PCLOS
PCLinuxOS and OpenMandriva Leftovers
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Sunday 7th of March 2021 09:28:45 AM Filed under

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Two PCLinuxOS Family Members Finally Meet
I know that the question of meeting other PCLinuxOS users has, again, recently come up in the PCLinuxOS forums. While the middle of a pandemic might not be the best time to meet up with other PCLinuxOS users, it can be the perfect time to start planning a meeting for once this pandemic is in our rearview mirror.
Meemaw and I, despite having "worked together" on The PCLinuxOS Magazine for many years, have never met face-to-face. We've burned up the email wires, and always do. We've "talked" extensively on IRC. We've texted each other on our cell phones. We've even talked to one another on the telephone. We are planning/hoping to get together for a trip to the Kansas City Zoo, just as soon as the weather turns decent. Even though Meemaw grew up in the Kansas City area, she hasn't been to the Kansas City Zoo in many, many years.
If you live near another PCLinuxOS user, reach out and try to meet them. PCLinuxOS has always had a close, family kind of feeling to it, especially among PCLinuxOS forum members. So, why not try to meet those other family members? If you do, let us know about it here at The PCLinuxOS Magazine. We might just feature your "getting to know you" escapades in a future issue. And remember ... pictures, or it never happened!
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PCLinuxOS Screenshot Showcase
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OpenMandriva notable mention in social network
FediFollows mentioned OpenMandriva in recommended follows of the week.
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The March 2021 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine
Submitted by MeeMaw on Saturday 6th of March 2021 11:02:19 PM Filed under
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the March 2021 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.
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Distribution Release: PCLinuxOS 2021.02
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Sunday 7th of February 2021 10:46:16 PM Filed under
PCLinuxOS installation media has been updated so new installations do not require such a large update to get current. This release features Kernel and application updates, bug fixes and security updates, with a focus on speed and stability. PCLinuxOS is officially released in three editions: KDE Plasma, MATE and XFCE desktops. Community editions featuring Trinity, Openbox and LXQT desktops are also available. All the editions can run on the computer alone, or in Virtualbox. PCLinuxOS is an old school rolling release desktop distribution and has been serving the Linux community for 18 years.
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PCLinuxOS: Repo, Interview, Editor and Screenshots
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 4th of February 2021 07:28:10 AM Filed under
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Repo Review: FSearch
FSearch is a very fast standalone file search utility inspired by the Windows-only Everything search engine. FSearch indexes file directories and builds a database, allowing you to get almost instant search results as you type. This makes FSearch extremely fast when compared to many other search tools built into file managers.
The interface is fairly simple and well designed, making FSearch quick and easy to use. The search results will appear as a list below the search bar. Down at the bottom of the screen are indicators showing how many files have been found, and how many files have actually been indexed.
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PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: cdbc
2005. My first was Fedora. Somewhere I stumbled upon PCLinuxOS and I've been here ever since. I got fed up with winblows, as simple as that.
[...]
I've two Lenovo Laptops for business and a shiny red HP laptop for play. All of them are running PCLinuxOS, one 32 bit LXDE and the other two 64 bit KDE.
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Welcome From The Chief Editor
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Screenshot Showcase
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The February 2021 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine
Submitted by MeeMaw on Thursday 4th of February 2021 03:56:27 AM Filed under
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the February 2021 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.
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PCLinuxOS 64 KDE 2020.1015 in Review
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Thursday 4th of February 2021 12:42:15 AM Filed under

This is a consumer oriented distribution formerly based on the long defunct Mandrake Linux that is now independently developed but still shares some characteristics with other systems based on that family, distant cousins so to speak that can usually be identified by them using the former Mandrake Control Center. Once upon a time PCLinuxOS, or PCLOS in short, was at the top of the Distrowatch rankings but has currently dropped to 24th place. Regardless, I loved the 2007 edition still utilising KDE 3.5 in those days and ran it on a desktop and a laptop for two years straight before switching over to Slackware. So how is it doing?
PCLOS offers KDE, XFCE and MATE editions and from time to time community releases. Currently these are LXQT, Openbox, TDE mini using the Trinity desktop and a larger Trinity BigDaddy edition. This one wants to revive the feel and flair of the classic PCLOS 2007. There also used to be a KDE Full Monty edition now called the Magnum version which is 3.8 GB.
2020.1015 is the latest release. As the one with KDE is the main, default or standard edition I opted to use this for my trials. After the download completed it took 2.7 GB on my XFS formatted partition but its size is stated as 2.4 GB on the download page. A more trimmed mini version of 1.2 GB is also available.
This Full version ISO comes with the standard compliment of KDE applications plus LibreOffice. Some additional applications include Timeshift, photo and image editing software, Megasync, Anydesk, Kodi pre-installed, the Calibre book reader, the Skrooge banking software and the Spotify client plus Firefox, Thunderbird, Strawberry music player and the VLC video player.
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PCLinuxOS: Focus Stacking, Yelp, Screenshot Showcase and Member Spotlight
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 5th of January 2021 03:13:32 AM Filed under
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Focus Stacking In PCLinuxOS
Focus stacking is the process of taking many pictures with different elements of the image in focus, and then combining the images so that the resultant image is in focus.
It's a little related to HDR (High Dynamic Range) in that in HDR one combines the dynamic ranges of many images into one HDR image. In focus stacking, the user combines the in-focus regions of various images to render one image.
In this post we will talk about how I focus stack in Linux.
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Yelp For Help
I would have continued developing for winhlp32 and onward to HTML-based Windows help, except that I kind of got left in the dust when things moved from 16-bit to 32-bit. I could barely afford my 16-bit C/C++ compiler when I got it. I saved and scraped together the money to buy it, and couldn't afford to upgrade to a 32-bit development environment. As a result, the rest of the world moved on with 32-bit programming, and I was unable to continue developing my 16-bit programs (there are others) into 32-bit programs.
So, that fire to create hypertext documents never really burned out for me. Embers of that fire still smolder today. Even though the rest of the world moved on to 32-bit help, I continued to create 16-bit help/hypertext for a while longer. I pretty much quit when things moved on to HTML based help systems. Fortunately, Yelp gives users several ways to create hypertext documents. You can use HTML, XML, DocBook, Mallard, and other file types to create the files that Yelp is able to read.
Also in the PCLinuxOS repository is a set of special tools, called yelp-tools. These tools are not installed by default, but can easily be installed via Synaptic. They allow you to properly create the "helpful" hypertext documents that Yelp can read. Getting into all the different tools and file types that can be used to create help/hypertext documents is quite a bit beyond the scope of this article, as well as my ability to talk intelligently about them. Still, you can explore them on your own, as I will most likely do at some point. You can find more information about getting started with DocBook here. Mallard also has some getting-started tutorials here. And, of course, you can find HTML information just about everywhere and anywhere. One thing I've already noticed is that both DocBook and Mallard are both XML based, so if you already know some XML, you'll be ahead of the game.
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PCLinuxOS Screenshot Showcase
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PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight - NoIBnds
I was a Computer geek at work starting with Win 3.1 - by the time of WinXP and all the problems I was always working fixing other peoples computers. I had a friend that thought computers were only for Guns & Porn, so he would trash XP every month or so. So then I went looking for an OS he could use and not trash. Tried Red Hat, Mepis, and then PCLinuxOS around the end of 2003 with Preview 4. I had a question and emailed Tex and he answered back. I was hooked and I have been using PCLinuxOS since then. Even my friend has been using it since then and has never trashed a computer since.
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The January 2021 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine
Submitted by MeeMaw on Monday 4th of January 2021 07:13:39 PM Filed under
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the January 2021 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.
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PCLinuxOS Selected Articles/New Pages
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 2nd of December 2020 11:07:40 PM Filed under
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PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: The Cat
Why and when did you start using Linux?
Just one year after our family bought our first PC with Win95, it already started freezing, breaking. All the wonders from MS. Since then, I started looking for an alternative to that crap. I heard about Linux, but back in the 90's there were very few people, books and resources about it in Brazil. So, after a frustrating period with a Mac (which let me down when it simply stopped functioning), I found Linux in Switzerland. My first distro was Linux Mint, which was quite friendly to use, but that broke my computer after every biannual big update, and the users' forum was useless. So, after learning about the evil systemd, I read something about the Resistance, the Few Ones who kept the flame of tradition! And here am I with PCLinuxOS, since the glorious year of 2014!What specific equipment do you currently use with PCLinuxOS?
Two notebooks, one is a Lenovo with Intel i5, the other one is an old (and brave) single core Toshiba Satellite!Do you feel that your use of Linux influences the reactions you receive from your computer peers or family? If so, how?
People still believe that Linux is for engineers, geeks and the like, so some think you're some kind of hacker, or genius. When you show them the graphical desktop, with all looking "normal", with icons, and Firefox and all the like, they get amazed! -
[PCLinuxOS] Screenshot Showcase
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Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News
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Welcome From The Chief Editor
Here's To Hoping that 2021 is far, far better than the 2020 that we all have endured. It's going to take some time to see how much impact the COVID-19 pandemic will have on society and many entrenched habits/trends that have existed for many, many years. But, any time something of this magnitude hits society, there's almost no way it can't have an impact. We'll never be able to go back to the old "normal." That old "normal" will be replaced with a new "normal" that will supplant it in ways we cannot yet begin to imagine.
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Mind Your Step: Going On Sabbatical
If you have watched videos about Linux on YouTube, especially ones that compare various distributions, did you notice that most of those videos do not even mention PCLinuxOS.
It does not do us well when it comes to public exposure of the distribution. But in this case, it is a good thing. Sometimes, not being popular has its benefits.
What I am saying is that the less popular a technology or product is, the less likely cybercriminals will spend time trying whatever it is they do on these products.
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I am considering installing Nextcloud on my webspace after moving the original website to Neocities. So far, It seems to work, but with a few quirks.
The webspace assigned contains 100GB of storage and runs in a container configured with 512MB of RAM, and enough bandwidth for a low traffic website, which this website has been for the past 24 years!
I have not decided whether to go for it or not, being that this is a low traffic website, and that Nextcloud was designed for high traffic servers. What attracts me to this solution is the high level of security built into the application.
The fact that this website existed for 24 years without a data breach or other attack is proof that the less popular a technology, product or idea is, the less it becomes vulnerable (or even feasible) to cyberattacks.
Case in point, the Slackware website is still accessed through HTTP instead of HTTPS, due to the fact that almost no one new to Linux has even heard of Slackware, let alone trying to install that distribution on their machines. At least my website is accessed only through HTTPS, which is important as I do not want my website to be tagged as Not Secure by Google simply because I did not enable HTTPS for my website.
Another solution I am considering is to use a product such as WordPress, but not allowing any accounts to be created. (The main website for PCLinuxOS does just that!)
I know that I just mentioned that WordPress is a popular product for building websites. But the way it is used on the main PCLinuxOS website is an exception to that theory.
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The December 2020 Issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine
Submitted by MeeMaw on Wednesday 2nd of December 2020 09:01:15 PM Filed under
The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the December 2020 issue. With the exception of a brief period in 2009, The PCLinuxOS Magazine has been published on a monthly basis since September, 2006. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community.
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| Review: Artix Linux in 2021
Artix Linux is a fork (or continuation as an autonomous project) of the Arch-OpenRC and Manjaro-OpenRC projects. Artix Linux offers a lightweight, rolling-release operating system featuring alternative init software options, including OpenRC, runit, and s6. The distribution is available in many editions, including Base, Cinnamon, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, KDE Plasma and Xfce. With all of the desktop options, combined with the available init choices, there are 21 editions, not including community spins from which to choose. All editions appear to be built for 64-bit (x86_64) machines. Picking randomly, I selected Artix's Plasma edition featuring the runit init software. The download for this edition is is 1.3GB. Browsing the other editions it looks like most flavours are about 1.1GB to 1.3GB in size, though the minimal Base edition is a compact 618MB.
The project's live media boots to the KDE Plasma desktop. On the desktop we find multiple documentation and README icons. There is also an icon for launching the system installer. The default layout places a panel at bottom of the screen where we can find the application menu and system tray. The default wallpaper is a soft blue while the theme for windows and menus is dark with high contrast fonts.
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Artix Linux is one of those distributions I really enjoy using and yet struggle to review in a meaningful way because it doesn't really go out of its way to introduce new or exciting features and everything works smoothly. The distribution is wonderfully easy to install, offers top-notch performance, and is unusually light on resources. Artix is somewhat minimal, but still ships enough software to be immediately useful right out of the gate. We can browse the web, install packages, view files, and play videos. Meanwhile the application menu isn't cluttered with a lot of extras. The developers clearly expect us to install the functionality we need, while doing a really good job of providing enough for the desktop environment to feel base-line useful right from the start.
Artix does a nice job of balancing performance and functionality while also juggling ease of use against not getting in the way. There is a little documentation, but no initial welcome screen or configuration wizards that might distract the user.
The one piece I felt was missing was a graphical package manager which would have made it easier to build the extra functionality I wanted on top of the base distribution. However, that one piece aside, I felt as though Artix was really well designed and put together, at lease for someone like me. It's not a distribution geared toward beginners, it's not a "first distro". It is a bit minimal and requires command line knowledge. However, for someone with a little experience with Linux, for someone who doesn't mind the occasional trip to the command line or installing new applications as needed, then Artix provides an excellent experience. It's fast, light, looks (in my opinion) great with the default theme, and elegantly walks the line between minimalism and having enough applications ready to go out of the box to be immediately useful. I'm unusually impressed with how smooth and trouble-free my experience was with this distribution and the fact it offers such a range of desktop and init diversity is all the more appealing.
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Alpine Linux Review: Ultimate Distro for Power Users
Alpine Linux is gathering a lot of attention because of its super-small size and focus on security. However, Alpine is different from some of the other lightweight distros we covered on FOSSLinux. It isn’t your typical desktop distribution as it is terminal-based like Arch and is marketed as a “general purpose distro.”
It is currently widely adopted as a Docker container thanks to its ultra-small footprint. However, it can be used for all sorts of Linux deployments that benefit from small, resource-efficient Linux distros.
Now, that statement might feel too generic. But don’t worry, as we have put together an in-depth and comprehensive review of Alpine Linux, giving you a detailed look at what it has under the hood and how to use it. As such, by the end, you should have a clear understanding of whether you should consider Alpine Linux as your next Linux distro.
So without further ado, let’s dive in.
| Programming Leftovers
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