Zorin OS 16 was officially released! Features Ubuntu 20.04 LTS package base, Kernel 5.11, and modified Gnome Desktop 3.36.
Zorin OS is an open-source Linux distribution for personal computers. It provides an user friendly desktop appearance based on Gnome. With built-in utility, it allows to single click changing UI layout to original Gnome, classic or modern Windows style.
A lightweight version is also available for old computers based on XFCE desktop environment. And it features “Zorin Connect”, GSConnect / KDE Connect similar implementation to link your Android phone and computer together.
What’s New in Zorin OS 16:
The new release introduced a revamped and refined desktop appearance, along with new wallpaper changes automatically according time of day.
The lock screen now displays a blurred version of desktop wallpaper, just like what it does in Ubuntu 20.04 LT. Follow GNOME 40, Zorin OS now has multi-touch gestures out-of-the-box for laptop users. The finger gestures are however a little different, and I prefer the way in Gnome and Elementary OS 6.
Touch-pad gestures:
4 fingers up/down to switch workspaces.
Pinch with 3 fingers to trigger activities overview.
SMPlayer media player released version 21.8.0 with official dmg package for macOS, and more binary packages for Linux users.
SMPlayer is a free open-source video player for Windows and Linux. By releasing v21.8.0, it finally adds macOS support officially. It uses MPV and/or MPlayer multimedia engine, so it can play virtually all video and audio formats.
The player remembers the settings of all files you play, so when you open an unfinished movie it will be resumed at the same point you left it, as well as the same settings. It also has built-in YouTube browser, allows to search for and click to play YouTube video directly in the media player.
I always keep SMPlayer in my system as an alternative media player, because it has some useful features that I need. They include:
ability to fetch subtitles from internet.
cast to smart phone and chromecast.
rotate video and change aspect ratio while playback.
What’s New in SMPlayer 21.8.0
Besides the macOS package, Linux Appimage, Flatpak, and Snap support, the release also include following changes:
Better automatic resizing of the main window, trying to prevent black borders.
Add option to rotate the video by 180 degrees.
Add some predefined speeds (0.25x, 0.5x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x).
Prevent a one second delay when using play prev/next.
The installation of YouTube support is now optional on Windows.
Disable power saving on Linux Wayland during playback.
And some bug-fixes.
How to Get SMPlayer:
The media player now is available at Github. All the binary packages as well as source tarball are available to download at the link below:
For Linux, since Appimage is a non-install executable, Flatpak and Snap are universal package formats need separate daemons to run in sandbox, native .deb / .rpm package may still be preferred.
To install and keep SMPlayer native packages up-to-date, you can either use the official OBS repository for Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE.
Or use the official Ubuntu PPA for all current Ubuntu releases, Linux Mint, and derivatives.
1. Add Ubuntu PPA.
Open terminal either from start menu (click top-left ‘Activities’, search for and open terminal), or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
Type user password, no asterisk feedback, and hit Enter to continue. So for, it supports Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 21.04.
2. Install / Upgrade SMPlayer:
After adding the PPA, you can either install it via command:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install smplayer smtube
or upgrade the player via Software Updater (Update Manager) if an old release was installed.
Uninstall SMPlayer in Ubuntu:
To remove the PPA, either open “Software & Updates”, go to “Other Software” line and remove the relevant repository line, or run command:
This tutorial shows how to enable hardware video acceleration (VA-API) for Firefox, so it uses the video card to decode/encode video to save power.
Hardware video acceleration is a computer technology to make the graphics card to encode and decode video, thus offloading the CPU to save power. And compared to CPU, GPU are normally more efficient at the job.
UPDATE 2024: VA-API SHOULD BE ENABLED BY DEFAULT (if available) IN RECENT FIREFOX RELESES! SO, JUST GO TO BOTTOM TO VERIFY.
There are a few ways to achieve this on Ubuntu Linux, including:
Video Acceleration API (VA-API) – an open source API developed by Intel.
Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) – open source API developed by NVIDIA.
NVENC/NVDEC – NVIDIA’s proprietary API.
The VA-API supports Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA (via open-source Nouveau drivers) GPUs. And it is widely supported by software, such as MPV uses va-api hardware acceleration for video playback by default if available.
The VDPAU API supports both AMD and NVIDIA, but has no support in Firefox or Chromium. And while NVENC/NVDEC is used for NVIDIA GPU only, we usually use VA-API for hardware video acceleration.
Firefox pop-up video encoding/decoding via Intel GPU
Verify VA-API:
NOTE: VA-API does not work on NVIDIA via proprietary drivers as mentioned above. If you installed NVIDIA proprietary driver via ‘Additional Drivers’ utility, this will only work when you choose ‘Intel (Power Saving)’ mode in NVIDIA Prime settings.
The VA-API may work out-of-the-box in Ubuntu. You can firstly open terminal from start menu (click ‘Activities’ and search terminal).
Next install vainfo package via command:
sudo apt install vainfo
And run it to check VA-API info:
vainfo
It outputs the driver as well as supported profile. VAEntrypointVLD means decoding support for this format, VAEntrypointEncSlice means encoding support.
If the command outputs an error, you can try to install drivers via command:
For NVIDIA nouveau and AMD, run command:
sudo apt install mesa-va-drivers
For Gen 8+ Intel hardware, install via command:
sudo apt install intel-media-va-driver
And for old Intel hardware, install i965-va-driver instead via apt install command.
By setting the environment variable, you can choose which driver to use. For example, set “export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965” to use i965 driver. The value can also set to “nouveau” for NVIDIA, or “radeonsi” for AMDGPU.
Enable VA-API in Firefox:
Firefox added VA-API support since version 80, though it’s not enabled by default. You can enabled it manually by doing following steps one by one.
Firstly, open Firefox and go to about:config in url bar. Click on “Accept the Risk and Continue”. Then search for following keys, enable or disable them one by one:
media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled set to true
media.ffvpx.enabled set to false.
media.rdd-vpx.enabled set to false.
media.navigator.mediadatadecoder_vpx_enabled set to true.
If you experience page crashes, try setting security.sandbox.content.level to 0.
Secondly, set environment variable (for current user only). Open terminal and run command to edit profile file:
gedit ~/.profile
When file opens, add following lines to the end:
(Optional) Specify va-api driver as mentioned above (replace iHD accordingly):
export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD
You can SKIP this if vainfo outputs without error!
Diable RDD sandbox:
export MOZ_DISABLE_RDD_SANDBOX=1
For Xorg session, default in Ubuntu 18.04/Ubuntu 20.04:
export MOZ_X11_EGL=1
For Wayland session, default in Ubuntu 21.04 & higher:
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
Finally, log out and back in. Open Firefox and play a video and see result!
Check if Hardware Video Acceleration working:
During video playback, you can use top command to see CPU usage before and after enable VA-API. For Intel GPU, there’s intel_gpu_top command that monitor it continuously.
Open terminal and run command to install the tool first:
sudo apt install intel-gpu-tools
Next, run command:
sudo intel_gpu_top
Start playing video in Firefox and you’ll see the video bar is busy (above 0%) if VA-API starts working.
For AMD GPU, there’s another command line tool “radeontop” available to monitor GPU activity.
NOTE for YouTube videos, the video codec may sometimes not supported by your hardware. To workaround, try h264ify or enhanced-h264ify extension to make YouTube stream H.264 videos instead of VP8/VP9.
Debian 11, code-name ‘Bullseye’, officially released. Features 5-year support, Kernel 5.10 LTS, out-of-the-box support for exFAT file-system and most modern printers.
Debian is free open-source community-supported Linux distribution started in 1993. It aims to be “The Universal Operating System” that is suitable for Desktop users, servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, and storage servers. And it’s the basis for many other distributions, including Ubuntu.
In my mind, Debian is a quite stable and reliable system for production use. While serving with less system resources, it’s very popular for server users. Though the package base is a little old, there are package teams keep working for the security, stability and performance. And in “Bullseye”, the Debian Med team has been flighting against COVID-19 by packaging software for researching the virus on the sequence level and for the tools used in epidemiology.
What’s New in Debian 11:
For personal computers, Debian 11 is available via different Desktop Environments, including:
Gnome 3.38,
KDE Plasma 5.20,
LXDE 11,
LXQt 0.16,
MATE 1.24,
Xfce 4.16.
The release provides Linux Kernel 5.10 with support for exFAT file system. The exfat-fuse package is no longer required for mounting exFAT file-systems. And the exfatprogs provides the tools to create, check and label exFAT filesystems.
With ipp-usb, it offers out-of-the-box support for most modern printers without vendor specific drivers.
There are also updated packages including Apache 2.4.48, BIND DNS Server 9.16, Calligra 3.2, Cryptsetup 2.3, Emacs 27.1, GIMP 2.10.22, GNU Compiler Collection 10.2, GnuPG 2.2.20, Inkscape 1.0.2, LibreOffice 7.0, MariaDB 10.5, OpenSSH 8.4p1, Perl 5.32, PHP 7.4, PostgreSQL 13, Python 3.9.1, Rustc 1.48, Samba 4.13, and Vim 8.2.
Other changes includes:
Activate the persistent journal functionality by default.
New Fcitx 5 input method.
Defaults to Wayland and better addon support.
64-bit/32-bit PC, PowerPC, IBM S/390, ARM, MIPS architectures support.
Over 11,294 new packages, 9,519 packages marked as obsolete and removed.
How to Get Debian 11:
Debian website provides small disco image that need internet connection while installing process to download more. There are also complete image, and live iso for trying Debian without installing it on your machine.
Mozilla Thunderbird email client released new major 91.0 version with many new features and improvements.
Thunderbird 91.0 now runs in multi-process (e10s) mode by default, which offers many advantages in responsiveness, stability, performance, and security.
For macOS users, the release adds native support for computers with Apple silicon CPUs. There are also Latvian language support, new user interface for adding attachments, etc.
The ‘Account Setup’ has a new look and finally move to new tab instead of a floating dialog. It also adds ability to detect and set up CalDAV calendars and address book during setup.
The new version also brings improvements to Calendar, such as remote calendar auto-detection, ‘Edit’ option in event context menu, double-click to open .ics files, and import filter and sort items.
And a warning popup will appear when either trying to spend a reply to a likely non-existant email address such as “noreply@example.com”, or public recipients of a message exceeds threshold.
Then paste following lines into the file. Replace “/PATH/TO/thunderbird“ with the executable file path, and finally save it.
If you don’t plan to move the source folder to another place for long time using, the file path should be: /home/USER_NAME/Downloads/thunderbird-91.0/thunderbird/thunderbird
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Thunderbird 91.0
Comment=Send and receive mail with Thunderbird
Keywords=Email;E-mail;Newsgroup;Feed;RSS
Exec=/PATH/TO/thunderbird %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=thunderbird
Categories=Application;Network;Email;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=Compose;Contacts
[Desktop Action Compose]
Name=Compose New Message
Exec=/PATH/TO/thunderbird/thunderbird -compose
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;
[Desktop Action Contacts]
Name=Contacts
Exec=/PATH/TO/thunderbird -addressbook
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;
The official PPA for Shutter screenshot tool is back! So far contains packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 21.04.
Shutter is one of the most popular screenshot tool for Linux. Other than basic screen capturing feature, it supports plugins, profiles, uploading to Imgur, Dropbox, etc., and has a built-in editor.
Shutter PPA was abandoned
The founder of Shutter has abandoned the project as well as the official PPA for many years. Due to the old Gtk2 dependency libraries, it has finally been removed from Ubuntu and Fedora repositories.
Luckily, a third-party PPA by linuxuprising is maintaining the Shutter package for over two years.
The development is back recently and moved to in Github. It now ported to GTK3. And the official PPA finally revived and maintained by the creator of linuxuprising.
Install Shutter via Official PPA:
For Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 20, and Ubuntu 21.04, open terminal from start menu, and run following commands one by one.
1.) To add the official PPA, paste the command below into terminal and hit Enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shutter/ppa
Type user password (no visual feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue
2.) Next install the tool via command:
sudo apt install shutter
For Linux Mint, you need to run sudo apt update to manually refresh package cache.
Remove Shutter & Its PPA
You can remove Shutter PPA as well as other PPAs via “Software & Updates” utility under “Other Software” tab.
And remove Shutter if you want, by running command in terminal:
Mozilla Firefox 91.0 is available with more than 1200 bug-fixes, new major privacy enhancement, and other features.
The release introduced more comprehensive logic for clearing cookies. With Firefox Strict Mode, you can clear a site data including embed content, such as images, videos and scripts, from other websites. This “cross-site” content was previously left behind.
You can now clear cookies and site data for current page by clicking the SSL lock icon in url bar. Or by right-clicking on sites under History menu and select ‘Forgot About This Site’.
For all sites, go to Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Cookies and Site Data. There you can click on “Manage Data” to search a site or remove all sites.
Firefox 91 now https first in Private Browsing windows. Even by clicking or entering http site in url, it tries to connect https first if available.
Other changes include:
Supports logging into Microsoft, work, and school accounts using Windows single sign-on.
Add Simplified option back in print settings.
New locale: Scots (sco)
The address bar now provides Switch to Tab results also in Private Browsing windows.
Automatic High Contrast Mode when “Increase Contrast” is checked on MacOS
10-20% improvement in response time to most user interactions.
Various security fixes.
How to Install Firefox 91:
Usually, Ubuntu publishes the new Firefox packages through the security & updates repositories. So just wait and keep your system updated. It’s will be available in next few days.
Alternatively, see the release note and download the portable package from Firefox website.
Want to cut a clip out of a video and share with your friends? Try Video Trimmer, a stupid easy way for those working on Linux.
In Linux there are quite a few ways to cut clips or trim videos either in graphical or using command line tools. While video editors are heavy to do the job, FFmpeg is the most efficient choice. And Video Trimmer offers an intuitive user interface for those hate Linux commands.
It’s a free and open-source GTK app based on FFmpeg. By importing video via top-left “Open” button, you can preview the video and write down the start and end timestamps. And the top-left button turns to ‘Trim‘ for cutting the clip out.
It outputs the clip as a new video file. And the process is super fast and does not reduce the video quality, because it just cuts the data steam but never re-code.
Install Video Trimmer in Linux:
The source code of the project is hosted on gitlab. Besides building from the source, you can install it on most Linux via the Flatpak package.
Got Razer peripherals? Polychromatic released version 0.7.0 with redesigned UI and command line interface to control the RGB lighting in Linux.
For those never heard of Polychromatic, it’s a free open-source vendor agnostic front-end for managing lighting, RGB effects and some special functionality for keyboards, mouse, keypads and other gaming peripherals.
It so far only supports OpenRazer as backend for Razer devices. Though it aims to add OpenRGB and phue for Philips Hue and more brands support.
The software now uses PyQt5 instead of WebKitGTK for its graphical user interface. And it redesigned the UI with following features:
New tab & sidebar interface.
New preferences dialog.
New colour picker dialog and saved colour management.
New “Apply to All” section
New “Inspect Matrix” for testing LEDs and co-ordinates
New DPI controls, allowing independent X/Y axis.
Add ability to set custom DPI stages.
Ability to use “native” system theme.
polychromatic new UI
The indicator menu in the release is also overhauled with legacy GTK Status Icon support, and new options.
The release also introduced a new command line interface for terminal warrior. You can get started by running command in terminal:
polychromatic-cli --help
For any device capable of individually addressable LEDs, you can now create your own static and animated effects via the Effect Editor, by clicking & draging with your pointer to draw on a graphic representing your devices, or use a grid.
So far the device graphics are available for the following devices: Razer BlackWidow Chroma, Razer BlackWidow Elite, Razer DeathStalker Chroma, Razer Huntsman Elite, Razer Mamba Elite, Razer Mamba Tournament Edition, Razer Blade Stealth (2016), Razer Blade (2018), Razer Blade Pro (2019), Razer Firefly, Razer Base Station Chroma. While the grid is always available.
Other changes include:
App can run without OpenRazer, but will be limited.
Add support for multizoned hardware.
Support custom effects for all compatible hardware.
New troubleshooter and new configuration editor.
New and updated icons.
How to Install Polychromatic in Ubuntu:
The Polychromatic team maintains official Ubuntu PPA that so far supports for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and Linux Mint 20.
Open terminal from start menu, paste the command below and hit run to add the PPA:
And you can remove the 2 Ubuntu PPAs by launching “Software & Updates” and navigating to “Other Software” tab. Then remove the relevant lines from the list:
Real-time strategy video game 0 A.D. released version Alpha 25 a day ago. Code name is “Yaunã”.
0 A.D. (pronounced “zero ey-dee”) is a free and open-source RTS game under development by Wildfire Games, that works on Windows, Linux, and MAC. It is a historically-based war/economy game that allows players to relive or rewrite the history of Western civilizations, focusing on the years between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D.
“Yaunã” comes with the twenty-fifth alpha version that initially implements Single Player Campaigns, along with other big ones including:
Improved Pathfinding, Performance And Reduced Game Lag.
Push new orders to the front Of their production queues.
Improved Unit AI.
New Biomes incorporating wew 2k textures and normal/specular maps.
GUI improvements.
Extended Graphics options.
Improved Mod support and game filtering in the multiplayer lobby.
Ongoing civilization balancing.
Various other game stability bug fixes and speedups.
See video about 0 A.D. Alpha 25:
How to Install 0 A.D in Ubuntu:
The game package is available in Ubuntu repository but always old! To get the latest version, keep an eye on this Ubuntu PPA while the official one is not being updated for long time.
Usually, maintainers update the latest software packages a few days after the release note. For beginners, you can follow this tutorial to add the PPA and install 0 A.D. once the new package published.
