Audacious, the popular lightweight audio player, released new 4.4 version this Wednesday!
The new release of this free open-source music player restores Lyrics plugin for GTK interface, and adds new provider chartlyrics.com. Thanks to Michel Fleur, there’s now “Background Music” plugin, under “Effect” tab in the Plugin page, allows to make the sound equally loud within and between tracks.
The Scrobbler (Last.fm) plugin now also works on macOS and Windows. And, the Song Change plugin now allows to run custom command when a song is stopped.
Audacious 4.4 now defaults to GTK3 + Qt6, though Qt5 and GTK2 are still supported. It improved Wayland support for GTK interface, but the classic Winamp interface does NOT work properly on Wayland, thus users are recommended to run Audacious via XWayland (default behavior if available) therefore.
Other changes in Audacious 4.4 include:
Add Disc Number support
Read ReplayGain values in Opus files from R128 tags
For Ubuntu users, it’s available to install via Ubuntu PPA (native .deb package), Snap package, or Flatpak package (runs in sandbox environment).
Method 1: Audacious Snap package
If you’re OK running the audio player in sandbox environment, then Audacious is easy to install through Ubuntu Software (or App Center) as Snap package.
Method 2. Install Audacious via Flatpak
Most Linux can install the audio player as Flatpak package, that runs in sandbox. So far, it supports amd64 and arm64 platforms.
All current Ubuntu user can press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run the 2 commands below one by one to get it.
After installation, search for and launch it from start menu or Gnome overview. Log out and back in if app icon not visible.
Method 3. Install Audacious from Ubuntu PPA
For Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04 users, I’ve uploaded the new release package into PPA for amd64 and arm64/armhf machines.
Changes in the PPA package:
Packages for Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 are built with Qt5 + GTK3, since Qt6 is NOT available.
Qt6 + GTK3 for Ubuntu 22.04 and higher.
The dependency library name changes that follow upstream policy in Ubuntu 24.04:
libaudcore5 -> libaudcore5t64
libaudgui5 -> libaudgui5t64
libaudqt2 -> libaudqt2t64
libaudtag3 -> libaudtag3t64
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/apps
Type user password (no visual feedback, just type in mind) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2. Then, update system package cache:
sudo apt update
3. If you have an old version of the music player installed, you can now update the package to the latest using “Software Updater” utility.
Or, run the command below in terminal to install or upgrade the package:
sudo apt install audacious audacious-plugins
NOTE: For Ubuntu 22.04 runs into “Error opening output stream” issue, open “Settings” and set audio output plugin to “PulseAudio” output.
Uninstall Audacious
To remove the audio player installed as Flatpak, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and use command:
Also clean up runtime library via flatpak uninstall --unused.
If you want to restore the music player to the stock version available in system repository. Run command below to purge PPA as well as downgrade installed packages:
GNOME, the default desktop for Ubuntu, expects to replace its core Totem video player with ‘Showtime’, which is still in development stage.
Due to switch to GTK4, GNOME has replaced some of the core apps, including image viewer, text editor, camera app, and terminal emulator. And, Decibels is proposed as core app for playing audio files.
As the current Totem video player has not been maintained for nearly a year and sticks to GTK3, Showtime is submitted and accepted into the GNOME Incubator, which will be the core app if it reaches the required maturity.
VLC, the popular free open-source media player, released version 3.0.21 after more than half a year of development.
The release introduced AMD HQ Scaler support for Super Resolution scaling with AMD GPUs. Meaning, user can now use this AI-assisted feature to improve the quality and sharpness of playback with NVIDIA RTX series (and more listed in this page), AMD Radeon™ RX 5000 Series Graphics and newer, and Intel Arc, Xe-LP GPUs.
If you have a compatible GPU, then you can enable this feature in Preferences dialog, under Video -> Output modules section.
Linux Lite, the lightweight and beginner friendly Linux Distribution, released version 7.0 few days ago.
Linux Lite is a free open-source (partly closed-source due to built-in proprietary apps, such as chrome) Distro based on Ubuntu LTS. It features customized XFCE Desktop environment that is lightweight for low end PCs.
Compare to XUbuntu and Linux Mint (Xfce edition), the lightweight system has a better look and feel due to the default themes, that seem to be also in use for Manjaro Linux.
The Distro aims to appeal to Linux beginners and Windows users, by trying to make the transition from Windows to Linux as smooth as possible. And, there’s NO Snap, NO Flatpak out-of-the-box.
Ubuntu 24.04, code-name Noble Numbat, is finally released!
It’s a new Long Term Support (LTS) release with 5 years of support until 2029, and another 7 years of support through ‘Ubuntu Pro’ (can be enabled in welcome or Software & Updates dialog).
Meaning users of Ubuntu 24.04 can keep receiving security updates until 2036!
Ubuntu 24.04 features Linux Kernel 6.8, and it will keep updating to new kernel series in next point releases. The new kernel introduced Intel Shadow Stack, and stable Intel Meteor Lake graphics support. KVM now allows up to 4096 vCPUs. And, there are many other new features as well as hardware support, see this page for details.
Audacity, the popular free open-source audio editor, release version 3.5.0 (then 3.5.1 with quick-fixes) few days ago.
Audacity 3.5.0 is a major release with new features. They include a new cloud-saving feature. By going to menu ‘File -> Save To Cloud …’, user can save Audacity project to audio.com via a free account. So, user can access the project from any other devices, and/or share and collaborate with others.
NOTE: this feature does NOT work in my PPA package, since it’s built with Debian upstream rule that disables network access! If you do prefer this feature, please leave comment below, or use the official AppImage package instead.
MPV, the popular free open-source media player, announced new 0.38.0 release few days ago!
The release improved --deinterlace with auto value, and --deinterlace-field-parity to automatically turn on deinterlacing. It can improve the overall clarity, sharpness of the video, by converting interlaced video (commonly found in analog television, VHS, Laserdisc, digital television (HDTV)) into a progressive form.
Without using config file, users can now press and hold Ctrl key then use mouse wheel scrolling to zoom in or zoom out the video playback.
Ubuntu 24.04, code-name Noble Numbat, is finally available for Beta testing after a week of delay.
Ubuntu 24.04 is long term support (LTS) release with 5-year of support. By enabling Ubuntu Pro, user can get 7 years more security updates. Meaning that Ubuntu LTS has 12 years of support!
The new LTS features GA Kernel 5.8 and GNOME Desktop 46.
After more than a year of development, Kodi media player 21, code-name “Omega”, is finally released!
Kodi 21 is a new major release. It’s now based on FFmpeg 6.0, that features Radiance HDR image support, VAAPI decoding and QSV decoding for 10/12bit 422, 10/12bit 444 HEVC and VP9, MediaCodec decoder, and various other exciting new features, see ffmpeg.org for details.
For macOS, the release supports HiDPI (retina) displays using its native implementations for window displays. And, it fixed crash on speech recognition activation, improved window resizing when moving (or fallback when display disconnected) from one display to another, and implemented Hotkeycontroller for media keys. Continue Reading…
