0 A.D., a free open-source real-time strategy video game, released Alpha 24 “Xšayāršā” a few weeks ago. Here’s how to install the game in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10 via PPA.
The game has an official PPA, which is however not updated for the new release almost a month after the release date.
For choice, xtradeb games PPA has made the package for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Linux Mint 20.
1.) Open terminal from system application menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/play
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2.) Then either install the game package via command:
sudo apt install 0ad
or update from an old release via Software Updater.
How to Remove 0 A.D.
As the PPA also contains many other game packages (e.g., openra, speed dreams, warzone2100, etc), you may remove it via Software & Updates tool under Other Software tab.
SoundConverter is a nifty audio file converting software for Linux Gnome. Here’s how to install the latest version via PPA in Ubuntu.
SoundConverter is a simple and fast Gnome sound conversion software with multi-threading support. It reads anything GStreamer can read, and writes to Opus, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, AAC, and MP3 files.
It can also be used to automated re-naming filenames and creating folders according to tags, extract the audio from videos.
Ubuntu includes the software package in its main repositories, however the package version is always old.
If you want to install the most recent 4.0.x version with latest bug-fixes and improvements, the “xtradeb packaging” team maintains the packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 22.04.
1. Add the PPA:
Firstly open terminal either from system application launcher or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When terminal opens, run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2. Install or upgrade SoundConverter:
After adding the PPA, you can either install the sound converter via command:
sudo apt install soundconverter
Linux Mint users may need to run sudo apt update first to update package cache.
or upgrade it via update manager (Software Updater) if an old package version exist.
Once installed, open it from your system application launcher. Add audio file or folder, click the gear button to set result folder, format, quality etc, and convert!
3. (Optional) How to Remove SoundConverter:
The PPA contains also many other software packages, e.g, Shutter, GNU Cash, Avidemux. You may want to remove it after installation, by going to Software & Updates -> Other Software.
And remove the sound converter if you want by running command:
For Spotify users, you can add the currently playing song name displayed on the top panel in Ubuntu 20.04 via Gnome Extension.
There’s a Gnome Shell Extension called ‘Spotify Song Label’, which adds the current playing song as well as artist in the top bar.
It can be placed in the left, center, or right of the top panel, with options to change left / right padding. And it has ability to toggle between Spotify window and last focused app.
How to Install Spotify Song label Extension:
1.) Firstly make sure chrome-gnome-shell package is installed. And for the configuration tool (see the previous picture), install the gnome-shell-extension-prefs package:
Got a video playing upside down? Here’s an easy way to rotate it via a single command in Ubuntu.
There are a few video players, e.g., SMPlayer, support for rotating by 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise during video playback.
If you want to make it permanent by exporting video rotated, besides using a heavy video editing tool, e.g., Pitivi and Openshot, the single command in this tutorial may help.
An upside down video
1. Install FFmpeg:
Firstly install FFmpeg if you don’t have it. FFmpeg is a large suite of libraries and programs for handling multi-media files and streams.
It is very popular and most likely already installed on your system, if you have any audio, video, and other multimedia relevant applications installed.
To make sure, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
2. Command to rotate video:
Now you can run the single command to rotate a video:
Before this command, you may first navigate to the video folder either via cd command (e.g., cd ~/Videos), or in file browser go to the folder and right-click blank area and select “Open in Terminal”.
In the command, the number in “transpose=1” can also be:
0 – means rotate by 90 degrees counterclockwise and flip
1 – means rotate by 90 degrees clockwise
2 – means rotate by 90 degrees counterclockwise
3 – means rotate by 90 degrees clockwise and flip
(Thanks to Roman Sheydvasser) Add -c copy (or -codec copy) will copy all the frames instead of doing decode -> filter -> encode process. It will speed up the command quite a lot!
This command however will re-encode the video. Depends on the video size and your CPU, the process may take a few minutes.
Optional
The last command can take quite a few minutes since it needs to re-encode the video. As a workaround, user can use this command instead to do the rotation in the metadata.
The default size of files and folders in Nautilus file browser does not meet you need? It’s easy to change it in all current Ubuntu releases with Gnome.
Though you can’t find how to configure it either in the System Settings or Gnome Tweaks, Ubuntu do provide an option to set an even larger or smaller icon size, and here’s the quick tip shows you how.
Change File & Folder Size via Single Command:
If you’re familiar with Linux command, you can run a single command to change the size.
Since Nautilus displays files and folders in either icon view or list view, the command can be either:
1.) Change icon size in icon view:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view default-zoom-level 'large'
Here value ‘large’ can be changed to: ‘small’, ‘standard’, ‘larger’, or ‘largest’.
2.) Change icon size in list view:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.list-view default-zoom-level 'large'
Here value ‘large’ can be changed to: ‘small’, ‘standard’, or ‘larger’.
The official LibreOffice Fresh PPA finally made the LibreOffice 7.1 packages for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 20.10.
LibreOffice, Ubuntu’s default office suite, released version 7.1 almost a month ago. The new release features new Additions Dialog to better integrate extensions, new User Interface select dialog, new widget with styles preview in tabbed Notebookbar.
LibreOffice Math gets full support of HTML colors, and new examples in Element pane. The Writer application features faster find/replace, a new Style Inspector, and better detection of Unicode in documents. LibreOffice Impress gains new animation presets and adds “Pause/Resume” and “Exit” buttons.
How to Install LibreOffice 7.1 via Ubuntu PPA:
For Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Linux Mint 20, firstly open terminal and run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.
After that, open Software Updater and you’ll see the package updates for office suite after checking for updates.
Just install all the updates and done!
How to Restore:
For any reason, you can restore the office suite to the original pre-installed version, by running command in terminal to purge the PPA:
For those prefer installing apps via the classic apt method, you can now install Blender 2.92 via PPA in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, and also Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04.
The open-source 3D modeller software Blender 2.92 was released a few days ago. Features “a completely new workflow for editing meshes, new physics simulation methods, faster Cycles rendering, better compositing with Eevee, and so much more.”
Blender offers official Snap package, which runs in sandbox, and is available to install directly from Ubuntu Software. As well, a Linux portable package is available to download in its website. For those prefer the classic deb packages, Thomas Schiex’s PPA has made it for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 20.10 uses.
1. Add Blender PPA:
Firstly open terminal from system application launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomas-schiex/blender
Type user password, no asterisk feedback, when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
The PPA does not support for Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04, but another PPA do! It however requires a few more PPA for updated libaries, see the PPA description for detail.
2. Install or update Blender:
If you have an old version of Blender packages installed via apt method, open Software Updater (Update Manager) and update the software:
Or run commands in terminal to install / update the package:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install blender
3. Fix missing libLLVM-6.0.so.1 issue:
Blender 2.92 does not start in my Ubuntu 20.04, and it outputs an error when running from terminal:
/usr/lib/blender/blender: error while loading shared libraries: libLLVM-6.0.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
This can be easily fixed by running command:
sudo apt install libllvm6.0
Not sure if the problem exists in Ubuntu 20.10, but libllvm6.0 is not available in the Groovy repository.
Uninstall:
To remove the Ubuntu PPA, open Software & Updates and go to Other Software tab, then remove the relevant line.
To remove Blender installed via apt, run command in terminal:
This is a simple tutorial shows how to set the priority of a certain package and/or apt repository in Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint.
In Ubuntu, we install software packages from different sources, including Ubuntu universe repositories (using Ubuntu Software), Ubuntu PPAs (e.g., LibreOffice, Kodi, GIMP, and more), apps’ own apt repositories (e.g, Chrome, VirtualBox, Opera, and more).
We can even install apps from other Linux Distributions. For instance, installing Linux Mint’s IPTV player, Web App Mananger, and Chromium Browser (in deb format) in Ubuntu is possible.
Why setting priority:
However, installing from mixed software sources may cause following questions:
Lock a package in specified version.
More than one repositories have the same package, but you want to install or receive package updates from a certain repository.
Install only one or two packages from the repository, but refuse all others.
Create and set package priority:
By adding a rule file under /etc/apt/preferences.d/ directory, and pinning a priority will fix the issues.
Just open terminal from system app launcher, and run command to create and edit a config file (replace gedit for other system):
In the case, I created a 99mint-repository file and added following lines:
# Allow upgrading only webapp-manager from Ulyssa repository
Package: webapp-manager
Pin: release n=ulyana
Pin-Priority: 500
# Also allow upgrading chromium (Added by another post).
Package: chromium
Pin: release n=ulyana
Pin-Priority: 500
# Never prefer other packages from the Ulyssa repository
Package: *
Pin: release n=ulyana
Pin-Priority: 1
As you can see, each entry has 3 lines (exclude the description line started with # at the beginning), and separated with a blank line.
The three lines started with Package: at the beginning specified the packages: “webapp-manager”, “chromium”, and “*” (everything).
About the “Pin: ” line:
The second line specifies the pin definition. It can be Pin: version 1.0.99*, the “*” is a “wildcard”, that says the package with all versions beginning with 1.0.99.
You can also use release or origin to specified package source. For example:
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-team-xbmc
Pin: release l=linuxmint
Pin: origin packages.linuxmint.com
The parameters for release are: a (archive), c (components), v (version), o (origin) and l (label).
And you can find out the values for release and origin by running command:
apt-cache policy |more
About the number of Pin-Priority:
The value of the third line can be set to:
1000 or higher. Install a version from the target release even if it would replace (downgrade) an installed package with a higher version.
990 to 999. Install a version even if it does not come from the target release, unless the installed version is more recent.
500 to 899. Install a version unless there is a version available belonging to the target release or the installed version is more recent.
100 to 499. Install a version unless there is a version available belonging to some other distribution or the installed version is more recent.
1 to 99. Install a version only if there is no installed version of the package.
-1 or lower. Prevent the version from being installed
After setting up the config file, refresh system package cache via sudo apt update command and done.
The Kodi media center 19.0 now is available to install via its official Ubuntu PPA.
Kodi 19.0 “Matrix” is a new major release for the open-source home theater software. Though it’s not officially announced at the moment of writing, the PPA packages has been updated, available for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, Linux Mint 20.x and derivatives.
What’s New in Kodi 19.0:
There are many new features in the release. And here are some big changes:
AV1 Codec support.
New color for subtitles and ability to change opacity.
static HDR10 and dynamic Dolby Vision HDR support.
Move to Python 3 for addons.
New functions in the PVR.
How to Install Kodi 19.0 via PPA:
Open terminal either from system app launcher or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run following commands one by one to get the new release packages.
Type user password when it asks, with no asterisk feedback, and hit Enter to continue.
2. Install / Update Kodi.
The Software Updater utility will prompt you to run a “partial upgrade” since the dependency packages switched from Python 2 to Python 3. So it’s recommended to install or upgrade Kodi by running terminal commands.
Firstly refresh system package cache, if you’re on Ubuntu 18.04, via command:
sudo apt update
Then install Kodi via command:
sudo apt install kodi
If you’re going to upgrade Kodi, the previous command may not update the add-ons, so I recommend to run apt upgrade instead:
sudo apt upgrade
How to Downgrade:
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:
For those prefer installing app via apt method, there’s now an Ubuntu PPA that contains the latest VLC 3.0.12 deb packages.
VLC 3.0.12 was released a few weeks ago. It features native Apple Silicon support, RIST protocol, YouTube & Vocaroo scripts updates, and various bug-fixes.
The VideoLAN team offers the official Snap package which can be installed directly from Ubuntu Software. If you don’t like the Snap package however, you can now install the media player from the unofficial PPA.
1.) Add the VLC PPA:
Firstly open terminal from system app launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:savoury1/vlc3
Type user password when it asks, while no asterisk feedback, and hit Enter to continue.
For the MATE desktop users, run this command instead to add another PPA with patch from full-screen issue:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:savoury1/vlc3-mate
2.) Add the dependency PPA:
Secondly, add the dependency PPA for updated media tools:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:savoury1/ffmpeg4
3.) Install or update VLC:
Finally, either run command to install VLC media player:
sudo apt install vlc
Or open Software Updater and update the software packages:
Uninstall:
You can purge the Ubuntu PPA which also downgrade the installed packages to their stock versions:
