Linux Blimp

By Jack M. Germain

Jul 25, 2018 12:42 PM PT

SoftMaker’s
FreeOffice 2018 Linux office suite is a high-end product that provides performance and compatibility with Microsoft Office and other office suites.

FreeOffice 2018, released this spring, is a free version that is nearly identical to the features and user interface of Softmaker’s commercial flagship office suite, SoftMaker Office 2018. I recently
reviewed the beta commercial version. The FreeOffice line is distributed under the Mozilla Public License.

The Germany-based software developer offers an impressive and very usable line of open source and commercial products. The FreeOffice 2018/SoftMaker Office 2018 products are Windows/Linux cross-platform applications with integrated modules for word processing (TextMaker), spreadsheets (PlanMaker) and presentations (Presentations).

If you are thinking, “Gee, why not keep the Maker moniker consistent by calling it ‘SlideMaker’?” I totally agree.

Office suite compatibility is one of the major selling/rejecting points when consumers and enterprises consider migrating to the Linux OS. The Linux OS has its share of free lightweight word processors and a few worthy standalone spreadsheet apps. Generally, Linux office suites lack a really solid slide presentation creation tool, however.

Many of the Linux word processing packages are little more than glorified text editors. Graphics compatibility in page design are often their fail point. That trend has been changing for the better with applications such as SoftMaker’s FreeOffice, The Document Foundation’s
LibreOffice and Ascensio System SIA’s recently released free office suite upgrade OnlyOffice Desktop Editors, which I recently
reviewed.

The FreeOffice 2018 suite has much to offer. It is a capable alternative to its commercial upgrade. It poses little trouble reading and writing to other document formats such as .docx, pptx, xlsx and provides very accurate page rendering when importing/exporting file formats. Except for the ability to save as earlier MS Office document formats, all that is missing from the SoftMaker commercial edition are a few dictionary-based and related tools.

The FreeOffice 2018 suite lets you configure many aspects of each modules’ operation with a detailed settings panel.

Switching Gears

I switched to LibreOffice years ago when
The Document Foundation forked OpenOffice. Each major release closed the gap as a reliable Microsoft Office replacement. I rarely had difficulties with exchanging files among users of Microsoft Word. The user satisfaction got even better with FreeOffice, to a point.

I began using earlier versions of FreeOffice two years ago on several of my computers, which allowed me to settle in with long-term compatibility testing. I would create files in LibreOffice or FreeOffice. Depending on which computer I used, for subsequent editing sessions I would work on the file in either LibreOffice or FreeOffice. Rarely would I see page layout or formatting glitches in how FreeOffice rendered the display or printed the page.

I tested FreeOffice 2018 using the same process. Since some of the documents I create or edit require printed copies by a client using Microsoft Word, I also routinely check for compatibility between FreeOffice and LibreOffice outputs. Results are usually more than adequate. Sometimes, a bit of tweaking resolves display issues. I almost never have issues with the way FreeOffice 2018 prints documents.

This latest release of FreeOffice proved itself to be very adept at opening, displaying and saving documents with a high degree of fidelity — that is, as long as I wanted to use the latest Microsoft file format, as in .docx.

Was it flawless? Not always.

Compatibility Without Compromises – Not Quite

SoftMaker claims that you not only can open but also can save documents in the Microsoft file formats docx, xlsx and pptx. The company also boasts that users can share files directly with Microsoft Office users without first having to export them. That is true, but with a catch.

That catch can be a mild inconvenience or a deal breaker, depending on your file interoperability needs. Depending on the module involved, you can *only* save documents as docx, xlsx or pptx files.

If you want to save files in the older MS Office formats, you must buy the commercial version of FreeOffice. For instance, in TextMaker You have options for the .txt and SoftMaker-specific .tmdx and generic .rft formats along with a few other formats.

However, there is no support for the Open Document Text (odt) format used in LibreOffice and other open source applications. This can cause difficulties in exchanging documents with those who use these cross-standard formats.

Potential Problems

If your office suite needs are limited to working with documents only you create and print out, or deliver as attached files, then go for it. Typical real-world document usage goes far beyond being limited to just the latest Microsoft Office file format, though. Many small businesses and even large enterprises work in the realm of .doc /.xls /.ppt formats.

For example, in the case of one client, in-house copy exchanges are done in .txt format filed on the company’s servers. I must save blogs and article submissions I provide to other publishers in a preferred file format of the editor involved.

In most cases, editors, publishers and my freelance clients care less what application I use to create or edit the documents we exchange. They only care if they can not open the document or its rendering is messed up when displayed on their screens or printed output.

On the other hand, the majority of press releases and slide presentations I receive or edit and return are done in .doc or .ppt file format, not .docx or pptx format. I have not found that situation to be much different outside my publications world, either. Personal correspondence from lawyers and government agencies, for instance, usually are in the older .doc/.xls/.ppt formats.

Ribbon vs. Traditional Interface

As good as LibreOffice is now with its 6.xxx series, its developers have been slow to implement the popular ribbon interface first introduced in Microsoft Office. SoftMaker’s FreeOffice 2018 has a very workable ribbon interface option along with the traditional toolbar-style menu. Switching between the two user interfaces is easy.

That is important. The ribbon interface requires adjusting to navigating around the options in each of the office modules. It is sometimes more convenient to use the traditional dropdown menus from the fully populated toolbar.

The ribbon interface includes a toolbar-style menu. Switching between the two user interfaces is easy.

The ribbon interface uses a tab line at the top line of the application’s window to open menu categories. The actual options in each category display in the second row.

A third row provides a few basic function icons that do not change. These are icons to create a new document, open an existing file, save the current document, and a dropdown list of undo/redo previous typing.

These menu icons also have keyboard shortcuts displayed. You can add/remove additional icons for more toolbar options.

How the Ribbon Menus Display

The first item in this third-row toolbar is a button to open a two-column cascading menu of all options. That list contains the keyboard shortcuts for many of the menu items. This keeps the ribbon interface active while giving you a way to bypass the ribbons without switching to a more traditional menu setting.

The FreeOffice 2018 productivity suite lets you easily switch between traditional and more modern ribbon menu styles.

The File tab ribbon provides commands to open, close, save/save as/save all, epub export, PDF export, print options and access properties for the file. The Options and Customize buttons display settings panels.

The Home tab ribbon holds all of the file formatting options for font, character, paragraph and style selections. The Insert tab holds page break, table, picture, text frame, comments, hyperlink commands and more.

The Layout tab has the ribbon controls for setting page margins, orientation, chapter markers and other layout and page design controls. The References tab opens the ribbon options for setting attributes for fields, footnotes, and table of contents. The Mailings tab displays ribbon settings for file-specific attributes to automate mailing lists for database output.

The Review tab shows spell check and hyphenation settings, a comments pane, and controls for tracking and working with text changes within the document. The View tab provides ribbon controls for Display Views, Forms, Fields, Grids/Guides/ ruler choices, Zoom and Windows display options.

The Latest Improvements

The FreeOffice 2018 suite for Linux is updated to revision 934. All three office modules have new features that include format painter, the ability to insert comments and footnotes, improved support for encrypted docx documents, and a new tool for reporting errors in the Linux version of the Office suite.

The latest release runs on any PC-based Linux distro, either 32 or 64 bits. The office suite is optimized for touchscreens. You can switch to touch mode with larger icons and increased spacing between user-interface elements. You can do this both with ribbons and with the classic menu-based user interface.

TextMaker combines easy use with a wide range of features. Formatting text is much simpler with the numerous new template catalogs and drop-down elements. Its advanced positioning and text-wrapping options let you create any style layout.

Master pages let you watermark each page and place repeating objects in your document. Character and paragraph styles add a consistent and professional look to your documents. TextMaker supports spell-checking using Hunspell dictionaries. The Assistant feature helps you to create PDF files and EPUB e-books directly from within the application.

PlanMaker lets you create complex calculations, worksheets and charts effortlessly. It includes more than 350 functions and a wide variety of analysis features. Easily insert pictures, drawings, text frames or impressive charts in 2D and 3D.

Choose from a large catalog of attractive cell styles that are compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016. PlanMaker supports large worksheets with up to 1 million rows and 16,384 columns and pivot tables. You can export worksheets as PDF documents or in a specified print format. You can select from five different scaling methods so that it fits on a specified number of pages. You can print 2, 4, 8 or 16 pages on one sheet of paper.

Other PlanMaker features include pivot tables that display data in a targeted way to meet individual specifications, and the ability to create database ranges within worksheets. You also can use an outline view for data grouping, sort by up to 64 columns, and apply auto filter and special filters.

Presentations is a powerful tool for creating impressive slide presentations. It is easy to combine text, images, tables and artwork to make attractive slides. You can apply a range of animations and slide transitions using OpenGL graphics acceleration.

Among its wide variety of design and drawing functions are the ability to Insert images, drawings and text frames, and apply type effects by using the TextArt or numerous other design templates. You also can insert static objects, movies and sound effects into presentations.

Bottom Line

SoftMaker’s FreeOffice 2018 is a high-end productivity suite that is worthy of consideration. The TextMaker word processor module is one of the closest products I have used in Linux to being capable of handling page design and publication functions.

I often use it for design pages instead of
Scribus for desktop publishing tasks. The PlanMaker and Presentation modules are equally adept at rounding out office documents needs.

However, FreeOffice 2018 has a few quirks. One of them is the spelling feature. The English language version is supposed to be included by default. It is not in the installed package. As a workaround, I downloaded the Canada English Hunspell dictionary from the Softmaker website. No U.S. English dictionary was available for download.

Another oddity is the right panel that has a show/hide button. In each of the three modules, the right panel displays handy tips on using some of the core features.

At the bottom are media buttons to move forward or backward through a slide-like presentation. Every time you click in the panel, the application automatically switches to a Web browser screen to view upsell details from the SoftMaker website.

A third issue is potentially more troublesome. You can set the auto-save (recovery) interval in the File/Options/Fields of the menu, but there is no auto-save feature. You must remember to save content frequently or you might lose information.

For example, I had saved the updated file as I completed writing section of this review and continued with a new paragraph. About two minutes later I clicked on a menu item. The application crashed. I declined to fill in the pop-up crash report prompt.

The window reported that the application recovered my file. When I reopened the file, however, the most recent additions that I entered after last saving the file were gone.

Want to Suggest a Review?

Is there a Linux software application or distro you’d like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Please
email your ideas to me, and I’ll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

And use the Reader Comments feature below to provide your input!

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open source technologies. He has written numerous reviews of Linux distros and other open source software.
Email Jack.

Source

Since I’ve started using Kali Linux, I have often encountered problems with my touchpad. The problem can either be with tapping (tapping the touchpad doesn’t result in a click, and I have to press the physical button), or with scrolling (two finger scrolling doesn’t work).

I have come across the following 3 fixes. At least one of them should work for you-

Fix 1: Easiest – GUI setting

This fix requires no fancy commands. You just have to go to Mouse & Touchpad settings and make appropriate changes. To go to the settings, you can either-

• Press the windows key (on the lower bottom, Ctrl key, Function key, Windows key, Alt key), and type mouse in the search bar that shows up.
• Click the activities button on the top left, and type mouse in the search bar that shows up.

Now, you should see something like this-

You can check the tap to click and two finger scroll options and your problem is solved.

If, however, you see something like this-

Then you have to use the next fixes, as the Mouse and Touchpad setting are useless for you.

Fix 2 : Tapping and reverse Scroll

If you are able to scroll just fine, but your touchpad is not registering the taps, then just type this command into the terminal-

synclient tapbutton1=1

This should enable tapping for you.

In my case, I had scrolling working without any problems, but I prefer natural scrolling, and that option wasn’t there for me in mouse & touchpad settings. However, if you type synclient into the terminal, you see something like this-

new@kali:

Parameter settings:
LeftEdge = 1618
RightEdge = 5366
TopEdge = 1356
BottomEdge = 4536
FingerLow = 25
FingerHigh = 30
MaxTapTime = 180
MaxTapMove = 251
MaxDoubleTapTime = 100
SingleTapTimeout = 180
ClickTime = 100
EmulateMidButtonTime = 75
EmulateTwoFingerMinZ = 282
EmulateTwoFingerMinW = 7
VertScrollDelta = 114
HorizScrollDelta = 114
VertEdgeScroll = 0
HorizEdgeScroll = 0
CornerCoasting = 0
VertTwoFingerScroll = 1
HorizTwoFingerScroll = 0
MinSpeed = 1
MaxSpeed = 1.75
AccelFactor = 0.035014
TouchpadOff = 0
LockedDrags = 0
LockedDragTimeout = 5000
RTCornerButton = 0
RBCornerButton = 0
LTCornerButton = 0
LBCornerButton = 0
TapButton1 = 1
TapButton2 = 0
TapButton3 = 0
ClickFinger1 = 1
ClickFinger2 = 1
ClickFinger3 = 1
CircularScrolling = 0
CircScrollDelta = 0.1
CircScrollTrigger = 0
CircularPad = 0
PalmDetect = 0
PalmMinWidth = 10
PalmMinZ = 200
CoastingSpeed = 20
CoastingFriction = 50
PressureMotionMinZ = 30
PressureMotionMaxZ = 160
PressureMotionMinFactor = 1
PressureMotionMaxFactor = 1
GrabEventDevice = 0
TapAndDragGesture = 1
AreaLeftEdge = 0
AreaRightEdge = 0
AreaTopEdge = 0
AreaBottomEdge = 0
HorizHysteresis = 28
VertHysteresis = 28
ClickPad = 0

You can quickly notice the VertScrollDelta (delta usually refers to rate of change, here speed of scrolling) parameter which for me is set to 114. I decided to check if making it -114 would make it scroll at the same speed but in the opposite direction. To test that, I tried the following command-

 

synclient VertScrollDelta=-114

And turns out I was right and it did reverse the direction of scrolling.

Little problem

These changes that we made aren’t persistent, and the synclient setting would revert to default every time you start your system again. There are many solutions to this, one of which include editing files in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/. However, these files tend to get overwritten and we have to deal with a lot of other mess to fix that behavior.

Instead, we will use a very simple solution, and just run the above two commands on system startup.

Add the commands to startup

Step 1 : Navigate to the .config directory

cd ~/.config/

Step 2 : Check if autostart folder exists

 

ls

Step 3: If it doesn’t exist, create the folder. If it exists, skip this step

mkdir autostart

Step 4: Navigate to autostart folder

cd autostart

Step 5: Use your favorite text editor [vim v/s/ sublime text?] (or cat ). I’m using leafpad to make things look less intimidating.

leafpad script.desktop

Step 6: A leafpad windows will pop up. Paste one of the following into the window and then save and then close leafpad.
If you are logged in as root (probably the case)
[Desktop Entry]
Name=MyScript
Type=Application
Exec=/root/script.sh

If you are logged in as another user (if you created a non-superuser account)

[Desktop Entry]
Name=MyScript
Type=Application
Exec=/home/<name here>/script.sh

Note 1 : To find the <name here> in second case, just navigate to home (cd ~) and find present working directory (pwd)

Note 2 : (If you’re curious why I didn’t use ~ and instead made two different scripts for root and other users) Exec=~/script.sh didn’t work for me. Maybe it does work in general, and there was some other factor in play for me, or maybe it isn’t supposed to work at all. Not sure. Any comments in this regard are welcome.

Step 7: Change directory to home.

cd ~

Step 8: Create a file called script.sh

leafpad script.sh

Step 9: Paste the following code into it. Then save.

synclient tapbutton1=1 #To enable tapping

synclient VertScrollDelta=-114 #To reverse direction of scroll
PS: Paste only the lines required by you.

Step 10: Make it executable

chmod 777 script.sh

or

chmod a+x script.sh

Restart Kali and see if your tapping and reverse scroll are still working. If not, go through the steps again and see what you missed. Everything is case sensitive so you have to be very careful in that regard.

TroubleShooting

If typing the commands into the terminal worked for you, but automation by adding the commands to startup didn’t, then here is one simple troubleshooting tip to isolate the problem.

Open a terminal and type

./script.sh

If your tapping/reverse scrolling is working fine now, then your script is fine, but the autostart directory content is not. Recheck steps 1 to 6.

If your tapping/reverse scrolling isn’t working fine, then your script is flawed. Recheck step 7 to 10.

Fix 3 : modprobe method

I found out about this method

here

. It did fix a few things for me, but like the second reply on the thread, what happened with me was-

Earlier my scroll was working and tap to click wasn’t
After running the commands

Tap to click started working and two finger scroll stopped working

Also, even when my scroll was working it wasn’t natural scroll and that’s a bit inconvenient for me. So, Fix 2 above was the best fix for me. However, I’ve included this fix because it seems to work with most people. So here it is-

Step 1 : Open a terminal.

Step 2 : Type the following command. Your mouse pointer will stop working after typing the first command and will resume continue working (hopefully with the touchpad problems solved) after the second.

modprobe -r psmouse

modprobe psmouse proto=imps

Persistence

Follow these steps-

Step 1 : Navigate to required directory

 

cd /etc/modprobe.d/

Step 2 : Open text editor

leafpad whatever.conf

Step 3: Paste this-
options psmouse proto=imps

Step 4: Save and exit

Restart and see if the changes are persistent.

Again, I reiterate, this method is based on a

fix I found on Kali Forums

, and you should read further there if you are facing any problems.

That said, if you are facing any problems, then feel free to comment. If you followed the guide but had to do something a bit different to get it working, then also comment, as it may help others.

Source

Right now there are handful of multimedia converters available for Linux. It is an free and open-source application that converts to plenty of formats using FFMpeg and avconv. It is written using Python programming language and GTK3 for GUI. Currently has ability to convert more than 100 different formats.

Curlew multimedia converter is around from quite sometime and known to have some extra features such as: ability to show file information(duration, progress, approx size, duration etc.), preview file before conversion, convert part of specified file, attach subtitles to videos, show errors in details if occurs, allow to skip files or remove during conversion process, and fairly simple user interface. It is available for all currently supported Ubuntu 18.04/16.04/14.04/Linux Mint 19/18/17 and other Ubuntu based distributions.

Features:

• Easy to use with simple user interface.
• Hide the advanced options with the ability to show them.
• Convert to more than 100 different formats.
• Show file informations (duration, remaining time, estimated size, progress value).
• Allow to skip or remove file during conversion process.
• Preview file before conversion.
• Convert a specified portion of file.
• Combine subtitle with video file.
• Show error details if exist.
• And more.

Available for Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic/18.10/16.04 Xenial/14.04 Trusty/Linux Mint 19/18/17/other Ubuntu derivatives
To install Curlew in Ubuntu/Linux Mint open Terminal (Press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy the following commands in the Terminal:
That’s it

Source

Brief: This tutorial shows you how to install Popcorn Time on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Some handy Popcorn Time tips have also been discussed.

Popcorn Time is an open source Netflix inspired torrent streaming application for Linux, Mac and Windows.

With the regular torrents, you have to wait for the download to finish before you could watch the videos.

Popcorn Time is different. It uses torrent underneath but allows you to start watching the videos (almost) immediately. It’s like you are watching videos on streaming websites like YouTube or Netflix. You don’t have to wait for the download to finish here.

Popcorn Time

If you want to watch movies online without those creepy ads, Popcorn Time is a good alternative. Keep in mind that the streaming quality depends on the number of available seeds.

Popcorn Time also provides a nice user interface where you can browse through available movies, tv-series and other contents. If you ever used Netflix on Linux, you will find it’s somewhat a similar experience.

Using torrent to download movies is illegal in several countries where there are strict laws against piracy. In countries like the USA, UK and West European you may even get legal notices. That said, it’s up to you to decide if you want to use it or not. You have been warned.
(If you still want to take the risk and use Popcorn Time, you should use a VPN service like Ivacy that has been specifically designed for using Torrents and protecting your identity. Even then it’s not always easy to avoid the snooping authorities.)

Some of the main features of Popcorn Time are:

• Watch movies and TV Series online using Torrent
• A sleek user interface lets you browse the available movies and TV series
• Change streaming quality
• Bookmark content for watching later
• Download content for offline viewing
• Ability to enable subtitles by default, change the subtitles size etc
• Keyboard shortcuts to navigate through Popcorn Time

How to install Popcorn Time on Ubuntu and other Linux Distributions

I am using Ubuntu 18.04 in this tutorial but you can use the same instructions for other Linux distributions such as Linux Mint, Debian etc.

Popcorn Time is available in the software center for Deepin Linux users. Manjaro and Arch users can easily install Popcorn Time using AUR.

Let’s see how to install Popcorn time on Linux. It’s really easy actually. Simply follow the instructions and copy paste the commands I have mentioned.

Step 1: Download Popcorn Time

You can download Popcorn Time from its official website. The download link is present on the homepage itself.

Step 2: Install Popcorn Time

Once you have downloaded Popcorn Time, it’s time to use it. The downloaded file is a tar file that consists of an executable among other files. While you can extract this tar file anywhere, the Linux convention is to install additional software in /opt directory.

Create a new directory in /opt:

sudo mkdir /opt/popcorntime

Now go to the Downloads directory.

cd ~/Downloads

Extract the downloaded Popcorn Time files into the newly created /opt/popcorntime directory.

sudo tar Jxf Popcorn-Time-* -C /opt/popcorntime

Step 3: Make Popcorn Time accessible for everyone

You would want every user on your system to be able to run Popcorn Time without sudo access, right? To do that, you need to create a symbolic link to the executable in /usr/bin directory.

sudo ln -sf /opt/popcorntime/Popcorn-Time /usr/bin/Popcorn-Time

Step 4: Create desktop launcher for Popcorn Time

So far so good. But you would also like to see Popcorn Time in the application menu, add it to your favorite application list etc.

For that, you need to create a desktop entry.

Open a terminal and create a new file named popcorntime.desktop in /usr/share/applications.

You can use any command line based text editor. Ubuntu has Nano installed by default so you can use that.

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/popcorntime.desktop

Insert the following lines here:

[Desktop Entry]
Version = 1.0
Type = Application
Terminal = false
Name = Popcorn Time
Exec = /usr/bin/Popcorn-Time
Icon = /opt/popcorntime/popcorn.png
Categories = Application;

If you used Nano editor, save it using shortcut Ctrl+X. When asked for saving, enter Y and then press enter again to save and exit.

We are almost there. One last thing to do here is to have the correct icon for Popcorn Time. For that, you can download a Popcorn Time icon and save it as popcorn.png in /opt/popcorntime directory.

You can do that using the command below:

sudo wget -O /opt/popcorntime/popcorn.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Pctlogo.png

That’s it. Now you can search for Popcorn Time and click on it to launch it.

Search for Popcorn Time in Menu

On the first launch, you’ll have to accept the terms and conditions.

Accept the Terms of Service

Once you do that, you can enjoy the movies and TV shows.

Well, that’s all you needed to install Popcorn Time on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution. You can start watching your favorite movies straightaway.

However, if you are interested, I would suggest reading these Popcorn Time tips to get more out of it.

7 Tips for using Popcorn Time effectively

Now that you have installed Popcorn Time, I am going to tell you some nifty Popcorn Time tricks. I assure you that it will enhance your experience with Popcorn Time multiple folds.

1. Use advanced settings

Always have the advanced settings enabled. It gives you more options to tweak Popcorn Time. Go to the top right corner and click on the gear symbol. Click on it and check advanced settings on the next screen.

2. Watch the movies in VLC or other players

Did you know that you can choose to watch a file in your preferred media player instead of the default Popcorn Time player? Of course, that media player should have been installed in the system.

Now you may ask why would one want to use another player. And my answer is because other players like VLC has hidden features which you might not find in the Popcorn Time player.

For example, if a file has very low volume, you can use VLC to enhance the audio by 400 percent. You can also synchronize incoherent subtitles with VLC. You can switch between media players before you start to play a file:

3. Bookmark movies and watch it later

Just browsing through movies and TV series but don’t have time or mood to watch those? No issues. You can add the movies to the bookmark and can access these bookmarked videos from the Favorites tab. This enables you to create a list of movies you would watch later.

4. Check torrent health and seed information

As I had mentioned earlier, your viewing experience in Popcorn Times depends on torrent speed. Good thing is that Popcorn time shows the health of the torrent file so that you can be aware of the streaming speed.

You will see a green/yellow/red dot on the file. Green means there are plenty of seeds and the file will stream easily. Yellow means a medium number of seeds, streaming should be okay. Red means there are very few seeds available and the streaming will be poor or won’t work at all.

5. Add custom subtitles

If you need subtitles and it is not available in your preferred language, you can add custom subtitles downloaded from external websites. Get the .srt files and use it inside Popcorn Time:

This is where VLC comes handy as you can download subtitles automatically with VLC.

6. Save the files for offline viewing

When Popcorn Times stream a content, it downloads it and store temporarily. When you close the app, it’s cleaned out. You can change this behavior so that the downloaded file remains there for your future use.

In the advanced settings, scroll down a bit. Look for Cache directory. You can change this to some other directory like Downloads. This way, even if you close Popcorn Time, the file will be available for viewing.

7. Drag and drop external torrent files to play immediately

I bet you did not know about this one. If you don’t find a certain movie on Popcorn Time, download the torrent file from your favorite torrent website. Open Popcorn Time and just drag and drop the torrent file in Popcorn Time. It will start playing the file, depending upon seeds. This way, you don’t need to download the entire file before watching it.

When you drag and drop the torrent file in Popcorn Time, it will give you the option to choose which video file should it play. If there are subtitles in it, it will play automatically or else, you can add external subtitles.

There are plenty of other features in Popcorn Time. But I’ll stop with my list here and let you explore Popcorn Time on Ubuntu Linux. I hope you find these Popcorn Time tips and tricks useful.

I am repeating again. Using Torrents is illegal in many countries. If you do that, take precaution and use a VPN service. If you are looking for my recommendation, you can go for Swiss-based privacy company ProtonVPN (of ProtonMail fame). Singapore based Ivacy is another good option. If you think these are expensive, you can look for cheap VPN deals on It’s FOSS Shop.

Note: This article contains affiliate links. Please read our affiliate policy.

Source

The Marian Smoluchowski Institute of Physics offers advanced scientific education and research facilities to undergraduate and postgraduate students. The Institute is part of the Jagiellonian University in Poland, founded in 1364 and today providing education to more than 40,000 students in 80 fields of study across 16 faculties.

The Challenge is that Physics is increasingly a data-driven science and each year the institute needs to store more data from experiments and simulations. In the past enterprise storage solutions were utilized but as the amount of data grew so did the challenge of economic sustainability. Most departmental budget comes from grants to the research teams, which makes it difficult to do capacity planning and management. Upgrading and replacing the current storage solutions was becoming costly.

The Institute started to evaluate other solutions seeking greater flexibility, easier management, and more granularity in adding storage capacity. It was decided to deploy a software-defined storage solution that would eliminate vendor lock-in and the need to make major investments every few years. Ceph was identified as the leading software-defined storage platform and SUSE® Enterprise Storage was the solution they chose.

Read more about this success story HERE

 

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Source

If you work within the world of software development, you’ll find yourself bouncing back and forth between a few tools. You’ll most likely use GitHub to host your code, but find yourself needing some task/priority software. This could be GitHub itself or other ones like Jira. Of course, you may also find yourself collaborating on several tools, like Slack, and several projects. Considering that it’s already hard to keep track of the progress on one of your projects, working across several of them becomes a struggle. This problem gets worse as you move up the ranks of management where it becomes increasingly difficult to assimilate and rationalize all of this information. To help combat this, Anaxi was created to help give you all the information on the state and progress of your projects in one single interface.

Why measure dev progress?

According to LinkedIn data, there are currently over 3,000 software engineers employed on average at Fortune 4,000 companies. So, how do those companies measure the progress of their software projects and the performance of their teams? After all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, so the best of them will manually compute portions of this data on a weekly basis. This turns into a tedious and time-consuming task. In fact, this directly impacts your bottom line. Anaxi cuts out this task and may significantly improve software development efficiency within organizations. Teams will know the impact of any process change, which task they should focus on, and whether or not to anticipate any bottlenecks. This also helps reduce the loss in revenue due to shipping critical issues. According to Tricentis, there was a total of $1.7T loss in revenue in 2017 alone due to software failures and poor bug prioritization.

What is Anaxi?

Anaxi currently offers a free iPhone app that provides the full picture of your GitHub projects to help you understand and manage them better. Anaxi has a lot of features based on what they call reports. Reports are lists of issues or pull requests that you can filter as you see fit using labels, state, milestone, authors, assignees, and more. This allows you to monitor those critical bugs or see the progress of your team’s work. For each project, you can select the people on your team so you can easily see what each person is doing and help where help is needed most. It can also be used to keep track of your own work and priorities, and because it’s an iPhone app, it grants quick access to issues and pull requests that have been assigned. There’s also a customizable color indicator for report deadlines that will help you prioritize what to work on.

How to set up the app

First, you’ll need an iPhone and access to the app store. Go into the App Store and download it. Once you open the app, the landing page will appear.

To get started, press on the Connect GitHub button on the bottom of the screen and enter your GitHub credentials. Next, you’ll be asked to select projects that you want to monitor. Anaxi will automatically select some projects. There is a button you can press to edit this list at the bottom that allows you to add or remove projects from this list. If you forget a project, or realize that you don’t want to monitor a project anymore, you can change it once the initial setup is over.

When you have your projects selected, hit the Next button. It’s time to select your team. Anaxi will start by automatically selecting people that you interact with the most with for the projects you selected. Just like the previous step, you can edit this list by pressing the button at the bottom and you can add or remove team members later.

Next, you will be prompted to help set up the reports for your projects. Anaxi will also start by automatically choosing labels that are most used, but you can customize which labels you want to monitor by clicking the button at the bottom of each project. Later on, you can create more tailored reports by adding issue or pull request reports when inside of a project folder.

Now, Anaxi is set up and a view of reports appears. Mine are all green because I don’t have any activity on my selected projects. From this menu, you can see which projects have pull requests at the top. Clicking on these will pull up open tickets on these projects. If you scroll down, you can see all the pull requests and issues that are assigned to you and your team. Then you can see individual views near the bottom for all of your projects. The order of these can be changed at any time by hitting the edit button in the top right and dragging the folders around.

Let’s choose an open-source project and see what it looks like when more people are working together and there are more issues and pull requests. For this example, let’s use kubernetes/kubernetes. As you can see below, Anaxi created a report for the new project, and added it to the current full report that already existed. Now that there is a more active GitHub project present in my reports, we can see the full extent of Anaxi in action.

To edit any part of the reports, simply click on that section, and then click on the edit button in the top right. Once there, you can change filters and if you scroll to the bottom, you can change the values for when an aspect of a report displays green, yellow or red.

My experience

After using Anaxi for a little while, scrolling through my GitHub Projects doesn’t feel like a chore anymore. It’s easy to choose one project and see everything that I want to see. One thing that was slightly bothersome is every time you click on a project, it has to read the GitHub API instead of holding on to it. This results in some wait time when you are trying to switch back and forth between multiple projects in quick succession, but that’s the only downside I’ve seen so far. Changing the colors or filters on aspects of reports is surprisingly easy and intuitive. Another thing I like is that you can create a due date for a certain issue or pull request. This is great when you want to build in dates into your projects. I feel like this would really help me when I want to prioritize certain things, instead of creating Google Calendar notifications, I can do this on the project directly.

So far, I haven’t worked on any project that’s been bigger than 4 people, so it hasn’t helped me that much… yet. As I move forward in my career and work on projects with more and more people and deadlines, I feel like Anaxi will become a go-to product for me. The ability to see everything so easily and the customizability really draws me in and makes me love the product and see myself using it in the future.

What’s coming next

Anaxi currently offers an iPhone app, but don’t fret if you are a web user. The plan for Anaxi is to work on integration with Jira next to help with the technology gap between managing project and managing code. After that is completed, they are planning on creating a web app, followed by Android, and ending with native desktop apps.

This article was produced in partnership with Holberton School.

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Linux Distributions for Professionals

If you currently work in IT or aspire to work in IT, then use RedHat, CentOS, or Ubuntu.

• RedHat Enterprise Linux
  • (NOTE: If you don’t want to pay to use RedHat, use CentOS.)
• Ubuntu

Linux Distributions for Hobbyists

If you are using Linux as a hobby or for personal projects, then almost any Linux distro will work. Stick to the most popular distros as you will be better supported if you need help.

Here is the list of the top 10 most popular Linux distributions:

• Linux Mint
• Ubuntu
• Debian
• Mageia
• Fedora
• openSUSE
• Arch Linux
• CentOS
• PCLinuxOS
• Slackware

For even more Linux distros to choose from, visit DistroWatch.

The Biggest Distro Mistake Beginners Make

If you are new to Linux or a looking for a general purpose desktop distro, do NOT use Kali Linux.

Kali is a very specialized Linux distribution. It doesn’t work like ANY of the other distros listed above. If you are ONLY interested in penetration testing, then Kali is for you.

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Ubuntu Kylin 18.04 LTS – See What’s New

Ubuntu Kylin 18.04 LTS is latest version of Ubuntu Kylin. As part of Ubuntu 18.04 Flavor, this release ships with UKUI desktop environment 1.0 series. Linux kernel has been updated to 4.15. Besides, all the special software and the jointly developed software are updated to the new version, including Kylin Assistant, Ubuntu Kylin Software Center, Kylin Video, Youker Weather, Sougou Pinyin and WPS Office. Especially, Electronic Wechat and Burner have been added to the default normal install for better user experience in work and entertainment.

WPS Office is a suite of software which is made up of three primary components: WPS Writer, WPS Presentation, and WPS Spreadsheet. Ubuntu Kylin team is working with Kingsoft Corp to continue providing WPS for Ubuntu Kylin users for free. Foxit reader is based on the Foxit for Linux and designed for Chinese user to be simple during installation. It provides a way to view, create and sign PDF files, and add annotations to them.

Download Ubuntu Kylin 18.04 LTS

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You need to use lsmod program which show the status of loaded modules in the Linux Kernel. Linux kernel use a term modules for all hardware device drivers.Please note that lsmod is a trivial program which nicely formats the contents of the /proc/modules, showing what kernel modules are currently loaded.

Module Commands

There are a few commands that allow you to maniuplate the kernel. Each is quickly described below, for more information say `man [command]`.

 

• depmod – handle dependency descriptions for loadable kernel modules.
• insmod – install loadable kernel module.
• lsmod – list loaded modules.
• modinfo – display information about a kernel module.
• modprobe – high level handling of loadable modules.
• rmmod – unload loadable modules.

List or display loaded modules

Method 1: less /proc/modulesram@linuxforfreshers.com#less /proc/modulesuas 24576 0 – Live 0x0000000000000000usb_storage 69632 1 uas, Live 0x0000000000000000bridge 126976 0 – Live 0x0000000000000000stp 16384 1 bridge, Live 0x0000000000000000llc 16384 2 bridge,stp, Live 0x0000000000000000xt_CHECKSUM 16384 3 – Live 0x0000000000000000ipt_MASQUERADE 16384 9 – Live 0x0000000000000000nf_nat_masquerade_ipv4 16384 1 ipt_MASQUERADE, Live 0x0000000000000000ebtable_nat 16384 0 – Live 0x0000000000000000ebtables 36864 1 ebtable_nat, Live 0x0000000000000000nf_log_ipv4 16384 0 – Live 0x0000000000000000nf_log_common 16384 1 nf_log_ipv4, Live 0x0000000000000000xt_tcpudp 16384 13 – Live 0x0000000000000000ip6table_mangle 16384 0 – Live 0x0000000000000000iptable_nat 16384 1 – Live 0x0000000000000000nf_conntrack_ipv4 16384 3 – Live 0x0000000000000000ram@linuxforfreshers.com# lsmod | tail -10hid_generic 16384 0 usbhid 49152 0 psmouse 126976 0 hid 118784 2 hid_generic,usbhidpata_acpi 16384 0 floppy 73728 0 fjes 28672 0 e1000e 233472 0 ptp 20480 1 e1000epps_core 20480 1 ptp

Finding more info about any module or driver

Syntax: modinfo driver-Name-Hereram@linuxforfreshers.com#modinfo e1000efilename: /lib/modules/4.4.0-59-generic/kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/e1000e/e1000e.kodescription: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driverauthor: Intel Corporation, <linux.nics@intel.com>srcversion: 8D9E9AFD67E40CA48E61582alias: pci:v00008086d000015D6sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015E3sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015D8sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015D7sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015B9sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015B8sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015B7sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001570sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000156Fsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015A3sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015A2sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015A1sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000015A0sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001559sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000155Asv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000153Bsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000153Asv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001503sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001502sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010F0sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010EFsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010EBsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010EAsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001525sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010DFsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010DEsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010CEsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010CDsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010CCsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010CBsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010F5sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010BFsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010E5sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000294Csv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010BDsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010C3sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010C2sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010C0sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001501sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001049sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000104Dsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000104Bsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000104Asv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010C4sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010C5sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000104Csv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010BBsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001098sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010BAsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001096sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000150Csv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010F6sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010D3sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000109Asv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000108Csv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000108Bsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000107Fsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000107Esv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000107Dsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010B9sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010D5sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010DAsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010D9sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d00001060sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010A5sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010BCsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d000010A4sv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000105Fsv*sd*bc*sc*i*alias: pci:v00008086d0000105Esv*sd*bc*sc*i*vermagic: 4.4.0-59-generic SMP mod_unload modversions parm: debug:Debug level (0=none,…,16=all) (int)parm: copybreak:Maximum size of packet that is copied to a new buffer on receive (uint)parm: TxIntDelay:Transmit Interrupt Delay (array of int)parm: TxAbsIntDelay:Transmit Absolute Interrupt Delay (array of int)parm: RxIntDelay:Receive Interrupt Delay (array of int)parm: RxAbsIntDelay:Receive Absolute Interrupt Delay (array of int)parm: InterruptThrottleRate:Interrupt Throttling Rate (array of int)parm: IntMode:Interrupt Mode (array of int)parm: SmartPowerDownEnable:Enable PHY smart power down (array of int)parm: KumeranLockLoss:Enable Kumeran lock loss workaround (array of int)parm: WriteProtectNVM:Write-protect NVM [WARNING: disabling this can lead to corrupted NVM] (array of int)parm: CrcStripping:Enable CRC Stripping, disable if your BMC needs the CRC (array of int)Using following command to find list of installed drivers.ls -l /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/ram@linuxforfreshers.com#ls /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/ | tail -10

What is the standard directory for driver files are stored?

Using following command u can get standard Directory for Driver files are stored.echo “Kernel drivers dir: “/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/” for Linux kernel version “$(uname -r)” “ram@linuxforfreshers.com#echo “Kernel drivers dir: “/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/” for Linux kernel version “$(uname -r)” “Kernel drivers dir: “/lib/modules/4.4.0-59-generic/kernel/drivers/” for Linux kernel version “4.4.0-59-generic”

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A SQL injection attack consists of insertion or “injection” of a SQL query via the input data from the client to the application. A successful SQL injection exploit can read sensitive data from the database, modify database data (Insert/Update/Delete), execute administration operations on the database (such as shutdown the DBMS), recover the content of a given file present on the DBMS file system and in some cases issue commands to the operating system. SQL injection attacks are a type of injection attack, in which SQL commands are injected into data-plane input in order to effect the execution of predefined SQL commands.

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With that in mind, let’s tackle this Security Shepherd injection module. We are presented with a brief lesson telling us what SQL Injection is and to get the key we have to fool the database into giving us some information that it would not normally divulge. So we need to craft an SQL query that would give us the information we want.

We are given a list of names and if we type a name in the text field and hit enter, the database spits out some information on that person. So we need to find someones name that’s hidden to us that spits out the key to pass the module.

Our SQL query will be entered into the text field above. We noticed immediately that anything that we typed, the server would add a ‘; at the end of the query. So if we have another ‘ in our injection, that would cancel the one thatthe server adds. Then if we say something like ‘and 1=1’ and end the query, the database would send us back a Boolean YES, or a positive.

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We need to craft an SQL query that would list all rows and columns in the database. This proved to be tough and we tried many different queries but the one that worked for us was the query below.

That’s how SQL Injection works. We fooled the SQL database into giving us some information that was hidden from us. A nice module and it took a while to crack, but we got there.

Thanks for reading and if you like what you’ve read, please add a comment. Like and share too guys, it’s appreciated.

QuBits 2018-09-15

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