Howtos | UbuntuHandbook

[Quick Fix] Enlightenment Xorg Session is Missing in Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: January 13, 2025 — Leave a comment

After installed Enlightenment desktop in Ubuntu 24.04, the classic Xorg session is missing from the login screen. And, here’s a quick fix for it.

Enlightenment released version 0.26.0 last year with experimental Wayland session support. Which is however missing the Xorg session in the login screen due to bug.

UPDATE Jan 2025: The Ubuntu package seems already fixed the issue by renaming the wayland session entry to enlightenment-wayland.desktop

Why the Enlightenment Xorg Session is missing

Ubuntu now finds the desktop sessions from both /usr/share/wayland-sessions/ and /usr/share/xsessions/ directories. And, the former one has higher priority!

Enlightenment 0.26.0 installs its session entries in both directories with same name. In the case, only the one for Wayland is in active, while another for Xorg is ignored and hidden from login screen.

Ubuntu 24.04 missing Enlightenment on Xorg

In Howtos Enlightenment

Get Rid of thunderbird.tmp in Ubuntu 24.04 Downloads Folder

Last updated: March 23, 2024 — 2 Comments

For Thunderbird users, there will be a thunderbird.tmp sub-folder in Downloads in Ubuntu 24.04. Here are the workarounds to get rid of it!

As you may know, the Thunderbird package in Ubuntu 24.04 is a Snap package that runs in sandbox! Due to this switch, the “thunderbird.tmp” sub-folder will be created on every launch (even after you deleted it) of the email client, in user’s Downloads folder.

According to this discussion page:

“This is a tmp dir to store files you choose to open directly from Thunderbird. The snap can’t use the usual (insecure) /tmp location so had to choose something widely available so other apps can open the files if chosen.“

In Howtos email client, thunderbird

How to Install Thunderbird as DEB (Not Snap) in Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: March 6, 2025 — 24 Comments

For Thunderbird users who don’t like Snap package, here’s step by step guide shows how to replace the pre-installed snap version of the mail client with classic Deb package in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Like Firefox, the Thunderbird Email Client in Ubuntu 24.04 and 24.10 has been replaced as Snap package that runs in sandbox! If you don’t like the change, then here are 2 other choices:

Mozilla Team PPA
Mozilla’s official Linux Tarball.

In Howtos email client, thunderbird

Install & Setup Veyon Classroom Management App in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: February 19, 2025 — 2 Comments

This tutorial shows how to install and setup Veyon for classroom management in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Debian 12, though it should also works in Windows 10 & 11.

Veyon is a free and open-source software for monitoring and controlling computers across multiple platforms. It supports monitoring all computers in one or multiple classrooms, view or control computers, and broadcast the teacher’s (or student’s) screen in real-time.

Besides the basic monitor, control, screen sharing features, the program also can do:

Lock student computers screen.
Power on/off, reboot student computers.
Send message, start app, open website, take screenshot, and transfer files to student computers.

In Howtos classroom management tool

Disable USB System or Certain Ports in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: August 23, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to disable USB, either the full sub-system or for certain USB ports, in Ubuntu 24.04 or Ubuntu 22.04.

For server or production machines, disable USB can be useful for data privacy, virus protection, and other security reasons. For Ubuntu and most other Linux, here I’m going to show you how to disable USB via 3 ways:

Disable whole USB sub-system
Disable USB storage only – Only disable access for USB flash drive and other storage devices.
Disable specific USB port

In Howtos security

How to Install 7-Zip (Command & GUI) in Ubuntu 22.04 & 24.04

Last updated: March 18, 2024 — 1 Comment

This simple tutorial shows how to install 7-Zip file archiver in Ubuntu Desktop.

7-Zip is a popular free open-source file archiver with a high compression ratio. Ubuntu Linux can get it in few different packages:

p7zip – a command line port of 7-Zip for POSIX systems, including Linux, when 7-Zip was Windows-only. Discontinued since 2016, but still popular and working good.
p7zip-desktop – fork of p7zip with a graphical interface.
7zip – 7-Zip for Linux, command line version.

NOTE: If you just want to do compress and/or extract .7z files, then Ubuntu supports the feature out-of-the-box with the Nautilus file manager.

Option 1: p7zip-desktop (GUI)

In Howtos p7zip

GNU Octave 9.1.0 Released! How to Install it in Ubuntu

Last updated: March 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

GNU Octave, the free open-source application for numerical computations, released new major 9.1.0 version! Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04.

The GNU website has not yet announced the new release, but it’s available in the download page.

According to the changelog, the new Octave 9.1.0 overhauled dec2base, dec2bin, and dec2hex. They now accept negative inputs and fractional inputs.

It re-architected the inputParser function to get a 60% performance improvement. And, the perms function has been made faster. The audiowrite function now supports writing to MPEG audio formats (including MP3) if the sndfile library supports it. The current directory of oruntests now changes to the directory containing the files with the tests for the duration of the test.

The release features new functions, including isenv, ismembertol, isuniform, tensorprod.

The disable_diagonal_matrix, disable_permutation_matrix, and disable_range functions have been removed! Replacements are optimize_diagonal_matrix, optimize_permutation_matrix, and optimize_range

Operators, such as .+, .+=, **, and .**= are removed. Replacements are +, +=, +=, ^, and .^=. And, following function are obsolete:

idx_vector::bool()
all_ok(const Array&) in Array-util.h.
octave_base_value::count

In Howtos, News GNU Octave, programming

How to Install Flatpak Apps from Flathub Beta Repository

Last updated: March 14, 2024 — Leave a comment

This simple tutorial shows how to install Beta version of your Flatpak app package from Flathub Beta repository in Ubuntu Linux.

Flatpak now is one of the top popular package formats for Linux. It runs in sandbox, allowing to easily manage software permissions and installing latest apps without worrying about dependency issues.

Most software developers publish their Flatpak app packages through Flathub repository. And for testing purpose, Flathub also provides a Beta repository.

There used to be beta.flathub.org web page for browsing and installing beta apps. The page however does no longer present in the website, though the beta apps are still installable.

In Howtos flatpak

Install Kdenlive 24.12.2 Deb Package via New Ubuntu PPA

Last updated: February 9, 2025 — 3 Comments

For those who prefer the native .deb app packages, here’s new unofficial PPA for installing the most recent Kdenlive video editor 24.08.3 in Ubuntu 24.04 and 24.12.2 in Ubuntu 24.10.

Since version 24.02, the Kdenlive video editor is finally ported to Qt6 plus KDE Frameworks 6, which brings big performance improvements, but also a few regressions.

Due to this change, the developer team discontinued the official Kdenlive PPA, since KF6 is NOT yet made into Ubuntu repositories.

The official packages are now only Flatpak and AppImage, that run in sandbox. For those who prefer the .deb package format, here’s the new unofficial PPA for choice.

Kdenlive 24.04 with Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5

In Howtos Kdenlive, video editor

How to Turn Off Laptop Screen in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: May 5, 2024 — 1 Comment

This tutorial shows how to turn off your laptop’s built-in display for using external monitors in Ubuntu Desktop.

When working with multiple monitors, it can be useful to disable the built-in screen for saving power. You can set lid close action to do nothing then just close the laptop lid.

However, the lid close action may not work properly in some laptops, or you need to use the built-in keyboard and touch-pad. In the cases, here are a few other ways to do the job.
Continue Reading…

In Howtos display, Ubuntu Laptop