Flameshot - My favorite screenshot utility for Linux

A friend of mine by the name of Peter Brown introduced me to Flameshot, and I love this screenshooter.

I always have been a fan of xfce4-screenshooter, simply for the fact that it was "just enough" of a screenshooter utility. And it still is, but... Flameshot has very useful tools and is just so handy I am now a Flameshot man.

Any screen capture utility can take the entire screen. Where Flameshot shines is all the extra tools that are available for you when you select a section of an image.

Before I show my own screenshots of this awesome app, I wanted to add this great gif from https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot. It does a lot better job than my own work below.

I had to share that, the team made such a great showing of their useful works. These next shots are of the tools I love the most.

Here is Flameshot's menu. There are some great options here, like sharing to imgur, pinning it to the desktop, and stuff like that. But my favorite options are those below the image.

First off, holding right click gives you this quick color chooser. I usually pick the red or blue because those seem the most visible, but it's nice having the options.

These screen captures are out of sync, so forgive me, but I love the draw arrows utility, which is what this one is showcasing. The arrow on the bottom tool set here is so useful for pointing out details of screenshots you capture.

Scrolling the mousewheel will let you choose the size of your text. (and other tools). This is so useful for adding info quickly to images. (Yes, this software is awesome.)

There's a lot going on here, but what I am trying to point out is the blur tool. As you can see in the middle, I was able to blur out some of the text. The tool that does this is the one that looks like a bunch of dots together, on the bottom bar.

This is me showing the addition of circles, open boxes and filled boxes. I use these tools often to highlight specific portions of my images.

This is me just showing the useful right click menu (once you launched flamshot) in your window manager's running apps section.

These tools prove useful for me very often.

For help in installing this software, go here: https://flameshot.js.org/#/getting-start

Here is their homepage: https://flameshot.js.org/

I think you'll be glad to add this app to your app tool belt. :)

-Denny

MX Linux 19.2 - antiX on steroids

 

With the release of MX Linux I just had to try it out. I've been a fan of antiX for some time, and MX Linux being a child of antiX in many ways, I have also had an affinity for it as well.

There are a few "flavors" to choose from, XFCE, KDE and a fluxbox option.

I tried the XFCE option. The first thing I have to say is, for a lightweight distro, it's rather beautiful. I also like the amount of tools that were readily at my fingertips.

So, whenever I take one of these jaunts through a new Linux distro, the first thing I notice is what the major tools are that I would use every day. This is usually the browser, the text editor, the file manager, the media manager, and the terminal app.

MX comes with firefox browser, vlc media player, thunar file manager, a text editor that I have never seen before called featherpad text editor, and good ole' xfce4 terminal.

I have to say, two things I loved immediately, tons of tools and a quick button to get to the guts of what hardware is installed. These two things might make MX my standby usb key distro for pc problem solving.

Here are the screenshots I grabbed while strolling through the live boot: (click to enlarge)

This is a great starter screen. Tons of information at my fingertips, all the tools i could ever want for tweaking, codecs for my media.. quick access password info for checking out the distro... This is simple and genius, I love it.

This is just a vanilla shot of the distro. clean, simple, beautiful. And that conky is simple, beautiful, and gives me the info I want now. There are a lot of conky options pre-installed for those conky lovers out there. (I monked with it for a bit, see one of my other conky setups below)

I found this and I like it. Quick access through "mx tools" for nvidia driver install, codecs install, and so much more.

MX isn't the lightest distro I've seen. Peppermint OS (still my fave lightweight) is gentler on ram than this. But still, MX is no slouch.

There were a lot of beautiful wallpapers, this one is my fave.

This was the text editor available. I've never heard of it, but it is gentle on resources and runs well enough.

This (and this screenshot below) are one of the things that got special attention from me. This is a very useful tool if your use for MX is to diagnose a computer's issues through live boot.

This is the quick system info screen i show above in menu. Again, I love this idea. Quick info at my fingertips.

This definitely hearkens back to MX's old school antiX heritage. I haven't seen a PPP connection in a very long time. If you have one, you are good to go.

This was just me messing with one of the many conkey pre-installs. There are a lot of other options. Very nice indeed.

All in all this is a very well rounded distro. And MX seems to get better with age. If you would like more information, I am including MX's website and distrowatch page URLs below.

Homepage: https://mxlinux.org/

Distrowatch: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mx

-Denny

Bunsen Labs Lithium review - August 2020

I have been keeping an eye on BunsenLabs since it's inception. To say I was a fan of it's predecessor,, CrunchBang, is an understatement.

So when lithium came out, I wanted to delve into it and see how things have progressed.

It's not bad for a lightweight Linux distro. I have seen lighter, and my current favorite "light" Linux distro is Peppermint Os. 

Bunsen does an excellent job though. Very clean, sharp looking (for using openbox) and very straight forward.

If you prefer Debian over Ubuntu clockworks, then this is the better choice over Peppermint. Peppermint is easier on ram, there's no doubt. But Bunsen is no hog.

Here are some screenshots of my romp through this unique distro: (Click on them to enlarge them)

This is the vanilla Bunsen start up feel. I am not a fan of this color scheme, but it's not ugly. And I do like the quick info conky on the right side.

This is my tweaking to add color and mess with the options.

This is a screenfetch with firefox running a youtube video, to see how much ram it ate. This is not bad at all, quite reasonable on the ram here. I was quite pleased.

This is a screenfetch with the system at rest. Not bad, but Peppermint likes to sit at about 280 or less ram used. I'm not certain why Peppermint sits so wonderfully low. Still, this is very good. My bloated Ubuntu 20.04 install likes to hover at twice this ram at rest.

The default installed apps were Firefox for browser, Geany for a text editor, good ole' Thunar for file manager (I love Thunar, it's so rock solid and reliable.), and VLC for the media player.

If I were making Bunsen, i'd probably choose the same apps.

Bunsen is the easiest to configure light weight openbox set up I have ever seen. You can tweak everything with config files of coarse, but BunsenLabs goes one step further, and has GUI's (visual menus) for everything.. meaning you don't have to hunt down where that specific config file is to make changes. I love that feature.

I would not suggest bunsenlabs for a new linux initiate. But if your an old hat at Linux, love tweaking things, and especially love light tight distros or have a bit of nostalgia for ole' CrunchBang, this distro is for you.

-Denny

If you want to read up on and/or download the distro, you can do that here: https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

If you are like me and like to peruse the DistroWatch page on a distro, that's here: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bunsenlabs