This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to install VS-Codium IDE in Ubuntu, using 4 different ways.
VSCodium is a free and open-source software binaries of VS Code. It’s NOT a fork, but a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code.
The VSCodium project was born due to:
Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.
It’s a good choice as a telemetry-less version of VS Code without rebuilding by programmers themselves.
This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest version of libheif library, for better HEIF and AVIF image formats support, in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and/or Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Libheif is a popular free open-source library for encoding and decoding HEIF and AVIF. Which, also has partial support for JPEG-in-HEIF, JPEG2000, uncompressed (ISO/IEC 23001-17:2023) capabilities.
It supports libde265 and/or ffmpeg for decoding HEIC images, and x265/kvazaar for encoding. For AVIF images, it uses either AOM/dav1d for decoding, and AOM/rav1e/svt-av1 for encoding support.
As well, it has command line tools to convert HEIF/HEIC to other images, and convert images to HEIF/HEIC.
Many popular applications, including GIMP, Darktable, ImageMagick, Krita, and gThumb, use libheif for HEIF and/or AVIF support. And, the library is usually installed as dependency along with them.
This simple tutorial shows how to install and setup SABnzbd, Usenet download tool, in Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04.
SABnzbd is a free open-source program to download binary files from Usenet servers. Many people upload all sorts of interesting material to Usenet and you need a special program to get this material with the least effort.
The app makes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible by automating everything. All you have to do is add an .nzb. SABnzbd takes over from there, where it will be automatically downloaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction.
This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to install Telegram instant messaging app in Ubuntu 22.04 & Ubuntu 24.04.
The popular Telegram Messenger is available in most platforms. For Linux, it available as official tarball, universal Flatpak ans Snap packages. And, Ubuntu has third-party repositories to make it easy to keep updated.
So, as far as I know there are 4 ways to install the app in Ubuntu Linux. Choose any one that you prefer.
Scribus, the popular free open-source desktop publishing software, announced the new stable 1.6.x release series on the first day of 2024!
It’s been more than 4 years since the last stable 1.4.8, while 1.5.x release series is available as development branch.
The new Scribus 1.6 includes many new features! If you have the default 1.5.8 dev package from Ubuntu system repository, then most of them are already in use.
Features include:
Resource Manager for online resources such as dictionaries
canvas rendering improvements on Hi-DPI screens.
New commands added to scripting engine
New PDF-based output preview
Adobe® Illustrator® look like “Symbol” or clone feature.
This simple tutorial shows how to install the most recent xxHash for faster hash checking in Ubuntu Linux.
xxHash is extremely fast non-cryptographic hash algorithm, working at RAM speed limit. It can be useful to check integrity for large amounts of data, index data, and/or used in cryptographic applications like digital signatures.
The library includes the following algorithms:
XXH32 : generates 32-bit hashes.
XXH64 : generates 64-bit hashes.
XXH3/XXH128 (since v0.8.0): generates 64 or 128-bit hashes, using vectorized arithmetic.
I’m new to hash algorithm, but doing hash check regularly when trying out different Linux distributions. And I use sha256, since the most sites provide sha256sum files for the hash code of their disco images.
This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to install VS Code IDE and keep it up-to-date in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, Ubuntu 24.04 using 3 different ways.
Microsoft provides official code packages for Linux through native .deb (for Debian/Ubuntu), .rpm (for Fedora/SUSE), and universal Snap package run in sandbox.
For choice, there’s also a community maintained Flatpak package which also runs in sandbox.
So, there are 3 common ways to install this IDE in your Ubuntu Desktop!
Alacritty, is a free and open-source terminal emulator, written in Rust programming language. It works in Linux, Windows, MacOS, and uses OpenGL API for GPU hardware acceleration for fast response and high performance.
The terminal emulator features vi mode, allows to move around the viewport and scrollback using the keyboard. And, vi search and normal search for anything in the scrollback buffer.
Option 1: Install Alacritty via Snap package
For Ubuntu users, the easily way to install the terminal emulator is using the Snap package. It’s available in Ubuntu Software (App Center for 23.10), though run in sandbox.
Alacritty terminal emulator in App Center
Or, user can install it by running the command below in terminal:
snap install alacritty --classic
Option 2: Install Alacritty through Cargo (official)
The terminal emulator is also available to install through Cargo, the Rust package manager.
1. Just open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install Cargo first:
sudo apt install cargo
2. Then, install the required dependency packages:
Next, open the Downloads folder, then either double click on the package or use right-click menu “Open With Other Application” and select open the .deb package you just downloaded via Software Install (or App Center). Finally, click install button to install it.
NOTE: The installing process may fail sometimes due to old package in your system, in the case, just uninstall the old one (go to bottom for how) then try to re-install again.
Once installed, search for and launch it either from start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.
Step 2: Add VirtualBox repository to keep it up-to-date
The .deb package you installed via ‘Step 1’ used to automatically add the repository. However, it does NO longer do the trick in recent versions.
So, here’s how to do it step by step via the new Ubuntu PPA policy.
1. Download & install the key
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window.
When it opens, run command to make sure “/etc/apt/keyrings” directory exist:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
Then, run command to use wget to download key, dearmor it (so unreadable), and finally save it to that directory:
You can finally verify the key file, by running command:
cat /etc/apt/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg
As the screenshot above shows you, it should outputs unreadable text.
2. Add VirtualBox repository
Before adding the source repository, first run command to get system code name:
cat /etc/os-release
The apt repository so far only support Debian Stable (& old stable), Ubuntu 22.04 & 20.04 LTS (focal, jammy). For all their based systems, use the code-name you got via this command.
Then, in terminal window, run command to create & edit a sources file:
This simple tutorial shows how to install and setup the rEFInd boot manager in your Ubuntu 22.04, and/or Ubuntu 24.04 computer.
Most Linux uses Grub2 as default boot-loader. Though, there’s a good alternative called rEFInd. It’s a free open-source boot manager for EFI/UEFI enabled computers, such as all Intel-based Macs and recent (most 2011 and later) PCs.
rEFInd with Matrix theme
Why rEFInd:
Compare to Grub2, rEFInd has a more eye candy boot interface, and a simple and easy to tweak config file.
No need to update something, it auto-scans for all boot-able systems on every boot, and displays you the OS menu entries from both local disk and removable device, such as USB drive and CD-R.
It’s more reliable at booting Windows with Secure Boot active. And, it provides handy options to shutdown, restart, and/or go to BIOS settings.
How to Install rEFInd:
The boot manager is quite easy to install in Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint, since it’s available in system repositories.
1. First, launch terminal (press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard) and run command to verify if UEFI enabled on your machine:
ls /sys/firmware/efi
The command will list content of ‘/sys/firmware/efi‘. It will show you No such file or directory, if UEFI not enabled.
2. To install rEFInd from system repository, simply run command:
sudo apt install refind
The package in system repository may be old. To install the most recent version, use the official PPA maintained by software developer.
Run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rodsmith/refind
Update system package index:
sudo apt update
Finally, re-run apt install command to install the package:
sudo apt install refind
Remove duplicate icons in boot menu
After installing rEFInd, you can now restart your machine to see the new boot menu.
In menu, use left/right arrow keys to switch menu entries, hit Enter to boot, or press Tab (or F2) for more options.
For duplicate icons issue, simply use left/right arrow to select the icon (menu entry), and hit Delete key on keyboard, finally answer yes to remove that icon (menu entry). Though, deleting icon may NOT work when 3rd party theme is in use.
Install Themes
The menu interface is easy to tweak by editing the refind.conf file under “/boot/efi/EFI/refind/” directory. Every option has description text telling what does it do and how it works.
Most themes have how to install steps in Readme file, they are usually:
Open “Files”, and navigate to “Other Location -> Computer (or system, root, etc) -> boot -> efi -> EFI -> refind”. (Some Desktop may need to open File Manager as root first!)
Create “themes” folder in that directory if not exist.
Drag and drop the themes you downloaded (extract & re-name first) into that “themes” folder.
Finally, apply new theme by editing the refind.conf file under “/boot/efi/EFI/refind/“, and adding new line in the end (replace rEFInd-glassy accordingly):
include themes/rEFInd-glassy/theme.conf
NOTE: the theme folder name, rEFInd-glassy in the case, is unique according to the PATH to icons/imgs in ‘theme.conf’ file.
In case the boot menu screen resolution is low, you may also add (or uncomment by removing #) resolution max line to set the maximum available resolution, or use resolution 1024 768 for certain resolution (Note that not all resolutions are supported).
Uninstall:
To uninstall refind in Debian and Ubuntu based systems, open terminal and run command:
sudo apt remove --autoremove refind
Also remove the PPA (if added) by running command:
