Small Image Tools that Pack a Real Punch

The spotlight usually focuses on the heavyweight Linux graphics tools such as GIMP, Shotwell, digiKam, Inkscape, and Krita. However, there are many other open source graphics tools that merit attention. Linux offers a vast collection of open source small utilities that perform functions ranging from the obvious to the bizarre. It is the quality and selection of these tools that help Linux stand out as a productive environment. A good utility cooperates with other applications, integrating seamlessly. Although command-line tools are very useful for updating, configuring, and repairing a system, their benefits are not only confined to system administration. The majority of the applications featured in this article are command-line tools. They are very light on system resources, fast and efficient, don’t rely on a windowing system, and are great for integrating with other applications and scripting. The term lightweight is a label attached to computer software which is relatively simpler or faster than its counterparts. Feature bloat is endemic in software especially commercial software. Often, the easiest way to persuade users to upgrade to the latest version is to add new spangly features. This happens with open source software (to a lesser degree), and open source graphics software is not immune to feature bloat. Well, there is no feature bloat here! To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of small image tools that are incredibly useful.

Debian: Rejections, LTS Work, and Bugfixes

• Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in February 2021

  FTP master This month I accepted 162 and rejected 28 packages, which is again a small increase compared to last month. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 291. Debian LTS This was my eightieth month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian.

• RCBW 21.9 – jwiltshire.org.uk

  A recent upload of electrum suffers from the serious bug #981374. On the face of it this is just a missing package dependency: can you help with testing and preparing an updated package to fix this? You don’t need to be a Debian Developer to get stuck into this one!

Videos and Shows: KDE Community Edition PinePhone and This Week in Linux

• KDE Community Edition PinePhone Unboxing and First Try! - YouTube

  In this video I'm "unboxing" (or, rather, showing the box and its contents) of the pinephone, and trying it for my first time!

• This Week in Linux 141: GRUB 2 Security Flaw, Linux Mint to Force Updates?, Valve’s Steam Link

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’re going to try something different with the show. Let me know what you think of the changes. This episode is completely stacked with exciting news, we’ve got a ton of Distro News from Ubuntu, openSUSE, Linux Mint, SystemRescue, IPFire, and even Linux From Scratch. A vulnerability was found in GRUB 2 that lets someone bypass Secure Boot so we’ll talk about that and just how bad is it? The EU announced some great news related to Right to Repair. Valve has announced that Steam Link is now available on Linux and it’s a real game changer. We’ve also got some media production news to check out this week from Blender, Ardour and a new synthesizer called Vital. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

Hands-On with Raspup on Raspberry Pi 4: Puppy Linux for Tinkerers

If you never heard of Raspup before, let me tell you that it’s a Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution built from the Woof-CE build system that was originally developed by Barry Kauler, the creator of Puppy Linux, and binary compatible with Raspbian (the official Raspberry Pi OS). As such, Raspup is a Puppy Linux port for Raspberry Pi. Raspup was created by Michael Amadio and it’s designed to run on ARMv7l hardware, specifically on the Raspberry Pi Zero, Raspberry Pi 1, Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi 3, Raspberry Pi 3+, and Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computers (SBCs).