Have many Flatpak app packages installed on your Linux desktop or mobile? Here’s an app to install, remove, downgrade, and manage app data with a simple graphical interface.
Flatpak is getting popular in today’s Linux, and some (e.g., Linux Mint, Fedora, and Pop!_OS) even have it support out-of-the-box. User can install (or uninstall) a Flatpak package by either using system package manager or running a Linux command in terminal. And, there’s a popular graphical tool Flatseal to manage permissions for each app package.
For users who want to get more controls for their Flatpak app packages, there’s a free open-source tool warehouse available for choice.
Looking for a download manager for Ubuntu, Fedora, or other Linux with GNOME Desktop? Try Varia!
There are quite a few downloading apps for Linux Desktop. And, uGet is one of them that I prefer, which is however not updated for a few years.
For GNOME, the default desktop in Ubuntu and Fedora Workstation, there’s now a new download manager called Varia. It’s based on aria command line download utility, which is lightweight, super fast (support downloading from multi-sources in parallel), and supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink.
Varia is written in Python programming language, and uses GTK4 + Libadwaita for its user interface, that’s modern and well integrated with GNOME Desktop.
Prompt, the container-oriented terminal emulator, now is re-named to Ptyxis!
GNOME Developer Christian Hergert announced the Prompt terminal emulator a few months ago. It “marries the best of GNOME Builder’s seamless container support, the beauty of GNOME Text Editor, and the robustness of VTE.” described in the blog post.
Due to name confusion to other product, the terminal emulator now has a new name called “Ptyxis”, according to this post “The extremely nice people at Panic let me know they had a product that might be confused with Prompt and I agreed it could be confusing.”
Network diagnostic is useful when you getting internet connection issue. And, here’s a brand new graphical tool for Linux beginners.
It’s PingPath, a free open-source tool written mostly in C, and use GTK4 toolkit for its user interface.
PingPath uses the popular command line tool ping to send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to networks hosts. Simply type the host-name or IP address in header input box, hit Enter, then press Ctrl+S to get started.
It will then show you all the host IPs (if you start with host-name), as well as their autonomous system numbers and country code. For each, it shows the real time information about
numbers of pings set.
loss in percentage.
best, worst, last, and average delay in milliseconds.
as well as ping jitter (variation in delay).
Besides digital information, it also has a Graph tab to show all the info in graph lines with or without legend. This makes it easier to identify connectivity problems, measure network latency between your machine and the destination host.
The app by default sends 100 packets with 1 seconds time interval. You can change the numbers and other settings using the header-bar button menus.
How to Install PingPath in Ubuntu
The tool has an official PPA which so far supports for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lrou2014/pingpath
Type user password for sudo authentication, and hit Enter to continue.
2. If you’re following this tutorial on Linux Mint, then you may either use Software Manager or manually refresh package cache by running command:
sudo apt update
3. Finally, install the network diagnostic tool by command:
sudo apt install pingpath
Once installed, search for and launch it from either start menu or Gnome overview screen depends on your desktop environment, and enjoy!
Uninstall:
To uninstall the tool, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo apt remove --autoremove pingpath
And, remove the PPA, either by running the command below in terminal:
Looking for an alternative to macOS Dropover utility? Collector is the one for Linux Desktop!
It’s a free and open-source tool to make drag & drop easier. Without having to open side-by-side windows, just paste or drag whatever content into the small app window, stash, gather, and then move all items to destination at once.
This is useful if you have many files to move, but they are saved in different locations. Just drag’n’drop them into Collector, then preview and/or edit them, finally drag’n’drop to destination folder at once.
Linux is getting more IPTV player applications in recent years. Here I’m going to introduce yuki-iptv, a new one with EPG support.
Personally, I prefer hypnotix which is developed by Linux Mint team, since it has a large list of built-in TV channels. But if you want more features, then yuki-iptv is a good choice to try out.
The IPTV player does NOT provide any content or TV channels. User has to manually add M3u / M3u8 / XSPF playlists (see github.com/iptv-org/iptv) and/or TV guide address via config dialog.
Yuki-iptv add playlist
Besides basic M3u / M3u8 / XSPF playlists support, the app also support viewing unencrypted streams UDP (multicast), HTTP, HLS (M3u8), XTream API, as well as TV program (EPG) support in XMLTV and JTV formats.
Need a tool to edit your apps in the start menu, main menu, or Gnome overview search results? Try MenuLibre!
In most Linux, all app icons you see in start menu, dock launcher, and the desktop, are handled by .desktop config files. By editing the file, you can change the app icon, name, hide the app, add right-click menu option, and choose which file types to be associated with.
For graphical ways, there are quite a few apps to do the job, and here are 3 of them:
Arronax – well known, but seems not being updated. Though, it’s still working.
AppEditor – Elementary OS style tool to edit desktop menu entries. However, lacks pre-build packages.
MenuLibre – the one I’m going to introduce in this tutorial.
MenuLibre is an advanced tool written in Python and GTK3 toolkit. With it, user can get started by either searching or browsing in left to select app to edit, or click “+” in top left to create new menu entry for your app.
Don’t remember how many tools, I’ve written about, for monitoring CPU, RAM, Network, and other system resources usage in Ubuntu. But, there’s a brand-new for GNOME, the default desktop environment.
It’s Astra Monitor, a free open-source tool provides highly customizable interface on Gnome top-panel, to monitor CPU, GPU, RAM memory, disk storage, network usage, as well as hardware temperature, voltage, and fan speed.
It supports displaying the data in real-time bar, history graph, percentage number, with user selected order, in left, center, or right corner of panel.
Aster Monitor on GNOME Panel
Besides having quick glance at system resource usage, user can also click on the indicator icon to pop-up a rich drop-down menu with detailed information. By moving cursor over the menu can also display even more about the hardware, resource load, processes, and so forth. Continue Reading…
Looking for app to convert your photo images into other formats? Try Switcheroo.
For batch image processing, I’d recommend to use Converseen. However, stupid simple applications are always good choices for beginners.
And, Switcheroo is one stupid simple app for converting photo images, while having modern look and feel in today’s Linux desktop.
Click ‘Open Images’ or drag’n’drop files into app window
With it, just click “Open Images” button and choose your image file/files, or drag and drop files into the app window to open them.
It shows thumbnail preview of all opened images, along with delete buttons in top-right for each images.
By using top-left ‘+’ button, user can add more images (Tips: hold Ctrl or Shift can select multiple files). And, ‘≡’ menu even provides an option to paste images from clipboard.
After opening all your photo images, click the drop-down box in the right of “Export Format” to select which file format to convert to.
At the moment of writing, it support converting image to PNG, JPG, WEBP, HEIF, HEIC, BMP, AVIF, JXL, TIFF, PDF, GIF. Though, you have to either use top-right hamburger menu or press Ctrl + H to show less popular file types.
The app’s hamburger menu
Before clicking ‘Convert’, it provides few more options, such as set background color, resize with or without aspect ratio, and change image quality. There’s also “Save To Zip” to directly output images into ZIP archive.
Instead of providing an in-app option, it pops-up file chooser dialog asks to choose where to save output images or ZIP archive, once clicking “Convert” button.
How to Install Switcheroo Image Converter
The app is available as universal Flatpak package, that can be installed in Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch, Chrome OS, and most other Linux, even including the mobile device, such as PinePhone.
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
Other Linux can follow the official setup guide to get Flatpak support.
2. Then, run command to install the app as flatpak:
As you see in the screenshot, the downside is that a small app can have 1 GB downloading due to run-time libraries (though shared).
3. Once installed, search for and launch it from your system application launcher, start menu, or ‘Activities’ overview depends on desktop environment.
First time installing Flatpak app needs a log out and back in, to make app icon visible.
4. To enable drag’n’drop support, you need to grant access permission to the folders that contain the photo images.
To do so, install Flatseal, then use it to allow access either all user files or certain folders (by adding Other files).
Uninstall Switcheroo
To uninstall the image converting application, also open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), then run command:
For Linux desktop user who want to access German-language public broadcasting live streams and archives, this can do the job for you.
It’s televido (“Television” in Esperanto), a free and open-source tool, allowing to livestream, search, play and download media from German-language public television services. Though, ORF (Austrian TV) & SRF (Swiss TV) are also supported.
The app is written in Rust programming language, and use GTK4 for its modern user interface. It has ‘Live’ tab for live TV shows, such as ZDF-Morgenmagazin, 28 Minuten, and more.
And, allows to search, play, and download media via ‘Mediathek’ tab.
The application only find and access TV shows with the power of MediathekViewWeb’s API and the Zapp backend API. The media playback is done by external video players installed on your system. So far, it supports GNOME Videos (Totem), Celluloid, Clapper, Daikhan.
How to install Televido in Ubuntu & Other Linux
Televido is easy to install in most Linux desktop through the Flatpak package.
For Linux Mint 21 and Fedora 38 + (with 3rd party repositories enabled), simply search for and install it directly from either Software Manager or Gnome Software.
Install Televido from Linux Mint software manager
For other Linux, follow the steps below one by one to install the app as Flatpak package:
First, launch terminal from start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.
Then, follow the setup guide to enable Flatpak support.
For Debian and Ubuntu based systems, just run command:
sudo apt install flatpak
Finally, install the app as Flatpak package by running the command below in terminal:
Tips: First time installing Flatpak app may have lots of download for run-time libraries, and user needs to log out and back in to make app icon visible.
Once installed, search for and launch the app either from start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.
Uninstall
To remove the software package, also launch terminal and run command:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data de.k_bo.Televido
Also run flatpak uninstall --unused to remove useless run-times to free up some disk spaces.
