Radically Simple Linux for the non-geek!

Part Five: What Can I Actually DO in PCLinuxOS?

Browse the Internet
If you've tried Firefox in Windows, you'll know what it can do for you. But what about all the plug-ins, addons that you can get. Do they work in Linux? Well, for the most part, yes. Flash, Real, and other sound/visual plugins that you can get for Windows are also available for Linux, especially on a PC. Greasemonkey scripts work. All the usual Firefox addons work.

Or you may have experienced the more refined look and feel of Opera. This is also available, free, in Linux. Maybe you've played with an AppleMac, and you've seen Safari. The most accurate and compatible of all web browsers. It uses a rendering system called KHTML. Well, what you may not have known is that KHTML was developed in conjunction with the KDE people for Konqueror. Konqueror is part of the KDE Desktop and you can only get this in Linux (and Unix-type systems). I use Firefox because of Greasemonkey and various addons which I use with GMail. Konqueror can cope with the other stuff (Real, Flash etc) and if I were not using GMail it would be Konq all the way. There are other browsers made to integrate with different desktops, (Galeon, Epiphany), feature restricted ones for slower, older computers (Dillo), even ones that render in pure Text! (Links).

PCLinuxOS comes with Firefox and Konqueror installed by default, many others available through Synaptic.

Get Your Emails
As I said, I use GMail, an on-line email service. All the addons for Firefox which make this a pleasure to use work just as well in Linux. Had I wanted to download e-mails to my computer, there are loads of alternatives. Windows users may already have seen Thunderbird. There is also KMail, which you can run on its own or as part of a big PIM suite (Kontact) which contains an Address Book, News Reader, RSS Client and loads of other goodies. Or you can go for the more "business-oriented" Evolution, something that heavyweight Outlook users won't be disappointed with.

Play Multimedia
Whilst there is no one program that's an absolute scorcher for both Video and Audio multimedia, Kaffeine does a pretty good job.  Like all open source programs of this type, it's designed to take plug-ins, so if it can't do something today, there's a fair chance it will do it tomorrow! It's certainly on a par with Windows Media Player, except that, like all open source products, it cannot play "protected" stuff (DRM etc). But if you rip your own CDs to play on your computer, that's not going to matter, is it? Region-coded DVDs require you run synaptic and install "libdvdcss2".

Where us Linux users have bragging rights, at least in the area of Audio only, is AmaroK. AmaroK is a simply amazing piece of software which catalogues all your music tracks (mp3, ogg, etc) and sorts them under Artist and Album. From there you can refine the id3 tags aka track information (eg rename the artists known as "Who" to "The Who" so that it doesn't show as separate artists). Whilst playing your tracks, you can link into lyrics sites, or get information about the artist(s) (if any) from Wikipedia. And that's just for starters. You can burn playlists to CD, you can play CDs, you can play Internet Radio sites, you can set it up to sync with your MP3/OGG player, and in some cases deal with "odd" file and folder layouts (ie it can sync mp3's with an iPod and some iRivers, too). Full mp3 functionality requires that you run synaptic and install "lame". Ogg comes as standard.

CD Ripping is a cinch in PCLinuxOS. Put in an audio CD and wait for it to load. Depending on how you are set up, a program called KsCD may play the CD. Or you may get  a menu asking you what to do. Just stop KsCD and do nothing. Right-Click on the CD symbol that appeared on the desktop and select "Open In New Window". You will see a window like the one on the left. The "track" icons are named by automatically looking up CD data on the internet. If you hover over each icon you will see that it has the "wav" extension. If you were to open a Konqueror window (just like Explorer in Windows) to another folder, you could drag and drop one or more of these icons, and you would get a copy of that track in "wav" format. Most people would prefer a compressed format for their portable player, though. Either FLAC (lossless compression), mp3 or ogg. To deal with that, "virtual" folders are displayed. Clearly they don't exist on the CD, but it doesn't matter. If you click on the Ogg Vorbis folder you will get another window:

What you see here is each track on the CD, this time as an Ogg Vorbis file. You could just as easily have used the MP3 folder, or the FLAC folder. You can now drag and drop all the files you want to your "Music" folder, the one where Amarok will look for your collection. Don't worry that they are all in the same folder, with 1000s of other music tracks, AmaroK will use the ID3 information to ensure they are sorted into Artist, Album and Track Number. Or you can of course create your own subfolders before dragging and dropping. It will take a while, as the encoding has to be done, the "ogg" or "mp3" files don't really exist on the CD, but it really doesn't get much easier, does it? Oh, and this has worked with every CD I've ever chucked in a Linux system. Programs that block access to track data just don't run in Linux. As long as you are copying tracks for personal use on your Portable or your computer, no-one is going to be too bothered (but I am Not a Lawyer!!!). The only thing that may be an occasional problem is that there is no internet data for the CD, and you will just see "Track-01" etc as the name. As long as you note the track names and don't rip another one before you sort it out, you can set this right in Amarok, under "Edit Track Information". So don't worry!

By the way, the FullCD folder contains huge wav / mp3 / flac / ogg files of the whole CD, useful with Live CDs when there is no real gap between tracks. The Information folder contains exactly what it says.

Once you learn a little, you could set up a hotkey or icon to run a customised Konqueror, with Dual-Pane, one window pointing to your CD's ogg or mp3 folder, the other to your music folder. Then just drag and drop over. I've set this up for a retired lady so she can play her operatic music in the background whilst on her computer. Another thing that I will go into at a later stage is customisation. Not just for looks but for tasks. Linux is far more flexible, and the more you get into it, the more you can tune it to your needs.

Catalogue/Retouch/Print your Photos
PCLinuxOS comes with a program called DigiKam. This is at least as good as the awful windows programs that come with many digital cameras. And I don't mean the cut-down one you get, I mean the one you often have to pay extra for. Actually it's quite powerful for little changes to your photos, like removing Red Eye, cropping, rebalancing colours, etc. You can tag and date stuff, making all your photos immediately available in a search. You can add "ufraw" from synaptic if you want it to recognise photos in "raw" format from your camera, otherwise standard jpg is handled with no problem. It can detect and read from most cameras. Nice.

Of course if you want a really professional program to play with your photos, then there's only one GIMP. Not the easiest program in the world to handle, but you'd pay hundreds of pounds for Photoshop or anything remotely as powerful. Get used to it, and let your creative juices flow!

Now there's another problem. You want the best bit of a photo to fit exactly into a 6" x 4" frame. Well PCLinuxOS includes a DeskTopPublishing program called Scribus. Open. Create a frame the right size, and load the pic into it. Now resize and move the photo around the frame until you can see exactly what you want printed. Print. Trim. Put in frame. Hit thumb with hammer when putting nail in wall. Simple. I'll be doing a separate piece on this use of Scribus at some point. Well it's free isn't it? Just because you could create a full glossy magazine with the program doesn't mean that some punter in their spare room can't use it to frame the grandkids' photos?

Keep Track of your Bank Account
PCLinuxOS comes with a program called KBudget, but I prefer KMyMoney. No problem, just run Synaptic and add it. There's also GnuCash if you prefer. All perfectly suited to maintaining your home finances, with Standing Order/Direct Debit control, multiple accounts, transfers, reconciling with statements. Never lose track of your dosh again!

BUT -- isn't Windows prettier? Doesn't all this Linux stuff look a little dated on your desktop? Hah, no chance, when it comes to eye candy, Linux can't be beat. We'll come back to some more applications later, but on the next page I will be introducing the lovely Beryl.

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