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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
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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
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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
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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:

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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
 

PhotoFiltre Like Image Editor ‘Photoflare’ 1.6.7 Released with Paint Tool Offsets

Last updated: March 8, 2021

Photoflare, simple but powerful image editor inspired by PhotoFiltre, released version 1.6.7 with translation updates and paint tool improvements.

Photoflare is an open-source cross-platform image editor written in C++ with Qt5 framework. It has a PhotoFiltre style user interface, and features basic image editing capabilities, paint brushes, image filters, colour adjustments and more advanced features such as Batch image processing.

The new 1.6.7 was released with new translations: Indonesian and Spanish. And it removed incorrect image extension check, instead it now shows the actual file type in the Image Properties dialog.

And the new version added offsets to the Paint Bucket tool and the Color picker tool. Previously, they select from the center of the cursor location.

Color Picker Before 1.6.7

Color Picker after

How to Install Photoflare in Ubuntu:

The official Ubuntu PPA has made the latest packages for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, and Linux Mint 19.x / 20.

1.) To add the PPA, open terminal from system application launcher and run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:photoflare/photoflare-stable

2.) After adding PPA, update system package cache and install the image editor via commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install photoflare

Uninstall Photoflare:

To remove Photoflare image editor, either use your system package manager or run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove photoflare

And remove the PPA either via Software & Updates under Other Software tab, or by running command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:photoflare/photoflare-stable
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Avidemux 2.7.8 Released! How to Install it in Ubuntu 20.04

Last updated: March 7, 2021

The free open-source Avidemux video editor 2.7.8 was released with many new features. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu via PPA.

The new release features many new video filters. A dedicated MOV muxer is available to replace MOV muxing mode within the MP4 muxer; A subset of color info relevant for HDR support is retained in copy mode when both input and output video are stored in Matroska / WebM containers.

The indexer in the MPEG-TS demuxer now detects resolution changes in MPEG-2 and H.264 streams.

YUV varieties of the lossless Ut Video codec are supported via bundled FFmpeg library. Multi-threaded video decoding is now available for the bundled FFmpeg.

Other changes include:

  • Uncompressed 24-bit audio support.
  • Limited support for 7.1 channel layout.
  • Decode and stream copy support for XLL substream in DTS audio tracks.
  • Audio properties updated on resuming playback.
  • An option to keep the identity of markers A and B instead of swapping them automatically
  • Maximum resolution support increased to 8192×8192
  • FFmpeg bundle updated to 4.2.4
  • MP4 muxer accepts now MPEG-1 and MPEG-2
  • Extended Python interface, and more.

How to Install Avidemux 2.7.8 in Ubuntu:

The editor offers official non-install .appimage package, which is available to download at the link below

Grab the appimage, go to file Properties -> Permissions and make it executable, finally right-click and run the file to launch the Avidemux video editor.

For those prefer the classic apt method, I’ve uploaded the .deb packages into the unofficial PPA, available for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 20.10.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/avidemux

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

2.) Then refresh system package cache and install the editor:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install avidemux2.7-qt5 avidemux2.7-plugins-qt5 avidemux2.7-jobs-qt5

Uninstall:

To uninstall the PPA, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/avidemux

To uninstall the video editing software, run:

sudo apt remove --autoremove avidemux2.7-qt5 avidemux2.7-plugins-qt5 avidemux2.7-jobs-qt5
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Macchina – Another Command Tool to Display Basic System Info in Linux

Last updated: March 6, 2021

Macchina is another command line tool to fetch basic system information in Linux, similar to Neofetch, but focus on performance and minimalism.

The software is written in Rust, and it displays basic system information, including hostname, manufacturer, kernel version, uptime, desktop environment, processor, memory / battery status, and more. Macchina is pretty fast, it runs 8.53 ± 0.72 times faster than neofetch!

Macchina is a new project in active development. By adding --theme or -t flag, you can specify one of the supported themes. They are so far: default, alt, and long.

And you can specify the key color (--color / -c), the separator color (--separator-color / -C), let it show palette (-p) and display memory usage and battery percentage as bars (-b).

It also has options to change left padding and spacing.

How to Install Macchina in Ubuntu:

The software so far is available to install via crates.io.

1. Firstly open terminal and run command to install cargo:

sudo apt install cargo

2. Then install the tool via command:

cargo install macchina

Once installed, you can run ~/.cargo/bin/macchina with your desired flags.

If you prefer to use command macchina instead, run command to edit user’s profile:

gedit ~/.profile

And add following lines to add “.cargo/bin” directory to your PATH:

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d "$HOME/.cargo/bin" ] ; then
    PATH="$HOME/.cargo/bin:$PATH"
fi

Log out and back in to apply the new PATH.

Uninstall Macchina:

To remove the software via cargo, run command:

cargo uninstall macchina

If you don’t use cargo, simply remove it via command:

sudo apt remove --purge cargo
In App Review
 

How to Change the Icon Size in Default File Browser in Ubuntu

Last updated: March 6, 2021

The default size of files and folders in Nautilus file browser does not meet you need? It’s easy to change it in all current Ubuntu releases with Gnome.

Though you can’t find how to configure it either in the System Settings or Gnome Tweaks, Ubuntu do provide an option to set an even larger or smaller icon size, and here’s the quick tip shows you how.

Change File & Folder Size via Single Command:

If you’re familiar with Linux command, you can run a single command to change the size.

Since Nautilus displays files and folders in either icon view or list view, the command can be either:

1.) Change icon size in icon view:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view default-zoom-level 'large'

Here value ‘large’ can be changed to: ‘small’, ‘standard’, ‘larger’, or ‘largest’.

2.) Change icon size in list view:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.list-view default-zoom-level 'large'

Here value ‘large’ can be changed to: ‘small’, ‘standard’, or ‘larger’.

To reset the change, either run command:

gsettings reset org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view default-zoom-level

or run:

gsettings reset org.gnome.nautilus.list-view default-zoom-level

Change file folder icon size via graphical tool:

Firstly open Ubuntu Software, search for and install dconf editor (or install dconf-editor via apt):

Then launch the tool and navigate to “org/gnome/nautilus/icon-view/default-zoom-level” for the icon size in icon view:

  • Turn off ‘Use default value’
  • Then select a size from ‘Custom value’

For the list view mode, go to “org/gnome/nautilus/list-view/default-zoom-level”.

In Howtos