This simple shows how to easily download & install Google web fonts in Ubuntu and other Linux through 3 different applications.
There are quite a few handy applications that can help downloading & installing Google Web Fonts for offline use in Ubuntu. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you 3 of them, including Font Manager, Font Downloader, and TypeCatcher.
Option 1: Font Manager
Font Manager is a free open-source app for GTK Desktop environments. It allows to preview, download & install Google Web Fonts, or install fonts from local files.
The app works in 3 different modes: Manage, Browse, and Compare. Which can be switched by clicking to top-left button.
While “Manage” mode allows to install, uninstall, preview fonts, “Browse” mode allows you to preview all installed fonts in different categories. As well, it provides option to compare selected fonts (from all installed) side by side.
It as well has command line options, to list, enable, disable, and install fonts in terminal or console.
Besides that, Font Manager also includes extra features, including:
Change system fonts.
Active/De-active installed fonts.
Import/Export.
Add custom user actions.
And more.
Install Font Manager
Font Manager is available in most Linux repositories.
Ubuntu users can simply search for and install it from either Ubuntu Software or App Center. Or, just press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run command to install:
TypeCatcher is a GTK app designed to search, browse, and download Google webfonts for off-line use. It’s a 12 years old app that’s still working today, though the app rarely gets update now.
The app provides a quite basic UI, allowing to search and browse Google Fonts, preview with selected or custom text in different size. Along with buttons to install, uninstall, and open font URL page in web browser. All the Google fonts are installed to .fonts/typecatcher folder. Just open Files (nautilus file browser) and press Ctrl+H to view them.
Install Typecatcher:
The app is available in Debian and Ubuntu system repositories. User can either open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install the package:
sudo apt install typecatcher
Or, search for and get it from Ubuntu Software, App Center, or your system package manager.
NOTE: TypeCatcher does NOT launch in Ubuntu 22.04 due to bug, see this step by step tutorial to fix it. In Ubuntu 24.04, it takes quite a few seconds to launch, perhaps due to poor network connection issue.
Option 3: Font Downloader
For choice, Font Downloader is another tool can download & install Google Web Fonts for offline use in Linux Desktops.
The app provides a quite basic user interface, to search, browse, and install fonts! However, I don’t find an option to uninstall.
The only difference to other 2, is that the app provide a button to download font only without install. So, you can use the .tff font files anywhere else.
Get Font Downloader
Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian Sid can get the app simply from system repository, either by running the command below in terminal:
sudo apt install font-downloader
Or, use App Center or system package manager to search & install it as .deb (Debian) package.
For most other Linux, the app is available to install as universal Flatpak package.
(Optional) Change Fonts in Ubuntu Desktop
To change your system fonts in Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with GNOME Desktop environment. Simply install GNOME Tweaks from system package manager.
Then, you can easily change the font of Interface text, Document text, and Monospace text in the first tab of the app window.
GScan2PDF, graphical to produce PDFs or DjVus from scanned documents, released version 2.8.1 a day ago.
The previous program launching issue should be fixed in the release, though it didn’t happen in my machine. Gscan2pdf 2.8.1 release highlights:
Pass resolution to tesseract to avoid messages like “Warning! Invalid resolution 0 dpi. Using 70 instead”
Cope better if data model becomes corrupted
Add restart option to ‘device not found’ mini-wizard & if tmp directory changed.
When saving a session file, note that pages have been saved to avoid ‘Some pages have not been saved. Do you really want to quit?’ message.
Improvements to the Crashed sessions dialog to make it more intuitive.
Update position of OCR text when cropping
Create PS level 3 instead of 1.
Fix check for unpaper version. (Scan fails if unpaper is not installed but selected in post processing)
Fix check for tesseract version. Remove support for tesseract
Update translations.
How to Install gscan2pdf 2.8.1 in Ubuntu:
The official Gscan2PDF PPA has made the new release packages for all current Ubuntu releases, and their derivatives, including Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10, Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 18.x, 19.x, and 20.
1. Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or by searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jeffreyratcliffe/ppa
Type user password (no asterisk feedback due to security reason) when it prompts and hit Enter.
2. For those who have a previous release installed, upgrade it through Software Updater:
Or run following command in terminal to install or upgrade the software:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install gscan2pdf
How to Remove:
To remove gscan2pdf, either use your system package manager or run command:
sudo apt-get remove --autoremove gscan2pdf
And the PPA can be removed via Software & Updates utility, under Other Software tab.
Audacious music player 4.0.5 was released a day ago with some important bug-fixes. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 19.10, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 16.04, and derivatives.
Fixed UI freeze when asterisk key (Shift+8) was pressed.
Fixed an exception when reading a large APE (> 1M) tag
Fixed album artist not being displayed for .m4a files
Fixed a crash on exit with a plugin settings window open
Fixed a crash when scrobbling with curl 7.71.0
Changed the default CDDB server to gnudb.org
How to Install Audacious 4.0.5 in Ubuntu:
All users of current Ubuntu releases and Linux Mint 18.x, 19.x, 20 can install the new release via Ubuntu PPA by running following commands one by one.
1. Open terminal by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps
Type your password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2. Then run commands one by one in terminal to install or upgrade the audio player:
Open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat software, Mumble 1.3.2, was released a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 16.04.
Mumble 1.3.2 is a maintenance release that fixed overlay not starting, and keychain-error on macOS for custom certificates.
There’s also known issues: overlay blocked by BattleEye, CS:GO Trusted Mode.
How to Install Mumble in Ubuntu:
Mumble is available as containerized Snap and Flatpak packages. You can install the Snap from Ubuntu Software, and install Flatpak from flathub repository.
For those prefer .deb package from apt repository, do following steps to install it from Mumble Team PPA.
1. Open terminal either from application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste below command and hit Enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mumble/release
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue adding the PPA.
2. If an old release was installed, simply upgrade Mumble via Software Updater:
Or run commands one by one in terminal to check updates and install the chat utility for gamer:
The Qt4 framework has been removed from Ubuntu 20.04 main repository. It is however still required for some obsolete applications.
Though it is not recommended, you can still get Qt4 libraries (e.g., libqt4-declarative, qt4-dev-tools, qt4-qmake, libqtwebkit4, and more) as software dependencies or for building an application via this third-party PPA.
NOTE: Qt4 has reached end of life! You may run into security issues with the library. USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK! And for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, please scroll down for option 2.
Option 1: Install Qt4 in Ubuntu 20.04
1.) Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or by searching for ‘terminal’ from your system application launcher. When terminal opens, run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rock-core/qt4
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit enter.
2.) After adding the PPA, it should automatically refresh the system package cache. On some Ubuntu derivatives, you may run command to manually update the package cache:
sudo apt update
3.) Finally install the software .deb package, and it should automatically install the required Qt4 libraries after running sudo apt -f install.
Or you may install specified Qt4 package by running command:
sudo apt install PACKAGE_NAME
See here for a full list of available Qt4 libraries.
Option 2: Install Qt4 in Ubuntu 22.04
For the new Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, you can get the Qt4 libraries via this unofficial PPA. The packages there belongs to kelebek333.
1. Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the command below to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ppa
Type user password when it asks (no asterisk feedback) and hit Enter to continue.
2. After adding the PPA, install your old app packages should automatically install Qt4 as dependencies.
To install the packages manually, either run command sudo apt install PACKNAME in terminal or use Synaptic package manager:
This quick tutorial shows how to enable remote desktop service in Ubuntu 20.04, so that you can access to Ubuntu desktop remotely via VNC viewer.
1.) Open System Settings utility, navigate to Sharing in the left pane, toggle on Sharing in the top-right, and finally click on “Screen Sharing”.
2.) In the pop-up dialog, turn on “Screen Sharing” and select:
Enable remote control by tick “Allow connections to control screen”.
Setup a password or select ask for access on each connection.
3.) As a workaround of TightVNC connection error: “No security types supported. Server sent security types, but we do not support any of them“.
NOTE: Instead of running following commands, you may use Dconf Editor and navigate to org/gnome/desktop/remote-access.
Run command in terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal):
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false
You may also run command to allow people not in local network to access using UPnP (if your router supports it):
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino use-upnp true
Finally, connect to this Ubuntu desktop remotely using either Computer name (as picture in step 1.) shows) or IP address via a VNC viewer / client and enjoy!
Prefer installing Sublime Text via the official .deb package rather than using the containerized Snap package? Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04 the official way via the apt repository.
Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or by searching for ‘terminal’ from your system application menu. When it opens, run following commands one by one to install the latest Sublime Text 3 in Ubuntu.
1.) Download and install the GPG key by running command:
Grab the package, extract, and run the tauon.py file to launch the music player:
python3 tauon.py
Tips: 1. Go into the folder that contains tauon.py file, right-click on blank area and select ‘Open in Terminal’, finally run the previous python3 tauon.py.
2. The portable package requires python3, python3-musicbrainzngs, and maybe other python libraries, install them via apt command.
