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Archives For November 30, 1999

Vivaldi 3.7 Released with Native Apple M1 Support & Speed Boost

Last updated: March 19, 2021

The Vivaldi web browser 3.7 was released a few days ago. Features performance improvements and Apple M1 machines support.

Vivaldi 3.7 gets a series speed boost. By testing on Ubuntu 18.04 PC with 2 GHz Intel Core i3 CPU and 4 GB RAM, the browser tabs open twice as fast, and new windows open 26% faster compare to the previous version.

The new release also adds native support for Apple computers using the new ARM-based M1 processors.

Besides, there are more new features including:

  • Add support for Kabyle
  • Add support for configurable document menus
  • Support Periodic Reload in web panels
  • Periodic Reload in Web Panels
  • Declutter a crowded Tab Bar in two clicks
  • Search highlight priority options
  • Silent update support for Windows.
  • Import bookmarks for Chromium Edge

How to Install Vivaldi 3.7 in Ubuntu:

The official Ubuntu .DEB package is available to download at the link below:

Grab the deb matches your OS, then install it via either Ubuntu Software install or Gdebi package installer. Or run command in terminal:

sudo apt install ./Downloads/vivaldi-stable*.deb

Vivaldi also has an official apt repository, with it you can install the browser and get future updates through Software Updater utility.

Open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by searching for terminal from application menu. When it opens, run following commands one by one:

1. Download and install the repository key:

wget -qO- https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

Typer user password when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.

2. Add Vivaldi repository via command:

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://repo.vivaldi.com/archive/deb/ stable main'

3. Finally check updates and install the web browser via command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install vivaldi-stable

Or upgrade from an old version via Software Updater utility.

(Optional): To remove Vivaldi apt repository from you system, launch Software & Updates and navigate to Other Software tab.

In News
 

Audacity 3.0.0 Released! Now Save Project into Single .aup3 File

Last updated: July 4, 2021

The Audacity audio editor 3.0.0 was release as a new major update a day ago.

Audacity 3.0.0 features .aup3 project format. The audio project was previously saved as large number of small data files, with an ‘.aup’ file to coordinate the lot. Now it saves project as the new all-in-one-file aup3 file format.

Working with the new .aup3 projects editing audio should be a little faster than before, however, finishing and closing a project at the end can be quite a lot slower.

You can open your older .aup projects in the new version, where they will be converted to the new .aup3 format.

Other changes in the Audacity 3.0.0 include:

  • Improved ‘Noise Gate’ effect
  • Add new analyzer ‘Label Sounds’ to label sounds and silences.
  • Import and export macros
  • New commands for using the last used tool or analyzer
  • Over 160 bug-fixes since version 2.4.2.

Download Audacity 3.0.0 for Linux:

No binary package for Ubuntu at the moment of writing, only the source tarball is available to download at the link:

And you can follow this guide to build it on Linux.

In News
 

Oracle Java 16 Released, How to Install it in Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 20.10

Last updated: September 15, 2021

Oracle Java 16 was announced as a short release with 6-month support. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10 via PPA.

UPDATE: Oracle Java 17 has been released as the new LTS (Long Term Support Release). This tutorial also works for the new release!

New features in the release include:

  • Vector API (Incubator)
  • Enable C++14 Language Features
  • Migrate from Mercurial to Git
  • Migrate to GitHub
  • ZGC: Concurrent Thread-Stack Processing
  • Unix-Domain Socket Channels
  • Alpine Linux Port
  • Elastic Metaspace
  • Windows/AArch64 Port
  • Foreign Linker API (Incubator)
  • Warnings for Value-Based Classes
  • Packaging Tool
  • Foreign-Memory Access API (Third Incubator)
  • Pattern Matching for instanceof
  • Records
  • Strongly Encapsulate JDK Internals by Default
  • Sealed Classes (Second Preview)

The “Linux Uprising” team ppa has made the installer script, which automatically downloads and installs Oracle JDK 16 package, and sets Java 16 as the default Java version (setting JAVA_HOME, etc.) on 64-bit Ubuntu based system.

1.) Open terminal and run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/java

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2.) After adding PPA, refresh system package cache and install the script:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install oracle-java16-installer

For Java JDK 17, replace the package name so the command will be:

udo apt install oracle-java17-installer

Once the package is installed, you have to accept the license (press Tab to highlight) before starting the download process.

And after installed Oracle Java 16, check via java --version command:

(Optional) To uninstall the PPA repository, run command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:linuxuprising/java

And remove Oracle Java 16 if you want by running command:

sudo apt-get remove oracle-java16-installer
In Howtos
 

How to Install 0 A.D. Alpha 24 via Another PPA in Ubuntu 20.04, 20.10

Last updated: March 16, 2021

0 A.D., a free open-source real-time strategy video game, released Alpha 24 “Xšayāršā” a few weeks ago. Here’s how to install the game in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10 via PPA.

0 A.D. Alpha 24 new features in breaf:

  • Balancing adjustments
  • Building snapping
  • Renderer improvements
  • Hotkey editor
  • Formation improvements
  • Status effects (and modifiers)
  • World population setting
  • Lobby improvements
  • In-game user interface (GUI) improvements
  • Unit behaviour improvements
  • Reinforcement-learning interface
  • Art: new models
  • New Skirmish maps

How to Install 0 A.D. Alpha 24 in Ubuntu:

The game has an official PPA, which is however not updated for the new release almost a month after the release date.

For choice, xtradeb games PPA has made the package for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Linux Mint 20.

1.) Open terminal from system application menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/play

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2.) Then either install the game package via command:

sudo apt install 0ad

or update from an old release via Software Updater.

How to Remove 0 A.D.

As the PPA also contains many other game packages (e.g., openra, speed dreams, warzone2100, etc), you may remove it via Software & Updates tool under Other Software tab.

To remove 0 A.D. package, just run command:

sudo apt remove --auto-remove 0ad 0ad-data
In Howtos
 

How to Install SoundConverter 4.0.x in Ubuntu 20.04 & 22.04

Last updated: December 16, 2023

SoundConverter is a nifty audio file converting software for Linux Gnome. Here’s how to install the latest version via PPA in Ubuntu.

SoundConverter is a simple and fast Gnome sound conversion software with multi-threading support. It reads anything GStreamer can read, and writes to Opus, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, AAC, and MP3 files.

It can also be used to automated re-naming filenames and creating folders according to tags, extract the audio from videos.

Ubuntu includes the software package in its main repositories, however the package version is always old.

If you want to install the most recent 4.0.x version with latest bug-fixes and improvements, the “xtradeb packaging” team maintains the packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 22.04.

1. Add the PPA:

Firstly open terminal either from system application launcher or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When terminal opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. Install or upgrade SoundConverter:

After adding the PPA, you can either install the sound converter via command:

sudo apt install soundconverter

Linux Mint users may need to run sudo apt update first to update package cache.

or upgrade it via update manager (Software Updater) if an old package version exist.

Once installed, open it from your system application launcher. Add audio file or folder, click the gear button to set result folder, format, quality etc, and convert!

3. (Optional) How to Remove SoundConverter:

The PPA contains also many other software packages, e.g, Shutter, GNU Cash, Avidemux. You may want to remove it after installation, by going to Software & Updates -> Other Software.

And remove the sound converter if you want by running command:

sudo apt remove --auto-remove soundconverter
In Howtos
 

Wine 6.4 Released with DTLS Protocol Support

Last updated: March 13, 2021

The Wine team announced the new development release Wine 6.4 with new features and various bug-fixes.

Wine 6.4 added support for the DTLS protocol. Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) is a protocol designed to secure data over UDP and is used for applications such as media streaming, VOIP, and online gaming for communication.

Other changes in the release include:

  • Fontset support in DirectWrite.
  • Dialog for editing Access Control entries.
  • Theming support for a few more common controls.
  • Support for Korean Wansung encoding.

And there are various bug-fixes to Windows applications including RTG Bills 2.x, Acrobat Reader XI, Soldiers of Anarchy, The Witcher 3, and more.

How to Install Wine 6.4 in Ubuntu:

The new release package will be available in next a few days for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 20.10.

Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, or by searching for ‘terminal’ from system application menu. When it opens, run following steps one by one.

1.) Run command to enable 32 bit architecture (if you don’t have it):

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2.) Install the repository key by running command:

wget -O - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -

3.) Add wine repository via command:

sudo apt-add-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main'

IMPORTANT: In this command, you have to replace focal with:

  • focal for Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 20.x
  • groovy for Ubuntu 20.10.
  • bionic for Ubuntu 18.04 and Linux Mint 19.x

Don’t know your system edition? Run lsb_release -a command in terminal to check out.

4.) For Ubuntu 18.04 and Linux Mint 19.x only, libfaudio0 library is required to install from a third-party repository by running command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cybermax-dexter/sdl2-backport

5.) Finally install Wine 6.4 via command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-devel

If you get unmet dependency issue, try aptitude command instead:

sudo apt install aptitude && sudo aptitude install winehq-devel

Uninstall wine:

You may remove the PPA by launching Software & Updates utility and navigating to Other Software tab.

To remove wine 6.4, run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --auto-remove winehq-devel
In News
 

Czkawka – Find & Remove Duplicates, Empty, Broken Files in Linux

Last updated: March 22, 2021

Czkawka is a simple, fast and easy to use software to remove unnecessary files from your machine.

Czkawka is a free and open-source software written in memory safe Rust. It works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Due to advanced algorithms and multi-threading, it is amazingly fast!

With it, you can scan your specified folder directories for:

  • Duplicates files based on file name, size, hash, first 1 MB of hash
  • Empty folders / empty files.
  • Big files.
  • Temporary files
  • Similar images.
  • Zeroed files
  • Invalid symbolic links
  • Broken files.

And it offers a few select buttons to select and remove your desired files from the output.

How to Get Czkawka in Ubuntu Linux:

The software offers official binary packages available to download at the github releases page:

For Linux users, grab the .appimage package. Make it executable from file properties dialog, and finally run it to launch the software.

UPDATE: Install Czkawka via Ubuntu PPA:

There’s now an unofficial PPA that contains the software packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 20.10 so far.

Open terminal and run following commands one by one to add the PPA and install Czkawka via apt:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps

sudo apt install czkawka
In App Review
 

Flatery – A Nifty Flat Style Icon Theme for Linux

Last updated: March 11, 2021

Looking for some different icons for your Ubuntu Desktop? Flatery is a flat style icon theme for Linux.

Flatery is a full desktop icons set licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. It includes icons for app shortcuts, file folders, menu buttons, and in application icons.

The icon theme is also available in different colors (each contains light & dark mode), including Black, Blue, Gray, Green, Indigo, Mint, Orange, Pink, Sky, Teal, and Yellow.

Download & Install the Icon Theme:

The theme is available to download at github project page.
You can simply click the link below to grab the zip archive:

Then extract the zip archive in your file browser. Install it by moving all sub-folders to:

  • .icons – For single use. In Home folder press Ctrl+H to show hidden file folders. And create .icons folder if it does not exit.
  • .local/share/icons – For KDE desktop.
  • /usr/share/icons – For global use. Gnome users can open the folder via nautilus /usr/share/icons command.

Finally apply the icon theme by Gnome Tweak Tool under Appearance tab:

In Theme
 

Show Spotify Playing Song on Top Bar in Ubuntu 20.04 via Extension

Last updated: March 10, 2021

For Spotify users, you can add the currently playing song name displayed on the top panel in Ubuntu 20.04 via Gnome Extension.

There’s a Gnome Shell Extension called ‘Spotify Song Label’, which adds the current playing song as well as artist in the top bar.

It can be placed in the left, center, or right of the top panel, with options to change left / right padding. And it has ability to toggle between Spotify window and last focused app.

How to Install Spotify Song label Extension:

1.) Firstly make sure chrome-gnome-shell package is installed. And for the configuration tool (see the previous picture), install the gnome-shell-extension-prefs package:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell gnome-shell-extension-prefs

2.) Go to the extension web page and turn on the toggle icon to install it.

Don’t see the toggle icon? Click the link which says “Click here to install browser extension” to install browser extension and refresh the web page.

That’s it. To change the extension settings, use either Gnome Tweaks or Extensions you installed via step 1.

In Howtos
 

[Quick Tip] Single Command to Rotate a Video in Ubuntu Linux

Last updated: February 9, 2023

Got a video playing upside down? Here’s an easy way to rotate it via a single command in Ubuntu.

There are a few video players, e.g., SMPlayer, support for rotating by 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise during video playback.

If you want to make it permanent by exporting video rotated, besides using a heavy video editing tool, e.g., Pitivi and Openshot, the single command in this tutorial may help.

An upside down video

1. Install FFmpeg:

Firstly install FFmpeg if you don’t have it. FFmpeg is a large suite of libraries and programs for handling multi-media files and streams.

It is very popular and most likely already installed on your system, if you have any audio, video, and other multimedia relevant applications installed.

To make sure, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:

2. Command to rotate video:

Now you can run the single command to rotate a video:

ffmpeg -i input-video.mp4 -vf "transpose=1" -acodec copy output-video.mp4

Before this command, you may first navigate to the video folder either via cd command (e.g., cd ~/Videos), or in file browser go to the folder and right-click blank area and select “Open in Terminal”.

In the command, the number in “transpose=1” can also be:

  • 0 – means rotate by 90 degrees counterclockwise and flip
  • 1 – means rotate by 90 degrees clockwise
  • 2 – means rotate by 90 degrees counterclockwise
  • 3 – means rotate by 90 degrees clockwise and flip

(Thanks to Roman Sheydvasser) Add -c copy (or -codec copy) will copy all the frames instead of doing decode -> filter -> encode process. It will speed up the command quite a lot!

In my case, the command is:

ffmpeg -i ~/Videos/aisha.mp4 -vf "transpose=1" -acodec copy ~/Videos/aisha-rotated.mp4

This command however will re-encode the video. Depends on the video size and your CPU, the process may take a few minutes.

Optional

The last command can take quite a few minutes since it needs to re-encode the video. As a workaround, user can use this command instead to do the rotation in the metadata.

fmpeg -i input-video.mp4 -map_metadata 0 -metadata:s:v rotate="90" -codec copy output-video.mp4

The command is fast and will work for video players (such as VLC and MPV) that support can handle rotation metadata.

In Howtos