- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

linux alternative to "edit" in windows photos?
by CAREY SCHUG 04 Sep '25

04 Sep '25

AI said there is no equivalent. The edit option in Windows Photos has a one-button "delete background" which can replace it with transparent or white (probably other colors, I didn't need, so didn't check). Anything similar in Linux/Unix? I needed this for an image with a monochrome portrait that had been superimposed on a colored background. If I could have eliminated everything not exactly greyscale, that would have probably been better (if there were a few greyscale pixels in the background, I could have manually removed them). Gimp would only remove one color at a time, and the background was "mostly" gold, but contained several yellow through red images. A few web-based sites I saw charged fees, afaics. Carey

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more bitches with ubuntu snaps
by CAREY SCHUG 03 Sep '25

03 Sep '25

asked an AI search engine how to automatically split a large image across multiple print pages. suggested gimp could do it, but might not be supported. The menu items were not present, so I presumed not. It is an Epson printer; does anybody know if the brand makes a difference? It claims edge-to-edge printing, so one might think that would be a likely candidate for image splitting. AI suggested Chrome or Firefox. My Chrome-derived browser would not, but I still tried that after I saw the menu items in Firefox were not present. Suggested Adobe Acrobat. Install said it was only 70k, wow. That was only an installer program, which then installed Wine and Acrobat. could not find the menu items to do it. Uninstalled Adobe, but it left wine (also a snap), so my root disk filled up the next day till i manually uninstalled wine. In the meantime, I used the alternative they suggested, having gimp split the image. That worked fine and was easier than I had feared it would be. Guess I should not have bothered looking for easy... Carey

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Anyone getting bounces from Gmail: failed sending to you@googlemail.com?
by Ron 01 Sep '25

01 Sep '25

Seeing quite a few mail rejection messages: > Address not found > > Your message wasn't delivered to *your.name(a)google.com* because the > address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail. > > <https:// support.google.com/mail/?p=NoSuchUser> Seems there's been quite a spate of these messages where someone's trying to send from my.name(a)gmail.com to my.name(a)googlemail.com and the back-scatter does raise eyebrows. At least a couple users of Ontario LUGs are experiencing this, so thought I'd reach out. If it's wide spread, it may indicate email harvesting from the list archive.

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Take 2: Anyone have experience with CatchyOS?
by Evan Leibovitch 01 Sep '25

01 Sep '25

My experiment with Brazzite has been, to me, a failure. For something touted to be a key player in the rise of the Linux Desktop, I'm not impressed. There are so many "so long as you don't" restrictions that I imagine it works fantastic in a handful of very specific scenarios but is pretty bad at anything else. So, time to move on rather than continue to fight with it. Life's too short. From one extreme to the other, I'm going to try CatchyOS. It promises multiple new tech for me to learn, notably Arch and btrfs. Plus this thing is massively configurable, to the point of specifying how advanced is your CPU's instruction set and what kind of kernel schedular to use(!). I'm using AI tools to figure out the optimal settings for Catchy for any given CPU/GPU combo. Any tips and caveats are appreciated. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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one more lug positive note.
by Karen Lewellen 31 Aug '25

31 Aug '25

Evan, In addition to the post from Germany I shared, others landed on the Debian list about other areas, Boston, California, Virginia. Then there is the post below..complete with a list of lugs where, at least in theory, one can attend a Linux Users group meeting every day of the week. Take heart, the work continues. at least if one knows where to look. Kare Post is below this line. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2025 16:19:38 -0700 Many have replied with excellent points, information, etc., so I'll try to not be (too) redundant. Most notably that folks may find of relevant interest, approximate/effective listing of such groups that have/include online (or hybrid) meetings. Not exactly how the list started, but regardless well covers that - at least for LUGs and such in (or including) English. So, URLs, canonical first, then one example of many shorter easier to remember handy redirects to the canonical: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:covid-19 balug.org/covid (https or http - it mostly doesn't force one to use https) And, teensy bit of history (and toot my own horn slightly), during COVID-19, notably shelter-in-place, lockdowns, etc., I started searching out and putting together list of LUGs and the like that were (also) having (or had moved to) online meetings. Since I was searching in (and am only fluent in) English, it's very much just those in (or including) English. But in any case, there are many such groups/meetings online or including such. Heck, one can virtually (online) go to about a LUG meeting every day - most days have at least one meeting, some days have multiple. And, as far as I'm aware, I was the first to put together such a list - don't know that anyone else has even done same/similar subsequently. Though there do exist and have long existed various listings of LUGs and the like - but this listing was specifically for those having/including online (or hybrid) meetings. So yes, can be fun/interesting to (virtually) go to various LUG and such meetings scattered around the planet. :-) There's also some handy info (mostly contributed by Rick Moen) on that page about using GNU date to conveniently convert time/date information between different timezones (e.g. timezone of meeting location to one's local timezone). Anyway, that's the relatively unique and (mostly) quite non-redundant bit I can add. As for (mostly) redundant, and yes, I quite concur, and many have been noticing this for many years, and typically conclude relatively similarly: LUGs and the like aren't what they once were - much interested has waned/faded. But regardless, many do still quite continue and are very useful, etc., just mostly not nearly as numerous and large as they once were. And probably mostly because of multiple factors. Once upon a time, installing Linux and getting it reasonably functioning was quite challenging. LUGs were exceedingly helpful for that, if not effectively "essential". Bandwidth also much more limited (to even non-existent) for many, so LUGs also generally great source to get desired ISOs, e.g. on CDs, or even get floppies with the relevant data. Likewise getting information online was much more challenging (not nearly so much there, bandwidth, search technology not nearly as good, etc.). And comparatively, these days, installing Linux is typically pretty dang easy, and similar for figuring out or getting information on any issues encountered. And another factor, Linux is no longer "the new shiny". It's mostly a (relatively) known quantity/thing, and with most of the major technical issues and such already highly well solved. So, yeah, LUGs, still rather/quite useful, but not nearly as popular (nor needed/"required") as they one were. And yes, LUGs and related do very much continue to exist, and including physical in person meetings, and events, etc. E.g. just yesterday there was a Linux installfest not far from where I reside, see, e.g. some of these URLs, etc.: http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2025-May/013003.html https://blog.zgp.org/alameda-linux-installfest/ http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2025-August/013041.html And Debian release day, I hosted: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleasePartyTrixie/US/Pacific I'm also relatively active with multiple local LUGs. If one is looking for such in the US California San Francisco Bay area, see also: (these aren't necessarily current / (well) maintained, but, meta-lists, so a listing of lists): https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:bay_area_open_source_linu… http://linuxmafia.com/bale/ http://www.lugod.org/calendar/ http://www.svlug.org/farm.php#other-local https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CaliforniaTeam/Projects/UserGroupContacts/Groups#SF https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=caj9iea2ol69b7n2uqdek4ocso%40grou… https://goo.gl/b9WY5k (redirector to the immediately above)

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Why I Don't Use #!/bin/bash - Shebangs Explained! (Another one by Dave at YSAP)
by Ron 31 Aug '25

31 Aug '25

It's a long weekend, a good time to play in the garden, ride bicycles up and down hills, and watch some `bash` videos. Dave at YSAP discusses "shebang" lines and does his deep-dive into them. Shebang lines are those lines at the top of a script that bash processes, right? Wrong. Bash ignores that line, it's the kernel that processes the shebang. Node / v8 also are smart enough to ignore the shebang line, even though lines starting with # in JS are *not* comments. Cool! He compares behaviours on Darwin, Void Linux, and IllumOS / SunOS. Differences show up when passing options in shebang lines. Lots of interesting tricks can be had by tweaking that line, and after some 10 minutes of general explanation, he heads down the rabbit hole starting with his favourite distro, Void Linux. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoHMiCzqCNw TL;DR: use: #!/usr/bin/env bash (or, since I'm a new convert) #!/usr/bin/env fish

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VoIP.ms Softphone -- opinion?
by William Park 31 Aug '25

31 Aug '25

Hi all, Anyone using "VoIP.ms Softphone" app from Google store? Why does it have low review on Google store? I'm thinking about moving my landline number to VoIP.ms. I would need another ATA box, because my current one is locked to Teksavvy. With "VoIP.ms Softphone", I can avoid buying another ATA box, and my usage will be the same as now. The only new feature would be having SMS on "homephone".

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any robocaller blocking answering machines?
by CAREY SCHUG 30 Aug '25

30 Aug '25

When I do a web search, I find devices "preloaded with xxx thousand numbers" or room for me to add xxx thousand numbers, but IME, spam/robo calls never come from the same number twice, so that is a waste of me pressing the "block call" feature. I want an answering machine including multiple cordless phones, and maybe that will connect to bluetooth to handle mobile calls too, that will: 1. if the number is in my local directory (names I have saved as friends), act like a normal answering machine: wait 2-6 rings (selectable) while ringing all my cordless phones with the "friend" ringtone and maybe saying the name, and then answer and take a message. (This would be a short, casual, friendly message) "Hi, it's <my name>, please leave a message" 2. If the callerid is an actual name, act like a normal answering machine: wait 2-6 rings while ringing all my cordless phones with a "stranger" ringtone and saying the name. If I don't pick up, answer with a formal business-like message: "You have reached 847-333-4444, the phone of Carey Schug. He is away or busy at the moment. After the tone, please leave your name, number, and purpose for your call." 3. If the callerid is "PRIVATE", "UNKNOWN", "TOLL FREE CALL", "CELLULAR CALL", "WIRELESS CALLER", or "ILLINOIS CALL" (which can be programmed for different local service providers' defaults), answer immediately with "hello" and wait a second. A real person, admittedly including some spammers, will respond immediately. A robocaller will have a 2-second delay until they connect their end to a person, so my device will hang up. If there is an immediate voice response, record it, then when they pause, respond "please wait while I locate <my name>" and continue ringing my phone(s), with an "anonymous" ringtone. 4. If I pick up, play the message it recorded and give me the options --connect live --play a message to "remove me from your phone list and do not call back" and hang up --respond as if I did not pick up (below 5. After a while, if I do not pick up, return to the caller and say "<my name> is not available. if are you happy with the message you left, just hang up, or press 1 to leave no message, or press 2 to record a new message." 6. bonus #1 (maybe). Long ago, I saw (or had?) a phone which had a button, press it and it would emit the tones the phone company uses to indicate a non-working number, purportedly would cause the spammers to remove the number from their list. Maybe that doesn't work anymore, as I have not seen it as a listed feature. I think I have recently gotten a special tone when I called a non-working number. 7. bonus #2: let me record a special message for a specific number, e.g. Sam is coming over today, so for Sam ONLY, a message plays "I may be 15 minutes late getting home, please wait for me." 8. bonus #3: like bonus #2, but for names in my directory in a group, e.g. family members or members of a club, the message could be "our next gathering is Sunday at 4 PM". 9. the special messages above should be selectable to be for 24 hours or until I delete them. Or maybe till the person calls. Carey

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Do you recognized valid email addresses? NO, you do not.
by Ron 29 Aug '25

29 Aug '25

For everyone complaining that $tech is too complicated or makes no sense (I'm guilty sometimes), here's a fun quiz to test your knowledge about something simple - email address formats. A tip when going into this, "Valid" can mean "Was Once Valid per RFC". https://e-mail.wtf/ > I scored 12/21 on https://e-mail.wtf and all I got was this lousy text > to share on social media. What's your score? 100% == liar Bonus: https://jsdate.wtf/ > How well do you know JavaScript's Date class? Worth looking at even if not interested in JS. I forget my score on that one, but it wasn't great.

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(Sort of off topic) High School courses
by William Park 29 Aug '25

29 Aug '25

Does anyone know how High School courses are selected? I don't think Ministry of Education staffs write the textbooks, exercises, and curriculum. They probably review it and stamp approval. Because I have an idea for a course at K-12 market.

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