Archives For November 30, 1999

The lightweight Pragha music player 1.3.91.1 was released a day ago as a new beta of Pragha 1.4.

Changes in the new release include:

  • Save lyrics and artist bio ans similar songs in user cache as files. These are easily editable by the user.
  • Implement increse play count to Koel.
  • Various improvements to the tag editor dialog.
  • Add a header that highlights the main tags.
  • Update the header as you edit the tags.
  • Hides the check buttons and shows them when the tag is modified.
  • When you demarcate the check, restore the original tag.
  • Fix plugins on last tarball due to an internal development patch.

How to Install Pragha 1.3.91.1 in Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, 17.10:

While the project page provides only source tarball, you can easily install Pragha music player via an unofficial PPA in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 17.10.

1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or from app launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/pragha

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing due to security reason) and hit Enter.

2. Then install the music player either via Synaptic Package Manager or by running commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pragha

Remove Pragha:

To remove the music player, either use Synaptic Package Manager or by running command:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove pragha

And you can remove the PPA via Software & Updates utility under ‘Other Software’ tab.

Free and open-source scorewriter MuseScore 2.2.1 was released a few days ago. Now it’s available in the PPA repository for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04.

MuseScore has an stable PPA repository, which was not updated for almost a year due to outdated dependency libraries in Ubuntu 16.04 since version 2.1.0. Now the PPA is active again with the latest 2.2.1 packages for all current Ubuntu releases.

1. To add the PPA, open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for ‘terminal’ from app launcher. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mscore-ubuntu/mscore-stable

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.

2. Then upgrade MuseScore from an existing release via Software Updater (Update Manager):

or simply run commands one by one in terminal to install or upgrade the scorewriter:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install musescore

Uninstall MuseScore:

To uninstall the software, open terminal and run command:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove musescore

And you can remove PPA repositories by launching Software & Updates and navigating to “Other Software” tab.

Flight Simulator FlightGear 2018.1 Released

Last updated: April 7, 2018

The open-source flight simulator FlightGear 2018.1 now is available for download.

Changes in FlightGear 2018.1 “Honolulu” include:

  • Improved “Classic theme” with better fonts and colours
  • Canvas MapStructure support for SlippyMaps, including VFRCharts, STAMEN,
  • Various improvements to the Launcher
  • Atmospheric Light Scattering renderer: extra volumetric vegetation layers for denser undergrowth
  • Active Volcanos, including Kilauea, Stromboli, Etna,
  • CH Products Throttle Quadrant supported out-of-the-box.
  • Improved support for add-ons
  • And many other changes

Download / Install FlightGear 2018.1:

Source tarball, Windows and Mac OS packages are available for download at the link below:

For Ubuntu Linux, there’s a PPA repository (check the link before doing following steps) and the new release packages should be available in few days.

1. To add the PPA repository, open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for ‘terminal’ from app launcher. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/flightgear

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing due to security reason) and hit Enter.

2. Then you can upgrade FlightGear via Software Updater (may not work on Ubuntu 16.04 due to version system change) once it’s published in the PPA repository.

Or install it for the first time via commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install flightgear

Uninstall:

To uninstall FlightGear, simply run following command in terminal:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove flightgear

And remove the PPA by launching “Software & Updates” utility and navigating to Other Software tab.

The final beta of Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver LTS (Long Term Support) was released a few hours ago.

Ubuntu 18.04 Beta 2 features iso images for Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Cloud products. Also Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu images are available.

The beta includes updated versions of most of core set of packages, including a current 4.15 kernel, and much more. And the final release of Ubuntu 18.04 will be available on April 26.

Notable hanges in Kubuntu 18.04 since the last LTS:

  • Replace Dragonplayer with VLC as default media player.
  • Muon package manager is shipped by default once again.
  • Replace Amarok with Cantata Qt5 as default music player.
  • Drop Telepathy instant messaging client from the defaults.

Notable changes in Xubuntu 18.04 include:

  • Removed the GTK Theme Configuration tool
  • Replaced the Sound Indicator with the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin.
  • Replaced Application indicator with Status Notifier Plugin
  • Replace some desktop applications: Evince -> Atril, File Roller -> Engrampa, GNOME Calculator -> MATE Calculator.

Changes in Ubuntu MATE 18.04 include:

  • MATE desktop 1.20
  • Uses Indicators by default in all layouts.
  • Brisk Menu switches to a dash-style launcher for Mutiny or Cupertino layout.
  • Minimal installation support and more and more other changes.
  • New and updated desktop layouts
  • The xcursor themes have been replaced with new cursours from MATE upstream

Changes in Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 Beta2 include:

  • Introduce Window Shuffler – a brand-new GUI and keyboard based grid tiling
  • Weather Applet now is working again.
  • Budgie Welcome has had a whole series of changes

Notable changes in Ubuntu Studio 18.04 Beta 2 include:

  • Add an option to Ubuntu Studio Controls to set the CPU governor to performance mode
  • Removed zynjacku as this is no longer maintained software
  • Updated versions of main multimedia packages

The beta images for other flavors: Ubuntu Kylin 18.04, LUbuntu 18.04.

Pragha music player 1.3.91 was released earlier today as the second beta of the next Pragha 1.4.

The 1.3.91 release of the lightweight music player (formerly known as Consonance) features:

  • New Koel plugin that allow play music from this service.
  • Implements cache purge limited by size. 1GB by default.
  • Add option to “Add and Play” from library view.
  • Allows reordering the columns of the playlists.
  • New panel on info plugin that show recomendations from Lastfm.
  • Use custom name for the panel icons.
  • Add a symbolic icon for panel. Not used by default.
  • Add “Search” hint to search entry.
  • And various bug-fixes. See here for details.

How to Install Pragha 1.3.91 in Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, 17.10:

While the project page provides only source tarball, you can easily install Pragha music player via an unofficial PPA in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 17.10.

1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or from app launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/pragha

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing due to security reason) and hit Enter.

2. Then install the music player either via Synaptic Package Manager or by running commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pragha

Remove Pragha:

To remove the music player, either use Synaptic Package Manager or by running command:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove pragha

And you can remove the PPA via Software & Updates utility under ‘Other Software’ tab.

Music notation software MuseScore 2.2.1 was released a day ago with some fixes to the last 2.2 release.

MuseScore 2.2.1 release highlights:

  • Fix messed playback in the score
  • Fix a regression playback slow to engage, when starting playback too quickly after load score
  • Fix a regression MIDI fixup for overlapping note shouldn’t kick in for different midi tracks
  • Fix that 2.0.x score gives synthesizer output artifact with new soundfont

How to Install MuseScore 2.2.1 in Ubuntu:

The single executable Appimage files to run MuseScore in Linux are available for download:

32-bit Appimage

64-bit Appimage

ARM-architectures

Download the appimage, make it executable and run the file to launch the free scorewriter:

MuseScore is also available as Snap, version 2.2.1 is not available at the moment, which can be easily installed via Ubuntu Software Center.

GnuCash, free and open-source accounting software, reached the 3.0 stable release series a few days ago.

GnuCash 3.0 now uses the Gtk+-3.0 toolkit and the WebKit2Gtk API. It also features:

  • New editors to remove outdated or incorrect match data from the import maps.
  • New user interface for managing files associated with transactions
  • Improved facility for removing old prices from the price database
  • Ability to remove deleted files from the history list in the file menu.
  • A new CSV importer largely rewritten in C++, adding new features including the ability to re-import CSV files exported from GnuCash, along with a separate CSV price importer.
  • A new preference panel for the Alphavantage API key
  • A Reconciliation Report based on the Transaction Report,a Income GST Report, and a Cashflow Barchart report.
  • And more and more other changes, see news page for details.

Download / Install GnuCash 3.0 in Ubuntu:

There’s no PPA repository contains GnuCash 3.0 package or updated snap package at the moment of writing, other than building it from the source tarball:

Linux Kernel 4.16 was released yesterday. Linus Torvalds announced in lkml.org:

So the take from final week of the 4.16 release looks a lot like rc7, in that about half of it is networking. If it wasn’t for that, it would all be very small and calm.

We had a number of fixes and cleanups elsewhere, but none of it made me go “uhhuh, better let this soak for another week”. And davem didn’t think the networking was a reason to delay the release, so I’m not.

End result: 4.16 is out, and the merge window for 4.17 is open and I’ll start doing pull requests tomorrow.

Outside of networking, most of the last week was various arch fixlets (powerpc, arm, x86, arm64), some driver fixes (mainly scsi and rdma) and misc other noise (documentation, vm, perf).

The appended shortlog gives an overview of the details (again, this is only the small stuff in the last week, if you want the full 4.16 changelog you’d better get the git tree and filter by your area of interest).

Linux Kernel 4.16 release highlights:

  • Spectre / Meltdown mitigation & other security updates.
  • L2 CDP support for L2 cache partitioning on Intel CPUs
  • Correct AMD Zen temperature reporting for the Ryzen Threadripper 1900X processor.
  • P-State driver support for Skylake X servers.
  • POWER memory protection keys support
  • Oracle DAX driver for SPARC co-processor
  • Jailhouse guest support for non-root users

How to Install Kernel 4.16 in Ubuntu:

Other than using a graphical tool UKUU to install the latest mainline kernel packages, following steps will tell you how to manually download and install it in all current Ubuntu releases.

The mainline kernel PPA has made the new kernel binaries for Ubuntu, available for download at the link below:

Depends on your OS type, download and install the packages in turns:

  1. linux-headers-4.16.0-xxxxxx_all.deb
  2. linux-headers-4.16.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64(/i386).deb
  3. linux-image-4.16.0-xxx-generic(/lowlatency)_xxx_amd64(/i386).deb

Select generic for common system, and lowlatency for a low latency system (e.g. for recording audio), amd64 for 64bit system, i386 for 32bit system, or armhf, arm64, etc for other OS types.

To get the Kernel 4.16 from the command console, run the commands below one by one:

For 64-bit OS:

cd /tmp/

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16/linux-headers-4.16.0-041600_4.16.0-041600.201804012230_all.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16/linux-headers-4.16.0-041600-generic_4.16.0-041600.201804012230_amd64.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16/linux-image-4.16.0-041600-generic_4.16.0-041600.201804012230_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

for 32-bit OS:

cd /tmp/

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16/linux-headers-4.16.0-041600_4.16.0-041600.201804012230_all.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16/linux-headers-4.16.0-041600-generic_4.16.0-041600.201804012230_i386.deb

wget -c http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.16/linux-image-4.16.0-041600-generic_4.16.0-041600.201804012230_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

After installed these .debs, restart and enjoy!

Uninstall Linux Kernel 4.16:

Start/restart your machine and select boot with the previous kernel in Grub2 -> Advanced menu. Then use Ubuntu Tweak, or other system tool to remove the Kernel 4.16, or you may see this how to remove old kernels tutorial.

This quick tutorial is going to show you how to install the latest TeXstudio, a full featured LaTeX editor, in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 18.04 via PPA.

The latest release so far is TeXstudio 2.12.8. It’s the first release after moved the development to Github.

The developer offers a PPA repository with the latest packages for all current Ubuntu releases. You can do following steps to add the repository and install the latest TeXstudio.

1. Open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for “terminal” from app launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sunderme/texstudio

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing due to security reason) when it prompts and hit enter.

2. Then you can upgrade the LaTeX editor via Software Updater if an old version was installed.

or run commands one by one in terminal to install (or upgrade) the software:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install texstudio

Uninstall:

To remove the editor, run command in terminal:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove texstudio

And launch Software & Updates and navigate to Other Software tab to remove PPAs.

Android Studio IDE 3.1 was released a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 18.04 easily via Snap package.

Android Studio 3.1 introduced a C++ performance profiler for trying to analyze CPU bottlenecks in application code. It also adds lint checks for the Kotlin programming language, SQL code completion support, D8 is now the default Dex compiler, a new build output window, and other enhancements.

The community has built the IDE into snap, the universal Linux package format, that can be easily installed on all current Ubuntu releases.

1. For Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04 users never installed a snap package, you need to install the snapd daemon while it’s not shipped by default in the two LTS.

Open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching ‘terminal’ from app launcher. When it opens, run command:

sudo apt-get install snapd snapd-xdg-open

2. Then launch Ubuntu Software, search for and install Android Studio.

For those who prefer command console, run command in terminal to install the snap:

snap install android-studio --classic

Once installed, launch the Android IDE from your application launcher (log out and log in back if you don’t see the app icon) and enjoy!