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Posts published in “Tutorial”

Michael DeHaan on Achieving Project Adoption

By Phil Shapiro on April 1, 2016 |

Software, Tutorial and Video

Michael DeHaan on Achieving Project AdoptionMichael DeHaan

The Video Screening Room

While open source software has many advantages over proprietary software, it takes more than writing good code to find a user base for a project.

Starting a successful open source project requires a lot more than technical skills. You need to have wise strategies, which Michael DeHaan, founder of the IT automation company Ansible, clearly explains in this valuable video. In this talk, recorded March 22 on the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University, he explains that for users to adopt your open source creations, the documentation needs to be outstanding. Your web site needs to be very well done. Learn these and other tips in this video.

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A First Look Tutorial of Newly Open Sourced OpenToonzOpenToonz screenshot

A First Look Tutorial of Newly Open Sourced OpenToonz

By Phil Shapiro on March 29, 2016 |

Software, Tutorial and Video

The Video Screening Room

The same 2D animation software that’s used by Studio Ghibli in the making of its feature length anime films is now available as OpenToonz under an open source license.

OpenToonz, 2D animation software based on the proprietary Toonz, was released as open source on Saturday and the OpenToonz tutorials are already rolling in to YouTube. This one by Ryan A. Boone, of Tacoma, Washington, caught my eye. I learned some helpful tips and tricks watching this.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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A Usability Study of GNOMEGNOME logo

A Usability Study of GNOME

By FOSS Force Guest Writer on March 23, 2016 |

Desktops, Operating Systems, Software and Tutorial

Gina Dobrescu and Jim Hall

“Thou shalt make thy program’s purpose and structure clear … for thy creativity is better used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to understanding.”
~ “The Ten Commandments for C Programmers” by Henry Spencer

How easily can you use your computer? Today, the graphical desktop is our primary way of doing things on our computers; we start there to run web browsers, music programs, video players, and even a command line terminal. If the desktop is too difficult to use, if it takes too many steps to do something, or if the cool functionality of the desktop is hidden so you can’t figure out how to use it, then the computer isn’t very useful to you. So it’s very important for the desktop to get it right. The desktop needs to be very easy for everyone to use.

Whenever we think of how easily you can use a program, we’re really talking about the usability of that program. Developers sometimes discount usability and think of usability as making things look nice instead of adding new, useful features. Other times, developers assume usability is too difficult, something that only experts can do. But usability is a very important part of software development.

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Learn Inkscape Ins and Outs Using VideosInkscape logo

Learn Inkscape Ins and Outs Using Videos

By Phil Shapiro on March 22, 2016 |

Software and Tutorial

The FOSS Force Screening Room

Sometimes learning how to use software such as Inkscape only seems difficult because you don’t have anyone to show you how it’s done.

I’d like to kick off this column by spotlighting not one video, but 116 outstanding screencast videos giving tips and techniques for using Inkscape, the vector graphics program that is popular on Linux, Mac and Windows. Created by two friends several years ago, these videos are exceptionally well done. If you’re new to Inkscape, start off viewing the short Microsodes. I particularly love the Photo Popping Fun screencast:

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Getting Started With the Raspberry PiRaspberry Pi tree

Getting Started With the Raspberry Pi

By Isaac Carter on December 30, 2015 |

Community, Hardware and Tutorial

The Raspberry Pi Report

Some of you might have received a Raspberry Pi for Christmas or know of a family member or friend who received one. While some of us know exactly what to do with the devices and what peripherals to buy, that does not hold true for a majority of non-technical people. This article, focused on the Raspberry Pi 2 B, will help serve as a guide to answer questions you or someone you know might have.

Raspberry Pi treeWhat equipment do I need? If you did give or receive a Raspberry for Christmas, hopefully it was part of a kit where all the necessary parts are included. If not, you may be asking what you need to get started.

Isaac Carter

In addition to hosting a Raspberry Pi meetup in Washington D.C., Isaac Carter is a co-host on mintCast. He’s also a software engineer who enjoys working with Java, JavaScript, and GNU/Linux. When he’s not coding, you can find him reading on any number of subjects or on the golf course.

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Turn a WebP Graphic File Into Something Useful on LinuxWebP logo

Turn a WebP Graphic File Into Something Useful on Linux

By Christine Hall on December 20, 2015 |

Browsers, Internet and Tutorial

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.

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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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.

Continue readingUsing the New iproute2 Suite