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Archives For November 30, 1999

Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ Released! Kernel 5.10, exFAT, Modern Printers Support

Last updated: August 15, 2021

Debian 11, code-name ‘Bullseye’, officially released. Features 5-year support, Kernel 5.10 LTS, out-of-the-box support for exFAT file-system and most modern printers.

Debian is free open-source community-supported Linux distribution started in 1993. It aims to be “The Universal Operating System” that is suitable for Desktop users, servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, and storage servers. And it’s the basis for many other distributions, including Ubuntu.

In my mind, Debian is a quite stable and reliable system for production use. While serving with less system resources, it’s very popular for server users. Though the package base is a little old, there are package teams keep working for the security, stability and performance. And in “Bullseye”, the Debian Med team has been flighting against COVID-19 by packaging software for researching the virus on the sequence level and for the tools used in epidemiology.

What’s New in Debian 11:

For personal computers, Debian 11 is available via different Desktop Environments, including:

  • Gnome 3.38,
  • KDE Plasma 5.20,
  • LXDE 11,
  • LXQt 0.16,
  • MATE 1.24,
  • Xfce 4.16.

The release provides Linux Kernel 5.10 with support for exFAT file system. The exfat-fuse package is no longer required for mounting exFAT file-systems. And the exfatprogs provides the tools to create, check and label exFAT filesystems.

With ipp-usb, it offers out-of-the-box support for most modern printers without vendor specific drivers.

There are also updated packages including Apache 2.4.48, BIND DNS Server 9.16, Calligra 3.2, Cryptsetup 2.3, Emacs 27.1, GIMP 2.10.22, GNU Compiler Collection 10.2, GnuPG 2.2.20, Inkscape 1.0.2, LibreOffice 7.0, MariaDB 10.5, OpenSSH 8.4p1, Perl 5.32, PHP 7.4, PostgreSQL 13, Python 3.9.1, Rustc 1.48, Samba 4.13, and Vim 8.2.

Other changes includes:

  • Activate the persistent journal functionality by default.
  • New Fcitx 5 input method.
  • Defaults to Wayland and better addon support.
  • 64-bit/32-bit PC, PowerPC, IBM S/390, ARM, MIPS architectures support.
  • Over 11,294 new packages, 9,519 packages marked as obsolete and removed.

How to Get Debian 11:

Debian website provides small disco image that need internet connection while installing process to download more. There are also complete image, and live iso for trying Debian without installing it on your machine.

Get Debian 11

To upgrade from the previous Debian 10 buster, the documentation is available with detailed information.

In News
 

Thunderbird 91.0 Released with Native Apple Silicon Support, Multi-Process By Default

Last updated: August 12, 2021

Mozilla Thunderbird email client released new major 91.0 version with many new features and improvements.

Thunderbird 91.0 now runs in multi-process (e10s) mode by default, which offers many advantages in responsiveness, stability, performance, and security.

For macOS users, the release adds native support for computers with Apple silicon CPUs. There are also Latvian language support, new user interface for adding attachments, etc.

The ‘Account Setup’ has a new look and finally move to new tab instead of a floating dialog. It also adds ability to detect and set up CalDAV calendars and address book during setup.

The new version also brings improvements to Calendar, such as remote calendar auto-detection, ‘Edit’ option in event context menu, double-click to open .ics files, and import filter and sort items.

And a warning popup will appear when either trying to spend a reply to a likely non-existant email address such as “noreply@example.com”, or public recipients of a message exceeds threshold.

Other changes in Thunderbird 91.0 include:

  • Beta-level support for Matrix servers chat.
  • Enable redirect of messages.
  • PDF.js viewer support.
  • Allow showing empty CC/BCC rows in compose window
  • Allow pinning folder views to the Folder Pane
  • And much more!

How to Get Thunderbird 91.0 for Ubuntu:

As the release note said, the release only is available as a direct download, and not as an upgrade from Thunderbird version 78 or earlier.

Download Thunderbird (tar.bz2)

For Ubuntu Linux, it’s a tar.bz2 package. Once you get it, extract and right-click to run the executable to launch the client.

To create a shortcut icon for Thunderbird 91.0, you can open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to create & open a .desktop file:

gedit .local/share/applications/thunderbird91.desktop

Then paste following lines into the file. Replace “/PATH/TO/thunderbird“ with the executable file path, and finally save it.

If you don’t plan to move the source folder to another place for long time using, the file path should be: /home/USER_NAME/Downloads/thunderbird-91.0/thunderbird/thunderbird

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Thunderbird 91.0
Comment=Send and receive mail with Thunderbird
Keywords=Email;E-mail;Newsgroup;Feed;RSS
Exec=/PATH/TO/thunderbird %u
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Type=Application
Icon=thunderbird
Categories=Application;Network;Email;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto;application/x-xpinstall;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=Compose;Contacts

[Desktop Action Compose]
Name=Compose New Message
Exec=/PATH/TO/thunderbird/thunderbird -compose
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;

[Desktop Action Contacts]
Name=Contacts
Exec=/PATH/TO/thunderbird -addressbook
OnlyShowIn=Messaging Menu;Unity;
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Firefox 91.0 Released with Enhanced Cookie Clearing / Https-First Policy

Last updated: August 11, 2021

Mozilla Firefox 91.0 is available with more than 1200 bug-fixes, new major privacy enhancement, and other features.

The release introduced more comprehensive logic for clearing cookies. With Firefox Strict Mode, you can clear a site data including embed content, such as images, videos and scripts, from other websites. This “cross-site” content was previously left behind.

You can now clear cookies and site data for current page by clicking the SSL lock icon in url bar. Or by right-clicking on sites under History menu and select ‘Forgot About This Site’.

For all sites, go to Settings -> Privacy & Security -> Cookies and Site Data. There you can click on “Manage Data” to search a site or remove all sites.

Firefox 91 now https first in Private Browsing windows. Even by clicking or entering http site in url, it tries to connect https first if available.

Other changes include:

  • Supports logging into Microsoft, work, and school accounts using Windows single sign-on.
  • Add Simplified option back in print settings.
  • New locale: Scots (sco)
  • The address bar now provides Switch to Tab results also in Private Browsing windows.
  • Automatic High Contrast Mode when “Increase Contrast” is checked on MacOS
  • 10-20% improvement in response time to most user interactions.
  • Various security fixes.

How to Install Firefox 91:

Usually, Ubuntu publishes the new Firefox packages through the security & updates repositories. So just wait and keep your system updated. It’s will be available in next few days.

Alternatively, see the release note and download the portable package from Firefox website.

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Polychromatic 0.7 Released, New UI / CLI to Control Razer RGB Lighting in Linux

Last updated: August 9, 2021

Got Razer peripherals? Polychromatic released version 0.7.0 with redesigned UI and command line interface to control the RGB lighting in Linux.

For those never heard of Polychromatic, it’s a free open-source vendor agnostic front-end for managing lighting, RGB effects and some special functionality for keyboards, mouse, keypads and other gaming peripherals.

It so far only supports OpenRazer as backend for Razer devices. Though it aims to add OpenRGB and phue for Philips Hue and more brands support.

The software now uses PyQt5 instead of WebKitGTK for its graphical user interface. And it redesigned the UI with following features:

  • New tab & sidebar interface.
  • New preferences dialog.
  • New colour picker dialog and saved colour management.
  • New “Apply to All” section
  • New “Inspect Matrix” for testing LEDs and co-ordinates
  • New DPI controls, allowing independent X/Y axis.
  • Add ability to set custom DPI stages.
  • Ability to use “native” system theme.

polychromatic new UI

The indicator menu in the release is also overhauled with legacy GTK Status Icon support, and new options.

The release also introduced a new command line interface for terminal warrior. You can get started by running command in terminal: 

polychromatic-cli --help

For any device capable of individually addressable LEDs, you can now create your own static and animated effects via the Effect Editor, by clicking & draging with your pointer to draw on a graphic representing your devices, or use a grid.

So far the device graphics are available for the following devices: Razer BlackWidow Chroma, Razer BlackWidow Elite, Razer DeathStalker Chroma, Razer Huntsman Elite, Razer Mamba Elite, Razer Mamba Tournament Edition, Razer Blade Stealth (2016), Razer Blade (2018), Razer Blade Pro (2019), Razer Firefly, Razer Base Station Chroma. While the grid is always available.

Other changes include:

  • App can run without OpenRazer, but will be limited.
  • Add support for multizoned hardware.
  • Support custom effects for all compatible hardware.
  • New troubleshooter and new configuration editor.
  • New and updated icons.

How to Install Polychromatic in Ubuntu:

The Polychromatic team maintains official Ubuntu PPA that so far supports for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and Linux Mint 20.

Open terminal from start menu, paste the command below and hit run to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:polychromatic/stable

Also add the OpenRazer PPA for the backend package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openrazer/stable

Finally update package cache, install it as well as OpenRazer daemon:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install polychromatic openrazer-daemon

Uninstall Polychromatic & OpenRazer:

To remove them simply run apt command with remove flag:

sudo apt remove --autoremove polychromatic openrazer-daemon

And you can remove the 2 Ubuntu PPAs by launching “Software & Updates” and navigating to “Other Software” tab. Then remove the relevant lines from the list:

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0 A.D. Alpha 25 Released! Implement Single Player Campaigns [Ubuntu PPA]

Last updated: August 9, 2021

Real-time strategy video game 0 A.D. released version Alpha 25 a day ago. Code name is “Yaunã”.

0 A.D. (pronounced “zero ey-dee”) is a free and open-source RTS game under development by Wildfire Games, that works on Windows, Linux, and MAC. It is a historically-based war/economy game that allows players to relive or rewrite the history of Western civilizations, focusing on the years between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D.

“Yaunã” comes with the twenty-fifth alpha version that initially implements Single Player Campaigns, along with other big ones including:

  • Improved Pathfinding, Performance And Reduced Game Lag.
  • Push new orders to the front Of their production queues.
  • Improved Unit AI.
  • New Biomes incorporating wew 2k textures and normal/specular maps.
  • GUI improvements.
  • Extended Graphics options.
  • Improved Mod support and game filtering in the multiplayer lobby.
  • Ongoing civilization balancing.
  • Various other game stability bug fixes and speedups.

See video about 0 A.D. Alpha 25:

How to Install 0 A.D in Ubuntu:

The game package is available in Ubuntu repository but always old! To get the latest version, keep an eye on this Ubuntu PPA while the official one is not being updated for long time.

Usually, maintainers update the latest software packages a few days after the release note. For beginners, you can follow this tutorial to add the PPA and install 0 A.D. once the new package published.

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Ubuntu 21.10 Finally Removed “Standard” Theme-box, Only Light & Dark Mode Now

Last updated: August 7, 2021

Ubuntu 21.10 daily build got an update for its gnome-control-center package(System Settings) recently. The ‘Standard’ mode is finally removed from the Appearance settings.

The Yaru theme developer team submitted the request to remove the ‘Standard’ theme when in June, since both GTK3 and GTK4 do NOT support having different background / text colors for headerbar than in the rest of the window.

The development build of Ubuntu 21.10 finally apply the change in the recent update. The ‘Window colors’ options under Appearance settings are now only fully dark and fully light. There’s no longer dark header bar with light window color called ‘Standard’.

Along with the new thumbnail preview, the context menus for the desktop, file manager, and other Gnome apps also inherit the dark and light appearance setting.

They are still some apps, e.g, Gnome Terminal and Ubuntu Software, that are not implemented for the changes.

As before, the settings do not change the color of top-bar menus, notification, and left dock menu, etc. However, a patched version of gnome-control-center is available to easily toggle the WHOLE system to Dark or Light.

In News
 

DeaDBeeF Audio Player 1.8.8 Now Reads WAV RIFF Tags

Last updated: August 3, 2021

DeaDBeeF audio player 1.8.8 was released as the 8th bugfix release for the 1.8 series.

The new release introduced some new features, including reading WAV RIFF tags, handling of Disc subtitle frames in ID3v2 and APE tags, and handling samplerates higher than 192KHz to pulseaudio.

New context menu options “Play Next” and “Play Later” are now available to choose your favorite song to play next, or set one-time play order for songs in play list. It will add marks at the beginning that indicates the sequence.

It also redesigned the plugin page in Preferences. Now each plugin has the configuration along with basic info and license in tabs.

Other changes in DeaDBeef 1.8.8 includes:

  • Non-modal preferences window
  • $rgb() title formatting function
  • Group title colorization support via title formatting
  • Plugin report and filtering in Plugin list
  • Focusable playlist tabs with keyboard navigation support
  • Sorting plugin list alphabetically
  • Improved album path handling, especially for Windows
  • Drag-and-drop on the main window
  • Using scroll wheel with seek bar
  • Delete from disk dialog will highlight the Delete button as destructive action
  • And some stability fixes.

How to Install DeaDBeeF 1.8.8 in Ubuntu:

The software offers official .deb package for 64-bit Ubuntu & Linux Mint systems.

Download DeaDBeeF (.deb)

Grab the package, ‘deadbeef-static_1.8.8-1_amd64.deb’, then install it by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install ~/Downloads/deadbeef-static*.deb

There’s also an Ubuntu PPA for DeaDBeeF, though it’s not updated at the moment of writing. And note that the PPA package conflicts to the official ‘deadbeef-static‘ package due to packaging issue. Remove the old package first if you’re going to install it from another source.

Remove DeaDBeeF:

To remove the music player, simply run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove deadbeef-static deadbeef
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PyCharm 2021.2 Released with Python 3.10 Support (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: July 29, 2021

JetBrains announced the release of PyCharm 2021.2. Features Python 3.10 support, auto-reload for browser HTML preview.

Starting with the new release, users from Asian can enjoy the a fully localized UI in Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. And it’s going to end support for several packages, e.g., mako, buildout, web2py, in next release.

Before Python 3.10 goes stable, the IDE starts working for Python 3.10 support with following features:

  • Adjust to the upcoming Structural Pattern Matching, such as the Unused local symbols and Unreachable code inspections, smart code completion and syntax highlighting for the match and case keywords, and the Complete Current Statement action.
  • Complete match statements and their corresponding case blocks.
  • Supports type inference for isinstance and issubclass arguments with the new syntax type.

And other changes include:

  • Working in the Python console is now supported on both the client and the host side.
  • Code completion for fields and operators in the MongoDB console (Pro only).
  • Context live templates from the data editor with SQL scripts action (Pro only).
  • auto-reload for browser HTML preview (pro).
  • Auto-import for require() (pro).
  • New Onboarding Tour in the IDE Features Trainer plugin.
  • Test runner auto-detection
  • The Test Management plugin includes Python support and available for PyCharm Community.
  • New Test Data plugin to generate random data.

How to Install PyCharm 2021.2 in Ubuntu:

Jetbrains provides official Linux package. They are portable tarballs, available to download at the link below:

Download PyCharm

To make life easier, you can install the community edition from the unofficial PPA. And it supports for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 21.04 so far.

1.) Open terminal from start menu, and run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/apps

2.) Manually refresh system package cache, e.g., for Linux Mint:

sudo apt update

3.) Finally install PyCharm via command:

sudo apt install pycharm-community

Uninstall:

To remove the PPA, either run command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:xtradeb/apps

or open “Software & Updates” and navigate to “Other Software” tab to remove the relevant line.

And remove PyCharm by running command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove pycharm-community
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Audacity 3.0.3 Released, Official Appimage for Linux /Auto Checking Updates

Last updated: July 29, 2021

Audacity audio editor and recorder 3.0.3 was released a few days ago. Finally it adds official Linux binary via Appimage.

Audacity 3.0.3 comes with minor bug-fixes, and binary changes. For Windows users, now it provides 64-bit EXE and 32-bit plug-ins will not work on the release.

The release introduced automatic app update checking. According to the updated Privacy Notice, Audacity needs a network connection for update checking. And this shares your IP address, OS, and Audacity version. You can disable the feature in the Preferences.

And when an app error occurs, error report dialog will pop up asking you whether to send report.

For Linux users, Audacity now provides Appimage package. It’s a single executable that launches the software directly without installation required. Just right-click on file, add execute permission in “Properties” dialog, and finally run it.

How to Get Audacity 3.0.3:

For the official binary and source tarball, you can download it from the github release page:

Download Audacity

It’s also available to install via the universal Flatpak package which runs in sandbox. And here’s how to guide for those new to flatpak.

About the Ubuntu PPA:

Audacity adds Conan package manager as the its new dependency library. It make me crazy again since it’s not available in Ubuntu repositories, and so far I can’t find any compile instruction.

So may be it’s time to abandon my personal PPA for Audacity package. :)

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Handwriting Notetaking App Xournal++ 1.1.0 Released for Linux

Last updated: July 21, 2021

Free open-source handwriting notetaking app Xournal++ 1.1.0 was released with many new features and improvements.

Xournal++ (aka Xournalpp) is a note taking app that support pen input from devices such as Wacom, Huion, XP Pen tablets. It also features PDF annotation, Lua scripting, and LateX support.

The Xournal++ 1.1.0 is a new major release follows the XDG Base Directory Specification. The config files will now be stored in user .config folder instead of user home.

A new plugin was introduced for those have non-default DPI settings, to fix incorrect text elements display issue for old documents.

Ubuntu 16.04 and Mac OS High Sierra are no longer supported. Other features include:

  • New “progressive mode” option to PDF export dialog.
  • New “Layerstack Preview” tab to show all layers up to the current layer.
  • Add seeking functionality during audio playback.
  • Remove the old input system and touch workaround.
  • Add a touchpad pinch gesture for zooming.
  • Rework LaTeX tool implementation.
  • Add snapping for vertical space, moving/resizing selections, recognized shapes.
  • Lua plugin support for Mac OS.
  • New action icons, and new app icon.
  • And tons more other improvements and changes.

How to Install Xournal++ 1.1.0 in Ubuntu:

The software offers official binary packages, available to download at the link below:

Xournal++ Release Note & Downloads

Grab the ‘xournalpp-xxx-bionic-xxx.deb‘ for Ubuntu 18.04, or ‘xournalpp-xxx-focal-xxx.deb‘ for Ubuntu 20.04/ Linux Mint 20.

You can then install the .deb by opening terminal and running command:

sudo apt install ~/Downloads/xournalpp*.deb

For other Ubuntu releases and other Linux, choose the non-install ‘xournalpp-xxx.AppImage‘ package. By adding execute permission in the right-click menu ‘Properties’ dialog under Permissions tab, you can finally run the Appimage to launch the software.

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