QtWebKit web browser QupZilla 1.8.1 has been released recently. Here is how to install / upgrade it in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives.
QupZilla is a free and open source browser that uses QtWebKit engine. Additional effort was put into seamless integration of the browser with the native look and feel of users’ desktops. Some additional features of the browser include the integration of history, web feeds and bookmarks in a single location, the ability to take a screenshot of the entire page, and Opera-like “Speed dial” home page. It is reported to consume fewer system resources than the major general purpose browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
QupZilla 1.8.1 is the first bugfix release since v1.8.0. It fixed:
reverted setting DNT header by default
autofill not working for some frames
saving speed dial in case of crash
open file in download option on windows
Internet Explorer bookmarks importer
building on Mac
Install / Upgrade QupZilla in Ubuntu:
The latest binaries have been made into PPA available for Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one to add the PPA and install the browser:
Linus Torvalds finally announced the stable release of Linux Kernel 3.17. He wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml.org):
So the past week was fairly calm, and so I have no qualms about releasing 3.17 on the normal schedule (as opposed to the optimistic “maybe I can release it one week early” schedule that was not to be).
However, I now have travel coming up – something I hoped to avoid when I was hoping for releasing early. Which means that while 3.17 is out, I’m not going to be merging stuff very actively next week, and the
week after that is LinuxCon EU…
What that means is that depending on how you want to see it, the 3.18 merge window will either be three weeks, or alternatively just have a rather slow start. I don’t mind getting pull requests starting now
(in fact, I have a couple already pending in my inbox), but I likely won’t start processing them for a week.
Anyway, back to 3.17. Nothing major happened during the last week, as you can see from the appended shortlog. Mostly drivers (i915, nouveau, ethernet, scsi, sound) and some networking fixes. With some misc
noise all over.
Go out and test,
Linus
What’s New in Linux Kernel 3.17:
Radeon R9 290 “Hawaii” GPUs finally play nicely with the open-source AMD Linux driver.
Microsoft Xbox One controller support.
Improvements to the Sony SIXAXIS support
Toshiba “Active Protection Sensor” Support, a driver to detect if Toshiba laptops are in a free-fall.
New ARM hardware support: Rockchip RK3288 SoC, Allwinner A23 SoC, Allwinner A31 Hummingbird, Tegra30 Apalis board, Gumstix Pepper AM335x, and the AM437x TI evaluation board.
Open-source NVIDIA driver improvements.
DMA-BUF cross-device synchronization support
Broadcom BCM7XXX-based board support
ACPI 5.1 activity and other power management improvements.
Audio support includes Wildcatpoint Audio DSP on Intel Broadwell Ultrabooks.
Install / Upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.17 in Ubuntu:
Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the binary packages, available for download in the link below:
You may first check out your OS type, 32-bit (i386) or 64-bit (amd64), then download and install the packages below in turn:
Tip: If you’re using a proprietary video driver, you may need to re-build (or re-install) the driver to get it work with new kernel.
If for some reason, the new kernel does not work properly for you, reboot with the previous Kernel (Grub boot loader -> Advanced -> select previous kernel) and run below command to remove Linux Kernel 3.17:
Deluge Team has recently announced its BitTorrent client v1.3.8. Later the same day, Deluge 1.3.9 was released with a quick fix that was missed in the previous release.
Deluge is a full-featured BitTorrent client for Linux, OS X, Unix and Windows. It uses libtorrent in its backend and features multiple user-interfaces including: GTK+, web and console. It has been designed using the client server model with a daemon process that handles all the bittorrent activity. The Deluge daemon is able to run on headless machines with the user-interfaces being able to connect remotely from any platform.
Changes in Deluge 1.3.9:
Fix every torrent is displayed twice in classic mode
Changes in Deluge 1.3.8:
Core:
Emit FinishedEvent? after moving storage complete
Fixes to mitigate fastresume corruption
GtkUI:
Fix application startup failing with ‘cannot acquire lock’ error
Fix the Queued Torrents ‘Clear’ button not properly clearing the list of torrent
Fix updating core_config before setting default options
Fix TypeError? if active workspace is None
Nautilus window opens behind current window
Fix showing the open_folder menuitem
Suppress unimportant gnome warnings
Optimized the updating of the torrent view
Fixed Indicator icon label issue
Fix listview error with new config
Other changes:
WebUI: Ensure values are updated from config upon showing a plugin page
Extractor: Add WebUI plugin page
Extractor: Find 7-zip application path on Windows via registry
Execute: Add a TorrentRemoved? event option
Scheduler: Fix an ‘undefined this.scheduleCells’ error in javascript console
Blocklist and Notifications: Add WebUI plugin page
Console: Fix console parsing args
Install / Upgrade Deluge in Ubuntu:
The latest packages has been made into the Deluge Team PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04, and derivatives.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:
Start the daemon by running deluge-web & in terminal and go to localhost:8112(or http://serverip:8112) in your web browser. The default password is deluge.
Also, you can install the console ui by installing the packages deluge-console and deluged.
This quick tutorial shows you how to install the latest release of Quassel IRC client in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives via PPA.
Quassel is a modern, cross-platform, distributed KDE / Qt IRC client. One (or multiple) client(s) can attach to and detach from a central core. It’s much like the popular combination of screen and a text-based IRC client such as WeeChat, but graphical.
While Ubuntu 14.04 Software Center provides Quassel 0.10, the latest release has recently reached 0.11. See what’s new:
Completely revamp the build system, making use of “new” CMake features
Install Quassel IRC Clien via PPA:
Thanks to Michael Marley, a PPA repository has been created with the latest stable builds of Quassel packages for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives.
1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the command below to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mamarley/quassel
Type in your user password when it asks. Note that there is no visual feed back when you’re typing a password.
Once installed, open the irc client from Unity dash or application menu and you can receive future updates by running regular update via Software Updater.
The latest NVIDIA Linux driver has reached 340.46 with a few bug fixes. Here’s how to easily install it in Ubuntu 14.10 or Ubuntu 14.04 via PPA repository.
What’s new in NVIDIA 340.46:
Fixed an OpenGL issue that could cause glReadPixels() operations to be improperly clipped when resizing composited application windows, potentially leading to momentary X freezes.
Fixed a bug that could prevent the GLSL compiler from correctly evaluating some expressions when compiling shaders.
Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-installer to crash while attempting to run nvidia-xconfig on systems where that utility is missing.
Added option UseSysmemPixmapAccel to control the use of GPU acceleration for X drawing operations on pixmaps allocated in system memory.
Release note and supported GPUs are available in the Nvidia page.
Install Nvidia 340.46 via PPA:
Besides using the official installer, we can easily install the driver from a Launchpad PPA.
To add the PPA & install Nvidia 340.46, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:
TimeShift, Linux system restore application, now is at v1.6. The new release supports cloning your Ubuntu to another device. BTRFS filesystem support is also available in a fork release.
TimeShift is an open source application for Linux that provides functionality similar to the System Restore feature in Windows and the Time Machine tool in Mac OS.
The utility takes incremental snapshots of the system using rsync and hard-links. These snapshots can be restored at a later date to undo all changes that were made to the system after the snapshot was taken.
The latest Timeshift v1.6 was released recently with below new features:
A “Clone” button to clone your current system to another device. You can clone your Ubuntu install to a portable device and boot on another machine.
Improved First Snapshot Size Estimation
Backups can now be saved on LUKS-encrypted partitions.
The terminal output was cleaned up. Only important messages will be displayed
The developer has also announced Timeshift BTRFS, a fork release that supports for Linux system installed on BTRFS filesystem. It features:
Super-fast snapshot creation
Snapshots takes ZERO space initially
Super-fast restore
Install Timeshift in Ubuntu:
Both rsync (normal version) and BTRFS version are available in the developer’s PPA for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.10 and derivatives.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and run one by one to add the PPA and install Timeshift packages:
Have tried multiple media players in Ubuntu and found that the sound menu is full of player controls? Well, below I’ll tell how to clean it up by removing unwanted players from the menu.
Remove unwanted players from sound menu
To get started, we need a simple tool called dconf-editor. If you don’t have it on your system, click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button.
Once you have it installed, open the tool from Unity dash or left launcher. When dconf-editor opens, navigate to com -> canonical -> indicator -> sound.
Double click the closed brackets next to ‘interested-media-players’ and remove the names of the players ended with .desktop.
For me, after removing ‘tomahawk.desktop’, ‘pragha.desktop’, ‘gnome-music.desktop’, ‘rhythmbox.desktop’, ‘pithos.desktop’, ‘nuvolaplayer.desktop’, only VLC media player is left under the sound menu.
If you later launch a player after you “removed” it, it will be added back to the sound menu automatically. To prevent this happens, add it into blacklisted-media-player.
In my case, pragha and gnome music player will be never listed in the sound menu, even you’re listening with one of them.
This tutorial shows how to install Pithos, a native Pandora Internet Radio client, in Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 14.10 via its PPA repository.
Pandora Radio is a music streaming and automated music recommendation service which is only available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The service plays musical selections of a certain genre based on the user’s artist selection.
Pithos is an open source Pandora Radio client for Linux. It’s much more lightweight than the Pandora.com web client, and integrates with desktop features such as media keys, notifications, and the sound menu.
The client features:
Play / Pause / Next Song
Switching stations
Remembering user name and password
Cover Art
Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down / Tired of this song
Notification popup with song info
Launching pandora.com song info page and station page
Reconnecting when pandora session times out
Editing QuickMix
Creating stations
Media Key support
Proxy support
Last.fm scrobbling
The latest release has reached v1.0.1, you can get the detailed changes from the github page.
Install Pithos in Ubuntu 14.10 / 14.04:
The developers have created a PPA repository that provides the latest packages for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and their derivatives such as Linux Mint 17.
To install the client, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, paste commands below and run one by one:
Adobe Reader for Linux is no longer available for download from Adobe website. But we can still install it in Ubuntu through the old Canonical Partners repository.
Adobe has recently removed the Linux support from its official download page. Actually the latest “AdbeRdr9.5.5-1_i386linux_enu.deb” package is still available in the official repository, but it might be removed in near future.
If you still want this PDF reader, below is how to install Adobe Reader (Acroread) 9 in Ubuntu 14.10 from the Canonical Partners repository for Precise (12.04).
1. Open up terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste the command below and hit enter to add the repository:
Secure Shell (SSH) is a protocol for securely accessing remote machine, it allows you to run command line and graphical programs, transfer files, and even create secure virtual private networks over the Internet.
Ubuntu does not provide the ssh service out-of-the-box. But you can easily enable it by installing the OpenSSH server package.
To enable SSH:
Search for and install the openssh-server package from Ubuntu Software Center. Or run command below in console if you’re on Ubuntu Server without GUI:
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
Once installed, the SSH service should be started automatically. If necessary, you can start (or stop, restart) the service manually via command:
sudo service ssh start
To edit settings:
To change the port, root login permission, you may edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file via:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
After you changed the configurations, press Ctrl+X followed by typing y and hitting enter to save the file.
Finally restart the SSH service to apply the changes:
sudo service ssh restart
Usage and Tips:
1. Normally, we can access remote machine through SSH via command:
ssh username@remote-ip
For the port that is not the default 22:
ssh username@remote-ip -p NUMBER
2. For desktop Ubuntu, root user need to be enabled first so that remote machines can SSH to it via root:
Run command below to set a password for root:
sudo passwd root
Then execute command to unlock the root account:
sudo passwd -u root
Edit the config file /etc/ssh/sshd_config, change the line
