Posts

List of blog posts:

My essential package list for Fedora Linux

This is a collection of packages and applications I usually install after a fresh Fedora Linux setup. The list is grouped by categories to make it easier to configure my working environment.

I use this post as a personal reference, and also in case it’s useful to anyone else.

1. Audio

Tools for audio editing and conversion:

audacity
abcde
normalize
soundconverter

2. Spanish localization

To set the system and applications to Spanish, install the language packages:

How to Apply the Emerald Dragon English Translation Patch on Linux

Learn how to patch the Japanese version of Emerald Dragon for PC Engine CD using xdelta3 on Linux, including image preparation and process automation.

How to apply the English translation patch for Far East of Eden: Ziria on Linux

Step-by-step guide to applying the English translation patch for Tengai Makyou: Ziria (Far East of Eden) using native Linux tools.

Vegan cheese does not exist: legislation and food reality

Cheese is made from milk, cream or buttermilk. Under current regulations, calling a plant-based product ‘cheese’ is not only incorrect but illegal because it misleads the consumer.

Package guide for Debian 13 (Trixie) with KDE Plasma

This is my personal list of Debian packages that I consider essential for my daily workflow. I use it to quickly install them (copy & paste) on a fresh Debian 13 (Trixie) installation. Packages are grouped by category:

1. Anonymity

mat2 torbrowser-launcher

2. Audio

audacity normalize-audio sox lame soundconverter gir1.2-gst-plugins-bad-1.0 abcde kid3

3. Localization (Spanish)

To have the system and main applications in Spanish:

task-spanish-kde-desktop libreoffice-help-es libreoffice-l10n-es hyphen-es mythes-es chromium-l10n firefox-esr-l10n-es-es fortunes-es gimp-help-es tesseract-ocr-spa texlive-lang-spanish kile-l10n hunspell-es krita-l10n

Compress scanned handwritten notes with Noteshrink

You scan your handwritten notes, but the quality isn’t great and the file is way too large. The solution: Noteshrink.

This assumes your notes are already in .pdf format.

1. Install Noteshrink

It’s best to install it in a Python virtual environment:

pip install noteshrink

2. Configure ImageMagick (if needed)

On some systems, you may need to adjust ImageMagick’s security policy to allow PDF handling:

nano /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml

Find the PDF line and change:

Package guide for Debian 11 (Bullseye)

This is a collection of packages and applications I usually install after a fresh Debian 11 (Bullseye) setup. Grouped by category:

1. Anonymity

torbrowser-launcher mat2 stegosuite

2. Appearance

sddm-theme-breeze grub-theme-breeze gtk3-engines-breeze breeze

3. Audio

audacity soundkonverter kid3 normalize-audio sox lame

4. Science

pspp kalzium

5. Compression

arj bzip2 cabextract gzip unrar p7zip-full unace xz-utils advancecomp brotli zopfli innoextract arc unp

6. Communications

kontact kdenetwork-filesharing libsmbclient samba samba-common-bin kdeconnect lynx thunderbird thunderbird-l10n-es-es firefox-esr-l10n-es-es firefox-esr telegram-desktop enigmail bogofilter webext-ublock-origin kget

Scan double-sided documents with a single-sided scanner

If you need to scan a double-sided document but your scanner only supports single-sided scanning, it’s easy to work around this in Linux using pdftk.

This assumes your scanned pages are saved as .pdf.

1. Install pdftk

On Debian/Ubuntu systems:

sudo apt install pdftk

2. Scan odd pages

First, scan the front sides of the document and save them as odd.pdf.

On most scanners with an automatic document feeder (ADF), these pages will already be in the correct order (1, 3, 5, 7…).

OCR in scanned PDF files with OCRmyPDF

If you’ve ever tried to copy or search text in a scanned PDF, you’ve probably noticed it doesn’t work — it’s basically just a collection of images. To fix this, you need to run an optical character recognition (OCR) process.

My go-to tool for this is https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, which adds a searchable text layer to the original file using the https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract engine.

1. Installation

On Debian-based systems, you can install everything you need with:

“Responsible Leisure” application

The regional government of Castilla-La Mancha requires hospitality venues to use the «Responsible Leisure» QR app for access, a controversial measure. Here’s how it works.

Firewalld firewall

Quick reference to install and configure Firewalld on a Debian system (largely applicable to Fedora as well).
This is mainly a simple personal cheat sheet for desktop environments.

1. Installation

sudo apt install firewalld

Optional: install the GUI (firewall-config):

sudo apt install firewall-config

2. systemd integration (auto-start)

Firewalld is managed through systemd, so it’s important to make sure it starts automatically.

Enable at boot:

sudo systemctl enable firewalld

Start it manually for the current session:

Ultimate guide to compressing files as much as possible in Linux

Over time I’ve picked up different ways to compress files in Linux — from stubborn PDFs to squeezing a few extra KB out of images. There’s almost always a bit more room for optimization.

The goal isn’t just to compress, but to do it properly: keeping compatibility and finding the best balance between size and quality.

While there are GUI tools, the terminal gives you much more control and often better results. This is a collection of the ones that have worked best for me, with practical examples. No need to memorize complex commands — just copy and paste.

Quick guide to setting up an Armbian server

A quick reference I use to install and set up a headless Armbian server.
Originally written for a Cubox-i4pro, but it works for most modern SBCs (Orange Pi, Banana Pi, Odroid, etc.).

Note: Some paths or tools may vary slightly depending on whether you’re using a Debian- or Ubuntu-based image, or on the Armbian version.

1. Install to the MicroSD

1.1. Download and prepare the image

Download the image for your device:

Home Server with Raspberry Pi

Steps to install a web server, file server (NAS), and XRDP on a Raspberry Pi. This guide is easily adaptable to other SBC (Single Board Computers) boards like Orange Pi, Tinker Board, Nano Pi, etc.

1. Install Raspberry Pi OS (Raspbian)

Download the operating system image (full version):

wget -c [https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_full_latest](https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_full_latest)

Unzip the downloaded file:

unzip raspbian_full_latest

(The extracted file, for example 2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-full.img, will have the date of the version you downloaded).