For those who want to change the look and feel of the left panel “Ubuntu Dock” in Ubuntu 18.04, Dash to Dock is a Gnome extension that replaces left panel with Mac OS style Dock application launcher.
Dash to Dock is a popular Gnome extension that Ubuntu Dock (the default left panel) is forked from. With it, you can get Ubuntu 18.04 desktop looks like:
1. First time to install a Gnome extension? Then you need to install an add-on for your web browser:
To make Firefox web browser looks better in Ubuntu Gnome desktop, you can now hide the title bar at the top of the browser to get Gnome-style application header bar.
1. The new feature was introduced in Firefox 60 that was released 2 days ago. So first upgrade your Firefox web browser using Software Updater utility.
2. Then launch Firefox and go to Menu -> Customize…
3. Next you’ll see the “Title Bar” checkbox in the left bottom of customize tab.
Opera web browser 53 stable was released earlier today with improvements to tab’s display and the address bar.
Opera 53 optimized and made the tabs’ favicons more visible when a plenty of tabs are open. And click on a tab will make it more visible and easier to manage.
Also there’s some fresh, sharpened coloring done to the address bar.
How to Install Opera 53 in Ubuntu:
The opera website offers official .deb binaries for Ubuntu Linux, available for download at the link below:
If you have a previous release installed, and enabled the official Opera Linux repository, upgrade it via Software Updater:
To manually add the Opera for Linux repository, open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or from app launcher, when it opens, run commands:
1. Add the opera repository:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera.list'
Mozilla Firefox 60 was released a few hours ago with new enterprise features, Web Authentication / YubiKey support, and new tab enhancements.
“Firefox 60 offers something for everyone and a little something extra for everyone who deploys Firefox in an enterprise environment. This release includes changes that give you more content and more ways to customize your New Tab/Firefox Home. It also introduces support for the Web Authentication API, which means you can log in to websites in Firefox with USB tokens like YubiKey.”
Transmission, the default BitTorrent client, reached the 2.94 release a few days ago. Now you can install it in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 18.04 easily via PPA.
The Liferea feed reader reached the 1.12.3 release earlier today with various bug fixes. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 16.04.
“Today sees a new 1.12 release which addresses some long-standing user concerns. One being accidentally marking all your headlines as read, we have no a confirmation dialog. Another issue addressed is that of custom download tools. The list provided is not always sufficient so we now provide a CLI command you can enter to use you favorite downloader. A lot of refactoring also allowed us to provide a GTK headerbar plugin for all fans of GNOME style window decorations.”
For Ubuntu 16.04 users who are accustomed to have window buttons ‘minimize, maximize, close’ on the left side, this quick tutorial will show you how to change window buttons position after you install or upgrad to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
1. To get started, open Ubuntu Software, search for and install Gnome Tweaks.
2. Then launch the Gnome Tweaks, and navigate to Windows tab. At the bottom, you can see the toggle to change the titlebar buttons placement.
SMPlayer media player 18.4.0 was released a few days ago with new feature to change the position of OSD bar.
Other than that, the time displayed by a tooltip when the mouse is over the seekbar is now much more accurate. And now it’s possible to turn off the use of the system native file dialog in Preferences -> Interface.
How to Install SMPlayer 18.4 in Ubuntu:
For Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Ubuntu 18.04, and derivatives, do following steps to install or upgrade SMPlayer via its PPA repository.
1. Search for and launch “terminal” from application launcher. When it opens, run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
Input your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it asks and hit Enter.
2. Then upgrade SMPlayer using Software Updater (or Update Manager):
or run commands in terminal to install (or upgrade) the media player: