Want to hear your sound in microphone? Here’s a stupid simple tool to the job in Linux.
It’s Whisper, a new free and open-source GTK4 application, allowing listen to microphone through your speaker. Which, is useful for testing your microphone or for listening to your voice.
As the screenshot shows, the app is quite easy to use. Just select the microphone and speaker from the list, and click ‘Connect’. Then, you can say something or make some noise through microphone to see the magic.
As a GTK4 application, it follow system color scheme by switching between light and dark automatically. However, it needs both PulseAudio and Pipewire to make things work, which is default in Pop! OS 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10, Ubuntu 23.04, Fedora 35/36/37, etc.
How to Install Whisper in your Linux
As mentioned above, this application requires Pipewire audio server. For current Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, it’s NOT the default, though you can enable it by following this tutorial (NOT recommend for beginners).
Whisper is available to install as universal Flatpak package. You can install it by following the steps below one by one:
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install Flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
Other Linux can follow this setup guide to enable Flatpak support.
2. Then, run command to install Whisper as Flatpak package:
This simple tutorial shows how to easily check your SSD health in Ubuntu and/or Linux Mint desktop.
I’ve been running Ubuntu Linux on my old laptop for about 7 years. Everything works well, but it recently refuses to boot sometimes when pressing on the physical power button. Not sure what’s the problem, but I guess it’s something to do the data reading issue from SSD drive.
In Windows 10, I prefer to use CrystalDiskInfo which is super easy to understand for beginners. For Linux, there’s a tool GSmartControl available for choice.
1. First, the tool is available in most Linux’s system repositories. User can just search for and install it from system package manager. For Ubuntu, it’s available to install via Ubuntu Software app:
For those familiar with Linux command can run a single command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install it:
sudo apt install gsmartcontrol
2. After that, search for and launch it from start menu (or Activities overview). It will list your SSD drive in the app window.
By double-clicking on the disk icon or go menu “Device -> View Details” will open the information dialog that you need.
Things are not so easy to read for beginners. But it will highlight something that is not going well with red text font or background.
By moving mouse cursor over any item in the app window, there will be a tool-tip pop-over that explain with detailed information. As the screenshot below shows, it shows you:
power-on time.
total disk read and write.
read error rate.
temperature and other information.
For those prefer a percentage value of the device life, go “Statistics” tab and check the value of Percentage Used Endurance Indicator. In my case as the screenshot shows, there should be still 93% left.
And you can click on “View Output” button to view all the info as text, copy and paste them into online forums to ask for help! Or, run a “Self-Tests” manually to see if there’s any error.
LibreOffice, the default office suite in most Linux, announced the new 7.5 feature release today!
The new release has greatly improved the dark mode support. It now has fully dark appearance, instead of leaving the document background white in dark mode.
LibreOffice 7.5 now has new icons for standard app shortcuts, MIME types, and macOS specific app shortcuts. App start center now includes a filter box for Recent Documents.
A better single-toolbar user interface is available under “View -> User Interface” menu, with context-aware controls and their customization support.
The “Writer” app gains new Plain Text content control and Combo Box content control. And, Content Control now supports titles and tags, as well as exporting to PDF.
For “CALC”, data tables are now supported in charts, the Function Wizard allows to search for descriptions. And, Impress & Draw gets a new set of default table styles.
Initial machine translation based on DeepL translate APIs
Ability to define a custom color for Grammar mistakes in the Application Colors dialog.
“Spell out” number formats in CALC.
Ability to crop inserted videos in the slide and still play them
Run presenter console can run as a normal window.
See short video about new features of LibreOffice 7.5:
How to Install LibreOffice 7.5 in Ubuntu Linux.
LibreOffice is available to install in 4 different package formats: Deb, Flatpak, AppImage, and Snap.
NOTE: User can install all of them side by side in same machine, meaning have duplicated app icons in start menu (‘Activities’ overview search results).
Option 1: Deb package
Libreoffice website offers official .deb packages, which is however built for supporting all Debian based systems.
For better integration, the LibreOffice Fresh PPA is HIGHLY recommended for Ubuntu Linux. User can press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command to add it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
NOTE: The PPA so far contains LibreOffice v7.5 for only Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 22.10
Then, run regular updates via Software Updater (Update Manager) app will update the pre-installed LibreOffice packages to the latest!
Option 2: Snap package
Snap is an universal package runs in sandbox. Ubuntu 20.04 and higher can easily search for and install LibreOffice as Snap from Ubuntu Software.
As mentioned, install LibreOffice Snap will cause duplicated app icons to the pre-installed package.
Option 3: Flatpak package
Flatpak is another universal package runs in sandbox. It’s a competitor to Snap. Users can run following commands one by one to install LibreOffice as Flatpak.
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then run command to install Flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
Next, install the office suite as Flatpak via command:
AppImage is an non-install package format runs in most Linux. It’s a good choice to try AppImage until the LibreOffice Fresh PPA updated for the new release packages.
Then, right-click and go file “Properties” dialog, add executable as program permission under Permission tab, and finally click run the AppImage to launch the office suite.
Uninstall:
For the LibreOffice PPA package, open terminal and run command:
Elementary OS 7 is finally released! Here’s how to enable the “Minimize” title-bar button in its app windows.
Elementary OS 7 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. It was released on Tuesday with many improvements on its core applications as well as desktop experience.
Like Fedora workstation, this Linux Distro does not has a ‘Minimize’ button out-of-the-box. But changing the button-layout key via either dconf-editor or gsettings does not function.
Step 1: Install Pantheon Tweaks
Pantheon Tweaks is simple configuration tool adds more options to configure Elementary OS’ Pantheon desktop appearance.
1. First, search for and open a terminal window from top-left ‘Application’ menu.
2. When terminal opens, run command to install the package for the ability to add PPA repositories:
sudo apt install software-properties-common
Run sudo apt update first on a fresh OS to update package index.
3. Next, run command to add the Ubuntu PPA that contains the Pantheon Tweaks package:
4. After adding PPA, install the tool by running command:
sudo apt install pantheon-tweaks
Step 2: Enable Minimize button
After installing Pantheon Tweaks, open or re-open System Settings from the bottom dock launcher. When it opens, you’ll see a new “Tweaks” option under ‘Personal’.
Click on it to open the settings page. There’s a drop-down box for selecting layout of “Window Controls”. Just choose Windows, Ubuntu, macOS, add minimize, or whatever option that you prefer.
The title-bar button layout will change immediately! Done.
OnlyOffice announced the new 7.3.0 release for its desktop editors office suite one day ago.
For Linux users, the new release now use native dialog windows (e.g., file manager and print). And, it adds support for xdg-desktop-portal in the file dialog window, meaning better desktop integration for application installed as Flatpak and/or Snap packages.
This release also add a Quick Print button right beside the original print button. Instead of bringing to the print configuration page, it will directly send your entire document to the last selected or default printer.
For the Spreadsheet Editor, there’s new Watch Window under Formula tab, as well as new functions include TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, TEXTSPLIT, VSTACK, HSTACK, TOROW, TOCOL, WRAPROWS, WRAPCOLS, TAKE, DROP, CHOOSEROWS, CHOOSECOLS.
Advanced forms via Forms tab in DOCXF files -> Available fields and Manage Roles menu
SmartArt (e.g., List, Process, Cycle, Hierarchy, Matrix) under Insert tab.
Ability to password protect document while allowing filling forms, commenting, or tracking changes.
Ability to add links between several spreadsheets
New Date and time, Zip Code, Credit Card for creating forms.
Support for creating math equations in both Unicode and LaTeX syntax.
Show/hide left and right panel.
Ability to insert data from the XML Spreadsheet 2003 file
How to Install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors 7.3:
The office suite is available to install in Ubuntu Linux in 3 different package formats: Snap, Deb, and Flatpak. Choose either one that you prefer.
1. Snap
Snap is an universal package format that runs in sandbox. Ubuntu 20.04 and higher users can simply search for and install OnlyOffice as Snap from Ubuntu Software.
The snap automatically receive updates, though the package at the moment of writing is still at version 7.2.1.
ONLYOFFICE Snap in Ubuntu Software
2. Deb
Deb is the native package format for Debian/Ubuntu and their based Linux systems. OnlyOffice provides the .deb package along with RPM, EXE, MSI, and DMG packages for downloading at the github releases page:
Just select download the “onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb” package, then click in file manager to open with Software Install and install it.
3. Flatpak
Linux Mint user may prefer the Flatpak package a bit more, since it’s available to install directly from the Software Manager.
It’s another universal package format runs in sandbox. Ubuntu user can install ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors as Flatpak by following the steps below one by one:
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to install the Flatpak daemon:
The Flatpak package is also in v7.2.1 at the moment, use the command flatpak update org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors to update the package once new version published.
Uninstall ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editor
Depends on which package you installed, choose to run either command below in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window to remove the office suite.
For the Snap package, remove it either via Ubuntu Software or by running the command below:
snap remove --purge onlyoffice-desktopeditors
For the native deb package, run command to remove it:
