Table of Contents

Welcome From The Chief Editor

ICYMI: Skype Closing Down May 5, 2025

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Paccheri Pasta

Web Applications: How To Use The Best In The Cloud!

Firefox Threatens Suicide, Then Backpedals

Inkscape Tutorial: Using The Shape Builder Tool

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Extra: Homemade Vanilla Pudding

Delete Lines From A Text File Easily & Quickly

Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

Wiki Pick: Getting Rid Of Unwanted/Unneeded Files

Product Review: iDPRT M610 Pro Thermal Printer

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Ricotta Beef Stuffed Pasta Shells

PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk...

Recently, I had a rather long email conversation with another member of our PCLinuxOS family (who will remain nameless here). In it, we lamented about some of the more recent failings of online life, as well as the failings of some of our so-called “Big Tech” leaders.

In the EU, they have the GDPR to help protect user data, and to reign in the data collection by “Big Tech.” Here in the U.S., we pretty much have nothing (or next to it) to protect the collection of private personal data. In the U.S., it’s pretty much the Wild, Wild West when it comes to collecting (and leveraging) user data. At least those living under the rule of EU law have some protections, but even that doesn't go far enough. But, it’s a good start. It’s definitely FAR, FAR more protection than we have here in the U.S.

Here in the U.S., we’re in a constant battle with the behemoths of the “Big Tech” community. We’re talking about companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and other members of that “exclusive” club. These companies have no conscience. They are after one thing, and only one thing: profits.

Lexi and dad at the annual Daddy-Daughter Dance.

Recently, Google has fully implemented Manifest V3, which effectively renders browser ad blockers useless, and have fully deprecated Manifest V2 at the same time. Well, at least on Chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Opera, Brave, etc.). Mozilla, and the other web browsers that use the Mozilla web engine (Firefox, Midori, etc.) still support both Manifest V2 and Manifest V3. Thus, your ad blockers still work under Firefox and others that use the Mozilla web engine.

You only have to “follow the money” to discover why Google decided to drop Manifest V2, and to replace it with Manifest V3. While Google’s most visible public-facing image is from running their search engine, Google Docs, YouTube, and the whole host of Google’s other “services” that they own and run, the vast majority of their revenue comes from selling ads. Their “angle” was to collect as much user information as they can, and then display ads based on each user’s interests … interests revealed by the massive amount of user data Google had amassed from all of the user interaction from their many “services.”

So, Manifest V3 is a thinly veiled (albeit successful) attempt by Google to prevent those ads sold by Google from being blocked. With ad blockers virtually neutered, those ads sold by Google are no longer blocked, and they thus have a larger audience. With a larger audience, Google can charge more to potential advertisers, because the ads are reaching more people. We can sum it all up with one word: greed. LOL! Forget about “Do No Evil.” That’s so naive and so “yesterday.” In fact, Google abandoned their “Do No Evil” mantra many years ago. Like Google needs the money. They just paid $32 billion dollars … CASH … to buy up a cybersecurity firm, Wiz. Yes, I’m aware that the EU regulators have fined Google billions of dollars, but it’s nothing more than a light slap on the wrist. Given that Google can spend $32 billion dollars CASH to buy up another company, those fines imposed by the EU are just a “cost of doing business” for Google, not a punishment.

Not to be outdone, Meta has their “Facebook Pixel” that is embedded on the vast majority of websites out there (but NOT this magazine’s website!). That “Facebook Pixel” gathers information on all users who traverse those web pages, regardless of whether that user is a Facebook user or not. As it tracks users across the web, the sites that a user visits reveals a LOT about their interests, allowing Facebook to target current and future users of that platform ads that are reflective of those interests.

Amazon doesn't want to be outdone in this area, either. As if your purchase history on Amazon isn’t revealing enough about your interests, you also have to consider all of the websites hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers. Amazon has a literal TON of information to use for targeting you with not only ads, but also purchase recommendations … all designed to get you to part with your money by buying more shiitake mushrooms you don’t really need.

These stories and themes go on and on and on and on, ad infinitum. Your personally identifiable and private information literally IS the currency of modern travels on the World Wide Web. It is more of the same theme that was unveiled in Mozilla’s bungled rollout of Firefox’s first ever “terms of use” agreement (covered elsewhere in this issue). It doesn’t seem that one entity of that exclusive club learns a single thing from the missteps of the other members of that exclusive “Big Tech” club. How many examples do we need before we all realize that these “Big Tech” companies cannot (or will not) police themselves?

What’s really needed (and probably the farthest from fruition) is legislation that protects user data. Here in the U.S., our legislators are a bunch of octogenarians who can barely figure out how to even turn on a computer. To most of them, the computer is this mysterious black box where all kinds of magic they don’t/can’t even begin to comprehend happens. They don’t understand the intricacies of the problem, nor the intricacies of that “magic” that happens in that mysterious little box. So, we can’t trust them to create meaningful legislation to protect user data.

And that’s completely separate from the fact that they are also voting for the ability of those three- and four-letter government agencies to collect as much of this data as they can, allowing them to essentially spy on the very people who elected them to power (conflict of interest much?). At this point, any legislation protecting user data will merely be a dog and pony show, meant to placate the masses and make them think that they’ve done something meaningful, with legislation that will ultimately be ineffective and weak, at best. Meanwhile, the vast majority of users don’t care, don’t worry, and won’t change their behaviors as they blissfully immerse themselves in these data-mining traps.

So, the ultimate responsibility falls to each individual user. Those users need to fully understand the issue, and how to prevent it (as much as they can). Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that users can do about some of this data collection. But, you can make it difficult for those entities (corporate and governmental) to collect and profit from your personally identifiable private information.

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This month’s cover celebrates the upcoming Easter holiday. The image of a penguin dressed up in an Easter Bunny costume, surrounded by eggs and candy, was generated with Bing’s AI image creator.

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Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity, prosperity, and continued good health! Be careful … influenza is still circulating with a vengeance.

ICYMI: Skype Closing Down May 5, 2025

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

An ongoing PayPal email scam exploits the platform's address settings to send fake purchase notifications, tricking users into granting remote access to scammers, according to an article from Bleeping Computer. For the past month, BleepingComputer and others have received emails from PayPal stating,“ added a new address. This is just a quick confirmation that you added an address in your PayPal account” The email includes the new address that was allegedly added to your PayPal account, including a message claiming to be a purchase confirmation for a MacBook M4, and to call the enclosed PayPal number if you did not authorize the purchase.

Researchers at Imperial College London say an artificial intelligence-based science tool created by Google needed just 48 hours to solve a problem that took them roughly a decade to answer and verify on their own, according to an article from TechSpot. The tool in question is called “-scientist” and the problem they presented it with was straightforward enough: why are some superbugs resistant to antibiotics? Professor José R Penadés told the BBC that Google's tool reached the same hypothesis that his team had – that superbugs can create a tail that allows them to move between species. In simpler terms, one can think of it as a master key that enables the bug to move from home to home.

“Google yourself” is terrible advice. If there's personal information about you floating around on the web, you should be aware of it—because, despite common misconceptions, the internet is not written in ink. If your info is popping up on Google Search, you might be able to get rid of it. On February 26, 2025, Google announced its redesigned “about you” tool, according to an article from Lifehacker. This feature, first rolled out in 2023, looks out for your personal information on Google Search, including your name, phone number, email addresses, and home addresses. The tool then tries to remove any information it does find. Note that this doesn't necessarily delete that information from the website in question; rather, it affects outdated info that appears in Search. For example, you requested a site take down your address, or you edited a webpage to reflect your new phone number, but that deleted data still shows up when people search your name.

After kickstarting the market for making calls over the internet 23 years ago, Skype is closing down, according to an article from TechCrunch. Microsoft, which acquired the messaging and calling app 14 years ago, said it will be retiring it from active duty on May 5 to double down on Teams. Skype users have 10 weeks to decide what they want to do with their account. It’s not clear how many people are impacted. The most recent numbers that Microsoft had shared were in 2023, when it said it had more than 36 million users — a long way from Skype’s peak of 300 million users. “We know this is a big deal for our Skype users, and we’re very grateful for their support of Skype and all the learnings that have factored into Teams over the last seven years,” Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative Apps and platforms, told TechCrunch in an interview this week. “At this point, putting all our focus behind Teams will let us give a simpler message and drive faster innovation.” Between now and May 5, users will have the option to migrate all their contacts and chat data over to Microsoft’s Teams platform. Alternatively, users can download their Skype data using the app’s built-in export tool.

Legislation under the moniker “right to repair” has now been introduced in all 50 states, marking a major milestone in this grassroots consumer movement, according to an article from the GoodNewsNetwork. Wisconsin just became the final US state to introduce some sort of right to repair laws. In broad terms, all of these bills would generally guarantee a consumer’s right to access replacement parts for devices and machines, repair manuals or other relevant documents for expensive products, diagnostics data from original manufacturers, and even in some cases, such as automobiles, appropriate tools necessary for maintenance. They may also ban the use of technological protection measures, sometimes called “software locks” that are designed to restrict repair only to authorized repair technicians.

Not again! The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make a hard deadline for shutting down ATSC 1.0 and transitioning to ATSC 3.0, also known as NextGen TV, according to an article from CordCutters News. The petition to the FCC suggests a two-phase plan. First, they ask that stations in the top 55 markets, which cover about 70% of U.S. households, switch to ATSC 3.0 by February 2028. The second phase would have all remaining markets make the switch before February 2030. In the petition, NAB notes that “In addition to setting a timeline, this transition requires updates to outdated rules. NAB is also calling on the FCC to modernize regulations governing television reception devices – ensuring consumers who buy new TVs can continue receiving broadcast programming – and to adjust MVPD carriage rules so that obligations remain fair and unchanged during the transition.” I guess they’ll do ANYTHING to sell more TVs!

Image by Dhanesh Damodaran from Pixabay

Antioxidants that give fruits and flowers their vibrant colors seem to counteract some of the most dangerous reproductive-system effects of exposure to microplastics, such as decreased fertility, and could ultimately be used in developing treatments, new peer-reviewed research shows, according to an article from The Guardian. The paper focuses on microplastics’ reproductive toxicity and plant compounds called anthocyanins, which are widely found in nuts, fruits and vegetables. The new review of scientific literature on anthocyanins finds that the compounds are probably protective against a range of plastic-induced effects on hormones, reductions in testosterone and estrogen, decreased sperm counts, lower sperm quality, erectile dysfunction and ovarian damage. “The search for natural compounds to counteract these harmful effects is ongoing, with anthocyanins emerging as a promising candidate,” write the study’s authors, who are with the Finland-China Food and Health Network.

A widespread Microsoft outage on March 1, 2025 left tens of thousands of users unable to access key services, including Outlook, Teams, and Office 365, for more than three hours, according to an article from TechRepublic. Microsoft has not provided full details on the root cause but attributed the disruption to a “problematic code change.” At about 5:00 p.m. ET on March 1, Microsoft confirmed it had identified a potential cause of impact, and almost an hour later reported that services were recovering. The company confirmed at 7:02 p.m. ET that service had been restored after “reversion of the problematic code change” and to “refer to MO1020913 in the admin center for detailed information.” Hmmmm … yet another untested software update from Microsoft. Who’d’ve thunk it?

During the last week of February, news outlets worldwide reported that North Korea orchestrated the theft of $1.5 billion in digital tokens from cryptocurrency exchange firm Bybit, according to an article from TechRepublic. However, this isn’t just another crypto hack. The cyberattack is considered the biggest crypto heist ever. The situation adds to the growing list of serious concerns about the security of digital assets and the increasingly sophisticated tactics of state-sponsored cybercriminals. According to reports, the North Korean hackers are believed to be part of the notorious Lazarus group, making this the third attack attributed to them in six months and bringing their grand total of stolen crypto to $3 billion. Lazarus employed a series of highly advanced techniques with several key components.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

A handful of major data breaches that occurred in 2024 have already come to light in the last few months (including the PowerSchool and Community Health Center incidents), the latest of which affected a major employment screening and background check service and compromised information from more than 3.3 million people, according to an article from Lifehacker. DISA Global Solutions provides background checks for more than 55,000 employers across the country, and its systems were compromised for more than two months last year. Hackers accessed DISA's system between Feb. 9, 2024 and April 22, 2024 (when the breach was discovered) and stole the data of 3,332,750 individuals. An additional filing located by TechCrunch indicated that the breach included Social Security numbers, medical records, financial account information, credit and debit card numbers, and other government-issued documents.

Google’s latest crackdown on browser extension has rendered popular ad blockers like uBlock Origin inoperable on Chrome, as the company pushes forward with its switch to Manifest V3, according to an article from TechRepublic. The move, which critics say weakens privacy protections, affects all Chromium-based browsers, including Microsoft Edge. Meanwhile, Firefox is doubling down on its commitment to ad-blocking tools, promising to support both Manifest V2 and V3, ensuring users retain control over their browsing experience. Manifest V3 is the newest version of Chrome’s extension framework but it has faced criticism for cutting off access to some of ad blockers’ functionality. It serves as the foundation for WebExtensions, which power browser APIs. Google has defended Manifest V3, calling it “the first step in our platform vision to improve the privacy, security, and performance of extensions.” As if I needed another reason to stay away from Chromium-based browsers as my daily driver.

While Silicon Valley obsesses over AI, a weight-loss drug is quietly becoming the biggest economic disruptor since the internet. Here's why your job, investments, and future depend on understanding it, says an article from Wildfire Labs Substack. If you told someone in 1850 that air conditioning would reshape the global economy, they'd think you were crazy. But it made the American South habitable year-round, revolutionized manufacturing in hot climates, and enabled computing by keeping servers cool. The most significant changes arise from the most surprising sources. GLP-1 drugs are our air conditioner moment. We're not just talking about weight loss. We're discussing the first medication that effectively regulates human impulse control.

Image by mcmurryjulie from Pixabay

A new study found that aspirin may help prevent some cancers from spreading by enhancing the immune system's ability to attack metastatic cells, according to an article from Becker’s Hospital Review. In the study published March 5 in Nature, researchers found that aspirin inhibits a key immunosuppressive pathway linked to platelet-derived thromboxane A2, which suppresses T-cell activity and allows for cancer to spread. You can read the ultra-technical study here.

Digg, the dominant link aggregator of the mid-2000s, is attempting yet another comeback, according to an article from Lifehacker. Kevin Rose, one of Digg's original founders, has acquired the brand name for an undisclosed sum and is teaming up with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian to build a new-ish social network. The plan was announced March 5, 2025 in articles on Techcrunch and in the New York Times. There aren't many concrete details in these articles about what the site will look like, though they do note it will use AI as a key moderation tool. “Communities thrive when there’s a balance between technology and human judgment,” Ohanian told Techcrunch, adding that, “should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best: building real connections” Rose surveyed current Reddit moderators in an attempt to learn what improved moderation tools could look like. That's about it in terms of specifics—both pieces focus less on the tech and more on the founders themselves. But we do know the new Digg won't look like a “school forum” according to Rose. He said that, in a few years, it “be an interface that is unlike any other that you've seen” Whatever that means.

Billions of devices worldwide rely on a widely used Bluetooth-Wi-Fi chip that contains undocumented “hidden commands,”, according to an article from TechRepublic. Researchers warn these commands could be exploited to manipulate memory, impersonate devices, and bypass security controls. ESP32, manufactured by a Chinese company called Espressif, is a microcontroller that enables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections in numerous smart devices, including smartphones, laptops, smart locks, and medical equipment. Its popularity is partly due to its low cost, with units available for just a few dollars.

Did you know that Windows has a package manager? No? Well, me neither. Of course, I’ve not been a real “Windows user” since WinXP, and this is just another example of Microsoft arriving late to the party, and copying Linux. Mimicking one of Linux’s best features truly is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess. Installing a bunch of applications at once on Windows can be annoying. You need to find the installer packages, download them, then run them all, one after another. It requires spending a bunch of time clicking through menus and checking boxes. But you don't have to live this way. Linux users have long used package managers to accomplish this with far greater ease—as have some Mac users. Using a package manager, you can type a single command to install as many different applications as you want. And, it turns out, Windows comes with a package manager. It's called Winget. You can try it right now — just open PowerShell, which you can find in the start menu, or by right-clicking the Windows logo and clicking “Terminal.” Type winget search followed by the application you want to install. In most cases, you should be delivered a list of options. Read the full article from Lifehacker here.

The tech giant Google is once again under scrutiny as the Department of Justice (DOJ) reaffirmed on Friday its proposal to force the company to divest its popular Chrome browser, a move that could have ripple effects across its ecosystem, potentially leading to the sale of its Google TV division and Android platform, according to an article from CordCuttersNews. This latest development comes as part of a broader antitrust battle initiated under the previous administration, now gaining renewed momentum under the current administration. The DOJ’s renewed push follows a landmark 2024 federal court ruling by Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which declared that Google maintains an illegal monopoly over internet search. The government argues that Google’s dominance, bolstered by its control over Chrome and strategic business practices, stifles competition to the detriment of American consumers and businesses. “Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that—no matter what occurs—Google always wins,” the DOJ stated in a recent court filing. The proposal to divest Chrome aims to “allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet,” a critical step toward leveling the playing field.

HP, along with other printer brands, is infamous for issuing firmware updates that brick already-purchased printers that have tried to use third-party ink. In a new form of frustration, HP is now being accused of issuing a firmware update that broke customers’ laser printers — even though the devices are loaded with HP-brand toner, according to an article from Ars Technica. The firmware update in question is version 20250209, which HP issued on March 4 for its LaserJet MFP M232-M237 models. Per HP, the update includes “security updates,” a “regulatory requirement update,” “general improvements and bug fixes,” and fixes for IPP Everywhere. Looking back to older updates’ fixes and changes, which the new update includes, doesn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The older updates mention things like “fixed print quality to ensure borders are not cropped for certain document types,” and “improved firmware update and cartridge rejection experiences.” But there’s no mention of changes to how the printers use or read toner. However, users have been reporting sudden problems using HP-brand toner in their M232–M237 series printers since their devices were updated to 20250209. Users on HP’s support forum say they see Error Code 11 and the hardware’s toner light flashing when trying to print. Some said they’ve cleaned the contacts and reinstalled their toner but still can't print.

Image by Julian Di Pietrantonio from Pixabay

On Tuesday, March 11, Apple dropped a series of updates for its devices, according to an article from Lifehacker. That includes iOS 18.3.2 for iPhones; iPadOS 18.3.2 for iPads, macOS Sequoia 15.3.2 for Macs, Safari 18.3.1, tvOS 18.3.1, and visionOS 2.3.2 for Apple Vision Pro. With the exception of tvOS, which doesn't contain release notes at this time, all of these updates appear to patch the same singular vulnerability: “Impact: Maliciously crafted web content may be able to break out of Web Content sandbox. This is a supplementary fix for an attack that was blocked in iOS 17.2. (Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on versions of iOS before iOS 17.2.)” It appears an out-of-bounds write issue (which happens when a program writes data that does not belong to it) allowed bad actors to attack users running versions of iOS older than 17.2. Apple's language implies that these are capable actors with specific targets, and while Apple doesn't say, it's possible that involves high-profile personalities such as politicians or journalists. The company says the issue was blocked in iOS 17.2, but since there are users who were attacked running earlier versions of iOS, it seems this update was necessary regardless.

Saving your passwords in your browser — like Chrome or Firefox — provides an easy way to access logins when you need them on websites, and having a safe place to keep strong, unique passwords is better than, well, not. However, browser password managers aren't necessarily the most secure nor the most convenient for filling password or payment fields in apps, nor do they come with features included with third-party password management tools, like encrypted storage or dark web monitoring. If you're transitioning away from your browser's password manager or simply want to remove credentials you no longer use, this article from Lifehacker shows how to delete saved passwords in the most popular browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera.

From security and privacy concerns to good old-fashioned cringe, there are all kinds of reasons you might want to delete your old social media posts. And there are plenty of tools for the job out there. The problem: most tend to focus on one or two social media networks. Redact, however, is a paid tool with support for deleting posts on 28 different services, according to an article from Lifehacker. You can use it to scan for old posts and choose what to delete, or you can search for posts that mention specific topics. It can also be used to delete posts on a schedule—this is perfect if, for example, you wanted to delete all Bluesky posts a month after you post them. It's a lot of power, basically, and it runs locally on your computer, meaning you're in control. Paid plans range from $8 per month to $15 per month for the “ultimate” plan. But just remember … the internet NEVER forgets!

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Microsoft says the March 2025 Windows cumulative updates automatically and mistakenly remove the AI-powered Copilot digital assistant from some Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems, according to an article from BleepingComputer. The warning was added to updated support documents days after Redmond released this month's Patch Tuesday security updates. As Microsoft explains, the update applies to all users who install the KB5053598 (Windows 24H2) and KB5053606 (Windows 10 22H2) cumulative updates issued last week, on March 11th. Oops!

Saturn and Jupiter have been locked in a competition for the planet with the highest number of moons. But as it happens, Jupiter never really stood a chance: Saturn has just won by a huge margin, according to an article from Smithsonian Magazine. That’s because on Tuesday, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognized 128 new moons in orbit around Saturn, discovered by astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the United States and France. Saturn’s new grand total of 274 moons is almost twice as many as all the rest of the moons in our solar system combined — so, the planet has clearly earned the title of “moon king.” Now I wonder how long it will take before the IAU sets size criteria for what it takes for a planetary orbital body to be considered an official moon (much like they did for Pluto).

One of the biggest and most enduring questions from the 20th Century (for many people) is who killed JFK? In accordance with President Donald Trump’s directive of March 17, 2025, all records previously withheld for classification that are part of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection are released.The National Archives has partnered with agencies across the federal government to comply with the President’s directive in support of Executive Order 14176. As of March 18, 2025, the records are available to access either online at this page or in person, via hard copy or on analog media formats, at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. As the records continue to be digitized, they will be posted to the collection.

Image by Elisa from Pixabay

Google agreed to buy Wiz, a fast-growing cybersecurity start-up, for $32 billion in the company’s biggest push to strengthen its cloud-computing business and expand beyond the search engine and consumer internet services that made it a household name, according to an article from the New York Times. The all-cash deal, announced on March 18, 2025, would be Google’s largest, easily surpassing its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2012. With the deal, Google would get a five-year-old company that most consumers are unfamiliar with but that a growing number of businesses rely on to protect their cloud applications. (It feels odd saying “Google” and “cybersecurity” in the same sentence.)

The Find My Device app for Android is getting an update: The new Find My Device app is now split up into two tabs, one for Devices, and one for People. With it, you can easily coordinate meet-ups with friends or check that your kids have safely arrived home, according to an article from Lifehacker. You'll find the app preinstalled on Pixels, and it's a free download for other Android devices. It's also available on the web, but there's no iPhone app. Despite that, you can still keep tabs on the real time locations of your contacts if they have iPhones—more on that in a moment. This is the same Find My Device tool that received a pretty major upgrade last year. While it's existed in some form for a long time, showing you Android phones and other gadgets on a map if they were ever lost and stolen, the new and improved version added a bunch of features to make it more useful. Whereas before you would need your phone to be on and connected to wifi to be able to find it, the 2024 improvements mean you can now enlist the help of all the other millions of Android gadgets out there to (securely and anonymously) track down missing devices (Apple's Find My Network works in the same way).

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible, according to an article from Wired. Sometime in the fall of 2021, Andrew Krapivin, an undergraduate at Rutgers University, encountered a paper that would change his life. At the time, Krapivin didn’t give it much thought. But two years later, when he finally set aside time to go through the paper (“just for fun,” as he put it), his efforts would lead to a rethinking of a widely used tool in computer science. The paper’s title, “Tiny Pointers,” referred to arrowlike entities that can direct you to a piece of information, or element, in a computer’s memory. Krapivin soon came up with a potential way to further miniaturize the pointers so they consumed less memory. However, to achieve that, he needed a better way of organizing the data that the pointers would point to. He turned to a common approach for storing data known as a hash table. But in the midst of his tinkering, Krapivin realized that he had invented a new kind of hash table, one that worked faster than expected — taking less time and fewer steps to find specific elements.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: Paccheri Pasta

Paccheri Pasta

Serves: 6

INGREDIENTS:

1 Pound ground beef, lean
1 Pound Italian sausage, sweet or hot
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Cup yellow onion, diced
8 Cloves garlic, thinly sliced
½ Cup red wine
2 Cans whole tomatoes
½ Cup beef stock, or broth
1 Tablespoon basil, dried
1 Tablespoon oregano, dried
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
½ Teaspoon black pepper
1 Pound pasta, paccheri, makes 28 Ounces cooked
¼ Cup fresh basil, chiffonade cut
1½ Cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 Cup Parmesan cheese, shredded

DIRECTIONS:

In a small mixing bowl, add the whole tomatoes. Using your hands, press and crush them into smaller pieces. Set aside.

In a large 12-inch deep, oven-safe skillet, cook the ground beef and Italian sausage together over a medium heat. Strain the cooked meat from the pan into a bowl and set aside. Once the meat is removed, carefully pour the grease into a heat-safe container.

Add the olive oil to the same pan and cook over a medium heat for 1 minute. Add the onion to the pan and sauté for 4 minutes. Add the sliced garlic and cook for an additional minute, stirring with a wooden spoon or spatula to avoid burning the garlic.

Add the red wine, deglaze the pan, and let it simmer over a medium heat for 5 minutes.

Add the cooked ground beef, tomatoes, beef stock, dried basil, dried oregano, salt and pepper, and mix thoroughly. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the sauce for 20 minutes.

While the sauce is simmering, cook the pasta according to the package instructions for al dente. Drain when cooked and set aside.

Add the pasta and the fresh basil to the skillet and mix well to coat the pasta in the sauce.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Top with all the mozzarella and half of the Parmesan cheese.

Cover the skillet and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Uncover and return the oven. Broil on low to brown the cheese topping, about 2 or 3 minutes.

Serve hot with extra Parmesan cheese, and garnish with fresh chopped basil or parsley.

NOTES:

Allow for resting time: Let the dish sit for a few minutes after removing it from the oven. This helps the flavors meld and makes serving easier.

Reserve pasta water: If your sauce seems too thick, reserve a bit of the pasta cooking water. Stir it into the sauce to achieve your desired consistency.

Mix pasta and sauce thoroughly: When combining the pasta with the sauce, toss it well to ensure every piece of pasta is coated. This maximizes flavor in every bite.

Cover the skillet while baking: Covering the skillet while baking helps trap moisture, keeping the pasta and cheese from drying out.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 702    Carbs: 11g    Sodium: 1834mg    Fiber: 2g    Protein:38g

Web Applications: How To Use The Best In The Cloud!

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a combination of web technologies and native mobile application features. They are designed to offer a user experience similar to that of a native application, but with the ease of access and updating of a website.

PWAs work in any browser that supports web technologies, and can be installed on the user's device directly from the browser, without the need to go through app stores. They offer advantages such as fast loading, offline operation and push notifications, all while keeping the same URL accessible on the web.

The aim of PWAs is to provide a uniform, high-quality user experience, regardless of the device or the quality of the internet connection. In essence, they combine the best of both worlds: the convenience and speed of web applications with the robustness and integration of mobile applications.

Advantages of Cloud Applications

1. Fast Performance: PWAs load quickly, even in slow internet conditions, providing a fluid user experience.

2. Offline operation: With the use of several programming techniques, PWAs can operate offline or on unstable networks, storing data in cache, on your local machine.

3. Simple installation: They can be installed directly from the browser, without the need to go through application stores.

4. Automatic Updates: PWAs update automatically as web content changes, ensuring that users always have the latest version.

5. Multi-platform Compatibility: They work on any device with a modern browser, regardless of operating system.

6. Security: They use HTTPS to guarantee a secure connection, protecting user data.

7. Space-saving: They take up less space on the device compared to native applications.

Disadvantages of Cloud Applications

1. System Resource Limitations: PWAs do not have full access to all system resources, such as native applications, which can limit specific functionalities, such as Bluetooth and contacts.

2. Variable Performance: Although they are fast, the performance of PWAs can vary depending on the browser and device capabilities.

3. Limited OS integration: PWAs are not as well integrated with the operating system as native apps, which can affect notifications and other functionalities.

4. Distribution and Discovery: The absence of app stores can make PWA discovery and distribution difficult, although this situation is improving with more support from the stores.

5. Inconsistent User Experience: The experience can be inconsistent across different devices and browsers, especially in browsers that don't support all PWA functionality.

6. Offline Limitations: Offline operation depends on data caching, which may not be as robust as in native apps.

7. Less iOS support: iOS devices have limited support for some PWA features compared to Android.

Despite these disadvantages, PWAs remain a powerful and flexible option for many applications.

Now, here are 10 web applications that you can use in the cloud, and that can help you a lot. These applications cover a wide range of areas, from personal productivity to multimedia.

Google Docs

One of the oldest web applications, Google Docs is a web-based word processing application that is part of the Google Workspace productivity suite. Google Docs was officially launched on March 9, 2006. Before that, it was known as Writely, a web-based word processor created by the company Upstartle, which was acquired by Google in March 2006. Google Docs allows users to create, edit and collaborate on documents in real time with other people. One of its main features is the ability to automatically save changes made, eliminating the risk of losing work due to technical failures.

In addition, Google Docs supports a wide variety of file formats, such as .docx, .pdf and .odt, making it easy to import and export documents. Integration with other Google applications, such as Google Drive, Gmail and Google Calendar, makes the user experience more cohesive and efficient. Users can also add comments, suggest edits and use the version history feature to keep track of changes made to documents over time.

As it is a cloud-based tool, Google Docs can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, enabling remote collaborative work. The collaborative feature is one of its greatest advantages, as it allows several people to work on the same document simultaneously, making it ideal for team projects, education, and dynamic work environments.

Office 365

Office 365 Online, now known as Microsoft 365, is a cloud-based service that offers a complete set of productivity tools from Microsoft.

Office 365 was officially launched on June 28, 2011. Initially, it was introduced as a cloud-based subscription service for businesses, combining applications such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.

Among the applications included are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive, all accessible directly via a web browser.

One of the main advantages of Microsoft 365 Online is the ability to access and edit documents from anywhere, as long as there is an internet connection. This facilitates real-time collaboration, as several people can work simultaneously on the same document, spreadsheet, or presentation.

In addition, Microsoft 365 Online offers cloud storage via OneDrive, allowing users to easily store, share and access files. The tools are integrated with other Microsoft services, such as Teams and SharePoint, creating a cohesive ecosystem that improves productivity and communication in the workplace.

The service is regularly updated by Microsoft, ensuring that users always have access to the latest features and security improvements. With a variety of plans, Microsoft 365 can cater for both individual users and companies of all sizes, offering a flexible and scalable solution for productivity needs.

A free Outlook account provides 5 GB of storage for documents, photos and various files.

Canva

Canva is a free and easy-to-use online graphic design tool that lets you create a wide variety of designs, from social media posts to presentations, logos, videos and much more. Launched in 2012, Canva was created to make design accessible to everyone, regardless of their level of graphic design skill.

With Canva, you can choose from thousands of free templates and customize them to your needs. The platform offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, making it easy to create professional designs without the need for advanced technical knowledge. In addition, Canva enables real-time collaboration, allowing several people to work together on the same project, leaving comments and making changes simultaneously.

Canva also integrates with other popular tools and platforms, such as Google Drive and Microsoft Office 365, making workflow more efficient. For users who require additional features, Canva offers paid plans, such as Canva Pro and Canva Enterprise, which include advanced functionalities and AI tools to create even more personalized and impactful designs.

Presentations.AI

If you hate making slides (and who doesn't?), Presentations.AI is for you. Presentations.AI is an online tool that uses artificial intelligence to create visually appealing presentations in minutes. With this platform, you can turn your ideas into professional slides simply by typing in the content you want. Presentations.AI offers a variety of features, such as creating PPTs, infographics, graphs, timelines, project plans, reports and much more.

One of the main advantages of Presentations.AI is its ease of use. It allows you to customize the design templates to align with your brand's visual identity, ensuring consistent representation in all your presentations. In addition, the tool offers compatibility with PowerPoint, allowing you to export your presentations with ease.

Another interesting feature is the ability to share your presentations in real time, with comprehensive access control. This facilitates team collaboration, allowing several people to work together on the same project, providing feedback and making changes simultaneously. Presentations.AI also offers multilingual support, allowing you to reach a global audience.

In summary, Presentations.AI is a powerful and efficient tool for creating high-quality presentations quickly, making the design process more accessible and collaborative.

Graphite

Graphite is a free, open source vector and raster graphics editing tool. Graphite combines a non-destructive workflow with layer-based composition and node-based procedural design, offering a unique experience for creating 2D content.

Here are some of Graphite's main features:

- Vector and raster editing: Allows you to create and edit vector and raster graphics with a variety of tools.

- Non-destructive workflow: All changes are made non-destructively, allowing for adjustments and reversals without losing the original work.

- Node-based composition: Uses a node graph to describe manipulations, offering a powerful and flexible approach to editing graphics.

- Cross-platform compatibility: Currently available as a lightweight web application, with plans to release native applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux in 2025.

- Free and open source: Graphite is completely free and open source, released under the GNU GPL v2 license.

Graphite is ideal for graphic designers, animators, and anyone who needs to create high-quality visual content.

Photopea

Photopea is a free online image editor that works directly in the browser. Developed by Ivan Kuckir, Photopea was launched in 2013 and has since been regularly updated to offer a professional and affordable photo editing experience.

Photopea offers a wide range of functionalities, including basic editing such as cropping and resizing, as well as advanced features such as layers, masks, color adjustments, filters and much more. It supports a variety of file formats, including PSD (Photopea's main format), JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, SVG, DDS, among others. This makes the tool an excellent alternative to Adobe Photoshop, especially for those looking for a free solution with no installation required.

In addition, Photopea is known for its user-friendly and intuitive interface, which makes it easy to use for both beginners and more experienced users. It also offers multilingual support, including Portuguese, and can be used on mobile devices, making it a practical option for editing photos on the go.

If you're looking for a complete, free image editing tool, Photopea is an excellent choice.

Clipchamp

Clipchamp is a free and easy-to-use online video editor that lets you create stunning videos directly in your browser, with no downloads required. Launched by Clipchamp, the tool offers a variety of professional features, including drag-and-drop video editing, customizable video templates, transition effects, animated titles, video filters and much more.

One of Clipchamp's main advantages is its simplicity and accessibility. Users of all skill levels can start creating professional videos quickly, using an intuitive and user-friendly interface. In addition, Clipchamp supports multiple file formats, allowing you to import videos, photos, audio and other types of media from different sources, such as OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox.

Another interesting feature is the ability to add AI-generated narrations, automatic subtitles and accurate transcriptions, making videos more accessible and engaging. Clipchamp also offers a video branding kit, allowing users to add custom logos, watermarks, fonts and colors to their videos, ensuring a professional and consistent look.

In short, Clipchamp is a powerful and efficient tool for creating high-quality videos quickly, making the video editing process more accessible and collaborative.

On September 7, 2021, Clipchamp was acquired by Microsoft. The acquisition was made to integrate Clipchamp's video creation and editing capabilities into the Microsoft 365 productivity ecosystem, allowing more people to create high-quality videos quickly and easily.

Animatron

Animatron is an online video and animation creation platform that allows you to create impressive visual content quickly and efficiently. Launched in 2011, Animatron Studio is especially popular with small businesses and marketing agencies, offering a complete solution for creating explainer videos, HTML5 banners and much more.

One of Animatron's main advantages is its ease of use. The intuitive and user-friendly interface allows users of all skill levels to start creating professional animations in minutes. The platform offers a variety of features, including the creation of HTML5 animations, video editing, transition effects, animated titles and video filters.

In addition, Animatron enables real-time collaboration, making it easy to create videos as a team. The platform also offers multilingual support and is compatible with mobile devices, allowing users to work on their projects anytime, anywhere.

In short, Animatron is a powerful and accessible tool for creating high-quality videos and animations, making the process of creating visual content more efficient and collaborative.

AudioTool

I've already written about Audiotool here in The PClinuxOS Magazine, and at the time it was based on Adobe Flash. As a reminder, Audiotool is a free online digital audio workstation, known as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), which allows users to produce music directly in the browser. Developed by Audiotool GmbH, the platform was launched in 2011 and has since been regularly updated to offer a professional and affordable music production experience. Currently, Audiotool works based on HTML5 and JavaScript.

One of the main advantages of Audiotool is its ease of use. The intuitive and user-friendly interface allows users of all skill levels to start creating professional music quickly, without the need to install additional software. The platform offers a wide range of features, including audio editing, mixing, effects, and the creation of loops and samples. In addition, Audiotool supports a variety of file formats, allowing you to import and export projects easily and efficiently.

Audiotool also promotes collaboration between music creators, allowing users to share their projects and receive feedback from other members of the community. The platform offers a library of loops and samples, as well as interactive music creation tools such as the “Music Board”, where users can remix and collaborate on songs published by others.

In short, Audiotool is a powerful and accessible tool for creating high-quality music quickly, making the music production process more inclusive and collaborative.

Wavacity

Wavacity is a free, open-source online audio editor inspired by Audacity. Launched in 2021, Wavacity allows users to edit audio directly in the browser without the need to install software. This makes the tool accessible and practical for anyone who needs to make quick edits or collaborate on audio projects from anywhere.

Wavacity's interface is very similar to Audacity's, which makes the transition easier for users who are already familiar with the original software. Wavacity's features include cutting, copying, pasting, applying audio effects, reducing noise, editing multiple tracks and export options for various formats, such as MP3 and WAV.

In addition, Wavacity is a collaborative tool, allowing several users to work together on the same project, making it ideal for teams using different operating systems. The platform is free and open source, released under the GNU GPL v2 license, ensuring that anyone can use, modify and distribute the software at no additional cost.

In short, Wavacity offers a practical and efficient alternative to traditional audio editing software, allowing users to make high-quality audio edits directly in the browser, without the need for complex installations.

Summary

So, here you have 10 online web applications, in the cloud, that can save the day, whether you are in a hurry, or don’t have a powerful computer, or lack disk space, or you need to have a collaborative work with your work team. These solutions can really help you out.

Firefox Threatens Suicide, Then Backpedals

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

On February 26, 2025, Mozilla announced a new Terms of Use (TOU) for Firefox. Their actions caused an immediate uproar from loyal Firefox users around the world. Once you see the original change to their TOU, you will fully understand the uproar. Below is that text:

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

Say WHAT?!

Even to me, that sounds a bit extreme. And I’m not as conspiracy minded as some. I do like to do what I can to preserve some resemblance of privacy, but there’s only so much you can do. With Google vacuuming up all of your public and private data it can get its grubby little paws on, to the vast majority of websites that have the Facebook Pixel embedded on it so that Facebook can track users across the web (whether they are Facebook members or not), some of that control of your data is simply … well … out of your control.

Aside from taking what many consider to be drastic measures, there’s little I can do about the Facebook Pixel embedded on so many webpages. And, while it’s totally possible to “de-Google” yourself, you will end up missing out on many options, services, and features available on the internet, given the wide breadth of services that are tied to Google.

Let’s not even get into the discussion of all of the “metadata” that’s collected by various government agencies (and corporate entities, too) across the globe. One or two pieces of metadata aren’t going to tell you much by themselves. But, thousands of pieces of metadata, put together like that 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle at your dining room table, will paint a quite accurate profile of you and your interests.

The outrage among Firefox users over the change to the Firefox TOU, as I mentioned, was almost immediate. Check out this thread on Reddit. You can literally feel their anger.

Mozilla’s change to the Firefox TOU, along with the outrage of Firefox users, caught the immediate attention of media outlets around the world.

Here’s the Mozilla blog entry announcing the new TOU text, announced just two days (February 28, 2025) after the original text was posted:

On Wednesday (February 26, 2025) we shared that we’re introducing a new Terms of Use (TOU) and Privacy Notice for Firefox. Since then, we’ve been listening to some of our community’s concerns with parts of the TOU, specifically about licensing. Our intent was just to be as clear as possible about how we make Firefox work, but in doing so we also created some confusion and concern. With that in mind, we’re updating the language to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user data.

Here’s what the new language will say:

You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.

In addition, we’ve removed the reference to the Acceptable Use Policy because it seems to be causing more confusion than clarity.

Privacy FAQ

We also updated our Privacy FAQ to better address legal minutia around terms like “sells.” While we’re not reverting the FAQ, we want to provide more detail about why we made the change in the first place.

TL;DR Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”), and we don’t buy data about you. We changed our language because some jurisdictions define “sell” more broadly than most people would usually understand that word. Firefox has built-in privacy and security features, plus options that let you fine-tune your data settings.

The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”

Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling data.”

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.

Some Words About Privacy

I do not subscribe to the school of thought that goes something like, “well, I’ve done nothing wrong, so I have nothing to worry about.” I do expect to be able to maintain a certain level of privacy in my online activities. If I send a snail mail letter, I have a reasonable expectation that only me and its recipient know its contents. I should expect nothing less with my online activities. That is the reason I have my Google Ads settings set so that it is the least “targeted” to what Google perceives as “my interests.”

That is also the primary reason I use a VPN. I don’t believe that my ISP has any right to know where I go or what I do on the internet, and I don’t want them to be able to send me “targeted ads” based on my use of the internet. I pay them to provide internet service to me, not to monitor my every move and then target me with ads that they “think” I might be interested in. Talk about visions of George Orwell’s 1984! Thus, by using a VPN, the traffic between my computer and my VPN’s server is encrypted. My ISP can only see traffic, and not the specifics of where I go or what I do. But, at the end of the day, there’s only so much I can do to protect my privacy and that of my data. I consider it a trade-off. Call it an acceptable level of risk.

I do have to admit, in the interest of full transparency, that I am one of those loyal Firefox users. I’ve used Firefox for well over 95% of my web activities ever since it was Netscape Navigator. I’ve strayed a few times (and usually for very short periods of time), but I’ve always come back to Firefox as my primary web browser. I’ve always liked their philosophy, as well as the abundance of useful add-on tools that make my “web life” a LOT more enjoyable and productive.

Summary

To say that the change from Mozilla was unexpected and unanticipated would be a gross understatement. Anyone should expect Mozilla to, at least by this time (what … well over 20 years later?), have a pretty good understanding of their user base, and the ideals that are important to them. It was almost as if Mozilla was threatening to commit suicide with its poorly implemented rollout of the Firefox TOU agreement. From the outside looking in, this definitely feels like Mozilla’s marketing and legal departments overextended and made a mess of everything. Of course, the “higher ups” had to sign off on this overreach, too.

Even though Firefox isn’t the top choice in browsers these days, they still have a sizable share of the browser market. Today, the Chromium-based browsers, led by Google Chrome, occupy that top spot in the browser market. I’ve not hidden my utter disdain for the Chromium-based browsers. At least twice a month for the past several years, we’ve heard about the security vulnerabilities that riddle and rifle throughout their code. I’ve found the Chromium-based browsers to be literal hogs, both for memory and CPU cycles, to the point where if I “push them too hard,” they become inoperable and lock up my computer.

So, do I have Chromium-based browsers installed on my computer? I sure do. There are a handful of poorly-designed sites (meaning that they don’t conform to W3 standards) that ONLY support Chromium-based browsers. It actually reminds me of a similar situation not all that many years ago surrounding Internet Explorer and Microsoft not insisting that it follow W3 standards. I actually have three Chromium-based browsers installed, but I certainly don’t use them very often. And, they definitely aren’t my “daily drivers.” I’ll occasionally use them to access those poorly-designed sites, and to sometimes just open them to check their development progress from time to time. While I used to have a whole host of add-ons that I used in Chromium-based browsers, I no longer even bother with any add-ons, since I so rarely use the browsers they are intended for.

But, I don’t put all of the blame for this fiasco on Mozilla. I also have to find fault with many of those loyal Firefox users for their hypocrisy. Many of these users bemoaning the TOU language also have Facebook accounts, yet don’t think twice about how much of their personal and private information is being vacuumed up by Meta, simply by using Facebook. How can you be worried about the privacy of your data while using Firefox, but be utterly unconcerned by your total lack of privacy on Facebook? It simply doesn’t add up.

For me, I’ll continue using Firefox as my go-to, daily-use web browser that I use for the vast, vast majority of my web traffic. I don’t feel as if I have any other choice.

Inkscape Tutorial: Using The Shape Builder Tool

by Meemaw

The Shape Builder Tool in Inkscape is a tool that lets you create new shapes based on the intersecting areas of overlapping shapes. It was first introduced in ver. 1.3, but we haven’t covered it before. It was enhanced in ver. 1.4, so we’ll look at it now.

You can use simple objects (lines, rectangles, circles, etc.) to make much more complicated objects. I started with three circles.

You can place them however you need to in order to make the design you want. When you are ready, select them all, then click on the Shape Builder tool (in the toolbar under the Nodes tool).

Your page will then change to grey and show the outlines of all your paths.

Let’s look at the icons in this tool. The left-most setting is the Add Shapes. From left to right, Add Shapes, Delete Shapes, Check mark, Close x, Opacity slider, and Delete unchosen objects.

Add Shapes: This is where you add the shapes to your creation. You can click on them, and they will be added individually, or you can click and drag from shape to shape, and they will be combined together in your choice. When you are in Add shapes mode, your shapes will be highlighted in blue.

Delete Shapes: Sometimes you are working on something where there should not be a shape. It might be easier to take out that one shape. When you are in Delete shapes mode, your shapes will be highlighted in pink.

NOTE: If you are using the Add Shape item, and want to delete a shape, you can leave the Add Shape button pressed, but simply hold down your <Shift> key, and it will toggle to Delete Shape until you release the <Shift> key. It works the other way too: toggling to Add when the Delete is selected.

Check mark: When you have your creation the way you want it, click the check mark to apply your changes.

Close X: If you want to close the tool (maybe you made a mistake and aren’t ready to use it yet), simply click the X. The Shape Builder will close, and you will be taken back to your drawing. WARNING: Clicking on the Undo tool will do that as well.

Delete unchosen objects: The tooltip is a bit misleading, but when it’s active, it deletes the objects you haven’t added. If it isn’t active, you end up with your project PLUS everything you started with.

Back to the drawing — click on the items you want to add to your project. Click and drag to combine the objects. In the image below, I added the small items to my drawing, and it ended up as you see it in the second view below.

I also did one where I deleted the inside shapes, and got something completely different.

This tool takes a bit of practice, and you need to know what shapes to create to form what you want.

You can find loads of tutorials on YouTube. Search for “Inkscape Shape Builder Tool”. One of the videos I started with was this one, from Davies Media Design.

Added in ver. 1.4 was the ability to use this tool on images as well. You can import an image, and then cut out a portion of it if you wish. I imported an image of Monument Valley in Utah that I took several years ago, and placed a circle where I wanted to cut a piece out. NOW is when you want to unclick that last icon that deletes everything you haven’t chosen.

When you finalize the Shape Builder, you will still see your photo, but grab inside the circle with your mouse and drag. You’ll see that Shape Builder has made a copy of the circled area that you can move around, and you still have your original photo.

I hope you have fun with this tool! It takes some getting used to, but it works pretty well.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Extra: Homemade Vanilla Pudding

Homemade Vanilla Pudding

Who doesn’t like pudding? I sure do, and it’s great, when served all by itself or as a desert immediately after a meal. When I was a kid, my mom would make pudding, and yes, it was a store bought boxed mix. I think it was Jello brand, that you added milk to and heated on the kitchen stove until it thickened.

However, today it seems that all you can find at the grocery store is instant box mix that you add cold milk to and whisk or shake (in a sealed container) until it thickens, but that just doesn’t taste the same, at least to me, it doesn’t. So I started making my own from scratch with just a few simple ingredients that most, if not all, of us already have in our kitchens. My taste buds tell me that I got it right!

Here is how you can make pudding from scratch in just a few minutes.

Prep time | : | ........... | 10 minutes
Cook time | : | ........... | 10 minutes
Total time | : | ........... | 20 minutes
Servings | : | ........... | 4

Ingredients:

Milk | ........... | 2 ¼ cups (ca. 530 ml)
Egg yolk | ........... | 2
Sugar | ........... | ½ cup (120 ml)
Corn Starch | ........... | 2 Tablespoons
Salt | ........... | ¼ teaspoon
Butter | ........... | 1 Tablespoon
Vanilla Extract | ........... | 2 teaspoons

Directions:

1. Put the egg yolks into a medium size bowl and whisk until light yellow and increase in volume (about 1 minute). Add the cornstarch and ¼ cup of the milk to the egg yokes and mix until smooth and set aside.

2. Put the remaining 2 cups (0.47 l) of milk – sugar and salt into a sauce pan and heat to a scald over medium heat, whisking constantly, which is when the liquid is 180 to 190°F. (82 to 88°C). This is before the mixture comes to a boil, at this stage you will see little bubbles starting to form at the sides of the pan.

Remove the pan from the heat and while whisking constantly, very slowly drizzle the egg yolk mixture into the pan.

3. Now return the pan to the stove and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until the pudding comes to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, continue whisking until the pudding thickens (1 to 2 minutes).

Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract and butter until well blended. Pour or spoon equal amounts into your serving dishes, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour or two until chilled. Serve and enjoy.

Notes: For chocolate pudding, add Cocoa Powder (unsweetened)… ¼ cup — added in step 2.

Delete Lines From A Text File Easily & Quickly

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Recently (as in towards the end of February, so it was quite recent), I went to update what I call my “travel” laptop. It’s a small Lenovo ThinkPad X230. I used to carry it in my backpack when I was still working.

That laptop had a PCLinuxOS Xfce installation that had served me very well since its first installation about five or more years before. When I first installed PCLinuxOS on the computer, I just accepted all of the “default” values of the old installer. That included a “default” size for the root directory of only 20 GiB.

I thought it would be adequate.

I was wrong.

I accepted those default values of the old installer because of the “smallish” SSD that the travel laptop had in it. It was only a 128 GiB SSD, which I viewed as being much smaller than I felt comfortable using. I was always fearful of quickly filling up that SSD. With all of my “other” installs of PCLinuxOS, I always made my root partition 30 GiB or 40 GiB.

Image by Temel from Pixabay

One day, while I was still working (I retired at the end of 2022), I went to update my travel laptop while I was at work. I got the dreaded message that the root partition was full.

So, I got to work on removing extra “stuff” that I really didn’t need on my travel laptop. I managed to free up enough space to allow the updates to complete.

And then, I forgot all about that incident … until it happened again in late February. I had done other subsequent updates on the computer without incident, so that caused the incident at work to drift further back in my mind. Having previously removed everything unnecessary from the computer during the 2022 incident, there literally was nothing more left to remove to make more room. Irritated, I dived in, and ended up borking my install on that SSD.

Now, it’s no secret that I’ve been sitting in this “editor’s” chair for nearly 16 years. Over those years, I’ve written about virtually all aspects of PCLinuxOS. I’m also no noob when it comes to installing PCLinuxOS, having done so many, many times before. Not only on my own computers either, but also on the computers of friends and family. So, suffice it to say that I know my way around installing PCLinuxOS pretty well.

Now, I had planned on installing a new SSD into this travel laptop for nearly as long as I’ve had it. But, for some unknown reason (yep, unknown even to me), I threw all of that accumulated knowledge out of the window and made the most egregious of rookie mistakes. I just plunged ahead, acting like a total noob.

Let me remind you of a couple of things. First, backup your files before trying to resize your partitions. Now, this travel laptop didn’t have anything stored on it that I couldn’t live without, so I skipped that step. Trust me when I tell you that the risk of data loss is VERY real when you try to resize your partitions. And that step is not what ultimately ruined my attempts. Nope. The second thing you need to remember is that you should ONLY ever try to redo your partitions (via GParted) from a Live session … which I failed to do. In the end, the SDD’s file system ended up as one big blubbering mess. (Never fear. I’ll reformat the SSD and find another use for it.)

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

So, I ended up forcing the issue about changing the smallish SSD to a larger one. I should have done it long ago, like when I first acquired this laptop. I tend to buy SATA3 SSDs when I see them on sale for a good price (and when I have the funds to do so), so I have several “lying in wait.” I grabbed up a 512 GiB SSD, and swapped it out with the 128 GiB SSD. That part was super easy.

I set up a 200 MiB partition for EFI boot (this laptop has EFI, but is old enough to NOT have (in)Secure Boot), a 50 GiB root partition on the new SSD, a 8 GiB swap partition, and assigned the “rest” of the space on the SSD to my /home partition. Installation was fairly straight forward, minus a couple of small hiccups that were quickly overcome/resolved.

<action>
    <icon>terminal</icon>
    <name>Open Terminal</name>
    <submenu></submenu>
    <unique-id>1694383311350259-1</unique-id>
    <command>exo-open --working-directory %f --launch TerminalEmulator</command>
    <description>Open Terminal window here</description>
    <range></range>
    <patterns>*</patterns>
    <directories/>
</action>
<action>
    <icon>gksu-root-terminal</icon>
    <name>Open Root Terminal</name>
    <submenu></submenu>
    <unique-id>1694383311350271-2</unique-id>
    <command>gksu xfce4-terminal</command>
    <description>Open Root Terminal window here</description>
    <range></range>
    <patterns>*</patterns>
    <directories/>
</action>
Snippet from my uca.xml file

It’s also no secret that I’m a big Xfce fan. I also have a LOT of Thunar Custom Actions that I like to have installed on ALL of my computers running Xfce. Now, the uca.xml file is where Thunar stores all of the magic that allows the Thunar Custom Actions to work. Some time ago, probably starting around Xfce 4.14 (I forget exactly when), the Xfce developers “inserted” another field into the data fields of each Thunar Custom Action. That data field is called … . For the life of me, even after searching for what seems like an eternity, I cannot see or find the purpose of this entry. However, I do know that with that data field left intact in the uca.xml file, you also cannot transfer your uca.xml file to another Xfce installation … unless you take the time to remove that line from each Thunar Custom Action you have defined.

I have a very definite set of files that I transfer between my computers when I do an installation on a “new” computer (new to me, anyway). I transfer my magazine layout files (vitally important to me), my custom bash scripts, and – without fail – my uca.xml file. It would literally take me DAYS to transfer them all by hand. So, quite by accident, I discovered some years ago that if I went through the uca.xml file and deleted the … line from each defined Thunar Custom Action, it worked as it should. Thunar will recreate that line automagically if it’s not present. Thus, it allows me to transfer my uca.xml file between my various computers running PCLinuxOS Xfce.

So, I set out to transfer my uca.xml file from my main computer to my travel laptop. That means that I opened the uca.xml file editor, and manually deleted all of the … lines. That whole process took about 15 minutes, which while WAY faster than trying to enter each Thunar Custom Action by hand, one at a time, it is/was still an arduous process. As I’m doing this, one thought kept going through my mind. Do you want to guess what that thought was? Yep. You guessed it: “There has to be a faster way to do this.”

A Bash Script To The Rescue

So, that’s when I decided to create a bash script to do this tedious task for me, and that’s what this article is really about.

If I wanted to create the bash script to ONLY remove the line, that would have been extremely simple (once I figured out how to do it). In fact, it would have been so simple that I wouldn’t even need a bash script. I could just put in the necessary command alone as the parameter for the Thunar Custom Action. But I created a bash script that allows you to use it on ANY text file (plain text … not a file from a word processor). Who knows? There might be times when such a tool comes in handy to remove annoying lines of text from other text files. So, I decided to head in that direction, instead.

I call my script “strip-line.sh.” Below is the entirety of that script. The whole bash script is 471 bytes in size, so I’m not including a link to download it. As small as it is, it should take you all of five minutes (or less) to type it in.

#!/bin/bash

# This script will remove any line from a text file with the specified text in it.
#
# by Paul Arnote
# Published in The PCLinuxOS Magazine, April 2025 issue
# This script is released under a GPL 2.0 (or higher) license
#
# This script takes a single text file filename as its sole parameter.

textfile=$(zenity --entry --title="Text File Line Deleter" --text="Enter the text to remove:")
    if [ $? == 1 ]; then
    exit
    fi
sed -i '/'$textfile'/d' $1

Like many of my other scripts, this one can be run from the command line, or from a Thunar Custom Action. If you run it from the command line, you only need to provide the name of the text file you want to delete lines from.

I keep all of my bash scripts in a directory in my /home partition, called bin. That /home/bin directory is in my path, so they can be found easily by the operating system without having to provide a full path to the bash scripts when I want/need to run them.

As with all bash scripts, the first line contains the typical bash “shebang.” That is followed by seven lines of comments.

The line that starts with “textfile” launches a Zenity dialog box where you can specify what text you want to search for. In my case with the uca.xml file, I want to find every occurrence of the lines, and delete them. The “if” statement causes the script and Zenity dialog box to exit cleanly if the “Cancel” button is selected in the dialog box.

The last line, which starts with “sed” is where all of the “magic” occurs. The “-i” command line parameter tells sed to do inline editing, which is bash-speak for editing the file without physically viewing it (as you normally would be able to do if you opened the text file in a text editor). The text entered into the Zenity dialog box is searched for ($textfile), and if the specified text is found, that entire line is deleted (the “/d” parameter).

In my particular use case, all I have to do is type “unique-id” into the Zenity dialog box. When I click on the “OK” button, every line that contains “unique-id” will be deleted from the text file (and XML files are nothing more than a specially formatted text file).

I will tell you that this script works PERFECTLY. It takes a task that usually takes me 15 minutes to accomplish manually with a text editor, and completes it in under five seconds. If I had this script several years ago, it would have (cumulatively) saved me HOURS of tedious work.

Using This Script As A Thunar Custom Action

As I mentioned earlier, I created this bash script to run either from the command line, or as a Thunar Custom Action.

So, let's add this to our Thunar Custom Actions. First, in Thunar, go to “Edit > Configure custom actions…”. The dialog box that looks something like the image above should appear. To create a new Thunar Custom Action, simply click your mouse on the “+” button, outlined in the image above with a red box.

In the first of the two images, give your Thunar Custom Action a name and a description. I also choose to store my Thunar Custom Action in a submenu I’ve created, called “File Tools.” The command will be strip-line.sh %f. The “%f” tells Thunar to execute the script on the file you right-clicked on. It passes the full path and filename to the bash script to work on. (Note: %n also works fine (instead of %f), except it only passes the filename, without any path information.)

Under the second tab (second image), place a checkmark in the checkbox next to “Text Files.” Leave the “File Pattern” and “Range” fields with their default values of “*”. Once you’ve done this, click on the “OK” button at the top of the dialog window. Your new Thunar Custom Action will appear as the last item in your list of custom actions, or (if you’ve done as I have, and placed it in a submenu), at the end of the list of Thunar Custom Actions in that submenu.

Summary

Although this is a relatively simple bash script, it streamlines a very tedious task by finding every occurrence of the indicated text, and deleting the entire line containing that text from the text file. While my use case is unique and focused, I’ve tried to make this script flexible enough to be of use for other situations where there is repetitive text/lines that need to be removed from other text files.

Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

compiled by Meemaw

World War II Veteran Parties For His 100th Birthday

Tim Drake & Alan

Alan turned 100 on January 26th, and had a party to celebrate.

Author and World War II historian Tim Drake posted on social media, sharing photos of Alan enjoying his party and gave more details about his time in the service.

“Alan served in Europe during the war as part of an artillery sound ranging battalion. They identified the location of enemy artillery, so that Allied forces could destroy them. Alan was an engineer in civilian life,” he wrote.

“Happy 100th Birthday Alan. Thank you for all you did on behalf of our freedom and letting me crash the party today,” Drake wrote.

To make the day even more special, his grandson helped raise more than $1,100 to buy him a comfortable sofa to enjoy, said a news report.

NJ Police Officer Pulls Boy From Icy Lake

An 11 year-old boy fell through the ice at a New Jersey lake in February. The police received a 9-1-1 call about the accident.

“Patrolman Dave Brosonski, the first officer on the scene and highly trained in water rescue, arrived to find the child stranded in the middle of the lake,” the police department continued, adding that “without hesitation,” Brosonski “entered the frigid water and successfully rescued the 11-year-old boy.”

After he got out of the lake, the boy was heard saying that he didn’t want to get into trouble, and the officer told him he wouldn’t. A neighbor on the scene had a rope to make sure the officer wasn’t in danger of being lost under the ice either.

“The only thing going through my mind was, ‘I’m going to get to this kid, give him the help he needed, and bring him back in,'” Brosonski, who is also a water rescue instructor at the Monmouth County Police Academy, said at the Tuesday press conference.

“I feel it was my job,” the officer added. “I would have gone in no matter what for anyone, whether I was working or not working.”

Good Samaritan Tackles Bank Robber

Humberto was in the bank in Albuquerque when he saw John come in, push someone aside, and walk to the teller, where he attempted to rob the bank. Humberto decided to take action, and tackled John to the floor, scattering over $2,400 that he had taken. The whole incident was caught on the security cameras.

Other customers helped keep John on the floor until police could get there and arrest him. They found that John had robbed the same bank several weeks before. This time he was taken to jail.

Blind Man’s Sight Restored

Thirty-one year-old Stuart had endured problems with his vision since he was a child and in 2023 he was diagnosed with the rare condition known as Leber congenital amaurosis, which made him functionally blind, only seeing some light. The disease causes retinal degeneration. He recently became the first patient in Ireland to receive an ocular gene therapy called Luxturna.

Two weeks after the treatment, he could see large letters on a page, and is now able to read big letters and make out large objects. He has expressed his gratitude to the medical personnel who have helped him.

Infant Thrives After Receiving World’s Smallest Pacemaker

Sarah and Michael went to the doctor for her 20-week ultrasound, and the doctor concentrated on the baby’s heart, diagnosing a complete heart block, in which the electrical signals never get to where they need to go. The only solution was for a pacemaker to be implanted in the baby when he was born.

Heart specialists at the New York hospital searched for a pacemaker that might be small enough to fit into the baby, and found one the size of a large vitamin. “They turned to Medtronic’s Micra, a tiny, leadless pacemaker no bigger than a large vitamin and weighing about as much as a penny. The device had to be specially adapted for Mikey, transforming it into a version where it could be used as a pacemaker generator after pacing leads were attached to his heart,” the hospital’s website reads.

When the baby was born he went to heart surgery immediately and had the pacemaker implanted. He has since gone home and is doing well.

Man Helps Deputies Save Women In Flipped SUV

In Colorado, at about 1:00 am, a 911 center received a call from someone who kept saying “Please”, but couldn’t answer any other questions. The center’s system showed that there had been a crash, so the officers reported to the scene. Someone at the scene pointed the officers in the right direction, where they found an SUV overturned in a ditch, which was filled with vegetation and water. The man at the scene had heard the SUV speed by and heard it go into the ditch.

The officers waded into the ditch and found the SUV. The vehicle’s windows were fully submerged in the water, and at one point, an officer said, “She’s banging on the door,” in reference to a woman inside the SUV. They removed two young women from the vehicle, getting one out fairly easily, and having to use the Jaws of Life to remove the other.

The man on the scene was recognized as a Good Samaritan. “If it wasn’t for you, man, if they would have gone off and nobody would have seen them, they probably would have died, to be honest with you,” an officer told the good Samaritan who helped in the rescue.

Both women, in their 20’s, were intoxicated, but treated at the local hospital. Amazingly, they only had minor injuries.

Wiki Pick: Getting Rid Of Unwanted/Unneeded Files

Editor’s Note: Wiki Pick is a new monthly column highlighting one article from the PCLinuxOS Knowledge Base Wiki every month. Whenever possible (and when known), we’ll attribute the Wiki Pick article to the PCLinuxOS user who made the Wiki post. The Wiki cannot survive and thrive without the efforts of PCLinuxOS members contributing and keeping it updated. So, visit and contribute to YOUR PCLinuxOS Knowledge Base Wiki!

This ONLY involves cleaning old logs and other system stuff that is not needed.

These files can be found in the /var directory and are log and cache files. There are several ways to get rid of these unwanted and unneeded files.

The first way is to remove them by hand.

Open a console window and su to root.

Now you can simply enter the following lines one at a time, pressing enter after each line.

rm -rf /var/cache/cups/job*
rm -rf /var/cache/fontconfig/*
rm -rf $(find /var/spool -type f)
rm -rf $(find /var/lib/spool -type f)
rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*.old')
rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -name '*.gz')
rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*.[1-9]')
cat /dev/null |tee $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*log')
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/dmesg
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/explanations
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/messages
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/wtmp
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/ConsoleKit/history

DO NOT just simply delete files in your /var/log folder, as some of these files are indeed needed by the system while it is running.

This is a list of some of the files that are required by the system while running dmesg, explanations, messages, wtmp and history.

You will note in the above list they start with the command cat /dev/null >. This command DOES NOT delete the file. It simply “empties” the contents of the file. Again, DON'T delete these files.

The above is not only time-consuming and error-prone, but it takes a lot of time to enter and execute each and every line.

Forum user “footstep11” brings a bit better solution by saving the commands to a filename called docleaning. To do this, simply copy the following lines and save them in your home directory as a file called docleaning.

rm -rf /var/cache/cups/job*
rm -rf /var/cache/fontconfig/*
rm -rf $(find /var/spool -type f)
rm -rf $(find /var/lib/spool -type f)
rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*.old')
rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -name '*.gz')
rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*.[123456789]')
cat /dev/null |tee $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*log')
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/dmesg
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/explanations
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/messages
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/wtmp
cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/ConsoleKit/history

Now to run this file, open a console window and su to root. At the prompt, type in the following command and then press enter: sh ./docleaning.

While this is somewhat better, you still have to open a console, change to the root user and type in some code. I don't know about you, but I just don't remember all of the possible commands that are required all the time.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Now comes CRON to the rescue

The nice part is we only need to set it up once and then let cron do all the work, and we can forget about it.

Here's what we need to do to set it up.

Copy the following lines:

@daily rm -rf /var/cache/cups/job*
@daily rm -rf /var/cache/fontconfig/*
@daily rm -rf $(find /var/spool -type f)
@daily rm -rf $(find /var/lib/spool -type f)
@daily rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*.old')
@daily rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -name '*.gz')
@daily rm -f $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*.[123456789]')
@daily cat /dev/null |tee $(find /var/log -type f -iname '*log') && cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/dmesg && cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/explanations
@daily cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/messages && cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/wtmp && cat /dev/null |tee /var/log/ConsoleKit/history

Save them as a file called root to /var/spool/cron. You will need to be the root user to save this new file.

Open a console window, become the root user.

Open nano (IE: nano /var/spool/cron/root).

Past the above lines into nano.

To save the file, press ctrl + x.

Answer Y when asked to Save modified buffer. Then press enter.

Your new file has been saved. You will need to set the permissions for your new file. Again, as root in the console window, type in the following at the command prompt: chmod 600 /var/spool/cron/root.

Press enter. That's it… You can now close the console window.

Now cron will do the job of cleaning your files automatically.

Editor's Note #1: You can use EITHER [123456789] *or* the regular expression [1-9]. Both will work here.

Editor's Note #2: You can also save the docleaning file above from footstep11 as docleaning.sh (don't forget to insert the bash shebang as the first line), and then just copy or move that script (you'll have to do this as the root user) into /etc/cron.daily to run under cron every day, or /etc/cron.weekly to have cron run the script once every week. Be sure to mark the file as being executable.

You can view the Wiki entry here.

Product Review: iDPRT M610 Pro Thermal Printer

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Well, we haven’t done one of these in a VERY LONG time. Probably the biggest reason is that I (personally) don’t use a lot of “cutting edge” equipment. I either “rescue” discarded, older equipment, or I buy it refurbished from a vendor like Newegg or Ebay. The other reason is that hardware vendors have done a much, much better job of supporting Linux. Before, Linux users were left to their own devices – and their own workarounds – to get hardware to work. Boy, how things have changed!

I started noticing an attitude change among hardware manufacturers when it came to supporting Linux about 12 or so years ago, when I first bought my (now defunct) Samsung laser printer. Steadily, over those dozen or so years, I’ve watched Linux support from hardware manufacturers slowly go from being almost nonexistent to now being more the rule, rather than the exception. I figured (and hoped) that the situation would improve. Hardware manufacturers, in their never ending quest for profits, cannot afford to ignore any part of the computing market. With Linux now making up between 3% and 10% of the computing market (depending on who’s numbers you believe), that would be a LOT of computer users to ignore … and a huge hit to potential profits.

I saw something on Amazon recently that piqued my interest. Now, I have a new Brother laser printer and scanner combo that I purchased to replace my dying Samsung laser printer. Samsung hasn’t made printers in several years. HP bought the Samsung printer division when Samsung decided to get out of the printer market. So, it was time to finally let that old Samsung ML-2525W laser printer go live out the rest of its days in the local landfill.

But this article isn’t about my new Brother laser printer and scanner combo. And, I didn’t buy my new Brother laser printer/scanner combo off of Amazon.

But, what piqued my interest was a thermal printer. Specifically, it is the iDPRT MT610 Pro portable thermal printer. It currently costs right at $80 on Amazon. And, it’s actually a pretty cool little printer, even if it can only print on “special” thermal printer paper.

There are several reasons I like this printer. First, I love how compact and portable it is. To use the printer with your PCLinuxOS PC, a USB-A to USB-C cable is included. The only other things in the box (besides the printer and the USB cable) are a multilingual instruction manual, and a 10-sheet package of the special thermal paper to get you started. My box came with A4 sized paper.

The printer is rechargeable, and sports a 2,000 mAh Li-ON battery. That USB-C cable is used to not only charge your printer, but to also connect it to your computer. The manufacturer claims that the printer can print continuously for four hours on a single charge. I cannot test that claim for two reasons. First, I don’t have enough thermal paper on hand to withstand four continuous hours of printing. Second, since the printer is (currently) plugged into my main laptop, it stays in a charged state.

And this printer is super small, yet capable of printing out a full size U.S. Letter sheet (or A4/A5 sized printouts, if that’s the size you’re most used to). It measures about 10.2 inches wide (25.9 cm), 2.2 inches deep (5.6 cm), and 1.8 inches tall (4.6 cm). It weighs only 1.1 pounds (0.5 kg). So, it checks off the portable checkboxes perfectly.

The printer sports a print resolution of 300 dpi, which is quite fine. For comparison’s sake, keep in mind that a “standard” resolution fax is only 100 dpi resolution. It will also print multiple sizes of paper, including 4 inch wide labels (10.16 cm). And don’t let this little printer’s appearance fool you. It can print out a full A4 sheet in about five seconds.

There’s another feature that might make this little portable printer an attractive purchase: it will also connect with your mobile devices, wirelessly, over a Bluetooth connection. Simply download their app (a QR code is included in the instruction manual), and follow the directions.

While connectivity to my mobile devices may be something I’ll use from time to time (I can also print to my Brother printer from my phone, if I need), I can see myself using this printer mostly while it’s connected to my laptop running PCLinuxOS. In the instruction manual, the manufacturer includes a website address to download drivers. Imagine my surprise when I saw that drivers were available for Linux among the supported platforms.

Installation of the drivers was fairly straight forward. As the root user, type ./install on the command line from within the directory, and allow the script to complete (on my computer, it was complete in about 15 seconds). However, do note that you will have to make the install and uninstall scripts executable before you can run them.

Once the install script finishes, you will need to go to CUPS (http://127.0.0.1:631 or http://localhost:631) and install the PPD file for the printer. In CUPS, simply go to the top item in the second column to finish installing the printer. Just follow the prompts. Once that was done, the new printer was immediately available for use.

The 10-page sample pack of A4 thermal isn’t really a lot to get started with, so you’ll have to be somewhat “judicious” about what you print out, at least until you get another supply of thermal paper. Expect that paper to be more expensive than your run-of-the-mill printer paper you can pick up just about anywhere. I ordered a 200-sheet package of U.S. Letter sized, single-sheet paper from Amazon, and it cost right at $25. There is also an assortment of special thermal fanfold paper available, and this little printer can accept either. While this printer doesn’t require ink or toner, the extra cost of the thermal paper will definitely increase your per-sheet costs of printing. I can print items on my Brother laser printer much more cheaply, and on plain paper. Compare that to a ream (500 sheets) of 20# printer paper, which I can get for around $5 or $6 (U.S.)

Here's a tip from using this printer for a little bit. Go ahead and get the “folded” (fanfold) thermal paper. That way, you can print multi-page documents more easily. Otherwise, you will have to print each single page of a multi-page document separately. With the single-sheet packs of paper, which is great for single sheet documents, the printer will give an error when it goes to print the second (and subsequent) sheets, due to a not detecting a sheet of paper present for the next sheet. With the fanfold paper, it will just keep on printing until either the entire document is printed out, or until you run out of fanfold paper. Curiously, the printer specs state that it can be used for U.S. Letter and Legal sized papers, but good luck finding U.S. Legal sized thermal paper. My search on Amazon came up empty. U.S. Letter sized paper, though, is plentiful, usually in 100 or 200 sheet packages. The “error” experienced by the printer not detecting the next sheet of paper put the printer into a “pause” mode. I had to go into CUPS and select “Resume Printer” to get the printer to print again.

The image above was taken by my cell phone. I printed out my Firefox TOU article from elsewhere in this April 2025 issue using the thermal printer (as it appeared in Google Docs), and then took a closeup picture of the printout. As you can see, it does a reasonably good job. The printing is nice and crisp, and for a monotone printer, it doesn’t do too badly with graphic images. Sure, you can see some banding and some dithering of the image, but holding at arm's length (which is proper to assess image printouts), that banding and dithering is barely noticeable. In fact, the image is definitely clear enough that it looks rather clear. The only “adjustment” I made to the original image from my cell phone (other than resizing) was to adjust the image to have proper white balance.

Now, this thermal paper is … uhm … different. First of all, it feels noticeably thinner than regular 20# printer paper (the most common weight of paper used here in the U.S.). The printer’s instruction manual tells you that the “glossy” side goes up when inserting a sheet of paper into the printer's infeed slot, but good luck figuring out which side is which. They look remarkably similar. But, if you pay VERY CLOSE attention, you will notice that the treated side of the paper has a slightly slicker feel than the non-printable back side of the paper. It took me a couple of (failed) attempts (printing inadvertently to the back side of the paper) before I finally got it correct. For what it's worth, some manufacturers of the thermal printer paper include special marks (usually small black bars) on the backside of the paper, to assist you in figuring out which side is the printable side of the paper.

I also think I'd be careful about leaving documents printed out on this thermal paper locked up in the car on a hot day, or near any other heat sources. While I'm uncertain what the temperature threshold is for this paper before what’s printed on them starts fading, I'm not certain I'd want to risk storing documents I wanted or needed anywhere near those warmer spaces.

I am also not aware of how “archival” these printouts are on this thermal paper. Some of the product descriptions for the various thermal papers mention (vaguely) something about expecting the printout to last anywhere from three to five years. As such, this printer will do exceptionally well for things like job resumes, term papers, school essays, and other printing tasks that don’t necessarily require long term archival printing. However, I don’t think I’d want to use this printer for printing tasks that require a longer “presence,” such as mortgage papers, contracts, and other such items. For a more archival “presence,” you would do better to use a laser printer on regular paper (or even archival paper, if you’re so inclined). A laser printer or even an inkjet printer will offer you printouts that last a LOT longer. Some of the “longevity” of the printouts on the thermal paper is highly dependent on storage conditions. If I were “forced” to use this thermal printer for documents that I know need a long-term storage solution, I’d be sure to copy them to a different printout medium (like using a copy machine to copy the thermal paper documents to a “regular” paper), as well as scanning the documents to a PDF file (which you should back up to multiple locations).

There’s one other thing to consider about the thermal paper used with thermal printers. Because it’s only coated on one side, you cannot print on both sides of the paper. Now, my new Brother laser printer is capable of doing two-sided printing. So, besides the much more economical printing afforded by the laser printer, I can extend those savings by selecting two-sided printing, reducing the number of sheets of paper necessary to print out a document by half.

Conclusion

This really is a nice little printer. I can see this printer being especially attractive to users who don’t have to print many things, but only the occasional document. You will never have to worry about running out of ink or toner, or if your (obscenely) expensive ink cartridge dried up. Yes, you will have to ensure that you have thermal paper on hand, so there is that particular cost for operating this printer.

I also like how drivers for Linux were available for it. Like I mentioned earlier, things sure have changed when it comes to support for Linux from hardware manufacturers.

The print is clear and legible, at least on the samples that I printed out. With the exception of the different “feel” of the thermal paper, I think it would otherwise be difficult to tell the difference between this printer and my Brother laser printer. Visually, they are pretty close, with the Brother holding an ever so slight of an edge in clarity.

You could do a LOT worse for a printer. If you’re a “high-volume” printer, this may not be the perfect printer for you, with the expense of the thermal paper being so high (roughly, 12 to 15 cents per sheet). At least not as your primary printer. A traditional laser printer will get the job done for far less expense. But, there are some scenarios where this printer makes sense. This would be perfect for students, who only have to periodically print something out. This printer also would be perfect for someone who travels a lot. They can carry this printer with them, either in their backpack or briefcase, and have access to a printer anytime, and anywhere they want or need. Or, maybe you’re what I call an “occasional printer,” and only seldom need to print something out. Then, this printer may just fulfill your needs, provided you keep a cache of the thermal paper on hand. Then, you won’t have to fuss with any of those messy inks or toners.

Yes, you could do a LOT worse for a printer.

PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Ricotta Beef Stuffed Pasta Shells

Ricotta Beef Stuffed Pasta Shells

Serves: 8

INGREDIENTS:

1 Box jumbo pasta shells, cooked to al dente per instructions
15 Ounces ricotta cheese
24 Ounces marinara sauce, homemade or jar
1 Pound ground beef, browned
4 Ounces provolone, shredded
4 Ounces mozzarella, shredded
1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
1 Teaspoon onion powder
1 egg
¾ Cup Parmesan cheese, grated
salt and pepper to taste
parsley, fresh, optional for garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook shells according to directions for al dente firmness. This will help the shells to hold their shape and not tear while stuffing. They will finish cooking in the oven.

In a medium pan, cook the ground beef and drain the extra grease. Set aside.

Combine the mozzarella and provolone cheese, or use a pre-packaged shredded cheese mix.

In a medium bowl, add the ricotta cheese, ½ cup of provolone/mozzarella cheese mix, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, egg, Parmesan, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine.

Add the cooled ground beef to the ricotta mixture and combine.

Spray the 9×13 pan with cooking spray.

Spread ½ cup of marinara sauce on the bottom of the pan.

Take a cooked shell and, using a large spoon, approximately 1/8 cup (you can use your best judgment on how much exactly) of the beef/Ricotta mixture to the inside of the shell.

Lay the stuffed shell in the pan and repeat the process, laying each one next to each other until all shells are filled.

Take the remaining sauce and pour it around the shells.

Use the remaining shredded cheese to cover the shells.

Cover the dish with foil and place in the center of the preheated oven.

Bake for 20 minutes and then remove the foil and bake an additional 10 minutes, or until the cheese is fully melted and starting to brown.

Serve with extra Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley if desired.

NOTES:

Simple and easy to make. It is certain to be a big hit with the family. So Good!

NUTRITION:

Calories: 555    Carbs: 40g    Sodium: 839mg    Fiber: 3g    Protein:33g

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