Ubuntu Tweak, one of the most popular Ubuntu configuration tools, now is officially discontinued!
Tualatrix Chou, the creator and maintainer, finally announced the discontinuation of Ubuntu Tweak in his Chinese blog a few days ago, though the last software update was more than one year ago.
The website Ubuntu-Teak.com has been redirected, and it will be shut off one year later, though it’s still getting 4000+ visits per day. Moreover, the Github and Launchpad page has been added a line said “This project is no long under maintenance”.
Ubuntu Tweak Alternative:
The best alternatives are Unity Tweak Tool for Unity Desktop and Gnome Tweak Tool for Gnome Shell. Both can be installed via Ubuntu Software App.
Code::Blocks is an open-source, cross-platform, full-featured C, C++, and Fortran IDE designed to be very extensible and fully configurable.
While Ubuntu provides the old Code::Blocks 13.12 release in its universe repository, this tutorial shows you how to install the latest stable Code::Blocks 16.01 using PPA.
1. Add Code::Blocks Stable PPA, so you can receive future software updates along with system updates using Software Updater.
Open terminal from Unity Dash or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T combination key. When it opens, paste the command below and hit run:
Enpass is a password management program for Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Web, and Mobile devices. All desktop versions are absolutely free while mobile apps are limited to 20 items unless a life-time license ($9.99) is bought.
Enpass now is at version 5.2, which features TOTP support, autorun on startup, import from 1Password OPVault, Pocket and Password Depot.
An official Linux repository is available for Ubuntu 12.04 and later (Ubuntu 16.04 is supported now), so you can follow the steps below to install it:
1. Add Enpass repository.
Launch Software & Updates from Unity Dash, or System Settings window. When it opens, navigate to Other Software tab, and click Add button to add the line below:
deb http://repo.sinew.in/ stable main
2. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste the command below and hit run to get the keyring, so your system will trust the packages from the repository:
Here’s a brief tutorial that shows how to install Komodo Edit with Unity integration in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS via PPA.
Komodo Edit is an open-source code editor based on Komodo IDE. Its website provides official Linux packages, but lacks global menu and application shortcut for Ubuntu Unity desktop.
Mystic-Mirage is maintaining a PPA contains unofficial Komodo Edit packages with patches for Ubuntu integration. Support for Ubuntu 16.04 was added a few days ago.
1. To add PPA
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste following command and hit run:
The new release has been made into universe repositories of all current Ubuntu releases and derivatives. Just run Software Updater and install the available update for Firefox after checking for updates.
Cinnamon 3.0, the GTK3 desktop environment developed by (and for) Linux Mint, was released yesterday afternoon.
Here’s a quick overview of some of the changes in Cinnamon 3.0 according to the release note:
Window management improvements on tiling, mapping and unmapping windows, compositor’s window groups and tracking of full screen windows
Improved out of the box touchpad support (edge-scrolling and two-finger-scrolling can now be configured independently and are both enabled by default)
New accessibility and sound settings (both rewritten as native cinnamon-settings modules)
Battery powered devices can be renamed
Different favorite applications can now be set for plain-text, documents and source code files
Panel launchers now include application actions
Animation effects are now enabled by default on dialogs and menus
Favorites and system options can now be disabled in the menu applet
The photo-frame desklet now also scans subdirectories
Improved support for GTK 3.20, Spotify 0.27, Viber
How to Install Cinnamon 3.0 in Ubuntu:
Linux Mint users can upgrade to Cinnamon 3.0 via the update-manager. For Ubuntu, there’s a PPA contains unofficial (though probably closest to official) builds of Cinnamon releases for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 15.10, and a little old version of Ubuntu 14.04.
Open teriminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste below command and hit run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:embrosyn/cinnamon
After typing your password, take a look at the PPA description in terminal output and hit Enter.
2. Then update and install the Cinnamon desktop via:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
3. If everything goes OK, log out and select log in with Cinnamon session (or Cinnamon (Software Rendering) session if you want it use software rendering to do more of the graphical work).
(Optional) To uninstall the Cinnamon session, use Synaptic Package Manager or run commands:
The default network manager in Ubuntu 16.04 now supports to create WiFi hotspot for Android devices.
You can create a Wireless access point in Ubuntu 14.04 using Unity’s default network manager, but a little hack on the configuration file is required.
In Ubuntu 16.04, there’s a Hotspot mode in the WiFi connection editings page that works directly for Android devices. Here’s the step by step how to guide:
1. First disable WiFi and connect your laptop to a wired network, so your network menu looks like:
2. Click Edit Connections on the menu shown in above picture. Then click Add to add a new connection:
3. Choose WiFi from the drop-down box in the next window and click Create button.
4. When the editing window popup, do:
Type in connection name, SSID, select Hotspot mode.
In Wifi Security tab, select WPA & WPA2 Personal and type in a password.
In IPv4 Settings tab, select mode “Share to other computers”
5. After clicked the save button, enable WiFi and click Connect to Hidden Wi-Fi network and select connect to the connection you just created.
6. Your network menu now looks like:
Finally connect to this hotspot from your Android device and enjoy!
On the new released Ubuntu 16.04 desktop, you may get a few error popups that asks you to report problems. Some popups has already been reported so you may want to disable these error popups before they are fixed by upstream.
To do so, you can either temporarily stop the Apport service on current boot, or manually edit the config file to disable error reporting system permanently
1. To stop the Apport service, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo service apport stop
Type in password when it asks and hit Enter. There’s no visual feedback while typing your password.
2. To disable the apport system so you’ll never see the error popups, run command to edit config file:
sudo gedit /etc/default/apport
When the file opens, change the value to 0 and save it.
Here’s how to enable Secure Shell (SSH) service in Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus, the new LTS release, to allow secure remote login and other network communications.
Ubuntu provides OpenSSH (OpenBSD Secure Shell) in its universe repositories, which is a suite of security-related network-level utilities based on the SSH protocol.
1. To install it, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) or log in Ubuntu server and run command:
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
2. After that, you should have SSH service enabled in your system, you may check its status by running command:
sudo service ssh status
3. You may change some settings (e.g., the listening port, and root login permission) by editing the configuration file via command:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
On Ubuntu desktop, you may use gedit instead of nano:
Finally apply the changes by restarting or reloading SSH:
The lightweight PDF and XPS viewer MuPDF 1.9 has been released. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and its derivatives.
According to the news page, MuPDF 1.9 brings following changes:
Headline changes:
New command line tools: create and run.
New low-level Java interface for desktop and android.
Bidirectional layout for Arabic and Hebrew scripts.
Shaping complex scripts for EPUB text layout.
Noto fallback fonts for EPUB layout.
mutool create:
Create new PDF files from scratch.
Read an annotated content stream in a text file and write a PDF file, automatically embedding font and image resources.
mutool run:
Run javascript scripts with MuPDF bindings.
The interface is similar to the new Java interface.
mutool draw:
Optional multi-threaded operation (Windows and pthreads).
Optional low memory mode (primarily for testing).
How to Install MuPDF in Ubuntu:
1. Launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to add PPA (unofficial):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps
Type in your password when it asks and hit Enter to continue. No visual feedback while typing password. You can lately manage the PPA in Software & Updates -> Other Software.
2. Then update package index and install the software via commands:
After installation, right-click on a PDF/XPS file and select open with MuPDF. You may also set MuPDF as default viewer in file’s Properties settings window.
For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab .deb packages for mupdf and mupdf-tools at PPA Index page.
