Archives For Howtos

Pinta, the popular free open-source drawing and image editing app, released new major 3.0 release yesterday. Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu users.

Pinta 3.0 features GTK 4.0 and Libadwaita for its modern user interface that’s well integrated in recent GNOME desktop environments. It now automatically switches between light and dark depends on desktop color style, and fits well in different screen sizes with adaptive interface.

Pinta 3.0 light mode

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For old Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 22.04 with Ubuntu Pro enabled for extended 5 years of Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) updates support, it might sometimes cause 3rd party apps refuse to install and even output unmet dependency issue.

This is because ESM apps have higher package priority 510, while most others are default to 500.
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Want to give more control of your graphics card in Ubuntu & other Linux? Here’s a graphical to do the job.

It’s LACT, a free open-source GTK4 application written in Rust. With it, you may monitor and control NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD GPUs with following options:

  • View detailed GPU information.
  • Control GPU fan speed.
  • Overclock / Downclock GPU, VRam speed.
  • Limit power usage.
  • Power states configuration (AMD only)

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This is step by step guide shows how to install the G’MIC plugin for GIMP 3.0 series in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 24.10, and higher.

GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing, G’MIC short, is a popular free open-source image processing software. It can work as plugin for GIMP, Krita, Photoshop, etc. with more than 600 filters to alter the appearance of an image.

G’MIC for GIMP 3.0

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After 5 years since the last 20.03, the Code::Blocks IDE finally announced new 25.03 stable release few days ago.

The new Code::Blocks 25.03 added support for MinGW64, MSYS2, MSVC17 and TDM compilers, C++ standards 23 and 26 (and their gnu extensions), as well as new -std=c23 and -std=gnu23 options on GCC13 and newer.

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This is a step by step beginners guide shows how to change the default terminal app in Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin.

To configure which terminal app opens, when you right-clicking on a folder and select “Open in Terminal”/”Open Terminal Here”, here’s an extension to do the job.

While, this tutorial shows how to configure which terminal to open when you press Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut on keyboard.

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Linux Kernel 6.14 was released yesterday on Monday! Linus Torvalds announced it in lkml.org:

So it’s early Monday morning (well – early for me, I’m not really a morning person), and I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon release schedule.

I’d like to say that some important last-minute thing came up and delayed things.

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Libinput released version 1.28.0 today, which finally introduced the long requested three-finger drag gesture support for touchpads!

The big new feature in this release is three-finger drag for touchpads. When enabled three fingers down on the touchpad will logically hold the left mouse button down, any movement of the fingers then moves the pointer for a drag. For some users this is a more precise and easier-to-trigger interaction than e.g. tap-and-drag.

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This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to manually download & install the new Gnome Adwaita Sans and Adwaita Mono fonts in all current Ubuntu releases.

GNOME introduced new interface font in version 48, named Adwaita Sans and Adwaita Mono. While, Ubuntu does not ship Adwaita fonts in system repository, user can install it manually by following steps.

GNOME & Ubuntu Fonts compare in Font Manager

NOT only for Ubuntu, this tutorial should work for most other Linux. And, you may follow this tutorial for manually installing any other fonts.

Step 1: Download Adwaita Fonts

First, download the source code of GNOME Adwaita Fonts from its project page via the link below:

Then, open your Downloads folder and decompress the source tarball. In the extracted folder, you’ll see the font files (.ttf files) under mono and sans sub-folders.

Step 2: Install the Font files

To install manually downloaded fonts in Ubuntu and most other Linux, simply put the .ttf files into one of the following locations:

  • /usr/share/fonts for fonts that work system-wide (meaning for all users).
  • /usr/local/share/fonts – an alternative system-wide font directory.
  • .local/share/fonts or .fonts– for fonts that work for current user only.

There are as well other locations, such as Ubuntu, GNOME, Flatpak, and Snap specific directories for storing font files. Run command fc-cache -v in terminal to list them all.

Option 1: Install Adwaita Fonts for current user only

For current user only, open another file manager window, press Ctrl+H to show hidden files/folders, then navigate to .local -> share -> fonts (create if not exist).

Then, drag and drop the .tff font files from the extracted adwaita-fonts folder (mono and sans sub-folders) into that directory.

Finally, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open up a terminal window, and run command to re-generate font cache:

fc-cache -f -v

Option 2: Install Adwaita Fonts for all users

For system wide use, just move the .ttf files into /usr/share/fonts directory (or sub-directory) instead, though you need root permission to do the job.

First, open file manager and navigate to the folder that contains the .ttf font files.

  1. Right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal” to open terminal window with that folder as working directory.
  2. When terminal opens, first run command to create a sub-folder, adwaita in the case, under target directory:
    sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/adwaita
  3. Then, run command to install (move and change permission to 644) all .ttf files from current to the location you just created:
    sudo install -m644 ./*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/adwaita

As the .ttf font files are separated into 2 folders (mono and sans sub-folders), you need to open another folder in terminal and re-do the steps above.

When done, also run fc-cache -f -v to apply changes.

Step 3: Apply the New Fonts

After installed font files into target location and updated cache, you may use following tools to apply/change font.

Option 1: Use GNOME Tweaks

For the default GNOME Desktop, GNOME Tweaks (available to install in Ubuntu Software / App Center) tool offers options to do the job in first tab.

NOTE: GNOME Tweaks v46 has bug changing fonts in Ubuntu 24.04, please try other ways instead.

Tips: As you see in the screenshot, there are 3 font options:

  • Interface Text – the text font in panels, menus, buttons, Settings, app window titles, etc.
  • Monospace Text – font for fixed-width characters in, e.g., terminal, coding, and text editors.
  • Document Text – font for displaying document text in an application (GNOME Text editor now use “Monospace Text” font instead).

Option 2: Use Font Manager

For non-GNOME desktop users who can’t find out the desktop specific font setting options, “Font Manager” also offers the options the change the fonts.

Simply search for and install the app from Ubuntu Software or App Center, then launch it, and click the setting gear icon in header, finally navigate to “Desktop” in left pane to get the options.

Option 3: Use Dconf Editor

Also for GNOME, the advanced dconf editor tool also provides the options to change fonts. While it also has options to easily reset fonts to default.

First, install Dconf Editor either from AppCenter (or Ubuntu Software) or by running command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Then, launch Dconf Editor and navigate to org/gnome/desktop/interface. Finally, find out and change the following key values:

  • document-font-name – for Document Text.
  • font-name – for Interface Text.
  • monospace-font-name – for Monospace Text.

For each key,  click turn off “Use default value”, then input a custom value Adwaita Sans 11 or Adwaita Mono 11 in the case, finally click the bottom right Apply button.

Option 4: Change fonts from command line (GNOME Only)

For the default GNOME desktop users who are OK with Linux command line, simply press Ctrl+Alt+T to open up a terminal window.

When terminal opens, run the commands below one by one to set Adwaita Fonts:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name "Adwaita Sans 11"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name "Adwaita Mono 11"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name "Adwaita Sans 11"

For choice, you may replace number ’11’ in the command to increase or decrease fonts sizes.

Restore Default Fonts (GNOME Only)

As mentioned above, “Dconf Editor” offer options to reset fonts to default.

Just install & launch the tool, then navigate to org/gnome/desktop/interface, finally click edit each key and turn on “Use default value” option to revert back to default font.

For choice, you may open terminal and run the commands below one by one to restore the fonts:

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name

OpenJDK announced the latest JDK 24 yesterday. This is the beginner’s guide shows how to install it in all current Ubuntu and Linux Mint releases.

OpenJDK 24 is a short term release with 6 months support. Ubuntu has made JDK 24 into system repository for upcoming Ubuntu 25.04, while all current Ubuntu releases may use the official tarball instead.

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