UbuntuHandbook | News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux

GNOME Expects to Use New “Showtime” as Core Video Player

Last updated: June 9, 2024 — Leave a comment

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.

In News media player

VLC 3.0.21 Released with AMD Super Resolution Support

Last updated: June 7, 2024 — 3 Comments

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.

In News vlc media player

Enable & Enhance Touchpad Gestures in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: June 12, 2024 — 1 Comment

This tutorial shows how to enable (or improve) touchpad gestures in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04. Not only for the default GNOME (both X & Wayland), but also for XFCE, MATE, and other desktop environments.

GNOME introduced multi-touch gestures support since v40, however, it only works on the default Wayland session, and supports only 3 finger swipe gestures. For more gestures, GNOME on Xorg, and other desktop environments, you can choose either option below:

Gesture Improvements extension (GNOME only) – enable 4-finger swipe and pinch gestures, support both Xorg and Wayland.
Touchegg – for all desktop environments on X, including GNOME on Xorg, but not for Wayland.

In Howtos touchpad gestures

Linux Lite 7.0, Lightweight & Ubuntu 24.04 base Distro is out!

Last updated: June 4, 2024 — Leave a comment

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.

In News

Enable Some Cool Window Animations in Ubuntu 24.04 GNOME

Last updated: June 3, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to enable some cool animations, when moving, opening, closing, minimizing and restoring app windows in Ubuntu with default GNOME Desktop.

All the animations here are handled by GNOME shell extensions, meaning they will also work in Fedora Workstation, RHEL 9, and other Linux with GNOME desktop.

NOTE: These animations will consume more energy and system resources. It’s NOT recommended for laptop running without power supply, and lower end PC with very old CPU and low memory.
Continue Reading…

In Howtos Gnome

Install Google Earth in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04 (Step by Step)

Last updated: May 31, 2024 — 3 Comments

This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to install Google Earth Pro or Enterprise Client in Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Ubuntu 20.04

Today we can use Google Earth easily in web browser or mobile phone. For those still need a desktop app, it’s easy to install in Debian/Ubuntu through:

either Google’s official apt repository (native .deb packages),
or Flatpak package, that runs in sandbox environment.

Choose either one that you prefer, though both run in only amd64 (Intel/AMD) CPU architecture.

In Howtos Google Earth

Automatically Create, Delete, Write to Files on Startup in Ubuntu

Last updated: October 6, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to automatically create, delete files/folders, and/or write parameters into config files at startup in Ubuntu and other Linux using systemd.

This can be useful if some configuration do not persistent and reset to default on every boot, or you want to clean up something either on every boot or after every time period.

Advanced users can manually create a script, and run it via either crontab schedule task or custom systemd service. But, here I’m going to show you how to do the trick using tmpfile.d, a built-in configuration for creation, deletion and cleaning of volatile and temporary files.

In Howtos ubuntu 24.04

Install HandBrake Video Transcoder 1.9.0 in Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: December 4, 2024 — 1 Comment

This is a step by step guide shows how to install the most recent Handbrake video transcoder 1.9.0 in Ubuntu 24.10, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 22.04. There’s also an option for those who are stick to the old Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 18.04, and Ubuntu 16.04.

Handbrake is a popular free open-source tool for converting video from nearly any format, including DVD video (disc or ISO image), Matroska MKV, AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS. It has presets to easily output to Android, Apple, Chromecast compatible, and various other devices. And, it supports hardware acceleration to speed up transcoding using Intel, NVIDIA, or AMD GPUs.

The most recent version so far is HandBrake 1.9.0, that features Intel QSV VVC hardware video decoding, lossless VP9 encoding, and some Linux fixes. See the release note page for details.

In Howtos handbrake

Set up Google Drive for Local Folder Sync in Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: May 26, 2024 — 1 Comment

This simple tutorial shows how to set up Google Drive, so you can access and sync files between the cloud and local folder in Ubuntu 24.04.

Ubuntu with default GNOME desktop has built-in option to map Google Drive onto local folder. For other desktop environments, such as MATE, XFCE, and Unity, there’s also a graphical app can do the job easily!

In Howtos cloud file sync, file sharing

Enable Login & Log Out Sound in Ubuntu 24.04

Last updated: May 22, 2024 — Leave a comment

This is a step by step guide shows you how to enable the event sounds (system sound or custom sound) for login and log out actions in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

When booting Ubuntu 24.04 from a live USB, it plays a sound after logged into the desktop. The sound however does no longer play after installed the system on your disk. So, here I’m going to show you how to re-enable this feature.

NOTE: This tutorial is tested and works in my case in Ubuntu 24.04. It MAY also work in old Ubuntu releases and even other Linux, but for GNOME Desktop only.

In Howtos Audio, login sound

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