Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak is reaching the end of its life. Its users will no longer receive security notices, critical fixes, or updated packages after today, July 20. Even third-party PPAs will end support for Ubuntu 16.10 too.
Ubuntu 16.10 was released on October 13, 2016. It’s a short term release with a 9-month support cycle. User can choose:
Oracle Vritualbox got an update for its 5.1 series earlier today with lots of bug-fixes.
For Linux users, Virtualbox 5.1.24 brings fixes to Kernel 4.12 and Kernel 4.13, fixes for loading shared libraries, fixes for kernel modules built with gcc-7, makes 2D video acceleration available for older Linux distributions.
VMM: mask the VME CPUID capability on AMD Ryzen processors.
VMM: emulate more SSE2 instructions
VMM: properly clear the TF and AC flags when dispatching real-mode interrupts
GUI: fixes to make the mini-toolbar work with recent versions of KDE / Plasma
GUI: fixed a potential crash when a VM with multiple screens is running in full screen / seamless mode and a host screen is removed.
GUI: fixed initial size hints for guests which set intermediate sizes before responding
GUI: prevent stopped screen updates or black screen on reboot in a multi-screen setup under certain conditions
Audio: many improvements for Windows 10 guests
Storage: fixed possible crash when using Intels SPDK
API: use the correct file name of the VM machine state if the VM settings directory is renamed, for example during grouping / ungrouping a VM
API: return the correct error code if powering up a VM fails
API: video recording did not automatically start at VM start when enabled in the VM settings
API: when relocating a medium, check that the target path is fully qualified
EFI: fix for VMs with more than 3504MB RAM
Host-only adapter: correctly determine IPv4 netmasks on Windows hosts
NAT network: properly do the refcounting for starting / stopping the NAT / DHCP services if the NAT network is changed while the adapter network connection type is anything else but NAT network
VBoxManage: fixed controlvm videocapfile
Windows hosts: fixed crashes if driver verifier is enabled
Download / Install Virtualbox:
The official Linux binaries (i386 for 32-bit, amd64 for 64-bit) for Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.04 are available for download at the link below:
If you have a previous 5.1 series installed, and enabled the Virtualbox Linux repository, you can simply upgrade Virtualbox via Software Updater:
To manually add the VirtualBox Linux repository, do:
1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching it from app launcher, when it opens, run command:
GnuCash 2.6.17, the seventeenth maintenance release in the 2.6-stable series of the free financial-accounting software, was released 2 weeks ago. Now you can install it via GetDeb repository in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.04, and Linux Mint 18.x.
WeChat is one of the most popular Chinese social media (instant messaging and payment services) mobile application developed by Tencent.
For desktop computers, there’s an open-source project, electronic-wechat, allows you to run WeChat on Linux, Mac OS.
The application features:
Modern UI and all features from Web WeChat.
Block message recall.
Stickers showing support.
Share subscribed passages on Weibo, Qzone, Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and email.
Mention users in a group chat.
Drag and drop to send photos.
Behaves like a native app, based on dozens of optimization.
Removes URL link redirects and takes you directly to blocked websites.
Press Esc to hide application windows.
The app is available via Snappy store for all Linux distributions. For Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, and higher, do following steps to install it:
1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching it from app launcher. When it opens, run command to install snapd daemon and snapd-xdg-open if you don’t already have them installed:
sudo apt install snapd snapd-xdg-open
Type in your password (no visual feedback while typing due to security reason) and hit Enter.
2. Then install the wechat app via command:
sudo snap install electronic-wechat
Once installed, launch the desktop app from your app launcher and enjoy!
Uninstall:
To remove the app, run following command in a terminal window:
This quick tutorial is going to show you how to install the IntelliJ IDEA IDE, both community and ultimate editions, via PPA in all current Ubuntu releases.
IntelliJ IDEA is a Java IDE developed by JetBrains. So far the latest is version 2017.1.5 that was released more than a week ago with some bug-fixes and performance updates.
While the official Linux binaries lack application launcher integration, Marcel Kapfer made an installer script that automatically downloads the source tarball from JetBrains server, installs it to /opt/, and finally creates an app launcher.
Install the script:
For all current Ubuntu releases, including Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 17.04, and derivatives, I’ve made the new script into PPA since the original maintainer does not update the latest release at the moment.
LibreOffice 5.3.4, the fourth release for LibreOffice 5.3 family, was announced more than 2 weeks ago. It’s finally made into PPA for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 17.04, and Ubuntu 17.10.
LibreOffice 5.3.4 integrates over 100 patches, with a significant number of fixes for interoperability with Microsoft Office RTF and OOXML documents. See HERE for details.
Install LibreOffice 5.3.4 via PPA in Ubuntu:
1. Open terminal 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:libreoffice/ppa
Type in your password (no visual feedback when typing due to security reason) when prompts and hit Enter.
2. Then launch Software Updater and upgrade LibreOffice after checking for updates:
How to restore:
To revert back to the stock version of LibreOffice in your Ubuntu, purge the PPA via command:
The Hugin panorama photo stitcher has reached the 2017.0.0 release. The official Ubuntu binary packages are now available via its PPA repository for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 17.04, Ubuntu 17.10, and derivatives.
Hugin is an easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools. With it, you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more.
The latest version 2017.0.0 is mainly a bug fix release. Changes include:
Several fixes for working with HDR images
Fixes handling of masks in cpfind when images needs remapping for cp finding.
Sometimes unsaved changes were disregarded without asking the user. Unsaved changes should now always require user confirmation.
Added special assistant variant for single image projects.
Display of final panorama dimensions on stitcher tab.
Extended the user defined output sequences
Use wxWidgets help windows instead of default browser
Other small improvements and translation updates.
How to install Hugin 2017 via PPA in Ubuntu:
1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for “Terminal” from app launcher. When it opens, run command to add the official PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hugin/hugin-builds
Type in your password when prompts and hit Enter
2. Then launch Software Updater and upgrade the software after checking for updates.
How to Restore:
To revert back to the stock version of Hugin packages in your Ubuntu, purge the PPA via command:
MusicBrainz Picard is an open-source cross-platform music tagger written in Python. While Ubuntu repositories provide an old version of the software, here’s how to install the latest release (Picard 1.4.2 so far) in Ubuntu 16.04, and higher.
MusicBrainz Picard has an official Ubuntu PPA repository, however, it’s not been updated for more than a year. It now publishes the official Linux binaries only through Flathub repository.
1. Install Flatpak (Ubuntu 16.04 only).
While Ubuntu 16.04 does not ship Flatpak in the default repositories, open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T and run commands to install it from the PPA.
Add the flatpak PPA via command (type your password when prompts and hit enter):