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Archives For May 31, 2015

Install Notepadqq (Notepad++-like Editor) in Ubuntu 14.04/15.04

Last updated: June 30, 2015

Notepadqq is a free, open source, and Notepad++-like text editor for the Linux desktop. It’s written in C++ and works on Qt5.

Notepadqq helps developers by providing all you can expect from a general purpose text editor, such as syntax highlighting for more than 100 different languages, code folding, color schemes, file monitoring, multiple selection and much more.

You can search text using the power of regular expressions. You can organize documents side by side. You can use real-time highlighting to find near identifiers in no time.

Install Notepadqq in Ubuntu:

Notepadqq team provides an official PPA repository for all current Ubuntu releases (e.g., Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10) and their derivatives such as Linux Mint 17, Elementary OS Freya.

1. To add the PPA, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:notepadqq-team/notepadqq

2. After that, refresh system package cache and install the editor via Synaptic Package Manager:

or by running below commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install notepadqq

And you can receive future updates of this editor just as part of system updates via Software Updater.

In Howtos notepad++, notepadqq

Change the Minimum Password Length in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: June 28, 2015

Ubuntu 14.04 requires a minimum password length of 8 characters, as well as complexity check by default, though you can set a short password while installing Ubuntu.

The /etc/pam.d/common-password file handles password-related configurations. If you want to set a short password and disable complexity check, edit the file via below steps:

1. Open terminal from the Dash, Launcher or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below command to edit the file:

sudo nano /etc/pam.d/common-password

Type in your user password when it asks

2. When the file opens in the terminal screen, scroll down and find out the line:

password     [success=1 default=ignore]    pam_unix.so obscure sha512

To set minimum password length, add minlen=N (N is a number) to the end of this line.

To disable complexity check, remove “obscure” from that line.

After that, press Ctrl+X and then type Y to save changes and finally press Enter to exit editing.

After all, change your password via passwd USERNAME command.

In Howtos minimum password length, short password

Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf Alpha 1 Available for Download

Last updated: September 29, 2017

The first alpha release of Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf was released a few hours ago, which features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, UbuntuKylin and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

Alpha 1 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. All releases are based on Linux Kernel 3.19.

Kubuntu 15.10 Alpha 1 features Plasma 5.3 desktop and KDE Applications 15.04.1.
LXQt is still in development, Lubuntu 15.10 Alpha 1 is set to be another bug fix release.
Ubuntu MATE 15.10 Alpha 1 features TLP for improved laptop battery endurance, xdg-utils support, more options in MATE Tweak tool, artwork updates, and some fixes.

For Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting and fixing bugs, download Ubuntu 15.10 Alpha 1 from:

Kubuntu 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/wily/
Lubuntu 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/wily/
Ubuntu MATE 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/wily/
UbuntuKylin 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/wily/
Ubuntu Cloud 15.10: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/wily/

Ubuntu 15.10 release schedule:

Alpha 1 – June 25th
Alpha 2 – July 30th
Feature Freeze — August 20th
Beta 1 – August 27th
UI Freeze — September 10th
Beta 2 – September 24th
Kernel Freeze — October 15th
Release Candidate – October 15th
Ubuntu 15.10 Final – October 22nd

via: fridge.ubuntu.com

In News Ubuntu 15.10

Record Videos with Your old Canon DSLR in Ubuntu via EOS-MovRec

Last updated: April 24, 2024

If your old Canon DSLR does not have video recording feature, but you still want to make one, you can use EOS Camera Movie Record, a software directly writes short movies from Canon DSLR to computer.

From the software’s main window you can instantly initialize and stop the recording process, adjust the focus and zoom, choose the desired White Balance and display the captured image. It also has preview, Av, Tv and WB control.

The camera must have LiveView feature to work. Here’s a list of known supported cameras:

Canon EOS 450D
Canon EOS 1000D
Canon 40D
Canon 50D
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 1Ds Mark III.

Learn how to use the software:

Install EOS Camera Movie Record in Ubuntu:

Thanks to Dariusz Duma, the software has been made into PPA, available for Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, and Elementary OS Freya.

To add the PPA and install the software, open terminal from the Dash, app launcher, or by press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install eos-movrec

Once installed, follow previous video to record videos with your Canon DSLR and enjoy!

In Howtos Canon DSLR

Install WhatsApp Client (Unofficial) in Ubuntu 15.04, 14.04

Last updated: June 23, 2015

A simple and beautiful WhatsApp desktop client has been created recently, available for Linux, Windows, and OS X. It’s an open-source and unofficial client based on WhatsApp Web.

Besides the basic WhatsApp features (e.g., group chats, send photos & videos, and share locations), this unofficial WhatsApp for desktop also features:

Badge with the number of notifications in the dock/taskbar (OS X and Windows)
Auto-launch on OS startup (OS X, Windows)
Native notifications (all platforms)
System tray icon (OS X, Windows)
Open links in browser or new window
Preferences in the right-click context menu (or menu bar for OS X, tray menu for Windows)

unofficial whatsapp client on all platforms

Install WhatsApp for Desktop in Ubuntu:

Before installing this software, you may first read the following DISCLAIMER from its project page:

This project does not attempt to reverse engineer the WhatsApp API or attempt to reimplement any part of the WhatsApp client. Any communication between the user and WhatsApp servers is handled by WhatsApp Web itself; this is just a native wrapper for WhatsApp Web, more akin to a browser than any WhatsApp software.

To install it, select download linux32.deb or linux64.deb that matches your os type (32-bit or 64-bit) from the link below and then click install via Software Center or Gdebi package installer.

WhatsApp for Desktop release page

For issues and other information, refers to github page.

In Howtos WhatsApp client

How to Install/Upgrade to Kernel 4.1 in Ubuntu, Linux Mint

Last updated: July 28, 2015

Linux Kernel 4.1, a new kernel series, was released over the night by Linus Torvalds. He wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list:

So after a *very* quiet week after the 4.1-rc8 release, the final 4.1 release is now out.

I’m not sure if it was quiet because there really were no problems (knock wood), or if people decided to be considerate of my vacation, but whatever the reason, I appreciate it. It’s not like the 4.1 release cycle was particularly painful, and let’s hope that the extra week of letting it sit makes for a great release. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, considering that 4.1 will also be a LTS release.

Anyway, since rc8 we’ve had truly small changes, mainly some final driver fixups (HDA sound, drm, scsi target, crypto) and a couple of small misc fixes. The appended shortlog is probably one of the shortest ones ever. I’m not complaining.

And this obviously means that the merge window for 4.2 is open.

Linus

What’s New in Kernel 4.1:

Some of highlights for the Linux 4.1 kernel (by Michael Larabel):

Significant performance improvements for certain hardware as well as power consumption/efficiency improvements for select Intel hardware.
Nouveau ships with GeForce GTX 750 acceleration support that doesn’t require the manual extracting/setup of any non-redistributable firmware blobs.
Intel XenGT vGPU support for those wanting Intel graphics acceleration support from Xen guests. The KVM support is still being developed.
Radeon DisplayPort MST support.
EXT4 file-system encryption thanks to work done by Google in looking to add file-system-level EXT4 encryption for Android.
Better RAID 5/6 support with MD RAID.
Improved laptop support from major vendors along with better Chromebook Pixel 2 support.
Continued bring-up of Intel Skylake support within Linux. Skylake is still on course for launching later this year.
ACPI support for AArch64 / 64-bit ARM.
Many other changes.

Install/Upgrade to Kernel 4.1 in Ubuntu, Mint:

The Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the binary packages for this kernel release, available for download at link below:

Download Kernel 4.1 (.DEB)

First check out your OS type, 32-bit (i386), 64-bit (amd64), or armhf, then download and install the packages below in turn:

linux-headers-4.1.0-xxx_all.deb
linux-headers-4.1.0-xxx-generic_xxx_i386/amd64/armhf.deb
linux-image-4.1.0-xxx-generic_xxx_i386/amd64/armhf.deb

After installing the kernel, you may run sudo update-grub command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to refresh grub boot-loader.

If you need a low latency system (e.g. for recording audio) then download & install below packages instead:

linux-headers-4.1.0_xxx_all.deb
linux-headers-4.1.0-xxx-lowlatency_xxx_i386/amd64.deb
linux-image-4.1.0-xxx-lowlatency_xxx_i386/amd64.deb

For Ubuntu Server without a graphical UI, you may run below commands one by one to grab packages via wget and install them via dpkg:

For 64-bit system run:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.1-unstable/linux-headers-4.1.0-040100-generic_4.1.0-040100.201506220235_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.1-unstable/linux-headers-4.1.0-040100_4.1.0-040100.201506220235_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.1-unstable/linux-image-4.1.0-040100-generic_4.1.0-040100.201506220235_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.1.0-*.deb linux-image-4.1.0-*.deb

For 32-bit system, run:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.1-unstable/linux-headers-4.1.0-040100-generic_4.1.0-040100.201506220235_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.1-unstable/linux-headers-4.1.0-040100_4.1.0-040100.201506220235_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.1-unstable/linux-image-4.1.0-040100-generic_4.1.0-040100.201506220235_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-4.1.0-*.deb linux-image-4.1.0-*.deb

Uninstall Linux Kernel 4.1:

If for some reason, the new kernel does not work properly for you, reboot into a previous Kernel (Grub boot loader -> Advanced -> select a previous kernel) and run below command in terminal to remove the Linux Kernel 4.1:

sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-4.1.0-* linux-image-4.1.0-*; sudo update-grub

In Howtos Linux Kernel

Install the Official Elementary Music Player in Ubuntu 15.04, 15.10

Last updated: June 21, 2015

Noise, the official music player of Elementary OS, is a fast and beautiful GTK3 audio player with a focus on music and libraries. It handles external devices, CDs, and album art. Noise utilizes Granite for a consistent and slick UI.

Elementary OS Team has created a few PPAs on launchpad.net so users can easily install and test some Elementary applications on Ubuntu desktop. And here’s how to install Noise music player in Ubuntu 15.04, or Ubuntu 15.10.

Noise in Ubuntu 15.04

1. Open terminal from the Dash, App Launcher, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the Elementary OS daily ppa:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:elementary-os/daily

2. After adding the PPA, refresh your system repository cache and install the music player via 2 commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install noise

3. Finally, you have to remove the PPA since it contains some unstable and EOS only applications. To do so, run:

sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:elementary-os/daily && sudo apt-get update

4. (Optional) If you want to remove this music player, simply run:

sudo apt-get remove noise

Tip: Due to a bug related to the Unity overlay scrollbars, there’s a background issue which can be fixed by running below command to edit the launcher file of Noise:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/noise.desktop

Install gksu from Software Center if the command doesn’t work. When the file opens, change the value of Exec to env LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 noise %U so it look likes:

That’s it.

In Howtos Elementary OS, Noise music player

Install MuPDF – lightweight PDF/XPS viewer in Ubuntu 15.04

Last updated: June 19, 2015

MuPDF is a small, fast, and yet complete PDF viewer that supports PDF 1.7 with transparency, encryption, hyperlinks, annotations, searching and more. It also reads XPS and OpenXPS documents.

The renderer in MuPDF is tailored for high quality anti-aliased graphics. It renders text with metrics and spacing accurate to within fractions of a pixel for the highest fidelity in reproducing the look of a printed page on screen.

MuPDF is available in Ubuntu repositories by default, but Canonical does not provide updates for this software. While Ubuntu Software Center provides the 1.6 (or older) release, the latest MuPDF 1.7a was released in last month with below changes:

Fixed bug that allocated too much memory when packing paths.
Fixed EPUB font scaling bug.
Fixed EPUB file type handling in viewers.
Improved tolerance for broken and unsupported CSS.
Added -z option to mutool clean.

Install MuPDF in Ubuntu:

1. Open terminal from the Dash, Application Menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

2. After adding the PPA, open Software Updater to automatically check for updates

After checking for updates, you’ll see MuPDF in the list available for upgrade if you have a previous version installed.

If you don’t have a previous release installed in your system, install it via Synaptic Package Manager or by running below command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install mupdf mupdf-tools

Once installed, open PDF/XPS files using MuPDF from their context (right-click) menu. For key bindings and other options, run man mupdf in terminal.

To set MuPDF as default viewer, go to PDF file’s context menu -> Properties -> Open With tab -> select the viewer from list and click Set as default button.

In Howtos MuPDF, pdf viewer

How to Install Nvidia 352.21 in Ubuntu 15.04/14.04

Last updated: August 29, 2015

NVIDIA driver 352.21 for Linux has been released recently with new GPUs support and numerous bug fixes. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and their derivatives via PPA.

Nvidia 352.21 release highlights:

Added support for the following GPUs:
- GeForce 720A
- GeForce 920A
- GeForce 930A
- GeForce 940A
- GeForce GTX 950A
- GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Fixed a bug that caused the Display Configuration page of the nvidia-settings control panel to automatically generate layouts with multiple displays occupying the same position when enabling or disabling Base Mosaic.
Updated nvidia-settings to allow the use of the standard Display Configuration page when SLI Mosaic is enabled.
Fixed a bug that caused the kernel to report errors when unmapping DMA allocations on kernels with CONFIG_DEBUG_DMA_API enabled.
Added GLX Protocol support for the following OpenGL extensions:
- GL_ARB_copy_buffer
- GL_ARB_texture_buffer_object
Fixed a bug that caused a kernel crash if SLI Mosaic and G-SYNC were used at the same time on a configuration with more display devices connected to one GPU than another.
Added the ability to configure the swapping behavior for quad-buffered stereo visuals. The driver can be configured to independently swap each eye as it becomes ready, to wait for both eyes to complete rendering before swapping, or to allow applications to specify which of these two behaviors is preferred by setting the swap interval. This setting can be adjusted in the nvidia-settings control panel, or via the NV-CONTROL API.
Fixed a regression which caused the GPU fan status display to disappear from the nvidia-settings control panel.
Added reporting of ECC error counts to the nvidia-settings control panel.
Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented OpenGL sampler objects from being properly deallocated when destroying OpenGL contexts.
Fixed a bug that caused GLX_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB to incorrectly report sRGB support in 30 bit-per-pixel framebuffer configurations.
Added support for G-SYNC with sync-to-vblank disabled. This allows applications to use G-SYNC to eliminate tearing for frame rates below the monitor’s maximum refresh rate but allow tearing above the maximum refresh rate in order to minimize latency.
When G-SYNC is active and sync-to-vblank is enabled, the frame rate is limited to the monitor’s maximum refresh rate.
GLSL gl_Fog.scale is now +infinity when gl_Fog.end equals gl_Fog.start. Previously, the value 0 was used, but this broke certain applications such as the game XIII running on Wine (Wine bug #37068).
Enabled G-SYNC by default when Unified Back Buffer (UBB) is disabled.
Updated the NVIDIA GPU driver to avoid using video memory already in use by vesafb.
Fixed a bug in nvidia-settings that caused the application to crash when saving the EDID to a file.
Fixed a bug that prevented the “mkprecompiled” utility included in the driver package from reading files correctly.
Fixed a bug that could cause an Xid error when terminating a video playback application using the overlay presentation queue in VDPAU.
Updated nvidia-installer to avoid recursing too deeply into kernel source trees under /usr/lib/modules, mirroring an existing restriction on recursion under /lib/modules.
Fixed a rare deadlock condition when running applications that use OpenGL in multiple threads on a Quadro GPU.
Fixed a kernel memory leak that occurred when looping hardware- accelerated video decoding with VDPAU on Maxwell-based GPUs.
Fixed a bug that caused the X server to crash if a RandR 1.4 output provided by a Sink Output provider was selected as the primary output on X.Org xserver 1.17 and higher.
Fixed a bug that caused waiting on X Sync Fence objects in OpenGL to hang indefinitely in some cases.
Fixed a bug that prevented OpenGL from properly recovering from hardware errors or sync object waits that had timed out.

Install NVIDIA 352.21 via PPA:

NOTE: If you’re just looking for a working driver for your graphics card, the default Nvidia package in Ubuntu repository may interact better with the rest of your distribution’s framework.

Open terminal from the Dash, Application Menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below commands one by one to add the PPA, and install the driver:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-settings

In Howtos Nvidia Driver

How to Install Open Broadcaster Software in Ubuntu 15.04/14.04

Last updated: June 14, 2015

This is a quick tutorial for Ubuntu users how to install Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), a free and open source software for recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or recording services.

OBS features:

Encoding using H264 (x264) and AAC.
Support for Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) and NVENC.
Unlimited number of scenes and sources.
Live RTMP streaming to Twitch, YouTube, DailyMotion, Hitbox and more.
File output to MP4 or FLV.
GPU-based game capture for high performance game streaming.
DirectShow capture device support (webcams, capture cards, etc).
Windows 8 high speed monitor capture support.
Bilinear or lanczos3 resampling.

Sorry that OBS doesn’t work for my laptop’s integrated graphics card. Picture from linux distro community forum

Install Open Broadcaster Software in Ubuntu:

Open terminal from the Dash, Application Menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, copy and paste (Ctrl+Alt+V) below commands and run one by one:

1. OBS requires ffmpeg, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10 need to add below PPA via command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kirillshkrogalev/ffmpeg-next

2. OBS has an official Ubuntu PPA that currently supports Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, and Ubuntu 15.04. To add the PPA, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:obsproject/obs-studio

3. Finally, refresh your system package cache and install the OBS package by running below two commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install obs-studio

For 14.04 Trusty and 14.10 Utopic, above command also installs the ffmpeg libraries from the PPA you added in step 1.

Not clear enough? See the video by Osirez Tech:

In Howtos open broadcast software

Archives For May 31, 2015

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