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Posts published in “Tutorial”

Turn a WebP Graphic File Into Something Useful on Linux

By Christine Hall on December 20, 2015 |

Browsers, Internet and Tutorial

Turn a WebP Graphic File Into Something Useful on LinuxWebP logo

Like it or not, Google’s open source WebP image format is here to stay. At this point, the only thing holding back widespread adoption on the Internet is browser support. At present, the format is supported in Chrome, Opera, Opera Mini, Android Browser and Chrome for Android. However, with the folks at Mozilla working fast and furious to improve the Firefox experience in hopes of giving Chrome some competition, you can bet that Firefox support for WebP will be coming soon. When that happens, the two other major holdouts, Internet Explorer (now Microsoft Edge) and Safari, will be sure to follow suit.

WebP logoWhen all browsers are on board, it’s certain that high traffic websites will adopt WebP as their graphics format of choice. Google is already converting most if not all graphics uploaded to Google+ to WebP to deliver to browsers supporting the format.

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Running Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce

By Christine Hall on August 31, 2015 |

Desktops, Distros, Operating Systems, Reviews and Tutorial

Linux Mint LogoThe good guys and gals at Linux Mint are on a roll, with three long-term support (LTS) releases in a row. It all started back in May of last year, with the release of 17.0, called Qiana, followed in January by 17.1, Rebecca. At that point it looked as if we’d hit the jackpot and could sit back and relax for at least a couple of years until the next LTS release, but the Mint folks had other plans and introduced yet another LTS, 17.2, Rafaela, this summer.

Although Rafaela with the “official” Cinnamon and MATE desktops came out at the end of June, those who prefer KDE or Xfce had to wait until the end of July for Mint to get those editions polished and ready for prime time. That’s okay. The Mint folks don’t like to release versions that still need work, which is one of the reasons why the distro remains the most popular desktop version of Linux on the planet.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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A Guided Tour of LibreOffice

By Don Parris on July 28, 2015 |

Software and Tutorial

LibreOffice logoI have been using LibreOffice since it was called Star Office and all documents opened in a tabbed interface, as in most modern spreadsheet applications (anyone remember those days?). From those early days until now, I have considered Star Office/OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice to be an excellent, if not superior, tool compared to many on the market.

Don Parris

Don Parris wears a Facility Services cape by day, and transforms into LibreMan at night. He has written numerous articles about free tech, and hangs out with the Cha-Ha crowd, learning about computer security. He also enjoys making ceviche with his wife, and writing about his travels in Perú.

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Setting Up Shop With KDE’s PlasmaKDE Virtual Desktop Dialog

Setting Up Shop With KDE’s Plasma

By Don Parris on July 21, 2015 |

Desktops, Operating Systems and Tutorial

We’ve all seen those “screenshot tours” of FOSS desktops, but how about a real, guided tour of the Plasma (KDE) desktop? There are still a great many people who simply are not familiar with Plasma’s features. A large number of people never had any computer training, and when they find themselves in such an advanced environment, they feel completely lost. Many people can barely find their way around a single desktop; the concept of multiple virtual desktops is completely lost on them — never mind Plasma’s activities. So let’s take a little time and make some very basic changes to our desktop theme, and then organize our work. After all, that’s what activities are all about.

Some of my favorite features of Plasma are:

  • Customizability: we can change just about anything I want
  • Activities: allow us to organize our tasks into related groups
  • Virtual Desktops (workspaces in some environments): standard fare in FOSS desktops
  • Application Set: Kontact, Digikam, Kate, K3B and Amarok — the apps by which I live and die
Don Parris

Don Parris wears a Facility Services cape by day, and transforms into LibreMan at night. He has written numerous articles about free tech, and hangs out with the Cha-Ha crowd, learning about computer security. He also enjoys making ceviche with his wife, and writing about his travels in Perú.

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Using the New iproute2 Suiteip neigh show

Using the New iproute2 Suite

By Don Parris on July 14, 2015 |

Admin, Operating Systems and Tutorial

For years, even in 2015, web tutorials, college textbooks and lab simulators have all been teaching the traditional networking utilities, such as arp, ifconfig, netstat and route. Whether you know it or not, most of these commands were deprecated years ago. They were replaced with commands from the iproute2 suite of utilities. Most Linux distros have continued to install the traditional tools, but CentOS, Arch and now openSUSE (among others), are moving to put them into deprecated status. That means we’ll need to start getting used to the new tools.

For those not familiar, the 2.2 Linux kernel revision (way back in the olden days) brought about some changes to the way the kernel handled networking. New features were introduced back then that had not been implemented anywhere else. The old tools use the /proc interface, while the newer tools use the newer kernels’ netlink interface. At least some of the older tools are no longer in active development. The bottom line is that the iproute2 suite offers some definite advantages over the old tools.

Don Parris

Don Parris wears a Facility Services cape by day, and transforms into LibreMan at night. He has written numerous articles about free tech, and hangs out with the Cha-Ha crowd, learning about computer security. He also enjoys making ceviche with his wife, and writing about his travels in Perú.

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Limit Your Linux Super Powers With su & sudosudo password prompt

Limit Your Linux Super Powers With su & sudo

By Don Parris on June 30, 2015 |

Admin, Security and Tutorial

I recently offered some security tips aimed at new system administrators. And hey, the home users among you should take note, after all, you’re the administrator of your home system! One of the tips was “Don’t run as root.” Today I would like to expand on that a bit. First, we’ll take a look at why you should limit the use of your super powers. Then we’ll look at the best ways to use su and sudo to help you limit your risks.

Don Parris

Don Parris wears a Facility Services cape by day, and transforms into LibreMan at night. He has written numerous articles about free tech, and hangs out with the Cha-Ha crowd, learning about computer security. He also enjoys making ceviche with his wife, and writing about his travels in Perú.

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Zen Cart Migration: When the Manual FailsZen Cart Logo

Zen Cart Migration: When the Manual Fails

By Christine Hall on October 1, 2013 |

Tutorial and Web Apps

RTFM.

Anybody who’s played with computers outside of surfing, sending emails and doing some word processing has run across these initials at least once or twice. Put politely, they mean, “Read the manual.”

Sometimes the manual is of little use, however. Such was the case in a recent Zen Cart migration I undertook. However, even in cases where the manual is being ignored, it should still be read first. Before going off book, it helps to understand the process behind what you are doing.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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When a WordPress Update Goes AwryWordPress logo

When a WordPress Update Goes Awry

By Christine Hall on September 25, 2013 |

Business, Tutorial and Web Apps

I guess this is something of a cautionary tale.

The weekend before last we decided that it was time to update the WordPress installations on two of our five sites. Both sites had been using version 3.4.2 which was now a year old. Days earlier, WordPress had released 3.6.1, urging all users to update due to some serious security issues. Although it wasn’t clear that this affected the version we were using, we decided to go ahead and update. It was time.

WordPress logoThat Friday night, in the wee hours of Saturday morning actually, I upgraded If This Be Treason, our less trafficked site. I began by checking all of the plugins to make sure they were good-to-go with WordPress’ latest and greatest and then updated all that had newer versions available. Except for one, all of the plugins used by that site indicated they worked with at least 3.6.0, which was good enough I figured, since 3.6.1 was only days old and was primarily a bugfix and security release, otherwise no different than the earlier point version.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Three

Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Three

By Gustav Fridell on September 19, 2013 |

Distros, Software and Tutorial

Getting started with applications on your new Debian system

So here you are with your new Debian system. Now you might be wondering, “Which programs do I use?”

First you might want to get the “minimize, maximize and close” windows-buttons which aren’t default in Debian 7–only the close window-button is there. From the desktop go to Activities menu to the top left and select Programs >System Tools and the “dconf-editor.” There are a lot of menus here to open so look carefully. Click Org >Gnome >Shell >Overrides. To your left you’ll find the “button layout” row. Type “:minimize,maximize,close” without quotation marks and then hit enter.

Evolution screenshot
Evolution–the default email client in Debian
Flash player is a must these days so let’s get that next.

Gustav Fridell

Gustav Fridell is a self-described “hard working family man” who resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been using Linux since August, 2010 and enjoys testing different distros.

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Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part TwoDebian 7

Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Two

By Gustav Fridell on July 3, 2013 |

Distros and Tutorial

Getting Your New Debian 7 “Wheezy” Box up to Speed

In Part One we learned that installing Debian 7 definitely isn’t rocket science–anybody can do it! Now that we have our Debian system installed and our computer is booting into the world of Debian Linux, let’s take a look and discover our new computing environment.

Gustav Fridell

Gustav Fridell is a self-described “hard working family man” who resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been using Linux since August, 2010 and enjoys testing different distros.

Continue readingNewbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Two

Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part One

By Gustav Fridell on July 1, 2013 |

Distros and Tutorial

Editor’s note: Part Two of the Debian Guide is now online.

An Illustrated Debian 7 Installation Guide

First of all you need an installation image (ISO file) which you can download from www.debian.org. I recommend the small network install image. After downloading the file, copy it to a blank CD, DVD or USB memory-stick. For information on creating a bootable USB memory stick, see the article Create a Bootable Live USB Thumb Drive or Rescue Drive Using UNetbootin.

Gustav Fridell

Gustav Fridell is a self-described “hard working family man” who resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been using Linux since August, 2010 and enjoys testing different distros.

Continue readingNewbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part One
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