UbuntuHandbook

How to Install the Latest digiKam 4.12.0 in Ubuntu 15.04, 14.04

Last updated: April 24, 2024

digiKam Software Collection 4.12.0 has been released recently with a huge bugs fixed. KDE Frameworks 5 port is planed to be completed before end of this year.

Philip Johnsson is maintaining PPAs with latest digiKam packages for current Ubuntu releases (e.g., Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 15.04). It’s easy to install or upgrade the software in supported Ubuntu releases via below steps:

1. For (K)Ubuntu 15.04 and (K)Ubuntu 14.04 with default KDE, open terminal emulator from app launcher and run below command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/extra

2. For (K)Ubuntu 14.04 who has upgrade to KDE 4.14 via Kubuntu Backports PPA, add another PPA instead:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/kubuntu-backports

3. After adding one of previous PPAs, upgrade digiKam through your package manager after reload system cache. Or run below commands one by one in terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install digikam

4. (Optional) To downgrade digiKam to the default version available in system repository, install ppa-purge and purge the PPA:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:philip5/extra

In Howtos digikam, digikam PPA

Install Variety wallpaper changer 0.5.4 in Ubuntu 15.10, 15.04

Last updated: August 7, 2015

Variety wallpaper changer sees a new release. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04 and their derivatives.

Variety is an automatic wallpaper changer that rotates your desktop wallpaper on a regular basis using local images or images downloaded from various online sources. It runs quietly on the background. To control it, use the indicator applet on the system tray.

variety wallpaper changer indicator on panel

variety wallpaper changer settings window

The latest Variety 0.5.4 was released a few days ago with UI fixes, dependency updates, and some other improvements.

Since the default Unity desktop doesn’t provide a built-in wallpaper changer, you may try Variety in Ubuntu via below steps:

1. Add the deverloper’s PPA. Open terminal from the Dash or via Ctrl+ALt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peterlevi/ppa

2. Then you can search for and install variety package via Synaptic Package Manager after clicking Reload button.

Or just run below commands one by one in terminal to refresh system package cache and install the package:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install variety

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb installer from launchpad page.

3 (Optional) To remove this application, use Synaptic Package Manager or run below command in terminal:

sudo apt-get remove variety

Also remove/disable PPA through “Other Software” tab of the “Software & Updates” utility (search it from the Dash).

In Howtos variety, wallpaper changer

How to Upgrade to LibreOffice 5.0 in Ubuntu, Linux Mint

Last updated: August 5, 2015

The Document Foundation finally announced the release of LibreOffice 5.0 and updated its PPA for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and derivatives (e.g., Linux Mint 13/17, Elementary OS Freya/Luna).

What’s New in LibreOffice 5.0:

Below are the descriptions from its new features page. For more, see the release note.

LibreOffice 5.0 ships an impressive number of new features for its spreadsheet module, Calc: complex formulae image cropping, new functions, more powerful conditional formatting, table addressing and much more. Calc’s blend of performance and features makes it an enterprise-ready, heavy duty spreadsheet application capable of handling all kinds of workload for an impressive range of use cases.

New icons, major improvements to menus and sidebar: no other LibreOffice version has looked that good and helped you be creative and get things done the right way. In addition, style management is now more intuitive thanks to the visualization of styles right in the interface.

LibreOffice 5 ships with numerous improvements to document import and export filters for MS Office, PDF, RTF, and more. You can now timestamp PDF documents generated with LibreOffice and enjoy enhanced document conversion fidelity all around.

How to upgrade to LibreOffice:

For all current Ubuntu releases and based systems, the best way is to upgrade LibreOffice 5.0 through the official PPA.

1. Open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:libreoffice/ppa

2. After that, open Software Updater/Update Manager and install all updates for LibreOffice after checking for updates, though the new packages named with ~rc5:

As the PPA description says “This PPA might contain the release candidate that is assumed to become the final release even before it is declared so by the Document Foundation (e.g. usually release candidate 2 for minor updates).”

Or you can run below commands to do the upgrade process after adding the PPA:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install libreoffice

In Howtos LibreOffice

Opera 31 Released, Now It Starts Up 70% Faster than Before

Last updated: August 4, 2015

The 31 release of Opera web browser has been announced today with big improvement on its start up time.

According to the release note, Opera for desktops now starts up to 70% faster in comparison to previous versions, which is especially important and helpful for devices with slower, traditional hard drives.

Opera 31 also has redesigned pages so everything looks nice and modern.

How to install/upgrade to Opera 31:

If you have a previous version installed on your system and agreed to add Opera for Linux repository when you were installing the browser, just run Software Updater to upgrade Opera to the latest.

old opera upgrade picture

Or you can directly download the .deb installer from its Linux download page:

Download Opera for Linux

In Howtos Opera

How to Upload images to Imgur via Elementary OS File Browser

Last updated: August 1, 2015

This tutorial shows how to upload your images to Imgur hosting service easily through files’ right-click context menu in Elementary OS Freya and share the image link with your friends.

Thanks to Stefan Ric (cybre) who wrote a plugin for Pantheon file browser to make uploading to Imgur easier in Elementary OS.

All you need to do is right click on your image file or files and select Upload to Imgur option. After that, system notifications pop up with uploading process:

Once done, it prompts that the image link has been copied to your clipboard.

To install Imgur uploader plugin:

Just open terminal from the application launcher and run below commands one by one to install it from developer’s PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cybre/imgurcontract

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install imgur-contract

For those who don’t want to add PPA, download and install the package “imgur-contract_xxx~ubuntu14.04.x_all.deb” for Freya directly from link below:

Imgur Uploader Plugin for Pantheon

In Howtos Elementary OS

Second Alpha of Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf Released

Last updated: September 29, 2017

The second alpha of Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf has been released yesterday afternoon, features images for Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, UbuntuKylin and the Ubuntu Cloud images.

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. It’s based on Linux Kernel 4.1:

Kubuntu 15.10 Alpha 2: Plasma 5.3 desktop and KDE Applications 15.04.1.
LXQt is still in development, Lubuntu 15.10 Alpha 1 is set to be another bug fix release.
Ubuntu MATE 15.10 Alpha 1 added new wallpapers, Ubuntu MATE Welcome 1.0.1, updated boot splash and Mate Tweak 3.5.0.

For Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting and fixing bugs, download Ubuntu 15.10 Alpha 2:

Kubuntu 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/wily/
Lubuntu 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/wily/
Ubuntu MATE 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/wily/
UbuntuKylin 15.10: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/wily/
Ubuntu Cloud 15.10: http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/wily/

Ubuntu 15.10 release schedule:

Alpha 1 – June 25th
Alpha 2 – July 30th
Feature Freeze — August 20th
Beta 1 – August 27th
UI Freeze — September 10th
Beta 2 – September 24th
Kernel Freeze — October 15th
Release Candidate – October 15th
Ubuntu 15.10 Final – October 22nd

via: fridge.ubuntu.com

In News Ubuntu 15.10

LibreOffice 4.4.5 Released [How-to Upgrade]

Last updated: July 30, 2015

LibreOffice 4.4.5, the final stable release before LibreOffice 5.0 stable which is scheduled to be released next week, has been announced today.

It is the fifth bugfix release from the 4.4 branch of LibreOffice which contains new features and program enhancements. As such, the version is stable and is suitable for all users. This version may contain a few annoying bugs which will be fixed in the next bugfix versions to come.

How to Upgrade to LibreOffice 4.4.5:

For Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives (e.g., Linux Mint 17.x, and Elementary OS Freya), follow below steps to upgrade the office suite from PPA.

1. To add LibreOffice PPA, open terminal either from the Dash/Launcher or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run below command:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:libreoffice/ppa

2 After added the PPA, open Software Updater and you’ll see the new LibreOffice release available for upgrade after checking for updates.

Just click Install Now button to install/upgrade it.

You can also use Synaptic Package Manager to upgrade the office suite.

3. Optional For those who want to revert back to the original LibreOffice version in Ubuntu, run below commands to install ppa-purge and purge the PPA which also downgrades all installed packages from that PPA:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa

In Howtos LibreOffice

Nvidia Driver 352.30 Released with Various Fixes [PPA]

Last updated: August 29, 2015

Nvidia announced the 352.30 release of its Linux driver yesterday with GeForce 910M support and various important fixes.

Release highlights of Nvidia 352.30:

Fixed a bug that caused poor video post-processing performance in VDPAU when operating on a large number of video streams simultaneously.
Fixed a bug that could cause an Xid error when terminating a video playback application using the overlay presentation queue in VDPAU.
Updated nvidia-installer to avoid recursing too deeply into kernel source trees under /usr/lib/modules, mirroring an existing restriction on recursion under /lib/modules.
Fixed a rare deadlock condition when running applications that use OpenGL in multiple threads on a Quadro GPU.
Fixed a kernel memory leak that occurred when looping hardware – accelerated video decoding with VDPAU on Maxwell-based GPUs.
Fixed a bug that caused the X server to crash if a RandR 1.4 output provided by a Sink Output provider was selected as the primary output on X.Org xserver 1.17 and higher.
Fixed a bug that caused waiting on X Sync Fence objects in OpenGL to hang indefinitely in some cases.
Fixed a bug that prevented OpenGL from properly recovering from hardware errors or sync object waits that had timed out.

Install Nvidia 352.30 from PPA:

For Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and derivatives (e.g., Linux Mint 17.x, and Elementary OS Freya), the new driver can be easily installed from an PPA repository:

1. To add the PPA, open terminal from the Dash/Launcher/Ctrl+Alt+T. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa

2. After adding the PPA, install nvidia-352 package via Synaptic Package Manager or upgrade from previous release through Software Updater. Or run below commands one by one in terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-352 nvidia-352-uvm nvidia-settings

For the official binaries, go to www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

In News nvidia, Nvidia Driver

Relay – A New Fast, Modern, Streamlined IRC Client

Last updated: July 31, 2015

Relay is a new IRC client designed for Elementary OS that aims to be small, fast, and elegant. It’s written in Vala and also works in Ubuntu and other Linux.

Relay uses very few libraries and takes less memory (<30mb usually). The project was created in June of 2015 so as of now it is a young project with functionality rapidly being added to it. So far, it features:

drag and drop to Hastebin – drag files to the paste icon will upload all of them and put the URL’s in the output window.
A missed message count.
Highlighting tabs with activity from IRC servers.
Drag and drop reordering of tabs.
Automatic IRC channel connecting
URL parsing and the ability to open your browser when clicked
Highlights the name of your or anyone else when mentioned in a chat
Right click tab switching.
The ability to switch channels through tabs or the sidebar.
It supports languages that use UTF-8 characters.
Although Relay was built on Elementary OS it will switch the theme depending on what operating system you are using.
The ability to search users
The ability to see where you left off since you last visited a tab
The ability to control many settings and set colors in the UI
Click a user name to have their name placed in the text entry
Private messaging and ability to block users
The ability to turn on or off joining or exiting messages
Creates a datestamp every 5 minutes to give you a timeline of what has happened

Screenshots:

At the moment of writing this tutorial there are two bugs for Ubuntu user and I’ve reported them to the project page:

In Unity desktop, when you try to minimize Relay window by clicking its icon on left Launcher, session crashes immediately and brings you back to login screen. – Bug with Compiz
In Gnome Shell, there’s a reading issue (Picture 4) – Fixed

Install Relay IRC client from PPA:

The developer has created a PPA repository for the project. So far, Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Elementary OS Freya are supported.

NOTE: Ubuntu 14.04 needs updated version of libgranite (>= 0.3.0) and GTK+3.0 (>= 3.14). You can get them from Gnome Testing PPA and Elementary Stable PPA. But using the PPAs could break your system or make it unstable! Do it at your own risk!

1. To add the PPA, open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:agronick/relay

2. After added the PPA, install the software via Synaptic Package Manager. Or just run below commands one by one in terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install relay

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb package from the launchpad page.

Feature requests and issues please report at github.com/agronick/Relay

In App Review IRC client

How to Install PyCharm IDE in Ubuntu 14.04/15.04

Last updated: November 28, 2016

Quick tutorial shows how to install the PyCharm, a Python IDE, in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 15.04, Linux Mint 17, or Elementary OS Freya via PPA.

PyCharm is an intelligent Python IDE with unique code assistance and analysis, for productive Python development on all levels. It features (community version):

Intelligent Editor, with code completion, on-the-fly error highlighting, auto-fixes, etc.
Automated code refactorings and rich navigation capabilities
Integrated debugger and unit testing support
Native VCS integrations
Customizable UI and key-bindings, with VIM
emulation available
And much more, all available under the Apache 2 license

Install PyCharm from PPA:

Update Nov, 2016: The PPA now supports Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 16.10. The packages for Ubuntu 15.10 and older have been removed.

There’s a PPA repository for Ubuntu based users that contains both professional (30-day free trial) and community version of PyCharm packages. So far, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives are supported.

1. To add the PPA, open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mystic-mirage/pycharm

2. After adding the PPA, update system package cache and install the IDE via Synaptic Package Manager. Or just run below commands one by one in terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pycharm

You may replace last command via sudo apt-get install pycharm-community to install the community version which is free.

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb installer for either professional or community version from the launchpad page.

In Howtos PyCharm, Python IDE

Archives For November 30, 1999