News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
Oracle announced the release of JDK 22 GA this Tuesday.
“JDK 22 delivers 12 enhancements that are significant enough to warrant their own JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs), including seven preview features and one incubator feature. They cover improvements to the Java Language, its APIs, its performance, and the tools included in the JDK.”
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Mozilla announced a new monthly release of its Firefox web browser on March 19.
In the new release, the caret browsing mode, keyboard navigating just like in text editor, also works in the built-in PDF viewer.
The Qwant search engine has been expanded to all languages in the France region along with Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.
In MacOS, Firefox now uses the macOS fullscreen API for better user experience for fullscreen spaces, menubar and the Dock. In Windows, it populates the taskbar jump list more efficiently, for a smoother overall browsing experience.
Firefox Caret Browsing setting option
The default wallpaper for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Noble Numbat, was finally released this Tuesday!
Similar to the one for current Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, the new wallpaper uses gradient color background (from purple in top-left to orange in bottom right?) with mascot in center.
I can’t say how it looks! Just see the image below for the new wallpaper:
This tutorial shows how to disable USB, either the full sub-system or for certain USB ports, in Ubuntu.
For server or production machines, disable USB can be useful for data privacy, virus protection, and other security reasons. For Ubuntu and most other Linux, here I’m going to show you how to disable USB via 3 ways:
For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, the top 8 photo images that won the wallpaper competition are out! They will be shipped by default in the .iso image as optional wallpapers for Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop.
Ubuntu Desktop team started the wallpaper competition for Ubuntu 24.04 on Feb 8. The submissions are grouped into 4 categories, including Mascot Theme, Digital / Abstract Art, Nature, Other. Each category has 2 winners and they are:
NOTE: The images here are optimized for faster loading. For original images, please scroll down and go to the competition web page.
Fuwafuwa Nanbatto-san (Dark/Light Variants)
This simple tutorial shows how to install 7-Zip file archiver in Ubuntu Desktop.
7-Zip is a popular free open-source file archiver with a high compression ratio. Ubuntu Linux can get it in few different packages:
NOTE: If you just want to do compress and/or extract .7z files, then Ubuntu supports the feature out-of-the-box with the Nautilus file manager.
QMPlay2, the free open-source Qt media player, released version 24.03.16 few days ago.
QMPlay2 is a Qt based media player that uses FFmpeg as backend for most video and audio codecs support. It also supports Audio CD, raw files, Rayman 2 music and chiptunes, as well as ALSA, PulseAudio or PipeWire sound servers. And, it has built-in a browser to search & play YouTube videos.
The most recent 24.03.16 release added better support for FFmpeg 6.1, and experimental Vulkan Video decoder support. So, since this release, the media player now supports hardware accelerated video playback through following APIs:
QMPlay2 YouTube browser
GNU Octave, the free open-source application for numerical computations, released new major 9.1.0 version! Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04.
The GNU website has not yet announced the new release, but it’s available in the download page.
According to the changelog, the new Octave 9.1.0 overhauled dec2base, dec2bin, and dec2hex. They now accept negative inputs and fractional inputs.
It re-architected the inputParser function to get a 60% performance improvement. And, the perms function has been made faster. The audiowrite function now supports writing to MPEG audio formats (including MP3) if the sndfile library supports it. The current directory of oruntests now changes to the directory containing the files with the tests for the duration of the test.
The release features new functions, including isenv, ismembertol, isuniform, tensorprod.
The disable_diagonal_matrix, disable_permutation_matrix, and disable_range functions have been removed! Replacements are optimize_diagonal_matrix, optimize_permutation_matrix, and optimize_range
Operators, such as .+, .+=, **, and .**= are removed. Replacements are +, +=, +=, ^, and .^=. And, following function are obsolete:
idx_vector::bool()all_ok(const Array&) in Array-util.h.octave_base_value::count
CopyQ, the popular free open-source clipboard manager, announced new 8.0.0 release today!
The new release features new arm64 build packages for MacOS, Debian, and Raspberry Pi. The packages for Windows and MacOS are now based on Qt6 framework. The 64-bit Windows packages now install the app to “Program Files” instead of incorrect “Program Files (X86)“. User has to remove the old path after installing the new version.
For Linux, CopyQ 8.0.0 adds cmake option -DWITH_X11=OFF to disable X11 support, and build option to disable auto-start, which is useful for Flatpak package so far does not support this feature due to permission issue.
For security, the release also disallows storing and processing data from password managers, such as KeePass, KeePassXC, 1Password, and some browsers in private mode.
CopyQ indicator and clipboard history editor
This simple tutorial shows how to install Beta version of your Flatpak app package from Flathub Beta repository in Ubuntu Linux.
Flatpak now is one of the top popular package formats for Linux. It runs in sandbox, allowing to easily manage software permissions and installing latest apps without worrying about dependency issues.
Most software developers publish their Flatpak app packages through Flathub repository. And for testing purpose, Flathub also provides a Beta repository.
There used to be beta.flathub.org web page for browsing and installing beta apps. The page however does no longer present in the website, though the beta apps are still installable.
