News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
Just a week after the 3.0.0 major release, GIMP announced the first maintenance update for the 3.0 series on this Sunday.
The new image editor release fixed more than a dozen of bugs, improved the official installers, updated translations, and introduced 2 new download mirrors for users from India.
Linux Kernel 6.14 was released yesterday on Monday! Linus Torvalds announced it in lkml.org:
So it’s early Monday morning (well – early for me, I’m not really a morning person), and I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon release schedule.
I’d like to say that some important last-minute thing came up and delayed things.
Libinput released version 1.28.0 today, which finally introduced the long requested three-finger drag gesture support for touchpads!
The big new feature in this release is three-finger drag for touchpads. When enabled three fingers down on the touchpad will logically hold the left mouse button down, any movement of the fingers then moves the pointer for a drag. For some users this is a more precise and easier-to-trigger interaction than e.g. tap-and-drag.
This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to manually download & install the new Gnome Adwaita Sans and Adwaita Mono fonts in all current Ubuntu releases.
GNOME introduced new interface font in version 48, named Adwaita Sans and Adwaita Mono. While, Ubuntu does not ship Adwaita fonts in system repository, user can install it manually by following steps.
GNOME & Ubuntu Fonts compare in Font Manager
NOT only for Ubuntu, this tutorial should work for most other Linux. And, you may follow this tutorial for manually installing any other fonts.
First, download the source code of GNOME Adwaita Fonts from its project page via the link below:
Then, open your Downloads folder and decompress the source tarball. In the extracted folder, you’ll see the font files (.ttf files) under mono and sans sub-folders.
To install manually downloaded fonts in Ubuntu and most other Linux, simply put the .ttf files into one of the following locations:
/usr/share/fonts for fonts that work system-wide (meaning for all users)./usr/local/share/fonts – an alternative system-wide font directory..local/share/fonts or .fonts– for fonts that work for current user only.There are as well other locations, such as Ubuntu, GNOME, Flatpak, and Snap specific directories for storing font files. Run command fc-cache -v in terminal to list them all.
For current user only, open another file manager window, press Ctrl+H to show hidden files/folders, then navigate to .local -> share -> fonts (create if not exist).
Then, drag and drop the .tff font files from the extracted adwaita-fonts folder (mono and sans sub-folders) into that directory.
Finally, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open up a terminal window, and run command to re-generate font cache:
fc-cache -f -v
For system wide use, just move the .ttf files into /usr/share/fonts directory (or sub-directory) instead, though you need root permission to do the job.
First, open file manager and navigate to the folder that contains the .ttf font files.
adwaita in the case, under target directory:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/adwaita
.ttf files from current to the location you just created:
sudo install -m644 ./*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/adwaita
As the .ttf font files are separated into 2 folders (mono and sans sub-folders), you need to open another folder in terminal and re-do the steps above.
When done, also run fc-cache -f -v to apply changes.
After installed font files into target location and updated cache, you may use following tools to apply/change font.
For the default GNOME Desktop, GNOME Tweaks (available to install in Ubuntu Software / App Center) tool offers options to do the job in first tab.
NOTE: GNOME Tweaks v46 has bug changing fonts in Ubuntu 24.04, please try other ways instead.
Tips: As you see in the screenshot, there are 3 font options:
For non-GNOME desktop users who can’t find out the desktop specific font setting options, “Font Manager” also offers the options the change the fonts.
Simply search for and install the app from Ubuntu Software or App Center, then launch it, and click the setting gear icon in header, finally navigate to “Desktop” in left pane to get the options.
Also for GNOME, the advanced dconf editor tool also provides the options to change fonts. While it also has options to easily reset fonts to default.
First, install Dconf Editor either from AppCenter (or Ubuntu Software) or by running command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):
sudo apt install dconf-editor
Then, launch Dconf Editor and navigate to org/gnome/desktop/interface. Finally, find out and change the following key values:
For each key, click turn off “Use default value”, then input a custom value Adwaita Sans 11 or Adwaita Mono 11 in the case, finally click the bottom right Apply button.
For the default GNOME desktop users who are OK with Linux command line, simply press Ctrl+Alt+T to open up a terminal window.
When terminal opens, run the commands below one by one to set Adwaita Fonts:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name "Adwaita Sans 11"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name "Adwaita Mono 11"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name "Adwaita Sans 11"
For choice, you may replace number ’11’ in the command to increase or decrease fonts sizes.
As mentioned above, “Dconf Editor” offer options to reset fonts to default.
Just install & launch the tool, then navigate to org/gnome/desktop/interface, finally click edit each key and turn on “Use default value” option to revert back to default font.
For choice, you may open terminal and run the commands below one by one to restore the fonts:
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name
Blender, the popular free open-source 3D computer graphics software, announced new 4.4 release few days ago.
The new release added many exciting new features, improved performances, and fixed over 700 issues.
Looking for a stateless password manager? There’s now a new LessPass compatible password manager designed for GNOME, though of course works in other Linux desktops.
It’s LPTK, a free open-source application written in Rust and use GTK4 for its user interface. With the app, you can generate and access your passwords, and optionally connect to a compatible LessPass server to read and store password profiles.
GNOME Desktop 48 was officially released on Wednesday! The developer team announced it in GNOME website:
The GNOME project is excited to introduce GNOME 48, a fresh release shaped by six months of hard work from our amazing community. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to making this happen!
OpenJDK announced the latest JDK 24 yesterday. This is the beginner’s guide shows how to install it in all current Ubuntu and Linux Mint releases.
OpenJDK 24 is a short term release with 6 months support. Ubuntu has made JDK 24 into system repository for upcoming Ubuntu 25.04, while all current Ubuntu releases may use the official tarball instead.
OpenJDK and Oracle announced the General Availability of JDK 24 this Tuesday.
Java 24 (Oracle JDK 24) delivers thousands of improvements to help developers maximize productivity and drive innovation. In addition, enhancements to the platform’s performance, stability, and security help organizations accelerate their business growth.
To help users switching from Adobe PhotoShop, PhotoGIMP project updated today with support for the new GIMP 3.0 image editor.
PhotoGIMP is a free open-source project that optimizes GIMP for AdobeShop users. By changing the local app data, it organised the tools and their options to be PhotoShop style, assigned keyboard shortcuts to similar to the ones in Photoshop for Windows, following Adobe’s Documentation, and added new default settings to maximize space on the canvas.
