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June 2021 LXF276 3
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MEET THE TEAM
Neil Mohr Editor
neil.mohr@futurenet.com
They’re not Google’s photos, they’re
mine! To the surprise of no one
Google has ended the free photo
storage feature of Google Photos.
Now any photos you take that are
uploaded to the Google Cloud
contribute to your overall storage
usage. Previously, you could choose
to have Google compress photos
and they were stored for free, but
offering to store billions of Android
user’s photos for gratis isn’t a viable
long-term strategy. Surprise!
Phrases like “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” or “if
something is free, you’re the product” spring to mind, but more to
the point Google’s expanded its empire as far as it can and offering
freebies is no longer required. It’s time to pay up.
But as usual, here at Linux Format Towers we like to do things
ourselves. Jonni’s been busy building his own NextCloud-powered
photo back-up solution, alongside other off-the-shelf options – both
on- and offline – for looking after your phone snaps and D-SLR
shots. Even if you still plan to use Google Photos, these tools can
help offset your storage usage and avoid paying for that 100GB
storage band from Google.
We’re also looking at Gentoo, OpenStreetMaps, managing
servers with Cockpit, analysing Systemd start-up times, grappling
with Blender modelling, classic emulation of the Commodore PET
and Jupiter Ace, and loads more. So enjoy!
Jonni Bidwell
OpenMediaVault server can install
Portainer
in
a single click, and despite running many a
container on very modest hardware, it never
once fell over during my labours. If only the
same could be said for me, who suffered
plenty at the hands of IPv6 these past weeks.
Nick Peers
For me, it has to be
Signal
. Open-source,
transparent and everything is properly
encrypted end-to-end for maximum privacy.
The program has evolved to support group
video chat too, so why anyone continues to
use
WhatsApp
beats me!
eil Bothwick
I switched to
Bitwarden
a while ago. It was
easy to set up my own server and the program
works with my desktop, browsers and phone.
ow I have all the benefits of convenient,
entralised password management, without
storing anything sensitive on anyone else’s server.
Les Pounder
I edit videos in
Sony Vegas
and
DaVinci
Resolve
, but more often than not I just need to
trim a few seconds of footage, add some titles
and then splice in some B-roll. For these quick
jobs I use
OpenShot Video Editor
, which has a
simple interface that’s ideal for beginners.
No free lunches
This issue we’re replacing Google Photos
with open source systems that give the
user control. What FOSS tool or service
do you think readers should give a try
over popular existing proprietary ones?
l t t th h d
Wh t A
b
Alexander Tolstoy
For the most part I’ve been using
Digikam
,
ever since it became available. As for sharing
other files on the network, I’d rather go with a
self-hosted storage. Google Photos has never
been my cup of tea!
w
h