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Archives For November 30, 1999

How to Disable Lock Screen App Notifications in Ubuntu 22.04 / Fedora

Last updated: June 13, 2022 — Leave a comment

Some applications display notifications in the lock screen, which could be quite annoying!

If you want, you can disable all of them or certain app notifications easily via Gnome Control Center.

1.) Firstly, go to the top-right corner system menu. Then click on “Settings” to open system settings utility, which is also known as gnome control center.

2.) When it opens, navigate to “Notifications” from the left pane. Then, just turn off “Lock Screen Notifications” will disable all the notifications:

3.) For choice, you may scroll down to find out a certain application. Click on it, and toggle the option in the next pop-up dialog.

As you see, there are also options to turn on/off sound alerts, notification bubble, message content in per app basis.

That’s it. Enjoy!

In Howtos Gnome

Vitals – Display CPU Temperature, Fan Speed, Memory Usage in Ubuntu Panel

Last updated: June 12, 2022 — 1 Comment

Want to display your computer’s temperature, voltage, fan speed, memory usage, and other system resources usage in top panel? Vitals is a good choice for Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with GNOME desktop.

It’s a Gnome Shell extension that can display following information on your system tray area:

CPU core temerature.
Voltage.
Fan speed.
Memory and Swap usage.
Processor load, frequency.
System load, uptime.
Network speed.
Storage usage.

A drop-down menu is available to take a glimpse of all available data. And, user may click on menu option to select which to display on panel.

There are as well bottom buttons to quickly launch system monitor utility and open the extension “Preferences” dialog. In which, you may configure the refresh interval, indicator position, as well as toggle display sensors.

How to Install Vitals Extension:

The extension supports GNOME from version 3.18 to the current 42. Which means, you may install and run it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 34/35/36, and other Linux (e.g., Debian, Arch, Manjaro) with GNOME.

Method 1: Install the extension via browser

Ubuntu user needs to firstly press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run command to install the agent to install Gnome Extension from web browser.

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Then, go the link below and turn on the slider icon to install the extension:

Install Vitals Extension

Click the link in the page to install browser extension if you don’t see the slider icon, and refresh the page.

Method 2: Install the extension in Ubuntu 22.04 via Extension Manager

Ubuntu 22.04 defaults to Firefox as Snap which does not support installing Gnome Extensions. Besides using another browser or install back the classic .Deb package, “Extension Manager” is a good alternative.

1. Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install the application:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager

2. Next, search for and open the tool from either Activities overview or app grid:

3. Finally, navigate to ‘Browse’ tab in Extension Manager app, search for and install ‘Vitals’ extension:

The indicator should appear immediately on your system panel after installation.

In Howtos Gnome

How to Install GNU Emacs (29.3 Updated) in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

Last updated: March 26, 2024 — 6 Comments

This simple tutorial shows how to install the GNU Emacs text editor 29.3 and keep up-to-date in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04.

GNU Emacs text editor has reached v29.x release series for few months, though Ubuntu still has v27.1 in its universe repository. For those would like to install/upgrade the editor, here are 3 different ways to do the trick in Ubuntu and its based systems.

Method 1: Snap Package

Snap is an universal Linux package format that runs in sandbox. It works on most Linux, and updates automatically when a new release is published. GNU Emacs is available as Snap with support for amd64 modern PC/laptop, arm64/armhf, ppc64el and s390x processors.

Ubuntu user can simply search for and install the package from Ubuntu Software. There are multiple app packages in software center, select install the one from “Snap Store”.

Install Emacs from Ubuntu Software

For other Linux, it’s available to install via https://snapcraft.io/emacs

Method 2: Ubuntu PPA

For those do NOT like applications run in sandbox, there’s an Ubuntu PPA contains the native .deb package for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 24.04.

Like the Snap and Flatpak packages, it’s a third-party repository. Though the maintainer has been working on the PPA for more than 5 years. Also, it supports for amd64, arm64/armhf, and ppc64el CPU architecture types.

1. Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Run command to remove the old emacs package if any, since it conflicts to the package from PPA.

sudo apt remove --autoremove emacs emacs-common

2. Then, run the command below to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/emacs

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

3. Then run the command to update system package cache, which should be done automatically in Ubuntu 20.04 and higher during adding PPA.

sudo apt update

4. Finally, install Emacs via command:

sudo apt install emacs emacs-common

Here you may replace emacs with emacs-nox for text-only interface.

Method 3: Emacs Flatpak

The text editor is also available as the universal Flatpak package which runs in sandbox. Like Snap, the package runs in most Linux and it’s easy to update. However, it takes more disk space due to run-time libraries.

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

sudo apt install flatpak

2. Then, install Emacs as Flatpak via command:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gnu.emacs.flatpakref

How to Remove Emacs text editor

The Emacs Snap, Flatpak and Deb packages can be installed all together in your system. So, there may be duplicated app icons when you try to launch the editor.

To remove the Snap package, either use Ubuntu Software or run command in terminal:

sudo snap remove emacs

To remove the Flatpak package, use command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.gnu.emacs

And clear useless runtime via flatpak uninstall --unused.

To remove the Deb package, run command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove emacs emac-common

And remove the Ubuntu PPA via command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/emacs

In Howtos text editor

Atom Code Editor to be Discontinued in December 2022

Last updated: June 9, 2022 — Leave a comment

The free open-source text and source code editor, Atom, is reaching the end of life!

Github, who is behind the editor, announced on June 8:

Today, we’re announcing that we are sunsetting Atom and will archive all projects under the organization on December 15, 2022.

Atom is cross-platform code editor developed by Github, the code hosting platform itself. It’s promoted as a “hackable text editor for the 21st Century”, as it is fully customizable in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The end-of-life announcement explained that Atom has no significant feature development for the past several years. The community involvement has declined significantly. So, they decided to sunset the project.

You know, Atom is a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Visual Studio (VS) Code. And, Microsoft acquired Github on June 4, 2018. That could be the real reason (IMO) though it takes 4 years 😄.

Anyhow, there are 6 months until the developer team archive the atom/atom repository. It’s time for those still using Atom to migrate to an alternative solution.

Alternative Code Editors:

There are quite a few good alternatives to Atom. Though I’m not a software developer, there are Sublime Text, Visual Studio (VS) Code, PyCharm, Brackets, Notepad++ as I know.

In Howtos text editor

Blender 3.2.0 Released with AMD GPU Rendering Support for Linux

Last updated: June 9, 2022 — Leave a comment

The free open-source 3D creation software Blender 3.2.0 was released! Finally, it adds support for AMD GPU rendering for Linux!

Blender 3.2.0 introduced a new type of Cycles render pass that contains only the lighting from a subset of light sources. It’s ‘Light Groups’ which can be used to modify the color and/or intensity of light sources in the compositor without re-rendering.

Cycles now supports selective rendering of caustics in shadows of refractive objects. Paint is now available in Sculpt mode. New paint brush comes with a bunch of new settings like tip shape, wet mixing, flow and density.

And there are many other changes including:

Using the voxel remesher all color attributes will be preserved.
Masking, auto-masking and face sets are fully supported with color attribute painting.
Duplicate Elements Node that can duplicate points, edges, faces, instances, and curves
Asset collections (no longer experimental)
Curve pen tool to quickly add, delete, and tweak control points
New Envelope modifier.
Manage video sequencer channels by giving channels a name, as well as mute and lock options
Webp image import/export support.
OpenColorIO color space aliases support
And much more.

How to Install Blender 3.2.0 in Ubuntu

It’s quite easy to install Blender in Ubuntu, since the official Snap package is available in Ubuntu Software. You just need to keep an eye on the source info in the header bar, and make sure it’s from Snap Store.

Don’t like the sandbox applications? Blender website also provides 64-bit Linux tarball for downloading:

Download Blender

Just extract, and run the executable file from extracted folder will launch the software. Or, you may follow this guide to create app shortcut for it.

In Howtos blender

How to Install “Incompatible” GNOME Extension in Ubuntu / Fedora

Last updated: June 8, 2022 — Leave a comment

Your favorite GNOME extension is marked as “INCOMPATIBLE“? It might still work!

There are so many extensions to help improve Ubuntu, Fedora, or other Linux’s GNOME desktop experience. Some of them may be outdated for your GNOME version. So, you see “incompatible” instead of on/off switch when try installing via a web browser.

Sometimes, the extension is still compatible, but the Gnome version is not declared. You may try out and see if it works by disabling version validation, before bothering the extension developer.

NOTE: Disable version validation ONLY makes incompatible Gnome extensions install-able. Extensions may refuse to work!

Single command to disable version validation:

For those familiar with Linux commands, open terminal by searching from ‘Activities’ overview screen.

Then, run the single command to will disable version validation when trying to install Gnome extensions:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-extension-version-validation true

Not only for Ubuntu and Fedora, it should also work for all Linux with GNOME desktop.

Disable version validation vid Dconf Editor:

For graphical configuration tool, you may first install Dconf Editor from Ubuntu Software (Gnome Software).

Then, click top-left ‘Activities’, search for and launch the tool.

Finally, navigate to “org/gnome/shell” in the configuration tool, and turn on the slider icon for “disable-extension-version-validation”.

Install incompatible extension via Extension Manager:

Since Ubuntu 22.04, user may simply press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then run command to install extension manager tool:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager

Or, search for and install “Extension Manager” in Ubuntu Software (or Gnome Software).

Then, search for and launch the tool from ‘Activities’ overview.

Finally, navigate to ‘Browse’ tab to search for and install GNOME extensions. Though incompatible extensions are marked as “Unsupported”, user can still click on the button and confirm in pop-up dialog to install it anyway.

In Howtos Gnome Shell Extension

How to install Coturn (TURN / STUN Server) in Ubuntu 22.04 via PPA

Last updated: June 6, 2022 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu 22.04 misses coturn TURN and STUN server package in its system repository. Here’s how to install it via PPA.

Coturn is a free open source implementation of TURN and STUN Server, which can be used as either a VoIP media traffic NAT traversal server and gateway, or general-purpose network traffic TURN server and gateway.

The software package is available in all current Ubuntu releases, exclude Ubuntu 22.04! The reason that the new LTS exclude the package might be a compile issue due to OpenSSL 3.0 does no longer has FIPS 140 mode.

When you try installing the package in terminal, it will output that “E: Package ‘coturn’ has no installation candidate“.

Coturn is NOT available in Ubuntu 22.04 repository

Ubuntu 22.10 development branch has added a patch to fix build the package against OpenSSL 3.0, and here’s an unofficial backport for Ubuntu 22.04 via PPA repository.

NOTE: I’m NOT sure if it’s the real reason that Ubuntu 22.04 exclude the package in its repository. Use the PPA package in your own risk!

1. Add the PPA

The PPA provides the coturn packages for amd64, arm64/armhf, ppc64el, and s390x CPU architectures for Ubuntu 22.04 and its based systems.

To get started, 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:ubuntuhandbook1/coturn

Type user password for sudo authentication and hit Enter to continue.

2. Update cache

It should automatically refresh system package cache while adding PPA. If not, run the command below to do it manually:

sudo apt update

3. Install Coturn

Finally, install the software package by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install coturn

How to Uninstall Coturn

For any issue about the TURN server packages, run the command below to remove it from your system:

sudo apt remove --autoremove coturn

And, remove the Ubuntu PPA using command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/coturn

In Howtos voip

Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri Support Ends on July 14 2022

Last updated: June 4, 2022 — Leave a comment

Still working on Ubuntu 21.10? It’s time to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, because it will reach end of life in next month.

Ubuntu 21.10, code-name “Impish Indri”, was released on October 14, 2021 as a short-term release with 9-month support.

Support of this Ubuntu edition will end soon. At that time, there’s no longer package updates and security fixes. Also, Ubuntu PPAs, software developers, as well as other software sources will (or has already) stop updating for 21.10.

To keep safe and get updated software packages, you may either upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 or do a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04. Both are long term support releases with 5-year support from their release date. Ubuntu 22.04 is recommended, though it still has various compatibility issues with old applications.

Download / Upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04

If you would like to do a fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04, download the iso image from the official website:

Download Ubuntu

And, here’s a step by step guide that could help you to install Ubuntu 22.04 from an USB stick.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 21.10 to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, you may either follow the official documentation with basic info. Or, follow this step by step upgrade guide which’s written for Ubuntu 20.04 but also works for 21.10 and will upgrade directly to the final release of Ubuntu 22.04.

In Howtos upgrade Ubuntu

How to Easily Zoom in/out Your Screen in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Last updated: June 3, 2022 — 3 Comments

Want to zoom in or zoom out your screen content? It’s easy to do the job via the system built-in magnifier tool.

If you just want to magnify your web pages, press Ctrl and + key combination on keyboard can do the trick in the most web browsers. For others, Ubuntu has a built-in screen magnifier.

It’s definitely the GNOME feature that also works in Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with the desktop environment. Which, can be useful when recording video tutorials.

Enable/Configure Screen Magnifier

It’s easy to enable the feature in Ubuntu 22.04 since “Settings” (aka Gnome control center) now includes the toggle option.

1. First, open “settings” via the top-right corner system menu.

2. When it opens, go to Accessibility from the left, then click on “Zoom” option in right to open the configuration page.

3. In next pop-up dialog, turn on/off the slider icon to enable or disable magnifier. The magnification factor defaults to 1.00 which means no magnification. You may set the value from 0.1 to 32 to either decrease or increase screen size.

There are options to set magnifier position to either follow mouse center or keep centered. Crosshairs in custom color is available to make mouse pointer easy to follow. And, you may adjust the screen brightness, contrast, and color when magnifier enabled.

Keyboard shortcut to Enable/Disable Magnifier

Besides using Gnome control center or Accessibility indicator (the human body icon in system tray), there’s a global keyboard shortcut Super (Windows key) + Alt + 8 to turn on/off the function quickly.

The shortcut key is quite useful. You may change it to any other key combination by going to “Settings -> Keyboard -> View and Customize Shortcuts -> Accessibility”.

As you can see, there are 2 more shortcuts Super + Alt + = and Super + Alt + -. Using them will set “Magnification factor” to 1.00 automatically. So, Super + Alt + 8 will only turn on/off the function but NO magnification, you can then press the 2 shortcut keys at any time to zoom in/out.

Change Magnifier shortcut key via Linux command:

For those familiar with Linux command, it’s possible to change the shortcut key (to Alt+Super+7 for example) using command:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys magnifier "['<Alt><Super>7']"

And, reset the key if you want by running command:

gsettings reset org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys magnifier "['<Alt><Super>7']"

In the previous commands, you may also replace magnifier with magnifier-zoom-in or magnifier-zoom-out to change the corresponding shortcut keys.

In Howtos zoom

[Workaround] MPV has No title-bar & window border in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: May 6, 2024 — 4 Comments

Since Ubuntu 22.04, you’ll find that the MPV media player does NOT have window border and title-bar out-of-the-box.

That’s quite annoying! You can no longer drag resizing the app window. And, title bar buttons (minimize, maximize, and close) only appear when you hover over the window during video playback.

MPV no window border and title bar

Why:

It’s NOT feature but a bug! Someone has reported the issue almost 9 years ago. Though, it’s still not been fixed due to GNOME Wayland protocol.

You know, MPV is a command line media player. It does not use the GUI toolkit for window borders, but the server-side protocol. However, GNOME developers do deliberately do not support the xdg-decoration protocol for server-side decorations in Wayland (via this FAQ).

Ubuntu 22.04 finally switched Wayland as the default session. So, the problem occurs.

Workaround 1: Switch back Xorg Session

Besides MPV, still many applications have compatibility issues with GNOME Wayland. ~~Even the Night Light feature does not work in Ubuntu 22.04 with this session~~.

As a workaround, user may switch back to the classic Xorg session. To do so, simply log out, click your username in login screen, then select “Ubuntu on Xorg” via the bottom right gear button menu, and finally type password to log in.

To verify your current session either run echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE command in terminal or check in “Settings -> About -> Windowing system”.

Workaround 2: Run MPV via X11 backend

For those prefer GNOME Wayland session, it’s possible to run MPV media player via X11 backend without switch session.

1.) To start video playback from command line, use command:

mpv --gpu-context=x11egl --hwdec=vaapi-copy PATH/TO/VIDEO_FILE

Here --gpu-context=x11egl tells to use x11 backend for video playback. And, --hwdec=vaapi-copy is required to enable GPU hardware acceleration in this case.

Thanks to S. Likhitrattanapisal, you may try --hwdec=vaapi flag to enable hwacc. Though it may not work, it depends on your hardware.

2.) To enable this for global use, you may add the flags into MPV configuration file.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When terminal opens, make a copy of configuration file first via command:

sudo cp /etc/mpv/mpv.conf /etc/mpv/mpv.conf.bak

Then, edit the file via command:

sudo xdg-open /etc/mpv/mpv.conf

When file opens, add the following new line:

gpu-context=x11egl

After saving the changes, start playing your movie via MPV. The window border as well as title-bar should be back!

Workaround 3: Use GUI front-end

There are a few media players that use MPV as backend. As far as I know, there are SMPlayer and Celluloid (formerly GNOME MPV), both of which are available to install via Ubuntu Software (or App Center).