UbuntuHandbook

Ubuntu Studio opens Wallpaper Competition for Next 24.04

Last updated: February 18, 2024 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu Studio, the official Ubuntu flavor, opens wallpaper competition for the next 24.04 LTS release!

Ubuntu Studio is one of the official Ubuntu flavors, that features KDE Plasma desktop environment and aims to general multimedia production.

The developer team opens the wallpaper competition on February 16. All users (needs login) can submit their own artworks until March 11. And 5 winner images will be shipped (as optional wallpapers) in Ubuntu Studio 24.04 iso image.

image name Charge by Aaron Rainbolt

Like the Ubuntu 24.04 wallpaper competition, the AI generated artwork is NOT allowed in this one, due to active legal debates and license issue of the popular AI generation tools.

The competition rules include:

Submitter must own the rights to the image.
Full quality image must be 3840×2160 px. PNG and WebP recommended.
No watermark, name or logo in image.
image license CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY 4.0

Differently, this competition will NOT include any wallpaper that wins in the Ubuntu 24.04 Wallpaper Competition (see link above).

And, due to lack of time constraints, there will be no community vote this time, instead, Ubuntu Studio Project Leader and Art Leader will judge which images win.

The entrance of the contest:

Ubuntu Studio 24.04 Wallpaper Contest

In News art, Ubuntu Studio, wallpaper

Darktable 4.6.1 Released, New Documentation & Various Fixes

Last updated: February 18, 2024 — Leave a comment

Darktable photography workflow application and RAW developer released new stable 4.6.1 yesterday!

The release finished the documentation for the new 4.6 release series, include translations to Ukrainian, Polish and Dutch.

And, it now performs image discovery asynchronously in the import dialog. Meaning that long parsing due to huge number of sub-directories and
files can be easily interrupted by selecting another place or un-checking recursive mode.

The release now drops support for macOS versions older than 12.5. Other changes are mostly bug-fixes. They include:

Fix memory and resource leaks in the QOI image loader.
Fix RGBE image loader.
Fix crashes when running low on GPU or system memory.
Fix OpenCL startup for various cards.
Fix compatibility issues with HDR created DNG files.

For more, see the github releases page for details.

In News darktable, RAW processor

RawTherapee 5.10 Released! How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

Last updated: February 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

RawTherapee, the free open-source raw photo processing program, announced the new 5.10 release this Friday!

It’s been more than 1 year since the last stable release. The new release can now add multiple custom external editors that can be chosen in the Editor tab.

The Preferences dialog now has new Favorites tab to add/remove favorite tools. And, it includes option to change Lensfun database directory.

RawTherapee 5.10 now uses Exiv2 to hanle metadata, and it supports CR3 medata. It can recognize ICC profiles in user configuration directory, and support Raw files from OM Digital Solutions cameras.

In News RAW processor, RawTherapee

Shotwell 0.32.6 Updated App Icon with Better HiDPI Support

Last updated: February 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

Shotwell photo manager released version 0.32.5, then 0.32.6 with quick fixes, few days ago.

The release has better HiDPI displays support, with new .svg app icon that looks way better (perfectly sharp).

The release also fixed that the viewer application always opens in maximized window size, as well as missing viewer app icon in dock, app switcher, and overview screen.

OAUTH authentication now is moved to external browser, so webkit2gtk-4.1 is no longer required as a dependency for building the binary package.

Other changes include remove “Import from Application” menu item, and translation updates.

In News photo manager, shotwell

HandBrake 1.7.3 Released with Bug-Fixes (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: February 15, 2024 — 2 Comments

HandBrake video transcoder announced a new update for the 1.7.x release a few days ago.

This release includes only bug-fixes and minor improvements. They include:

- Fix formatting leading zeros for timestamps in logs
- Incorrect input FPS detection
- tx3g to SSA subtitles conversion issue.
- “All Files” open file dialog filter not really show all files in Linux.
- add a new default audio track automatically set the gain to -20 dB
- VideoToolbox crashes on macOS Sonoma

In News handbrake, video

Power Profiles Daemon 0.20 Adds Multi Drivers, AMDGPU Power Saving Support

Last updated: February 15, 2024 — Leave a comment

power-profiles-daemon, the power mode settings backend in Gnome, released 0.20 today!

The new release added amdgpu panel power savings which uses dedicated hardware in systems with integrated Radeon graphics to decrease panel power consumption when the system is on battery.

This activates the DRM connector attribute panel_power_savings which takes a range from 0 to 4 to indicate how aggressively to enable panel power savings.

GNOME Power Mode settings page

In News AMD, power, power management, power saving

How to Disable Mobile Broadband Menu Option in Ubuntu 22.04

Last updated: May 5, 2024 — Leave a comment

This simple tutorial shows how to get rid of the “Mobile Broadband” menu option from the upper right system status menu in GNOME Desktop.

GNOME, the default desktop in Ubuntu and Fedora Workstation, has built-in support for mobile broadband. If your computer (usually laptop) has a built-in SIM card slot, then it will show you the “Mobile Network” page in Settings and “Mobile Broadband” option in upper right menu.

For those who rarely use this feature, the option is useless but makes the menu longer. So, it’s a good choice to completely disable it!

In Howtos Gnome, network, systemd

How to Get Classic GNOME 2 Session in Ubuntu 22.04 & 24.04

Last updated: February 13, 2024 — 2 Comments

This simple tutorial shows how to install and enable the Classic Gnome 2 style desktop session in Ubuntu 22.04 and/or Ubuntu 24.04.

Though the title said for Ubuntu, this tutorial also works in Debian 12 & 11. Fedora, Arch, and their based systems also have corresponding packages for the similar job.

As far as I know, there are 3 ways to get back the classic Gnome 2 layout. They include:

Option 1: gnome-flashback -traditional desktop session based on GNOME technologies.
Option 2: gnome-shell-extensions – Classic Gnome 2 layout through some Gnome Shell extensions.
Option 3: MATE Desktop – a free open-source fork and continuation of Gnome 2 Desktop.

Option 1: Gnome Flashback

In Howtos Enable Gnome Classic in Debian, Gnome, Gnome Classic

How to Rotate Images in Ubuntu 22.04

Last updated: February 12, 2024 — Leave a comment

This is a beginner’s guide shows you how to rotate your images using either a Linux command or built-in apps such as file manager and image viewer.

Option 1: Rotate an image using built-in image viewer

If you want to change the orientation for only a few photo images, then the built-in image view is always the best choice.

Simply click open your image file through the image viewer. Move mouse cursor over the app window, then you’ll see the buttons to rotate to the left and rotate to the right in bottom.

The image viewer app varies depends on your desktop environment, the rotate options may be available other-where such as in app menu.

After rotated your image, either click Save (Ctrl+S) to override the original image file, or choose Save as (Ctrl+Shift+S) to save the rotated image as another file.