1 LXDE: An Overview LXDE: The Control Center LXDE: Autostart Apps With .desktop Files Installing PCLinuxOS-LXDE on the IBM Thinkpad 600e Educational Linux! OpenOffice 3.2 Part 4: Impress Command Line Interface Intro: Part 12 Game Zone: Battle For Wesnoth Ladies of PCLinuxOS: Meemaw Alternate OS: Syllable, Part 1 Repo Spotlight: Repository Speed Test Forum Foibles & ms_meme's Nook Google Wave Waves Goodbye And more inside! Volume 44 September, 2010
Transcript
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LXDE: An OverviewLXDE: The Control CenterLXDE: Autostart Apps
With .desktop FilesInstalling PCLinuxOS-LXDE
on the IBM Thinkpad 600eEducational Linux!OpenOffice 3.2 Part 4: ImpressCommand Line
Interface Intro: Part 12Game Zone: Battle For WesnothLadies of PCLinuxOS: MeemawAlternate OS: Syllable, Part 1Repo Spotlight:
by Paul Arnote (parnote)The holidays have finally come and gone, thepackages have all been unwrapped, the Christmastree and other holiday decorations are coming down,and a new year is upon us. Texstar and thePCLinuxOS Packaging Crew are busy putting thenew tool chain to good use, working on getting thePCLinuxOS 2010 release nearer to completion. Theupdates continue to roll out at an amazing pace, withliterally hundreds of new and updated packagesbecoming available every week.This month's magazine cover features snow coveredphotos from ms_meme. On the inside, the contentsare hot enough to melt that snow. To start off, wetake a look back at notable news of 2009, and allthat has happened with computing, PCLinuxOS,Linux, and FOSS. Peter Kelly continues hisCommand Line Interface Intro column, with partfour of his continuing series. Gary L. Ratliff, Sr.continues his march through the alphabet ofcomputer languages, taking a look at Guile in hisComputer Languages A to Z series. Hootiegibbonchats with PCLinuxOS Magazine, in the Behind TheScenes column, where we continue to get to knowthe folks who work so diligently behind the scenes tomake PCLinuxOS the quality Linux distro that it is.We take a look at the recent ebook explosion,where many of the ebook readers out on the marketrun on Linux, in the Book Worms Unite: An EBookExplosion. You may be surprised at just how muchfree ebook content you can find out in the digitalrealm, if you just look for it.Meemaw has transcribed Sproggy's Glass PanelTutorial video for the PCLinuxOS Magazine,
The PCLinuxOS name, logo and colors are the trademarkof Texstar.The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine is a monthly onlinepublication containing PCLinuxOSrelated materials. It ispublished primarily for members of the PCLinuxOScommunity. The Magazine staff is comprised of volunteersfrom the PCLinuxOS community.Visit us online at http://www.pclosmag.comThis release was made possible by the following volunteers:Chief Editor: Paul Arnote (parnote)Assistant Editors: Andrew Strick (Stricktoo), MeemawConsultants: Archie Arevalo, Tim RobinsonArtwork: Sproggy, TimethMagazine Layout: Paul Arnote, Meemaw, ms_memeHTML Layout: Galen SeamanStaff:Neal Brooks ms_memeGalen Seaman Mark SzoradyPatrick Horneker Macedonio FernandezGuy Taylor MeemawAndrew Huff Gary L. Ratliff, Sr.Peter Kelly Darrel JohnstonContributors:Hootiegibbon MuungwanaRyan Smith Dan Malewski
Welcome From The Chief EditorOpenOffice 3.2 Part 4: ImpressLXDE: An OverviewScreenshot ShowcaseDouble Take & Mark's Quick Gimp TipScreenshot ShowcaseLadies Of PCLinuxOS: MeemawLXDE: The Control CenterScreenshot ShowcaseDoes Linux Market Share Matter? What Matters?Sing & ShoutScreenshot ShowcaseAlternate OS: Syllable, Part 1LXDE: Autostart Apps With .desktop FilesScreenshot ShowcaseBeginner's Guide To Gimp: Part 3Forum Foibles: A Rose By Any Other Name ...Screenshot ShowcaseCommand Line Interface Intro: Part 12Screenshot ShowcaseEducational Linux!Game Zone: Battle For WesnothScreenshot ShowcaseInstalling PCLinuxOSLXDE On An IBM Thinkpad 600eRepo Spotlight: Repository Speed TestComputer Languages A to Z: OctaveGoogle Wave Waves GoodbyeScreenshot Showcasems_meme's Nook: Download The DistroMore Screenshot Showcase
Table Of ContentsTable Of Contents
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Can you believe that it's September already? Justthink of it ... summer is waning in the northernhemisphere, the hours of daylight are gettingshorter, school has started up again, and fall willsoon be here, with leaves of deciduous trees puttingon their glorious annual display of color. Oh, and T6just recently made his 10,000th forum post,revealing a heretofore unknown forum user level of"Super Villain." Congratulations, T6. You certainly dohelp keep us entertained.
Change continues to come to PCLinuxOS, and therest of the computing world. KDE 4.5.0 was recentlyreleased, and 4.5.1 is literally right around thecorner. Texstar, true to form, has KDE 4.5.0released, and is working on KDE 4.5.1 (according tothe Twitter posts). Novell is looking to sell out, afterbattling a foe (SCO) that just wouldn't die. Googlegrabbed up some of the spotlight as they renegedon their commitment to net neutrality, presumably asa part of their newfound partnership with VerizonWireless (who has been opposed to net neutrality allalong). Meanwhile, Chile has joined the rank ofcountries officially supporting net neutrality.This month, The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine startsa series of articles covering the LXDE desktopenvironment. Just as we did with KDE 4 and Xfce4.6.2, we'll take a look at LXDE over the next fewmonths. To kick it off, I've written three LXDE articlesfor this issue, and start is off with my LXDE: AnOverview article. I continue taking a look at LXDE,with my LXDE: The Control Center article. To roundout the LXDE articles for this month, I tackle a moreadvance topic, with my LXDE: Autostart Apps With.desktop Files article. As a bonus, Hootiegibbonwalks us through his efforts to resurrect an olderlaptop that many of us wouldn't give a secondthought to, in his Installing PCLinuxOSLXDE OnAn IBM Thinkpad 600e article.Meemaw continues her series on OpenOffice 3.2,with her OpenOffice 3.2, Part 4: Impress article.With the resumption of school, she also takes a looka the use of Linux in education, with herEducational Linux! article. Darrel Johnston takes alook at another alternate operating system, with hisAlternate OS: Syllable, Part 1 article. He also
spotlights one of the more recent additions from ourtalented developers to the repository, with his RepoSpotlight: Repository Speed Test article.Muungwana examines the value of Linux's marketshare, with his Does Linux Market Share Matter?What Matters? article.Pete Kelly wraps up his article series on thecommand line this month, with his Command LineInterface Intro: Part 12 article. Ryan Smith joins usagain this month to review another game, in hisGame Zone: Battle For Wesnoth article. GaryRatliff continues his alphabetical march throughcomputer programming languages, with hisComputer Languages A to Z: Octave article. DanMalewski returns with a third installment in his articleseries, Beginner's Guide To Gimp: Part 3. And,ms_meme is back with three entertaining columnsthis month, as well as Mark Szorady's Double Take& Mark's Quick Gimp Tip.To round out this issue, I take a look at one ofGoogle's recent announcements to pull the plug onGoogle Wave, with my Google Wave WavesGoodbye article. We also start a special, bimonthlyseries of articles that take a look at some of theLadies Of PCLinuxOS. To start it off, we get tolearn more about Meemaw.That's quite a bit. Hopefully, it will give you plenty toread over the next month. So, until next month, Iwish each and every one of you peace, happiness,serenity and tranquility.
Welcome From The Chief EditorWelcome From The Chief Editor
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by MeemawPresentations are good to use if you have to give aspeech and need visual aids. You can also use apresentation as a slideshow of pictures you wantpeople to see. For that, you need OpenOfficeImpress.This will be a very basic overview ofImpress, but it should be enough toget you started.When you first open Impress, youwill get several screens asking youhow you want your presentation setup:Screen 1 asks whether you want tostart with a 'blank' presentation,open a template or open one thatyou already have. I chose blank.Screen 2 asks you to select abackground for your slides, andalso designate how it is to bedisplayed.Screen 3 asks you to select thetransition effect for your slideshowpresentation, and also how youwant the transitions to take place.(I think the defaults are as shown).From here you should click 'Create'and you will be presented with thestandard Impress window, with yourpresentation already started foryou.
This screen is probably the oneyou will use most. The sectionat left will show a list of slidethumbnails, much like many ofthe pdf readers which havepage thumbnails.
You'll noticethat right nowthere is onlyone slide.That's fine,because you canadd them at anytime with the AddSlide button on thetoolbar.Also, in the lefthand column, youcan rightclick andchoose 'Add Slide"from the menu that
appears, or you can click Insert > Slide in the menubar.The center section displays the slide you areworking on, with your background in place. The rightsection has most of the useful items you are going toneed to design your presentation.At the top of the center section, you will see tabs forNormal (View), Outline, Notes, Handout and SlideSorter. Normal is the page that opened first, where
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you design each page of your presentation, puttingin the text and illustrations for each slide.In the Outline tab, you can type the text you want toappear on your slide. It is generally put in a text boxat the top of the slide. However, you can also typeinformation into your slide from Normal view, tomake sure it goes into the text box you desire.
In the Notes tab, you can add any other pertinentinformation you want to tell your audience. Thiswould be side comments that are not included in theslide layout. The notes can be printed out separatelyfor you to use as reference. Each slide will be on apage, with the notes at the bottom, which you canuse as reference while you give your speech.
In the Handout tab, you can choose alayout for an arrangement of slides onpaper which you can then give to youraudience for their later reference. Ihave attended workshops wherethese handouts were used. I usuallytake extra notes on them so all thenotes are together.
The final tab says Slide Sorter. If, in themiddle of your presentation, you decide thatslide 7 should really be slide 8, you can clickand drag the slides to the order you want.Being the wonderful program it is, Impresswill renumber them for you.
Open Office 3.2 Part 4: Impress
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On the right side you will see a list of formatting aids:Master Pages, Layouts, Table Design, CustomAnimation, and Slide Transition.Master Pages are the backgrounds available to useon your presentation, just in case you changed yourmind when you set it up in the beginning.Layouts are predesigned templates for your slide.These are great if you have a certain form in mindand want each slide to be similar or exactly like eachof the others. Each page of your presentation canhave a heading or title at the top, graphic on the leftside and explanation text on the right, or any otherdesign you choose. Depending on yourpresentation, you may have a different layout oneach page. But if each page needs a heading plus
content, the layout pageshave them already set upthat way, and they arealready spaced similarly,so the slide headingdoesn't jump aroundduring the presentation.Besides, with predesigned layouts, that'sless work for you!The next tab is TableDesign. You will seeseveral grid thumbnails.When you click on one,the tables toolbar willopen so you canconfigure your table theway it needs to be(number of rows, number
of columns and so on.)Custom Animation Here is whereyou can add an effect to a certainobject in your slideshow. In your slidespanel, select the object on which youwant the effect. (I chose to have mytitle appear and expand to start myslideshow. I chose slide 1 andselected the title). In CustomAnimation, you click Add, then choosethe animation desired from the box. (Ichose Expand). Then you configurehow you want it to start, and how fastyou want it to go. Clicking the 'Play'button plays a sample, so if you don'tlike it, you can try something else.
Open Office 3.2 Part 4: Impress
Moving slide 7 to the end Layouts
Custom Animation
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As tempting as it may be to use lots of differentanimations in your presentation, you'll be muchbetter off to resist the temptation. While the customanimations are all very cool and you'll want to usethem all, doing so may make your presentation lookamateurish. At the very least, it may make yourpresentation appear to lack direction, and maydistract from the message you are attempting todeliver. The better practice is to limit yourself to oneor two custom animations. Three should be theabsolute limit, and may be pushing things, at that.
Slide Transition Even though you set yourpreferred transition when you were setting up yourpresentation, you still need to configure thetransitions. You can change back to transitioning on
mouse click (maybe to practice your speech) orchange the interval you want between slides.Just as with the custom animations, it's best to limityourself to one or two slide transitions, and use themthroughout your presentation. Again, using too manytypes of slide transitions can make your presentationappear amateurish, or may distract from themessage you are trying to deliver.It's especially important to consider the nature of
your message. If your message isa serious one, or one you wish tobe taken seriously, it's best toconsider more modest, simpletransitions and animations.Whimsical and "fun" transitions andanimations will detract from theseriousness of your topic. This maycause your audience to not takeyour message seriously, makethem discount the seriousness ofyour message, or cause youraudience to question the validity ofyour message altogether.At the bottom of the window, youwill find the Drawing toolbar, alongwith some of the other formattingaids we've already seen, Gallery,Fontwork Gallery and Insert fromFile. Layer, alignment and rotationtools are also available and will
display here.While this presentation only has eight slides, yourpresentation can be as long as you wish. Have funmaking your own!
by Paul Arnote (parnote)One thing Linux users have become accustomed tois choice. And choices abound for almost anythingand everything, including desktop environments.Previously, we've covered KDE 4 and Xfce 4.6.2.Now, it's time to take a look at the LXDE desktop.Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment ("LXDE") isone of the newest desktop environments. It began in
2006 when Hong Yen Jee of Taiwan, better knownby his nickname "PCMan", introduced the PCManFile Manager, or PCManFM. Today, the LXDEproject is an international collaboration ofdevelopers, designers, and contributors from allaround the world. Similar to the Xfce and Gnomedesktop environments, LXDE is built with the Gtk+2.0 libraries.Living up to the first word in its name, LXDE truly is a
lightweight desktopenvironment.ConsequentlyLXDE thrives onolder hardware. Onmy computer (IBMThinkpad T23,Pentium III, 1.13GHz, 512 MBRAM), LXDE usesonly 115 MB RAMwhen it's fullybooted, andrunning a handfulof panel plugins,checkgmail, andConky. LXDE iseven capable ofrunning on aPentium II with only128 MB RAM.The "newness" ofLXDE shinesthrough, however.Probably the firstthing to hit you is
the lack of configuration options that are availablevia a graphical user interface. If you are expecting tofind oodles of configuration options, as you wouldfind in KDE or Xfce, you will be disappointed. Thatdoesn't mean that you can't configure LXDE as youmight like. It just means that you will have to find theconfiguration files and edit them by hand. For thisreason, the LXDE desktop environment isn'tnecessarily for new users or the faintofheart. It'sgeared more towards intermediate to advancedusers who don't mind digging deep into theconfiguration files and getting their hands dirty.
Once you figure out how to manipulate and moldLXDE's configuration however, you will be treated toa desktop environment that lives up to its name.LXDE is fast, even on older hardware. Your oldercomputers will feel as if they have been reinvigorated with new life. Many users compare theLXDE desktop appearance to KDE 3.5.x. It doeshave a lot of similarities in appearance. LXDEadheres to the desktop standards laid out byfreedesktop.org.LXDE is only a desktop environment, and officiallyrelies on the OpenBox window manager to handlethe windows on your computer. So, many of thethings we'll talk about for LXDE will also apply to theOpenBox version of PCLinuxOS.Overall, you will probably like LXDE, but you willmost likely fall in love with its simplicity and speed.My LXDE desktop, with some degree of customization of the panel and running Conky.
LXDE: An OverviewLXDE: An Overview
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By digging into the configuration files stuffed deepinto subdirectories of subdirectories of subdirectories scattered across your hard drive, youmay also learn a lot that will transfer to otherdesktop environments. We will take a look at thebasic configuration options, then some moreadvanced options. We'll attempt to demystify someof LXDE's intricacies, thus improving your ability totailor LXDE to be what you want it to be.I am sure of one thing: this old Pentium III ThinkpadT23 has never run so fast. I doubt your results willdiffer much from mine.
A magazine just isn't a magazinewithout articles to fill the pages.
If you have article ideas, or if youwould like to contribute articles to the
PCLinuxOS Magazine,send an email to:
[email protected] are interested in general articlesabout Linux, and (of course), articles
specific to PCLinuxOS.
Screenshot ShowcaseScreenshot Showcase
Posted by AndrzejL, August 21, 2010, running KDE 4.
When using the Gimp to edit one of mycartoons, the background of the image isusually white. The padding (or backgroundfill of Gimp), however, by default, is usuallyset to a light gray or white (or follows theKDE color theme.) If it's white or gray, itbecomes hard to distinguish where thecartoon ends and the padding of the Gimpbegins. The solution is to change thepadding color. A quick way to change thepadding color is to select View>PaddingColor and then make your selection from
Mark's Quick Gimp Tip
Doubl
eTake
byMa
rkSz
orady
the pop outmenu. You caneven select acustom color ofyour own
making. In the example atright, I've made the paddingcolor a light blue. Setting thepadding color to somethingdistinctive helps to define theboundaries of the image you'reediting and lets you see theexact size of the canvas you'reworking on.
Find at least seven differences between cartoons. Answers on Page 13.
Editor's Note: Starting this month, we're starting a newbimonthly feature in The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine,taking a look at some of the "Ladies of PCLinuxOS." Tokick it off, we'll first "meet" and learn more about ourown Meemaw, one of the PCLinuxOS Magazine assistanteditors. If you know a female user of PCLinuxOS andwould like to "nominate" them to be highlighted here,drop us a note at [email protected].
Can you start off by introducing yourself, andtelling us a little bit about yourself? (Real name,where you live, marital status,children/grandchildren, hobbies/interests, etc).My real name is Pam, and I live in eastern Kansas.My wonderful husband and I just celebrated our 39thwedding anniversary. We have two beautifuldaughters and three grandchildren (two girls and aboy), and as you can tell by the amount of time Iseem to be in the forums, one of my main interestsis computers and Linux, specifically PCLinuxOS. Ialso love to spend time with my family and read.(Actually, family is first.)
How did you get started in computers?My first career was teaching. In the 80's and 90's,schools were just starting to use computers, and Iwas entranced with how they could do the thingsthey did. I knew a tiny bit about computers fromtaking a class in programing in college (Fortran), butI quickly found out that programming wasn't my'thing.' Of course, that was also when computerswere huge and the program was put into the
computer with punchcards! Using computers in myjob was different, and I found that I loved computers.I got my own first computer in 1996, and had a friendwho already had a computer. My computer camewith Win 3.1, but hers had DOS. I spent manyevenings learning how to do things on my computer,and when she was over, she taught me a great dealabout DOS and the command line. I found over theyears that I could figure out how to use mostprograms, and even help other people with problemsthat they had. Since then, I have gotten out ofteaching and work as a secretary. At this point, I amthe one that some of the other secretaries call if theyare having trouble with something or want to know
how to do something. (I did an instruction sheet onMail Merge for all of them several years ago.)
What drew you to Linux?One of my computers had WinME on it. The secondtime it crashed, my wonderful older brother wasvisiting and tried to recover it, but it was notrecoverable. (I ended up paying to have itreinstalled.) During our conversations, he asked if Ihad ever heard of Linux (no) and told me that it wasan alternative system to Win or Mac. He was usingFedora at the time and had about 5 computers at hishouse. He suggested I do loads of research and tryseveral live CD's to learn about it. Thus started myLinux journey. This was in 2003.
What was the first Linux distro that you used?I downloaded a dozen or more live CD's while I wasresearching. My first two were Mandriva Move andKnoppix. Each one had its own merits, but I quicklynarrowed it down to Kubuntu, Mandriva, Mepis orPCLinuxOS. Each time I would boot up thecomputer and try new things with whatever CD I wasusing. I quickly discovered that the printer I wasusing would not work in Linux, no matter which disk Iused, so I decided not to install yet, but to wait a littlebit and just keep exploring. Amazingly enough, theprinter died within the next 6 months and I replacedit with one that works wonderfully in Linux (still). Iinstalled Kubuntu first. My reasoning was that I wasa noob, and since my wonderful brother had recentlyswitched to Ubuntu, he could help me if I had any
Ladies Of PCLinuxOS: MeemawLadies Of PCLinuxOS: Meemaw
problems. For a while I dualbooted Kubuntu andPCLinuxOS, but that was not for me, either. Not toolong after that, though, I repartitioned and installedPCLinuxOS only. That's what I've used ever since.
When did you first start using PCLinuxOS? Whatattracted you?I installed it in about 2005. It seemed a little moreuser friendly to me. While I was dualbooting, I foundmyself using PCLinuxOS more than Kubuntu, andpretty soon not using Kubuntu at all. Also, thePCLinuxOS forums were just so much more friendly!
With Linux having a reputation of being a realmpredominately populated by males, do you feelthat your being a woman has an impact on yourtreatment by the rest of the community? If so, inwhat way?I can't recall a time when I thought I was treateddifferently because I was a woman, so I feel verylucky! I think that is because our community is sogreat. I think the computer industry as a whole ispredominantly male, but I could be wrong.
Do you feel that your use of Linux influences thereactions you receive from your computer peersor family? If so, how?Oh, yes. Any time I mention to someone that I useLinux rather than Windows, they nearly always lookat me like I'm crazy. (But sometimes I think it's
because they've never heard of Linux.) The IT guysin the company I work for seemed very shocked thatI knew anything at all about Linux! My husband anddaughters just shook their heads when I first startedmentioning it, but not any more. My youngerdaughter decided last year that she HAD to have achange of OS, and asked me to install it to hercomputer. So she uses PCLinuxOS now.
How do you feel you contribute to thePCLinuxOS community?While I should donate money to this wonderfuldistro, I haven't been able to yet. My contribution isto help publish the magazine every month, and Ialways hope everyone gets something they can useout of every issue.
Want to keep up on the latest that'sgoing on with PCLinuxOS?
Follow PCLinuxOS on Twitter!http://twitter.com/iluvpclinuxos
Answers to Mark Szorady's Double Take:(1) Hair different; (2) Cloud moved; (3) Arm shorter;(4) Hand missing from chair back; (5) Shirt stripedifferent; (6) Footstool lower; (7) Word balloondifferent
by Paul Arnote (parnote)Probably one of the first places you will want to go,once you have installed PCLinuxOSLXDE, is theLXDE Control Center. Among LXDE users, it's morecommonly referred to simply as lxdecc. It is here thatyou will make or change some of the basic settingsfor LXDE, allowing you to tailor your LXDE desktop
to work the wayyou want it to,and to better suityour tastes. Afterall, Linux is allabout choice.When you firstopen the LXDEControl Center,you will see theabove windowappear on yourdesktop, dividedinto the variouscategories ofsettings. Let'sexplore thosecategories, andwhat can beaccomplishedthere.Under the firstcategory, SetWallpaper, youwill be directed to
this configuration dialog box, which is the actuallythe PCManFM Settings dialog box. Under LXDE, the
wallpaper and the desktop are under the control ofPCManFM by default. So our discussion of thesesettings will also apply to the PCManFM Settingssection of the LXDE Control Center.The first section of the first tab, General, allows youto set options for "Display." These include the size of"big icons" and "small icons" on your system. Under"Behavior," you can choose to open files with asingle click. By default, this setting is checked. Clickon the check box (clearing the check mark) if youare more accustomed to opening files with a doubleclick of the mouse or pointing device. You can alsoselect if you want bookmarks opened in a new tab,in the current tab, or in a new window.The next setting allows you to set the maximum filesize of files to display as thumbnail images. The
default setting is 1 MB (1024 KB), meaning fileslarger than 1 MB will not display as a thumbnailimage. Finally, you can turn on or off the display ofsupported image file formats as thumbnails. Simplyclick on the check box to check or uncheck thesetting.
Under the second tab, Interface, you can changesome settings that dictate a few aspects of theLXDE interface. By default in PCLinuxOSLXDE, allof these settings are unchecked. "Always show thetab bar" allows for the tab bar in PCManFM toalways be displayed, even when you have only onetab open. Personally, I set this to be "on," since, forme, it serves as a reminder that I can have multipletabs opened. The other options should be fairly selfexplanatory, and will do no permanent harm if youwish to play with them. You can, after all, reverse the
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setting simply by opening up this tab and clicking onthe setting again and revert it back to the way it was.So, feel free to play with the settings here
Under the third tab, Desktop, you can controlvarious aspect of your LXDE desktop. At the top isthe "Manage the desktop and show file icons"setting. This is selected by default, to allowPCManFM to control the desktop. This means thatPCManFM will control the display of your wallpaper.Under this scheme, there is a "My Documents"folder placed on your desktop. When selected, itautomatically opens up PCManFM, with your /homedirectory displayed. If you dislike having icons onyour desktop, you may not be a fan of this. Due to a"glitch" in the PCManFM code, this icon cannot beremoved without taking away PCManFM's ability tomanage the desktop.
In the "General" section, you can have the menuprovided by the window manager displayed whenyou right click on the desktop. With PCLinuxOSLXDE, as well as most LXDE desktops, OpenBox isthe window manager employed. This option isselected by default, allowing you easy access to theOpenBox settings simply by rightclicking on thedesktop.In the "Wallpaper" section, you can select thegraphic file to use as the wallpaper for your desktop.You can also choose the "mode" by which to displayyour graphic file. First, you can select to stretch thegraphic file to fill the entire screen, which is probablythe most common setting. Your other choices arestretch to fit the screen, center on the screen, or tilethe image to fill the screen.Finally, under the "Colors" section, you can selectthe colors to use for the background, text, andshadow colors.
Under the fourth tab, Advanced, you can set thecharacter set to use for file names. UTF8 is thedefault setting. You can also select which terminalprogram you want to be used by default.
For the next section of Control Center, Change YourCursor Theme, you can select which cursor themeyou want to use as your default setting. After youclick OK, LXDE logout will open. It is necessary tolog out and back in for the new cursor theme to beapplied.
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For LXDE Control Center's next section, GTK &Icon Theme, you can use the first tab, "Window," toselect the theme to use to display your windows.Similarly, the second tab, "Icons," allows you toselect the icon theme to use with PCLXDE.
Under the third tab, "Other," you can select whichtoolbar style you want to use. The default setting isto display "text besides icons." Your other choicesare icons only, text only and text below icons.Under the Screensaver Settings section of theLXDE Control Center (graphic top of next column),you can make all of the settings for your screensaver. XScreenSaver is the default program forcontrolling your screen saver's behavior underLXDE.The next selection under the LXDE Control Center isthe PCManFM Settings, which we already coveredwhen we talked about Set Wallpaper. The last
selection under the Appearance Settings tab of theLXDE Control Center is to Refresh Panel. You mayneed to do this manually after changing some of theappearance settings.
The System tab of theLXDE Control Centercontains some settingsthat require root access. Infact, the first fourcategories require you toacquire root access.Under the first tab of GDMSettings, "General," youcan choose to hide visualfeedback for entry of theGDM login password. Youcan also disable multiplelogins for the same user(the default setting), selectthe default session for theGDM (default is "Run
XClient Script), specify a default GtkRC file to use(default is none) or to specify whether or not to use a24 hour clock (default is set to "auto").The second tab, "Local", allows you to set severaloptions for the display of the GDM (Gnome DisplayManager). First, you can set the "style." The defaultis "themed with face browser." Your other choicesare plain, plain with face browser and themed.Under the "theme" option, you can select whether to
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display random, selected GDM themes, or only oneselected GDM theme. The default is "random fromselected." Since only one is selected, PCLXDEGDM, only that one will be displayed with eitheroption.The background color tells GDM what color to usefor the background of the GDM theme. Under "MenuBar," you can choose whether or not to display theactions menu, or if you choose to include a
"configure menu item" or the "hostname choosermenu item." In the last section of the "Local" tab, youcan choose the welcome message to display.Under the "Remote" tab (not shown), you canchoose whether to disable remote login (the default),or to inherit the setting from the local user, or to usea plain interface with face browser.
The fourth tab, "Accessibility," allows you to setaccessibility options for your GDM theme. First, youcan choose whether or not to enable accessiblelogin. The default is for this setting to be turned off.Under the "themes" section, you can choosewhether or not to allow users to change the font andcolors used in the plain greeter. By default, thissetting is checked and activated. Under "sounds,"you can specify sound files to be played when thelogin screen is ready, when the login is successful,or when the login is unsuccessful. By default, onlythe first option is activated. In the above screen shot,I've customized the sound file to be played, andactivated all three options.
At the top of the "Security" tab, you can determine ifyou want automatic login for a specified user. Whilethis may be alright for a computer that only has oneuser, you will be sacrificing some security of yourfiles. Alternatively, the second choice allows forautomatic login for the specified user after a set timedelay (default is 30 seconds). This gives any otheruser a chance to login, but if no other user is chosenafter 30 seconds, then the specified user isautomatically logged in. Again, you will be sacrificing
LXDE: The Control Center
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the security of the specified user's files. The rest ofthe options under the "Security" tab should be fairlyevident.Under the "User" tab (not shown), you can setoptions for which users to display in the GDM loginscreen, the picture to use for that user, and thedirectory where the user "face" graphics arecontained.
The next three buttons under the "System" tab of theLXDE Control Center offer short cuts to "FileManager Superuser Mode," Synaptic for installingsoftware and system settings under PCLinuxOSControl Center, or PCC. When you select the "FileManager Superuser Mode" button, you will first beprompted for the root password, and if properlysupplied, PCManFM will open (as above). Noticethat when you open PCManFM with root privileges,there will be a blue banner at the top of the
PCManFM window, just below the toolbar, serving asa reminder of the elevated privilege. Synaptic andPCC behave normally when selected.
When you select the "Mouse & Keyboard" button inLXDE Control Center, you will first have access tothe "Mouse" tab. Here, you can control the
acceleration of your mouse, as well as thesensitivity. If you are a left handed user, you canswap the mouse buttons by checking the box.Switching to the "Keyboard" tab gives you options toset the repeat delay, as well as the repeat interval foryour keyboard. A test area is included in the middleof the window, where you can test your settingsbefore committing to using them. Near the bottom ofthe window, you can select whether or not there is a"beep" produced when there is a keyboard inputerror. The default is to have the beep turned on.
For the next LXDE Control Center button, "SessionSettings," you can select which applications areautomatically started when LXDE is started. We willcover this aspect of LXDE's behavior more indepthin a separate article, but you can choose whichavailable applications you want to be startedautomatically at LXDE's boot by checking or clearingthe check box next to each item.
LXDE: The Control Center
19
Under the "Advanced Options" tab, you are bestadvised to heed the warning about NOT touching oraltering this setting, unless you know exactly whatyou are doing. Any changes you do make here willtake effect on the next login to LXDE.
The last selection in the LXDE Control Center's"System" tab is "Monitor Settings." Here, you canchange the resolution of your monitor, as well as therefresh rate.
ConclusionDespite its relative youth, the LXDE Control Centerprovides quite a few configuration options. Some
more advanced configurations options will becovered in more depth in separate articles. But, viathe LXDE Control Center, you can make significantinroads to tailoring LXDE to your liking.
Screenshot ShowcaseScreenshot Showcase
Posted by Crow, August 21, 2010, running KDE 4.
LXDE: The Control Center
20
by Muungwana
Each year is declared the “year of Linux” or “the yearof the penguin,” and every year ends with adisappointment because Linux market share fails toincrease significantly in thatyear. As a matter of fact, Linuxmarket share has beenhovering around 1% for areally long time, with no signof a major breakthroughanytime soon. Is Linux aplayer in the desktop spacewith the market share it has?How much market shareshould Linux have to begin tomatter?Linux doesn't need to have alarge market share in order to matter. Large marketshare will actually do Linux more harm than good,since it will have to compromise on ideas andprinciples that carried it this far, in order toaccommodate new users who have no idea orinterest in knowing these ideas. OS X has had thesame small market share for the same reasons.Apple chose to stick to its guns, taking a hit onmarket share, because it wants its users to knowwhat Apple stands for, and only accommodate thosewho agree with their ideas of how a desktopcomputer is to be presented and used.Mac OS X has around 4% world wide, and around7% in the US in desktop operating systems marketshare. However, OS X plays a critical part in shapingthe present and future of desktop computing. Market
share is important, but not that important. What isimportant is mind share. OS X has a mind sharemuch much larger than the market share, and that iswhat makes the industry pay attention to what it isdoing.
Linux, as an operating system, will not benefit thatmuch from increased market share. It will, however,benefit much more from an increase in mind share ofideas that brought it up and propels it forward, andthese ideas are working. The industry is starting topay attention, and use them as it runs around tryingto maximize its shareholder's pockets. Most webbrowsers today are built around these ideas, andweb technologies are moving towards these ideas.Android and WebOS, two of the hottest operatingsystems powering smart phones today, stand on theshoulders of these ideas. The next generation officefile formats are structured around these ideas. Thenet neutrality debate has some elements of thesame ideas. .Net makes up a core of current andfuture versions of Windows, and core parts of its
specifications are released to the masses to“appease” advocates of these ideas. Microsoft, aheavyweight in the computing world, is starting tocave in to the ideas.There most likely will never be a 30second Linux
commercial during theSuper Bowl, but these ideasare taking hold and gainingstrength, sneaking in fromthe bottom of the corporateworld, and going upwards.These ideas are what willshape the future ofcomputing for decades tocome, and Linux marketshare will increase as a sideeffect of these ideas takinghold. Most likely, Linux willnever reach a currently
unknown market share upper limit, if it is to stay trueto itself, as it should. It will do more harm than goodif Linux compromises on these ideas for a few pointsin market share.What will be the optimal market share desktop Linuxshould aim for to keep those who care about ithappy? Should it matter?
Your Community Projects Forum
Does Linux Market Share Matter? What Matters?Does Linux Market Share Matter? What Matters?
I see it as a mostvalid alternative toother operatingsystems. Stan
I have to say it'sfantastic.
caf4926
It is amazing,gorgeous, simple,
reliable.Red Leader
Seems radically
simple to me!exploder
Cozy warm bubble!
dubigrasu
The distro isgreat.muungwana
I'm just realhappy with it.sixthwheel
I am impressed.Truly impressed.
marriedman
Job well done!
gungaden
So Thank you Allfor this amazingsystem! Sefy
Thank You Texand the Gang!Sparky
I love it, it works
great and fast.billy29
It's blazing fast.Glocko
fast and stablemantd
WELCOMEHOME
PCLinoxOSRevival
22
SSIINNGG AANNDD SSHHOOUUTT
Like a Shiny NewPenny
MeeMaw
awesome distro
Stricktoo
Like a Shiny NewPenny
MeeMawWe all lovePCLinuxOS here
davecs
For me its theonly game intown. Jonesy
Thanks Thanks Thanks
seahawk5
it is truly a excellent
piece of work.
verronicathecow
I'm impressed.Xyus
I absolutely love it.
mystika1
Everythingworks withoutfuzz.Zwopper
PCLOSwill deliver
Iqlarry
PC Linux is just all
right OH, YEAH!
MeeMaw
Ridem Cowboy
HeeeeeHaaaaw
Joble
the distro is fantastic,
and the community is
really something else
tschommer
thunder andlightening is no lark,
when PCLOS users
are in the darkJohnboy
penguin dreams are mine
windows infestation gone
let the good times roll
weirdwolf
PCLinuxOS lifts
my spirits.ms_meme
like rolling thunder
across an evening
sky Neal
PCLinuxOS..theway uhhuh uhhuh I like it!
Rudge
PCLinuxOSRocks My RAM!parnoteWELCOME
HOME
PCLinoxOSRevival
23
I got a system I'm going to tell you aboutI got a system it never will wear outI got a system about it there's no doubtNow gather round help me SING and SHOUT
We got a system we're going to tell you aboutWe got a system it never will wear outWe got a system about it there's no doubtNow gather round hear us SING and SHOUT
Boot up your 'puter and see how it will shineBoot up your 'puter oh everything is fineBoot up your 'puter so quickly you're on linePCLOS is all I'll have on mine
Going to the forum my favorite gathering placeGoing to the forum of Windows there's no traceGoing to the forum where everyone's an acePCLOS is our saving grace
PCLOS is the only way to goPCLOS is for those in the knowPCLOS will make your screen glowGet the best and go with the flow
I got a system I'm going to tell you aboutI got a system it never will wear outI got a system about it there's no doubtNow gather round hear me SING and SHOUT
I got a system I'm going to tell you aboutI got a system it never will wear outI got a system about it there's no doubtNow gather round let's all SING and SHOUT
by Darrel Johnston (djohnston)This month's article is on SyllableOS. It is a littledifferent than either ReactOS or Haiku, in thatSyllable didn't have to "reinvent the wheel," so tospeak. Quoted from Syllable's main site,"Syllable Desktop is an original, modern operatingsystem design, in the tradition of the Amiga andBeOS, but built using many parts from the GNUproject and Linux. It is designed and optimized foryour desktop PC, making it exceptionally fast andresponsive and easy to use. It is underdevelopment, so it is interesting and even exciting totry out, but you have to decide for yourself whether itfits your needs already. Syllable Desktop runs onindustrystandard Personal Computers with aminimum of a Pentium compatible processor and 32MB of memory. It can make a new computerextremely fast and an old computer usable again."What that short description doesn't tell you is thatthey started from an existing base, AtheOS. Theoriginal site, (now defunct), can be found here:http://www.atheos.cx/ . From the site:"AtheOS is a free desktop operating system underthe GPL license. AtheOS currently run on Intel, AMDand other compatible processors and support theIntel Multi Processor architecture. I have seen quitea few anouncements of "promising" OSes with"great potential" during the development of AtheOS.The problem is that when I follow the links I normallyfind a description of the concept, a floppybootloaderwritten in assembly, and not much else. AtheOS is abit more mature, and is already running quite a lot ofsoftware. This server for example is runningAtheOS. The HTTP server is a AtheOS port of
Apache, and most of the content is generated by theAtheOS port of PHP3 and perl.The native AtheOSfile system is 64bit and journaled.AtheOS is not meant to be a new Unix clone (likeLinux and *BSD) but a new clean desktop OS. Itdoes support large parts of the POSIX standard andhence are able to run most of the UNIX CLI toolsand it comes with a standard UNIX shell (BASH) butthis does not compromise anything in AtheOS as adesktop OS. AtheOS have a integrated GUI thatworks in conjunction with the kernel and variousother components to create a complete andconsistent system. The GUI is server/client like X11but communicate through the native messagingsystem and the protocol is private to the server andclient library and entirely hidden from theapplications. Both the client library and the server isheavily multithreaded. The finegrained multithreading and the lowlatency messaging system make theGUI much more responsive thanX11."The operating system was writtenand published on the web sometimein 2000 by Kurt Skauen. Unlike otheroperating systems of the time, it hadsupport for ATA disk drives, but nosupport for CDs. The TCP/IP stackwas slightly limited. The originaloperating system can still bedownloaded from Syllable's mirrorsite at:http://atheos.syllable.org/index.html .Here is a screenshot of an AtheOSdesktop.
Other screenshots can be found athttp://atheos.syllable.org/screenshots.php3.html.Syllable is available from their website athttp://web.syllable.org/pages/index.html. Click on theTry Syllable link at the top of the page, and you havea choice of Premium CD, Live CD, Basic CD,Emulate, or Upgrade. The premium CD is a paidversion. The live CD is for hardware compatibilitytesting. The basic CD is an installable versionwithout the extra frills of the premium one. Theemulate version is said to be for VMware, QEMU,Virtual PC or VirtualBox, but only a VMware image isoffered. The upgrade CD is to upgrade an existinginstallation.Although I am installing this in VirtualBox, I chose todownload the basic CD, and install from that.
Alternate OS: Syllable, Part 1Alternate OS: Syllable, Part 1
Booting from the CD, we see a familiar GRUB bootmenu. There are many choices available, and oursis obvious.
Then youcome to thewelcomescreen (right).Press "i" tobegininstallation.
Next, you are given partitioning instructions (below).
You will then selectthe hard drive to bepartitioned./dev/disk/ata/cdc/rawis the CD drive (right).
I selected the entire disk space and chose Syllable'spartition type (below).
The next screengives youformattinginstructions andpartitionselection (nextpage).
Alternate OS: Syllable, Part 1
27
Now that the basesystem filecopy hascompleted, I pressedENTER to continue(right).
I chose to install the bootloader in the master bootrecord of the disk (below).
After thebootloaderinstallation, Irebooted thevirtualmachine fromthe hard diskinstead of theCD (right).
The network device was later changed to PCnetPCIII (NAT) as shown below.
Alternate OS: Syllable, Part 1
28
The password for the root user is "root".
First login to thedefault desktop asroot user.
The Syllable menu (below).
Choices availableby selecting Quitfrom the menu(right).
Next month, we will look at creating a new user,resizing and customizing the desktop,capabilities of the operating system, and whatprograms are included with the basic CD.
Alternate OS: Syllable, Part 1
29
by Paul Arnote (parnote)Under almost every other major desktopenvironment, it's a relatively simple task to set upapplications to automatically start whenever youstart the desktop. However, this is not necessarily sounder LXDE. In fact, LXDE does not natively havean autostart directory, by default. Thanks to NealBrooks, author of the PCLinuxOSLXDE remaster,PCLinuxOS users of LXDE do have this featurealready set up for them.
Hidden in the user's home directory, is the .configfolder. Under the .config folder, you will find a foldernamed autostart. Just as with KDE, items placed inthe autostart directory will be automatically startedwhen LXDE starts.You might think it to be as easy as placing a link –either a symbolic link or a hard link – to theapplication you want to automatically start in the
autostart directory. But that is not going to work.Nope. Only actual .desktop files work toautomatically start the selected applications whenLXDE is started. And no, you cannot create a link tothe .desktop files. It has to be an actual, bona fide.desktop file.Of course, the easiest way to obtain the proper.desktop file is to, (as root), copy the appropriate.desktop file from /usr/share/applications to the/$HOME/.config/autostart directory. But what if theapplication you want to automatically start doesn'thave a corresponding .desktop file? Read on.
Uses for the .desktop fileBefore we discuss how to create the .desktop file forthe application(s) you wish to automatically start, it'simportant to understand how .desktop files are usedon your system. Obviously, one such use is the maintopic of this article: automatically startingapplications when you start LXDE. But probably oneof the primary uses of .desktop files is to displayitems in your LXDE menu.All items displayed in the LXDE menu have acorresponding .desktop file in/usr/share/applications. So much of the informationhere can also be utilized to customize your LXDEmenu. In this aspect, LXDE is not all that unlikeXfce, and the information in the Xfce 4.6.2:Customize Your Xfce Menu article (June 2010issue of The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine) will alsoapply to your efforts to customize your LXDE menu.
Fortunately, LXDE follows the standards for the.desktop file set forth by freedesktop.org. This linkwill take you to the page that explains all therecognized "keys" in a compliant .desktop file, aswell as specifying whether each key is required oroptional. While not an "official" standardsorganization, the "guidelines" set forth byFreedesktop.org have become defacto standards.
Creating the .desktop fileJust as with many things in Linux, there is more thanone way to create a .desktop file for the applicationyou wish to automatically start when LXDE starts. A.desktop file is, as many files in Linux are, a simpletext file. Using the .desktop file for AlsaMixer GUI asan example, here is the basic format for that.desktop file:[Desktop Entry]Name=AlsaMixerGUIComment=Advanced Linux SoundArchitecture (ALSA) graphical mixerExec=alsamixerguiIcon=sound_sectionTerminal=falseType=ApplicationCategories=Audio;Mixer;XMandrivaLinuxMultimediaSoundThe lines should be fairly selfexplanatory, but here'sa brief rundown on each. The "Name" entry is, asyou might expect, the name displayed for theapplication. The "Comment" entry contains theinformation that is supplied when a user hovers theirmouse over the entry in the LXDE menu. The "Exec"
LXDE: Autostart Apps With .desktop FilesLXDE: Autostart Apps With .desktop Files
30
entry specifies the application to launch. Althoughmost of the executable files on your computer arestored in the /usr/bin folder, it would be wise tospecify the full path to the application. If yourapplication, indeed, has its executable file stored in/usr/bin, you can get away with specifying only theapplication's executable name, because /usr/bin is inyour path. Otherwise, you will need to specify the fullpath to the application's executable file.The "Icon" entry specifies the icon to display for thespecified application. The "Terminal" entry specifiesif the application should be opened in a terminalsession. The "Type" entry most likely doesn't needan explanation. Finally, the "Categories" entryspecifies, first, the categories that the applicationshould be classified as, and second, where to placethe application's icon in the LXDE menu. In ourexample above, that would be under the LXDE >Multimedia > Sound menu.So now that you have a basic understanding of whata .desktop file does, and how it's constructed, it'stime to discover how to create our .desktop file. Thefirst choice, and probably the most obvious one, is tosimply create the file by hand, in a basic text editorsuch as Leafpad. To prevent the program fromappearing in the LXDE menu, refrain from saving the.desktop file to your /usr/share/applications directory.Conversely, if you want the program to appear inyour LXDE menu, be sure to save the .desktop file(or a copy of it) in your /usr/share/applicationsdirectory. You will need root privileges to save the filethere. For setting up an application to automaticallystart when you start LXDE, be sure to save the.desktop file (or a copy of it) to your/$HOME/.config/autostart directory.
The second choice is to take an existing .desktop fileon your system and modify it for your needs. Openup an existing .desktop file, make the changes to thelisted keys, and resave it with the same name asyour application, but with the .desktop extension.The third choice is to follow the steps outlined in theXfce 4.6.2: Customize Your Xfce Menu article (June,2010 issue of The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine) byrunning the exodesktopitemedit command tocreate your .desktop file with a GUI.Regardless of the method you choose to use, don'tforget to save the resulting .desktop file (or a copy ofit) in your $HOME/.config/autostart folder for thoseapplications you want to automatically start whenyou start LXDE.
Advanced: A Workaround (Easier) ShortcutNow, I'm calling this "advanced," but don't interpretadvanced as meaning difficult. Actually, thisworkaround is easier. I call it "advanced" for tworeasons. First, it involves making a simple bashscript. This fact alone may keep some of you fromattempting it. Second, it's a different way of lookingat the problem, and offers a different solution that ismore flexible.This method started off as a "proof of concept" ideain my head. I don't know if anyone has tried thisbefore. If so, great. If not, I wonder why. So let mewalk you through this method, stepbystep.
Step One: Create a simple bash script, similar to thefollowing:#!/bin/bashsleep 10dropbox &conky &aumix &leafpad &pcmanfm &checkgmail &pcc &All I've done here is simply list all the theapplications I want to automatically start when LXDEstarts. The first line causes a 10 second delay in theexecution of the rest of the script. This delay allowsthe desktop to finish loading before I start launchingapplications. Notice that each application name isfollowed by a space, then the ampersand sign. Theampersand tells bash to execute the application inthe background, and move on to the next line.Without the ampersand, the script would first launchdropbox, wait for it to finish and exit, and oncefinished, launch conky. Once conky was finishedexecuting and exits, then aumix would launch.Things would proceed in this manner until all theapplications listed had been executed, one at a time.This list assumes, of course, that I want to launchDropBox, Conky, Aumix, Leafpad, PCManFM,CheckGmail and PCC every time I start mycomputer. I am certain that I do not want all of theseapplications automatically started when I start LXDE,as a matter of fact. But I list them here to prove thatthis technique works, validating my proof of concept.
LXDE: Autostart Apps With .desktop Files
31
You can just as easily list other applications herethat you may want to automatically launch wheneverLXDE starts.Step Two: Save your new bash script. I called mineautostartlxde.sh. Sure, you can call it whatever youlike. But I have this thing about making the namesmean something that makes sense to me six monthsor a year down the line. I saved my bash script in my$HOME directory.Step Three: Right click on your new bash script, andselect "Properties" from the context menu.
Click on the "Permissions" tab, and check all theboxes that are labeled "Execute." This will allow notonly the file owner to run the script, but also allmembers of the specified group, as well as all otherusers on the system.Step Four: Right click on your script, and select"Copy" from the context menu. Open up the /usr/bindirectory (as root), and paste your script into that
directory. The /usr/bin directory is most desirable,since it is in your $PATH. When you paste a copy ofyour script in the /usr/bin directory, root will becomethe owner and group of the script. An added benefitis that the list of applications to automatically startwhen LXDE starts can only be changed or edited bya user with root privileges.If you want to make it possible for any user to editthe script (or easier for YOU to edit the script), youcan save it to some other directory of your choice. Ifyou choose this route, you will have to provide theentire path to the script in the .desktop file that youcreate in the next step.Step Five: Create a .desktop file for your script. Itshould look something like the following:[Desktop Entry]Name=LXDE AutostartComment=Automatically start listedapplications when LXDE starts.Exec=autostartlxde.shIcon=/usr/share/icons/5.pngTerminal=falseType=ApplicationCategories=ConfigurationSave the file to your $HOME/.config/autostartdirectory. There is no need to save this .desktop fileto your /usr/share/applications directory, since itssole purpose is to automatically launch yourselected applications when LXDE starts. In fact, Idon't have all the proper parameters set up in theexample .desktop file above for the script to evenappear in your LXDE menu.
Now, when you start LXDE, all the applications listedin your script will be launched automatically. To testit, log out of your current LXDE session, and thenlog back in. If you've followed all the directionsaccurately, all the applications listed in your scriptshould automatically start when you start LXDE.Remember that I said this method is easier and ismore flexible? It certainly cleans up your$HOME/.config/autostart directory. Instead of havinga lot of .desktop files filling up the autostart directory,you now only have one (or two, since DropBoxplaces one there automatically for us) that replacesthem all. It also saves space on your hard drive.Instead of having multiple copies of the .desktopfiles repeated in your autostart directory, there's onlyone. Finally, it's more flexible. You can automaticallystart any application on your system with thismethod, regardless if it has a .desktop file or not.Also, even though I haven't tried it extensively, thismethod should work equally well on just about anyother desktop environment. As long as it has aprovision for automatically starting applications whenthe desktop environment starts, there should be noproblem, since .desktop files are generally seen asbeing executable files.Can the script be improved upon? I'm certain of it,since my scripting skills are very, very basic. But asit exists in its current state, it's very functional. It justworks. I'm sure that for someone (hint, hint) who isgood with creating scripts with a GUI interface(either via Zenity or Gtkdialog), it would be a fairlysimple proposition to create a GUI script to helpcreate the autostartlxde.sh script and .desktop file.This would give PCLinuxOSLXDE users something
LXDE: Autostart Apps With .desktop Files
32
that no other users of LXDE on other Linux distroshave: a graphical way to manage the applications toautomatically start when LXDE starts. Screenshot ShowcaseScreenshot Showcase
Posted by travisn000, August 20, 2010, running KDE 4.
As I sit thinking about this series on Gimp and abeginner’s perspective, I realize in my past articles Imay have “jumped the gun” a bit. I will be steppingback a bit and starting from what I believe is more ofa beginning to The Gimp.What is the first thing that happens when we openGimp? Right off the bat, three “windows” open up.The left one is the Tool panel. The middle is whereyour images and editing will be. The right is theLayer, Channel, Paths, Undo, Brushes, Patterns andGradients panel.
This time around, I will be focusing on the “Tools”window. I will look at what some of those wonderfulbuttons do. I’m going to let you play with the onesthat I don’t talk about. The best way to learn, I found,was just going and doing.
The first one I will look at is the “RectangleSelect Tool” found in the top left position.
This one will select a rectangle for many differentneeds. One would be to fill in some color. Let’s try it.Open a new file and select the rectangle tool. Pick aspot, left click and drag. You should see somethinglike this.
This will lead us to another one of the buttons on thetool window. The fill button. Gimp calls it a“Bucket Fill Tool” and it looks like a bucket ofpaint. Select it, point inside the rectangle you
just made, and left click. Now it has filled therectangle.You will also be able to cut things out with therectangle tool. All you would need to do is make yourrectangle > right click>select Edit> then select Cut.
Next time, I will go through more of those buttons onthe Tool Panel.Thanks and enjoy the Gimp.
Want To Help?Want To Help?Would you like to help with the PCLinuxOSMagazine? Opportunities abound. So getinvolved!You can write articles, help edit articles, serveas a "technical advisor" to insure articles arecorrect, create artwork, or help with themagazine's layout.Join us on our Google Group mailing list.
Beginner's Guide To Gimp: Part 3Beginner's Guide To Gimp: Part 3
"V" because my real name starts with it."uncle"because I thought here, like in almost every otherforum, I would be one of the oldest... uncleVMy nickname = My First name + First letter of mylast name. AndrzejLMy name is my name. NealAs for the nick, raven was our high school mascot,cuervo is one of my favorite beverages, y loscuervos son mis hermanos. Other stuff, too, and thelonger I have kept the nick the more fond of it I'vebecome. ElCuervoMine nickname came from the first email address Isetup for college. I had been given an email fordoing some work for a friend who ran an ISP fromhis home and my wife (now ex) was jealous. So my
sister and I setup an email through the university Iwas attending and choose amoeba (a singlecellorganism that only thinks of food and sex). Thenyears later when I started working for the sameuniversity, that was still linked to my name and wasmade into my 'career account'. amoebaWayne is my name and 1932 is the year I was born.Simple. wayne1932Mine's easy too..... my grandchildren call meMeemaw. MeeMawath are my initials and aki was just something Itacked on that sounded cool to me. athakiMine came from some of the antics I did while racingas a youngster! WildmanWhen I first moved out and got my own internetconnection, I had to pick my email address. Everynickname I have in real life was taken. Since I hadjust got married, I went with Marriedman. Funnything is, no one ever seems to have that nameanywhere I go. Never on IRC or any email places.marriedmanmy nickname is a play on punctuation. jaydotJohnW is John + William, my birth names (inEnglish). My real name in Dutch see in my profile.Using JohnW_57 on IRC and mailing lists (57 isyear of birth). JohnWI was born a chimp and raised by penguins thatcalled me JOE. joechimpI ain't nuthin' but a hounddog so I'm calledhounddog. hounddog
Since there are four different ways to spell my firstname, Eliot, OneL is something I have been sayingto people for most of my life. It also happens to bemy apartment number. OneLMine is a semifuturist rendering of my first name,Ryan(Xyon), which was then partially latinized byinflicting the name with the gender denoting suffix 'us' and removing the 'on'.It's a bit more complicatedthan that, but that's the summary. XyusNo mystery here.g = first letter of my first name r =first letter of my middle name nich = first few lettersof my last name grnichAndy is my first name. And as far as Axnot isconcerned, don't ask! Andy AxnotWhen my kids aged 4 (or 5) I had to sign in on agame site to play against them (I lost)The kids forced me to a nick, in there eyes I am(was) the Boss of the puter so it should be TheBoss, in Dutch, De Baas. Since then DeBaas it is.DeBaaswhen i was young i required a nickname, maybe fora game so i wanted something simple and fast towrite T6 was my choice it has no relation with myreal name, age or anything else, it serves very wellits purpose keeps me anonymous but recognizableT6My nickname is obvious to car folks..the car of mylife, purchased used way back in the 70s. Togetherwe have both aged well...even if we creak and leaka bit. MGBguy
UncleV started a topic in the forum that was funAbout our user names from where did they comeThe response was epic so many willin' to shareCreativeness ran rampant each had a special flarePCLinuxOS users are surely a special breedExtraordinary people with that we're all agreedSo here are our stories for everyone to seeThey will be in the magazine for all eternity
ms_memeI see intriguing nicknames here in the forum.So what do our nicknames mean or why didwe choose them? uncleV
Forum Foibles: A Rose By Any Other Name ...Forum Foibles: A Rose By Any Other Name ...
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Mark is my middle name (and what everyone callsme) and 342 is a semirandom number that waschosen because of the pattern it makes on thekeyboard when entering it in. keyboard layout:1234567890, start at 3 go right one go back to threeand go left one. Yeah, its really lame. Mark342Mine means 'No Angel' (zero being the mathematicalequivalent of 'none'). When I was a kid, I used toplay a video game called Armored Core, where youget to design a combat robot and use it to battleother combat robots in mission scenarios youcould have 3 in your garage and give them their ownnames, paint schemes and part loadouts (likegenerators, FCS, leg parts, arm parts, weaponssystems, etc). I made one which was optimized forattacking from the air and called it Zero Angel. I likedthe name and it stuck with me. Zero Angel'Padma' is based on the character Padma theOutbond, from Gordon Dickson's Childe Cycle seriesof stories. Gordie chose his name to reflect PadmaSambhava, an 8thcentury Buddhist monk. Theconnotation intended is 'wise old man'. (Yeah, Iknow, at 55 I'm merely in the middle of the pack,here. ) I started using it nearly a decade ago when Ijoined the Civilization Fanatics Center (see sig), andcorrectly assumed that I would be one of the olderones there. In combination with my Basset Houndavatar, it makes me "anonymous, but recognizable".Padmai got my nick from my sweet finnish motherinlaw...she is unable to pronounce my real (and verysimple) name. luikkiI always figured if I can YouCanToo YouCanToo
Well, mine's nothing special. First letter is also thefirst letter of my first name. The rest is my last name.Not very imaginative. djohnstonMine isn't very exciting or interesting. The first 3letters are also the first 3 letters of my wife's firstname. The next 3 letters are the first 3 letters of myfirst name. And here you most likely concluded that ithad something to do with Martial Arts. It also hasnothing to do with my avatar. RamchuMy birthright name is Sammuel (Sam will do). I ama pieces, the two fish facing in opposite directions.SAMmy2fish.The "K" is in honor of KDE, and "Storm" is a partialanagram of my real name KStormI like wolves. I like the concept of the "lone wolf"whether based in fact or not. There was also amovie by that name I thought was fairly decent.That should be "Wolfen" for the movie. weirdwolfShort explanation: Dubigrasu was the name of mydog. dubigrasuI have five brothers. I was third. ThirdOfSixtaelti is a mix of my first name and my cousins'name. TaeltiMy nickname is a reference to my favorite hobbyand pastime, a form of percussive dance calledclogging. Clogging and Tap are sibling forms, theformer being older and a true American folk dance.When clogging "went Broadway" it came to beknown as Tap. Clogging remains a folk dance,blending native Appalachian, English, Dutch, and
Irish dance. Imagine what "Hillbilly Riverdance"would look like, and that's pretty much an accuratepicture. From square dance and reels to smooth andprecision line (my specialty), clogging encompassesthem all. DixiedancerMine changes with every passing season or perhapsa full moon, much to the bewilderment and probable(yet unintended) annoyance of the communitymembers. Google can give you an answer as to thewhat... Google nor I however, can give anexplanation as to why. Just pity the nursing staff whowill have to manage me once I get too old to care formyself. Chuck Chunderwell longtom comes from a common translationerror we Germans are famous for. "Lang" inGerman means "tall" in English. Most Germans notas fluent in the English language would readilytranslate "land" as "long". Since I am a pretty tallperson I reckon long*** would be fine. It also mixedbetter than "tall". Now where does the ***tom camefrom. Dunno just sounded good, I guess.. longtomMine is due to the fact that I'm a postal mechanic forthe last 20 years and I work on LLV's, postal trucks,and 63 is the year of my birth ... not real exciting huh... LLVMech_63Mine is my name.Since I don't really worry about IDtheft (you don't want to be Me) and I am sure I amalready on "lists", I am not concerned. I have usedthe same since I got a computer in 2003. PeterClayton Osmar. pcosmarRuel = first name 24 = Jeff Gordon NASCAR baby!!!Ruel24
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Mine is work related, I am a 25 year veteran of thefire service for a small city in eastern Kentucky. ff forfirefighter and 103 is my badge number. ff103A former controller where I worked (~20 years ago)called me this, and it's kind of stuck, since. Yet, it'sunique to this forum. For some bizarre reason, Ichoose different handles on different boards. pagsi got that name Sproggy from my dad introducing topeople as his Sprog (child) and it has stuck all mylife. SproggyMy wife should probably to blame why I started toget interested in computers and especially Linux inthe first place. So I guess it's quite natural that myforum name is formed from my first name, my wife'sfirst name and my last name. anlemI always liked programming and ever wanted tomake my own company. When I was about 14 I firstthough of BigSoft, but somebody could havecopyrathed that alreadt, so I though, nobody cancopyright my name, that's where BP are from.software exlpaines itself. Since then I always usethose where no anonimity is needed. BPsoftwareMine is my name and the year I graduated HighSchool. I think my brother copied me cause I'm justthat cool. Lee2010My nickname comes from my punkband couldKellerleichen. This name was given mymother...Music can you listen under my signature.LeichiI spent 23 years in the U.S. Navy, the last 15 as aChief Petty Officer or Senior Chief Petty Officer, and
I was called "Chief" during all that time, plus, asMacLeod remarked in Highlander, "There can onlybe one," so "TheChief." Pretty self explanatory. Ialso use it almost everywhere. I only wish I couldhave put a space in it. Didn't think of an underscore,at the time. TheChiefMy nick comes from the Latin, and English meansunbreakable, strong. InfragilisMine is so people know how to pronounce my namecorrectly. GuypronouncedGuynotGuyAs very young teenagers in the 1950's we all hadnicknames, nobby, meggsy, mine was crritter Idon't remember why but it stuck. I'm in my 60's nowand still known by a few as critter. critterpull a pint. One of my favorite things to do after along hard day at the office. Ah who am I kidding.Any time of day is good. It's 5 O'clock somewhere!pullapintI almost hate to post this because it pales incomparison to some of the other stories but...My lastname is Bounds. I've had several friends over theyears call me Boundzy some of the other namesI've been called wouldn't make it past the censor.boundzy was the first nickname I could think of whenI joined my first forum and it's just stuck. At 43 yearsold, this is probably the only forum I've ever joinedand lowered the average age of its members!bounzyI'm share a kinship with djohnston ... my forum"name" is simply my first initial, followed by my lastname. But I suppose you already knew that, if youread The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine. Like others
here, I have nothing to hide. I know ... not the mostoriginal ... but it serves its purpose, and that's me toa tee ... utilitarian: as long as it works. parnoteMy first name is Sixth,, and my last name is Wheel,but you can call me Pete. sixthwheelOK I wasn't going to post in this thread. But then Ithought " What the heck". I'll state the obvious. Myname is Terry and my Last Name begins with a H.TerryHChose mine when I decided in the year 2000 thatKDE would be my desktop of choice and was theyear kde 2 was released. kde2kWell, "marno" is an old email name and I wanted toadd a linuxsounding name to the end of it. marnuxMy nickname comes from a 1991 Ford Explorer Iused to have. Me and my Wife always called theexplorer an exploder. In reality the exploder was themost indestructible vehicle I have ever owned.When I was trying to think of a nickname I got tothinking about a friend on a hardware forum that hadpassed away. My friend went by rangeral, his namewas Al and he had a Ford Ranger. I put thesethoughts together and chose "exploder" for mynickname. exploderg = first initial (Galen) seaman = last name Nosurprise. I try to keep my comments safe for anyoneto see, so I don't need anonymity. As long as we talkabout computers and software, it's no problem. Thesandbox can be a bit of a minefield, though.gseaman
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I used to race mountain bikes where I was known tomy teammates as Davey Sprocket, "King of the WildFront Gear" an obvious takeoff on Davey Crockett,King of the Wild Frontier, and yes, they sang it. The"brew" part comes from my active homebrewinghobby. The name of my brewery (yes, there is abrewery in the house), is Davey Sprocket's Brewery(complete with my own custom labels). So combinethem, and there you have it. daveysprocketbrewMy nick is fairly obvious. I was extremely skinnywhen I was a kid. All my clothes were too big for mebecause most of them came from a cousin who wasmuch bigger than me. My alcoholic father thought Ilooked like Gandhi and started calling meGandy(pronounced like Randy). He continued to callme that til he eventually drank himself to death. Ineeded to change my email address because I wasgetting spammed to death. I use web mail so it washard to pick one that wasn't in use by someone. Idecided to use gandy as the first part and my lastname as the last part. My avatar is Captain Kirk(Ibelieve he's screaming Khaaaaaannnnnn!) my hero,along with James Bond, when I was a teenager.gandyI have two younger brothers, one is only a few yearsyounger and as kids we were great friends. Whenwe watched "The Andy Griffith Show" together weused to love when Barny would call Andy "Andge".When learned that we had another brother on theway at about 6 and 8 we were freaked! Except forone thing. Our younger brother was born with SpinaBifida. What does that mean to an 8 year old?NOTHING. All it meant was that we didn't get tomeat our new brother because he was in thehospital for the first 3 years of his life. We knew wehad a brother but we had never seen him. All we
knew about him was that his name was Andy. Um Imean, Randy. Our mistake for 3 years! Randy turnedout to be quite a funny guy and we joked with himabout our mistake and started calling him "Randge"in dedication to the nickname that Barney gave toAndy because we had mistakenly called him that for3 years! My real name is Russell, and so "Randge"started calling me "Rudge" in loving return. At birththe doctors that delivered "Randge" suggested to mymom that she let him starve to death as he wouldnever live. He has had countless major surgeriesand spent the first 10 years of his life in body casts.He is and always has been my best friend. He isnow almost 40 years old and lives a happy life as apopular trivia host at local bars and restaurants. Thename Rudge means a lot to me and I have chatted,and created email accounts with it all my life.RudgeI never use my real nicknames online, the ones myMum gave me are too cutesy and the ones that I gotelsewhere would be rather inappropriate. So I cameup with my own. I took inspiration from thePsycho/Gothabilly band The Nekromantix and thedemented American cousin of Gothrock: Deathrock.And in internet meme fashion I fused the twotogether and used the Combichrist band logo as myavatar. deathromantik
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by Peter Kelly (critter)The vi editorI'll be honest. I don't like vi. The newer vim (vi –improved) is well named, being an improvement,but none the less, still vi. I find that the commandsare not intuitive and, unless you use it regularly,difficult to remember.The main reason to learn vi is that you must do it ifyou are going to use the command line in any sort ofa serious way. Also, it is sometimes the only editoravailable, but it invariably will be available. Somesystem commands, such as cron, rely on vi, and itwill drop you straight into vi when editing crontab.The sudo command insists that you use a specialversion of vi named visudo to edit its configurationfile /etc/sudoers, although it is not really necessaryto do so. Many other system utilities base theircommands on this editor.Although I personally don't like vi, I have to admitthat it is a very powerful editor. And, once you arefamiliar with vi, it can be a very fast way of editingtext files. There is a lot of documentation availablefor vi and vim, if you want to learn how to use it as aprofessional. Here, I will show you the basics thatcan be learned in just a few minutes, and will enableyou to do most of the editing that you need to do toget out of a sticky situation, when vi(m) is the onlyeditor available.You start the application by typing vi, followed by afile name. If the file doesn't exist, then it will becreated when you save your changes. You may alsoopen a file at a particular line number by typing a
plus sign (+), followed by a number, or at the firstoccurrence of a pattern of characters with a +, thena forward slash (/) and the pattern to be matched.This is useful when editing a script and trying to geta particular section working correctly. Try vi+/$USER /etc/passwd to open that file at your entryin it. If working as an ordinary user, the file will open,but as you don't have write permissions, it will be inreadonly mode. This fact will be displayed at thebottom of the screen.The first thing that most new users fail to do is to getout of the application, as there is no easy "quit" or"exit" command. Let's get this out of the way rightnow. vi is bimodal. This means that it has twodifferent modes of operation: command mode andinsert mode. When you open a file, you are placed incommand mode, with the text of the file on screen,which you can move around in but not edit directly.To edit the file, you need to issue a command thatwill put you into insert mode. But you cannot exit theapplication from here, and that is mostly whatconfuses new users. To exit insert mode, you pressthe escape key. If you forget which mode you are in,or just feel lost, then press the escape key and youwill always be put back to command mode.Once in command mode, you can exit the program.To do this, type a colon, which will appear at thebottom left of the screen. vi then waits for you totype a command. The command to quit is q. If therehave been no edits, then the application exits andreturns you to the command line. If the text of the filehas changed, you will get an error warning stating"no write since last change". Now you can do one oftwo things.
:wq the w writes out the changes then quits:q! the exclamation point tells vi to discard
the changes and then quit.In summary, to exit the file, press escape, then type:wq.Moving around in the file can be done with thecursor keys, but was traditionally done by using theh j k l keys to move left, down, up or rightrespectively (l to go right?). To move one full wordforward press w and then b to move back a word,and 0 and $ to move to the beginning or end of aline. Ctrlf and Ctrlb moves forward or backward ascreen at a time. Ctrld or Ctrlu moves up or downhalf a screen at a time.In command mode, you can use the followingcommands:c changed deletey yank which means copyp put or place the yanked text at the cursorWhen you issue the c or d commands, the text isremoved from the screen and placed in a bufferknown as the cut, or yank, buffer. The y commandplaces a copy of the text into the buffer, leaving thescreen unchanged. You can then reposition thecursor and press p to "put" the contents of the bufferat that position. The stored text can be reused asmany times as required, until it is replaced byanother operation.
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What you change, delete or yank are objects,including words, lines, sentences, paragraphs orsections. But for our simple editing needs, I will limitit to words and lines. You can also specify how manyobjects you want the command to operate on. Tomake the whole line the object, you repeat thecommand cc dd or yy.Examples:5cw change the next 5 words. this deletes the next
five words and allows you type in some newones.
3dd delete 3 lines starting with the current line.2yw copy the next 2 words starting at the cursor,
not necessarily at the beginning of the word.4yy copy the current line and the next 3 linesInsert mode is entered by typing one of the followingcommands: a, A, c, C, i, I, o, O, R, s or S. You willthen see INSERT at the bottom left of thescreen. These commands allow you to append,change, insert, replace or substitute text or open upa new line to type in some text. When users had tomake do with a rather unforgiving dumb terminal,most of these options would have been welcomed.Today's desktop computer keyboard interface israther more sophisticated and standardized.With the movement keys outlined above, we canquickly move to the part of the text that we need tomodify, and press i to enter insert mode. We cannow begin typing new text. Press the insert key on
the keyboard to toggle overwrite mode. You willnotice the " INSERT " at the bottom changes to" REPLACE ", or use the delete key to removetext.If you are using the more advanced vim, which Iwould recommend if you have a choice (andPCLinuxOS users do have this choice), you canactivate a visual highlighting mode, which can becharacterwise, linewise or blockwise. Press theescape key to get into command mode, and press v.You are now in characterwise visual mode, and textunder the cursor is highlighted as you move around.Uppercase V puts you in linewise mode and fulllines only can be highlighted. Ctrlv enters blockwise mode. Here a rectangle of text is highlighted asyou move across and up or down. A simpleexperiment in each of the three modes willdemonstrate this much more easily than I coulddescribe the effects.With the text highlighted, you can issue the c, d or ycommands, with the c command automaticallyputting you in insert mode to type in the replacementtext.This brief introduction to vi will allow you to performalmost all of the editing that you will ever need to doon the command line. Obviously, if you learn somemore of the available commands, then your editingwill become even more efficient. But this is enoughto get you out of trouble when things aren't going sowell, or to enable you to edit files like crontab orsudoers.
Midnight CommanderOne of the most useful utilities for the command lineuser is Midnight Commander. For those of you whoaren't familiar with it, I'll explain. MidnightCommander is a two panel file manager, very similarto KDE's Krusader. The main difference is that it isentirely text based and used from a terminal. Itprovides a graphical interface to most file systemmanagement tasks, using elements from thencurses and Slang libraries to provide the textdrawn graphics. The application is extremelycustomizable, and it is installed by default in mostfull variants of PCLinuxOS. It will also be found inmost other Linux distributions. Mouse interaction issupported and works fine in a terminal emulatorunder a windowing system. But for use in a 'true'terminal, as you will get by typing CtrlAltF2, you willneed to install the gpm mouse server from therepositories. Midnight Commander includes a textfile viewer and an excellent editor, and can be usedover remote connections. Midnight Commander willalso let you look inside compressed files and rpmpackages by simply pressing enter when the file ishighlighted.Midnight Commander (hereafter referred to as MC)can be started from the command line by simplytyping mc. It is intuitive enough to be usedimmediately by even the newest Linux user. Youmay be wondering why I have not introduced such awonderful time saving utility before now, and whyyou have had to jump through hoops in an unfriendlyand often unforgiving environment to achieve eventhe simplest file system commands, such as copyingand moving files. Quite simply, you have now seenthe interior workings of the Linux system and are
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more able to take full advantage of it, and tounderstand the many advanced features, whichmany users do not comprehend or miss completely.By default you will start with a screen like this:
The top line is a drop down menu bar, accessiblewith the mouse or by pressing F9 and then the arrowkeys. Directly below are the two panels that are splitvertically by default, but can be changed tohorizontal from the configuration menu. Then leftand right on the top line will read above and below. At the bottom of each panel is a status bar, whichdisplays some file information and file system usage(default). Next down is the command line. Anythingentered from the keyboard that is not interpreted asa command to MC goes here, and enter sends it tothe shell for processing. The bottom line is a set ofbuttons corresponding to the Function keys, but theyare also mouse clickable. The panels are overlaid onthe output screen, and can be toggled on or off bypressing Ctrlo (that's letter o, not zero). You maywant to do this to see, for example, the output of acommand executed from the command line window.
Anything that you type in MC is examined to checkwhether it is a MC command. If it's not, it is passedto the shell to be dealt with. There are a lot ofcommands in MC and shortcuts to them are shownin the drop down menus like this:Ctrlu hold down control and press u this oneswaps the panels overCtrlx c hold down control, press x, release bothand type c brings up the chmod dialogMeta? hold down the meta key, more usuallyknown as the Alt key, and type ? bring up the find filedialog.Basic configuration is done through a menu foundunder options on the top menu bar. Drop this menudown and press Enter on the configuration entry.You will get a dialog like this:
Use the arrow keys to move around, and press thespace bar to add or remove an option, or hold downthe Alt key and press the letter in blue. Most of the
options can safely be left at their default settings. Iprefer to not show hidden files unless necessary,as they are hidden for good reason. I alsorecommend checking Lynxlike motion. Lynx is atext only web browser which uses the arrow keys fornavigation through links, and this option allows youto move up or down through highlighted directoriesby using the left and right arrow keys. The shellPatterns option, when checked, uses searchpatterns such as wild cards, as you would use inshell 'globbing.' Unchecked, it uses the full power ofregular expressions, which makes it an extremelypowerful tool. If you need more help on the otheroptions, F1 will bring up a fairly comprehensive helpsystem.For most operations, you will want to have the twopanels showing the contents of two differentdirectories, perhaps source and destinationdirectories for copy and move operations. Switchbetween panels with the tab key, and select files bytagging them with Ctrlt or the insert key. F5 copiesselected files from the active panel to the otherpanel by default, but pops up a dialog box to allowyou to change this. F6 moves them across, with theoption to rename the file, and F8 deletes them.While a file is highlighted (not tagged), pressing F3displays the contents where practical, and F4 opensit in the editor, although you must have writepermission to save any edits to the file.If you find that you need to frequently drill downdown to a directory buried deep within the filesystem, you can add it to the hotlist dialog. typeCtrl\ and select add current (Alta). You will beprompted for a name for the entry. The full pathname will already be there if you want to use it. Want
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to go home? Type cd, (the letters go into thecommand line box as you type), then press Enterand the active panel will show your home directory.The panels are not limited to displaying a directorylisting. By dropping down the left or right menus(F9),
you have the option to change the display in thatpanel to the contents of the currently highlighted filein the other panel, or to display a heap of informationabout the file. It can also be set to display the filesystem in a tree like structure. If you keep thedirectory listing, the same menu will allow you toselect the amount of detail shown similar to the a,and l options of the ls command. Or you can set upa custom display to show exactly what you need.
The listing can be sorted in any way you like asshown below.
You can set up a filter to show only files that match apattern. The rescan option, Ctrlr, refreshes thecontents of the active panel if the contents havechanged since the directory was entered.The ftp and shell link options are one of thecleverest parts of MC. They allow you to display thecontents of a directory on a remote system, and letyou navigate around as though it was on your ownhard drive.Try this:Set the right panel to quick view.Tab back to the left panel and drop down the leftmenu.Select ftp link ...Enter ftp.nic.funet.fi in the dialog box that appears.
On the right hand panel are displayed the contentsof the highlighted file in the left panel. The filesshown in the left panel are on a file server inFinland. Funet is the Finnish University andResearch Network. You can freely browse anydirectories for which you have been granted access,and you may read or copy documents to your ownhome directory. It's a great research tool. Tryopening the pub/ directory. You can even add it toyour directory hotlist (ctrl\), and give it a nicer namefor quick future access.There are hundreds of free ftp sites that can beaccessed in this manner. If you want to downloadsoftware or a live cd image, I would recommend adedicated ftp client application, such as gFTP, or theftp capabilities of a decent web browser.
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To use the shell link... option to connect to anothermachine on the local network, make sure that the/etc/hosts file contains a line with the IP addressand host name of the remote computer to allowaddress translation. In the dialog that is presentedwhen you select shell link... from the menu, type insomething along the lines of jane@daisy. You maythen be asked for Jane's password before beinggranted access to the machine as Jane.When you enter a directory with lots of files and subdirectories, you can home in rapidly with the quicksearch function, Ctrls. Try navigating to the /etcdirectory and type Ctrls fs. You will be takenstraight to the /etc/fstab file, where you can pressF3 to view the contents, or F4 to edit it.Under the file menu are options to perform most ofthe file handling commands that you would normallycarry out on the command line. For example, tocreate a symbolic link in the right panel to a file inthe left panel, simply select Symlink, and a dialog isshown with the defaults already filled in. Press Enterto accept or change the symlinks name to yourpreference.At the bottom of the file menu are a group ofcommands to tag a group of files according to apattern. As an example, if shell patterns aredisabled, then a pattern such as ^\.bash.* in yourhome directory will tag all of your (hidden) bashrelated files ready to be copied to a backup directory.Pressing the F2 key brings up the user menu. Whatthis shows depends upon the contents of the file~/.mc.menu, and you can edit the file to your heartscontent to customize the menu. Open up the default
menu, and you will see just how complex you canmake the menu commands. But simple commandsare also acceptable.There is a simple find files dialog accessible from thecommand drop down menu or by pressing M? Thisis pretty easy to use, with a space for the startdirectory, which can be filled by selecting a directoryfrom the Tree option and spaces for the searchcriteria, which may be either the file name orcontent. Both can use either shell expansions orregular expressions. When the list of files isdisplayed, you have the option to 'panelize' them,which means display them in the active panel forfurther processing. To get back the previouscontents of the panel, use the refresh Ctrlrcommand. This is an excellent place to practice yourregular expression skills, with the Again optiontaking you back to the pattern for modification orrefinement if the results are not what you expected.If you need even more power, the External Panelizecommand will provide it. This is activated from thecommand drop down menu, or Crtlx !. Thiscommand allows you to execute an externalcommand, and to put the results into the activepanel. You can even save regularly used commandsunder a friendly name.Also available from the command drop down menuis the directory tree command, which displays adialog showing the file system in a tree like structure,and changes the function key definitions at thebottom of the screen. F4 or Rescan refreshes thetree display. F3 temporarily removes a directory fromthe display. This useful when there are lots and lotsof subdirectories making navigation difficult. F4
toggles between static and dynamic treenavigation. Play around with it and you'll see thedifference. Pressing the enter key on any directorycloses the dialog and switches the active panel tothat directory.
To compare the contents of two files that you havebeen editing, select one file in the left panel, and theother in the right. Then, from the command dropdown menu, select view diff files and a new, twopanel window will open, showing the contents ofboth files, with the differences highlightedIf you need to keep two directories synchronized, theCompare directories, or Ctrlx d, is a boon. Withone of each of the directories in its own panel,execute the command, and you will be prompted forthe type of comparison to make, and the files thatdiffer will be tagged on both sides. You can thensimply copy the tagged files across with the F5 key.
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When you open a file in the editor or viewer, orcompare two files, a new screen is shown. MC canhave multiple screens open at any time, and you canswitch between them as you wish, using thesecommands:Alt forward one screenAlt back one screenAlt` list the open screens (that's the backtick)Unfortunately, you may only have one file listingscreen open at a time.If you forget to close an open screen and try toleave, MC will issue a warning.If you think that I have done a comprehensive job ofcovering the features in MC, then you are not evenclose. I've only covered the features that I regularlyuse. Read the help files and you will find a lot moreto play with.
PlaytimeWhen you are working in a text only terminal, eitherbecause you are trying to achieve a command lineoriented goal, are simply locked out of your belovedX windowing system temporarily, or just becauseyou want to, (sadly), you don't have to sit there inmonastic silence.There is a widely available tool known as sox, whichis an incredibly powerful audio application with abewildering array of options. It recognizes most
audio formats, can play back or record, add effects,split, combine and do just about anything that areasonable person would wish to do with, or to, anaudio file.If you are so inclined, then please, be my guest.Read the manuals and produce your masterpiece.Personally, I would much rather use a graphicalapplication, such as audacity, to perform suchmagic.sox can be called in one of three incarnations:sox the full versionplay the play back part andrec the recording function part.Let's concentrate on play.To simply have some music while you work, you cancall play v number song. The v option controlsthe volume and number is a real number, thedefault being 1. Enter 0.5 for playback at halfvolume, 2 for double the default volume, or normalvolume and so forth. Be warned that entering toohigh of a number may damage your hardware orears.Here's a little script that will allow you to have yourfavorite music playing while you work. It expects afolder containing compatible music files on thecommand line as a play list. This version looks formp3 files and plays them back at half volume. Edit itto your own preferences.
Open a virtual terminal with CtrlAltF2 and run thescript. Use CtrlAltF3 to open another terminal todo your work. Enjoy!
Call it with a command like ~/playitsam.sh/data/Music/TheWho/ (so, I like 60's pop, okay?).The script could use a little more error checking, andhas the potential to provide more functions, such asvolume control. I'll leave that to you. If you make anysignificant improvements, and I am sure that youcan, I would be interested in seeing them.
Where to next?If you want to stop right here, that is fine, What Ihave covered in this introduction is more thanenough to lift you out of the 'newbie' class, and willalmost certainly cover most of what the average userneeds to make efficient use of the command line.
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Should you wish to delve a little deeper, there areseveral ways to do this.Almost all of the commands include some sort ofdocumentation as part of the installation. As aminimum you can follow the command with help,which will usually give you some idea of the usage,along with the available options of the command.Most commands are also documented in the manpages, a special type of built in help system. Themanual pages are not always installed by default inevery distribution, but are almost certainly availablefrom the software repositories, and are well worthinstalling. If a man page is not available from therepository for a given command, tryhttp://linuxmanpages.com/. It's a great resource.The manual pages are accessed by typing mancommand, where command is the name of thecommand you are interested in.As a reference, they are invaluable. But they are notvery beginner friendly, although the information thatthey contain is usually accurate. If you see areference to a man page, it is often followed by anumber. This is the section number. Forconvenience, the manual pages are organized intosections, but the number is optional. The sectionsinclude:1. user commands2. system calls3. library functions4. special files5. file formats6. games
7. conventions and miscellany8. administration and privileged commandsWhen the man command fails to provide sufficientinformation, use the info command. The content issimilar to the manual pages but often much moredetailed. Unfortunately, the info command's userinterface is terrible so remember this: type q to quit,and type h for help.That should get you by.There is, of course, lots of information available onthe internet, but beware that some of it may beinaccurate. The most reliable source is LDP theLinux documentation project (http://www.tldp.org).Here you will find a wealth of information on allthings Linux, in a variety of formats and languages.Another reliable online source is The Linux Gazette(http://linuxgazette.net/), with all back issuesavailable in the archives. The Gazette has beenaround since 1995.If you prefer a good, oldfashioned book, then youwill be spoiled for choice, as there are literallythousands of them available. Which to choose canbe a headache and a kind of lottery. My personalexperience is that you can't go far wrong with theexcellent O'reilly series of Linux reference titles.They are usually well written, reliably factual, anddurable. I have a 10 year old copy of Linux in anutshell that shows little sign of wear despite theyears of rummaging through its 600 odd pages).
PCLinuxOS users are fortunate enough to have theirown magazine, which is an excellent source ofdistributioncentric information. All previous issuesare available for free download.Last, but not least, there is the PCLinuxOS forum. Ifyou can't find a solution to your problem, then askthere and surely one or more of the friendly residentexperts will help. Even Texstar, the distribution'smain man, is a regular contributor there.The only other thing you need to become moreproficient is practice. Only you can provide that. Themore that you use the methods outlined in thisintroduction, the easier you will find them to use.Reading about a command is fine. But to understandit fully, you must use it regularly.
Editor's Note: This, the 12th installment of the CommandLine Interface Intro article series, is also the last. Critter,a.k.a. Pete Kelly, has provided us, the PCLinuxOScommunity, an outstanding tutorial on how to use thecommand line. If you have followed along, I'm sure thatyou have discovered just how powerful the Linuxcommand line truly is, and how easy it can be.Critter is not, however, "going away." He has agreed tostay on and write additional articles for The NEWPCLinuxOS Magazine. You will be seeing more from himin the coming months.Meanwhile, we will be publishing a special edition of TheNEW PCLinuxOS Magazine, containing all of Pete'sexcellent Command Line Interface Intro articles, in orderfrom the first article, up to and including this final article.
If you are (or get) serious about learning the Linuxcommand line, then the special edition would serve as anexcellent starting point, not to mention an excellentreference resource. Watch for it, coming soon.Thank you, Pete, for all of your hard work in producingthis outstanding tutorial series for The NEW PCLinuxOSMagazine.Paul Arnote, PCLinuxOS Magazine Chief Editor
Screenshot ShowcaseScreenshot Showcase
Posted by bones113, August 19, 2010, running KDE 4.
By MeemawWith the arrival of school enrollment, I have startedthinking about redoing an old computer I am notusing and giving it to my grandkids. I would like tohave all the educational software possible in order tohelp them learn. They range in age from six toeleven, so I need a varied assortment of programsfor them.I started doing research, beginning in thePCLinuxOS community project forum, as they havebeen talking about a version of our wonderful distrothat concentrates on educational programs. I havealso read several articles that have appeared onLinux Today. Linux Links does lists of the bestprograms in many categories, so I read those aswell. From there, I saw an article titled "9 of the BestFree Linux Educational Games." The author talkedabout the best programs for education in Linux. Theprograms are:
By clicking on the links, you are taken to the LinuxLinks page for that project, which has each project's
respective home page. All the Tux programs(TuxMath, TuxType, etc.) have been combined intoTux4Kids, and the SchoolsPlay project is whereChildsPlay is located.
The KDE Education Project includes:LanguagesLetter Order Game (Kanagram) mixes up theletters of a word (creating an anagram), and you
have to guess what themixed up word is.Hangman Game(KHangMan) theclassical hangman game.The child should guess aword letter by letter. Ateach miss, the picture of ahangman appears. After10 tries, if the word is notguessed, the game is overand the answer isdisplayedJapanese
Reference/Study Tool (Kiten)Learn the Alphabet (KLettres) aims to help to learnthe alphabet and then to read some syllables in
different languagesFlash Card Trainer (KWordQuiz) a general purposeflash card program. It can be used for vocabularylearning and many other subjects
Vocabulary Trainer (Parley) a program tohelp you memorize thingsMathematicsGraph Calculator (KAlgebra) amathematical calculator based contentmarkup MathML language Nowadays it iscapable to make simple MathMLoperations (arithmetic and logical) and
representate 2D and 3D graphsExercise Fractions (KBruch) a small program topractice calculating with fractionsInteractive Geometry (Kig) a program for exploringgeometric constructionsMathematical Function Plotter (KmPlot)Educational Programming Environment (KTurtle) an educational programming environment for theKDE Desktop. KTurtle aims to make programmingas easy and touchable as possible, and thereforecan be used to teach kids the basics of math,geometry and... programmingChemicalPeriodic Table of the Elements (Kalzium) anapplication which will show you some informationabout the periodic system of the elementsTeachingBlinken (blinken) Classic Electronic Simon GameGeography Trainer (KGeography) a geographylearning programTouch Typing Tutor (KTouch) offers you an easyway to learn to type quickly and correctly
AstronomyDesktop Planetarium (KStars) a DesktopPlanetarium for KDE. It provides an accurategraphical simulation of the night sky, from anylocation on Earth, at any date and time.Desktop Globe (Marble) a Virtual Globe and WorldAtlas that you can use to learn more about Earth:You can pan and zoom around and you can look upplaces and roadsInteractive Physics simulator (Step) place somebodies on the scene, add some forces such asgravity or springs, then click "Simulate" and Stepshows you how your scene will evolve according tothe laws of physicsThe thread at mypclinuxos.com lists the followingadditional educational software packages:Educational ProgramsO Gamine: For children starting 18 months. Aneducative and interactive game for GNU/Linuxdesigned for 2 years old children who are not able touse a keyboard.O Pysycache: A program to teach children to usethe mouse. Very useful with children that have neverused a computer.O TuxMathScrabble is a math version of thepopular board game. It is highly entertaining as wellas great educational value. The game challengesyoung people to construct compound equations andconsider multiple abstract possibilities. There arethree skilllevels for practice from basic addition andsubtraction through to multiplication and division.O OOo4Kids: OpenOffice.org for children.Beautiful and easy to start with.O TuxWordSmith: A multilanguage word gamewith obvious similarities to Scrabble. In developing
the game, the goal was not to copy Scrabble, but toextend TuxMathScrabble. Historically,TuxMathScrabble came first. Thanks to thelanguage resources provided by the xdxf project, ithas been possible to create this "sister application"to TuxMathScrabble, which can be played in manylanguages.O Littlewizard: "development environment forchildren. It is intended to be used by primary schoolchildren to learn about the main elements of realcomputer languages. Using only the mouse, childrencan explore programming concepts such asvariables, expressions, loops, conditions, and logicalblocks." The latest version is almost 2 years old, andis not available in Spanish.O Scratch: Is a programming language thatmakes it easy to create your own interactive stories,animations, games, music, and art. Looks like agood alternative to Microworlds.O Etoys: From the project page: an educationaltool for teaching children powerful ideas incompelling ways; a mediarich authoringenvironment and visual programming system; a freesoftware program that works on almost all personalcomputers. The latest version is from 24Oct2009.O FreeMind: A premiere free mindmapping(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) softwarewritten in Java. Very useful for organize ideas, makepresentations and manage discussions sessions.O XMind: A mind mapping program. It doesn'tappear to have localizations for Spanish or Frenchlanguages.O TuxPaint: a simple, easytouse drawingprogram for children ages 2 and up. It provides afixed canvas size, oneclick saving and thumbnailbased browsing and loading. Large icons, simplelabels and prompts, and the ability to display onlyuppercase characters and disable features like
printing, quitting, and certain prompts make it easyfor very young children and the disabled.O MuseScore: a free cross platform WYSIWYGmusic notation program, licenced under GNU GPL.Some highlights: WYSIWYG, notes are entered ona "virtual note sheet; unlimited number of staves; upto four voices per staff; easy and fast note entry withmouse, keyboard or MIDI; integrated sequencer andFluidSynth software synthesizer; import and exportof MusicXML and Standard MIDI Files; available forWindows, Mac and Linux; translated in 26languages.Teacher's ToolsO Clic: A Windows program to design activities forchildren, it runs well under wine. Lots of activities inthe homepage.O Jclic: Same as above, but the activities are notcompatible. Jclic is based in Java.O Mnemosyne: You can visit the project homepage at http://www.mnemosyneproj.org/. Built onPython, it uses spaced repetition, which ismentioned as being good for longtermmemorization of items. It is part of a research projecton longterm memory, and may voluntarily collectdata from its users. The current version is 1.2.2.O Ignuit: a memorization aid based on the Leitnerflashcard system. Cards can include embeddedaudio, images, and mathematical formulae (viaLaTeX). It can import and export several file formats,including CSV, jMemorize, and Mnemosyne.Legend:O In ReposO Not In ReposO It Works (in wine)
So would I just use one of these lists? Or make upone of my own? What is needed for a complete setof educational programs? My own list is as follows,starting with twelve for elementary students:gComprisChildsplayKDE Education ProjectTuxPaintTuxMathTux TypingOOo4KidsTux Math ScrabbleTux Word SmithScratchEToysAs they get older and need moreadvanced programs. OOo4Kidscan be replaced by OOo, and thefollowing can be added:Dr. GeoPiano BoosterMnemosyneFreeMindMuseScoreThis is only my opinion, however, and almostanyone's list could contain different things.A more recent article(http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linux/articles/43224.aspx) has the following five distros as best forkids; Qimo for Kids, OLPC/Sugar, Edubuntu,LinuxKidX and Foresight for Kids. Qimo andEdubuntu are Ubuntu based, Sugar is based onFedora, LinuxKidX is Slackware based, and
Foresight for Kids is based on Foresight. I havelooked at LinuxKidX and Edubuntu, (the live cd'sanyway), and each has many of the same programslisted above. LinuxKidX's apperarance is gearedtoward younger learners, but Edubuntu's initialappearance is much like any of the other 'buntu's,and can be altered very easily.
From this article, we see that Russian schools;German Universities, the Phillipines; the Soviet stateof Georgia; The Indian State of Tamil Nadu;Switzerland schools; Bolzano, Italy; Kerela, India;OLPC; and in the US, Indiana schools are also usingLinux. I'm sure there are more that haven't beenlisted, and from all the work being done oneducational distros, it seems natural that Linuxshould find its way to most schools. I, for one, surehope it does.
by Ryan Smith (Xyus)“General, I bring grievous news: Oulham andCorkharbor have been sacked by Northerners, theKnalgan war machines have pierced the front lines andare rapidly advancing toward the fortress, and theNecromancer Lords have gained full control over the east.All is not lost, however; the Rebel leader has been slain inbattle and his forces scatter before our armies. Howshould we proceed?”Such is an average day for the players of thepopular open source strategy game, “The Battle forWesnoth.”Originally created by David White, and nowdeveloped by a large group of volunteercontributors, The Battle for Wesnoth is a fantasytactical strategy game with the design goal of beingeasy to learn and having simple rules of play whilestill being challenging for more experienced players.The objective of the game is usually to “eliminate allfoes and be all that is left standing,” although thisdepends on whether a campaign or skirmish map is
being played, with different campaign maps havingdifferent goals.
Modes of PlayThe game has several modes of play, includingTutorial, Campaign, and Multiplayer modes.Campaign mode is where the 'stories' of the gametakes place. In a campaign, you fulfill objectives inorder to advance a plot. The campaigns do not needto be completed in any particular order; allcampaigns, from the easiest to the most difficult, areavailable to play immediately from a clean install.Campaigns are divided into several scenarios thatact as chapters of the campaign, with each scenariotaking place on its own map and having its ownwinning and losing conditions.Multiplayer mode is where, as you may haveguessed, you can test your strategies against otherplayers. There are three types of multiplayer modesavailable: Internet play, LAN, and Hotseat. You canalso play single player skirmishes here as well.
GameplaySelecting a campaign from the campaign menu willtake you directly into the battle, while selecting amultiplayer/skirmish game will take you to a setupscreen.The units of the game are divided into severalfactions. The faction you play determines whichbasic units you will be able to recruit, and willsignificantly affect your strategy. The factions of thebase game are the Loyalists, the Rebels, theNortherners, the Undead, the Knalgan Alliance, andthe Drakes. Most campaigns choose your faction foryou, but in skirmish and multiplayer games,choosing a faction will be the first strategic choiceyou will make.
Game Zone: Battle For WesnothGame Zone: Battle For Wesnoth
The game is controlled completely by mouse. Aswith most strategy games, you left click on units toselect them, then left click at a target location tomove or attack with them. The right mouse button isused for things such as recruiting units and quicklyaccessing the ingame encyclopedia.The game itself takes place on a map composed ofa number hexagonal tiles. Each tile represents acertain type of terrain, such as a desert or forest.The terrain type of a tile affects how many tiles yourunit can move, as well as how much environmentalprotection they receive. For example, it is moredifficult to attack an enemy who is in a forest than inan open plain. Some tiles contain villages, which isthe source of gold in the game. Gold is used torecruit units, and is the only resource you have tomanage in the game.
The most important unit in the game is your Leader.The Leader starts out as a higher level unit and isrequired to recruit units. If you lose your leader, youlose the game. The most common victory conditionis destroying all enemy leaders. Aside from thesepoints, the Leader is a normal unit, and can attack
and move, with all the advantages anddisadvantages of any other unit of his type.Your leader starts out in a fortress, which acts asyour headquarters or capital. Fortresses arecomposed of a number of 'castle' tiles and a single'Keep' tile, which can be distinguished from thecastle tiles by its unique graphic. The fortressprovides considerable defense to your units, andplays a central part in the game. Recruiting newunits is only possible when your leader is standing inthe Keep tile in the center of a fortress, and is doneby right clicking on any space of the fortress andselecting “recruit.” When you do this, a list of all unitsavailable for recruitment opens, and from this list youpick the unit you want to recruit.
The units themselves are varied, with each unithaving a unique set of stats and skills. In addition tohaving a certain amount of Hit Points (for nongamers, the amount of damage a unit can takebefore it is killed) and Movement Points. Every unithas at least one type of attack, weaknesses, andstrengths against certain types of attack, analignment that determines how much damage isdone during the night and day, possible bonus
abilities, and an amount of battle experiencerequired to advance in level. The tutorial coversthese in more detail.Fighting in this game happens simply by moving oneof your units into a space occupied by an enemyunit. The battle window opens, which shows severalstatistics that may determine how the battle will turnout, as well as a choice between the different attacksthe unit possesses.The attacks you can use in a fight are as varied asthe units that use them. During a battle, after anattack has been picked from the menu, units taketurns attacking each other. The amount of damagean attack does depends on how many times a unitwill use his attack in this fight, how much damageeach hit does, and the chance that each hit willconnect. Again, these are described in detail in thetutorial.
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In addition to normal damage, attacks can also havespecial abilities, like poisonous attacks that continueto deal damage after a battle, or attacks that can beused by certain Undead units that can turn enemiesinto zombies under your control.After every battle, especially battles in which anenemy is destroyed, your unit gains experience.After a certain amount of experience is reached,your unit will gain a level, which will cause the unit tochange into a more powerful type of unit, and willhave a higher amount of HP, and more powerfulattacks.That's about it for game play: Recruit units, capturetowns, and fight until you are the last one standing.
ExtrasThe Battle for Wesnoth is highly moddable. As such,the game has a strong and proficient moddingcommunity. From the main menu, you can accessboth the addons repository and a map editor.The addons repository contains all mods availablefor the version of the game you are using. In here,you can find many interesting addons, includingnew factions, complete with new units, which areusually packaged into groups called 'Eras', newcampaigns, multiplayer scenarios and campaigns,and maps for skirmishes and multiplayer games.The map editor allows you to easily create your ownmaps from within the game using the terrain tilesand simple paintbrush style tools. These maps are
then available to play in skirmishes and multiplayergames.
AvailabilityThe Battle for Wesnoth is freely available for manyoperating systems from the main site, but forPCLinuxOS, you won't have to look far; it is in thePCLOS repositories, under Games/Strategy.The minimal system requirements are uncertain, butfrom the FAQ on the site:“For versions 1.1 and up we recommend a computerwith at least 1 GHz and 512 MB RAM if you run KDEor Gnome as Windowmanager”Synaptic should take care of all of librarydependencies.
Hints and TipsAlthough The Battle for Wesnoth is a relativelysimple strategy game, there are a few things worthknowing.In addition to gold, villages have another extremelyuseful property: Leaving a unit on a village andending the turn will heal that unit upon the start ofthe next turn. One of the simplest strategies involveshaving units switch between fighting and healing,prolonging the average lifespan of your units.Though I only mentioned it when I spoke about unitskills, Alignment plays a significant role in battle.Units can have an Alignment of Lawful, Neutral, orChaotic. Lawful units are stronger and are morelikely to hit during the day, but are weaker and lesslikely to hit at night. Chaotic units are the exactopposite, and neutral units are totally unaffected bytime of day. Use this to your advantage. You do notwant to lose your mighty Undead Legion bylaunching your massive siege in the day.Some important unit info is covered in the ingameencyclopedia, including weakness and strengthagainst certain types of attacks, and the number ofmovement points expended when passing over thedifferent terrain tiles. To view a unit's encyclopediapage, right click the unit and select “description”.Your high level units may be powerful, but they arefar from immortal. If things look tough, you shouldpull your most valuable units from the fray, and letthem heal. Believe it or not, a level 0 can still defeata level 3 or 4 if it is sufficiently weakened. More than
Game Zone: Battle For Wesnoth
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once, I have sent my most powerful unit to take onmore than it could handle, only to have it die in awave of weak units.If you are stuck on any of the campaigns, the officialsite has walkthroughs of all campaigns that comewith the game.
Conclusion/My ThoughtsMy history with this game goes back a few years, soI am a little biased. Having given that warning, I thinkthis game is very good. Though the setting andcampaign stories may not win many awards fororiginality, that does not detract from the game. Thegraphics are not bad, in my opinion. But, I get a thrillfrom textbased games. Judge the graphics from thescreen shots. The music lends itself to the theme ofthe game.With only one type of resource, no diplomacy, nomicromanagement of things like cities, and noresearch or espionage, the Battle for Wesnoth fulfillsits promise of simple game play, adding itself to the“more complex than Chess, less than Civilizations”niche.Overall, I think strategy gamers, and modders, willenjoy it very much. Others may or may not,depending on their style of play, but I urge all to atleast play through the tutorial.
by HootiegibbonA couple of weeks ago, I was very fortunate toacquire a Pentium II IBM ThinkPad. At the time, theThinkPad was in a poor state. The HDD wasmissing, it had no hard drive caddy, and the harddrive cover was missing. It was also missing thecharger. I also wondered if the 128megs of RAMwere going to be enough to get it up and running.
Despite all of these issues, I had fairly highexpectations for this machine. It was destined to runPCLinuxOS.The first thing I decided to do is search around allthe “computer junk” I had lying about, and managedto locate a 64 MB stick of RAM that was suitable.
The ThinkPad itself, asmentioned above, is aPentium II. The systemboard came with 32 MBof RAM clocked at 66MHz. It also has two baysfor additional RAM to beadded, up to an “official”figure of 288 megs ofRAM (32 MB of onboardRAM, plus 2 sticks of 128MB of RAM, clocked at66mhz), but more on thislater.So I swapped out a 32MB stick of RAM for the64 MB sticks, giving 2 x64 + 32 on board, for atotal of 160megs of RAM,which is enough to runLXDE.I did have a problem,though. I had no HDD.Well, this was somewhatincorrect, as I had an IBMHDD from another
machine, but I had no caddy assembly or plastichard drive door. This removed the possibility ofhaving a swap partition to take the load off of theRAM.I eventually found an “ugly” work around for nothaving a HD caddy. If you take care, you can placethe HDD in position and set a screw directly into oneof the mounting threads in the HDD itself, holding itsecurely into place.So I grabbed a newly burned PCLinuxOS LXDE2010.7 Live CD, put it in place and started up themachine. I was then faced with an error “unable toread memory size” and a Grub command prompt. Ihad seen this before, but not in some time.Now this brings me to a wonderful thing aboutPCLinuxOS: the community, its peers and itsmembers. Thanks go out to two people who assistedme a great deal with getting this far with thisThinkPad (a 600e) up and running. The first isAndrzejL (who has a similar machine), and thesecond is parnote. Without their input, it would havetaken a lot longer for me to troubleshoot some of theissues that happen as a consequence of having anolder machine.Anyway, I digress. After being reminded that at thecommand prompt to type LiveCD and enter, theLiveCD booted up slowly, painfully slowly. It tookseveral minutes, but I was eventually able to getonline and have a chat on our IRC channels usingXchat. Unfortunately, Firefox killed off the livesession for me. It was just too heavy for themachine, and I realized would have to be thrifty withthe applications I choose.
Installing PCLinuxOS-LXDE On An IBM Thinkpad 600eInstalling PCLinuxOS-LXDE On An IBM Thinkpad 600e
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After a further reboot, I fired up the installer andchose to repartition. The first thing I managed to dois make a 1gig swap partition and formatted it. I thenmade two further ext4 partitions, / and /home. After Ireformatted, I rebooted so that the swap could beutilized, if needed .On reboot, I restarted the installer, chose existingpartitions, and let it do its thing. Quite some timelater, I was met with the Grub installer. I set this tothe defaults, finished the install and rebooted.After it had prompted for user setup, I found myselfin a familiar LXDE environment, although, given theRAM situation, it was on the slow side. Afterspeaking to others, I decided to switch from ACPI tothe older APM, due to the age of the laptop.To do this in practice is quite simple. In the Grubboot stanza, you simply have to append thefollowing: acpi=off apm=on and set the systemservices daemons (Via PCC > System > Services)accordingly.This left my machine a fair bit quicker and moreresponsive.I also did a search of its graphics card, (driven bythe neomagic xserver), and located some useful“Options” to add to Xorg.conf. Most options of thistype improve the performance of the card. If youwant to know what options are available for yourcard then check online for the “man” page for thexserver you are using. (I have previously, andrecently, posted in the Hints and Tips section on theforum for older ATI/Radeon driven cards).
Over the course of time that all the above tookplace, (a few days), I was able to obtain someadditional hardware: an Atheros based wirelessPCMCIA card and some more RAM. In fact, Imanaged to get a 256meg stick of ram. I wondered ifit would work, as the machine had a listed maximumRAM of 288 (in the configuration above) .After some research, I found out that some laptops(including ThinkPads) lie in respect to some of thespecs they have, namely in the area of maximumRAM. For the 600e, it appears that if you have acompatible 256 stick and place it in the correct RAMbay, along with stick of 128meRAM clocked at 66MHz, then the laptop will see the full 415 MB ofRAM. This was according to the ThinkWiki pages onthe amount of “unofficial maximum ram.” This isactually correct. Don't forget that your chosen search
provider is your friend when tweaking your install. It'sdefinitely worth your while looking for “Option” andhardware tweaks.The following are my specs for this machine now,using “infobash” from the PCLinuxOS repo:CPU[Pentium II (Deschutes) clocked at265.264 Mhz] Kernel[Linux 2.6.33.5pclos1.bfs (Deschutes)] Up[1:50]Mem[111.1/406.6MB] HDD[40GB(6%used)] Procs[107] Client[Shell]The applications I have chosen to use are asfollows:Browser(s): Dillo, Epiphany and Midori
(although I have removed the FlashPlugin)Email: SylpheedWord Processer: AbiwordIRC: XchatEditor: LeafpadMedia Player: SMPlayerAudio Mixer: AuMixMusic Player: LXplayerPDF Viewer: epdfAs mentioned above, Flash was removed. I feel it'stoo heavy for a machine of this age.Well, there it is a summary of how I managed to getPCLinuxOS onto my Pentium based laptop. I am nottoo sure if this is of any merit, but I hope it gets youthinking about your older equipment, or that offriends, gathering dust in the back of a closet, thatyou could get up and running again.
As for this 600e, I love it. It's a great, albeit aged,machine. I hope you pick up that older laptop ordesktop and have an attempt of making it usefulagain.
AddendumAfter spending a few weeks with this resuscitatedcomputer, I'd like to update some of the information.First, I have been able to determine that thiscomputer is actually a 600 with some 600e parts.Although it's not an official 600e, it's pretty much thesame though.After usingThinkpad 600 fora while, I decidedto follow up onpart of what I hadread on thethinkwiki site, thatthe 600 serieswere capable ofusing ACPI(AdvancedConfiguration &Power Interface).So I reinstalled the ACPI packages. I had previouslyremoved them to ensure that APM (Advanced PowerManagement worked correctly. I then adjusted mymenu.lst in the grub boot menu so that ACPIactivated correctly for the machine. On most modernlaptops and computers this should happenautomagically, but with older machines, you sometimes need to invoke the power of bootcodes (alsocalled cheatcodes by some although personally I
think that term incorrect as what exactly are youcheating on/with?).For the thinkpad 600 model you need to use:acpi=force acpi=noirq lapicThese are added to the boot line (as root, using yourfavorite text editor). I placed them after the rootpartition designation and before the vmalloc=256entry. In my case, it looks something like this:title linuxkernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuzBOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=48fbf4f0e454484591e2db0bfbd17fe9 acpi=forceacpi=noirq lapic vmalloc=256Mresume=UUID=3fe5acf829914b158ccea1a9de007876 vga=788initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.imgAfter booting with this, it activates ACPI, which youcan test using the 'acpi' command. I would suggestthat you use 'acpi V'. This will show the mostinformation.At this point, I also started to wonder about boottimes. Due to the fact that its a Pentium2, and evenwith the RAM super boosted as above, the boot timeis still slow.After much research, I decided to explore rewritingthe initrd (initial ram disk). To do this (I advisecaution you can do much damage if you get itwrong) requires use of the following command:
mkinitrd f /boot/initrdname of yourkernel in use.img name of your kernelin useTo find the name of your kernel, use the commanduname r. In my case, I used:mkinitrd f /boot/initrd2.6.33.5.pclos1.bfs.img2.6.33.5.pclos1.bfsThis command rewrites the initrd, based on themodules 'in use' on your device. For me, it reducedboot time by about 1015 seconds.For some further reading/reference about ACPI,APM and Initrd, head on over to the Wikipediapages listed below:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interfacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Power_Managementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initrd
by Darrel Johnston (djohnston)In the PCLinuxOS menu, under Applications »Software Center, is the item Repository Speed Test.This item is used to download a list of current officialrepositories for PCLinuxOS, then test eachrepository for both connectivity, and for the networkspeed of each repository connection over theinternet. To begin the test, select the item from themenu. Once started, the window below will beshown.
The next window shows that you have a workinginternet connection and that the repository list wasretrieved successfully.
Here you can select the number of days before anupdate check by moving the slider.
Once the sync age in days question has beenanswered, the speed test will begin. Do not bealarmed if some of the listed repositories show astatus of FAILED.
After the speed test has finished, you will be askedto select your preferred repository. As noted, pleaseDO NOT use ibiblio.org.
After making your preferred repository selection, youwill be asked how many total repositories in the list.The default number is five.
You can elect to keep all the repositories in the listby moving the slider all the way to the right.
NOTE: If you already have a PASS account, and theinformation is entered in your Synaptic repositorylist, an extra window (not shown) will appear,showing your PASS account information. You will beasked if you wish to keep it in the repository list.Once the speed test has completed, you will beasked if you wish to overwrite your currentsources.list. The correct answer would normally be"Yes", as answering "No" would defeat the purposeof running the test.
Repo Spotlight: Repository Speed TestRepo Spotlight: Repository Speed Test
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After answering, Synaptic will begin and ask for theroot password.
After starting Synaptic, the current sources.list filewill be shown in its own window. If you wish tochange your preferred repository, you can do sohere.
After closing Synaptic, you have the option ofkeeping or deleting the speed test working directory.After running the speed test, the working directoryreally serves no purpose. You may, however, have areason to keep it. The default answer is "Yes".
That concludes the PCLinuxOS repository speedtest.
Visit Us On IRCVisit Us On IRC• Launch your favorite IRC Chat Clientsoftware (xchat, pidgin, kopete, etc.)
by Gary L. Ratliff Sr. (eronstuc)A Little Unfinished BusinessIn the last installment, I implied that I would becovering Oberon2, which like Pascal and Modula2,was created by Nicklas Wirth. However, oninvestigation, I learned that Oberon, which henamed after one of the moons of Saturn, wasessentially a stripped down version of Modula2.Essentially, it removes any command which heregarded as being able to be dangerous. Later,some simple extensions to allow primitive OOP wereadded to create Oberon2.The XDS package, which was released to the opensource community, is able to compile both Modula2and Oberon2 files. If the file ends in “file.mod,” thenthe Modula2 compiler is used, while if the ending is“file.ob2,” then the Oberon2 compiler is used. Thesystem for Linux comes in two versions. Onecompiles to ANSI C code, and could then becompiled with a C compiler such as gcc. The otherversion compiles to native code. Both are obtainedfrom the XDS site. A simple Google search for xdswill provide the info. The files would be extracted tothe users home directory using the command tar zxfwhatever.tar.gz, depending upon if you downloadedthe C version or the native version.So now that we've tidies up our loose ends, let'sexplore GNU Octave, a highlevel language that isprimarily intended for numerical computations. It iscompletely unrelated to Modula2 or Oberon2.
Obtaining OctaveOctave is available in the PCLinuxOS repositories.However, I could not get the system to install on myKDE version. The system wants to use Gnuplot,which seems to come with the default install of theGnome version for producing graphs and plots. Toinstall, use Synaptic and search for octave. Selectoctave, octavedoc and koctave3 for installing. Thesystem will most likely require you to also installmany other libraries with these items. So simplyapprove of these additions, and click the apply icon.
Here you see the Synaptic screen after we havemarked the items octave octavedoc and koctave3for install. The system will also install many otherlibraries which will be required to use this system.One thing to note is that you will also need to install
the info package, if it is not already installed on yoursystem.Once installed, the system is launched by enteringthe command “octave” at a command prompt in aterminal session. Or, you may also click on theApplications menu, select Programming and thenselect the GNU Octave item displayed.Most likely, the first order of business would be tolearn to use the product. So you would enter thecommand “doc” to view the documentation, asshown in the next screen:
Once the doc command has been processed, youwill see that there is quite a bit to learn, as you willbe shown from the following screen:
Computer Languages A to Z: OctaveComputer Languages A to Z: Octave
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Just as in APL, the main unit is the matrix.Octave is very much like the commercialMathlab system. The main difference is that it isfree under the terms of the GPL license. As youwill see, it is able to perform differentialequations and integration of functions, whichyou may have learned back in the days youwere sweating out your Calculus classes.You have a vast language at your disposal, forwhich you may design functions and explorethe world of advanced mathematicaloperations.There is also a 575 page manual for Octave,
available online at http://www.octave.org. However,this currently covers version 2.9.12+, while theversion installed from the PCLinuxOS repositories isversion 3.2.2.The problem of getting the system to install onthe KDE version was resolved by updating thesystem. Now, there is a graphic interface tothe Octave system, called Koctave3. Thiswould install on the Gnome version, but wouldcrash after being opened. Because the KDEversion of PCLinuxOS has all the features ofKDE, and Koctave 3 is specifically a GUIinterface for the KDE desktop, I thought that Iwould try and see if this worked or crashed onthe KDE version. Below is a screen shot of thesystem using both of the windows provided bythe Koctave3 package:
In the bottom left shot, the command doc has beenentered into the Graphical interface, and thecontents of your files are shown by also selectingthe browser window.
In the above view, the browser window has beenclosed and the contents presented after the doccommand has been run are shown. To view the itempresented in the doc file, just move the cursor downto the item of interest and press the Enter key.So, if you need to do some high powered math, orperhaps your children need to verify their advancedmath course homework, you have a powerful tool.
by Paul Arnote (parnote)Almost as quickly as it waved hello, it appears thatGoogle Wave will soon be waving goodbye.
Rolled out at last year's Google I/O in May,developers cheered and applauded theadvancements and "different thinking" of GoogleWave. It promised to revolutionize webbasedcommunication, asking the question "what wouldemail be like if it were invented today?" GoogleWave envisioned an interweaving of email, photosharing, instant messaging, chat, and draganddropfile sharing between users.From the Official Google Blog on August 4, 2010:But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wavehas not seen the user adoption we would have liked. Wedon’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standaloneproduct, but we will maintain the site at least through the
end of the year and extend the technology for use in otherGoogle projects. The central parts of the code, as well asthe protocols that have driven many of Wave’sinnovations, like draganddrop and characterbycharacter live typing, are already available as opensource, so customers and partners can continue theinnovation we began. In addition, we will work on toolsso that users can easily “liberate” their content fromWave.
The NEW PCLinuxOS Magazine covered the rolloutof Google Wave in the November, 2009 issue, backwhen Google Wave was only available via invitationfrom other Google Wave users. While the conceptwas innovative and fresh, Google Wave may havebitten off more than it could chew. Individual internetapplications – email, instant messaging, photo/filesharing, chat, etc. – are so deeply entrenched in thelives of computer users, it would be an exceptionallydifficult task to supplant them. Also, many usersdon't use all of those applications on a regular basis,so for them, Google Wave may have been overkill.Once users develop certain patterns of usage andhabits, it becomes increasingly more difficult to getusers to shed or change those habits, the moreentrenched those habits become.Had Google Wave made its debut 10 years ago, oreven five years ago, it may well have had a chanceto garner the number of users that Googleenvisioned using Wave. But coming along so late inthe "game," when such a large number of users hadalready developed a pattern of behavior with all thefunctions and applications that Google Wave soughtto replace, the cards were definitely stacked against
widespread adoption of a new communicationmedium.
Despite this, there is a movement under way toSave Google Wave. They even have their ownTwitter page. Even though Google Wave hasn'treached the level of usage that Google had envision,it has garnered a very loyal group of niche users.And these users come from all walks of society.Judging from the comments on the web site, thosefolks range from a theoretical physicist, to novelists,to students and teachers, and everyone in between.On Twitter, one user makes a very valid point: "Idon't understand do we need 5 billion users to keepa product? Why can't it be the perfect tool for a smallniche?"
Google Wave Waves GoodbyeGoogle Wave Waves Goodbye
On the web site, comments included this one from atheoretical physicist, who makes a very valid point:"I am a Theoretical Physicist and I use google wave forcollaborating with my colleagues who are in differentplaces around the world. Google wave has to be saved ...it is such a brilliant tool ... unfortunately, badly advertised(not at all ...). A lot of people would quickly realize itspotential and the way it can really change collaborativeworking in a positive way."Did Google give Google Wave a fair chance? Giventhe virtually insurmountable task of changing userhabits, a little more than a year is hardly whatanyone would declare a fair chance. Throw in a quitelimited start, where users were only allowed into theGoogle Wave arena via invitation. Join this with alack of publicity (other than the hulaballoo when itwas launched), and you cut whatever chances it hadfor succeeding by at least 90%. Folks can't use whatthey don't know is available. Thus, users had nochance to change their habits.I know there are many out there who may be quitehappy to see any endeavor by Google fail. Theyargue that Google is too large as it is, and theydespair about Google's questionable data collectionpractices. In fact, some users are so concerned overthese issues, that they avoid using any Googleservice at all. Honestly, their concerns are notwithout validity and cause for concern, in a timewhen personal privacy has diminished enormouslyand is attacked at every turn. However, GoogleWave represented, in many ways, a cutting edgeimplementation and integration of many servicesthat web users routinely use. It simply didn't havethe chance to gain the steam to become as large as
was envisioned by Google, in the short time that wasallowed.So Google Wave may have rolled upon our shores,but it leaves us gently, like a slow, low tide. Weapplaud the innovation, relish in the advances that it
showed us was possible with webbasedapplications, and are sad to see it close shop(providing that the efforts to save it fail, as so manyother such efforts tend to do), leaving behind somany unfulfilled promises.
Screenshot ShowcaseScreenshot Showcase
Posted by pirate, August 7, 2010, running KDE 4.
Google Wave Waves Goodbye
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MP3 OGGThere's a forum what a forumYou will find the elite thereAnd there's no doubtMany geeks you will meet there
There's carousing and a browsingFrom many a thousandWhen you see that penguin swayYou'll never go astray
Then Texstar he gives a mighty roarHe's the man we are cheering forThe Crew all take a bowFor what they've given us OH WOW
PCLOS PCLOSDownload the distro2010 has finally comeDownload the distroJust be sure of your checksum
Burn the iso to a diskThere is very little riskNow's the timeTo download the distroFor 2010 is finally here
ms_meme's Nook: Download The Distroms_meme's Nook: Download The Distro
Top Left: Posted by Lee2010,August 26, 2010, runningKDE 4.Top Right: Posted bydaveysprocketbrew, August 2,2010, running Zen Mini.Bottom Left: Posted by OrdiDoc,August 22, 2010, runningGnome.Bottom Right: Posted byescapingsummer, August 20,2010, running KDE 4.
