PureOS 9.0, The Silently Released Distro
Unlike many other secure & privacy-respecting operating systems, PureOS does not get celebration in every release. Say for example QubesOS, Tails, Whonix, and OpenBSD, they all get celebrations every time they reach a new version. However, after a period of version 8.0, now PureOS reaches version 9.0 as per February 2020 I could tell. This article overviews PureOS in general and version 9.0 in particular starting from a little Librem computers intro, then things about the new Amber codename, the switch from Rolling to Stable style of release, and more. I also added valuable links at the end about its history and development. I hope this article can sum up well about PureOS for you. Enjoy!

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Index

1. About PureOS
2. OEM or Manual Install?
3. What are Amber and Byzantium?
4. GNOME stack?
5. Internet capability?
6. Productivity?
7. Multimedia & relaxation?
8. How if you need more apps?
9. Programming ready?
10. Technical Things
11. Further Readings

My Specification
I use an old laptop Acer Aspire One 756 with Intel Pentium 1.3GHz and 4GB RAM to run PureOS Hephaestus in LiveCD mode. I find out it runs well and can browse the web with many tabs opened without lagging. If your specification is better I am sure you can run PureOS better.

About PureOS
PureOS is the official operating system of the modern Purism Librem laptops, computers, and smartphones which is focused in security and privacy. It is a new GNU/Linux operating system derived from Debian, but unlike its predecessor, it is free from any kind of proprietary software. It is committed to GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG) so it holds a commitment to remove any proprietary software whenever found. It is shipped in two laptops today, Librem 13 and Librem 15 while at the same time also downloadable via its website. Speaking technically, PureOS is a GNOME desktop  distro with its own repository and is architecturally available in amd64 for Desktop and arm64 for Mobile Phone. In a bigger picture, PureOS is created as a main part of Free Software Movement (symbolized by GNU/Linux) and Privacy Movement (symbolized by Edward Snowden) which made Mainstream (user friendly) carried by Purism. Everybody could download PureOS (version 9.0 at the moment) at https://pureos.net.

Librem laptops with PureOS displayed on screen (screenshot taken from Purism website)
OEM or manual install?
Personally, in my opinion it is best to get PureOS along with its official Librem computers --just as best practice in Windows coming preinstalled in many branded PCs or so does macOS in Macintosh ones-- and this is what I wanted to see for years. Why? Because this way user will not encounter hardware issues which frequently encountered if the computer hardware are not designed for the OS in the first place. You can choose between Librem 13 or Librem 15. The door is already opened and I love that. But if we want to install it by ourselves on our own computers, this door is also opened as well, and this is the way discussed in this article.

I mentioned mobile version but in fact PureOS website does not display download option except desktop version one. Where are them? Easy, they are in https://downloads.pureos.net/amber/phone/gnome/librem5 with file name ended with .img.xz instead of .iso, so they are actually available in that website address if we dive in a little more. However this is not discussed here.

What are Amber and Byzantium?
PureOS is now adopting Stable release style in place of its previously Rolling release style by keeping the latter one as a separate release. Amber is the current name of Stable PureOS and Byzantium is the Rolling one's. If you download PureOS from official website at the moment or updated it on your Librem computer, you will see "amber" name as the codename presented in sources.list:
pureos@pureos:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/ amber main
deb https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/ amber-security main
deb https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/ amber-updates main
pureos@pureos:~$
But if you download PureOS Byzantium instead, or deliberately change your current system to it, then you will see all "amber" name above replaced with "byzantium". You perhaps will ask, where do we find this PureOS rolling version download? Easy also, just change "amber" into "byzantium" like this http://downloads.pureos.net/byzantium/gnome.

 (Alternatively, you could open Software & Updates from start menu to see "Amber" codename of PureOS 9.0)
However, I still do not know what is the scheme behind naming of the download ISOS "Prometheus" and "Hephaestus" and why they are not using "Amber" or "Byzantium" names instead. I asked the official forum but today it is still not clear.

GNOME stack?

PureOS 9.0 included by default standard apps from GNOME namely Archive Manager, Audio Player, Backups, Calculator, Clocks, Calendar, Cheese, Contacts, Disks (Manager), File Manager, Text Editor, Photo Manager, Image Viewer, Maps, Software (Store), Virtual Machine, Scanner, PDF Reader, Chat, System Settings, Task Manager, Terminal, ToDo, and Video Player. This means PureOS is ready for daily tasks for most users. You can use your computer normally like everyday for example to take care of your photos and surf the internet with audio/video conferences.

 (An overview of apps included in PureOS 9.0 which are mainly GNOME)
 (GNOME Maps, a desktop map application displaying Tugu Pahlawan, one of most popular places in Surabaya city, Indonesia)
Internet capability?
It includes PureBrowser and Mozilla Thunderbird. The former is a Firefox-modified web browser (with ad blocker and https everywhere add-ons preinstalled) and the latter is the most popular mail client. For real-time communication, it also includes Polari, an IRC client, which is a common in our community so that users of PureOS could contact PureOS user and developer community directly at IRC network. However, unlike other GNOME based distros, PureOS does not include bittorrent and remote desktop clients.

(PureBrowser 60.9.0, a browser based on Firefox Extended Support Release)
Speaking about wifi detection, PureOS does not detect my wifi hardware (Broadcom BCM4313) because this hardware depends on proprietary software firmware, and this is normal. Fortunately I can connect to the internet although I do not have cable internet thanks to Huawei Mifi which can do USB Tethering (thank you so much brother Juang Nakarani for this amazingly useful gift).


Productivity?
It includes LibreOffice 6. This means you can open and edit documents produced with LibreOffice and Microsoft Office and beyond. LibreOffice is a complete suite of word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, flowchart, database, and equation editor programs with large community. You can find documentations and tutorial videos all around the net. Along with it, PureOS also includes Evince PDF Reader and good printing support.


(Writer word processor edits the text I copied from Making the Most Secure Phone article by Purism founder dated 21 February 2020)
It also includes Alarm (within the Clocks app) so you set some and expect to be warned whenever you are busy typing. Tip: keep the program alive or simply move it to another workspace so no alarm would be missed.




Multimedia and relaxation?
PureOS 9 plays MP3 and MP4 out of the box with the audio (Rhythmbox) and video (Totem) players. Of course it can play OGG, FLAC, WEBM, MKV, and OGV multimedia format files as well. But in fact it does not bring any video game preinstalled. For example, it is common for a GNOME based distro like Ubuntu and Fedora to bring GNOME games such as Mahjongg, Aisleriot, Mines, and such, but PureOS does not.

(PureOS 9.0 plays a lot of MP3 files and an MP4 video)
How if you need more apps?
Apps are available in Software (Store) you can find as a shopping bag icon. Normally on other distros (Ubuntu, Manjaro) you would see Software (Store) is mixep up together between free and proprietary software. It is troublesome for user who want to distinguish both. But fortunately on PureOS, you would only see free software as the development team making great effort to make it free from proprietary software. For people who seek purity, this is a bliss. What applications are available? Simple answer, more than 10000 software packages for every human being field are available.

(Software displaying applications under Audio & Video category)
(GNU Octave, a scientific and teaching purpose software, can be installed easily via Software)
Programming ready?
Yes, PureOS 9.0 supports several popular programming languages. It includes built-in compiler and interpreters for C, Python, Perl, and Bash Shell languages. You can already code (or run source code you already have) in these languages. The terminal emulator you use to work here is capable to split its screen and work with sessions, it is called Tilix.

• gedit 3.20
• tilix 1.8.9
• bash 5.0.3
• python 2.7.16
• python 3.7.3
• perl 5.28
• gcc 8.3.0

Technical Things
Installation? The installer is called Calamares, symbolized by Install PureOS logo on the start menu, it is the operating system installation method which are user friendly and also used by Debian and Manjaro. However, to install PureOS there is a tutorial already.

Documentation? Open the start menu and find out Help. That is the user guide to run PureOS desktop environment.

CPU/RAM resource monitoring? Just like any other distro, PureOS includes System Monitor that can display real-time CPU and RAM usage graphs.

Extensibility? Yes, PureOS desktop is extensible by installing more extensions from GNOME Shell Extensions website. For example, if you dislike the lack of bottom panel, you can add it by getting TaskBar extension.

Customization? Yes, PureOS includes Tweak Tool. By this you can change screen text size if you have difficulties in reading them, or change the theme if you prefer dark one, or other tweaks as long as they are related to GNOME desktop.


Further Reading
2019 year in review PureOS - official summary of PureOS development throughout 2019 with explanation about Amber and Byzantium, both Stable and Rolling respectively, different release styles. 

Librem 5 Software Update - October 2019 - official news of PureOS in October 2019 which summed up Amber release in both desktop and phone versions.

PureOS Rolls On As Stable - official announcement that PureOS switched into Stable release style after previously released in Rolling style (following Ubuntu rather than Arch)

Purism press releases - historical timeline in the official website. You can find for example information when Purism joined Debian's and GNOME's conferences.

Librem 5 Development Chronology - a comprehensive timeline with extensive links about Purism Librem whole history up to recently.

Wikipedia: Purism (company), Librem (hardware), Librem 5 (phone) PureOS (software),

Crowdfunding website: Librem 13 - the legendary crowdfunding campaign which started Purism Librem and PureOS.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 (An old Lubuntu Bionic version from 2018 runs in 2020 via LiveCD session from a USB pendrive I run on a borrowed laptop to write this article)
LiveCD is the ability to run full operating system without installing it to computer beforehand. You can run GNU/Linux LiveCD with CD, DVD, or USB Flash, or even external Hard Disk Drive. To make it easier to understand for everybody, Windows is not LiveCD, but GNU/Linux is. I live with LiveCD everyday, many of UbuntuBuzz's articles I actually wrote in LiveCD mode, and many reviews I could made by using it. LiveCD is a feature known and popular from GNU/Linux. The first distro to introduce it was KNOPPIX. And Ubuntu made it very popular thanks to Canonical's ShipIt program that sent Ubuntu CDs to people in this world (including me) so many people benefited from Ubuntu LiveCDs. To you I share my story with LiveCD and things I learned from my story. I wish this writing benefits you as well. Enjoy!

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Too Long Didn't Read

Just go to section Lessons Learned at the end if you don't want (yet) to read my story below.

Do you remember DOS and Floppy Disk?
DOS predates LiveCD. If you ever worked with MS-DOS from a diskette at 1990's, that's same as LiveCD, except LiveCD is more modern and more advanced. In DOS, you run the whole operating system from a floppy disk without installing it. Windows does not do LiveCD. But most GNU/Linux distros do LiveCD, such as all Ubuntu family, Fedora, openSUSE, Trisquel and PureOS, and many more.

My Limitations
All my hardware are old and slow. That's the only one I have for now. I have only one laptop myself: a Pentium 64-bit with 4GB RAM. In the past, I have one more laptop: a Celeron 64-bit with 2GB RAM (but unfortunately it has been broken since a long time ago). In total, I have 3 hard disk drives. However, I have more than 1 USB flash drives. More difficult limitation is my last laptop cannot do virtualization (so I cannot run things like VirtualBox or QEMU-KVM). Because of these limitations, I cannot install many operating systems I want.

To be honest, there is an old PC in my home but it cannot boot from USB. And recently my father brought an old TOSHIBA laptop which also cannot boot from USB. However, fortunately, both can boot from CD-ROM. But I do not use them daily.

LiveCD's Rules 

• All data deleted every time computer restarted or shutdown. 
• Capacity of data in a LiveCD session is capacity of our RAM. 
• LiveCD can access hard disk and flash drives if we instruct it.
• LiveCD can access local network, wifi, and the internet if we instruct it.
• LiveCD can also be installed permanently to hard drive.

1. I Do LiveCD Everyday
To write articles on UbuntuBuzz, I do many LiveCD sessions when I could not install the operating system or when there is something wrong with my system. To do my own works unrelated with this website, I also do many LiveCD sessions for example to test out several new distros or to help people with their data without compromising my data security. This means I always bring my USB Flash Drive that is already a LiveCD if I work out of my home.

Lesson learned: I benefit from LiveCD everyday and more benefits available day by day.



2. LiveCD is Fast
Running a LiveCD session is basically running an entire operating system without installing it to your hard drive. So it is very fast to enter desktop and be ready to work just as if it is installed permanently. To Windows users, this means we save time to install "Driver CD" as LiveCD works out of the box like magic. Imagine you need to take screenshots of 10 different GNU/Linux distros. Without LiveCD, you will sequentially install them 10 times and remove them 10 times as well and between those you boot them 10 times. With LiveCD you cut off those times by just boot them up.

Lesson learned: OSes with LiveCD ability are fast (faster than those who do not have LiveCD) to benefit us and they can make us work faster.

3. LiveCD is Working
All things work in LiveCD session. Ubuntu LiveCD for example, just like Windows or macOS, has networking, file access, application installation, writing documents, multimedia playback, playing video games, graphic designing, programming and debugging, testing new software, and all.

Lesson learned: we can work with LiveCD everywhing we work with normal operating system installed.

4. LiveCD is Consistent
Run a LiveCD once today, then run same LiveCD tomorrow, and run it again next week, all those sessions are identical. This also means that very LiveCD when actually installed to hard driver, the installed system is identical to the LiveCD system. This means a lot for software developer as you can figure out dependencies consistently with this.

Lesson learned: LiveCD is consistent against time and against its own installed system.

5. LiveCD is History Snapshot
Probably this is the one benefit many people not aware of. If you have a LiveCD of Ubuntu 10.10 from the year 2010, you can still run it perfectly the same as 2010 on the year 2020. Perfectly means all of its features (splash screen, desktop, applications, networking abilities, all limitations, and also bugs and security flaws). For history-loving people, and for those who love retro computing, this means a lot! Even this could be useful for security teaching people. For example, imagine you want to demonstrate Heartbleed security flaw, but your all systems have been patched nowadays (of course they have, right?), how do you easily do the demonstration? The easiest one is if you have a LiveCD of old Ubuntu version which still contain that security bug and present to your audience quickly by booting it up. Make sense, right? So does other things such as if you want to make historical story of LibreOffice versions, the easiest thing to do is just run LiveCDs, as you can take not only screenshot pictures of them but also full functionalities of each of them.

Lesson learned: LiveCD is history snapshot.

6. I Run Applications on LiveCD
Ubuntu in LiveCD session can run all of its preinstalled applications. So does other GNU/Linux distros. This is beneficial a lot as I can write my book manuscript just by using a LiveCD. All activities I want can be done with it. For example, just by an Ubuntu LiveCD, I can run web browser, email client, file manager, office suite, and more.

Lesson learned: we can run all applications in a LiveCD without installing the operating system first.

7. I Install Applications on LiveCD
Of course this is the goal of doing LiveCD sessions. I connect my LiveCD system to the internet and then freely install apps I want. On Ubuntu I use apt-get. On openSUSE I use zypper. On Fedora I use dnf. On Solus I use eopkg. And more you can see yourself comparison table on Distrowatch. This means very big as we can learn different package management systems without installing the particular GNU/Linux operating systems. Also this means simplifications for us who want to test a certain application which we find too difficult to install if that app is already included in a LiveCD. For example, which one is more easy, installing latest GNOME on your permanent system, or just running a LiveCD of latest GNOME? I believe you answer the latter one.

Lesson learned: we can install applications on LiveCD and then copy them to install those applications offline on a permanently installed system.

8. I Run AppImages on LiveCD
I stored several AppImages on my data partition and run those software every time I need from LiveCD sessions so I do not need internet access at all to reuse them.

Probono from Germany is the founding father of AppImage technology, the most useful thing in whole package management styles on GNU/Linux. Probono, aka Simon Peter, is a person who do LiveCD truly often also. I can appreciate him quickly just because I also do LiveCD and benefited from it everyday. He really knows how useful LiveCD is. What is the connection to AppImages?

To most users, AppImage is a new software format that is portable across GNU/Linux distros and across their versions as well. For example, have you heard that now LibreOffice, Inkscape, Krita, Kdenlive are already officially available as AppImages? You just need to download the AppImage file and double-click that, software runs without installation.

Lesson learned: I can run applications I want quickly & universally on LiveCD thanks to AppImage technology.

Lesson learned: I can save much of my money of internet access thanks to AppImages.

(More about AppImage see Hacker News discussion)

9. In Past Singleboot LiveCD, In Present Multiboot LiveCD
Before I knew MultiSystem, I always made every LiveCD in a single CD disc. If I use USB Flash Drive, I also made every LiveUSB in a single USB. This means expensive cost and and resource waste. Since I knew MultiSystem, I always made all my LiveCD multiboot.  This means cost & resource saving a lot. To give you an example, thanks to MultiSystem I can make a 16GB flash drive contains multiple bootable LiveCDs of Ubuntu, Fedora, Trisquel, and other GNU/Linux distros. This way I remove need of time to create LiveCD.

Lesson learned: I can get more benefits with same amount of resources thanks 
to multiboot technology. I really owe MultiSystem, Multibootusb, GLIM, and Aguslr for their inventions.

10. I Can Learn Many Different GNU/Linux Distros Quickly and Without Risks
Thanks to LiveCD, I can learn a lot of GNU/Linux such as dozens of versions and variants of Ubuntu family, Trisquel and PureOS, Fedora and openSUSE, CentOS and Debian, Slitaz and TinyCore, Puppy and Knoppix, BlankOn and IGOS, gNewSense and Manjaro, and more without installing them at all. Learning here of course means running them, seeing their desktops, hearing their sound effects, trying out their applications, experiencing with their control panels, and so on. Without LiveCD I will never learn because my hardware are so limited.

Lesson learned: I can learn many different distros quickly and without risks.

11. I Can Teach GNU/Linux to People Quicker and Easier
Faster for me to process it, and easier to people to digest & understand it. This is the case when I meet people in place.

Lesson learned: I can convey GNU/Linux benefits to people so they can grasp more things quicker as they see the LiveCD session I show them.

12. I Can Help People!
This is the part I love the most. From checking out whether their computer is broken or not, checking whether it is hardware fault or OS (Windows) fault, rescuing their files from broken hard disk drive, to even scan their data with antivirus available (ClamAV), I can use just a LiveCD. So handy, so helpful.

Lesson learned: there are unlimited benefits in teaching GNU/Linux to others and those benefit could be conveyed more quickly with LiveCD.

13. I Can Borrow People's Computers Safely
I can run GNU/Linux as I please on other person's computer without changing their computer at all thanks to LiveCD. This way I can avoid Windows while making them feel secure as I don't delete any data. I avoid Windows not only because I refuse it as the biggest proprietary software (hence it's easiest to avoid) but also I refuse it as malware (although most people are still unaware of). This benefits me (I got help whenever I do not have a computer) and benefits them (they feel safety to entrust their computer to me).

Lessons learned: always use LiveCD when borrowing somebody else's computer to benefit both parties.

14. I Avoid Accidental File Deletion
Yes my laptop runs without a battery for a long time because it was broken and I could not afford to buy a new one. If I had a battery, I would charge it full before doing a LiveCD session if I knew the place I was there was prone to power outage or has some electricity problem. If my LiveCD session got restarted or shutdown accidentally, then all files stored in LiveCD filesystem (in computer memory) are gone. For that reason, I always prepared by saving my files to hard disk drive instead of letting them saved on LiveCD filesystem. Mostly my files from a LiveCD session are screenshots. So as you can guess I have so many folders of screenshots on my special data partition.

Lesson learned: be prepared to save files before power outage.

15. I Learn New Things A Lot
For example, at the moment I tried gNewSense (version 3.0 before Ucclia version) for the first time, that was the time I realized that GStreamer is not proprietary software, it is verily free software, no problem with it, and the problem is instead the MP3 format: it's a patented format, a fierce hostility towards our community. This cleared my past misunderstanding where I thought the software (the implementation) to playback MP3 files are proprietary. As gNewSense could play MP3 while at the same time Ubuntu cannot, I was jolted out, I realized that Ubuntu decided not to ship MP3 support just to protect users in countries where MP3 patent trolls could sue the users for it. From this point I learned a lot about Software Patents: Obstacles to Software Development (this speech made me know really a lot more about our free software community) and in 2016 I wrote my own article (in Indonesian language: Software Patents Mistreat Community) about it. Not only me, you can see how Probono (AppImage founder) learnt a lot about a specific wifi driver problem just by examining LiveCDs of Ubuntu and Deepin.

Lesson learned: I can learn new things with LiveCD.

Lessons Learned 
Finally, here is a collection of lessons learned from my story with LiveCD. I hope my story could benefit you also. Indeed, my living is more lively with LiveCD. I hope yours too.

1. Lesson learned: I benefit from LiveCD everyday and more benefits available day by day.
2. Lesson learned: OSes with LiveCD ability are fast (faster than those who do not have LiveCD) to benefit us and they can make us work faster.
3. Lesson learned: we can work with LiveCD everywhing we work with normal operating system installed.
4. Lesson learned: LiveCD is consistent against time and against its own installed system.
5. Lesson learned: LiveCD is history snapshot.
6. Lesson learned: we can run all applications in a LiveCD without installing the operating system first.
7. Lesson learned: we can install applications on LiveCD and then copy them to install those applications offline on a permanently installed system.
8. Lesson learned: I can run applications I want quickly & universally on LiveCD thanks to AppImage technology.
9. Lesson learned: I can save much of my money of internet access thanks to AppImages.
10. Lesson learned: I can get more benefits with same amount of resources thanks to multiboot technology. I really owe MultiSystem, Multibootusb, GLIM, and Aguslr for their inventions.
11. Lesson learned: I can learn many different distros quickly and without risks.
12. Lesson learned: I can convey GNU/Linux benefits to people so they can grasp more things quicker as they see the LiveCD session I show them.
13. Lesson learned: there are unlimited benefits in teaching GNU/Linux to others and those benefit could be conveyed more quickly with LiveCD.
14. Lessons learned: always use LiveCD when borrowing somebody else's computer to benefit both parties.
15. Lesson learned: be prepared to save files before power outage.
16. Lesson learned: I can learn new things with LiveCD.

After learning about LibreOffice Writer's user interface and basic text formatting, we will learn about Views and Document Navigation so we can see better and moving around text more quickly. You will learn about two views, Normal and Web, and also three paging modes, Single-Multiple-Book. You will also learn about how to use zoom features and Navigator dialog. Lastly, you will learn to hide and show several important stuffs such as Rulers, Grid, and Pictures which in turn can help you reduce computer memory usage. Happy learning!

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1. Switching Between Normal and Web Views
To switch to either view:

• Go to menu View > Normal.
• Go to menu View > Web.

Writer provides two view modes, Normal and Web, as depicted below. The view we usually see is the Normal one. If we change it to Web view, it loses paper boundaries and looks far wider. For most cases , you use Normal view. How about Web View? As we already learned on previous part, LibreOffice Writer is a WYSIWYG editor so if you want to create web in visual way without coding, there is Web View for you. It is similar to Microsoft FrontPage. With web view you can type text, format them as you please, include pictures and tables, etc. then Save As HTML file just that easily. The resulting HTML file is a web page formatted as you edit which the code generated automatically by LibreOffice Writer.

This is comparison between Normal and Web views with empty document.



This is a comparison of both Views with text (text taken from my old writing Support ODF).



2. Visual Web Form Editor
To open visual form editor:

• Go to View > Toolbars > enable Form Controls > a floating dialog of buttons appears.
• Go to View > Toolbars > enable Form Design > a new toolbar appears.
• Click Design Mode on Form Controls dialog (index finger with an OK) to enable form creation, click it again to test clicking buttons.

With this editor, Writer can visually design user interface form (involving button, combo box, etc.) in a document with certain functions to receive inputs and process them. The created form document can then be exported as HTML (web page), ODT, PDF, and the buttons will be clickable there. You can, for example, create a simple website with go forward and go back buttons to navigate between pages. This editor works in both Normal and Web views.


2. Zoom and Fullscreen
Too zoom in and out:

• Click + on zoom section on status bar to zoom in a level.
• Click - instead to zoom out a level.
• Alternatively, scroll up or bottom to zoom in and out.
• Alternatively, click View > Zoom > select a zoom level.

Writer gives you two kinds of zooming, either with slider (on statusbar), or preset (Page Width, Entire Page, Optimal View).


Picture below compares zoom presets available:


3. Using Navigator
To show Navigator dialog:

• Go to View > Navigator.
• Alternatively, click compass logo on right sidebar.

To jump to a point in document:

• Click Headings item > collapse arrows under it > you see all headings > double-click a heading name > you jumped to section right under that heading.
• Click Images item > collapse arrows under it > you see all image names >double-click a image name > you jumped to section right under that image.
• Click Tables item > collapse arrows > you see all table names > double-click a table name > you jumped there.

In a word processor user can "jump" (quickly move viewport) to a certain point in text document. That is the purpose of Navigator dialog. Navigator shows list of headings, list of images, and list of tables (among other types of item) within a document for you to navigate.


4. Single, Multiple, and Book Page Views

• Single-page: displays document page per page in a straight vertical line order.
• Multiple-page: displays pages in overview in horizontal and vertical order.
• Book view: displays pages side by side, except front and back cover pages, just like a book.

To switch to either one, simply click one of three paper piece logos on statusbar near zoom slider.

 
Normally you use Single-Page one. It is enough for most cases. For overview purpose, the best is to use Multiple-Page one. If you are a book author and want to quickly see how your book looks in print, Book View is the best.


5. Hide/Show Things 

• Hide/Show Pictures: click menu View > uncheck Images and Charts > all pictures hidden within empty frames > check to show them again. This reduce memory usage a lot.
• Hide/Show Tables: click menu View > uncheck Table Boundaries > all tables now lost their border lines > check to show them again.
• Hide/Show Text Boundaries: click menu View > uncheck Text Boundaries > four L-shaped lines on each page now gone (also Section's border lines) > check to show them again.
• Hide/Show Non-Printing Characters: click menu View > uncheck Formatting Marks > all non-printing characters (such as ¶) are now gone.
• Hide/Show Grid: click menu View > Grid and Helplines > uncheck Grid > background grid is now gone > check to show it again.
• Enable/Disable Toolbars: click menu View > Toolbars > uncheck to hide, check to show a toolbar among choices available.
• Rulers: click menu View > Ruler > Rulers for horizontal only and View > Rulers > Vertical Rulers for the vertical one.
• Data Sources: click menu View > uncheck Data Sources > Data Sources panel is now gone > check to show it again.

These things are important because sometimes one might figure they see things on screen they unusually see or think that it is annoying but they do not know how to hide them.

Summary
Now you know several things about viewing document in Writer such as how to switch between two views, how to switch between three paging modes, and to hide/show crucial things like rulers and table borders. Next time you will learn about previewing document before printing it out. Happy writing!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 
This is my list of GNU/Linux tools for academic, educational, and research purposes which all are free software. I tried to pick up choices as simple as possible here just to represent every basic category and further I hope you could see more alternatives if you want. I also listed several specific tools like GNU Octave and Parallel which are proven to be useful for certain researches. On the other hand, I deliberately did not list LaTeX tools here as I already chosen LibreOffice for that category. I made every proprietary software name italicized here so you can spot them on easier. Happy researching!

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LibreOffice
Tool for writing all text documents. On other OS, this is equal to MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with abilities to write math equations, draw diagrams and flowchart, plus make database, plus many more extensions. Zotero bibliography tool, for example, helps you creating citations and bibliographies easily on LibreOffice Writer. On Ubuntu and most GNU/Linux distros, this tool is preinstalled already.

https://www.libreoffice.org

Firefox
Tool for surfing the internet. It is also preinstalled on Ubuntu and most distros. The important thing is that it is used by many people including researchers and it has tremendous amount of extensions available including for research purposes. Zotero, for example,  works by "Save to Zotero" button on Firefox.

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox

Zotero
Tool for managing research references, bibliography, and citations. This tool integrates well to Firefox browser and LibreOffice word processor so you can make standard paper or thesis with nice citations. This is equal to Mendeley. Zotero is not preinstalled but is available as stand alone program plus Firefox and LibreOffice addons (old versions were simply an addon to Firefox).

https://zotero.org

StarDict
Dictionary for almost all languages. You can install the software and later add up dictionary files as you wish from repositories[1][2][3][4]. StarDict is not preinstalled but available on Ubuntu and most distros to be installed manually. If your research involves foreign languages, you will find this tool very helpful.

http://stardict.sourceforge.net

Inkscape
Tool for drawing and making illustrations. This is equal to CorelDRAW. Inkscape is not preinstalled but available on Ubuntu and most distros to be installed manually.

https://www.inkscape.org

GIMP and G'MIC
GIMP is tool for photo retouching. This is equal to Photoshop. G'MIC is tool for image processing, often paired with GIMP, which can help your research if it involves images. With GIMP you can easily adjust things such as brightness, color, contrast, etc. from images you are researching for further processing e.g. doing optical character recorgition (OCR) with Tesseract. For research example in this field, read David Revoy's interview. GIMP and G'MIC are not preinstalled on Ubuntu and most distros but can be easily installed.

https://www.gimp.org
https://gmic.eu

Fcitx and Mozc
Tool for writing text not in Latin alphabet script i.e. Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, etc. Fcitx and Mozc are preinstalled on Ubuntu, but not in most distros, however they are available to install manually.

https://fcitx-im.org
https://github.com/google/mozc

PDFSAM
Tool for splitting and joining PDF document. You can use this tool to join several documents with chapter order you choose. You can use it too if you wish to separate a document into parts with range you choose. You can find this tool helpful also for making digital journal which consists of PDF parts. PDFSAM is not preinstalled but available to be installed manually.

https://pdfsam.org/pdfsam-basic

Simple Scan
Tool for scanning physical paper documents into digital files. It is preinstalled on Ubuntu and most distros. It is a part of GNOME desktop environment.

https://launchpad.net/simple-scan

Tesseract
Tool for optical character recognition (OCR). This tool can help you to automatically write down text (either hand-written or printed) from photo without typing manually. Tesseract is the tool used by Google Inc. to detect text in images, videos, mobile devices, and Gmail spam detection. Read more about Tesseract use at Dedoimedo and LinuxJournal and Splitbrain.

https://opensource.google/projects/tesseract

Cheese
Tool for webcam. It is also preinstalled on Ubuntu and many other distros. You can use this if you research about image processing or pattern recognition for example. It is also part of GNOME.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Cheese

Audacity
Tool for editing digital audio and recording it also. It is not preinstalled on Ubuntu and most distros so you need to install it manually. You can use this if your research involves voices or sound.

https://www.audacityteam.org

digiKam
Tool for photo management especially to import them easily from any camera. This tool is not preinstalled on Ubuntu and most distros but you can install it manually.

https://digikam.org 

Orca and Magnifier
Accessibility tools for vision or hearing impaired people. Orca helps speak-out-loud text on screen, while Magnifier helps zoom out things on screen. With these tools you can help yourself if you have difficulties, and help other researchers if they have ones. Fortunately, both are already preinstalled on Ubuntu and many other GNOME-based distros.

Orca, text to speech
Magnifier, zoom in and zoom out

Specific Tools
In order to keep this article simple, I separated field-specific tools from the main part. I also tried to make this particular list as simple as possible so later you could extend yourself to find more alternatives if you wish because I mention the website links. I believe you could learn so much just by reading each website of tools here.

• GNU Octave: equal to MATLAB, a mathematical simulator. But if you need Simulink alternative, use Scilab.
• GNU PSPP: equal to IBM SPSS, a statistical tool.
• GNU R: equal to IBM S language, for statistical programming.
• GNU Health: a medical and hospital information system tool.
• FreeGLUT: library to help you create (implement) OpenGL-based graphical programs e.g. video game or computer graphic projects.
• QGIS: equal to ArcGIS, a geographical information system.
• gEDA and KiCAD: equal to Multisim and EAGLE, a set of electronics design and simulation tools. See excellent example in real-life by Purism Librem project.
• GNU Parallel: a parallel processing tool. See amazing example in huge data processing (25TB) here.
• Mesa 3D: the free software OpenGL implementation on GNU/Linux.
• GNS3: equal to Cisco Packet Tracer, a computer network simulation tool.
• Wireshark: wiretapper tool to analyze how computer network works.

References

• https://linuxrig.com/tag/linux-academics
• https://bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1756-0500-4-434
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091616
• https://opensource.com/article/20/1/teach-physics-open-source
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266883914_Open_source_software_in_teaching_physics_A_case_study_on_vector_algebra_and_visual_representations
• GNU Parallel https://www.biostars.org/p/63816
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OCR
• https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

(Writer document with 3 level headings applied and Navigator shows them on right-side panel)
Headings are automatic text styles used as titles. Headings are important parts of a document. Every heading is remembered by Writer and can be used to navigate, jump here and there, within long document quickly. You can use headings for titles and sub-sections; and on the other hand thanks to them you can also create table of contents like explained previously. PDF document you created if you used headings will show automatic table of contents as navigation items. We need headings when writing books and following a certain academic paper standard such as APA Style. LibreOffice Writer provides nice headings including ability to suit them to your needs. This tutorial explains the use and creation of headings by examples and pictures. Happy writing!

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1. Headings and Heading Levels
What are they used for?

• To ease navigation, as a heading is a jump point in a long document.
• To ease writing, as same styles do not need to repeatedly re-created.
• To ease reading, as one can make as tidy or as beautiful as possible document look.
• To follow standard, as academic papers like the one with APA Style are standardized.

What are levels of headings? Different levels show different importance of text sections. Some text sections may be main point, some others are subpoint. Like that.


2. With and Without Headings
Here is a 3 pages document with 3 levels of heading. See below how they look like on Navigator. See also below how it looks like as PDF document viewed on PDF reader. With headings, you mark points in your document which can be used as navigation.


Here is that document after exported as PDF and displayed on PDF reader. See the left panel (often called "Outline" or "Index"). That is generated automatically thanks to headings. Web browsers nowadays can display PDF too and so do they display the Outline panel.



On the contrary, without headings we can still write document but it could not easily be navigated when become long and exported document will not show outline. A long document without headings requires you to scroll over and over again to go to certain point. Pictures below showing both PDF reader and web browser display only page preview and not Outline.


3. Navigation
Headings form "jump points" automatically on Navigator panel. Double-clicking a point will jump your view to section right under that heading. You do not have to scroll up/down over and over to go to a certain section. If your document is long enough, let's say 100 pages, they are helpful to navigate quickly.


4. Apply Headings

• Select a title text.
• Click drop-down box of Default Style.
• Several headings choices displayed.
• Select Heading 1.
• Or, select Heading 2.
• Or, select Heading 3.
• Now selected text formatted as heading chosen. 
• Repeat steps above for another texts.

5. Normalize A Heading

• Select a formatted heading.
• Click headings drop down > select Default Style.
• Selected text normalized.

6. Custom Heading
You can create your own headings with a certain set of rules such as APA Styles or other standards. For example, you can name the heading, set specific font, indentation and spacing, and horizontal line and color. Instructions below gives a generic example in making a custom heading --but not limited to these, you can add up more stuffs as well--.

1. Select a preset heading.
2. Right-click > Modify.
3. On Organizer Tab (picture A), rename it.
4. On Fonts tab (picture B), set the font choices.
5. On Indentation tab (picture C), set first line indent and also before/after text spacing.
6. On Border tab (picture D), set bottom line only and give it a certain color e.g. Turqoise.
7. OK.
8. A new heading created.
9. Repeat steps above to create another headings. 

Important things here are two points, firstly, you can copy characteristics (font, indent, etc.) of an existing heading you like by changing Inherent from field so that you just need to adjust less things; and secondly, you determine influence of your heading to the next section of text under it by selecting a certain Paragraph Style among Styles available in Next style field. For most cases, you can just determine Default Style here. I plan to write more about Paragraph Style after this article.


Picture 5.1((A) Organizer tab | (B) Font tab | (C) Indent & Spacing tab | (D) Borders tab)
Summary
Now you can make your document better with headings. You can also create your own headings. Next time we will learn more about Paragraph Styles. Happy writing!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Also in 2019, I shipped another GNU/Linux multiboot to Kalimantan Island, Indonesia. It was KNOPPIX --the first distro known to bring LiveCD technology--. And once again it was not supported by GLIM Maker. But fortunately, I managed to make it works by custom scripts. You can use scripts below to make KNOPPIX multiboot USB. Happy hacking!

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Get KNOPPIX OS
Download it from knopper.net. I was using version 7.2 CD at that time. It was a very lightweight KNOPPIX with beautiful desktop animations.


grub.cfg

#KNOPPIX
for isofile in ${isopath}/knoppix/KNOPPIX_*.iso; do
if [ -e "$isofile" ]; then
menuentry "KNOPPIX >" --class knoppix {
configfile "${prefix}/inc-knoppix.cfg"
}
break
fi
done
This code represents first page on the bootloader. This code calls next script inc-knoppix.cfg when we select (pressed Enter) on KNOPPIX entry. That entry will appear only if this script found a KNOPPIXblablabla.iso file within /knoppix/ directory. Please take note that the file name are all capital letters.

inc-knoppix.cfg
# KNOPPIX GNU/Linux
for isofile in $isopath/knoppix/KNOPPIX*.iso; do
if [ ! -e "$isofile" ]; then break; fi
regexp \
--set 1:isoname \
--set 2:version \
--set 3:arch \
--set 4:variant \
"^${isopath}/knoppix/(KNOPPIX([^-]+)-([^-]+)-([^-]+)\.iso)\$" "${isofile}"
menuentry "KNOPPIX ${version} ${arch} ${variant}" "${isofile}" "${isoname}" --class knoppix {
set isofile=$2
set isoname=$3
bootoptions="bootfrom=/mnt-iso/$isofile lang=en apm=power-off nomce libata.force=noncq hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1 loglevel=1"
echo "Using ${isofile}..."
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/boot/isolinux/linux $bootoptions
initrd (loop)/boot/isolinux/minirt.gz
}
doneThis code boots up the real things which are two, the kernel file, and the initrd file, in the last lines. Kernel is called by linux command  and initrd by initrd. The bootoptions are the thing that distinguishes KNOPPIX and other distros, as I found (please give corrections if you have) it will not work except with that bootfrom code. Once again, yes, KNOPPIX works with loopback just as Debian as it was derived from Debian.

Icon
Download this KNOPPIX icon and save it as knoppix.png. This icon is what called by the code --class knoppix in the first and second scripts above.



Code Screenshot

Compare your codes with screenshot below to make sure we put codes in right places.


Bootloader 
Once booted up, you will see new entry with the name KNOPPIX on your bootloader.


Result
Successful configuration can make KNOPPIX LiveCD runs from multiboot USB. From this point you can run the very lightweight but pretty desktop of KNOPPIX or install the system to your computer. Congrats!


This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Continuing previous deepin and Vector, my customer from Sulawesi Island also ordered Parrot Security OS GNU/Linux in multiboot USB. GLIM Maker does not support Parrot as well. So I did modifications and managed to make it multibooted. You can use my scripts below to make it too. Happy hacking!

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Download Parrot OS
Get it from https://parrotlinux.org. At that moment, I used version 4.7.

grub.cfg
for isofile in ${isopath}/parrot/Parrot-*.iso; do
if [ -e "$isofile" ]; then
menuentry "Parrot >" --class parrot {
configfile "${prefix}/inc-parrot.cfg"
}
break
fi
done
This code represents the first page on the bootloader. This particular code section checks whether there is a Parrotblablabla.iso file in /parrot/ directory. If any, then it displays an entry "Parrot >" on bootloader, and if entered it calls out next script inc-parrot.cfg. Please note that Parrot filename is with capital P in the beginning.

inc-parrot.cfg

# Parrot GNU/Linux
for isofile in $isopath/parrot/Parrot-*.iso; do
if [ ! -e "$isofile" ]; then break; fi
regexp \
--set 1:isoname \
--set 2:version \
--set 3:arch \
--set 4:variant \
"^${isopath}/parrot/(Parrot-([^-]+)-([^-]+)-([^-]+)\.iso)\$" "${isofile}"
menuentry "Parrot ${version} ${arch} ${variant}" "${isofile}" "${isoname}" --class parrot {
set isofile=$2
set isoname=$3
echo "Using ${isoname}..."
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz-* boot=live findiso=${isofile} components
initrd (loop)/live/initrd.img-*
}
done
This code runs the ISO image file. It boots up the kernel file and the initrd file from within the ISO after activating the ISO in a loopback.

Icon
Download icon below and save it as parrot.png in the directory /boot/grub/themes/invader/icons/.




Code Screenshot
See my screenshot below to make sure you put codes in right places.



Bootloader
Working multiboot displays Parrot entry among other entries on bootloader.


Result
Successful multiboot will be able to boot up LiveCD of Parrot. Congrats!

 
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

In December 2019, at the same time I shipped another multiboot GNU/Linux to different customer in Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. For this, my customer ordered deepin 15, but GLIM Maker cannot make it multiboot. To my experience, deepin ISO images work best if they made singleboot in a flash drive (similar to BlankOn's). So I edited the configuration code mimicking a singleboot's config and it worked. You can use my scripts below to make your own multiboot with depin as one among its OSes. Happy hacking!

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Download deepin OS
Get it from https://deepin.org. I used version 15.11 for this.

grub.cfg

for isofile in ${isopath}/deepin/deepin-*.iso; do
if [ -e "$isofile" ]; then
menuentry "Deepin >" --class deepin {
configfile "${prefix}/inc-deepin.cfg"
}
break
fi
done
This is the Deepin entry at first page on bootloader when you boot up the USB Flash Drive. This code works by reading if any deepinblablabla.iso file existed, if any, display the Deepin > entry with deepin.png icon, and when this entry selected call next script inc-deepin.cfg.

inc-deepin.cfg
# Deepin GNU/Linux
for isofile in $isopath/deepin/deepin-*.iso; do
if [ ! -e "$isofile" ]; then break; fi
regexp \
--set 1:isoname \
--set 2:version \
--set 3:arch \
--set 4:variant \
"^${isopath}/deepin/(deepin-([^-]+)-([^-]+)-([^-]+)\.iso)\$" "${isofile}"
menuentry "Deepin ${version} ${arch} ${variant}" "${isofile}" "${isoname}" --class deepin {
set isofile=$2
set isoname=$3
echo "Using ${isoname}..."
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/live/vmlinuz boot=live findiso=${isofile} components
initrd (loop)/live/initrd.lz
}
doneThis is the code called by the previous code. This code is responsible for loading the kernel and the initrd. For deepin, particularly the version 15.11, kernel file path is in /live/vmlinuz and initrd path is /live/initrd.lz. The important thing is the boot options, as that is the secret.

Icon
Download this icon and save it as deepin.png in /boot/grub/themes/invader/icons/.



Code Screenshot
See picture below to make sure where to put the codes.



Bootloader
When booting, now your USB will display Deepin as an entry and you can run it.


Result
Successful multiboot can run deepin 15 in LiveCD mode like below. Congrats!


This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

In December 2019 I managed to ship multiboot GNU/Linux to Sulawesi Island, Indonesia. One among operating systems in that USB flash drive is Vector. My customer ordered it so I cannot make it works multiboot with GLIM Maker as of course it is not supported (although the forum is still having new posts in 2020). The secret is, Vector is an old distribution based on Slackware with latest release dated back to 2015 and now it does not receive updates anymore. Fortunately, I finally can make custom GRUB configuration script so it works. You can learn my scripts however to make similar distros working or if someday Vector being actively developed again. Happy hacking!

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Get Vector OS
Download it from http://vectorlinux.com. For this case I use latest Vector version 7.0 which is still loadable in a CD with 700MB capacity.

grub.cfg
for isofile in ${isopath}/vector/VECTOR*.iso; do
if [ -e "$isofile" ]; then
menuentry "Vector >" --class vector {
configfile "${prefix}/inc-vector.cfg"
}
break
fi
doneThis code represents the first page of GRUB bootloader of the USB. This code reads whether there is a VECTORblablabla.iso filename available under /vector/ folder. If exists, then display an entry "Vector > " with icon named "vector". If user presses Enter key, then read inc-vector.cfg script. This is the 2nd entry among other entries displayed in final result photo below.

inc-vector.cfg
# VECTOR GNU/LINUX
for isofile in $isopath/vector/VECTOR*.iso; do
if [ ! -e "$isofile" ]; then break; fi
regexp \
--set 1:isoname \
--set 2:version \
--set 3:arch \
--set 4:variant \
"^${isopath}/vector/(VECTOR([^-]+)-([^-]+)-([^-]+)\.iso)\$" "${isofile}"
menuentry "Vector Live ${version} ${arch} ${variant}" "${isofile}" "${isoname}" --class vector {
set isofile=$2
set isoname=$3
bootoptions="livemedia=/dev/disk/by-uuid/$rootuuid:$isofile load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 rw printk.time=0 kbd=us tz=localtime locale=us_EN.utf8"
loopback loop $isofile
linux (loop)/isolinux/kernel/sata $bootoptions
initrd (loop)/isolinux/init.lz
}
done
This script mainly sets up a long and unique boot options and then call the kernel and the inited after activating ISO loopback. Yes, this script boots up Vector iso image with loopback technology provided by GRUB.

Icon & Directory Structure
Download this Vector official logo as vector.png and store it under /grub/themes/invader/icon/. Final directory structure displaying icon, grub.cfg, and inc-vector.cfg files should look like picture below.


 



Code Screenshot
To make sure your code placed in right places, see my screenshot below. The important thing is do not forget to make caller code in grub.cfg. Without it, your inc-vetor.cfg will not work.

 


Bootloader
Boot up your USB Flash Drive and now you should see a new entry named Vector on bootloader.

 
Result
Successful multiboot making will run blue Vector Setup like this while Vector selected at booting time. From this, you can install Vector GNU/Linux to your computer. Do not worry seeing such appearance, as I said, Vector is indeed very similar to Slackware. Congrats!



This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

I have a 'GNU/Linux Computers' article in 2019. And in late 2019 until early 2020, I have not found any website summarizing these four awesome laptop brands in one place: Purism Librem, KDE Slimbook, Pine64 Pinebook, and Kubuntu Focus. If you care about free software community and following their social networks like Reddit or Mastodon, you will find these names being discussed a lot lately. So I write this summary that informs you stuffs interesting from them. Why? Because computer that is manufactured for GNU/Linux is important for us GNU/Linux users and community. Enjoy this article!
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About This Article

I care about our community. I feel happy if people using GNU/Linux happily as their computers (hardware) support it. On the contrary, of course I don't feel happy if I or people find their computers do not work with it. That makes people downgrade to proprietary operating system which we all know are often malware. So for me vendors that make effort to make GNU/Linux computers make great help and benefit for us all. Help because it remove barriers to use GNU/Linux. Benefit because it empowers community. And, they make GNU/Linux mainstream from the perspective of users.

A user who purchased a GNU/Linux laptop can run it normally without wifi problem, nor VGA problem, nor any usual hardware issues as the vendor made it working before they sell it out. It is not things we can get easily and clearly from popular vendors like ASUS, Acer, Toshiba, and others. That is what I want to be a reality. Remember Windows, which created its own community thanks to computer vendors who shipped it preinstalled so people do not have barriers to use it; in same sense I want such things to happen with GNU/Linux. That is why I really like Purism, Slimbook, Pine64, and Tuxedo making great effort to make it reality. And now in 2020 I see the real things started to rise. What do you think?

Note: I do not have any nor already purchased any of these computers (although of course I want to buy one when I have enough money) and I am not endorsed by any of these vendors.

1. Purism Librem
This is personally my favorite. Do you know Purism? It is a United States based company that produce PureOS, a purely free operating system certified by the FSF, that sells Librem laptops, a series of computers that are 100% compatible to GNU/Linux operating system. Things I love the most from Purism is their branding, they are popular in social medias (even they replied to my tweet!) and tried a lot to reach people as close as possible, these are things that made other OSes popular. In technical side, I admire they are doing others didn't, they are publishing their hardware designs to enable free software community to produce free (as in freedom) hardware. What I really respect is that the hardware designs are created with free software in free document formats too (namely gEDA, KiCAD). They are making GNU/Linux laptops mainstream in both user and manufacturer ways.


Librem Computers from Purism(screenshot taken from https://puri.sm)
2. KDE Slimbook
I am a KDE user and I teach it on my online course. Everyone knows me on GNU/Linux Communities in Indonesia knows I use KDE. So when KDE Slimbook appeared for the first time I was really happy. I wish someday I can get that awesome laptop.

KDE Slimbook with other Slimbook computers(screenshot taken from https://slimbook.es)
3. Pine64 Pinebook
Pinebook is a low-priced under $100 GNU/Linux laptop. Oh, and do you remember Canonical's Ubuntu Touch which was discontinued? They now continuing it with PinePhone, along with other mobile GNU/Linux operating systems, such as Plasma Mobile and Postmarketos. These are why our community now especially at social medias talking about Pine64 dearly.



Pinebook Laptops(screenshot taken from https://pine64.org)

4. Kubuntu Focus
As I said I love KDE, when lately Kubuntu Focus announced for first time, it increased my joy as now there are two KDE laptops which are amazing. The vendor between Focus is Tuxedo, same vendor behind Manjaro Laptops. I reviewed Tuxedo's in 2019. This one is a high-end brand for pro-users. The website even tells several workflows for photography, image editing, gaming, and more. For the branding, I admire the K name in its URL, KFocus.org, as us KDE users know KDE is popular with K naming as we found in apps Konqueror, KDevelop, KTorrent, Kalzium, and so on.

Kubuntu Focus laptop(screenshot taken from https://kfocus.org)
My Comments 
Of course there are more vendors like System76, ThinkPenguin, Vikings, Minifree, Technoethical, Manjaro Laptops, Ubuntu Laptops, and more and I wish them all success, but here I deliberately picked up names I want to emphasize. I just wish that magazines and websites review these hardware a lot. I wish people to see this and tell their friends that GNU/Linux are already available right now and beyond. I want people to know this and support these vendors along with their community in any way they can.

The Future?
I stated in several older articles that I want to see official elementary OS laptop. Here, I wish in the future we can see printers, scanners, video cards, wifi cards, manufactured and branded solely for GNU/Linux as libre hardware.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Conecto is a fork of KDE Connect for elementary OS. It is rewritten in Vala programming language and now still in an early development phase. This article explains step by step installation of it from source code with pictures to make iteasier for everyone. This article tries to make Conecto's developer-friendly compilation guide user-friendly. If you want how to in using Conecto, read my tutorial. Enjoy synchronization!

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Summary
At the moment, this awesome software is still not available in the elementary AppCenter (in the repository). So, we need to install it manually from its source code. First you will install packages needed to built the software, second you will download the source code, third you will compile and install it, and fourth you run it. As a personal note, I wish soon this app will be available as an official app.

Install Requirements

• Run Terminal.
• Copy and paste command line below.
• If a window asks you for permission, select OK.
• Terminal will say it needs around 100MB for 300 packages to download.
• Terminal will ask you "y/n" then answer with y and press Enter.
• Let it go for several minutes.
• Once finished, go to next step.

Command:
$ sudo apt-get install elementary-sdk libunity-dev libnotify-dev libghc-gnutls-dev libsqlite3-dev libedataserver1.2-dev libebook1.2-dev
If you want to look at full process from my system as an example, here is a full text copy of apt-get output.


Download Source Code

• Stay tune on Terminal.
• Run command line below.
• Wait until it finished downloading.
• Successful process will create a new folder 'conecto' in your Home folder and Terminal goes into that.
• Go to next step.

Command line:
$ git clone https://github.com/hannesschulze/conecto.git && cd conecto


Compile and Install

• Stay tune on Terminal.
• Run 4 command lines below one line by one line.
• Wait for a while as it compiles the source code into binary code and after than installs the binary code into your elementary OS.
• Go to next step.

Command lines:
$ meson build --prefix=/usr 
$ cd build 

$ ninja 
$ sudo ninja install




Run

• To run the Conecto program, run command line below.
• You will see messages similar to codes while it is running. That's normal.
• To stop the program, see Terminal window again, and press Ctrl+C.

Command line:
$ com.github.hannesschulze.conecto

PairingSee the user guide here. Enjoy!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Once you picked up elementary as your computer operating system, you will work with its desktop, file manager, and in modern days, need to synchronize it to your Android phone to transfer files and so on. There is an awesome software called Conecto, a modified KDE Connect, that can help you sync between both devices. This article explains how to pair and transfer files, however the installation guide is published in a separate article. not installing the software itself. This will make your life easier with GNU/Linux. Enjoy!

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Requirements

• KDE Connect installed on Android phone. Get it on F-Droid.
• Conecto installed on elementary.
• USB cable.

1. Connect Computer and Phone

• Plug USB cable in between computer and phone.
• Unable USB Tethering from your Android.
• Both devices are now connected in a network.

2. Run Conecto & KDEConnect

• On elementary computer, run Conecto.
• On Android phone, run KDEConnect.

Picture 2.1(My sync'ed phone Xiaomi Redmi displayed on desktop)
3. Pair

• On elementary, on Conecto window, now you should see a new device recognized.
• Click toggle button to send pairing request to phone.
• On phone, KDE Connect displays a pairing request. 
• Tap ACCEPT.
• KDE Connect displays controls.
• Both devices paired.  

Picture 3.1(Left: KDE Connect displays connected computer as elementary@elementary | Middle: pairing request displayed with ACCEPT button | Right: successfully paired device displays control buttons Send Files)
4. Test Ping

• On elementary, click PING button. 
• Phone rings.
• On Android, tap triple dots > Ping.
• Computer says "Ping!".
• This makes you sure both devices are synchronized. You are ready to transfer files.

Picture 4.1(A lively Ping! notification on desktop)

5. Transfer from elementary Computer

• On elementary, open file manager.
• Pick up a file you want to send to phone.
• Right-click that file > Send to Phone.
• Phone rings as a file received. 
• File stored in Android phone.

Picture 5.1(Clear and easy, one click to share a file from computer to phone)
6. Transfer from Android Phone

• On Android, open KDEConnect.
• Tap Send Files.
• File manager displayed.
• Select a file you want to send to computer.
• Tap OPEN.
• Computer does not say anything.
• On elementary, open file manager at ~/Downloads/Conecto/ folder.
• File sent from phone stored there.

Limitations
This early version of Conecto possesses a few limitations:

• I find that this version of Conecto failed to work with old version of Android's KDE Connect particularly version 1.6.6 but works with latest 1.13.7 (as per February 2020).
• Sending files from Android to elementary works. But sending from elementary from several folders does not work, but strangely works if the files are from other disk partitions.
• No phone-as-a-mouse input, no remote keyboard. 
• No system tray.
• The application icon is missing.
• I could not make wifi tethering works. This is the reason this article uses USB Tethering instead.

This application is amazing and I say big thanks to the developers!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

I remember a quotation from GNU/Linux FAQ document published by Free Software Foundation "In that alternative world, there would be nothing today like the GNU/Linux system, and probably no free operating system at all" that is very inspiring for me. Because of this statement, I can easily find similar alternative movements around computing and software, especially for those related to user privacy. You will find here resources such as PRISM Break, PrivacyToolsIO, FSF Directory, Libreho.st, Fediverse.Party, and many more with my comments, plus additional links at the end. Here I want to collect the rest of resources I know up to today (Monday 9 February 2020) in one article so I can easily share with you and anybody on the internet. I wish this short article to be useful for everybody in the world. Enjoy!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates directly.

About This Article

Do you care about free software, internet decentralization, and privacy? Do you want to escape from and seeking alternatives to Google, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter, Youtube and Instagram, WhatsApp and Skype, and many more, either in software side or in service side? Do you want to know about internet federation? Do you know about Windows 10 serious problems with privacy and security (that cannot be fixed)? If so, you can start by reading resources such as websites mentioned below with short description from me. As an important reminder, when I mention free software here it is not meant gratis software but libre software which official definition you can read from the FSF.

/1/ PRISM Break
https://prism-break.org

This community collaborated site appeared as a reaction to 2013's mass-surveillance privacy case to break through the so-called PRISM for everybody. This site is actually a table comparing proprietary services against free software privacy-oriented services. The table is divided to several sections for different operating systems. From PRISM Break we know SearX search engine as alternative to Google, Hubzilla as alternative to Facebook, KeePassX as password manager, and many many more. Up to today, PRISM Break is still my favorite website number one in privacy.

/2/ PrivacyToolsIO 
https://www.privacytools.io

This community collaborated site is similar to PRISM Break but with more colorful display and wider free software recommendations. You will find useful recommendations of secure & private operating systems, web browsers, browser add-ons, software utilities, search engines, federated social networks, VPN and email services, encryption systems, meaningful explanations & quotes, tips and tricks, warnings against several insecure OSes / applications / services, and finally further privacy resources. We will also see excellent explanation about The 14 Eyes there.

/3/ MyShadow
https://myshadow.org

This site is also similar to PRISM Break and PrivacyToolsIO, but more dedicated to make us aware about our own online data being tracked by companies. It explains much more about Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (GAFAM) surveillance in comical way hence very easy to understand and then teaching us how to control and secure our own data in same amusing ways. More interestingly, it provides an animated analysis of GAFAM's & alike's terms of services so that we know they are dangerous for our privacy. Ultimately, it explains short but strong guidances about Security & Privacy. As 2019 ended, I noticed that this awesome site was not going updated anymore and I feel really saddened about that. Could anybody with capacity please continue this site?

/4/ Degooglify Internet
https://degooglisons-internet.org

This is site by Framasoft, a free software enthusiast company from France, that inspired the particular de-google-ization movement we can find everywhere. Not only that, Framasoft is a leader behind world decentralization of internet services, as it develops PeerTube, the federated YouTube, released as free software and also a part of Degooglify Internet.

/5/ That One Privacy Site
https://thatoneprivacysite.net

This is a site by That One Privacy Guy that analyzes Emails and VPNs by comparing with tables which are easy to understand but still detailed and as objective as possible. For us, after reading the tables we will have good reasons to choose an alternative services we want. For email, we will find here providers such as ProtonMail, Tutanota, Disroot, among dozens others. For VPN, we will find here IVPN, TorVPN, Mullvad, among dozens others. We can sort out the table descending/ascending by every columns, and even more columns available if we choose detailed tables instead. We can even download the tables in LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet and CSV file formats. This site also provides a valuable long essays on choosing best VPN and email providers. And lastly we will get many valuable information in its FAQ section.


/4/ FSF Software Directory
https://directory.fsf.org

From the organization I quoted at the initial paragraph, this is a curated list of tens of thousands free software around the world and still counting. Compared to alternative resources I mentioned here, this is the biggest one. We can find comparison tables similar to PRISM Break here, by two pages Collection:PRISM page and Collection:Privacy_pack; alternative search engines by Collection:Search_engine; alternative online services and federated social networks list like PrivacyToolsIO at Collection:SaaSS; alternative software list for GNU/Linux and Windows and macOS users; but all exclusively free software. And ultimately unlike any other movements, just like initial paragraph quoted, a High-Priority Free Software Projects.

/5/ Get GNU/Linux!
https://getgnulinux.org

This is an excellent introduction to GNU/Linux for non-technical persons. It is the real simple beginner's guide to switch to an alternative that every other movement should follow. It is short but informative, ultimately friendly, a thing missing in many sites. It cites the original sources such as Free Software Definition and uses GNU/Linux naming style. It answers several trivial but important questions such as why it is secure, how about antivirus, and why not Microsoft Windows, which distro to choose, further steps in GNU/Linux computing, how to find friends after migrating, etc. It also provides a FAQ and a forum. For me, the most admirable thing about this site is the How To Misunderstand Free Software, that is a reversed understanding explanation to Free Software Definition, which cannot be found from any other site.

/6/ Compute Freely
https://computefreely.org

This is a similar site to Get GNU/Linux! but even more simpler but emphasizes the distro choices. The maker of this site is an ethical designer so of course the site will have awesome design stuffs such as easy to navigate, consistent layout, shuffle distros, neat displaying of screenshots + description, and with a search box. From this site you will find popular GNU/Linux distros such as Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, along with Trisquel, PureOS, GuixSD, categorized from beginner to advanced.

/6/ Dont Track Us
https://donttrack.us

This is a site by DuckDuckGo Search Engine that explains the danger of Google online trackings in a very short and easy way to understand suitable even for non-techie persons.

/7/ Spread Privacy
https://spreadprivacy.com

This is also a site by DuckDuckGo but unlike DTU, this one focused on privacy tips for end users, however of course it's promoting the search engine. Just like its sister site, this one is also excellently easy to read, by useful articles such as why we should leave Google (and this one is good too), living without Google, choosing VPN service, what HTTPS is, incognito is not really private, and more. More or less, this site is similar to Choose To Encrypt website by Search Encrypt search engine.

/8/ Choose To Encrypt 
https://choosetoencrypt.com

This is informational site by Search Encrypt alternative search engine. It publishes important-to-privacy easy-to-understand articles like how search engines track us, what is a proxy, what is a firewall, what is private search engine, why people avoid Google and Facebook, and so on.

/9/ Switching.Software
https://switching.software
https://swiso.org

This is a purely informative list of alternative software and online services that are ethical, easy to use and respecting your privacy. We will find here things like "Alternative to Gmail" or "Alternative to WhatsApp" and so on. We will find also really simple and nice explanations in every section, take example, when SwiSo explains Google alternatives, Mastodon/Friendica, LibreOffice, and All in One Alternatives. I admire its simplicity from the URL, site appearance, and it's strong dedication to non-technical user as stated in one page. Despite that, cleverly this site also provides special page for technically advanced people.

Switching.Social
https://switching.social (inactive)
https://web.archive.org/...switching.social (archived February 2019)

This is a list of alternative social networks which are ethical but unfortunately this is is no longer available. The about page explains everything as I quoted here "switching.social is a grassroots website that is trying to let people know about more ethical alternatives to websites and apps that are threatening people’s privacy [...]". This is the one inspiring Switching.Software to exist (fortunately!) as the contents and the concepts are all transferred there. I mention this here as a tribute to them and I want people to know this amazing site once existed.

/10/ Libreho.st
https://libreho.st

A join group among alternative service hostings. Mainly, they are committed to free software and decentralized internet, and they provide alterntives to Gmail, Pastebin, GitHub, Facebook/Twitter, and so on we can sign up to. Some of their services are gratis and some others are paid. Here we will find Disroot^, Linux.Pizza, Synopta^, NixNet^, Activix^, Webarchitecs, Weho.st, and more. Name I mention with ^ sign provide gratis email accounts with POP/IMAP features. They communicate in their own Discourse forum.

/11/ InfoSec Handbook
https://infosec-handbook.eu
https://pages.codeberg.org/infosechandbook

This is an informative site maintained by European security experts that explains internet security and privacy in very easy ways. We rarely see any security site that is as easy to read as this site. From this site we will find out a handy glossary of security and explanations to several among them shortly such as what is vulnerability and privacy. We find out also excellent explanations of GnuPG email encryption, End to End Encryption, even securing document with LibreOffice. Personally, I think their most valuable thing is their recommendation of security tools. InfoSec is active at alternative social media Mastodon.

/12/ Peers.Community
https://peers.community

This is a join group that supports free software and free culture. It also presents two software freedom companies that sell RYF certified hardware, Minifree and Vikings. They communicates with its own technologies, Freepo.st, a discussion board similar to Reddit. They have clear objectives here. This site features an important page called Why? which listed reasonings in exclusively using free software and also many resources to alternative world. From this unique community we know things like Libreboot (a free BIOS alternative), Dragora (a 100% free alternative operating system) Notabug (GitHub alternative), GNU Social (federated social network), Mumble (VoIP alternative to Skype), Replicant, F-Droid (alternative to Google Play Store for Android), Libre Game Wiki (alternative free games), and so on. We also recognize that this community recommends us to read PRISM Break.

/13/ Fediverse.Party
https://fediverse.party

This is our gate to alternative social network world. For us who want to leave GAFAM alike, this is what we are looking for. This alternative, which we call Federation or Fediverse, is a world of social networks that are interconnected. From this gate you will find out PeerTube (YouTube alternative), Mastodon and Pleroma (Twitter alternatives), PixelFed (Instagram alternative), diaspora* (Facebook alternative), among others, read the explanations with screenshots and how to create an account, and also see the population of every one of them.

/14/ The Federation
https://the-federation.info

This site is a public monitor to watch out fediverse growth worldwide. This site is referenced by Fediverse.Party as statistics source.


/15/ Good Alternative Providers
Framasoft.org: almost complete Google services replacement from alternative world which uses exclusively free software.

Disroot.org: similar to Framasoft, but they provide a gratis Gmail alternative which is built upon free software.

Linux.Pizza: service provider provided by one person and it's a part of Libreho.st mentioned above.

Pixie.Town: similar to Linux.Pizza, also a part of Libreho.st.

TuxFamily - oldest longstanding free software services provider (email, hosting, mailing list, code repository) exclusively for free software projects. They host 3000 more projects since 1999. For example, Get GNU/Linux! mentioned above is hosted here.

Neocities: an alternative to Geocities, and in turn, Blogspot, as a gratis blog service provider. Your website will have address yourname.neocities.org there. To me, the name is amusing and also intelligent, it reminds us to Neo Geo, arcade game platform of our past times.

Netlify: an alternative to GitHub Pages, a static-site service provider.

/16/ Self-Hosting
Self-hosting is when if you want to be your own Gmail or YouTube as you have infrastructure and are able to maintain it. The word self explains everything that you are not depend to somebody else's hosting. For that purpose, you will find extraordinary software project you can install and maintain yourself alone or with your friends such as:

Mail-in-a-box - build your own Gmail.

Nextcloud - build your own Google Drive.

Jitsi - build your own Skype VoIP system. You can create a gratis server instantly here.

Freedombox - imagine Google alternatives already installed in an OS and you can get that OS freely (and you can buy a computer preinstalled with it).

Interesting Projects
Tor, The Onion Router
https://www.torproject.org

Email Safe Defense
https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org

Internet Archive
(alias: Internet Wayback Machine)
https://archive.org

Purism Librem
https://puri.sm
https://pureos.net 

Respects Your Fredom
https://ryf.fsf.org

F-Droid
https://f-droid.org

Matrix.org
https://matrix.org

Jabber
https://www.jabber.org/faq.html

Sourcehut and Codeberg
https://sourcehut.org/community
https://codeberg.org

LibreJS
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs

Historical Links
For everybody researching about privacy, you will eventually find out Edward Snowden anyway, as he recognized as the person that revealed the 2013 case so people know about mass surveillance and at the end made worldwide departure movements from GAFAM and alike. Do you know which document was revealed? It was revealed by two popular sites, The Guardian and The Washington Post, the two historical articles.

Important Links
Why privacy is more than crypto - to me, this is my ultimate starting point to privacy ethical world, as it explains new concepts such as decentralization, federation, metadata, xmpp, end-to-end-encryption, cryptography very well and easy to understand, and honestly this is the one drove me to Telegram, Signal, Kontalk, and F-Droid, and eventually to Mastodon an others. This article is extraordinarily awesome. A horrible thing not easy to forget to me is the statement "We kill people based on metadata" by NSA you can find quoted here --just to warn us how important privacy is. If you are starting to learn about privacy and security, I suggest you to read this first.

https://github.com/KevinColemanInc/awesome-privacy

https://github.com/yilmaztolga/awesome-data-privacy

https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome Awesome Awesomes.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 

After knowing elementary OS, downloading and installing it, now we learn to use its File Manager that is called Files. With file manager we access files, folders, documents, disk partitions, external drives, by browsing, creating, copying/moving, renaming, and deleting files. By this guide you learn how to do those things with Files. More that that, there are also Open In Terminal and Color Folders which are important to learn. I wish this guide will be useful for everybody getting started with elementary OS. Enjoy!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates directly.Switch from Windows 7 to elementary OS: Review | Download | Install | Post-Install | User Interface | Office Suite | Tweaks | Customization

File Manager Overview
Files is the name of this file manager. Simple looking, minimal number of buttons, grey-white colored. Features are:

1. Simple but modern user interface
2. Headerbar, no menubar, that is titlebar mixed in one with toolbar
3. No minimize, it remembers last place when user closes it
4. Thumbnails, list, and compact view modes
5. Zoom with keyboard 
6. Basic navigation, address bar, single-click to open, go back/forward
7. Basic manipulation, including copy/paste, delete, make new folder
8. Color folders
9. Multitabbing
10. Left panel displays Home, Partitions, and Network groups of locations
11. Capacity indicator in every active Partition
12. Search (Ctrl+F) is limited to address bar drop-down menu, not done in main area
13. Recycle bin

Picture i(Files File Manager)
Despite the fact that Files created as a GNU/Linux program, it is different to other graphical file managers such as Dolphin and Nautilus, as there is really no menu within it. This causes no About dialog window in Files --the usual dialog we see version number, who created it, official website, language translations info, etc. However, to see version number of Files, we should run Terminal first and then perform a command line:$ files.elementary.io --version
And that results in output such as below:
** Message: 03:06:02.201: Application.vala:50: Report any issues/bugs you might find to https://github.com/elementary/files/issues

io.elementary.files 4.0

That output is two lines of messages. First line displays address to contact the developers and report problems as well. Second line is what we want, it is the actual name of the program, which is io.elementary.files, and the version, which is 4.0 in this example. Yours can be newer or older.Picture ii(Terminal displaying version number of file manager)
1. Running File Manager

• Open Applications Menu (Super+Space)
• Find Files with folder icon.
• Click it.
• File manager running. 

Picture 1.1(Files app on the start menu)
To put file manager in Plank (bottom dock), drag and drop Files icon from Applications Menu onto Plank.

Picture 1.2(Adding Files app to Plank)
2. View
This section discusses visual looks of the file manager. This includes explanation of headerbar, panel, and main area.

• Green: headerbar.
• Red: left panel. 
• Yellow: tab bar.
• Blue: main area. 

More about titlebar, please read Wikipedia. More about headerbar, please read elementary, GNOME and KDE.

Files file manager uses top element of its window that is called Headerbar. If you  are familiar with macOS, since Yosemite, you will find it very similar. Here's example of headerbars of three windows of Files.


Picture 2.2(Headerbars)
A headerbar is a modern style of titlebar, a 30 years old window decoration style that still works very well up to today, that mixed up titlebar with toolbar below it, with design intention to save vertical space. On elementary OS in general, and in Files in particular, headerbar consists of items from left to right:

• Close button
• Back button
• Forward button
• Thumbnails view button
• List view button
• Compact view button
• Empty space
• Address bar
• Empty space
• Maximize button

After headerbar, next thing is address bar. This address bar is once again similar to Finder's, macOS file manager's, as it features something called Breadcrumbs, that is displaying address with > signs as separator between directories that is clickable in every directory name so that it does not need 'Go Up' button anymore. 
Picture 2.3(Addressbars)
After address bar, next thing is tab bar. You are already familiar with this if you often work with web browser nowadays. This is the area crowded when you open multiple folders in one window. 
Picture 2.4(Multiple tabs opened with leftmost button '+' and rightmost button 'history')
After tab bar, next thing is left panel. It is same thing you found on Windows Explorer or macOS Finder, shortcuts to your favorite folders and ways to access disk partitions. As a modern file manager, Files also incorporates remote network connection features. 
Picture 2.5(Left panel divided in three sections Personal, Devices, and Network)

After left panet, last thing is main area. It is the largest space displayed on Files where you see your folders and files. Picture below depicts a Home directory of current user. This view means I am currently in Home folder that contains several folders from Desktop to Videos. Notice that there are folders (items to display) and also empty space (white space) between folders and beyond. You can do right-click on that empty space to manipulate the current folder, Home, for example to see the Properties.
 Picture 2.6(Main area)
This main area is the most special thing as it features three kinds of view that is Thumbnails, List, and Columns, you find the buttons at headerbar as depicted below. 

Picture 2.6(Comparison of 3 different view styles)
3. Accessing Files and Folders
Accessing is several things: display, select, open, copy-paste, cut-paste, rename, delete, and special.

Select:
Click the check mark on a file or a folder so that it displayed with grey background. To deselect, click the check mark once again so it lost its grey background.

Picture 3.1(Showing how to select a folder and doing multiple-select is just repeating it to other folders)
Open:
Click an item to open it. Folder content will be displayed, file will be opened in another application.

Copy-Paste:
Select a file > right-click > Copy > go to a folder > right-click empty area > Paste > file copied.

Cut-Paste:
Select a file > right-click > Cut > go to a folder > right-click empty area > Paste > file moved.

Move:
Drag and drop a file from a folder into another folder. This is actually the same as Cut-Paste.

Rename:
Right-click a file > Rename > file displays a text box > type new file name > press Enter > file renamed.

Display:
Files represented to us differently according to their types. The file manager automatically previews several types such as documents, PDFs, pictures and videos, but doesn't preview for folder and executable files.

Picture 3.2(Files displaying different types of file differently, sometimes with preview sometimes without)
Special:
Folders outside of user's Home folder are forbidden except for administrator user. You cannot create nor delete any file within a forbidden folder. This is a normal security system so don't worry. This is the reason you see Lock icon on every folder under / directory and other folders below it. To Unlock them all, you need a special Files window: run Files > Files icon displayed on Plank > right-click Files icon > New Window As Administrator > root access File Manager opened.

Picture 3.3(Once Files app running on Plank, you can find the option New Window as Administrator if you right-clicked it)
4. Accessing Disk & Partitions
Picture 4.1
(Devices section on left panel displaying
several partitions)Files displays your File System partition as a hard disk with a capacity bar on left panel under Devices section. Your File System is the disk partition containing elementary OS system folders including your Home directory. On Windows, this is similar to C:\ partition where system folders and Program Files stored.

Other than File System, Files displays disk partitions of Hard Disk Drive you have right below it. You will see them with their filesystem label, not with alphabets like D:\, E:\, F:\, unlike Windows. If you have not yet rename every one of your partition, you might see them labeled with "such and such GB partition". For example, picture 4.1 depicts my disk partitions with funny names such as dingo, libre2, yakkety, etc. as I named them when I created them.

Picture 4.2(File System with all folders displayed; notice the slash at the address bar as it is the address; notice also the home folder there as it is where your Home located)
If you have USB flash drive or external HDD attached, of perhaps DVD disk,  Files displays them also on the same place.

To open a disk partition, click the name. To savely remove it, click Eject (black triangle) button after its name.


5. Multitab and Multiwindow
Files works with multitab just like a web browser and on elementary OS you can display two windows of it side by side fullscreen.

• To create new tab, click + button below address bar area, and a new tab created.
• To open new window, right-click Files icon on Plank > New Window, a new window opened.
• To arrange two windows of Files side by side, drag a Files window and push mouse cursor to left edge of screen, and drag another Files window and push it to right edge of screen. The result should looks like picture below.

Picture 5.1(Two Files windows displayed side by side)
6. Open In Terminal

• Open a folder.
• Right-click an empty space > Open In > Terminal.
• A Terminal window opened with prompt located in same directory within Files.

This feature is very helpful for example to access a deep path folder quickly and to teach using console commands more easily to newbies. By this, it is not necessary anymore to type multiple commands just to go to a long addressed directory. Talking about AppImage, it is also easier to execute it by this.

Picture 6.1(First, go to a folder | Second, right-click an empty space > Open In > Terminal | Third, a Terminal window opened)
7. Open With
You can open a file type with alternative application installed instead of the standard one you have. To do so, right-click a file > Properties > a small informative dialog opened > change Open With selection to alternative program you want > Close > open that file > file opened with alternative program. For example, if you were accustomed to open MP3 file in Music Player, you can instead do "Open With" it in Audacious Player. Another example, instead of opening TXT file in Code Editor, you can "Open With" Geany if you already have it. Picture below depicts those and opening a photo alternatively with Shotwell instead of Photo Viewer.

Picture 7.1(Left: open with Shotwell Viewer for photo | Middle: open with Audacious for audio | Right: open with Geany for text)


8. Coloring & Bookmarking
You can give color to a certain folder to make it unique to others:

• Right-click a folder.
• Select a color from color selection.
• Your folder name is now colored.
• To revert back, do the same but click X on the color selection.

Picture 8.1
(Colorful folders)
You can put several folders you love the most on left panel as quick access:

• Go to folder you want.
• Press Ctrl+D.
• Folder displayed on left panel.
• Repeat that for other folders you love.

For example, as I am teaching, I put my teaching materials as bookmarks along with my writing materials for I currently writing a book (I wish I could finish it as soon as possible). If you are a graphic designer, you can bookmark folders related to your graphic assets or tools. If you are a programmer, you can bookmark folders containing references and coding materials. And so on.

9. Searching

• Press Ctrl+F.
• Address bar changed to search bar.
• Type keyword you want to search.
• Press Enter.
• Search result displayed as drop down rather than result we usually see on main area.
• Move selection with Up/Down arrow.
• Press Enter to go to selected file.
• Press Esc to close search functionality.

As of version 4.0, the search functionality is still very limited. I hope you don't get surprised with this if you were already accustomed to search functionality on other file manager, such as Nautilus or Dolphin, as here you do not see result growing in main area and you cannot see al search results as well (in fact, Files hides some results). We kindly hope elementary OS developers soon improve this search functionality (and you can contact them even in social medias).
Picture 9.1(Example to search pdf within a partition)

Closing Words
Up to this section you should have basic abilities to navigate and manipulate between folders and files with elementary OS file manager. With this ability you can already live with elementary OS lively. Files will be your close friend everyday. Next time, you will learn more about installing additional applications and more stuffs. That's all. Enjoy!

Further Readings

• https://blog.elementary.io/the-heuristics-of-headerbars
• https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/01/27/2245240/should-apps-replace-title-bars-with-header-bars
• https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/CSD
• https://developer.gnome.org/gtkmm-tutorial/unstable/sec-buildapp-header-bar.html.en
• https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/GnomeGoals/HeaderBars
• https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/header-bars.html.en
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_decoration#Title_bar

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Do you know Repology.org? It is a brilliant package search engine for all GNU/Linux distros. For us, we can find out software packages --in binary and source forms-- across various distros' repositories, even those which do not have package search facilities, and then quickly compare package version with versions available in another distros. In short, we using Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and whatever distros can search for packages centrally here. For individual software developers, Repology is useful to discover which distros have not yet packaged your software, and to contact the maintainers quickly. For distro maintainers, of course it's useful to compare your repository against another distros' repositories. Repology can generate informative badge of package availability (see examples below) we can display onto any website that accept HTML code. This overview covers what Repology is with examples and how to use it for users across GNU/Linux distros in easy ways. I didn't find any other source on the net that covers it yet so I decided to write this article. I hope this helps you a lot in finding packages and researching more about GNU/Linux. Enjoy!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates directly.


Index

1. Understanding Repository Concept
2. Individual Distro's Package Search
3. Distros that Do Not Have Package Search
4. Repology.org
5. How it works
6. Purposes
7. Hard Days before Repology.org
8. How to use Repology

 
1. Understanding Repository Concept
Talking about it is talking about several terminology, those are repository itself, source code, binary code, distribution, and package. A repository is a special thing every GNU/Linux distro has.  Ubuntu has repository, so does openSUSE, so does Fedora, and on and on.

A repository is the cause why a distro called distro. It is a distribution of a lot of software, that is compiled solely for the distro, and the repository is stored in a certain place on the internet. Every software in a repository is packaged for us in 2 format, source code package and binary code package, for example source code package filename is ended with .tar.gz; and binary code package filename for Ubuntu is always ended with .deb, while binary code package filename for Fedora / openSUSE is always ended with .rpm.

User gets software by downloading & installing the binary package, for example LibreOffice.deb in Ubuntu; LibreOffice.rpm in Fedora / openSUSE. User has the right to access the source code of every software in distribution, regardless they are software expert or not, and they can have it for example LibreOffice.tar.gz by downloading the source code package from source code repository. To sum it up, every distro has a repository of software that is very big we need search solution to find out a package, a version, a source code, or everything related to packages in it.

2. Individual Distro's Package Search Engine

• Ubuntu has packages.ubuntu.com
• Debian has packages.debian.com
• openSUSE has software.opensuse.org
• Fedora has apps.fedoraproject.org/packages
• Arch has archlinux.org/packages
• Mint has packages.linuxmint.com
• Mageia has https://madb.mageia.org
• KaOS has http://kaosx.tk/packages
• Kali (formerly Backtrack) has https://pkg.kali.org

and many more.

3. Distros That Do Not Have Package Search
Yes, there are so many major distros that packages in their repo cannot be easily searched or do not have a search engine. They are:

• CentOS
• Slackware
• Red Hat
• SUSE
• Deepin 
• Solus
• Manjaro, only has mirror list
• MX and antiX join, only has package list
• GuixSD, only has package list
• elementary OS
• Zorin OS
• OpenMandriva
• ROSA
• PCLinuxOS
• Trisquel 
• PureOS

This data is noted as per Monday, 3 February 2020. In the future, distros may change.

4. Repology.org - A Package Search Engine for All
Now what do you think if there is a repository search engine that is able to find you packages from all distros? Not only that, it is able to compare version numbers of a software between different distros. Not to mention, that means easy for us to figure out package availability, which distro has a package and which distro has not. More than that, Repology can display graphical statistics of them. From software freedom perspective, it helps you to find packages in source code forms. That is awesome, right? That is Repology.org!




Picture 4.1(Repology.org displaying gimp and inkscape packages availability across distros)
5. How It Works
Repology.org monitors multiple repositories and adds new repositories day by day. It presents us search facility we can use to find out a package in multiple distros, its versions, its availability, its naming, and its relationship with other packages. If you want to know more or even contribute to, then join Repology developers at GitHub webapp, updater, and ruleset. Founder of Repology is Dmitry Marakasov from Russia and the search engine itself free software licensed under GNU GPLv3+.

6. Purpose
Repology's purpose can be divided into 3 categories:

• For user: to figure out packages in multiple distros.
• For software developer: to figure out distros that have made your software available, and which ones have not.
• For distro maintainer: to compare your distro with another distros.

Example 1:

User wants to compare LibreOffice versions available in Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. User types "libreoffice" in search box and instantly finds out version 6.3.2 in Ubuntu 19.10, version 6.3.3.2 in Fedora Rawhide, and version 6.4.0.3 in openSUSE Tumbleweed. This comparison I find out as per Monday, 3 February 2020. One more amazing thing, user can post in their website a colorful list of versions like below.

Picture 6.1(Badge of package versions list generated automatically by Repology.org in SVG format that is displayable on any website)
(Picture above is PNG from the original SVG I edited with Inkscape to reduce the length)

Example 2:

User wants to know which distros do not have Zotero Bibliography Manager. User types "libreoffice" and then scroll down the resulting page to see Absent in repositories section. There, we see majority of distros do not have Zotero, for example Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. Once again amazing, user can create a colorful list badge too.


Example 3:

There is sK1 Project, a developer team of sK1 CMYK-colored Vector Editor, wants to know which distros already have their software. Developer types "sk1" and find out a few distros like PCLinuxOS, Mageia, Fedora, and openSUSE made their software available. On the other hand, developer knows from that that Ubuntu, Mint, Deepin, even Debian do not have their software yet.

 
Example 4: 

User who want to search for package in non-searchable distros --like GuixSD, OpenMandriva, Manjaro-- can do it easily.
 
7. Before Repology, We Used To Be Working Hard
Before doing search in Repology as explained in next section, it is very good if we look once again at individual distro's search engine. It is with and without.

Without a search engine, we have only 2 options:

• figuring out manually one directory by one directory within repository web pages (and this is very tiresome)
• using that distro to run package manager's search command (and this constitutes installing it on our computer, how if we don't want to?)

With one, we solve those problems:

• we do not need to crawl manually one by one, as we can quickly find one by search page
• we are not required to use that distro, as we do not need install it on our computer

However, this solves only problems in one specific distro. For example, Ubuntu package search is for Ubuntu only, Fedora's for Fedora, openSUSE's for openSUSE, as I said, those are individuals. If we work with multiple distros, it means a hard work, as we need to do multiple search manually in multiple search pages.

More than that, how if a distro does not have a search engine? Like OpenMandriva, for example? Or GuixSD, that is not easy to find a package with such A-Z paging? That makes everything more difficult.

Fortunately, thanks to Repology now we solve all those problems with one solution.

8. How to use Repology?
To search for package:

1. Go to https://repology.org
2. See section 'search packages' with a search box
3. Type a package name for example gimp
4. Click Go button
5. Page reloads
6. Page displays list of packages containing gimp in their names
7. Select the simplest name displayed in this example gimp*
8. Page reloads
9. Page displays list of package gimp versions in multiple distros
10. Click a package gimp name on the list for example Ubuntu 18.04's
11. Page changed onto that distro's official info of that package, here it is Ubuntu 18.04's repository page of gimp version

Picture 8.1(Left: search box you want | Middle: search box for maintainers, distro developers | Right: useful links to Repositories' Statistics)
 Picture 8.2(Search result for gimp keyword showing various packages with gimp in their names)
  Picture 8.3(1st column: distro versions | 2nd column: package name | 3rd column: package version numbers | 4th column: repository section where that package stored / package category | 5th column: contacts (emails) of the maintainers behind that package)
Picture 8.4(Search result of package gimp displays multiple distros (often more than one versions) their respective gimp versions)
(Left: from Alpine to Arch repositories ... | Middle: from Astra to CRUX repositories ... | Right: from Debian to Deepin repositories)
Picture 8.5(An official Ubuntu's repository web page for gimp package)(Top: title says it is a source code package of gimp software version 2.8.22 | Left: links to download the binary package gimp | Right: links to developmental stuffs and bug report)
By this example you can explore more by yourselves, o dear readers. Enjoy researching!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Continuing Writer #1 Master Method, now we are trying a different method to merge multiple documents with menubar Insert. This method is done one by one so it is suitable for an author who prefers everything done manually. You will learn by examples you can download freely once again and final result is a ODT with 300 pages long you can export easily into a PDF. Let's go and happy learning!

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Summary

• 1. Preparation
• 2. Start Writer
• 3. Open First Document
• 4. Insert 2nd Document
• 5. Insert 3rd and Next Documents
• 6. Rearrange
• 7. Save
• 8. Final Result
• 9. Export as PDF

1. Preparation
Just like previous tutorial, we prepare once again 10 documents, but this time we use number 11-20. You can download all example files here https://archive.org/download/mkoteknoplasma. 


Total size of 10 documents is 7MB. This means the merged document later will not go beyond this size.


2. Start Writer
Run your LibreOffice Writer.

3. Open First Document
First document here is the document number 11 from the example above. This document is 51 pages long.

• Open first document, here it is number 11.
• Save as new name merged-document.odt.
• Total page number is now 51.

4. Insert Second Document

• Put cursor at the end of text.
• Ctrl+Enter.
• A new blank page created. 
• Go to menubar Insert > Text From File.
• A file chooser dialog appears.
• Select next file, here is number 12, and open.
• Total page number is now 89 as this second one is 32 pages long.

5. Insert Third and Next Documents

• Put cursor at the end of text.
• Ctrl+Enter.
• A new blank page created. 
• Go to menubar Insert > Text From File.
• A file chooser dialog appears. 
• Select next file, here is number 13, and open. 
• Total page number is now 126 as the third one is 42 pages long. 
• Repeat these steps for next files number 14 until number 20.
• Now you have 10 different documents merged in one.
• Total page number for whole merged document is 385.

6. Rearrange
My example documents above does not have headings so you don't see titles on Navigator dialog. To make every section (chapter) visible, give every title a Heading 1, and you can see your merged document is now quick to navigate.


To rearrange chapters. it is not as easy as the previous method. The simplest method I can explain is by manually blocking text starting from the chapter's title to the last line of that chapter > Cut (Ctrl+X) > paste into another place in document. This is heavy and tiresome. To make it easier, there are 3 things: first disable pictures by menubar View > uncheck Images & Charts and second use zoomed multiple-page-view and third use Shift+Click on end when cursor is still on beginning to select a chapter.



7. Save
Ctrl+S.

8. Final Result
Merged document in this examples is 397 pages long consisted of 10 different documents arranged in numeric order from 11 to 20. Your resulting document should be similar to this example. The file size is 7MB.



9. Export as PDF
Click menubar File > Export as PDF > Export > your document saved as PDF. This example produces a 7MB PDF file with 397 pages long and outlines (headings) we can navigate easily like picture below.


Happy writing!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

With LibreOffice Draw, you can make network diagram just like you did with Visio (or GNS3 or even Cisco Packet Tracer). The problem is that icons for networking, such as server, router, firewall, workstation, cloud, etc. are not included by default. Fortunately, the solution is you can add such icons as plugins in Draw and then use it to make diagram.  Thanks to the awesome VRT project, now we have it on LibreOffice. This tutorial explains step by step to install VRT extension into LibreOffice Draw until you can see networking icons available. Enjoy!

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1. Go to Extensions Page
Head your browser up to https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/vrt-network-equipment. That is the LibreOffice Extension Download Center on the VRT Network Equipment extension page. VRT is the excellent project behind these networking icons that they licensed under a free license (CCBYSA).


*) Note: yes, LibreOffice is similar to Mozilla Firefox, you can add it new functionalities by installing add-ons (also called 'extensions' or 'plug-ins'). Discover more extensions.

2. Download VRT Extension
Scroll below that page to find the download link with extension in .OXT format. It is the VRT extension we want for LibreOffice. At the moment, the size is 6MB. Download it.

 
Once finished, you will get a file named vrtnetworkequipment_1-2-0-lo.oxt or similar in your Downloads folder.



3. Install VRT Extension
Run LibreOffice Draw and go to menubar Tools > Extension Manager > Add > a file chooser dialog appears > select the .oxt file > OK > the extension installed > another dialog asks for "Restart LibreOffice" > OK > LibreOffice restarted.




4. See VRT Icons
Now on LibreOffice Draw, see right panel, open Gallery, scroll down to find out VRT Clients & Peripherals, VRT Networking & Communications, VRT Servers, and more. Those are the networking icons we are installing. Now you can draw a networking diagram by these. Happy drawing!


References

• https://www.vrt.com.au/downloads/vrt-network-equipment

(Doing multiple audio/video conversion is easy & fast on Ubuntu by using WinFF)
WinFF is an Ubuntu application to convert multimedia files in easy way. It is an alternative (replacement) to Any Video Converter or FormatFactory from Windows; so you can do audio/video conversions in ways you are familiar to as well on GNU/Linux. WinFF can convert all formats, including the popular MP4, MP3, OGV, OGG, FLV, WMV, WEBM, and MKV. Actually, it is a visual version of FFmpeg command line, hence the name WinFF. This tutorial explains how to install it on Ubuntu and give you example in using it. Enjoy!

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Summary

• WinFF Installation
• 1) Run WinFF
• 2) Insert Media File
• 3) Set Output
• 4) Convert
• 5) Result
• Bonus 1
• Bonus 2

Install
Open your Terminal and type this command:
$ sudo apt-get install winff
1. Run WinFF
Go to start menu and find winff and open it.





(WinFF icon)

(A WinFF window looks simple like this)
3. Insert Media File

• Click Add button.
• A file chooser dialog appears.
• Select an MP4 video file.
• OK.
• An MP4 video inserted into WinFF.

4. Set Output

• See Output Details section.
• Select Convert to: Audio.
• Select Preset: MP3.
• Let the output folder as is, default is your Home folder.

If you want to convert audio to audio, for example, MP3 to OGG, just adjust the selection.
5. Convert
Click Convert button.


6. Result
An MP3 audio file produced in your Home folder. Nice!

 (In this example, a 50MB video can be converted into a 10MB audio with .mp3 format)
Multiple Conversion
Additionally, you can also convert multiple files at once by inserting more than 1 file. And then just continue to Convert button.


Reduce Bitrate
Reducing bitrate reduces the file size. For audio and video outputs, you can determine resulting bitrate by using Options button. As example, standard bitrate of MP3 audio is 128kb/s, so you can reduce it by using 64kb/s or even 32kb/s. Here's the example.

• Click Options button.
• New tabs appear after "Output Details" tab.
• For audio bitrate, open tab "Audio", and type bitrate value you wish.
• For video bitrate, the tab is "Video".

 (Example determining the resulting audio bitrate)
 (Example determining the resulting video bitrate)
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

(Mint with Windows 7 desktop theme and bluish wallpaper)
This article explains step by step to change GNU/Linux Mint operating system user interface to mimic W7 especially after its official support ended in this January 2020. You can practice this tutorial in Cinnamon Edition and you will install 2 types of theme plus 1 original wallpaper here. By this tutorial, I want to help people who find it's easier to migrate to Free Software if their desktop looks like their previous OS. I believe helping them are good and useful. And I hope by publishing this more people will come to help B00merang Project and others alike to develop these themes. I hope your switch from W7 to GNU/Linux goes easier, smoother, and perfect. Enjoy!

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Composition

• Desktop+border+controls theme: https://www.cinnamon-look.org/p/1012735 [Aero]
• Icon theme: https://github.com/B00merang-Artwork/Windows-8
• Wallpaper: https://wparena.com/official-windows-7-wallpaper [PNG]

Installation

• Copy desktop theme folder into ~/.themes/
• Copy icon theme folder into ~/.icons/
• Change 4 points in Themes Settings: Window borders=Windows 7.2.1, Icons=Windows-8-master, Controls=Windows-7-master, and Desktop=Windows-7.2.1. See picture below.
• Change your background into the original blue wallpaper mentioned above.

Result
Desktop in a whole now should look like this:

 (Final desktop)
Window borders (outer frames) and taskbar:

(Firefox web browser)
(LibreOffice Writer, Calc, and Impress; also look at the taskbar icons)
File manager:


File manager with image preview disabled and tooltip enabled:




Control panel:



Some Issues
We will find that the start menu part is still not satisfying despite the icons are almost all perfect.

Further References

• https://github.com/B00merang-Project/windows-7
• https://www.cinnamon-look.org/p/1012735/
• https://www.cinnamon-look.org/p/1314327/
• https://www.cinnamon-look.org/p/1012722/

 This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

elementary is a very popular modern operating system even non-technical people want to use it. It's not strange if some of them felt difficulty in downloading the OS. But it is highly beneficial to help them because by doing so we have more people using it and big chance also more donations can go to empower the development. Beyond that, I saw the internet at the moment lacks step-by-step tutorial to do this important thing. For that reason, I make this simple guide in how to download elementary OS for new users by using standard and alternative methods everyone may choose. I hope this article helps you a lot and let's go use elementary!

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Preparations

• Free storage space 2GB or more. 
• Internet access.
• Web browser.
• BitTorrent client program, if you want alternative way to download.

1. Where To Download
Go to https://elementary.io. and you should see "Pay What You Want" section with "Purchase" button. That is the download area. Please note that I write this in January 2020 when elementary reached version 5.1 "Hera" so all screenshots here are from this time and some may change in the future.

 Picture 1.1(Download section on elementary OS official website)
2. Download It
There are two ways to download, either by donating or not. For most people, you can use not donating. For people who love to help fund the development, go ahead by donating. However, even if you download without donating, you can still donate to the project by Funding Page or purchase merchandises by the Store.

Without donating:

1. Select custom price
2. Type 0
3. Click download button
4. The dialog 'Choose a Download' appears and click 'Download' button.
5. You download an ISO image file
6. Wait some time as the file size is big

Picture 2.1(The dialog 'Choose a Download')
With donating:

1. Select $10, $20, or $30 from options available
2. Alternatively, select custom and type amount you wish, for example $5 or $100
3. Click 'Purchase elementary OS' button
4. Wait a minute
5. A small dialog appears from elementary, Inc. asking for your debit/credit card information
6. Enter your card information
7. Click "Pay" button
8. The dialog 'Choose a Download' appears and click Download button.
9. You download an ISO image file

 Picture 2.2 (This payment form is provided by Stripe Checkout service --an alternative to PayPal-- and if you want there is a video explanation)
3. Wait
With a standard broadband connection, for example 5MB/s, the download process should finish in under 10 minutes. However, internet access is sometimes slow so wait patiently until it's finished completely.

Picture 3.1(Firefox web browser downloading the ISO file)
4. Result
The file downloaded should be named elementaryos-[version]-[stable]-[release_date].iso with size no less than 1GB. Up to this step, you downloaded elementary OS successfully. Congratulations!

 Picture 4.1(The operating system stored as a file with .iso extension just like any other OSes)
5. Alternative Download
Technically, above mentioned way of downloading is called "HTTP Download". That is standard. But there is an alternative download method, called "BitTorrent Download", that is far more faster and reliable, you can resume download at any time and make sure the file downloaded will never be corrupted. To download in BitTorrent way, you need a BitTorrent client program, for example Transmission (Ubuntu, Mint, Manjaro) or KTorrent (Kubuntu), both are free software. If you are using Windows or macOS, I recommend Transmission. If you want alternative method instead, follow these:

1. Go to elementary.io
2. Repeat above steps to download until 'Choose a Download' dialog appears
3. Click 'U' button next to 'Download' button (it is called 'Torrent Magnet Link')
4. Your BitTorrent client appears with folder options to store the file
5. Click OK
6. Your download starts in the BitTorrent client window

 Picture 5.1(The dialog 'Choose a Download' with a torrent magnet link button)
Picture 5.2(KTorrent, a bittorrent client program, downloading the same elementary OS but with faster speed)
Happy downloading!

Further Readings

• elementary on Distrowatch.com
• elementary os Wikipedia 
• What is bittorrent?
• What is torrent magnet link? 
• Why selling free software is OK and encouraged?
• Why donations & fundings in elementary are important?
• Why elementary developers make us type zero dollar?

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.