This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest Android Studio 2024.1.1 in Ubuntu 22.04 and/or Ubuntu 24.04.
Android Studio, the official IDE for Android app development, is easy to install in Ubuntu in different ways! They include Snap, Flatpak, and official tarball.
NOTE: All the Android Studio packages below support only amd64 (Intel/AMD) CPU architecture type.
Method 1: Install Android Studio via Snap package
The easiest way to install the IDE is using the Snap package, which however runs in sandbox environment. At the moment of writing, the Snap package is at version 2023.1.1, though the newer 2024.1.1 is in dev channel now. Just install it and wait, it will automatically update to the latest once published.
Simply launch App Center (or Ubuntu Software for 22.04), then search & install Android Studio:
This is beginner’s guide shows how to install and setup Waydroid to run full Android system as well as Android applications in Ubuntu.
I’ve written about this by using Anbox, which is however no longer in active development.
This is a re-write with free and open-source ‘Waydroid’, which is a container-based approach to run a minimal customized Android system image based on LineageOS.
Android OS in my Ubuntu 22.04 desktop
This tutorial is tested and works on Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with default Wayland session (Xorg is NOT supported)! Hardware specs include:
CPU: Intel i5-10400.
GPU: Intel HD 630.
Step 1: Install Waydroid
Waydroid is easy to install in Ubuntu/Debian based systems, through its official apt repository.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install required packages:
sudo apt install curl ca-certificates
sudo command needs password authentication, but with no asterisk feedback. Just type in mind and hit Enter.
2. Then, run command to download the official script, and run it to add Waydroid repository into your system.
curl https://repo.waydro.id | sudo bash
In case the script does not work properly, find out your OS code manually via either lsb_release -sc or cat /etc/os-release command. Then, run command below instead:
curl https://repo.waydro.id | sudo bash -s jammy
Replace jammy depends on your system code-name. So far, it supports focal, jammy, noble, bookworm, bullseye, sid
3. Finally, run command to install Waydroid:
sudo apt install waydroid
Try sudo apt update first to refresh cache if the command output package not found
Once successfully installed the app, you should be able to launch it from start menu, applications menu, or any other app launcher depends on your desktop environment.
Step 2: Initialize
The first launch of the app, will launch the “Initialize Waydroid” dialog.
The default options are usually OK. But, you may have to choose Android type before getting start:
VANILLA – as name indicates, it’s vanilla ROM, without Google Services/Apps.
GAPPS – come with Google Services/Gapps.
Next, click Download button will automatically download & install ROM and required packages. In my case, it downloaded & installed Android 11.
When done successfully, it will show you something like the screenshot shows you.
After clicking “Done” button in last step, start Waydroid again will launch an Android screen on your desktop.
However, it by default starts in full-screen (or may-be called maximized) mode.
To change the Android screen size, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) in the Ubuntu host, and run commands:
waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.width 506
waydroid prop set persist.waydroid.height 1000
The 2 commands will set the screen width and height to 506 x 1000. Change the numbers accordingly, and apply by running command to stop current Android session (then re-launch).
waydroid session stop
The Android window is borderless in my case. To move the window, you may either press & hold Super (Windows logo) key then dragging, or press Alt+F7 and then move mouse cursor without mouse clicking.
Step 4: Install & Remove Android Apps
If you selected ‘VANILLA’ while initializing Waydroid, then there’s no app store in the Android to install applications.
In the case, you may download any APK file from the web, or download & install the free open-source F-Droid in the host (Ubuntu in the case) then use it in Android screen to install apps.
To install APK file from host user’s ‘Downloads’ folder, just run command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):
And, verify by listing all installed Android apps:
waydroid app list
Waydroid will create app shortcuts for all installed Android apps, through .desktop files under “.local/share/applications”. Meaning, you can search & launch Android apps directly from host machine (Ubuntu).
Launch ‘F-Droid’ Android app in Ubuntu
And, it supports launching multiple instance of Android apps at the same time out-of-the-box.
To remove an app, either do it in the Android screen, or run command in Ubuntu host:
waydroid app remove packageName
Replace packageName according to waydroid app list output, e.g., org.fdroid.fdroid.
Step 5: Share files between Ubuntu Host and Android
To share files between host and the Android system, simply run single command in Ubuntu host:
sudo mount --bind ~/Documents/vboxshare/ ~/.local/share/waydroid/data/media/0/Documents/share
In the command, you need to replace:
~/Documents/vboxshare/ – ‘vboxshare’ sub-folder in Ubuntu host.
~/.local/share/waydroid/data/media/0/Documents/share – ‘share’ sub-folder of Documents in Android.
You need to first create the share folder if not exist, or it will show mount point does not exist as the screenshot below shows you.
Uninstall Waydroid:
First, stop the session and container, which maybe useful for reloading settings, run commands:
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2. After adding the PPA, you can then launch Software Updater (Update Manager) and upgrade the system pre-installed transmission package to the new release.
For Ubuntu based system without the BitTorrent client pre-installed, you may run command below to install it:
This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to install LibreWolf web browser in Ubuntu and its based systems.
LibreWolf is a free and open-source web browser fork from Firefox. The browser focuses on privacy and security, and has uBlocker ad blocker out-of-the-box.
The browser website has an official guide for installing in on Debian and Ubuntu based systems. This tutorial is just a re-write with screenshots and more explanations.
NOTE: This tutorial only works on x86_64 system for modern Intel/AMD CPU architecture types.
Step 1: Install the Key
Adding 3rd party repository in Debian/Ubuntu system needs to first install the key, so your system will trust the packages from that repository.
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command:
This command will download the key file via wget command line tool, dearmor it so the key will be un-readable, finally save it to /etc/apt/keyrings directory.
You may verify the key by running cat /etc/apt/keyrings/librewolf.gpg. And, it should output unreadable text, like the screenshot below shows you.
Step 2: Add LibreWolf Repository
LibreWolf repository so far supports Debian 11/12, Ubuntu 20.04 & 22.04, Linux Mint 20.3, 21.1, 21.2, and all their based systems. It also works in Ubuntu 23.04/23.10 by using the package for 22.04.
1. Get your system code-name
First, run command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to get the code-name of your system:
lsb_release -sc
The code-name MUST be one of una, bookworm, vanessa, focal, jammy, bullseye, vera, or uma. If NOT, then run command:
cat /etc/os-release
This command will output which version of Ubuntu (and its code-name) is based on.
2. Add LibreWolf repository
Once you got the code-name, run the command below in terminal to create & edit source file:
Replace gedit in command with gnome-text-editor for Ubuntu 24.04, xed for Cinnamon, pluma for MATE, mousepad for XFCE, or nano command line text editor that works in most desktop environment.
When the file opens, paste the line below and save it:
Types: deb
URIs: https://deb.librewolf.net
Suites: jammy
Components: main
Architectures: amd64
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/librewolf.gpg
Here you need to replace jammy with the code-name you got in last step. For Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble) and 23.10 (Mantic), just use jammy which is working good in my case.
Finally save the file. For nano text editor, press Ctrl+S to save, then Ctrl+X to exit.
Step 3: Install LibreWolf web browser
After adding the repository and key, run the command below in terminal to refresh your system package cache:
sudo apt update
Finally, install the browser via command:
sudo apt install librewolf
Once successfully installed the package, search for and launch it from start/application menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.
And, when a newer version of the browser package is released, just use Software Updater (Update Manager) to update it:
future version of LibreWolf available in Update Manager
Set LibreWolf as default web browser
For the default GNOME Desktop, open Settings (Gnome Control Center), then navigate to Default Applications in left pane. Finally, select “LibreWolf” from the drop-down box for Web.
For GNOME 46 (Ubuntu 24.04), Default Applications has been moved to “Apps” settings page.
Other desktops may have their own option to do the job. If you don’t know where to find the option, try editing the config file that works in most desktop environments. To do so:
First, open file manager and press Ctrl+H to show all hidden files and folders.
Navigate to .config sub-folder and click edit mimeapps.list file.
Finally, set librewolf.desktop for text/html, x-scheme-handler/http, x-scheme-handler/https and save file.
How to Remove LibreWolf Web Browser
To remove the web browser, also open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo apt remove librewolf --autoremove
Also remove the Key file as well as source repository by running commands in terminal one by one:
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/librewolf.sources
sudo rm /etc/apt/keyrings/librewolf.gpg
And, refresh system package cache after making changes to package sources.
I’m using Virtualbox to try out different Linux Distributions in virtual machines. It always has 2 logo icons on Ubuntu dock: one for the manager, and another for VMs.
The VM and VM manager icons on the dock are totally same, causing me to make mis-clicks frequently. And, all the opened VMs are grouped into single icon on the dock.
If you don’t like this default behavior, then it’s easy to make Virtual Virtual Machines to have separate icon per instance.
As the screenshot below shows you, after following this tutorial, every VM will have its own system logo on Ubuntu Dock:
The VM icons for Linux are handled by virtualboxvm.desktop file under “/usr/share/applications” directory. Simply disable that file will make Virtualbox VM (7.0.12 in my test) fall back to separate icon with system/distro logo.
To do so, just create an empty file with same filename under “.local/share/applications”. It will be taken in use instead of the one in ‘/usr/share/applications’ for current user only.
Option 1: Single command to create empty virtualboxvm.desktop
Ubuntu user can press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, then run the single command below to create the empty file:
This command should work in most Linux, though running command mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications may be required first to create the directory. Option 2: Use text editor to create empty virtualboxvm.desktop
For those who hate Linux commands, simply search for and launch a text editor window.
Then, it should by default open an empty file (if not create one). There open menu and select “Save as”.
In next dialog, name the empty file to virtualboxvm.desktop and save it into “Home > .local > share > applications”.
The change will be applied next time you launch a VirtualBox VirtualBox.
Method 2: Edit virtualboxvm.desktop
In case the first method does not work for you, you can configure the file to make it start VM as separate process.
1. First, open 2 “Files” windows. Then drag’n’drop virtualboxvm.desktop to local folder.
In “Files” (aka nautilus), navigate to Other Locations -> Computer -> usr -> share -> applications, then, find out the virtualboxvm.desktop file.
In another “Files” window, press Ctrl+H, then navigate to .local -> share -> applications. Finally, drag’n’drop the file to this folder.
2. Right-click on the virtualboxvm.desktop file in .local/share/applications folder and click “Open with Text Editor”.
When the file opens, add --separate flag to ‘Exec’ line. So it will be ‘Exec=VirtualBoxVM --separate %U‘.
For choice, you can change the icon to Icon=virtualbox-vbox, or replace with /path/to/whatever-icon that your want. However, all VMs will use the same icon on Ubuntu Dock.
How to Restore
To restore the change, simply delete the empty file either in your file manager or by running command in terminal:
This simple tutorial shows how to install the Waterfox web browser from its official tarball & create app shortcut in Ubuntu Linux.
Waterfox is a free open-source fork of Firefox, claims to be ethical and user-centric, emphasizing performance and privacy.
The browser provides official Linux package through the portable tarball package, though a community maintained Flatpak package is also available to run it in sandbox.
Step 1: Download Waterfox Tarball
To download the package, simply go to its website via the link button below and click the “Download” button:
Once you got the package, just extract it, and run the executable file (waterfox or waterfox-bin) in the new generated folder, will launch the web browser.
Extract, and Launch Waterfox web browser
Step 2: Create App Shortcut for Waterfox
If you want to make the app icon visible in the ‘Activities’ overview search result (or application/start menu depends on your desktop environment), then follow the steps below to create app shortcut for it.
1. Move the source folder
Before creating app shortcut, it’s better to move the ‘waterfox’ folder for long time use.
For current user only, you may put the folder to anywhere in your user home. I usually create a custom folder in user home (e.g., bin, apps) or put portable apps into .local (it’s hidden, press Ctrl+H to view/hide).
In the screenshot below, I moved the waterfox folder into the custom “MyApps” folder:
For global, it’s good choice to move the folder to “/opt“, so all users in the system can launch the web browser.
In the case, right-click on blank area of the folder that contains “waterfox” sub-folder, and click “Open in Terminal”. In pop-up terminal, run command to move or copy it to opt:
sudo cp -R waterfox /opt
2. Create App Shortcut
In most Linux, the app shortcuts are handled by .desktop files located in either /usr/share/applications or .local/share/applications.
First, search for and launch your system text editor from overview or application menu depends on your DE:
When it opens with an empty document, paste following lines:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Waterfox Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
GenericName=Web Browser
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer
Exec=/home/ji/MyApps/waterfox/waterfox %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=/home/ji/MyApps/waterfox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=new-window;new-private-window;
[Desktop Action new-window]
Name=Open a New Window
Exec=/home/ji/MyApps/waterfox/waterfox -new-window
[Desktop Action new-private-window]
Name=Open a New Private Window
Exec=/home/ji/MyApps/waterfox/waterfox -private-window
Depends on where you moved the ‘waterfox’ folder, change the value of “Exec” and “Icon” accordingly! Meaning replace /home/ji/MyApps to yours.
When done pasting file content and changing Exec/Icon path, press Shift+Ctrl+S to open the “Save as” dialog. Then, do:
press Ctrl+H to show hidden folders in the pop-up dialog.
navigate to home -> .local -> share -> applications. Create ‘applications’ if it does not exist.
type waterfox.desktop as the file name.
finally click Save button.
If you did the previous steps correctly, it should now show ‘waterfox’ icon in the start/application menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.
Uninstall Waterfox
To uninstall the web browser installed via the previous steps, first remove the ‘waterfox’ folder depends on where you saved it. Then, remove the waterfox.desktop file from .local/share/applications.
This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest qBittorrent 4.6.2 (the Qt5 build) from PPA in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
qBittorrent has an official PPA, which however seems no longer updating for Ubuntu 22.04 since v4.6 release series.
User can choose to install the Flatpak package, which runs in sandbox. But if you prefer the classic .deb package, then here’s new unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04.
While Ubuntu 22.04 has Qt6 6.2.4 in system repository, now qBittorrent requires at least Qt6 6.4. That could be the reason the official PPA stop updating for 22.04. Thankfully, Qt5 version is still supported, so I built it into PPA for those who need it.
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo authentication and hit Enter to continue.
2. Update system package cache
Ubuntu now automatically refresh system package cache while adding PPA, but Linux Mint does NOT.
To do it, simply run command:
sudo apt update
3. Install or Update to qBittorrent 4.6.2
If you’re using the torrent client package from either system repository or its official PPA, simply launch Software Updater (Update Manager) to update it.
Or, run the command below in terminal window to install/update it:
sudo apt install qbittorrent
Uninstall qBittorrent
To uninstall the torrent client package, open terminal and run command:
There are so many tutorials teaching how to install the latest Kernel, while, this one is going to show you how to downgrade to the original GA (General Availability) Kernel 5.15 in Ubuntu 22.04.
The GA Kernel is shipped by default in the first stable release of Ubuntu 22.04. By rolling out Ubuntu 22.04.1, 22.04.2, and 22.04.3, it now has Kernel 6.2 as default (next should be 6.5 in 22.04.4).
Don’t know why, but someone asked how to revert back the original Kernel 5.15. So, here’s the quick tips show you how.
Install GA Kernel in Ubuntu:
All current Ubuntu releases, including the next Ubuntu 24.04 Noble, include linux-image-generic package in system repositories for the Generic Linux kernel.
Simply press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run command to install it:
sudo apt install linux-image-generic
Run sudo apt update if the command above does not work.
Boot Your Ubuntu with Kernel 5.15
After installing the kernel package, you have to either set it as default in boot-menu or remove the HWE 6.2 Kernel.
Firstly, boot/reboot your machine, press Esc while booting to show the Grub menu. Then, select boot the Kernel 5.15 from “Advanced options for Ubuntu” -> “Ubuntu, with Linux 5.15.0-xx-generic”.
After booted into Ubuntu and logged in, verify by running command in terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T):
uname -a
To make it default, either remove the HWE kernel by running command:
This simple tutorial shows how to install ungoogled chromium web browser in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and their based systems.
Ungoogled-chromium is a free open-source variant of Chromium web browser, that removes all Google web services.
The project was started in 2015. It retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible. But disables functionality specific to Google domains, including Google Safe Browsing, blocks internal requests to Google at runtime by replacing Google web domains in the source code with non-existent alternatives, and strips binaries from the source code.
It also features tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency. However, almost all of these features must be manually activated or enabled.
How to Install Ungoogled Chromium in Ubuntu
The project refers to OBS repository for Debian and Ubuntu packages, however, no longer updated for long time.
As far as I know, there are still community maintained Flatpak and Ubuntu PPA available for choices.
Option 1: Flatpak package
The flatpak package can be installed in most Linux, but run in sandbox and take more disk space due to run-time library.
Tips: Linux Mint 21 can directly search for and install the Flatpak package from Software Manager.
All current Ubuntu releases can open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run 2 commands below to install the browser as Flatpak:
First, run command to install the flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
Then, install the browser package by running command:
If you’re first time installing a software package as Flatpak, then you need log out and back in to make the app icon visiable.
Option 2: Ubuntu PPA
For Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, the xtradebs PPA also contains the browser packages for amd64 (Intel/AMD), arm64/armhf (Apple Silicon/Raspberry Pi) CPU architecture types.
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps
Type user password when it asks (no asterisk feedback) and hit Enter to continue.
Linux Mint 21 users need to manually refresh system package cache after adding PPA. To do so, run command:
sudo apt update
Finally, install the web browser as .deb package by running command:
sudo apt install ungoogled-chromium
For choice, also install ungoogled-chromium-driver package for WebDriver support.
After installing the package, search for and launch the web browser from start/application menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your DE and enjoy!
Uninstall Ungoogled chromium
Depends on how you installed the software package, select remove it via:
For the Flatpak package, uninstall it by running command:
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:
