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Archives For November 30, 1999

Chromium to Allow VA-API Hardware Decoding in Linux Wayland

Last updated: January 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

For Chromium user, the popular web browser is finally to allow VA-API hardware decoding for video playback in Linux Wayland.

Chromium so far does NOT officially support VA-API Video Acceleration API on Linux. However, there are experimental flags to enable this feature, which might work on certain configurations, but without guarantees (See the official Docs).

This experimental feature however does not work in Linux with Wayland session. Meaning the most recent Ubuntu, Fedora, & other Linux with GNOME Desktop.

Just few days ago on Saturday, Chromium source merged the request to “allowing VA-API on Linux Ozone/Wayland“, submitted by JianHui J Dai.

VaapiWrapper has been updated to remove the usage of libva-x11 and the legacy VaapiVideoDecodeAccelerator, in favor of libva-drm only. This means now Linux Ozone/Wayland can share the same code path as Linux Ozone/X11. See CL:4938496.

This CL removes the remaining libva-x11 codes from Ozone and VaapiWrapper, and allows VA-API by default on Linux Ozone/Wayland.

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Linux 6.7 Released with Many New Hardware Support (Kernel PPA)

Last updated: January 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

Linux Kernel 6.7 is finally released! Linus Torvalds announced the release on Sunday night:

So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want
to delay this any further.

End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release.

The new Kernel release has many new and improved hardware support!

For Intel, the Turbostat command utility now supports Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake (15th gen) processors; LPSS (Low-Power Sub-System) driver now support Lunar Lake M processors; The Meteor Lake (14th gen mobile processors) graphics support now considered stable.

All the newest AMD Radeon RDNA2 and RDNA3 GPUs with Display Core Next 3.0 has Seamless Boot enabled.

And, NVIDIA has GSP support in the open-source Nouveau driver for initial GeForce RTX 40 acceleration support and improved RTX 20/30 series hardware support.

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Foliate eBook reader now Supports OPDS catalogs & JPEG-XL

Last updated: January 8, 2024 — 1 Comment

Folicate, the modern ebook reader, released version 3.1.0 with new features support.

It’s a free open-source reader written in JavaScript, and uses GTK4 plus LibAdwaita for its modern user interface, that works in most Linux Desktop and mobile devices such as PinePhone.

Folicate can open local ebook in EPUB, Mobipocket, Kindle, FB2, CBZ, and PDF file formats. It supports online digital libraries such as Feedbooks, Internet Archive, Manybook, Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, unglue.it.

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Lossless Cut – Swiss Army Knife of Video Cutter added Full-Screen Support

Last updated: January 5, 2024 — Leave a comment

Lossless Cut, the popular free open-source video cutting/trimming tool, updated recently with full-screen support.

There are a few tools to cut out a fragment of a video in Linux, besides using heavy video editor application (e.g., Kdenlive and OpenShot). They include Video Trimmer, VidCutter.

However, Lossless Cut is my top favorite one! It lets you quickly extract the good parts from your videos and discard many gigabytes of data. It’s extremely fast because it does almost direct data copy instead of re-encoding with the power of FFmpeg library.

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Shutter works on Wayland for Select Area & Window Screenshots

Last updated: January 2, 2024 — Leave a comment

For Ubuntu 22.04/23.10, Fedora & other Linux with Wayland, Shutter screenshot tool can finally take screenshots for selected area and app windows!

Shutter is (or was) an excellent feature rich screenshot tool, with image editing and uploading support.

It was one of my top favorite apps, but removed from Ubuntu repositories due to lack of maintenance. Though, it’s later added back to system repository, thanks to open-source community’s work by porting it to GTK3.

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How to Install Scribus (1.6.2 Updated) in Ubuntu 24.04 / 22.04

Last updated: June 18, 2024 — 3 Comments

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.
  • most often requested text features

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Gnome Files (Nautilus) is adding More Beginner Friendly Options

Last updated: December 31, 2023 — Leave a comment

Gnome Files, aka the default Nautilus file manager in Ubuntu & Fedora workstation, keeps moving with new features!

In the passed few month, there are minor but beginner friendly features merged into this popular file manager. They include “Enter Location” menu option, sidebar toggle button in sidebar, and badge icon to folder icon in ‘properties’ dialog.

NOTE: The new features introduced in this post are merged to master branch but NOT released yet! They may be available in next GNOME versions, backport to current, or even removed!

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Alacritty Terminal Emulator Released New Major 0.13.0

Last updated: December 30, 2023 — Leave a comment

Alacritty, the popular free open-source GPU-accelerated terminal emulator, release new major 0.13.0 version few days ago.

The release introduced new features, including persist config option in hints config section, warnings for unused configuration file options, support for keybindings with dead keys, dynamically loading conpty.dll on Windows, as well as:

  • Back/Forward mouse buttons support in bindings
  • Copy global IPC options (-w -1) for new windows
  • Bindings to create and navigate tabs on macOS
  • Support startup notify protocol to raise initial window on Wayland/X11
  • Debug option prefer_egl to prioritize EGL over other display APIs
  • Inline vi-mode search using f/F/t/T
  • window.blur config option to request blur for transparent windows
  • --option argument for alacritty msg create-window
  • Support for DECRQM/DECRPM escape sequences
  • Support for kitty’s keyboard protocol

The release now uses TOML instead of YAML for configuration files. Run alacritty migrate command will automatically convert all the configuration files.

Other changes include:

  • Bundle mode-specific bindings in any mode.
  • Disable OSC 52 paste ability by default.
  • Deprecated draw_bold_text_with_bright_colors, key_bindings, and mouse_bindings.
  • Removed background_opacity, colors.search.bar, mouse.url, mouse.double_click.
  • See the github releases page for more.

How to Get Alacritty:

The Github releases page, provides official packages for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

Download Alacritty (under ‘Assets’)

For Ubuntu users who are new to this terminal emulator, I’ve a tutorial teaching how to install Alacritty step by step.

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SMPlayer 23.12 Fixed MPV 0.37, Ubuntu 23.10 & New OpenSubtitles API

Last updated: December 29, 2023 — Leave a comment


SMPlayer media player released version 23.12 few days ago, with important bug-fixes and new API.

The new released fixed the compatibility issues when using MPV 0.37 as backend. They include video playback can not be resumed from pause, as well as the issue getting the audio and video codec on mpv 0.37.

SMPlayer 23.12 also implemented the new OpenSubtitles API. Since, the old API on OpenSubtitles.org is deprecated, and to be turned off by the end of 2023. If you use the service for getting subtitles, then it’s highly recommended to upgrade as soon as possible.

SMPlayer 23.12

For Ubuntu 23.10, the SMPlayer 22.7.0 installed from system repository, either freezes or pops-up following error on video playback:

“Oops, something went wrong. MPlayer/mpv has finished uxexpectedly. Exit code: 1”

The issue has been fixed in my test by installing the new version 23.12.

Other changes in SMPlayer 23.12 include:

  • Fix loading playlists with extension m3u8.
  • Fix video jitter/shudder when clicking on timeline bar.
  • Other bug fixes.

How to Install SMPlayer 23.12

The player provides official .exe for Windows, .dmg for MacOS, and .rpm/.deb/.snap/.flatpak/.AppImage for Linux, which as available to download at Github releases page:

Download SMPlayer

For Ubuntu, user can choose to install the Snap package (run in sandbox), directly from Ubuntu Software or App Center. Or, use the official PPA (with ARM devices support) by running the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt update
sudo apt install smplayer

It somehow does not provide package for Ubuntu 23.10. However, download & install the package for 22.04 works good in my case in 23.10 laptop.

For Debian from version 8 to 12 (Bookworm), SMPlayer is also available to install in both amd64 and i386 through the OBS repository.

Uninstall

For Ubuntu user, depends on which package you installed, either remove Snap from Ubuntu Software.

Or, remove the .deb package by running command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo apt remove --autoremove smplayer

If the PPA was added, either remove it from “Software & Updates” tool under “Other Software” tab, or run command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:rvm/smplayer
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HandBrake 1.7.2 Released with Encoding Fixes & Linux Performance Improvement

Last updated: December 25, 2023 — 4 Comments

 

HandBrake, the popular free open-source video transcoder, released a new update for the new 1.7 series yesterday.

The new release fixed encoding issue for AMD VCN, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, NVIDIA NVENC, and VP9 encoders, which could cause the creation of an excessive number of keyframes.

It fixed unintentional automatic pass through of closed caption side data when using NVIDIA NVENC encoder.

For Linux, the release includes performance improvements by removing duplicate graphic assets and reducing file size, as well as fixes to Flatpak file chooser, file destination path, and memory leaks in the graphical interface.

Other changes include:

  • Improved automatic selection of Dolby Vision Level
  • Fixed crash opening an empty folder, and crash using VideoToolbox encoders on Apple Silicon Ultra.
  • Workaround to prevent issues decoding H.264 video on Mac OS.
  • Added Automation Properties to some controls on the audio tab to assist screen readers for Windows.
  • Fixed NVIDIA NVDEC option being ignored in Windows.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

How to Install HandBrake 1.7.2

HandBrake provides official Windows, MacOS, and Linux packages available to download at Github releases page under Assets

Download HandBrake (‘Assets’)

For Linux users, it’s Flatpak package which also available in Flathub repository, though NOT updated at the moment of writing.

For Ubuntu & Linux Mint users who prefer the classic .deb package, I’ve uploaded the package into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 23.10.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/handbrake

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. Linux Mint users need to manually update the system package cache, after adding PPA, by running command:

sudo apt update

3. Finally, install the new HandBrake package via command:

sudo apt install handbrake

For choice, you may also run sudo apt install handbrake-cli to install the command line tool

When installation done, search for and launch the video transcoder from either start/application menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.

Uninstall:

To uninstall the Ubuntu PPA, either open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/handbrake

or, just remove the source line using ‘Software & Updates’ tool under “Other Software” tab.

To remove the HandBrake video transcoder, use command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove handbrake handbrake-cli

That’s all. Enjoy!

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