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Archives For November 30, 1999

NVIDIA 545.29.02 is out! Support Night Light for GNOME/KDE Wayland

Last updated: November 1, 2023 — 1 Comment

NVIDIA announced 545.29.02 graphics driver for Linux yesterday, as a new release series for its New Feature Branch Version.

For Ubuntu 22.04 + and Fedora Workstation with default GNOME on Wayland, as well as KDE on Wayland, the new driver adds support for the CTM, DEGAMMA_LUT, and GAMMA_LUT DRM-KMS CRTC properties, which, finally make the ‘Night Light’ and ‘Night Color’ feature work for NVIDIA users.

Night Light finally works on Wayland with NVIDIA driver

For desktop GPUs, the release adds initial experimental support for runtime D3 (RTD3) power saving mode. When all the PCI functions are idle, and all required conditions are satisfied, your GPU will go to the lowest power state resulting into maximum power savings.

The new driver also added experimental support for framebuffer consoles. On kernels with implement features, nvidia-drm will install a framebuffer console when loaded with both modeset=1 and fbdev=1 kernel parameters. Though, when an nvidia-drm framebuffer console is enabled, unloading nvidia-drm will cause the screen to turn off.

Other changes in NVIDIA 545.29.02 include:

  • Experimental HDMI 10 bits per component support
  • Support for virtual reality displays
  • CERTIFIED-quality support for GeForce and Workstation GPUs to open kernelmodules.
  • Support for PRIME render offload to Vulkan Wayland WSI
  • Support for HDR signaling
  • Add support to NVIDIA VDPAU driver for running in Xwayland
  • Support EGL_ANDROID_native_fence_sync EGL extension.
  • Support VK_EXTERNAL_SEMAPHORE_HANDLE_TYPE_SYNC_FD_BIT
  • Support VK_EXTERNAL_FENCE_HANDLE_TYPE_SYNC_FD_BIT

For more about the new driver, see the official release note.

How to Install NVIDIA 545 Driver

Ubuntu will build the new driver series and publish through official system repositories. So, just wait! It will be available in “Additional Drivers” utility when it’s ready.

For those who can’t wait, the “Graphics Drivers” team PPA has made the driver package for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and higher.

Simply, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run command to add the PPA:

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

Finally, launch the ‘Additional Drivers’ utility for installing the new driver.

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Linux 6.6 Released as the Latest Kernel Series

Last updated: November 1, 2023 — Leave a comment


Linux Torvalds announced the release of Kernel 6.6 this Monday.

It’s the latest mainline kernel so far, that features EEVDF scheduler, and per-policy CPUFreq performance boost control.

For Intel, the new kernel added Intel Shadow Stack support to prevent ROP attacks; Initial PECI support for 4th Gen Xeon Scalable “Sapphire Rapids” platforms; And, initial support for the Intel Lunar Lake VPU4.

For old laptops with Intel 4th/5th CPU, the kernel enabled Panel Self Refresh (PSR) support for power-savings.

For AMD, the kernel has Dynamic Boost Control support, Zen 5 temperature and EDAC support for AMD 1Ah processors, and FreeSync Panel Replay support with better power saving for upcoming AMD Ryzen laptops.

The cpupower utility has been updated. Now it supports for adjusting new AMD P-State driver features, include changing the AMD P-State mode, and turbo-boost mode.

For Linux system installed on EXT4 file partition, Kernel 6.6 will have 34% improvement with many concurrent writes and Apache Kafka 10% performance boost.

Linux 6.6 has many new hardware support, they include:

  • GameSir T4 Kaleid Controller.
  • SteelSeries Arctis 1 Xbox headset
  • New Ethernet hardware supported, including the Broadcom ASP 2.0 72165 controller, MediaTek MT7988 SoC, TI AM654 SoC, TI IEP, Atheros QCA8081 PHY. Marvell 88Q2110 PHY, and the NXP TJA1120 PHY.
  • MediaTek MT7981 wireless chipset
  • Bluetooth support for Intel Gale Peak, Qualcomm WCN3988 and WCN7850, NXP AW693 and IW624, and the MediaTek MT2925.

Other changes include:

  • Better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver.
  • New driver for Azoteq IQS7210A/7211A/E touch controller
  • Force feedback (rumble) support for the Google Stadia controller.
  • New sysctl interface for disabling IO_uring system-wide
  • Supports AP mode on the RTL8192FU, RTL8710BU (RTL8188GU), RTL8192EU, and RTL8723BU.
  • USB MIDI 2.0 gadget function driver
  • Toggle charge mode, middle fan control for ASUS WMI supported devices.
  • dGPU and CPU tunables for ROG laptops

How to Install Linux Kernel 6.6

The Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA somehow stuck at v6.6 RC5. So, there’s no proper way to get the Linux Kernel 6.6 at the moment of writing besides building from the source code.

Though, you can keep an eye on the third-party trustworthy Zabbly repository, which should update for the 6.6 Kernel in next few days.

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Display Live Earth as Desktop Wallpaper in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: May 5, 2024 — Leave a comment

This simple tutorial shows how to display live earth as desktop wallpaper in Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04.

Ubuntu has Wallch wallpaper changer in system repository, which has option to show live earth as wallpaper. However, the app is no longer updated and the feature is broken for all current Ubuntu releases.

If you’re interested in viewing high-resolution 3d real-time image of the earth in your desktop, then there’s another free open-source tool can do the job.

It’s liewa (Live Earth Wallpapers), that supports all known geostationary satellites for the high resolution sentinel images, Nasa Solar Dynamics Observatory images and NASA astronomy picture of the day (Apod)!

By default, it uses GEOS-16 satellite for the earth image, that display a small earth in center of your screen. Though, the app has setting options to add or edit satellites.

Add, configure satellites

So, you can have more than one real-time images of the earth from different satellites displayed on your screen at the same time, in different size, with either natural color or geocolor.

How to Install Live Earth Wallpapers (Liewa)

The tool provides .deb package for downloading in its Github releases page:

Download Liewa

After downloaded the .deb package, right-click on ‘Downloads’ folder and select “Open in Terminal”. Finally, run command to install it in pop-up terminal window:

sudo apt install ./liewa.deb

Finally, launch it from either start/applications menu or the overview screen depends on your desktop environment.

When the app window opens, configure canvas size, satellites, etc in first tab, then click on “Create New Scheduler” in Scheduler tab should start the live earth wallpaper.

Though, it takes quite a few seconds to apply, waiting for automatically start the service. If you can’t wait, try to open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to manually start the service:

systemctl status --user liewa

Uninstall:

You can stop the live earth wallpaper by clicking on “Delete Scheduler” button in app window, then set another wallpaper via ‘Background’ settings.

To remove the software, simply open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove liewa
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Televido – Play German-language public TV in Linux

Last updated: October 30, 2023 — Leave a comment

For Linux desktop user who want to access German-language public broadcasting live streams and archives, this can do the job for you.

It’s televido (“Television” in Esperanto), a free and open-source tool, allowing to livestream, search, play and download media from German-language public television services. Though, ORF (Austrian TV) & SRF (Swiss TV) are also supported.

The app is written in Rust programming language, and use GTK4 for its modern user interface. It has ‘Live’ tab for live TV shows, such as ZDF-Morgenmagazin, 28 Minuten, and more.

And, allows to search, play, and download media via ‘Mediathek’ tab.

The application only find and access TV shows with the power of MediathekViewWeb’s API and the Zapp backend API. The media playback is done by external video players installed on your system. So far, it supports GNOME Videos (Totem), Celluloid, Clapper, Daikhan.

How to install Televido in Ubuntu & Other Linux

Televido is easy to install in most Linux desktop through the Flatpak package.

For Linux Mint 21 and Fedora 38 + (with 3rd party repositories enabled), simply search for and install it directly from either Software Manager or Gnome Software.

Install Televido from Linux Mint software manager

For other Linux, follow the steps below one by one to install the app as Flatpak package:

  1. First, launch terminal from start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.
  2. Then, follow the setup guide to enable Flatpak support.
    For Debian and Ubuntu based systems, just run command:

    sudo apt install flatpak

  3. Finally, install the app as Flatpak package by running the command below in terminal: 
    flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/de.k_bo.Televido.flatpakref

    Tips: First time installing Flatpak app may have lots of download for run-time libraries, and user needs to log out and back in to make app icon visible.

Once installed, search for and launch the app either from start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.

Uninstall

To remove the software package, also launch terminal and run command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data de.k_bo.Televido

Also run flatpak uninstall --unused to remove useless run-times to free up some disk spaces.

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How to Perform Stress Test on Your CPU in Ubuntu / Debian

Last updated: June 10, 2024 — 1 Comment

This simple tutorial shows how to do stress test on your CPU in Ubuntu or Debian Linux, either Desktop or Server.

Got a new CPU /CPU cooler, or changed your computer environment? You can perform a stress test to find out if it’s working good! And, here’s how to do the trick in Debian, Ubuntu, and their based systems.

Step 1: Install stress/stress-ng & s-tui

In all current Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04, 24.04) and Debian releases, there are few command line and TUI tools to do the job.

First, open terminal either from start/application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard.


When it opens, run command:

sudo apt install --install-suggests s-tui

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo authentication and hit Enter.

The command will install s-tui, with TUI interface to start, stop, configure stress test, and monitor your CPU status in terminal.

With --install-suggests option, it also installs the stress or stress-ng package as the backend for the testing.

Step 2: Perform Stress Test

After installing the tool, simply run the command below in terminal to start s-tui:

s-tui

Then, you’ll see something look like the screenshot below shows you.

In left, it shows some options, as well as summaries of core temperatures, and frequencies. In right, it shows information about the temperature, utilization rate,etc in graphs.

To start stress test, just left click on ( )Stress in the top-left corner of terminal, or use arrow key to highlight it and hit Enter. To stop it, just click to switch back ( )Monitor.

By clicking Stress Options in left, it will show you option to set a timeout to automatically stop stress testing in given seconds. You can also change Sqrt() worker count and Sync() worker count to specify how many cores to run for stress test.

Tips 1 : For GNOME, Ubuntu’s default desktop environment, open “Power” settings and change CPU power mode to ‘Performance’ before performing stress test, or your CPU may not run in full speed.

Tips 2: While stress testing, you may also monitor the temperature of other devices (e.g., SSD) in your machine. To do so, you may install ‘hardinfo’ by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install hardinfo

Then open it and navigate to ‘sensors’ tab in left.

That’s all. Enjoy!

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BleachBit system cleaner adds Edge, Firefox Snap & Chrome Flatpak Support

Last updated: October 29, 2023 — Leave a comment

BleachBit, the popular free open-source system cleaner application, updates recently with many new features.

It’s BleachBit 4.5.1, the beta development release series for the next major 4.6 version. The new release adds new applications support, including cleaning caches for GIMP, FileZilla, and Microsoft Edge.

As Flatpak and Snap apps are getting more and more popular today, the release also adds support for Firefox as Snap (pre-installed in Ubuntu), Thunderbird and Google Chrome installed as Flatpak.

BleachBit clean Firefox Snap in Ubuntu

For KDE user, it can now clean recent documents. And, in Preferences dialog, user can enable “shred with bleachbit” context menu option for KDE Dolphin file manager.

The release also has various bug-fixes. When cleaning Firefox, it does no longer show “no such table” error. And, it fixed admin mode launching issue when working on Linux with Wayland session. For more, see the release note.

How to Install BleachBit 4.5.1 in Ubuntu

BleachBit 4.5.1 refreshed the installers for newer Linux Distros, making it easy to install in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, Ubuntu 23.10, Debian 11/12, and Fedora 37/38. While the old Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, Debian 10 are also supported!

Just go to the official download page via the link below:

Download BleachBit 4.5

For Ubuntu user, select download the proper .deb package. Then, right-click on your Downloads folder and click “Open in Terminal“. Finally, install it by running the command below in pop-up terminal window:

sudo apt install ./bleachbit_4.5.*_all_*.deb

BleachBit is also available to install as Flatpak package, though it’s not verified (meaning unofficial).

To install the Flatpak package in Ubuntu, just open terminal and run 2 commands below one by one:

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.bleachbit.BleachBit.flatpakref

After installing the tool, launch it from either start/applications menu or the Gnome overview screen depends on your Desktop environment, and enjoy!

Uninstall BleachBit

For the application installed through .deb package, simply open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to uninstall it:

sudo apt remove --autoremove bleachbit

While the Flatpak package can be removed by running command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.bleachbit.BleachBit

And, you may also run flatpak uninstall --unused to free up some more disk space by removing useless run-time libraries.

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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Release Schedule is Out!

Last updated: October 27, 2023 — 1 Comment

Ubuntu 24.04, is in development now! Here’s when it will be released!

Ubuntu 24.04, code-name ‘Noble Numbat’, will be a new LTS release with 5 years support and another 5 years extend (ESM) support. It will probably features GNOME Desktop 46, and of course newer Linux Kernel.

The development was started this Thursday, according to this announcement. And, the final release is planned for April 25 2024.

Here’s the full release schedule according to the official discussion page.

Ubuntu 24.04 Release Schedule

February 29, 2024 Feature Freeze,  Debian Import Freeze
March 21, 2024 User Interface Freeze
March 28, 2024 Kernel Feature Freeze, Documentation String Freeze
April 01, 2024 Beta Freeze, Hardware Enablement Freeze
April 04, 2024 Beta (mandatory)
April 11, 2024 Kernel Freeze
April 18, 2024 Final Freeze, Release Candidate
April 25, 2024 Final Release
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[Tips] Quickly Access Source of installed Extensions in Ubuntu

Last updated: October 27, 2023 — Leave a comment

This is a quick tutorial shows you how to quickly access the source of all your installed GNOME extensions in Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, Debian and other Linux with GNOME.

Gnome extensions are usually installed to “.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/” directory. While, system built-in extensions are available in “/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/“.

For developing or debugging purpose, you can open that folder every time to access the sources. However, GNOME has a built-in debugger and inspector tool that can also do the trick quickly.

Quick access source of extensions via Looking Glass

1. First, press Alt+F2 on keyboard to launch the ‘Run a command’ dialog box. Then, input lg and hit Enter.

2. The Gnome debugger and inspector tool, aka Looking Glass, will drop-down from the top.
There, just switch to “Extensions” tab, then, you’ll see all the installed extensions, either enabled or disabled.

And, each extension has 3 links:

  • View Source – open the source folder of extension in a new Nautilus window.
  • Web Page – open the extension web page in default web browser.
  • Show/Hide Errors

Looking Glass Indicator

To make life easier, there’s also an extension to add a panel indicator in top-right. So, you can access it easily by a single mouse click. Which, also has a drop-down menu:

  • Restart Shell (Xorg only).
  • Reload Theme.
  • Open Extensions Folder.
  • Open Themes folder.

To install the indicator, first search for and install “Extension Manager” from either Ubuntu Software or App Center.

Install Extension Manager in Ubuntu 22.04+

Then, launch and use “Extension Manager” to search and install “Looking Glass Button” under Browse tab.

The extension so far supports all current GNOME versions. For Fedora, Debian, etc without ‘Extension Manager’, just go to extension web page via the link below:

Looking Glass Button

Then use ON/OFF switch to install it. If you don’t see the toggle switch, click the link in the page to install browser extension then refresh.

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Audacity 3.4.0 Beta is out! Musical View, Time stretching & New Exporter

Last updated: November 3, 2023 — 1 Comment

Audacity audio editor released the Beta version of the next 3.4.0. Here’s how to try it out in Ubuntu.

According to the project release page, the new release now features several music related features, such as switching between hh:mm:ss time and Beats & Measures, and time-stretching clips to align them to a song’s tempo.

The release also features Time stretching. Just hold “Alt” (macOS: Option) while hovering over the top third of a clip edge to stretch it.

The 3.4.0 also features a new export dialog with easier access to options such as sample rate and custom mapping (for 5.1 or 7.1 audio). Additionally, the “Browse” button uses the native file browser now!

New Export dialog

Other changes include:

  • always uses Joint Stereo mode for MP3.
  • Simplified pasting logic, and stereo tracks.
  • uses Conan 2.
  • Built-in Opus support.
  • And stability fixes.

How to Install Audacity 3.4.0 Beta:

Option 1: AppImage
It provides official macOS .dmg, Windows .exe, and Linux .AppImage packages available to download at the link below:

Download Audacity

For Linux, click expand the “Assets” section and choose download the .AppImage package.

Then, right-click on the .AppImage file and go to its ‘Properties’ dialog. Add executable permission by enable ‘allow executing file as program‘. Finally, right-click on it and select “Run” to launch Audacity.

Option 2: Ubuntu PPA

For choice, I’ve uploaded the new release package into unofficial PPA for x86_64 (amd64) bit Ubuntu 22.04, 23.04, and Ubuntu 23.10 support.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When terminal opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity-unstable

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. For Linux Mint users, you may manually update system package cache by running command:

sudo apt update

3. Finally, install Audacity 3.4.0 Beta via command:

sudo apt install audacity audacity-data

Uninstall:

To uninstall Audacity 3.4.0 Beta, you have 2 choices:

  • Purge the Ubuntu PPA, which also downgrade the installed packages to stock versions: 
    sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity-unstable
  • Or, remove Audacity package by running command: 
    sudo apt remove --autoremove audacity audacity-data

    Then, remove the Ubuntu PPA via command:

    sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity-unstable
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Firefox 119 Released with Improved PDF Editing Support

Last updated: October 25, 2023 — Leave a comment

Firefox web browser announced the release of 119.0 this Tuesday.

The new release improved PDF editing, by allowing to add images and alt text, in addition to text and drawings.

“Firefox View” icon has been replaced with a folder icon instead of the previous Firefox logo. And, it allows to see all open tabs from all windows, and all tabs from other synced devices.

The release also has some security improvements. They include Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) to extend TLS encryption to cover more of the handshake and better protect sensitive fields, supports the partitioning of Blob URLs for Total Cookie Protection, and restrict website fonts visibility to system fonts and language pack fonts in Enhanced Tracking Protection strict mode.

Other changes in Firefox 119 include:

  • Ability to import some extensions from Chrome.
  • Recently closed tabs now persist between sessions that don’t have automatic session restore enabled.
  • Updated Storage Access API web standard.
  • Santali (sat) language support.
  • Unexpected jumps in scroll position on Facebook.
  • Various security fixes, and development changes.

How to Get Firefox 119

The official release note as well as the download link is available at the link below:

Firefox 119 Release Note

For Ubuntu, the pre-installed Firefox Snap package has already been updated to v119. If you don’t have it, try running snap refresh firefox in terminal.

For the .deb package, Mozilla Team PPA is available though you have to manually block the Snap package.

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