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Intangible gift ideas with open source in mind Phil Shapiro Thu, 12/01/2022 - 03:00

When the holidays roll around each year, you'll encounter some wonderful gift-giving guides for physical gifts. But how about intangible gifts? Some of the most meaningful gifts are intangible ones. Let me plant some ideas in your head in that regard, and explain how intangible gifts fit in perfectly with the open source way.

Growing up, my parents established an ethic for our family: "We fix things, build things, and take agency upon the world," became our family's motto. My dad, a trained pharmacist and the chief medical supply officer for UNICEF, would routinely do carpentry, car maintenance, plumbing, and electrical work at our house. My dad once used a paper clip to fix his broken-down VW car, stalled in heavy Parisian traffic in 1952.

Mom, she could sew anything, whip up a great meal with leftovers, and exercise her creativity in a thousand other ways. I loved watching my parents' resolve when they decided to undertake a project. They would literally chortle as they rolled up their sleeves, figuring out what they needed to do first, second, and third.

In the vein of do-it-yourself, back in 2005, when I was unemployed, I wanted to send a birthday gift to my niece, turning seven. Without funds to buy her a gift, I sat down and composed When I Was Seven. She adored receiving this gift and remembers it fondly seventeen years later. What could be more valuable than a gift that is remembered fondly seventeen years later? Incidentally, the graphics in this YouTube video were created using LibreOffice Draw. (Back then, LibreOffice was called OpenOffice.)

More great content Free online course: RHEL technical overview Learn advanced Linux commands Download cheat sheets Find an open source alternative Explore open source resources Give wonder

Did you know that wondering can be a gift? I work at a public library, so I know all about the value of wondering. You too can bump up the wonderings in your life—and pass along that wondering as an intangible gift in the conversations you have with others. For example, this past week I've been wondering where would be a good location to set up a large, rural makerspace. Some YouTube videos about wood-powered trucks, cars, and bicycles got my synapses thinking. Wood is a renewable resource. Maybe we ought be using it more.

"Hmmmm," I thought to myself. "What's the most forested state in the United States?" I recall that 90 percent of Maine is covered in forests. So I did a web search for how many trees there are in Maine. I was prepared to encounter a large number—such as 5 or 10 million. I wasn't prepared to encounter the actual number—23 billion.

So with 23 billion trees, you could have a large, rural makerspace powered by wood-powered gasifiers, along with solar, wind and micro-hydro power (as long as the property has a fast-flowing stream or river on it.) People traveling to such a place could have their electrical vehicles recharged at the makerspace, reducing their travel costs. Trees are a renewable resource, and if used wisely (not wastefully) could provide heating, cooking, and electrical power to a rural makerspace. People could learn all about sustainability at this rural makerspace, too.

As you can see, wondering takes your mind places. My wonderings allowed me to be one of the first persons in the world to see the bicycle treehouse elevator, in Idaho, back in August, 2013. I was also one of the first to see the trivia vending machine (Raspberry Pi powered), originating from Southern Methodist University and the Dallas Makerspace.

Wondering is contagious. At your family's dinner table, make it a practice to use the phrase, "I was wondering..." That's an intangible gift you can give others. Wonder together with friends, too. Back in 2007, I got together with some friends to create a spoof YouTube video—which was chosen as a YouTube Editor's Choice and featured on the front page of YouTube. This particular video was created using proprietary software, but I knew in 2007 that similar videos could be created using open source software in coming years. Today, I'd be using OpenShot, Blender, KDEnlive to create this video.

In terms of intangible gifts you give others, find fun small projects where you're exploring something that nobody in the world has ever done before. Before the pandemic, I decided to upload an 8K digital storytelling video to YouTube, created using LibreOffice Draw. Of the 8 billion people living on planet Earth, there's (roughly speaking) one person using LibreOffice Draw to create 8K videos on YouTube. That would be me. And, in the process of doing so, I teach others how they can do so, too.

Final thought

Let me leave you with one last thought. Open source is not only a software creation method, it is an approach to living one's life. I find it an enriching way to live one's life—and this enrichment can be given to others.

Gratis.

Give that gift, in multiple ways, to loved ones in your life. Do it for the holidays and maybe the process will become a family habit. A year-round family habit. Spread it around the neighborhood. See what happens.

Consider giving the priceless gift of wonder, curiosity, or heartfelt art this holiday season.

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Photo by Aaron Haley, CC BY-SA 4.0

Art and design Video editing LibreOffice What to read next 7 maker gifts for kids and teens This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. 1 Comment Register or Login to post a comment. Phil Shapiro | December 1, 2022 Register or Login to like

Max Jarrell, of Los Altos, California, once asked his parents to install Inkscape as his Christmas present. That is all he wanted for Christmas. This anecdote is reported in this PCWorld article https://www.pcworld.com/article/494626/inkscape-3.html For that Christmas, his parents learned the deep value of non-monetary gifts.

5 reasons I use the Dolphin file manager on Linux Seth Kenlon Thu, 12/01/2022 - 03:00

Computers are basically fancy file cabinets, full of folders and files waiting to be referenced, cross-referenced, edited, updated, saved, copied, moved, renamed, and organized. Of course, the files and folders are only virtual, and so software developers came up with the modern "desktop" user interface. Your screen is the top of your "desk," which you can use as a surface for taking out files from their folders so you can review and work on them. The analogy seems almost quaint these days because computers are so much more than just a filing cabinet. And yet the model remains, for many of us, as the primary way we interact with data on our personal computers, which makes humble file manager software some of the most important applications you use.

Dolphin on Linux Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The KDE Plasma Desktop provides Dolphin as its file manager. At first glance, it's a simple and almost minimal application. Don't let that fool you, though. There's a lot of potential in how you interact with the files on your computer, and Dolphin recognizes that. Here are five of my favorite Dolphin features.

More Linux resources Linux commands cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Free online course: RHEL technical overview Linux networking cheat sheet SELinux cheat sheet Linux common commands cheat sheet What are Linux containers? Our latest Linux articles 1. Fast launches

Dolphin is quick to launch, and I don't mean that Dolphin itself launches quickly, but that the files you use within Dolphin can be opened quickly. A longtime KDE convention is that a single click of the mouse opens a file. That's admittedly counter-intuitive at first. After all, everybody knows you use a single click to select something and a double-click to open. But think about it. When you're selecting something, you're probably engaged in something relatively ponderous. You select files to then do something with them. The act of selection isn't the main action, it's the prep work for the action. There's no immediacy to selection.

But when you open something, you've already made up your mind. You want the file opened so you can start working. There's immediacy to opening a file.

If you look at it that way, it makes sense to require fewer clicks to open a file. So with Dolphin, by default at least, a single click opens a file in its default application. To select a file, you can either click on a Selection button overlaid over the icon, or click and drag to make a group selection. None of this is what you're used to, maybe, and it may seem unnatural, but after you've tried it you won't be able to tolerate a less efficient system.

Faster launch (the other kind)

This isn't a Dolphin feature specifically, but it deserves recognition. Thanks to the kdeinit subsystem of the KDE Plasma Desktop, Dolphin and many other KDE applications benefit from function pre-loading. Essentially, processes are launched by forking and loading a dynamic library containing a ''kdemain()'' function, which gives the typical KDE application a boost to launch time (I haven't timed it myself, but they say it's 2.5 times faster than without) and a reduction in memory consumption.

2. Contextual actions

One of the most basic and most common actions you do with a file manager is move and copy files. In fact, for many people, that's all a file manager is for.

In Dolphin, when you drag-and-drop a file from one place to another, you're given a pop-up contextual menu so you can quickly choose whether you're copying, moving, or symlinking the file. If that slows you down, you can press a modifier key while dragging: Shift to move, Ctrl to copy, or Ctrl+Shift to link. It's fast, efficient, and friendly.

Image by:

​(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

3. Power of Qt

The KDE Framework is based on the Qt framework, a famously flexible graphical toolkit. Not all KDE applications have the opportunity to take advantage of that, but Dolphin has several features that draw upon Qt's modular design. For instance, if you don't like the Places panel on the left of the window, you can move it to the right side of the window, or remove it entirely. Move the toolbar, remove the menu bar and status bar. Qt stops short of letting you redesign Dolphin entirely, but there's enough malleability for you to be able to change its layout to what works best for you.

Here's my personal Dolphin configuration:

Image by:

(Seth Kenlon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

4. Plugins

Dolphin isn't just Dolphin. It's Dolphin plus any number of plugins you choose to enable. There are plugins for several version control systems, including Git. There are lots of ways to interact with Git, and Dolphin adds one more way for convenience. I don't often think that I'm going to use Dolphin as my Git interface, but with Dolphin version control plugins enabled, it's too easy not to use Dolphin as my Git interface. Nothing could be more natural than adding a file to staging, or adding a commit message, or even pushing to a remote repository, with the file manager that you're using to browse through the files anyway.

5. Options

They're not technically plugins because they're built along with the application, but Dolphin has a staggering number of optional features. You don't have to activate them all at once, but there's plenty of features in Dolphin for you to discover over years of use. For instance, there's an option to show a filter bar, which you can use as a kind of instant find command. You can use tabs in Dolphin, or split the Dolphin window into panes, you can enable expandable folders or choose to click into them, you can open archives as folders, you can choose to view thumbnail previews of certain files or deactivate them for other filetypes, and much more.

Dolphin and the modern Linux desktop

Dolphin, like KDE, thrives on providing you, the user, options, by letting you decide what you want activated and what you want to ignore. Dolphin isn't the minimal lightweight file manager you compile and install on a 10-year old computer you've rescued from the bin (although I've run it as a file manager for Fluxbox on some surprisingly old computers with success), it's the one you feature on your latest PC build. In short, Dolphin is the high tech desktop experience you'd expect from an advanced operating system like Linux. Dive in!

The KDE Plasma Desktop provides the Dolphin file manager on Linux. It may appear minimal, but its useful features make a splash.

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(WordPress, CC0 License)

Linux What to read next 24 Linux desktops you need to try This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Register or Login to post a comment.

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