Shotwell photo manager has recently reached the 0.23.1 release. While Ubuntu 16.04 contains the old 0.22 release, you can now install the latest release and receive future updates through the maintainer, Jens Georg’s PPA.
Notable changes in Shotwell 0.23.1:
Update Facebook application id so Facebook integration works again
Rename “Yorba website” to “Shotwell website” in About dialog
How to Install / Upgrade Shotwell in Ubuntu 16.04:
1. Add the maintainer’s PPA.
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste the command below and hit run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yg-jensge/shotwell
Type in your password (no visual feedback) when it asks and hit Enter.
2. Launch Software Updater and upgrade Shotwell.
Launch Software Updater, after checking for updates, you’ll see the new release of “Digital photo manager” available for upgrade under Other updates -> Ubuntu Base.
3. (Optional) To revert back to the stock version of Shotwell in Ubuntu 16.04, run command in terminal to install ppa-purge and purge the PPA which also downgrade the photo manager:
For users who dual boot Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows, you may find the clock time is off that causes time differences after you reboot and switch between the two systems. Here’s how to fix it.
Ubuntu maintains the hardware clock (RTC, real time clock) in universal time (UTC) by default while Windows maintains the clock in local time, thus causing time conflicts between Ubuntu and Windows.
To fix it, either set Ubuntu to maintain RTC in local time or make Windows uses UTC.
1. Disable UTC and use Local Time in Ubuntu:
In previous Ubuntu editions, you can edit the config file /etc/default/rcS to disable UTC.
In Ubuntu 16.04, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the command below instead:
timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock
To check out if your system uses Local time, just run:
timedatectl
you’ll the local time zone is in use in the Warning section.
Finally restart and switch to Windows, adjust system clock time if need and done.
2. Make MicroSoft Windows uses UTC:
Another way to fix this issue is doing the following changes in Windows, Windows 10, in the case below:
1.) First if you’ve switched to local time in Ubuntu, run command in Ubuntu terminal to use back UTC:
timedatectl set-local-rtc 0
2.) Restart and select boot into Windows 10, when you’re in, do:
go to Start Menu, search for and launch cmd as Administrator.
When the command console opens, paste below command to create a DWORD value to the registry:
This is a quick tutorial shows how to easily install the Light Table IDE in 64-bit Ubuntu via PPA, since there’s no official .deb binary for Ubuntu Linux.
Light Table is a cross-platform and open-source IDE that features real-time feedback allowing instant execution, debugging and access to documentation.
To make it easy to install Light Table IDE in Ubuntu, there’s now a PPA that contains an installer script, which automatically downloads the official Linux package from its website, installs and creates a launcher shortcut in your system for better Ubuntu integration.
1. First download the script from the link below:
Select download the package “lighttable-installer_xxx_amd64.deb”, the click install via Ubuntu Software.
Or open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command install the downloaded package. The script starts automatically after installation:
If everything goes OK, you’ll be finally able to launch the IDE from Unity Dash, or other Application Launcher.
2. (Optional) To receive future updates of Light Table along with other system udpates, you may add the PPA repository so to get updates via Software Updater once a new release is made into PPA.
Want to install Microsoft fonts, Google web fonts for off-line use, or you just found a favorite font on the web and want to install it in Ubuntu?
Well here’s how to install the font files (.ttf, .ttc) downloaded from web, Google fonts page, or copied from your Windows OS.
Here are 4 font files shown in the picture above. In the steps below I’ll show you how to install and use it in Ubuntu Desktop.
Option 1: Install Fonts for current user only
If you want to install the fonts for current user use only, then simply open up a “Files” (file manager) window, press Ctrl+H to show hidden folder, and navigate to .local/share/fonts (create fonts sub-folder if not exist).
Next, drag’n’drop your font files into that directory, or a sub-folder of that directory.
Finally, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, and run command to refresh the cache:
sudo fc-cache -fv
Next, your system configuration tool can find and allow you to apply the fonts
Option 2: Manually install Fonts to system wide use
To install fonts for all users use, do the following steps one by one instead.
1. Launch Terminal from start menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard:
When it opens, paste following commands and run one by one.
2. In Ubuntu Linux, font files are installed to /usr/local/share/fonts or /usr/share/fonts. The former directory is recommended in this case for manual installation.
First create a sub folder in the font directory, ms_fonts, as example:
sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/fonts/ms_fonts
Type in your password when it asks (no visual feedback) and hit Enter.
3. Move all font files from your Downloads directory to the new created folder:
The Linux Kernel 4.6 stable has been released. Linus Torvalds announced this kernel release in lkml.org:
It’s just as well I didn’t cut the rc cycle short, since the last week ended up getting a few more fixes than expected, but nothing in there feels all that odd or out of line. So 4.6 is out there at the normal schedule, and that obviously also means that I’ll start doing merge window pull requests for 4.7 starting tomorrow.
Since rc7, there’s been small noise all over, with driver fixes being the bulk of it, but there is minor noise all over (perf tooling, networking, filesystems, documentation, some small arch fixes..)
New features in Kernel 4.6:
Initial open-source support for GTX 900 series
Runtime AHCI power management support for greater power savings
Dell laptop support improvements
Better security for 32-bit Linux programs.
Various open-source AMD graphics driver improvements.
A number of new ARM hardware support.
How to Install Kernel 4.6 in Ubuntu:
There are .deb packages for this kernel release available in kernel-ppa/mainline:
Download and install the packages named below one by one according to your OS type (i386 for 32-bit, amd64 for 64-bit):
Restart your computer after installation to apply changes.
Restore:
You can easily switch back to the previous kernel by restart your machine and select boot with old kernel version (available in Advanced options). Then use Ubuntu-Tweak or follow this guide to remove Kernel 4.6.
While Ubuntu 16.04’s repository contains the old SMPlayer 15.11 packages, you can easily upgrade to the latest 16.4 release and receive future updates by using the SMPlayer PPA.
Changes in SMPlayer 16.4.0:
The Windows installer now includes mpv as well.
Now it’s easier to switch between MPlayer and mpv via Preferences -> General -> select multimedia engine.
The extrastereo filter works again when using mpv.
Possibility to use the VLC shortcuts. (Preferences -> Keyboard and mouse, click the load button, select vlc.keys).
Possibility to enable mouse gestures (when the mouse is dragged up or down in the video window the volume changes, if dragged left or right it changes the time position). You can enable this option in Preferences -> Keyboard and mouse -> Mouse -> Drag function: seek and volume.
A fix for saving bookmarks.
The option for streaming sites in Preferences -> Network is different now, and allows these values: disabled, auto, YouTube and mpv+youtube-dl.
An animated icon has been added in the status bar to indicate when the player is buffering.
A new layout is used to display the media information (Options -> View info and properties).
How to Install/Upgrade SMPlayer 16.4 via PPA:
NOTE: The current 16.4.0 build available in PPA is based on QT 4.8.7, while the stock version in Ubuntu 16.04 repo is built against Qt5.
1. Add PPA.
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste the command below and hit run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
Type in your password (no visual feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2. Install/Upgrade SMPlayer.
If you have a previous release installed, you can now upgrade the media player by launching Software Updater and installing SMPlayer package updates after checking for updates.
For the first time installing this player, use your favorite package manager or just run the commands below one by one in terminal:
3. (Optional) To revert back the stock version of SMPlayer in Ubuntu 16.04, install ppa-purge and purge the PPA, which also downgrade the packages installed from that repository:
Corebird, a native GTK3 Twitter client, has reached 1.2.1 release with some fixes. Here are the changes according to its release page:
Fix a11y labelling of several switches in the settings dialog
Fix an input window clipping bug in the tweet info page
Fix a few cases of overlapping widgets into window borders
Remove the “Save as” context menu from inline media. This has not been working in a while but the context menu was still there.
Rename the .sidebar style class to .topbar. This was used in corebird before gtk+ used it, but now that the sidebar is at the top, the .sidebar style from gtk+ themes collides with the horizontal alignment we use, so use the more fitting ‘.topbar’.
Show a focus outline in the topbar again. We are setting a custom background color here, so we also need to set a fitting outline color.
Fix a coloring but in the topbar, where wildcard selectors in themes would overrde our foreground color.
How to Install Corebird 1.2.1:
While the 16.04 universe repository provides the old Corebird 1.1 release, you can upgrade to version 1.2.1 via third-party PPA since there’s no official Linux installer.
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the commands below one by one to add PPA and install corebird:
For users of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS who still need Ubuntu Tweak, especially for its Janitor (system cleaning) feature, a repacked of 0.8.7 release now is available in GetDeb repository.
If you have already added Getdeb App repository, just search for and install Ubuntu Tweak via your package manager or use apt install command. For those who don’t want to add the repository, follow the steps below:
1. Download the deb installer:
2. Click install the package via Ubuntu Software.
Or open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), run the commands below one by one to install it via dpkg and fix dependency problem via apt:
For LVM, encrypted, or limited-storage systems, you need to regularly remove old kernels to prevent your computer (/boot partition) from running out of storage space.
Removing old kernels is easy. You can do it manually, or set unattended-upgrades to do it automatically. For details, open terminal from App Launcher or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys, and follow the steps below:
Remove Automatically Installed Kernels:
1. To remove the kernels that were automatically installed via regular system updates, open terminal and run:
sudo apt autoremove --purge
It will ask you to type in user password and then remove old kernels as well as other automatically installed packages that are no longer needed.
2. To enable automatic removing of old kernels:
Run command to enable unattended upgrades. For Desktop Ubuntu 16.04, this is enabled by default.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades
Edit the config file via command (first install gksu via sudo apt install gksu):
If you install latest kernels from Kernel PPA, or build your own kernels with patches, a “purge-old-kernels” script is the best and the easiest way to remove old kernels.
1. The script is maintained in byobu package, so first install it via:
sudo apt install byobu
2. Then run the script regularly to remove old kernels:
sudo purge-old-kernels
Remove Old Kernels via DPKG
If your /boot partition has already full while doing an upgrade or package install, and apt(the script above uses apt) can’t remove packages due to broken dependency, here you can manually find out the old kernel packages and remove them via DPKG:
1. Run command to check out current kernel and DON’T REMOVE it:
rc linux-image-4.4.0-15-generic 4.4.0-15.31 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-4.4.0-18-generic 4.4.0-18.34 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
rc linux-image-4.6.0-040600rc3-generic 4.6.0-040600rc3.201604120934 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 4.6.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
There will be three status in the listed kernel images:
rc: means it has already been removed.
ii: means installed, eligible for removal.
iU: DON’T REMOVE. It means not installed, but queued for install in apt.
3. Remove old kernel images in status ii, it’s “linux-image-4.4.0-18-generic” in the example above:
sudo dpkg --purge linux-image-4.4.0-18-generic
If the command fails, remove the dependency packages that the output tells you via sudo dpkg --purge PACKAGE.
And also try to remove the respective header and common header packages (Don’t worry if the command fails):