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Archives For November 30, 1999

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:

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

In App Review IPTV

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!

In Howtos power

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.

In News system cleaner

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

In News ubuntu 24.04

[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.

In Howtos Gnome

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

In News audacity

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.

In News Firefox

qBittorrent 4.6.0 Released with I2P Support & UI Editing (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: October 14, 2024 — Leave a comment

qBittorrent, the popular Qt-based BitTorrent client, released version 4.6.0 this Sunday!

The new release introduced experimental support for I2P, a peer to peer fully encrypted private network layer, allowing to transfer data in a more secure way.

The ‘Preferences’ dialog now have “Customize UI Theme” button in the behavior tab. It allows to set custom colors and icons, by double-clicking action, for both light and dark mode when using the default theme.

qBittorrent 4.6.0 also features many other changes, including option to add new torrents to queue top, filter torrent list by save path, option to stop seeding when torrent has been inactive, as well as:

‘socket send/receive buffer size’ options
‘max torrent file size’ setting
‘bdecode limits’ settings
Options to adjust behavior of merging trackers to existing torrent.
Expand the scope of “Proxy hostname lookup” option
Shortcut for “Ban peer permanently” function
Option to auto hide zero status filters
Allow to disable confirmation of Pause/Resume All
Add alternative shortcut CTRL+E for CTRL+F
Show filtered port numbers in logs
Add button to copy library versions to clipboard

How to Install qBittorrent in Ubuntu Linux

Option 1: AppImage
The software provides official Linux package through .AppImage package, available to download the link below:

Download qBittorrent

It’s a non-install package, that can be run directly to launch the torrent client. Just right-click on .AppImage file and go to ‘Properties’, then enable “Allow executing as program” option under Permissions tab. Finally, click run it to launch the app.

For choices, you can also install qBittorrent 4.6.0 through Flatpak and Ubuntu PPA.

Option 2: Flatpak

Like AppImage, Flatpak is another package format runs in sandbox. All current Ubuntu releases can easily install qBittorrent as Flatpak, by running 2 commands below one by one.

First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When terminal opens, run command to ensure Flatpak support:
```
sudo apt install flatpak
```

Then, install the torrent client as Flatpak by running command:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent.flatpakref

Option 3: Ubuntu PPA

UPDATE: Due to requirement of Qt > 6.5.0, the PPA will NOT update for Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and earlier.

For those who prefer the native .deb package format, qBittorrent has an official Ubuntu PPA. Though, it’s NOT updated at the moment of writing (check the previous link).

To add the PPA, and install the app package, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. And, run commands below one by one:

Add the PPA:
```
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable
```
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
Then, manually refresh system package cache (required for Linux Mint 21):
```
sudo apt update
```
Finally, install the torrent app via command:
```
sudo apt install qbittorrent
```

Uninstall qBittorrent

Depends on how you installed the software package, uninstall it by running either command below in terminal.

To remove the Flatpak package, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
```
flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.qbittorrent.qBittorrent
```
Also run flatpak uninstall --delete-unused to remove useless run-time libraries.
To remove the PPA package, use command:
```
sudo apt remove --autoremove qbittorrent
```
Also remove the Ubuntu PPA, either by removing source line through “Software & Updates” utility under Other Software tab. Or, by running the command below in terminal:
```
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable
```

In News bittorrent

How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10 [Step by Step Guide]

Last updated: October 23, 2023 — 4 Comments

This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows Ubuntu Desktop users how to upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10 from either Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 23.04.

Ubuntu 23.10, code-name, Mantic Minotaur, was released a week ago. It features Kernel 6.5, GNOME 45, new App Center, and has official support until July, 2024.

Before getting started:

Before start upgrading your OS, you have to do some preparations to avoid failure and speed up upgrading process.

First, backup, backup, backup! The upgrade process MAY FAIL, due to internet corrupt, hardware issue, and/or package conflict. If the upgrade process failed, your system MAY refuse to boot. So, it’s important to make backup, though, you can mount the disk in another OS to export user data.
Remove useless applications. It will try to upgrade all installed packages to the higher versions in 23.10 system repository. So removing useless packages, such as non-default desktop environments, results less downloading to speed up upgrading process. Though, it’s totally OK to skip this step.
Restore important libraries. If you’ve installed 3rd party versions of multimedia (e.g., FFmpeg) libraries, it’s highly recommended to uninstall/restore to avoid package conflict.
Disable third-party repositories. Third party repositories may contain packages that cause conflict to the packages in 23.10 system repository. It’s highly to disable them by launching “Software & Updates” and removing/un-ticking source lines under “Other Software” tab.
Remove 3rd party PPAs
Disable third-party extensions. Third-party extensions may not work on higher GNOME versions. It’s better to disable them using either ‘GNOME Extensions‘ or ‘Extension Manager’ app (both available in Ubuntu Software.).
Remove 3rd Party Extensions
Restore open-source drivers. If any proprietary driver in use. It’s better to restore the original open-source drivers using “Additional Drivers” utility.

Check Distribution Update

If you’ve done the preparations, now launch “Software Updater“, then install all the available updates:

Then, restart your computer if it prompted to finish updates.

Finally, press Ctrl + Alt + T on keyboard to open terminal, and run command:

update-manager -c -d

This command will launch “Software Updater” again, while checking Distribution updates. Use update-manager -c instead, if the command above does not work.

For Ubuntu 22.04, first launch “Software & Updates” and navigate to “Updates” tab. Then, set “Notify me of a new Ubuntu version: For any new version“. Finally, run update-manager -c to first upgrade to 23.04, and then to 23.10 with same method.

Start upgrading process

If everything’s done properly, you should see the pop-up says: “The Software on this computer is up to date. However, Ubuntu 23.10 is now available (you have 23.04)“. For Ubuntu 22.04, follow the steps to upgrade to 23.04 first, then do it again to upgrade to 23.10.

Just click on “Upgrade” button will open the ‘Release Note’ dialog. Where, you can click “Upgrade” again to start the process.

After that, the “Distribution Upgrade” dialog opens to prepare the upgrade, and setup software sources for Ubuntu 23.10.

When done, it asks again to confirm upgrade.

Once you click “Start Upgrade”, it starts downloading all them required packages and install them.

When done installing all the updates, you have to do one more click to confirm “Remove obsolete packages”.

If everything’s done successfully, it will prompt to “Restart the system to complete the upgrade”.

After reboot, either open ‘Settings’ and go to ‘About’ page, or run command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to verify:

cat /etc/os-release

In Howtos ubuntu 23.10

OnlyOffice Desktop Editor 7.5 released with PDF Editor & Screen Reader

Last updated: October 21, 2023 — Leave a comment

OnlyOffice announced the new 7.5.0 release for its desktop editors office suite few days ago.

Like online version, the desktop app can now open PDF files and do basic editing operations, such as text annotating, form filling, commenting and drawing. While, collaborative editing is planned for the next release.

Another new feature in this release is automatic hyphenation support. It automatically detects syllable boundaries and inserts hyphens for words at the end of the text line.

Other features in OnlyOffice 7.5.0 include:

Beta screen reader support.
Interface scaling up to 500%.
Add ‘Open Recent’ option in each editor page.
Create new office files from local templates
Smart paragraph selection for Document editor.
Page breaks, SORTBY formula, support adding images to headers and footers for spreadsheets
Morph transition, SmartArts adding via sidebar placeholder for presentation editor

How to Install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors 7.5:

The office suite is available to install in Ubuntu Linux in 3 different package formats: Snap, Deb, and Flatpak. Choose either one that you prefer.

1. Snap

Snap is an universal package format that runs in sandbox. Ubuntu 20.04 and higher users can simply search for and install OnlyOffice as Snap from Ubuntu Software or App Center.

The snap automatically receive updates, though the package at the moment of writing is still at version 7.4.1.

ONLYOFFICE Snap in Ubuntu Software

2. Deb

Deb is the native package format for Debian/Ubuntu and their based Linux systems. OnlyOffice provides the .deb package along with RPM, EXE, MSI, and DMG packages for downloading at the github releases page:

Download ONLYOFFICE

Just select download the “onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb” package, then click in file manager to open with “Software Install” and install it.

Or, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and run the command below to install the package you just downloaded (say it’s stored in your ‘Downloads’ folder):

sudo apt install ~/Downloads/onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb

3. Flatpak

Linux Mint 21 user may prefer the Flatpak package a bit more, since it’s available to install directly from the Software Manager.

It’s another universal package format runs in sandbox. Ubuntu user can install ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors as Flatpak by following the steps below one by one:

First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to install the Flatpak daemon:

sudo apt install flatpak

Then, install the office suite via:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors.flatpakref

The Flatpak package is also in v7.4.1 at the moment of writing, use the command flatpak update org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors to update the package once new version published.

Uninstall ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editor

Depends on which package you installed, choose to run either command below in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window to remove the office suite.

For the Snap package, remove it either via Ubuntu Software or by running the command below:

snap remove --purge onlyoffice-desktopeditors

For the native deb package, run command to remove it:

sudo apt remove onlyoffice-desktopeditors --autoremove

And to remove the package installed as Flatpak, run command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors

Also clear useless runtime libraries via flatpak uninstall --unused command.

In News office