today's howtos

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 04, 2026

• TecMint ☛ How to Search, Stream, and Download Anime Using ani-cli

• RIPE ☛ When Traceroutes Lie: How TTL Jumps Can Give Us a False Impression of the Internet’s Topology

  Traceroute is a powerful tool for uncovering how packets travel across the Internet. However, as we recently discovered, some routers tamper with the TTL values in traceroute's probing packets, giving you a false view of how networks are actually interconnected.

• OSTechNix ☛ Paint.NET Can Now Run on Linux: Here’s How to Install It in Ubuntu [Ed: Made by slop; better avoided, experimental, use GNU's GIMP instead. Using slop (LLM) to develop something does not prove you're advancing or evolving, just like taking steroids does not make you stronger, it kills you because you cheat and destroy your health.]

  Paint.NET can now run on GNU/Linux with experimental Wine support. Here’s how to install Paint.NET 5.2 Alpha on Ubuntu using Wine, Winetricks, DXVK, and the /wine launch option.

• University of Toronto ☛ Status reports and indicators are untrustworthy, UPS battery edition

  A lot of things these days can report useful information about their status and health. Or at least their theoretical status and health. As we've seen, things like server BMCs may be reporting outdated hardware inventories. Today I got another vivid illustration of that, when Toronto had what you could call a significant weather event with some power flickers in my area, and I made an unhappy discovery about my home UPS: [...]

• PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ GIMP Tutorial: Remove A Background In A Glass Object

  I saw a tutorial the other day that I thought was cool. It takes an image of a glass object and makes it more transparent, so a background can show through it. The catch is that it only works with images with a white background. This tutorial was from Logos by Nick. The first thing you do after loading in your image is to remove the surrounding area. In my case, I used an image of a pitcher.

• PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Wiki Pick: Install Man Pages In PCLinuxOS

  This tip comes from our PCLinuxOS founder and overlord, Texstar.

  Are you unfamiliar with man pages? They are accessed from the command line, by typing man . They differ from the “help” information accessed by typing the name of the program, followed by either -- help, -h, or -?. Linux man pages are much more comprehensive, and cover the options of a program in much greater depth and detail. You wouldn't be remiss to think of Linux man pages as a comprehensive help file, available from the command line.

  Under PCLinuxOS, Linux man pages are no longer packaged for installation from the package manager. The packagers have many more important things to focus on.

• PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Using AI Locally On PCLinuxOS: Upscayl

  But let’s talk about how we can start using AI locally on PCLinuxOS, with a program called Upscayl.

• PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Alternative Methods of Installing Typst Locally

  Almost two years ago, I wrote a tutorial on how to install Typst locally on your computer, thus avoiding the need for an internet connection to use Typst's web app. I recently learned about some alternative methods of installing the Typst compiler locally and would like to share them.

  Linux allows you the flexibility to install a third-party application such as Typst in multiple ways. I will discuss one installation method in detail, and mention three other options you might want to consider in the latter half of my article.

  If your computer is a single-user, single-disk machine, then where you install Typst is not a crucial matter (personal opinion). However, if your system has multiple users and/or multiple disks, you should evaluate all these options carefully before making a final decision.

• PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ Tip Top Tips: Automatically Backup Your System When You Update

  Tip Top Tips is a semi-monthly column in The PCLinuxOS Magazine. Periodically, we will feature – and possibly even expand upon – one tip from the PCLinuxOS forum. The magazine will not accept independent tip submissions specifically intended for inclusion in the Tip Top Tips column. Rather, if you have a tip, share it in the PCLinuxOS forum’s “Tips & Tricks” section. Occasionally, we may run a “tip” posted elsewhere in the PCLinuxOS forum. Either way, share your tip in the forum, and it just may be selected for publication in The PCLinuxOS Magazine.

• PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ mpv: Using The "Forgotten" Multimedia Player As An OTA TV Player

  mpv is a fork of a fork. No, really! According to Wikipedia, in 2010, mplayer2 was forked from Mplayer. In 2012, mpv was forked from mplayer2. Its goal was to encourage developer activity by removing unmaintainable code and dropping support for very old systems. As a result, the project received a large influx of contributions. mpv is a multiplatform offering, with versions existing for Linux, macOS, BSD, and Windows. There is even an unofficial Android port of mpv.

  mpv seems to have been designed from the get-go to be a command line program. As a result, its GUI is about as minimalist as you can get and still have a window. The OSC, or on-screen controller, was added to help offer basic mouse interactions, gave new users easier access to the controls, and to allow precise and direct seeking during playback of multimedia elements. The multimedia engine powering mpv is ffmpeg, so pretty much any file or multimedia format that ffmpeg can recognize can be played back in mpv.

• Linux Handbook ☛ Tmux Fundamentals

  Never lose a terminal session again! Learn tmux sessions, panes, and windows in this free, beginner-friendly course. No signup required.

• Linux Handbook ☛ Chapter 1: Why Tmux?Understanding Terminal Multiplexing

  If you have ever run a long command over SSH and lost it because your connection dropped, you already understand the pain tmux solves.

• Linux Handbook ☛ Chapter 2: Get Tmux Running

  In the previous chapter, we looked at the problem tmux solves and why persistent terminal sessions are useful, especially when working over SSH.

  Now it's time to actually use tmux.