Use Alt+Tab or Super+Tab frequently in Ubuntu or Fedora Linux? This extension replace the default window switcher with advanced options.
It’s AATWS, Advanced Alt-Tab Window Switcher, a Gnome Shell extension which may be useful for those working with many application windows at the same time.
The extension adds type to search function to the Alt/Super + Tab window/app switchers. Which allows to quickly find your opened app or window. It will also try to search and launch system applications if no match app/window exist.
As you see, each item in the switcher has corresponding hotkey (F1, F2, F3 …) for quick access with one key, rather than hitting Tab multiple times.
Also, many configure options are available in the extension settings dialog, including:
Move Alt/Super + Tab switcher in screen top, center or bottom.
Show switcher in different monitor.
Use Up/Down arrows to switch workspace while using the switcher.
Configure window/app icon size, mouse actions, and more.
Many configure options for app/window switcher
How to Install AATWS App/Window Switcher
For Ubuntu 22.04, search for and install “Extension Manager” in Ubuntu Software. You may then use the tool to install the extension:
Install AATWS via Extension Manager
For Ubuntu 20.04 and other Linux with GNOME, use the ON/OFF switch in the link below to install it:
Audacious 4.2 finally goes stable! Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu users.
This release is a bit late, since the beta has been released for 5 months. As you may already known, Audacious 4.2 feature new dark theme, as well as Flat icon in both light and dark. You can enable them via ‘Files -> Settings’ dialog.
Audacious Dark & Flat icons
For Winamp interface in Qt mode, there’s now a Search and Select dialog for searching music in playlist. Which, supports regular expressions syntax for advanced users.
Winamp interface, search in playlist
Other changes in the release include:
Add partial support for Ogg FLAC streams
Automatically set the title of an imported playlist based on the filename
Preselect the filename of an imported playlist when exporting it again
Add a Jump to Song dialog to the Winamp interface in Qt mode
Add formatter syntax to allow truncating title strings
Install Audacious 4.2 via PPA:
I’ve updated the unofficial PPA with the package for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and their based systems, such as Linux Mint and Pop! OS.
NOTE if you’re using the Audacious 4.2 beta package via my test PPA, you have to remove it as well as the PPA first.
First, open terminal by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or searching from Activities overview (start menu). When it opens, run the command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps
Second, update the package cache in Ubuntu 18.04, Linux Mint, though it’s done automatically in Ubuntu 20.04 +
sudo apt update
Finally, either update the music player via Software Updater, or run the command below in terminal to install/update the package:
The Chromium browser package (Snap version) in Ubuntu Software is missing VAAPI hardware decoding support. Ubuntu developer team is finally working on get the feature back!
As you may know, Ubuntu now includes the chromium web browser in the system repository as Snap package that runs in sandbox. However, the package is missing the graphics hardware acceleration since version 72 which was released a few years ago in 2019.
Some third-party PPAs are being maintained with Chromium packages, either due to lack of hardware acceleration or just because they don’t like Snap.
For Chromium fans who are OK with the Snap package, you can now help testing the new hwacc build that uses the graphics card for video playback.
Install Chromium from test repository:
1.) Firstly, backup your bookmark, password etc if you’re running Chromium as Snap.
2.) Press Ctrl + Alt + T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to remove chromium snap (if any) via command:
sudo snap remove chromium
3.) Next, install the testing build with hardware acceleration support by running command:
The report page recommends to run the command below to launch chromium browser:
snap run chromium --disable-features=UseChromeOSDirectVideoDecoder --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder
Finally, start playing a video either by drag and dropping local file into browser window, or via video website.
And, go to about:media-internals in address bar. Click what it’s playing and find out the value of “kVideoDecoderName“.
It will be {Vaapi,VDA,Mojo}VideoDecoder if succeed, or {FFMpeg,Vpx}VideoDecoder when failed.
For Intel graphics, there’s also a command line tool to verify if GPU rendering is working.
First, run command to install the intel-gpu-tools package:
sudo apt install intel-gpu-tools
The, use command to verify:
sudo intel_gpu_top
In my case, the previous command did’t work in both i3-6006U and i5-10400 with integrated graphics card, but using the following command to launch Chromium works!
Looking for ways to get quick look at your files in Ubuntu, Fedora, or other Linux with GNOME? Try Sushi file previewer!
It’s a free open-source project present more than 10 years. I’ve almost forgotten about it, until I saw that Ubuntu desktop team proposed to install Sushi by default in 23.04 release
GNOME Sushi runs as a DBus-activated service. With it, user may hit Space Bar on keyboard to quick preview selected file in a pop-up window. And, hit the Space Bar again will close it.
It supports previewing photo images, audio, video, plain documents, PDF, XML, and SVG files.
I did remember it also preview selected folder with the basic information, including total size, contained items, modified time etc. However, it does not work in my case in Ubuntu 22.04 may be due to GTK4 port.
Sushi can be efficient when you have a large list of files to preview. Just hit Space-bar to open preview window, use arrow keys (←, →) allow to quickly preview next or previous files.
How to Install GNOME Sushi
Firstly, open terminal either by searching from ‘Activities‘ overview screen or by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T on keyboard.
When terminal opens, run the command below to install it:
sudo apt install gnome-sushi
Fedora user may run sudo dnf install sushi command to get the package
After installation, it should run silently at background. Just open ‘Files’ (aka Nautilus file manager), highlight your file and hit Space bar to try out!
Ubuntu automatically checks and updates all installed Snap packages 4 times every day. Here’s how you can delay or assign a certain time period for the automatic update.
Snap is an Ubuntu developed universal package format that runs in sandbox. Few core apps (such as Ubuntu Software and Firefox in 22.04) and many software in Ubuntu Software are Snap packages. Unlike classic .deb package, snap updates all the packages automatically in the background silently without user intervention.
If you didn’t block the Snap package, you must have some installed on your Ubuntu machine. And, to avoid conflict to daily work (e.g., online meetings, data backup), you may tell Snap when to do the updates.
Check when Snap will do updates:
By default, snap check (and install if any) updates 4 times per day. You may verify it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command:
snap refresh --time
Besides the time period and frequency, it also tells when the last done and next will occur.
Hold or Completely Disable Automatic Updates
The developer team finally added the --hold parameter, so user can hold updates for either certain app or all snaps for given time or indefinitely.
NOTE: the commands below work only for edge channel of snapd daemon at the moment of writing.
Simply open terminal and run command, and run command to hold updates for 24 hours via command:
snap refresh --hold=24h firefox
Or completely disable automatic updates for firefox via:
snap refresh --hold firefox
To disable automatic updates for all snap applications, run command:
snap refresh --hold
To re-enable automatic updates, use command to unhold all:
snap refresh --unhold
Or unhold specified app via command:
pre>snap refresh –unhold firefox
Specify time period for Snap update
To tell when and how often to check updates, it can be done by running a single command in terminal to set the value of “refresh.timer”.
For example, to allow only between 4.00am and 6.00am, and 9.00pm and 12.00pm, use command:
sudo snap set system refresh.timer=4:00-6:00,21:00-24:00
Or, only check/install updates twice in weekend via command:
sudo snap set system refresh.timer=sat,sun,0:00-24:00/2
Other examples include between 10.00pm and 11.00pm from Monday to Wednesday, and between 9.00am and 11.00am on Friday.
sudo snap set system refresh.timer=mon-wed,22:00-23:00,,fri,9:00-11:00
Or second Monday of the month between 9:00 and 11:00 via command:
sudo snap set system refresh.timer=mon2,9:00-11:00
Delay the update
Ubuntu supports to delay snap updates by specifying a value to “refresh.hold” up to 90 days.
1. Firstly, in case you don’t know your time zone short name, run command:
date
It will output the current date and time, as well as time zone (e.g., NST, AST, EST, PST, CST).
2. Next, use the command below to convert your desired time (e.g., July 7, 2022) to the right format:
date --date="CST 2022-07-07 18:22:00" +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%:z
Replace the time zone, date and time in bold. And, copy the output time for use in next command.
3. Finally, delay snap refresh until the given date and time.
sudo snap set system refresh.hold=2022-07-07T18:22:00+08:00
To verify the change, use command:
sudo snap get system refresh.hold
Prevent update when on metered connections
If you’re running Ubuntu on a metered network connection. Which mean you have limited amount of data per month or day. You can prevent Snap from doing updates by running command:
The popular Vim text editor released new major 9.0 version few days ago with many new features and large number of new features.
The new release introduced Vim9 script with drastic performance improvements. The execution speed can be increased via 10 to 100 times faster. However, function must be defined with def, and the argument and return types must be specified to benefit from the speed-up.
Legacy scripts will keep working as before. The new script syntax now looks a lot more like most programming languages. Line continuation does not require using a backslash; Function calls do not require call, assignments are done without let and expressions are evaluated without eval. And, comments now start with #.
Instead of the ‘wildmenu’ option, now a popup menu can be used in Vim 9 by setting “wildoptions’ to “pum”. Which, allows for showing many more command line completion matches. The updated colorschemes are also included in the release.
New options in the release including:
'autoshelldir' change directory to the shell’s current directory
'cdhome' change directory to the home directory by “:cd”
'cinscopedecls' words that are recognized by ‘cino-g’
'guiligatures' GTK GUI: ASCII characters that can form shapes
'mousemoveevent' report mouse moves with
'quickfixtextfunc' function for the text in the quickfix window
'spelloptions' options for spell checking
'thesaurusfunc' function to be used for thesaurus completion
'xtermcodes' request terminal codes from an xterm
There are as well new ex commands, functions, variables and operators. See more about Vim 9 via its news page.
How to Get Vim 9 in Ubuntu Linux
Vim offers official AppImage package, along with the source tarball they are available to download at the link below:
There’s another universal Flatpak package available, though not updated at the moment of writing. For Windows, MacOS and other sources, go to vim.org/download.php
The free cross-platform Deluge BitTorrent client released version 2.1.0 one day ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04.
Deluge is a fully-featured torrent downloading app with GTK, web UI, and command line interfaces. The app features protocol encryption, DHT, Local Peer Discovery (LSD), Peer Exchange (PEX), UPnP/NAT-PMP, web seeds, stream torrent and more.
The new 2.1.0 was released with minimum libtorrent requirement increased to v1.2. Python 2 is no longer supported! And, Python 3.6 is the minimum requirement of the programming language.
New features in Deluge 2.1.0 include:
Add context menu option to copy magnet URI.
Add support for IPv6 in host lists.
Add systemd user services, though I didn’t see them in PPA packages.
Add is_interface and is_interface_name to validate network interfaces.
Add support for pygeoip dependency for location lookup.
Add plugin keys to get_torrents_status
Add support for SVG tracker icons.
Hide passwords in config logs.
There are as well various bug-fixes, see the release note for details.
How to Install Deluge 2.1.0 in Ubuntu:
The software offers official binary packages for downloading at its website.
For Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop! OS, etc, there’s an official Ubuntu PPA contains the packages for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10, Ubuntu 22.04, and other Linux based on them.
1.) Add the PPA.
Firstly, search for and open terminal from system start menu (“Activities” overview). Or, just press Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys on keyboard.
When terminal opens, paste the command below into it and hit Enter to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deluge-team/stable
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2.) Install / Update Deluge
If you have an old version of the software package installed on your system, simply open “Software Updater” should prompt you the updates of the BitTorrent Client:
If not, run commands below one by one to refresh package cache and install the software packages:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install deluge
For choice, you may replace deluge with deluged for server, deluge-console for command line interface, or deluge-web for web UI.
After installation, open the app from system start menu (or search in “Activities” overview) and enjoy!
How to Remove Deluge:
To remove the Ubuntu PPA, either run the command below in a terminal window:
Then, open your Downloads folder, right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal“. It will open terminal and automatically navigate to the folder as working directory.
When terminal opens, run following commands one by one to add executable permission, and run installer script:
chmod u+x hplip-3.22.6.run
./hplip-3.22.6.run
In the terminal screen, it will ask you a few questions during the installation process. Except for password authentication, it’s OK to hit Enter to answer default for all questions!
After installation, plug or re-plug your printer/scanner and open the HP device manager application to get start:
Uninstall HPLIP 3.22.6
While running the installer script in terminal, it automatically creates “hplip-3.22.6” folder in your user Downloads directory!
Right-click on that folder in your file manager and select “Open in Terminal”, finally run the uninstall script via command:
sudo ./uninstall.py
If you’ve already removed that folder, re-run the .run installer will generate the folder again.
Mozilla Firefox 102 is available to download now. See what’s new and how to install the browser package.
For Linux users, Firefox 102 now support Geoclue if available for geolocation. The release also added subtitles and captions display in Picture-in-Picture (pop-out video) for more websites, including HBO Max, Funimation, Dailymotion, Tubi, Disney+ Hotstar, and SonyLIV.
For those boring with the drop-down download panel, that automatically opens every time you start a download. User may now right-click on the download icon (before Hamburger menu button), and un-check “Show Panel When Download Begins” to disable it.
Firefox 102 is the new Extended Support Release (ESR) for enterprise and/or school use. The previous Firefox 91 ESR will end support on September 20, 2022.
Other changes in Firefox 102 include:
Improve PDF reading in high contrast mode
Filter style sheets in the Style Editor tab of our developer tools
Support Content-Security-Policy (CSP) integration with WebAssembly.
Mitigate query parameter tracking when navigating sites in ETP strict mode.
Improved security by moving audio decoding into a separate process with stricter sandboxing.
Various bug fixes and new policies
Download / Install Firefox 102:
Ubuntu will publish the new browser packages in its universe repositories. So, just keep your system up-to-date by installing updates (via Software Updater) regularly, you’ll get Firefox 102 automatically in next few days ago.
For Ubuntu 22.04 user prefer native .deb over the pre-installed Snap package, the Mozilla Team PPA has already build the package. So this how to tutorial to switch from Firefox Snap to Deb.
For the release note (not ready yet) as well as official Linux tarball, go to the link below:
Ubuntu’s default Rhythmbox music player got new release updates a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu via PPA.
Rhythmbox released version v3.4.5 last month and v3.4.6 days ago after more than 2 years of development. Compare to previous Rhythmbox 34.4, Soundcloud plugin and mmkeys plugin have been removed since they are no longer work / useful. DAAP plugin now supports libdmapsharing 4 API, but no longer enabled by default.
The new release has rewritten podcast downloader with better resume and retry, uses podcast episode GUIDs to handle episode URL changes, preserves original order of episodes in podcasts even if episodes have the same publication date. And, crossfading player backend now works much better with network streams. There are as well many bug-fixes and translation updates.
Install / Update Rhythmbox in Ubuntu
The latest Rhythmbox package is available to install as Flatpak package, which runs in sandbox.
For those prefer the pre-installed .deb package, here’s how to update it via the unofficial PPA.
1. Add PPA
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA. So far, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 are supported.
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks for sudo authentication and hit Enter to continue.
2. Install / Update Rhythmbox
After adding the PPA repository, search for and launch “Software Updater” from Activities overview. It should show you the updates for the music player. Simply click on “Install” to get them and enjoy!
Or, you may run the single command in terminal to install/update the music player package:
sudo apt install rhythmbox
How to Restore:
If you found any issue for the package installed from PPA, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
The command will install the ppa-purge tool and purge the Ubuntu PPA you just added, which also downgrade all installed packages from that PPA to the stock versions in your Ubuntu system repository.
