UbuntuHandbook | News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux

How to Set Your Video as Animated Wallpaper in Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: October 22, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to easily set your video playback as animated desktop wallpaper in Ubuntu and other Linux!

I’ve written about how to do the job in Ubuntu using Komorebi and Gpu Video Wallpaper. However, both seems no longer being actively development.

So here I’m going to introduce you Hidamari, a free open-source video wallpaper application written in Python. Which, provides an easy to use interface to play local video, steam online video (e.g., YouTube), or set a web page as desktop wallpaper.

play local video as wallpaper in Ubuntu

In Howtos animated wallpaper

Clementine Music Player Released 1.4.1 Stable after 8 Years of DEV

Last updated: October 22, 2024 — Leave a comment

It’s been more than 8 years since the last 1.3.1 stable. Clementine, the old popular music player and library organizer, finally got a new stable release!

Clementine is a free open-source music player inspired by Amarok 1.4. It provides an easy to use Qt5 user interface to play and manage large music collections, while keeping fast and lightweight.

Besides local music playback, the player also supports internet radios, such as last.fm, radio-browser.info, Subsonic. And, it can search and play you music from cloud, including Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and more.

Moreover, it provides handy tools to transcode music, open and rip audio CD. See Clementine website for more about it.

Clementine Music Player

In News Clementine, music player

How to Install Inkscape 1.4 in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: October 21, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to install Inkscape, version 1.4 so far, in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 24.10.

Inkscape is a popular free open-source vector graphics editor, that works in Linux, Windows, and macOS. It uses SVG as default file format, and can also import/export various other file formats, including AI, EPS, PDF, PS and PNG.

The software is widely used for both artistic and technical illustrations such as cartoons, clip art, and logos. So far, the latest version is v1.4 that was released a week ago.

In Howtos image editor, Inkscape

Set Ubuntu PC/Laptop Speaker as AirPlay Audio Player

Last updated: October 19, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to set up Ubuntu Linux as AirPlay receiver, so your PC speaker can play audio streamed from iPhone, iTunes, iOS devices and third-party AirPlay sources.

For Linux, there’s a popular free open-source app called Shairport Sync. It’s a AirPlay and AirPlay 2 audio player forked from the original Shairport (discontinued).

Shairport Sync offers full audio synchronisation. It means that audio is played on the output device at exactly the time specified by the audio source.

In Howtos airplay

How to Install GNU Octave 9.2.0 in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: October 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows you how to install the latest GNU Octave (version 9.2.0 so far) in all current Ubuntu releases, including Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 24.04.

GNU Octave is a free open-source scientific programming language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It features powerful mathematics-oriented syntax with built-in 2D/3D plotting and visualization tools, cross-platform, and drop-in compatible with many Matlab scripts.

The latest version of the programming language has reached version 9.2.0. Features in the 9.x release series include:

Overhauled dec2base, dec2bin, and dec2hex. They now accept negative inputs and fractional inputs.
Re-architected the inputParser function to get a 60% performance improvement.
The perms function has been made faster.
New functions, including isenv, ismembertol, isuniform, tensorprod.
Removed disable_diagonal_matrix, disable_permutation_matrix, and disable_range functions. 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
Support Qt6.
Deprecate FLTK backend, in favor of Qt.

See the news page for more about Octave 9.

In Howtos programming

How to Open Certain URL Links in Specific Web Browsers

Last updated: October 15, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to configure Ubuntu or other Linux to redirect certain URLs or domains to specific web browser, while leaving all others open in the default browser.

When clicking an URL in email reader, chat app, and other apps, it by default opens the linked page in system default web browser. However, some users may prefer to open certain websites in non-default browser. For example, use Google Chrome for watching YouTube, while using Firefox as default.

In Howtos web

How to Install qBittorrent 5.0.0 in Ubuntu

Last updated: October 13, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to install the most recent qBittorrent 5.0.0 in all current Ubuntu releases, including Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 24.10.

qBittorrent announced new major 5.0.0 release few weeks ago, with many new features, including create .torrent with larger piece size, support for Mark-of-the-Web, ability to pause/resume entire BitTorrent session, option to set BitTorrent session shutdown timeout.

The webUI now supports dark theme, and supports running concurrent searches. The web API can now send binary data with filename and mime type specified, support SSL torrents, and allow to download .torrent file using search plugin.

For Linux, qBittorrent 5.0.0 now supports systemd power management. For Windows 10+, it uses Fusion style, which has better compatibility with dark mode. And, the app in macOS now displays download/upload speed in dock icon. See HERE for more about the release.

In Howtos qbittorrent

Ubuntu 24.10 Released! Kernel 6.11, GNOME 47, & More

Last updated: October 11, 2024 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu 24.10, code-name “Oracular Oriole”, was officially released!

This is the latest short term release with 9 months support until July 2025. It features Linux Kernel 6.11 and GNOME Desktop 47.

And, there are official flavors feature other desktop environments, such as KUbuntu 24.10 and Ubuntu Studio 24.10 with KDE Plasma 6.1, XUbuntu 24.10 with XFCE 4.18, Ubuntu MATE 24.10 with 1.26.

In News Ubuntu 24.10

Python 3.13.0 Released! New Interactive Shell & Free-threaded Mode

Last updated: October 9, 2024 — Leave a comment

Python, the popular free open-source programming language, finally announced 3.13.0 stable this Monday!

Python 3.13 introduced new interactive shell. It’s enabled by default and based on code from the PyPy project.

When you start the new shell in an interactive terminal, it uses colors by default for prompts and tracebacks and supports multi-line editing.

As well, it supports REPL-specific commands such as help, exit, and quit without call them as functions. And, I can finally use clear command in the shell to clear screen.

The new interactive shell also supports interactive help browsing using F1, history browsing using F2, and ‘paste mode’ with F3 for pasting larger blocks of code.

Just in case for those who don’t like the new shell, it can be disabled by setting environment variable. PYTHON_BASIC_REPL=1.

Python 3.13 shell, with colors, multi-line editing, etc support

In News programming, python

How to Completely Disable Suspend/Hibernate in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: October 8, 2024 — 3 Comments

This tutorial shows how to completely disable suspend and/or hibernate function, so your Linux computer will never go to sleep.

Linux can automatically go to sleep when system is idle or laptop lid is closed, though user can configure to disable that behavior via either graphical options or logind.conf configuration file.

But, if you never want to sleep your computer, e.g., for server, then you can completely disable this function. So even the suspend option in power-off menu or the corresponding Linux command won’t work!

image from pixabay.com

In Howtos hibernate, suspend, systemd

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