News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
This simple tutorial shows how to remove the trash icon from the dock in Ubuntu 24.04 Noble Numbat.
Different to the previous releases, Ubuntu 24.04 puts the trash icon on left dock instead of the desktop. However, I don’t use the trash icon in either location. Instead, I removes files using right-click menu options, and go to trash via file manager left sidebar.
If you also find it useless, then here’s how to remove it either via a single command or by a graphical configuration tool.
The “Software Updater” utility in Ubuntu MATE 21.10 tries to remove native Firefox package and install the SNAP version instead. If you’ve done that, here’s how to revert to Firefox DEB package and prevent the misbehavior.
As you may know, Ubuntu is switching Firefox from native DEB to the universal SNAP package. Ubuntu 21.10 now has Firefox SNAP out-of-the-box, while its flavors are still having the classic deb package.
However, in Ubuntu MATE 21.10 the “Software Updater” has a bug. It tries to remove pre-installed Firefox package by marking it as “Duplicate packages to be removed”.
Software Updater Tries to Install Firefox SNAP
If you clicked “Install Now” button without attention. The default Firefox web browser will be replaced with the SNAP app:
By going to the app “menu -> Help -> About Firefox” will tell if you’ve done that mistakenly.
The Firefox SNAP app
And, you may press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, and run command to remove the Snap if installed:
sudo snap remove --purge firefox
Then install the native Firefox deb package by running command:
sudo apt install firefox
Thanks to N0rbert, run the single command below in terminal to do the trick until the upstream fixed the bug.
sudo apt-mark manual firefox
The command will work on all Ubuntu flavors, though I found the issue only in Ubuntu MATE so far.
That’s it. Enjoy!
Everyone needs to tweak the default desktop environment before getting ready to work! And here are the top 10 things that I’ve done after installing Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri.
If you didn’t enable ‘Install third-party software …‘ check-box during the installing process, you need to install the multimedia codecs for audio and video playback with built-in apps.
To do so, open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard and run command:
sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras
As you see in terminal outputs, it will also install codecs for Chromium based browser, Microsoft TrueType core fonts, as well as non-free package to handle rar archive.
Clicking app icon on the dock panel will do nothing for the focused app window by default. Though I think most people want it act as minimize the current window.
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the single command will do the trick:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock click-action minimize
In the final release of Ubuntu 21.10, the default Firefox web browser has been switched to the Snap package runs in sandbox. However, it does not support for installing Gnome extensions!
So I have to remove it by running command in a terminal window:
sudo snap remove --purge firefox
And then install back the classic deb package via command:
sudo apt install firefox
Also for the left dock panel, there are a few tips to tweak its appearance. Open terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T key combination on keyboard, and run the command below:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-apps-at-top true
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock extend-height false
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dock-position BOTTOM
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-mounts false
For those prefer a graphical configuration tool, all the above commands can be done via Dconf Editor tool.
The most extensions for Gnome is to be installed via web browser by visiting extensions.gnome.org, though you have to install something to enable it.
Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install chrome-gnome-shell and Gnome Extensions app:
sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell gnome-shell-extension-prefs
After that, you may visit the web site and install browser extension for the first time and install your prefer Gnome Extensions.
And by searching for ‘Gnome Extensions’ from activities overview, you can open the app to manage them.
Besides the default system settings, Gnome Tweaks is the must have configuration tool for GNOME desktop, especially for changing themes and fonts.
To install the tool, open terminal and run command:
sudo apt install gnome-tweaks
Ubuntu 21.10 now defaults the trash icon into dock panel, though the Home icon present in the desktop out-of-the-box. User may choose to hide it or change the icon size via new settings menu.
Simply right-click blank area on the desktop and choose “Desktop Icons settings” will open the page to manage desktop icons.
The default top bar and overview screen is a little bit ugly. To make them look good, try “Blur my Shell” Gnome Shell Extension.
After doing step 5, you may click the link below to install it:
Ubuntu 21.10 with Blur effect
To be able to switch between dark and light menus, notifications, etc, and try out different Gnome Shell themes, you have to install the User Themes extension.
After that, use Gnome Tweaks to change Shell themes under Appearance tab.
Ubuntu defaults to Wayland session since Ubuntu 21.04. However, some applications are still not working good with Wayland. If you’re sticking to those apps, you may choose to switch back “Ubuntu on Xorg” from the login screen via bottom right gear button.
That’s all. If you have more tips to improve the Ubuntu desktop appearance, please leave comment in the bottom!
Ubuntu 21.10 officially released! Here’s what’s new and how to upgrade from the previous Ubuntu 21.04.
Ubuntu 21.10, codenamed “Impish Indri”, is the new short-term release with 9 months support. It features Linux Kernel 5.13 with new hardware support. And it ships GNOME Desktop 40 with a redesigned activities overview screen. Workspaces are now arranged horizontally. Three-finger touchpad gestures are supported out-of-the-box to toggle overview and switch workspaces.
For Ubuntu Server 21.10, it integrates OpenStack Xena, QEMU 6.0, PHP8, libvirt 7.6, Kubernetes, and Ceph with advanced life-cycle management tools.
Other changes include:
For those want to do a fresh install, download Ubuntu 21.10 from the official website.
Before getting started, it’s always recommended to backup important data and switch to open-source driver via “Additional Drivers” utility. Also, disable third-party PPAs via “Software & Updates -> Other Software”. And it’s better to purge Ubuntu PPAs that contains updated graphics & multi-media libraries, e.g, FFmpeg, Mesa.
1.) First, search for and open “Software Updater” utility and install all available updates. And restart your computer if required.
2.) Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, and run command to launch the Software Updater with checking system upgrade:
update-manager -c
It will open up ‘Software Updater’ and indicate that Ubuntu 21.10 is available for upgrade. Don’t see the prompt? Try opening “Software & Updates” and select notify me for any version under ‘Updates’ tab.
3.) After clicking on “Upgrade” button, it will bring up the ‘Impish Indri Release Note’ dialog.
4.) Click “Upgrade” again and it opens the “Distribution Upgrade” wizard indicates the process.
5.) After ‘Preparing to upgrade’ and ‘Setting new software channels’, it will ask for confirm again for upgrading the system.
Now, it starts downloading the new packages and installing the updates! And, it will ask for confirm to clean up obsolete packages. After all, restart computer when it indicates restart to complete upgrade.
To upgrade Ubuntu Server, firstly connect to command console, and install the update-manager-core package via command:
sudo apt install update-manager-core
Make sure the Prompt line in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades is set to normal via command:
cat /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades |grep Prompt
If the value if not normal, you need to edit the file and change it.
Finally, start the upgrade tool and follow onscreen instructions via command:
sudo do-release-upgrade
To verify downloaded packages, we do hash checks. And Hashbrown is a simple graphical tool to generate or verify file hash in Linux Desktop.
Software developers often provide cryptographic hashes along with downloads, for users to ensure the file or program matches the source. Usually, they are MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 hashes.
Ubuntu provides SHA256 hashes in its ISO download pages.
Ubuntu comes with md5sum, sha1sum, sha256sum and a few other tools to do hash check from command line. For beginners or those hate Linux commands, then “Hashbrown” may help by providing a modern GTK user interface:
Compare package and shasum file
By opening a file via the tool, it generates the MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 hashes with buttons to copy to clipboard, though it takes quite a few seconds in my case to handle large file.
And it allows to compare / verify download using either a file or the hash code in different tabs.
The software is available to install as universal Flatpak package.
Open terminal by either searching from activities overview or pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to install the daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
For Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 16.04, you may need to add this PPA first.
Next add the flathub repository that hosts the software packages, by running command:
Finally run command in terminal to install the app via Flatpak:
flatpak install flathub dev.geopjr.Hashbrown
Like normal apps, open it by searching from activities overview after installation.
To remove the software package, use command in terminal:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data dev.geopjr.Hashbrown
You may also run flatpak uninstall –unused to remove unused runtime libraries.
Using Flatpak apps in Linux? You may found that Flatpak app appearance does not change when toggling light & dark mode or switching to another app theme.
As more and more apps publish Linux packages via Flatpak, I have a few of them installed in my Ubuntu laptop. However, the apps stick to the light theme whenever I switches to dark mode in Appearance settings.
Since Flatpak runs in sandbox and does not have permission to access the “/usr” directory, it does not use system theme according to the document. So, some popular GTK themes are packaged as Flatpaks. And, it detects the current system app theme and tries to install the Flatpak version of the theme if available during app installation or update.
I’m working with default Yaru theme in the most time, so it automatically installs Yaru theme flatpak package but leaves Yaru Dark not installed. When I switching to Yaru Dark, it can’t find the match theme so falls back to the default Adwaita.
As all I said, the solution is install the themes you use as Flatpak packages.
For Ubuntu 20.04 and higher that use the default Yaru app theme, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command:
flatpak install flathub org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Yaru-dark
flatpak install flathub org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Yaru-light
There are also elementary stylesheet, Deepin GTK theme, Linux Mint’s Mint-Y in different colors, Arc, Numix, and other themes in Flatpak package format. You can find more themes via command:
flatpak search gtk3theme
Then install your prefer theme via “flatpak install flathub app-id” command.
After that, change app theme via Gnome Tweaks or System Settings to see the magic!
Though I don’t have Qt applications as Flatpaks, according to the document, you need to open terminal and run following commands one by one to install the required runtime libraries:
flatpak install org.kde.KStyle.Adwaita
flatpak install org.kde.PlatformTheme.QGnomePlatform
That’s all. Enjoy!
After installed the new Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04, one of the top things to do is tweaking the left dock panel.
Via “System Settings -> Appearance”, you may change the panel position to bottom, adjust icon size, and enable auto-hide. However, the 9 dots ‘Show Applications’ (or ‘Show Apps’) icon sticks to the bottom which is not movable.
Though you can not drag moving the icon, Ubuntu has hidden option to change the position. And you may run single command in terminal to do the trick.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, paste the command below and hit Enter:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock show-apps-at-top true
The icon goes to top (or left if you moved dock to bottom) immediately after running the command. So it will look like:
The dock launcher is easy to move to the bottom, but Appearance setting does not has option to make it compact, so to have Mac OS style short bottom panel.
To shorten Ubuntu Dock, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run command:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock extend-height false
After that, it will look like:
For those hate Linux commands, there’s an advanced configuration tool ‘Dconf Editor’ available to do the trick.
Search for and install the tool from Ubuntu Software if you don’t have it.
Next, open Dconf Editor by searching from activities overview screen. Then navigate to “org/gnome/shell/extensions/dash-to-dock“. There you’ll see a list of options to configure the dock panel, including moving ‘Show Applications’, ‘extend-height’, ‘click to minimize’, and more.
That’s all. Enjoy!
For those having Ubuntu or other Linux server (e.g., Debian, CentOS and Fedora) remotely, here’s how to login without password using SSH key authentication.
Compare to user password login, SSH key authentication is more secure because only the person who has the key allows to connect, and the keys are well encrypted by different algorithms. It also make SSH connection simple by login without password.
In case you don’t have enabled the SSH service in remote server. You need to first connect to the server, and run command to install openssh:
sudo apt install openssh-server
For CentOS and Fedora server, use sudo dnf install openssh-server command instead.
After installation, enable and start the service via command:
sudo systemctl enable ssh && sudo systemctl start ssh
And finally verify the SSH service status by running command:
sudo system status ssh
If you see the service is active and running, you may start connecting the server via SSH remotely using the command below in local computer:
ssh user@server_ip
Replace user and server_ip. And use -p port_number to specify the port number if it’s not the default 22.
The authentication keys are generated in local computers. They are usually consists of private key and public key. By uploading the public key into remote Linux server, you’ll be able to SSH login using the private key in local machine.
NOTE: this tutorial is tested on Ubuntu local computer, though it should work on most Linux, including Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and Arch Linux.
The OpenSSH client is installed out-of-the-box mostly. In case you don’t have it, run this command in local computer to install it:
sudo apt install openssh-client
For CentOS and Fedora, use sudo dnf install openssh openssh-clients instead.
The ssh-keygen command allows to generate a SSH key pair via RSA, ECDSA, and ED25519 algorithms. While RSA is widely used and best supported, ED25519 offers better security and good performance.
a.) Firstly, create and navigate to the .ssh directory in local computer terminal window:
mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cd ~/.ssh
b.) Next, run command to generate a key pair:
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f linode_ed25519 -C "root@linode"
In the code, you may replace “ed25519” with your prefer encryption algorithm. And “-f linode_ed25519” specifies the key name, “-C “root@linode”” is the optional comment.
c.) For security reason, it’s highly recommended to set none permission (even not readable) for other users except for yourself:
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/linode_ed25519*
Change “linode_ed25519” to the key name you set in last step. And there’s an asterisk “*” in the end so it also applies to the “linode_ed25519.pub” file.
Now upload the public key (“linode_ed25519.pub” in my case) from local computer to remote server, using command:
cd ~/.ssh && ssh-copy-id -i linode_ed25519.pub user@server_ip
Don’t remember to add ‘-p number‘ if the listening port is not default 22. And you need to type remote user password for uploading the key.
After that, try SSH login again in local computer will ask for the key password you set in b.):
ssh user@server_ip
If you select Cancel, it will instead ask for user password authentication.
You can tick ‘Automatically unlock this key whenever I’m logged in‘ and type the password only for one time in the last screenshot. However, some desktop environments may not provide this friendly feature. So ‘ssh-agent’, OpenSSH authentication agent, is present to do the job for your.
Firstly run ‘ssh-agent’ via shell command:
eval 'ssh-agent'
Next, add the SSH key to the agent:
ssh-add linode_ed25519
After that, SSH command will login without typing the authentication key password.
After successfully setup the key authentication, you may disable the user password login, so no one else can access the server!
Firstly, connect to the remote server and run command to edit the ssh daemon config file:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Next, un-comment the “#PasswordAuthentication yes” line and set its value to no, so it will be:
PasswordAuthentication no
And then press Ctrl+X, type y and hit Enter to save the file.
Finally reload SSH via
sudo systemctl reload ssh
command and enjoy!
This simple tutorial shows how to install the latest version of Kodi media center in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, and their based systems, e.g., Linux Mint 20, Elementary OS 6 and Zorin OS 16.
Kodi, formerly XBMC, is now at version 19.2 “Matrix”. It fixed some possible crashes caused by missing timer type, missing channel icons, accessing invalid PVR channel, or switching monitors, toggling on/off HDR from Windows 10 display settings.
The big one in the release it that Kodi 19.x now is available on the Xbox, along with swap chain and HEVC DXVA2 decoder performance improvements, and 4k resolution and HDR video playback fixes. For more, see the release note.
Kodi has an official Ubuntu PPA. It usually contains the latest packages for all current Ubuntu releases.
Firstly, open terminal either by searching from the activities overview screen or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard.
When terminal opens, paste the command below into it and hit Enter to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
Type user password when it asks, while no asterisk feedback, and hit Enter to continue.
If you’re now running the stock version of Kodi package in Ubuntu, the Software Updater may refuse to update it. So it’s recommended to use the command below to install or update the media player.
Firstly refresh system package cache for old Linux, e.g., Ubuntu 18.04, by running command:
sudo apt update
Next, install or upgrade Kodi via command:
sudo apt install kodi
Once installed, you may open Kodi like normal apps by searching from the overview screen. Or log out and select login via Kodi session.
The PPA also provides more audio encoder and PVR add-ons packages. Install them as you need via either apt command or synaptic package manager.
You can purge the Ubuntu PPA as well as downgrade Kodi to the stock version available in Ubuntu main repositories. To do so, run command:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
This simple tutorial shows how to compile and install Python 3.11, Python 3.10, or other certain Python version in Ubuntu.
For Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, there’s well trusted “deadsnakes” team PPA that maintains all the Python packages. For non-LTS releases, you may build the programming language package manually from the source tarball.
NOTE: This tutorial is tested and works in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 23.04 in my case.
Before getting started, you need to install some essential packages for building the computer language package.
Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or by searching from start menu. When it opens, run the command below to install the dependencies:
sudo apt install wget build-essential libreadline-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev libffi-dev zlib1g-dev
You can simply download the latest tarball from the Python website via the link below:
In case you’re running Ubuntu without desktop environment, download the source package by running the wget command in terminal:
wget -c https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.11.0/Python-3.11.0.tar.xz
For other Python version, go and download via web browser in this page. And, change the version number in command accordingly.
And uncompress the tarball either by right-click and selecting ‘Extract Here‘ in file manager, or by running command in terminal:
tar -Jxf Python-3.11.0.tar.xz
Depends on how you grab the source tarball, either right-click on it in file manager, extract, and open the source folder in terminal via context menu option:
Open Python 3.11 source folder in terminal
If you just did the tar command above, then you may navigate to source folder via:
cd Python-3.11.0/
The command varies depends on which Python version you downloaded.
When you’re in source directory, run command to configure the source with expensive, stable optimizations (PGO, etc.):
./configure --enable-optimizations
Finally compile and install it into “/usr/local/bin” by running command:
sudo make -j4 && sudo make altinstall
Here -j4 will start 4 threads to speed up the job. Depends on your CPU, you may increase the number or just skip it. And, when make command done, it will ask you to type password for running make install with sudo privilege.
If everything’s done successfully without error, you may verify by running command:
python3.11 --version
python3.11 -m pip --version
It should output the language version as well as the pip package manager version for you
IMPORTANT: Change default Python3 in Ubuntu MAY cause issues!!! Do it at your own risk.
After installation, you may set it as default by creating symbolic links to /usr/bin/python3:
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/local/bin/python3.10 110
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python3 python3 /usr/local/bin/python3.11 100
In the first command change system default python3.10 to python3.8 if you’re on Ubuntu 20.04. Finally, run command below at any time to select which Python to use as default:
sudo update-alternatives --config python3
Until you removed the source directory, you may first either navigate to that folder in terminal or right-click and select open folder in terminal, finally run make uninstall command to remove Python 3.11:
sudo make uninstall
If you’ve already removed the source, or the previous command does not work for you, try removing all the installed libraries manually via:
cd /usr/local/bin && rm -f sudo rm -f 2to3 2to3-3.11 idle3 idle3.11 pip pip3 pip3.10 pip3.11 pydoc3 pydoc3.11 python3 python3.11 python3.11-config python3-config
