Archives For jimingkui

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 “[email protected]”, or public recipients of a message exceeds threshold.

Other changes in Thunderbird 91.0 include:

  • Beta-level support for Matrix servers chat.
  • Enable redirect of messages.
  • PDF.js viewer support.
  • Allow showing empty CC/BCC rows in compose window
  • Allow pinning folder views to the Folder Pane
  • And much more!

How to Get Thunderbird 91.0 for Ubuntu:

As the release note said, the release only is available as a direct download, and not as an upgrade from Thunderbird version 78 or earlier.

For Ubuntu Linux, it’s a tar.bz2 package. Once you get it, extract and right-click to run the executable to launch the client.

To create a shortcut icon for Thunderbird 91.0, you can open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to create & open a .desktop file:

gedit .local/share/applications/thunderbird91.desktop

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:

sudo apt remove --autoremove shutter

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.

For beginners, you can open terminal from start menu and run following commands one by one in Ubuntu to get the software.

1.) Install the flatpak daemon for running the app via command:

sudo apt install flatpak

2.) Add the flathub repository which hosts the software package by running command:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

3.) You can finally install the app via command:

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.gitlab.YaLTeR.VideoTrimmer

After that, open it from start menu and enjoy!

Uninstall Video Trimmer:

To remove the app as well as its data, open terminal and run command:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.gnome.gitlab.YaLTeR.VideoTrimmer

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:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:polychromatic/stable

Also add the OpenRazer PPA for the backend package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openrazer/stable

Finally update package cache, install it as well as OpenRazer daemon:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install polychromatic openrazer-daemon

Uninstall Polychromatic & OpenRazer:

To remove them simply run apt command with remove flag:

sudo apt remove --autoremove polychromatic openrazer-daemon

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.

Missing the old Ubuntu Unity style login screen? It’s easy to get it back in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and higher.

LightDM, stands for Light Display Manager, is a free open-source project by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. Ubuntu up to version 16.04 LTS uses it as the default display manager. And it’s present in Linux Mint 20 and some Ubuntu flavors.

For those prefer the LightDM style login screen, it’s available in Ubuntu universe repositories:

How to Install LightDM in Ubuntu 20.04 & Higher:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, paste the command below and hit enter:

sudo apt install lightdm unity-greeter

While the installing process, it will prompt to configure the display manager. Just hit Enter on the screen.

At the next screen, use up/down arrow key to choose “lightdm” and hit Enter to apply.

Once installed, restart your computer and you’ll see the new login screen!

Configure LightDM login screen:

Uses are mostly want to remove the white dots and change the login background wallpaper.

To do so, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install dconf-editor if you don’t have it:

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Next, run command to grant lightdm user privilege to access control list:

xhost +SI:localuser:lightdm

Finally launch dconf editor via lightdm:

sudo -u lightdm dconf-editor

When it opens, navigate to “com/canonical/unity-greeter“. Then turn off ‘draw-grid’, and change background image as you want.

For more settings, see the Ubuntu Wiki.

How to Restore Gnome Login Screen:

To revert back the original GDM display manager. Firstly, open terminal and run command to disable LightDM:

sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service

Then launch the configure screen by running the command below:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

This time choose ‘gdm3’ to handle the login screen and hit Enter.

Finally, remove lightdm as well as its dependency packages via command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove lightdm unity-greeter

That’s all. Enjoy!

Ubuntu 21.10 daily build got an update for its gnome-control-center package(System Settings) recently. The ‘Standard’ mode is finally removed from the Appearance settings.

The Yaru theme developer team submitted the request to remove the ‘Standard’ theme when in June, since both GTK3 and GTK4 do NOT support having different background / text colors for headerbar than in the rest of the window.

The development build of Ubuntu 21.10 finally apply the change in the recent update. The ‘Window colors’ options under Appearance settings are now only fully dark and fully light. There’s no longer dark header bar with light window color called ‘Standard’.

Along with the new thumbnail preview, the context menus for the desktop, file manager, and other Gnome apps also inherit the dark and light appearance setting.

They are still some apps, e.g, Gnome Terminal and Ubuntu Software, that are not implemented for the changes.

As before, the settings do not change the color of top-bar menus, notification, and left dock menu, etc. However, a patched version of gnome-control-center is available to easily toggle the WHOLE system to Dark or Light.

DeaDBeeF audio player 1.8.8 was released as the 8th bugfix release for the 1.8 series.

The new release introduced some new features, including reading WAV RIFF tags, handling of Disc subtitle frames in ID3v2 and APE tags, and handling samplerates higher than 192KHz to pulseaudio.

New context menu options “Play Next” and “Play Later” are now available to choose your favorite song to play next, or set one-time play order for songs in play list. It will add marks at the beginning that indicates the sequence.

It also redesigned the plugin page in Preferences. Now each plugin has the configuration along with basic info and license in tabs.

Other changes in DeaDBeef 1.8.8 includes:

  • Non-modal preferences window
  • $rgb() title formatting function
  • Group title colorization support via title formatting
  • Plugin report and filtering in Plugin list
  • Focusable playlist tabs with keyboard navigation support
  • Sorting plugin list alphabetically
  • Improved album path handling, especially for Windows
  • Drag-and-drop on the main window
  • Using scroll wheel with seek bar
  • Delete from disk dialog will highlight the Delete button as destructive action
  • And some stability fixes.

How to Install DeaDBeeF 1.8.8 in Ubuntu:

The software offers official .deb package for 64-bit Ubuntu & Linux Mint systems.

Grab the package, ‘deadbeef-static_1.8.8-1_amd64.deb’, then install it by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install ~/Downloads/deadbeef-static*.deb

There’s also an Ubuntu PPA for DeaDBeeF, though it’s not updated at the moment of writing. And note that the PPA package conflicts to the official ‘deadbeef-static‘ package due to packaging issue. Remove the old package first if you’re going to install it from another source.

Remove DeaDBeeF:

To remove the music player, simply run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove deadbeef-static deadbeef

This simple tutorial shows how to install and setup Gerbera home media server in all current Ubuntu and Debian releases.

Gerbera is a free and open-source UPnP media server for Linux, BSD, and Mac OS. With it, you can stream audio and/or video files over home network, and play on any device with a media player with UPnP support, e.g., VLC.

How to Gerbera in Ubuntu / Debian via its official repository

Gerbera is available in Ubuntu repositories but always old. It’s however quite easy to install the latest version since it offers an official apt repository. And so far, it supports for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Debian Buster & Bullseye.

1.) Firstly open terminal from start menu. Then paste the command below and hit run to install the key:

curl -fsSL https://gerbera.jfrog.io/artifactory/api/gpg/key/public | sudo apt-key add -

Install curl via sudo apt install curl if you don’t have it. Type user password when it asks (no asterisk feedback) and hit Enter.

2.) Next add the apt repository by running command in terminal:

sudo apt-add-repository https://gerbera.jfrog.io/artifactory/debian

3.) Adding repository should automatically update the package information. If not, run it manually via command:

sudo apt update

4.) You can finally install the latest Gerbera package via command:

sudo apt install gerbera

Set up Gerbera Media Server:

The media server is now simple to use since user and permission are well configured during installing process.

1.) Set user and password for Web UI.

You can skip this step, so anyone in home network can access the server configuration page via Web UI without authentication.

Firstly, open terminal and run command to edit the config file:

sudo gedit /etc/gerbera/config.xml

When files opens, go to UI section. Enable account login and set username and password as you prefer.

2.) Run Gerbera service:

Next, run command to start the media server service:

systemctl start gerbera

And check the server status via command:

systemctl status gerbera

If it’s running successfully, it will output the IP address and listening port for the web UI page.

NOTE: to make the service start automatically at login, run systemctl enable gerbera.

3.) Paste the address in web browser, http://192.168.0.108:49152 in my case, and hit Enter. Then login with the user and password you set in step 1.).

You can finally, click “Add some files” to steam your media files, and manage them as well as clients via next two buttons.

OK, you can now enjoy the music or movie in any device with UPnP client, for example VLC on iOS: