GIMP tutorial

This is a tutorial about one of the most popular open source and free image editing programs around - GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). It's a powerful image editing tool with paths, color management, and layers. While perhaps not 100% on the scale of Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, it does offer a great deal of functionality.

GIMP is available on most desktop platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS. Hope the overview is helpful to get those with and those without any image editing experience started.

Download GIMP
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Learn more:
https://www.gimp.org/docs/
https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

iPhone image source:
https://techupdatess.com/its-time-to-take-googles-pixel-phones-more-seriously-engadget/
(again not mine, just used for the tutorial)

Since GIMP has been around for more than two decades, a great deal more information is available. I hope this is a good first overview of the basics.

Open Source vs Free to Use

So as this content gets flushed out, I want to ensure that I'm clear with what this blog and videos series are and are not.

I chose Open Source Tech Training (OSTT) as a name because I hope in some small way, this can help your average user get over any fears or uncertainty about open source and free tools. That said, what I share, is my own experience and workflows, not all of which are 100% open source. For example, the introduction to GSuite or Google Docs is a way that I tend to use email and office personally, and professionally these days. GSuite is free to use to a point (create your Google account get 15 GB of space in their cloud) but would not be considered open source as the underlying code is not public.

So what is open source? Search in Google and a few definitions come up:

• Open source - "denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified." - Google search result for "Define open source"
• Open-source software "is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose." - Wikipedia

A couple of items needed are the software is free to use, but the code must also be freely available, and allow for other people to make changes. Lots of tools and services, like Linux which we covered, FreeBSD, or Signal Messenger, adhere to the standard of open source. Those with the knowledge and willingness, can go find the code (much of which is shared via GitHub), and can tweak, modify and help improve the code that is there. 

It's a community. Open source is built by both skilled developers and unskilled people looking to learn, spending time to improve code and projects. Many people will explain how they became involved and often it has to do with pure interest. Open source can also allow for a wider net of developers to work on something. While a corporation would have more control on direction for a project, it takes a lot of resources to create modern applications, including both the initial development and testing and debugging. Open source helps as anyone who finds a bug can report it and become involved in the process of fixing it, so for many smaller projects its a good way to get started to help iron out bugs and field test a software at least at its most basic level. 

Coming back to this blog and effort, I am no developer, and haven't been involved in the community aspects, though I have great respect for the people who have that knowledge. What Open Source Tech Training seeks to do is explains how to use open source and free software to handle common tasks. In that sense, I talk almost purely about the usage of these tools, and am not too concerned about the nuances of only using open source. Its really about finding what works for your workflow, and what we're focusing on is some tips and tricks to explore how these tools can be used.

Using G Suite and Google Docs

G Suite is the current term for the whole range of office / productivity applications that Google offers for free with your Google account. Beyond just Gmail, it includes the following applications:

• Gmail
• Docs (like Word)
• Sheets (like Excel)
• Slides (like Powerpoint)
• Drive (cloud storage / file sharing)
• Forms
• Hangouts (messaging)
• Meet (concalls)
• Sites (your website)
• App maker
• Jamboard
• and more...

G Suite when viewing their site is the business variant for enterprises and has multiple subscriptions. That said a standard Google account will also have most of these features, particularly all of the Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, so it is easy to get started. For more info about the professional version see here.

More useful links about getting started using Google Docs and G Suite are below:

• GSuite help https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9282664?hl=en
• GCFGlobal https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/googledocuments/
• Zapier Google Sheets tutorial https://zapier.com/learn/google-sheets/google-sheets-tutorial/
• Technology for Teachers and Students https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBITNezSmLY
• Prolific Oaktree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJiUTXGv3PE
• Flipped Classroom Tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6V_h43-BIY

Though not open source, it is very useful to get started with as most already know, and we'll be exploring some more cool features that it can do with Forms, Sheets and Scripts in a later tutorial.

Linux overview and introduction

This video is somewhat in depth on my thoughts about Linux and its background. For those of you just looking for how to install, feel free to jump to minute 35.

What we cover is a slightly more detailed overview of Linux, including how to get started and some things (like enable your firewall) to run when first installing Linux. Linux Mint is used as the example just because it is popular and has a more familiar user interface for people used to Windows.

For more information about the source material and references used, please see the links below. To download some popular Linux distros and find out more info about where to learn all the ins and outs of Linux, please check out the Quick Links in the sidebar.

Linux commands:

• http://linuxcommand.org/
• http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/
• https://medium.com/@duruldalkanat/bash-commands-guide-129c81cbfe87

Creating a bootable USB:

• https://www.pendrivelinux.com/liveusb-install-live-usb-creator/
• https://rufus.ie/
• https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/
• https://www.balena.io/etcher/

Still have more to come, hope this is helpful.

What are we doing here?

This blog is aimed to be a supplementary reference to a series of YouTube videos I am slowly putting together as free training / overviews on using open source and free software tools. The name is opensourcetechtrn because I can't really think of anything better, but not all tools covered are necessarily open source, and some do have paid features you can decide if you wish to use or not.

What I hope this site and video series can be is a reference to get more people started and understanding of how to use tools like Linux, Google Docs, GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), and FreeNAS to better understand computers, website design, programming, and more. These are a collection of tools that I myself use and have had to learn through years of combing the Internet for information about how to do things like create websites, backup files, share files, script functionality in spreadsheets, etc. In my time, the more I used these tools, the more I learned and the more interested I became in the history and functionality they offer. My goal is to help gather these tools, speak on their usage, go through how to use them on a basic level, and provide more reference links for those of you who wish to master any of these topics.

The series will cover everything from fundamentals of an operating system, to getting started with Linux, to using GIMP for photo editing, and even some rudimentary programming with Python and Java. I am not a master of any of these tools, but I have through years of bumbling around learned a few things, and hope my experience can be useful for non-technical people to get over the fears of starting. Like it or not, technical skills are becoming a requirement for nearly every industry with average salaries well above minimum wage.

When I graduated collage with a liberal arts background, I never thought I'd end up learning so much about computers, servers, programming, and more. These 'geeky' technologies are in fact not only accessible, but really handy, and I truly believe anyone can learn them.

I hope this page can be useful and help more people get started understanding open source tech.