to reel tape deck instead of cassettes from this collection) from 1973 which starts with the classic K-Mart jingle at that time. The music on this tape is the same type of music heard on the Seeburg 1000, whereas tapes produced in the 1980s and 1990s contained popular music of that era. There is also a Christmas 1978 tape containing the standard K-Mart advertising spots as well as special messages such as "Security to Section 3 please" designed to deter shoplifting.

Seeburg 1000 Update

Shortly after I wrote the last article, seeburg1000.com upgraded its servers and again changed the access URL to http://74.82.59.197:8351/stream.

The best way to keep up with the changes is to go to seeburg1000.com, click on Click to Play, then where it says Click on your favorite media player's logo, click on the first icon (representing Winamp), and allow your web browser to download playlist.pls and then launch the media player assigned to your web browser.

For the official PCLinuxOS releases, that default player is Clementine.

Like PCLinuxOS itself, their online store, http://seeburg1000.bigcartel.com/ has merchandise for purchase, of which proceeds fund the operation of the website and the playback of the music library. Merchandise includes apparel, CDs, and a vinyl record of Seeburg music.

Seeburg1000.com merchandise can also be found on eBay for purchase. If you are lucky enough, there might be a real Seeburg 1000 machine for sale.

The website located at http://www.nixiebunny.com/seeburg/ contains 10MB files of digitized Seeburg records available in MP3 format. The files here represent a small sample of what was available for the Seeburg 1000.

The aforementioned sources are some of the music vaporwave artists used as the base for their creations. In theory, most any music ever recorded was fair game for this practice.

The experiments I worked with for this article go beyond the concepts of vaporwave and house music. Once you start using these tools for audio file manipulation, imagine the possibilities of what you can do.

PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: jake721

As told to YouCanToo

What is your name/username?
My name is Logan/jake721

How old are you?
Currently I am 80 years young and will soon add 1 more to that.

Are you married, single?
I am married. My wife Patty and I have been married for 25 years.

How about Kids, Grandkids ?
Between the two of us we have 3 sons and 6 grandkids, 3 boys and 3 girls ranging in age from 13 to 33.

Do you have pets, what is your favorite?
We have no pets, mainly because we have traveled a lot but if we were to get one it would be a dog.

Are you retired, still working and if working, what do you do?
I have been retired for nearly 21 years after a long career with a pharmaceutical company. I was in the research area, involved with biological testing of potential new drugs and later in the quality control laboratory, doing micro-quantitative analysis. Most of my last several working years were spent setting up, maintaining and sometimes troubleshooting analytical instruments while trying to help others solve those inevitable glitches that crop up from time to time.

Where do you call home? What is it like? IE: weather, scenery
I live in Evansville, southwestern Indiana where we have all 4 seasons of the year. We get some snow in winter and in summer it is hot and humid. Spring and fall are usually pretty nice. The terrain is somewhat flat with low rolling hills and adjacent to the Ohio river. The rural areas are farmland, mostly producing corn and soybeans.

Reflection of the city skyline on the Ohio River.

Where did you go to school and what is your education level?
I graduated from Bosse High School, spent one hitch in the U.S. Navy and enrolled in some night classes at the local university, but never completed a degree.

What kind of things you like doing? hobbies, travel, fishing, camping?
We enjoy traveling and in our 25 years together have been busy visiting all 50 states. In addition we have visited Australia, England, Ireland and Scotland, with a 1 day junket to Paris while we were in England. I am a licensed, Extra Class, ham radio operator since 1971, with the call sign N9LJ but I am not nearly as active as I once was. I also enjoy bowling which I have done for many years.

Taken while on tour in Ireland with the Cliffs of Moher in the background.

Why and when did you start using Linux?
My first experience with computers was with an IBM PC at my workplace in 1982. I later had my own Timex-Sinclair 1000 and then graduated to an ATARI 800XL before the PC era really bloomed. My first interest in Linux was spurred by Leo LaPorte and his TV shows on the old ZDTV channel. I have always been a bit of a DIY, tinkerer type and Linux loomed as a new adventure for me. Over the next few years I tried a number of distros, the first being Red Hat on a disk I copied from a CD in a library book. Then I began a quest for a version I could better understand but I honestly didn't give most of them a fair chance. Mandrake Linux, I think version 7 or 8, was the first one I found that I got into at all. That was my very first actual Linux install to a hard drive. Then I came across PCLinuxOS and downloaded P.93 Minime, which I played with for a while but never really got going with it. All this had been experimental rather than progressing toward a goal. I had been reading the online PClinuxOS magazine since its beginning. When I went with PCLinuxOS 2007, it all began to make more sense to me, and my interest grew. Even so, with all the improvements, it took the 2009 distro to finally pull me in. Now, here we are today. Plus, I want to say how much I enjoy the forum with all the knowledgeable, friendly and helpful members who are so willing to assist anyone who asks. Also a big THANKS to Texstar and the gang for keeping us up to date and running with PCLinuxOS.

What specific equipment do currently use with PCLOS?
My main computer with KDE is built on a Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, AMD Phenom II X2 550, 4GB RAM, ASUS GeForce GT 440 (Silent), 500 GB Seagate HDD and ASUS DVD/CD burner. Patty's machine is similarly equipped, built on a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3, AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8GB RAM and dual boots Win7/PCLinuxOS KDE while I try to win her over to the Linux side. There is also an older Toshiba laptop with Mate 32bit, which will be replaced very soon due to its obsolescence.

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.

ms_meme's Nook: Log Right In

OGG                                        MP3

Tip Top Tips: Chaining Sound Effects With Rakarrack

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 corazon.

(Written to include people who have never used the audio tools in PCLinuxOS, starts out dry, but hopefully gains momentum, holds interest, and inspires some experimentation.)

Run the command

groups

If the audio group is not listed, use PCC to add yourself to that group.

Edit the text file /etc/security/limits.conf. It should conclude with these lines:

@audio - rtprio 99
@audio - memlock unlimited
@audio - nice -10

(For luck, use the same spacing as exists in your existing file).

Install and start qjackctl. (There are many youtubes to visualize using qjackctl, as written below.)

Install and start amsynth.

What is my soundcard or chip called, in qjackctl setup panel? Run the commands aplay -l and arecord -l.

The items in the terminal output within brackets are your soundcards/chips. In the qjackctl setup panel, click the widgets to the right of Input Device and Output Device, and choose or fill in the title found within brackets.

If you lack a midi keyboard to play notes, you can use qwerty keyboard input. Install vkeybd and start it with vkeybd --octave 6 (or 8, etc.).

It will appear in the ALSA tab of the qjackctl connection panel, on the left side. Connect it to your amsynth on the right side. To make connections, you select an item on both the left and right sides, and press the Connect button, and a line will draw between them if it's a valid connection option.

For another easy soundsource, install qsynth GUI for fluidsynth, and fluid-soundfont-gm. This will give you a collection of sampled common pop-orchestral sounds.

You can also cable in any instrument that has a line-out or headphone out, to your computer audio input, (usually the green jack is the audio input, when motherboard sound is used) Most yamaha, casio, and similar rompler style keyboards work fine. Second-hand stores often have some very cheap, as well as craigslist, ebay, etc.

When you have an instrument working, install rakarrack, and start four (4) instances of it. You can resize and place the windows so that the main sliders and preset title are all visible, or just put them on multiple desktops.

Note that there is an on/off checkbox in the upper left of both the main rakarrack panel, and each of the individual effects panels, and that many of the individual effect panels have some useful presets in a menu at the upper right.

In each rakarrack, in it's preferences for jack, uncheck the autoconnect boxes, and make sure none of the system:capture or system:playback entries is highlighted. (This provides a blank connection slate to start with).

For this example, use these rakarrack presets in order (all from Bank 1) in the four rakarracks:

Metal Tone  i/o  at -13   and   -9
Summer At The Pit  at -13 and  -6
Clean Swirl at  -9 and 0
Jet Flanger at -17  and 12

In Summer At The Pit, in the Echotron panel, I chose from the menu in the upper right, 'Ambience'. (The default has a delay effect I didn't want, in this case).

In Clean Swirl, look at the Analog Phaser panel. It has a tempo control. I slow it down to six (6). To gain a slow subtle filter sweep, type influence.

Remember you select an item on both the left and right side of a qjackctl connection panel, and press the Connect button, and a line will draw between them if it's a valid connection.

The connections below will route your chosen sound into the first effect, the effected sound into a second effect, and those effected sounds into a third effect, which goes to your audio output, building the amp gain, and adding modulations and distortions along the way.

And then, the original sound goes by itself into a separate fourth effect.

Choosing a variety of input sounds will display the versatility of the effects, and you can start a list of combos you like. Here are the connections for an emotive moving distortion, that gives a whole new life to some sounds, but once 'you're in' there isn't much that can't be done, and both extreme sublety, and extremism can be rewarding

-------------------------------------------

In the qjackctl connection panel, under the Audio tab, connect:

amsynth on the left to rakarrack on the right (Metal Tone)

rakarrack on the left to rakarrack 01 on the right (Summer At The Pit)

rakarrack 01 on the left to rakarrack 02 on the right (Clean Swirl)

rakarrack 02 on the left to system on the right (your sound output)

amsynth on the left to rakarrack 03 on the right (Jet Flanger)

rackarrack 03 on the left to system on the right (your sound output)

------------------------------------------------

What if it's too quiet or too loud, or too noisy?

Each rakarrack has a pair of stereo sliders, the one on the left is the (dry) input signal, the one on the right is the (wet) effected signal. In this example, there can be a lot of noise, mainly undesired, but you can adjust that away, by using these i/o (dry/wet) sliders to control the levels of each rakarrack. Your tastes will differ from mine, and experiments can find sonic jewels.

For simple recording of your experiments and masterpieces, install and start Timemachine, a simple one-button recorder, then in qjackctl audio panel, connect the original sound, the summed third effect, and the fourth effect, (all on the left) to Timemachine on the right. Timemachine has a level meter, and shows any clipping in red. Press the record button, and it turns orange while recording.

Import the timemachine .w64 or .wav file into audacity for editing, and export to mp3, ogg, etc.

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Scrappler

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Sudoku

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Weather Crossword

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

PCLinusOS Word Find: March 2017
Weather

Download Puzzle Solutions Here!

Screenshot Showcase

Posted by Crow, March 5, 2017, running LXDE

Posted by ms_meme, March 6, 2017, running KDE

Posted by OnlyHuman, March 29, 2017, running e21

Posted by parnote, March 28, 2017, running Xfce

Posted by PendragonUK, March 20, 2017, running KDE

Posted by tbschommer, March 17, 2017, running KDE

Posted by tuxlink, March 2, 2017, running KDE

Posted by uncleV, March 14, 2017, running KDE

Posted by YouCanToo, March 1, 2017, running KDE

Posted by uT6, March 17, 2017, running KDE