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CPU-X – Gather PC Hardware Specs in Linux with CPU-Z Style User Interface

Last updated: July 18, 2022 — 1 Comment

For those want to check PC hardware specs in Linux, CPU-X is a good choice for user switching from Microsoft Windows.

It’s a free open-source system profiling and monitoring application, that looks quite similar to CPU-Z for Windows. With it, you can check your CPU specification, vendor, codename, clocks, and L1/L2/L3 caches.

It also shows the motherboard manufacturer, model, BIOS brand and version, etc. As well, it shows graphic card vendor, driver, GPU chip, and basic operating system up-time, and monitor memory usage for you.

Benchmark is also available for running in either single or multiple cores. However, it does not provide a list of other CPU scores to compare with.

How to Install CPU-X in Linux:

The software is available in the official repositories of Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian Linux. User may simply search for and install it via your system package manager.

For Ubuntu user, simply search for and install it in Ubuntu Software:

CPU-X in Ubuntu repository is a little old. For the latest version with bug-fixes and updated database. Go download the “AppImage” from releases page:

Download CPU-X AppImage

Then, right-click on it and go ‘Properties’ to enable executable permission. And, finally click run the AppImage to launch the tool.

In Howtos system info

How to Fix No Sound Issue in Ubuntu 22.04 with ESSX8336 Sound Card

Last updated: July 22, 2022 — 11 Comments

Sound does not work in your Ubuntu 22.04, and happen to have Everest ESSX8336 sound card in your machine? This tutorial may help!

ESSX8336 is one of the common used chips in recent laptops and tablets, such as Huawei Matebook D14~16, Gemini Lake laptop, and Chuwi Hi10X tablet. But, the current Linux Kernel does not support this sound card, though there seems to have patches (here and here) for it.

Until Linux Kernel officially adds the device support, you may build Kernel manually with the patch. Or use yangxiaohua’s custom kernel files to fix the issue.

NOTE: the steps below are done in an Intel machine. The commands in step 3 & 4 vary if you have AMD CPU.

1. This tutorial is tested on Ubuntu 22.04 with the 5.17 OEM Kernel. So, you may first press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and run command to install the kernel package:

sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-oem-22.04a

And restart computer to apply change.

2. Next, run command to grab the source of yangxiaohua’s custom kernel files:

git clone https://github.com/yangxiaohua2009/custom-kernel

3. Once done, navigate to that folder via command:

cd custom-kernel

And copy required files into system directories via:

sudo cp ./tplg/* /lib/firmware/intel/sof-tplg/

sudo cp sof-jsl.ri /lib/firmware/intel/sof/

sudo cp -r sof-essx8336 /usr/share/alsa/ucm2

4. Kernel 5.17 somehow does not correctly load the file, so you may need to rename filename from ‘sof-jsl-es8336-ssp1.tplg’ to ‘sof-jsl-es8336.tplg’

cd /lib/firmware/intel/sof-tplg && sudo cp sof-jsl-es8336-ssp1.tplg sof-jsl-es8336.tplg

5. Finally, edit the ‘/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf’ config file via command:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

When file opens, add the line below to the end and save it.

options snd_soc_sof_8336 quirk=0x01

When everything’s done. Restart your machine and verify if sound’s working!

via: forum.ubuntu.org.cn

In Howtos

AATWS – Highly Customizable Alt-Tab Window Switcher for GNOME

Last updated: July 12, 2022 — Leave a comment

Use Alt+Tab or Super+Tab frequently in Ubuntu or Fedora Linux? This extension replace the default window switcher with advanced options.

It’s AATWS, Advanced Alt-Tab Window Switcher, a Gnome Shell extension which may be useful for those working with many application windows at the same time.

The extension adds type to search function to the Alt/Super + Tab window/app switchers. Which allows to quickly find your opened app or window. It will also try to search and launch system applications if no match app/window exist.

As you see, each item in the switcher has corresponding hotkey (F1, F2, F3 …) for quick access with one key, rather than hitting Tab multiple times.

Also, many configure options are available in the extension settings dialog, including:

Move Alt/Super + Tab switcher in screen top, center or bottom.
Show switcher in different monitor.
Use Up/Down arrows to switch workspace while using the switcher.
Configure window/app icon size, mouse actions, and more.

Many configure options for app/window switcher

How to Install AATWS App/Window Switcher

For Ubuntu 22.04, search for and install “Extension Manager” in Ubuntu Software. You may then use the tool to install the extension:

Install AATWS via Extension Manager

For Ubuntu 20.04 and other Linux with GNOME, use the ON/OFF switch in the link below to install it:

Advanced Alt Tab Window Switcher

NOTE: Debian and Ubuntu need to first install the agent package by running the command below in terminal first:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

And install the browser extension via the link in that page if you don’t see the ON/OFF switch, and finally refresh the web page.

In Howtos Gnome

Audacious Music Player 4.2 is Out Finally! Ubuntu PPA Updated

Last updated: July 10, 2022 — 5 Comments

Audacious 4.2 finally goes stable! Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu users.

This release is a bit late, since the beta has been released for 5 months. As you may already known, Audacious 4.2 feature new dark theme, as well as Flat icon in both light and dark. You can enable them via ‘Files -> Settings’ dialog.

Audacious Dark & Flat icons

For Winamp interface in Qt mode, there’s now a Search and Select dialog for searching music in playlist. Which, supports regular expressions syntax for advanced users.

Winamp interface, search in playlist

Other changes in the release include:

Add partial support for Ogg FLAC streams
Automatically set the title of an imported playlist based on the filename
Preselect the filename of an imported playlist when exporting it again
Add a Jump to Song dialog to the Winamp interface in Qt mode
Add formatter syntax to allow truncating title strings

Install Audacious 4.2 via PPA:

I’ve updated the unofficial PPA with the package for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and their based systems, such as Linux Mint and Pop! OS.

NOTE if you’re using the Audacious 4.2 beta package via my test PPA, you have to remove it as well as the PPA first.

First, open terminal by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard or searching from Activities overview (start menu). When it opens, run the command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

Second, update the package cache in Ubuntu 18.04, Linux Mint, though it’s done automatically in Ubuntu 20.04 +

sudo apt update

Finally, either update the music player via Software Updater, or run the command below in terminal to install/update the package:

sudo apt install audacious audacious-plugins

Uninstall Audacious:

To remove the music player package, use command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove audacious audacious-plugins

And remove the Ubuntu PPA via command:

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

In Howtos Audio

Chromium Snap Package to Finally Get back VAAPI Hardware Decoding

Last updated: July 7, 2022 — 1 Comment

The Chromium browser package (Snap version) in Ubuntu Software is missing VAAPI hardware decoding support. Ubuntu developer team is finally working on get the feature back!

As you may know, Ubuntu now includes the chromium web browser in the system repository as Snap package that runs in sandbox. However, the package is missing the graphics hardware acceleration since version 72 which was released a few years ago in 2019.

Some third-party PPAs are being maintained with Chromium packages, either due to lack of hardware acceleration or just because they don’t like Snap.

For Chromium fans who are OK with the Snap package, you can now help testing the new hwacc build that uses the graphics card for video playback.

Install Chromium from test repository:

1.) Firstly, backup your bookmark, password etc if you’re running Chromium as Snap.

2.) Press Ctrl + Alt + T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to remove chromium snap (if any) via command:

sudo snap remove chromium

3.) Next, install the testing build with hardware acceleration support by running command:

sudo snap install --channel candidate/hwacc chromium

Verify if hardware acceleration works:

The report page recommends to run the command below to launch chromium browser:

snap run chromium --disable-features=UseChromeOSDirectVideoDecoder --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder

Finally, start playing a video either by drag and dropping local file into browser window, or via video website.

And, go to about:media-internals in address bar. Click what it’s playing and find out the value of “kVideoDecoderName“.

It will be {Vaapi,VDA,Mojo}VideoDecoder if succeed, or {FFMpeg,Vpx}VideoDecoder when failed.

For Intel graphics, there’s also a command line tool to verify if GPU rendering is working.

First, run command to install the intel-gpu-tools package:
```
sudo apt install intel-gpu-tools
```
The, use command to verify:
```
sudo intel_gpu_top
```

In my case, the previous command did’t work in both i3-6006U and i5-10400 with integrated graphics card, but using the following command to launch Chromium works!

LIBVA_DRIVERS_PATH=/snap/chromium/current/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/ chromium --use-gl=egl --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,VaapiVideoEncoder --disable-features=UseChromeOSDirectVideoDecoder --ignore-gpu-blocklist --disable-gpu-driver-bug-workaround

How to Restore:

To remove the Chromium package, open terminal and run command:

sudo snap remove --purge chromium

And, install back the package (if you want) from stable channel either from Ubuntu Software or by running the command below in terminal:

sudo snap install chromium

Report in launchpad

In Howtos web

Install & Use GNOME Sushi to Quickly Preview Files in Ubuntu 22.04

Last updated: July 5, 2022 — 5 Comments

Looking for ways to get quick look at your files in Ubuntu, Fedora, or other Linux with GNOME? Try Sushi file previewer!

It’s a free open-source project present more than 10 years. I’ve almost forgotten about it, until I saw that Ubuntu desktop team proposed to install Sushi by default in 23.04 release

GNOME Sushi runs as a DBus-activated service. With it, user may hit Space Bar on keyboard to quick preview selected file in a pop-up window. And, hit the Space Bar again will close it.

It supports previewing photo images, audio, video, plain documents, PDF, XML, and SVG files.

I did remember it also preview selected folder with the basic information, including total size, contained items, modified time etc. However, it does not work in my case in Ubuntu 22.04 may be due to GTK4 port.

Sushi can be efficient when you have a large list of files to preview. Just hit Space-bar to open preview window, use arrow keys (←, →) allow to quickly preview next or previous files.

How to Install GNOME Sushi

Firstly, open terminal either by searching from ‘Activities‘ overview screen or by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T on keyboard.

When terminal opens, run the command below to install it:

sudo apt install gnome-sushi

Fedora user may run sudo dnf install sushi command to get the package

After installation, it should run silently at background. Just open ‘Files’ (aka Nautilus file manager), highlight your file and hit Space bar to try out!

In Howtos File Preview

How to Delay or Tell When to Update Snap Apps in Ubuntu

Ubuntu automatically checks and updates all installed Snap packages 4 times every day. Here’s how you can delay or assign a certain time period for the automatic update.

Snap is an Ubuntu developed universal package format that runs in sandbox. Few core apps (such as Ubuntu Software and Firefox in 22.04) and many software in Ubuntu Software are Snap packages. Unlike classic .deb package, snap updates all the packages automatically in the background silently without user intervention.

If you didn’t block the Snap package, you must have some installed on your Ubuntu machine. And, to avoid conflict to daily work (e.g., online meetings, data backup), you may tell Snap when to do the updates.

Check when Snap will do updates:

By default, snap check (and install if any) updates 4 times per day. You may verify it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command:

snap refresh --time

Besides the time period and frequency, it also tells when the last done and next will occur.

Hold or Completely Disable Automatic Updates

The developer team finally added the --hold parameter, so user can hold updates for either certain app or all snaps for given time or indefinitely.

NOTE: the commands below work only for edge channel of snapd daemon at the moment of writing.

Simply open terminal and run command, and run command to hold updates for 24 hours via command:

snap refresh --hold=24h firefox

Or completely disable automatic updates for firefox via:

snap refresh --hold firefox

To disable automatic updates for all snap applications, run command:

snap refresh --hold

To re-enable automatic updates, use command to unhold all:

snap refresh --unhold

Or unhold specified app via command:

pre>snap refresh –unhold firefox

Specify time period for Snap update

To tell when and how often to check updates, it can be done by running a single command in terminal to set the value of “refresh.timer”.

For example, to allow only between 4.00am and 6.00am, and 9.00pm and 12.00pm, use command:

sudo snap set system refresh.timer=4:00-6:00,21:00-24:00

Or, only check/install updates twice in weekend via command:

sudo snap set system refresh.timer=sat,sun,0:00-24:00/2

Other examples include between 10.00pm and 11.00pm from Monday to Wednesday, and between 9.00am and 11.00am on Friday.

sudo snap set system refresh.timer=mon-wed,22:00-23:00,,fri,9:00-11:00

Or second Monday of the month between 9:00 and 11:00 via command:

sudo snap set system refresh.timer=mon2,9:00-11:00

Delay the update

Ubuntu supports to delay snap updates by specifying a value to “refresh.hold” up to 90 days.

1. Firstly, in case you don’t know your time zone short name, run command:

date

It will output the current date and time, as well as time zone (e.g., NST, AST, EST, PST, CST).

2. Next, use the command below to convert your desired time (e.g., July 7, 2022) to the right format:

date --date="CST 2022-07-07 18:22:00" +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%:z

Replace the time zone, date and time in bold. And, copy the output time for use in next command.

3. Finally, delay snap refresh until the given date and time.

sudo snap set system refresh.hold=2022-07-07T18:22:00+08:00

To verify the change, use command:

sudo snap get system refresh.hold

Prevent update when on metered connections

If you’re running Ubuntu on a metered network connection. Which mean you have limited amount of data per month or day. You can prevent Snap from doing updates by running command:

sudo snap set system refresh.metered=hold

To undo this change, use command:

sudo snap set system refresh.metered=null

Posted on July 4, 2022 In Howtos snap

2 Comments

Vim 9.0 Released with New Script Syntax, Popup Menu Command Completion

Last updated: July 1, 2022 — 1 Comment

The popular Vim text editor released new major 9.0 version few days ago with many new features and large number of new features.

The new release introduced Vim9 script with drastic performance improvements. The execution speed can be increased via 10 to 100 times faster. However, function must be defined with def, and the argument and return types must be specified to benefit from the speed-up.

Legacy scripts will keep working as before. The new script syntax now looks a lot more like most programming languages. Line continuation does not require using a backslash; Function calls do not require call, assignments are done without let and expressions are evaluated without eval. And, comments now start with #.

Instead of the ‘wildmenu’ option, now a popup menu can be used in Vim 9 by setting “wildoptions’ to “pum”. Which, allows for showing many more command line completion matches. The updated colorschemes are also included in the release.

New options in the release including:

'autoshelldir' change directory to the shell’s current directory
'cdhome' change directory to the home directory by “:cd”
'cinscopedecls' words that are recognized by ‘cino-g’
'guiligatures' GTK GUI: ASCII characters that can form shapes
'mousemoveevent' report mouse moves with
'quickfixtextfunc' function for the text in the quickfix window
'spelloptions' options for spell checking
'thesaurusfunc' function to be used for thesaurus completion
'xtermcodes' request terminal codes from an xterm

There are as well new ex commands, functions, variables and operators. See more about Vim 9 via its news page.

How to Get Vim 9 in Ubuntu Linux

Vim offers official AppImage package, along with the source tarball they are available to download at the link below:

Download Latest VIM (AppImage)

There’s another universal Flatpak package available, though not updated at the moment of writing. For Windows, MacOS and other sources, go to vim.org/download.php

In Howtos text editor

Deluge BitTorrent Client 2.1.0 Released! How to Install in Ubuntu

Last updated: June 30, 2022 — Leave a comment

The free cross-platform Deluge BitTorrent client released version 2.1.0 one day ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04.

Deluge is a fully-featured torrent downloading app with GTK, web UI, and command line interfaces. The app features protocol encryption, DHT, Local Peer Discovery (LSD), Peer Exchange (PEX), UPnP/NAT-PMP, web seeds, stream torrent and more.

The new 2.1.0 was released with minimum libtorrent requirement increased to v1.2. Python 2 is no longer supported! And, Python 3.6 is the minimum requirement of the programming language.

New features in Deluge 2.1.0 include:

Add context menu option to copy magnet URI.
Add support for IPv6 in host lists.
Add systemd user services, though I didn’t see them in PPA packages.
Add is_interface and is_interface_name to validate network interfaces.
Add support for pygeoip dependency for location lookup.
Add plugin keys to get_torrents_status
Add support for SVG tracker icons.
Hide passwords in config logs.

There are as well various bug-fixes, see the release note for details.

How to Install Deluge 2.1.0 in Ubuntu:

The software offers official binary packages for downloading at its website.

For Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop! OS, etc, there’s an official Ubuntu PPA contains the packages for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10, Ubuntu 22.04, and other Linux based on them.

1.) Add the PPA.

Firstly, search for and open terminal from system start menu (“Activities” overview). Or, just press Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys on keyboard.

When terminal opens, paste the command below into it and hit Enter to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deluge-team/stable

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

2.) Install / Update Deluge

If you have an old version of the software package installed on your system, simply open “Software Updater” should prompt you the updates of the BitTorrent Client:

If not, run commands below one by one to refresh package cache and install the software packages:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install deluge

For choice, you may replace deluge with deluged for server, deluge-console for command line interface, or deluge-web for web UI.

After installation, open the app from system start menu (or search in “Activities” overview) and enjoy!

How to Remove Deluge:

To remove the Ubuntu PPA, either run the command below in a terminal window:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:deluge-team/stable

Or, remove the source line by opening “Software & Updates” utility and navigate to “Other Software” settings tab:

And, remove the torrent client package easily by running command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove deluge deluge-common

That’s all. Enjoy!

In Howtos bittorrent

HP Printer Driver HPLIP 3.22.6 Adds Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 36 & New Devices Support

Last updated: June 29, 2022 — 5 Comments

HPLIP, HP developed open-source Linux driver, released v3.22.6 a day ago with many new printers/scanners support.

See the new devices supported in HPLIP 3.22.6:

HP Color LaserJet Managed MFP E785dn, E786dn, E78523dn, E78528dn, E786 Core Printer, E78625dn, E78630dn, E78635dn
HP Color LaserJet Managed Flow MFP E786z, E78625z, E78630z, E78635z
HP LaserJet Managed MFP E731dn, E731 Core Printer, E73130dn, E73135dn, E73140dn
HP LaserJet Managed Flow MFP E731z, E73130z, E73135z, E73140z
HP Color LaserJet Managed MFP E877dn, E877 Core Printer, E87740dn, E87750dn, E87760dn, E87770dn
HP Color LaserJet Managed Flow MFP E877z, E87740z, E87750z, E87760z, E87770z
HP LaserJet Managed MFP E826dn, E826 Core Printer, E82650dn, E82660dn, E82670dn, E730dn, E73025dn, E73030dn
HP LaserJet Managed Flow MFP E826z, E82650z, E82660z, E82670z
HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3101fdwe, 3101fdw, 3102fdwe, 3102fdw, 3103fdw, 3104fdw, 3101fdne, 3101fdn, 3102fdne, 3102fdn, 3103fdn, 3104fdn
HP LaserJet Pro 3001dwe, 3001dw, 3002dwe, 3002dw, 3003dw, 3004dw, 3001dne, 3001dn, 3002dne, 3002dn, 3003dn, 3004dn.

Also, the official installer script finally adds Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 36, and MX Linux 21.1 Support.

How to Install HPLIP 3.22.6:

Firstly, download the “hplip-3.22.6.run” installer from the link page below:

Download HPLIP

Then, open your Downloads folder, right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal“. It will open terminal and automatically navigate to the folder as working directory.

When terminal opens, run following commands one by one to add executable permission, and run installer script:

chmod u+x hplip-3.22.6.run

./hplip-3.22.6.run

In the terminal screen, it will ask you a few questions during the installation process. Except for password authentication, it’s OK to hit Enter to answer default for all questions!

After installation, plug or re-plug your printer/scanner and open the HP device manager application to get start: