NetSpeed – Display Download / Upload Speed in Ubuntu 20.04 Panel

June 1, 2020 — Leave a comment

gnome shell

Need an indicator applet to display internet download and upload speed in the top panel of Ubuntu 20.04 Gnome Shell?

NetSpeed used to be an old Gnome applet, then an indicator for Unity desktop. Now it’s a Gnome Shell extension that displays real time internet speed for all network interfaces.

How to Install NetSpeed in Ubuntu 20.04:

In your web browser, simply go to extensions.gnome.org/extension/104/netspeed/

If you don’t see the toggle icon, do:

  • Click the link text “click here to install browser extension” and follow the pop-ups to install the browser extension:

    shell browser extension

  • Then open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T and run command: 
    sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Finally refresh the extension page, toggle on and click ‘install’ in the confirm pop-up.

To manage the Gnome Shell extension, either use ‘Extensions‘ utility or Gnome Tweak Tool, both are available in Ubuntu Software.

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How to My Weather Indicator in Ubuntu 20.04

May 31, 2020 — Leave a comment

Looking for a desktop weather application for Ubuntu desktop? My Weather Indicator is one of the great choices.

My Weather Indicator is an application especially designed for Ubuntu. It’s written in Python 3 and works on Plasma, GNOME, MATE, Xfce, etc.

The software displays current weather and the weather forecast via system tray indicator applet and desktop widget. Supported weather services include: OpenWeatherMap, Yahoo, wunderground.com, and World Weather Online.

To install the weather application, open terminal from your system application menu and run following commands one by one.

1.) Add the developer’s PPA by running command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao

Type your login password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompt and hit Enter to continue.

2.) Refresh package cache and install the software:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install my-weather-indicator

3.) The first launching My Weather Indicator will bring up the settings dialog. There you can setup your location, widget theme, weather services, auto-start, refresh frequency, etc.

Note: after clicking OK button, it can take a few seconds to show the desktop widget.

Uninstall:

To remove the PPA, either open Software & Update > Other Software or run command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:atareao/atareao

To remove the weather application, run command:

sudo apt remove my-weather-indicator
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How to Install Foliate eBook Reader 2.2.0 via PPA in Ubuntu

May 30, 2020 — 1 Comment

Modern GTK3 eBook reader Foliate 2.2.0 was released today with many great new features. Here’s how to install it via PPA in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10, and Ubuntu 20.04.

Foliate 2.2.0 is a new major release that features:

  • New library tab:
    • showing recent books and reading progress.
    • Search books by metadata
    • E-book discovery with OPDS
  • New eBook format support:

    • FictionBook (.fb2, .fb2.zip)
    • Comic book archive (.cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cb7)
    • Plain text (.txt)
    • Unpacked EPUB files
  • Improved layout, text-to-speech, image viewer, annotations.
  • Important security fix. Recommend to “Allow Unsafe Content” for old version.
  • Support for StarDict dictionaries.
  • And many other features, see release note for more details.

How to Install Foliate 2.2.0 in Ubuntu:

The software is available to install either via Snap package (in Ubuntu Software) or Flatpak package, both run in sandbox.

For those prefer Ubuntu .deb package, run following commands one by one to install it via the PPA repository.

1.) Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/foliate

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.

2.) Then refresh package cache and install the eBook reader:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install foliate

NOTE if you’ve installed an old version via the .deb package downloaded from github release page, remove it first due to different package name by running command:

sudo apt remove com.github.johnfactotum.foliate

Uninstall:

To remove the PPA repository, open Software & Updates utility and navigate to Other Software tab.

To remove Foliate ebook reader, simply run command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove foliate
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How to Compress Files to Password Protect Archive in Ubuntu 20.04

May 30, 2020 — Leave a comment

The default nautilus file browser allows to compress files into Zip, Tar.xz, 7z archive with no other options.

What if you want to compress your data into other formats (e.g., rar, epub, jar, and more) with password protection, and change the compress level?

1.) Open file roller archive manager from ‘Show Applications’ menu.

2.) Go to menu > New Archive, then you can:

  • create with 24 supported arhive formats.
  • type a filename, select location.
  • and set password under Other Options (click expend) for epub, rar, zip, and more.
  • finally click on Create button.

NOTE: you need to run sudo apt install rar unrar command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and follow by nautilus -q to enable rar support.

3.) Next click on top left ‘+‘ icon and add your files to the archive, finally close the window and done.

4.) If you want to enable maximum compression level, install dconf editor from Ubuntu Software and launch it.

Navigate to org/gnome/file-roller/general/compression-level, toggle off ‘Use default value’ and set ‘Custom value’ to ‘maximum’.

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Android Studio 4.0 Released! How to Install in Ubuntu 20.04

May 29, 2020 — 1 Comment

Android Studio 4.0 was released a day ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10, Ubuntu 20.04.

Android Studio 4.0 features a new Motion Editor, improved Layout Inspector, Clangd support for C++, smart editor features, enhancements to the CPU Profiler, Java 8 language library desugaring in D8 and R8, and much more other changes. See the release note for more.

How to Install Android Studio 4.0 in Ubuntu:

The containerized Snap package is available to install in Ubuntu Software for Ubuntu 18.04 and higher:

Don’t like Snap application? You can also install Android Studio 4.0 easily via Ubuntu Make.

1.) Install the latest Ubuntu Make:

  • Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to add the PPA which contains the latest Ubuntu Make packages for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10, and Ubuntu 20.04. 
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lyzardking/ubuntu-make

  • Then install or upgrade Ubuntu Make via command: 
    sudo apt update && sudo apt install ubuntu-make

    • 2.) Install Android Studio via command:

    umake android --accept-license

    It automatically downloads the software package and dependencies from Google and installs on your system for single use by default.

    3.) Once installed, launch the IDE from ‘Show Applications’ menu. Restart you machine if you don’t see the icon, or run sh ~/.local/share/umake/android/android-studio/bin/studio.sh command to launch it from terminal.

    Uninstall:

    You may remove Ubuntu Make PPA by running command:

    sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:lyzardking/ubuntu-make

    And remove Android Studio via command:

    umake android --remove
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