Howtos | UbuntuHandbook

How to Enable JPEG-XL (.jxl) Image Support in Ubuntu 22.04/20.04

Last updated: February 18, 2024 — Leave a comment

Want to open (or export to) .jxl files? Here’s how to enable the image format support in Ubuntu and Debian.

JPEG-XL (.jxl) is a royalty-free raster-graphics image format supports both lossy and lossless compression. It includes features such as animation, alpha channels, layers, thumbnails, and has better compression efficiency (60% improvement) comparing to JPEG.

GNOME favors JPEG-XL as background wallpaper in next version 46. But, Ubuntu now does not support the image format due to lack of a build dependency.

If you have some .jxl images stored in Ubuntu, then here’s how to make them work in image viewer, GIMP, and maybe other graphical apps.

In Howtos JPEG XL, photo

How to Disable Mobile Broadband Menu Option in GNOME

Last updated: February 13, 2024 — Leave a comment

This simple tutorial shows how to get rid of the “Mobile Broadband” menu option from the upper right system status menu in GNOME Desktop.

GNOME, the default desktop in Ubuntu and Fedora Workstation, has built-in support for mobile broadband. If your computer (usually laptop) has a built-in SIM card slot, then it will show you the “Mobile Network” page in Settings and “Mobile Broadband” option in upper right menu.

For those who rarely use this feature, the option is useless but makes the menu longer. So, it’s a good choice to completely disable it!

In Howtos Gnome, network, systemd

How to Get Classic GNOME 2 Session in Ubuntu 22.04 & 24.04

Last updated: February 13, 2024 — 1 Comment

This simple tutorial shows how to install and enable the Classic Gnome 2 style desktop session in Ubuntu 22.04 and/or Ubuntu 24.04.

Though the title said for Ubuntu, this tutorial also works in Debian 12 & 11. Fedora, Arch, and their based systems also have corresponding packages for the similar job.

As far as I know, there are 3 ways to get back the classic Gnome 2 layout. They include:

Option 1: gnome-flashback -traditional desktop session based on GNOME technologies.
Option 2: gnome-shell-extensions – Classic Gnome 2 layout through some Gnome Shell extensions.
Option 3: MATE Desktop – a free open-source fork and continuation of Gnome 2 Desktop.

Option 1: Gnome Flashback

In Howtos Enable Gnome Classic in Debian, Gnome, Gnome Classic

How to Rotate Images in Ubuntu 22.04

Last updated: February 12, 2024 — Leave a comment

This is a beginner’s guide shows you how to rotate your images using either a Linux command or built-in apps such as file manager and image viewer.

Option 1: Rotate an image using built-in image viewer

If you want to change the orientation for only a few photo images, then the built-in image view is always the best choice.

Simply click open your image file through the image viewer. Move mouse cursor over the app window, then you’ll see the buttons to rotate to the left and rotate to the right in bottom.

The image viewer app varies depends on your desktop environment, the rotate options may be available other-where such as in app menu.

After rotated your image, either click Save (Ctrl+S) to override the original image file, or choose Save as (Ctrl+Shift+S) to save the rotated image as another file.

In Howtos image editing, imagemagick

Top New Features in GNOME 46, the Desktop for Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: February 10, 2024 — Leave a comment

GNOME 46 reached UI, ABI/API, and feature freeze stage today. Let’s see the top new features in this popular desktop environment.

GNOME 46 will be the default desktop environment for Fedora 40 Workstation, Ubuntu 24.04, and optional in Arch, Manjaro, etc Linux.

It continues polish the desktop appearance by redesigning the improving the core app experiences.

GNOME Files, aka Nautilus, to have explicit Global Search mode, allowing to find files and folders in all search locations. And a “Search Settings” button is available to filter search results.

In Howtos Gnome

How to Install GO (golang 1.22) in Ubuntu 22.04

Last updated: March 9, 2024 — 2 Comments

Go programming language announced the new 1.22 release this Tuesday! Here’s the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu & other Linux.

What’s New in Go 1.22:

The variables declared by a “for” loop were created once and updated by each iteration. In new 1.22 release, each iteration of the loop creates new variables, to avoid accidental sharing bugs.
“For” loops may now range over integers.
Commands in workspaces can now use a vendor directory containing the dependencies of the workspace.
go get is no longer supported outside of a module in the legacy GOPATH mode
2% ~ 14% improvement from enabling PGO.
Requires the final point release of Go 1.20 or later for bootstrap
New math/rand/v2 package
New go/version package
See release note for more details.

In Howtos, News golang

Enable Fingerprint Reader in Ubuntu 22.04 for ThinkPad T480s

Last updated: February 7, 2024 — 1 Comment

This is a step by step guide shows how to enable fingerprint reader support for Lenovo ThinkPad T480/T480s, X1 Carbon 6th gen, X1 Yoga 3rd gen, X280, etc with 06cb:009a device in Ubuntu 22.04.

Ubuntu has fingerprint reader support out-of-the-box using libfprint, and provides option to enable fingerprint login in Users settings page. However, the library has a list of unsupported devices, including 06cb:009a that’s built-in in my used ThinkPad T480s laptop.

Thankfully, there’s a free open-source alternative python-validity that works in my case. Here’s how to install and set it up in Ubuntu 22.04, while Ubuntu 20.04 is also supported.

NOTE: This tutorial may also work in many other fingerprint readers, however, the project so far does NOT provide a page to list all supported devices.

Step 1: Tell Which Fingerprint Reader device do your laptop have

First of all, you may press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window.

Then run command to find out the device name of your fingerprint reader:

In Howtos fingerprint reader

How to Set Battery Charge Limit in Ubuntu 22.04 & 24.04

Last updated: February 6, 2024 — Leave a comment

This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to configure your Ubuntu laptop to limit the maximum battery charge level.

For those who keep laptop plugged in for long term, it’s better to set battery charge limit to reduce the battery wear by constantly trickle charging.

Linux Kernel supports battery charge threshold, and there’s a merge request to provide graphical UI options in Gnome Control Center. Until GNOME officially support this feature, you can follow this tutorial to do the job step by step.

In Howtos battery

New PPA to Install .NET 8 in old Ubuntu 18.04 & Ubuntu 16.04

Last updated: February 5, 2024 — 2 Comments

For .NET developers, the latest .NET 8 can be installed on old Ubuntu 18.04 and/or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS easily through PPA.

.NET 8 was released few months ago in November, 2023. It’s a new LTS release with 3 years support, and features new code generator “Dynamic Profile-Guided Optimization” (PGO), AVX-512 instruction set, out-of-the-box AI features, first preview of .NET Aspire, native AoT, and various other changes. See the release note for details.

.NET 8 is made into Ubuntu system repositories for Ubuntu 23.10 and upcoming Ubuntu 24.04. For Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, I’ve written how to install .NET 8 from Microsoft repository.

For users of Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 who can’t upgrade the system, there’s now a third-party PPA contains the .NET 8 packages for 64-bit Intel/AMD machines.

The PPA is maintained by Rob Savoury, who maintains so many PPAs with Blender, Chromium, FFmpeg, Firefox, LibreOffice, Qt5/6, Python, LLVM, Node.js, and other popular software packages with old Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04 support!

In Howtos microsoft

How to Install and Use Incus Container in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Last updated: February 4, 2024 — Leave a comment

This simple tutorial shows how to install and use Incus container in Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Incus is a free open-source system container and virtual machine manager developed by Linux Containers community. It supports images for a large number of Linux distributions.

With it, you can manage your containers and VMs either with a simple command line tool, directly through the REST API or by using third-party tools and integrations.

Incus was started as community fork of Canonical’s LXD. Now, it’s led and maintained by much of the same people that once created LXD.

Step 1: Install Incus

Incus is available in Zabbly repository maintained by the software developer. So far, it supports Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 12 and Debian 11.

To install it, first open terminal from system start menu or Gnome activities overview screen. Ubuntu users can simply press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard.

In Howtos container, incus