UbuntuHandbook

Ubuntu 23.04 is Reaching End of Life Today

Last updated: January 25, 2024 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu 23.04, code-name ‘Lunar Lobster’, will be soon no longer supported!

Ubuntu 23.04 was released on April 20, 2023 with 9-month support circle. And, today January 25, 2024 is the last day it’s officially supported according to the announcement.

Meaning that Ubuntu developer team will no longer publish any security and package updates for users of Ubuntu 23.04. Also, third-party repositories and Ubuntu PPAs will mostly stop updating packages for 23.04.

There are security risks of using end-of-life system, so it’s better to either upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10, which is supported until July 2024, then upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 (with 5 years support) a few months later.

Or, re-install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS that is supported until 2027, plus 5 years of expanded security maintenance.

To download the latest Ubuntu images, go to ubuntu.com/download.

To upgrade Ubuntu 23.04 to Ubuntu 23.10, either see the official guide or this step by step guide. It’s IMPORTANT to make backup, since upgrade might fail due to various reasons!

In News ubuntu 23.04

How to Install IMSProg (I2C EEPROM programmer for CH341A) in Ubuntu

Last updated: January 25, 2024 — 4 Comments

Got a CH341a series USB programmer? Here’s a graphical free I2C EEPROM programmer tool for Linux Desktop.

There are a number of programs for Windows, such as CH341Programmer, NEOProgrammer, and ASProgrammer, for working with popular “green” and “black” CH341a devices, but it lacks a graphical interface for Linux.

So, Linux IMSProg was born to provides a graphical interface to read, write, erase and test I2C, SPI and MicroWire EEPROM/Flash chips (24xxx, 25xxx, 93xxx, 95xxx series).

It’s a free open-source tool based on Qt5, that uses QHexEdit2 for hex editor widget and a modified set of the SNANDer programmer libraries.

In Howtos CH341a

Firefox 122.0 Released with new .deb package for Debian/Ubuntu

Last updated: January 24, 2024 — 1 Comment

Mozilla announced new 122.0 release for its free open-source Firefox web browser this Tuesday!

This is a new monthly release that include minor new features. For Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and their based systems, Firefox now provides official .deb packages through an apt repository.

Meaning now, there are 5 official ways to install Firefox in Ubuntu Linux:

Snap package (pre-installed in Ubuntu 22.04+)
New apt repository (maintained by Mozilla)
MozillaTeam PPA (maintained by Ubuntu Team members)
Portable Linux tarball (maintained by Mozilla)
Flatpak package (verified by Mozilla)

Besides providing .deb package for the Stable release, the apt repository also includes the packages for Beta, Nightly, and Dev versions of the popular web browser.
Continue Reading…

In News Firefox, web

How to Get Ubuntu Style Layout in KUbuntu 22.04 | 24.04

Last updated: January 23, 2024 — Leave a comment

This simple tutorial shows how to easily make your KUbuntu desktop layout to be Ubuntu (GNOME) Style, that includes top-panel, left side-bar, and a full-screen launcher.

KDE Plasma is highly customizable. User can manually add new panel, configure its position, add panel items. But, without struggling with configurations, there’s a theme can automate the process, to make your Plasma Desktop look like Ubuntu with default GNOME desktop.

In Howtos kubuntu, Plasma Desktop

UVC Webcam/Camera Software Guvcview 2.1.0 Released (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: January 23, 2024 — Leave a comment

Guvcview, the free open-source tool for capturing image/video and dynamically controlling UVC camera and webcam devices, released version 2.1.0.

It’s a GTK3 and Qt5 application that provides both graphical interface and command line options to control your webcam or camera.

With it, you can change the brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, white balance (gamma), sharpness, backlight compensation, etc settings for your webcam.

Besides the dynamic control of UVC (USB Video Class) camera/webcam, it also allows to capture video with control of frame rate, filters such as mirror, invert, pieces, blur, etc. Also, capture audio with sample rate, latency, and filters including echo, reverb, fuzz, wahwah, and ducky.

In Howtos, News camera, webcam

How to Install Enlightenment 0.26.0 (E26) in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

Last updated: January 21, 2024 — 1 Comment

This simple tutorial shows how to install the last Enlightenment desktop 0.26.0 in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 23.10 via PPA.

Enlightenment announced 0.26.0 release almost a month ago. There’s however no easy way to install it in Ubuntu, besides building from the source.

To make life easier, I’ve built the package into this unofficial PPA. So, you can easily try it out in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and/or Ubuntu 23.10.

Changes in Enlightenment 0.26.0 include:

Add DDC option to backlight settings (for external monitor)
Bigger task previews
Add watermark to wl mode
Support new eet disk sync API to ensure config it stored
Support action desktop files in EFM to add file actions
Add org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver inhibit support
See the official release note for more.

In Howtos Enlightenment

Collector – New Alternative to macOS Dropover for Linux

Last updated: January 20, 2024 — Leave a comment

Looking for an alternative to macOS Dropover utility? Collector is the one for Linux Desktop!

It’s a free and open-source tool to make drag & drop easier. Without having to open side-by-side windows, just paste or drag whatever content into the small app window, stash, gather, and then move all items to destination at once.

This is useful if you have many files to move, but they are saved in different locations. Just drag’n’drop them into Collector, then preview and/or edit them, finally drag’n’drop to destination folder at once.

In App Review collector, dropover

Wine 9.0 Stable Released! How to Install it in Ubuntu

Last updated: February 11, 2024 — 2 Comments

Wine, the popular software for running Windows applications on Linux, macOS, & BSD, announced new stable 9.0 release few days ago on Tuesday.

Wine 9.0 features WoW 6.0 (Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit), which was experimentally supported in last 8.0 release. It allows to run 32-bit Windows applications on a purely 64-bit Unix installation, instead of inside a 32-bit Unix process. However, the features is NOT enabled by default.

The release also includes experimental Wayland graphics driver. Which is also not enabled by default, but already implements many features, such as basic window management, multiple monitors, high-DPI scaling, relative motion events, and Vulkan support.

The 9.0 release added initial support for building Wine for the ARM64EC architecture, for running Windows apps on ARM64 powered devices with native speed.

Other changes in Wine 9.0 include:

WinRT theming supports a dark theme option
Vulkan driver supports up to version 1.3.272 of the Vulkan spec.
Implement Windows Media Video (WMV) decoder DirectX Media Object (DMO)
Mono engine is updated to version 8.1.0
DLS1 and DLS2 sound font loading
The default Windows version for new prefixes is set to Windows 10.
MIDI playback in dmsynth
Indeo IV50 Video for Windows decoder
And much more! See release note for details.

In News wine

VirtualBox 7.0.14 Released with Initial RHEL 9.4 Support

Last updated: January 19, 2024 — Leave a comment

Oracle Virtualbox announced a new point release for the 7.0 series this Tuesday.

It’s VirtualBox 7.0.14, which add initial host and guest support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4, though it’s still in development stage. As well, there’s a kernel panic fix for RHEL 8.9 running as guest OS.

For Solaris Linux, the guest additions can be installed into an alternate root path, and it no longer requires to reboot after uninstalling guest additions.

For macOS as host, the release added support for newer USB storage devices, and fixed memory Leak in the VBoxIntNetSwitch process when VM was configured to use ‘Internal Networking’.

The release also include OVF import/export improvements. They include import & export virtual machines containing NVMe storage controllers, and, export a VM which contains a medium inserted into a virtual CD/DVD drive which is attached to a Virtio-SCSI controller.

In News Virtualbox

Install XIVLauncher (Custom FFXIV Launcher) in Ubuntu 24.04, 22.04

Last updated: January 18, 2024 — Leave a comment

Play Final Fantasy XIV Online in Linux? There’s a custom launcher for the game for better experience!

It’s XIVLauncher, a free and open-source launcher that provides a customized WINE version for perfect compatibility with FFXIV.

Since the original launcher is slow and cannot save your password, XIVLauncher provides a faster experience, better Linux integration, as well as following QoL features: