UbuntuHandbook

Krita 5.2.3 Released with Numerous Bug-Fixes (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: June 30, 2024 — Leave a comment

The popular free open-source digital painting software, Krita, released version 5.2.3 a few days ago.

The release rework the build system, so the CI can be built in all 4 platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android).

Besides that, Krita 5.2.3 fixed various bugs, including crash on saving webp images, crashes when inserting keyframe columns when there’s a transform mask, animation playback freezes when pausing past the end of audio, batch exporter python plugin does not respect trimming flag, and various fixes to tool canvas input shortcut behavior.
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In News image editor, Krita

NVIDIA 555.58 Stable Released! GSP Firmware Enabled by Default

Last updated: June 29, 2024 — Leave a comment

NVIDIA announced the first stable release of the 555 series driver for Linux few days ago.

It’s NVIDIA 555.58, the latest new feature branch version. The release now uses GSP firmware by default on all GPUs that support it (e.g., Tesla T4, T10, A100 series).

GSP, stands for GPU System Processor, acts like a CPU embedded into the GPU, it can be used to offload GPU initialization and management tasks. To disable this feature, user can just add NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0 kernel parameter to /etc/default/grub config file if boot with Grub2.

In News nvidia

OpenShot 3.2.0 Released with Great Performance Improvement

Last updated: June 29, 2024 — Leave a comment

OpenShot released version 3.2.0 a few days ago with great performance improvements.

OpenShot is a free open-source Qt-based video editor works on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Due to its beginner friendly menu options, built-in title templates, and animated titles (Blender powered), I prefer it over Kdenlive and Shotcut.

However, the video editor was sluggish, froze frequently, and slow for video preview playback every time after made changes. It made me crazy quite often, so I turned to learn using Kdenlive for basic editing.

In OpenShot 3.2.0, the video editor has significant performance enhancements. It’s now running smoothly out-of-the-box in my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop!

In News OpenShot Video Editor, video editor

6 Free Apps to Edit / Annotate PDF Files in Ubuntu Desktop

Last updated: June 28, 2024 — 4 Comments

Looking for an app to sign, annotate, or edit PDF files in Ubuntu Linux? Here I’m going to introduce some for you!

PDF, stands for Portable Document Format, is a file format that’s popular for office use. Besides using Adobe Acrobat, Linux has quite a few applications that can edit this file format.

1. Firefox

In App Review PDF

How to Hide GNOME Top Bar in Ubuntu 24.04, 22.04 or 20.04

Last updated: June 25, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to hide (or auto-hide) the top bar in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and/or Ubuntu 20.04 with default GNOME Desktop.

Like the left (or bottom, if you moved it to) dock panel, the top bar can be hidden in Ubuntu and other Linux with GNOME Desktop to save screen space. And, this can be done by using one of the following extensions:

Just Perfection – GNOME UI & behavior config tool with many toggle options, including hide top-bar.
Hide Top-bar – support intellihide, that hides only when app window hit screen top or maximized.
Hide Panel Lite – very light version that only hide top-bar, except in overview. However, so far supports ends at GNOME 42.
Dock Unroll – light version that support GNOME 46.

In Howtos Gnome

Celluloid, GTK4 GUI for MPV, Adds Floating Header-bar, Faster Loading

Last updated: June 24, 2024 — Leave a comment

Celluloid, free open-source GTK4 GUI front-end for MPV, released new 0.27 version hours ago.

Celluloid, formerly GNOME MPV, is a media player interacts with mpv via the client API, allowing access to mpv’s powerful playback capabilities, while providing a modern user interface that looks native in Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with GNOME Desktop.

The new 0.27 release introduced floating header-bar in the windowed mode. It can be enabled, along with floating controls, either in “Preference” dialog or by running gsettings command. They only appear when moving mouse cursor over the video, so user can watch video without distraction.

Floating header-bar & controls only appear on mouse hover

In News gnome mpv, media player, mpv

ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors 8.1 Adds Full PDF Editing Support

Last updated: June 23, 2024 — Leave a comment

OnlyOffice, the popular free open-source office suite, announced new 8.1 release for its desktop editors.

The Desktop Editors is the offline use version of OnlyOffice office suite. It’s made up of Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and PDF Form apps, and, supports collaborative editing by connecting to a cloud service.

The new 8.1 release finally added full-featured PDF editing support for the both online and offline apps. After opened a PDF file, go to Home -> Edit PDF to toggle between viewing and editing mode.

When in editing PDF mode, you’ll see the tool-bar options to edit text, add, rotate and delete pages, insert various objects, such as text boxes, shapes, images, hyperlinks, tables, and more.

In News office, OnlyOffice, PDF

Darktable 4.8.0 Adds Color Equalizer, Enlarge Canvas, & Overlay Modules

Last updated: June 22, 2024 — Leave a comment

Darktable, the free open-source raw image processing software, released new 4.8.0 version this Friday!

Darktable 4.8.0 introduced a few new modules. They include the color equalizer module, allowing to control hue, lightness, and/or saturation based on colors.

There are as well new Enlarge Canvas module, allowing to add areas on top, bottom, left, and/or right of the image, and fill with different colors, or some other part of the image by using Retouch module.

By drag-and-dropping from the filmstrip to the new Overlay module, it can now add overlay on top of current image. And, the overlay can be scaled, rotated and shifted horizontally or vertically.

Darktable 4.8.0 Enlarge Canvas and Color Equalizer

In News photo

KeePassXC 2.7.9 Adds Native Browser Integration for Snap

Last updated: June 21, 2024 — 1 Comment

KeePassXC, the popular free open-source KeePass and KeePassX based password manager, released version 2.7.9 few days ago.

The new KeePassXC 2.7.9 installed as Snap finally uses new desktop portal for native messaging integration. Meaning without using an external script, it now has out-of-the-box browser integration support. However, KeePassXC seems no longer provides official support for Snap package.

So far, Firefox (native + Snap), Chromium Snap, Google Chrome native, Brave native are tested and work with KeePassXC installed as Snap. Though, user may need to grant permission by running the command below in terminal:

sudo snap connect keepassxc:browser-native-messaging

Since version 2.7.7, the password manager added basic Passkeys/WebAuthn support, and added a context menu option to import passkeys. In the new release, it improved the feature by adding a new “Remove Passkey from Entry” context menu option.

In News password

Enable JPEG-XL (.jxl) Image Support in Ubuntu 24.04 & 22.04

Last updated: June 20, 2024 — 2 Comments

This tutorial shows how to enable .jxl file support for system image viewer, GIMP, and some other apps in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and even Ubuntu 18.04.

JPEG-XL is a new image format by JPEG committee. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, and includes features such as animation, alpha channels, layers, thumbnails, and has better compression efficiency (60% improvement) comparing to JPEG.

For encoding and decoding JPEG-XL images, there’s a free open-source libjxl library available. Ubuntu has included the library in system repository since 24.04, however lacks GdkPixbuf loader plugin until Ubuntu 24.10 (still in development so far).

Meaning system default image viewer, and many other apps do not work with .jxl file in current 3 Ubuntu LTS releases out-of-the-box.