digiKam photo management software 7.0 was released a few days ago with greatly improved face detection and recognition.
digiKam 7.0 was released after one year of development. It features new deep learning faces management. No learning stage is required to perform face detection and recognition. And face detection reaches 97% of true positives.
The improved face detection and recognition also supports non-human faces, blurred faces, covered faces, profiles of faces, printed faces, faces turned away, partial faces, etc.
And it supports multiple cores to speed-up computations.
Other changes include:
Improved HEIF image format support
A new tool Image Mosaic Wall.
The SlideShow tool ported as plugin.
New RAW files support including the famous Canon CR3, Sony A7R4, and more:
Canon: PowerShot G5 X Mark II, G7 X Mark III, SX70 HS, EOS R, EOS RP, EOS 90D, EOS 250D, EOS M6 Mark II, EOS M50, EOS M200
DJI Mavic Air, Osmo Action
FujiFilm GFX 100, X-A7, X-Pro3
GoPro Fusion, HERO5, HERO6, HERO7
Hasselblad L1D-20c, X1D II 50C
Leica D-LUX7, Q-P, Q2, V-LUX5, C-Lux / CAM-DC25
Olympus TG-6, E-M5 Mark III.
Panasonic DC-FZ1000 II, DC-G90, DC-S1, DC-S1R, DC-TZ95
PhaseOne IQ4 150MP
Ricoh GR III
Sony A7R IV, ILCE-6100, ILCE-6600, RX0 II, RX100 VII
Zenit M
and multiple smartphones…
Download / Install digiKam:
1. Non-install single executable Linux Appimage is available in the official download page.
2. digiKam is also available as Flatpak package, you can get it from flathub repository.
SuperTuxKart 1.2 Release Candidate, free and open-source kart racing game, was released today with many great new features and performance improvements.
SuperTuxKart 1.2 release highlights according to the change-log:
The kart racing game is available as SNAP package which can be installed from Ubuntu Software. Flatpak package is also available in flathub.org repository.
SuperTuxKart team PPA will build the DEB package for apt install. Check the PPA Link before getting started.
At that time, open terminal from application launcher and run following commands one by one:
1.) Run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stk/dev
Type user password, no visual feedback, when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2.) After adding the PPA, either upgrade from an old version via Software Updater, or run commands in terminal to install the game:
Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine reached end of life on July 17 2020. Users are recommended to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
Ubuntu 19.10 was released 9 months ago, on October 17, 2019. As a non-LTS release, it has 9 months support. Now it is no longer supported by Canonical. No more security and package updates will be accepted to 19.10.
Users are argued to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04, a LTS release with 5-year support. To get started, do following steps one by one:
Disable third-party repositories by Software & Updates -> Other Software.
Launch Software Updater and install all the updates after checking for updates.
You may restart your computer to complete updates.
Launch Software Updater again, and you’ll see option to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04
Full instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at:
Oracle Virtualbox 6.1.12 was released a day ago as the sixth maintenance release for the 6.1 series.
Oracle Virtualbox 6.1.12 release highlights:
UI fixes for Log-Viewer search-backward icon
Fixes and improvements for the BusLogic SCSI controller emulation
Regression fixes in FIFO data handling
Experimental new type of network attachment, allowing local VM to act as if it was run in cloud
Improved resource management in the guest control functionality
Fixed command option parsing for the “snapshot edit” sub-command
Fix crash of ‘VBoxManage internalcommands repairhd’ when processing invalid input.
Guest Additions:
New experimental 3D GLX graphics output
Fixed releasing texture objects, which could cause guest crashes
Fixed writes to a file on a shared folder not being reflected on the host when the file is mmap’ed and the used Linux kernel is between version 4.10.0 and 4.11.x
Fixed the shared folder driver on 32bit Windows 8 and newer returning an error when flushing writes to a file which is mapped into memory under rare circumstances
Improve resize coverage for VMSVGA graphics controller
Fix issues detecting guest additions ISO at runtime
Fixed German translation encoding for Windows GA installer
How to Install VirtualBox 6.1.12 in Ubuntu:
The official .deb packages are available for download at the link below:
If you’ve already added the Oracle apt repository for Linux, install the updates simply via Software Updater.
Or add the apt repository by running following commands one by one:
1. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste below command and run to add the repository:
Python 3.8.4 was released a few days ago as the latest stable release of the Python language. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 16.04.
This is the first bugfix release that is considerably smaller than the previous three. There’s almost 20% fewer changes at 162 commits than the average of previous three bugfix releases. Detailed information about all changes made in version 3.8.4 specifically can be found in its change log. Note that compared to 3.8.3, version 3.8.4 also contains the changes introduced in 3.8.4rc1.
The deadsnakes team maintains unofficial Python packages for different Ubuntu releases. Note the PPA does not contain Python 3.8 for Ubuntu 20.04 as upstream ubuntu provides the package.
Install Python 3.8.4 in Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04:
1.) Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard, or by searching for ‘terminal’ from system application launcher.
When terminal opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) Then run commands to refresh system package cache, and install Python 3.8:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3.8
3.) Once successfully installed, check your system Python versions (python –version):
4.) (Optional) To use Python 3.8 as the default python3, run commands:
For Ubuntu 16.04 replace python3.6 with python3.5. And you can then switch between the two Python3 versions via command:
sudo update-alternatives --config python3
NOTE: Due to known bug, terminal won’t open if you changed python3 symlink. An workaround is recreate a symlink via command (For Ubuntu 16.04 replace python3.6 with python3.5):
GScan2PDF, graphical to produce PDFs or DjVus from scanned documents, released version 2.8.1 a day ago.
The previous program launching issue should be fixed in the release, though it didn’t happen in my machine. Gscan2pdf 2.8.1 release highlights:
Pass resolution to tesseract to avoid messages like “Warning! Invalid resolution 0 dpi. Using 70 instead”
Cope better if data model becomes corrupted
Add restart option to ‘device not found’ mini-wizard & if tmp directory changed.
When saving a session file, note that pages have been saved to avoid ‘Some pages have not been saved. Do you really want to quit?’ message.
Improvements to the Crashed sessions dialog to make it more intuitive.
Update position of OCR text when cropping
Create PS level 3 instead of 1.
Fix check for unpaper version. (Scan fails if unpaper is not installed but selected in post processing)
Fix check for tesseract version. Remove support for tesseract
Update translations.
How to Install gscan2pdf 2.8.1 in Ubuntu:
The official Gscan2PDF PPA has made the new release packages for all current Ubuntu releases, and their derivatives, including Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.10, Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 18.x, 19.x, and 20.
1. Open terminal either by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or by searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jeffreyratcliffe/ppa
Type user password (no asterisk feedback due to security reason) when it prompts and hit Enter.
2. For those who have a previous release installed, upgrade it through Software Updater:
Or run following command in terminal to install or upgrade the software:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install gscan2pdf
How to Remove:
To remove gscan2pdf, either use your system package manager or run command:
sudo apt-get remove --autoremove gscan2pdf
And the PPA can be removed via Software & Updates utility, under Other Software tab.
Audacious music player 4.0.5 was released a day ago with some important bug-fixes. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 19.10, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 16.04, and derivatives.
Fixed UI freeze when asterisk key (Shift+8) was pressed.
Fixed an exception when reading a large APE (> 1M) tag
Fixed album artist not being displayed for .m4a files
Fixed a crash on exit with a plugin settings window open
Fixed a crash when scrobbling with curl 7.71.0
Changed the default CDDB server to gnudb.org
How to Install Audacious 4.0.5 in Ubuntu:
All users of current Ubuntu releases and Linux Mint 18.x, 19.x, 20 can install the new release via Ubuntu PPA by running following commands one by one.
1. Open terminal by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps
Type your password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2. Then run commands one by one in terminal to install or upgrade the audio player:
Open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat software, Mumble 1.3.2, was released a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 16.04.
Mumble 1.3.2 is a maintenance release that fixed overlay not starting, and keychain-error on macOS for custom certificates.
There’s also known issues: overlay blocked by BattleEye, CS:GO Trusted Mode.
How to Install Mumble in Ubuntu:
Mumble is available as containerized Snap and Flatpak packages. You can install the Snap from Ubuntu Software, and install Flatpak from flathub repository.
For those prefer .deb package from apt repository, do following steps to install it from Mumble Team PPA.
1. Open terminal either from application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste below command and hit Enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mumble/release
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue adding the PPA.
2. If an old release was installed, simply upgrade Mumble via Software Updater:
Or run commands one by one in terminal to check updates and install the chat utility for gamer:
