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.
For Ubuntu laptops with dual graphics cards, Intel graphics is being used by default. To get the best graphics performance for playing games or charting, you need to manually switch to NVIDIA graphics card.
This can be easily done after installing Nvidia graphics drivers and below steps will show you how:
1. Search for and launch “Additional Drivers” utility from Unity Dash.
2. When it opens, you can see a list of recommended drivers for your graphics cards:
3. Install NVIDIA proprietary driver as it shows by launching terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-361
Replace nvidia-361, or just use nvidia-current instead and keep an eye on the installing process to make sure the installed driver is listed in above picture.
You may also install Intel proprietary driver, which is not required:
sudo apt-get install intel-microcode
4. After installed graphics drivers, re-launch Additional Drivers utility and apply new installed drivers, so it looks like:
5. Finally switch graphics card by launching NVIDIA X Server Settings and select a GPU you want at PRIME Profiles tab.
Answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything
Add “Psychedelic Colour” mode to all analyzers
There are also some other features such as m4b support for non-drm files, HipHop and Kuduro equalizers, IDv3 tag lyrics support, lyrics from AZLyrics, bollywoodlyrics.com, hindilyrics.net, lololyrics.com, Musixmatch, Tekstowo.pl, and more and more.
You can also install Clementine 1.3 from its official PPA, which allows you to receive future Clementine updates along with other system updates via Software Updater utility.
1. Add PPA.
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and paste below command and hit run to add PPA:
This is a quick guide for beginners that shows how to remove / disable the Guest account login from Ubuntu 16.04 Unity Greeter.
LightDM configuration files are located in /usr/share/lightdm and /etc/lightdm. Disabling Guest account can be easily done by adding a rule into one of the two directories. And below I made a change in /etc/lightdm:
1. Open terminal from Unity Dash, or via Ctrl+Alt+T combination key.
When it opens, paste below command and run to create a sub folder:
sudo mkdir /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d
Type in your password (no visual feedback on typing) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2. Running below command to create a “50-no-guest.conf” file under this folder and write the rule allow-guest=false.
sudo sh -c 'printf "[SeatDefaults]\nallow-guest=false\n" > /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-no-guest.conf'
Now restart your computer and the Guest session disappeared.
3. To revert the changes, just remove the configuration file via command:
Skype for Linux sucks. It is lagging behind and has lots of problems, but some of Ubuntu users may still need this application.
Here’s the quick tip for beginners how to install Skype 4.3 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:
1. Enable Canonical Partners Repository
Canonical partners repository offers access to proprietary and closed-source software including Skype for Linux and is not enabled by default.
To enable it, launch Software & Updater from Unity Dash or System Settings, then check the first box in Other Software tab.
The second “Canonical Partners (Source Code)” is not required unless you want to get software sources and make some changes.
2. Skype won’t be listing in the Software App even after adding the partners repository. To install it, use Synaptic Package Manager (need to install):
click Reload to update cache
click Search and search Skype
right-click skype package from the list and select “Mark for Installation”
click Apply to apply changes
Or just open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and paste following command and hit run:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install skype
Type in your password (no visual feedback while typing password) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
Finally launch Skype from Unity Dash or App Launcher and enjoy!
