Mozilla Firefox 102 is available to download now. See what’s new and how to install the browser package.
For Linux users, Firefox 102 now support Geoclue if available for geolocation. The release also added subtitles and captions display in Picture-in-Picture (pop-out video) for more websites, including HBO Max, Funimation, Dailymotion, Tubi, Disney+ Hotstar, and SonyLIV.
For those boring with the drop-down download panel, that automatically opens every time you start a download. User may now right-click on the download icon (before Hamburger menu button), and un-check “Show Panel When Download Begins” to disable it.
Firefox 102 is the new Extended Support Release (ESR) for enterprise and/or school use. The previous Firefox 91 ESR will end support on September 20, 2022.
Other changes in Firefox 102 include:
Improve PDF reading in high contrast mode
Filter style sheets in the Style Editor tab of our developer tools
Support Content-Security-Policy (CSP) integration with WebAssembly.
Mitigate query parameter tracking when navigating sites in ETP strict mode.
Improved security by moving audio decoding into a separate process with stricter sandboxing.
Various bug fixes and new policies
Download / Install Firefox 102:
Ubuntu will publish the new browser packages in its universe repositories. So, just keep your system up-to-date by installing updates (via Software Updater) regularly, you’ll get Firefox 102 automatically in next few days ago.
For Ubuntu 22.04 user prefer native .deb over the pre-installed Snap package, the Mozilla Team PPA has already build the package. So this how to tutorial to switch from Firefox Snap to Deb.
For the release note (not ready yet) as well as official Linux tarball, go to the link below:
Ubuntu’s default Rhythmbox music player got new release updates a few days ago. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu via PPA.
Rhythmbox released version v3.4.5 last month and v3.4.6 days ago after more than 2 years of development. Compare to previous Rhythmbox 34.4, Soundcloud plugin and mmkeys plugin have been removed since they are no longer work / useful. DAAP plugin now supports libdmapsharing 4 API, but no longer enabled by default.
The new release has rewritten podcast downloader with better resume and retry, uses podcast episode GUIDs to handle episode URL changes, preserves original order of episodes in podcasts even if episodes have the same publication date. And, crossfading player backend now works much better with network streams. There are as well many bug-fixes and translation updates.
Install / Update Rhythmbox in Ubuntu
The latest Rhythmbox package is available to install as Flatpak package, which runs in sandbox.
For those prefer the pre-installed .deb package, here’s how to update it via the unofficial PPA.
1. Add PPA
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA. So far, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 are supported.
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks for sudo authentication and hit Enter to continue.
2. Install / Update Rhythmbox
After adding the PPA repository, search for and launch “Software Updater” from Activities overview. It should show you the updates for the music player. Simply click on “Install” to get them and enjoy!
Or, you may run the single command in terminal to install/update the music player package:
sudo apt install rhythmbox
How to Restore:
If you found any issue for the package installed from PPA, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
The command will install the ppa-purge tool and purge the Ubuntu PPA you just added, which also downgrade all installed packages from that PPA to the stock versions in your Ubuntu system repository.
Want to configure the top-bar, dock, overview and other Gnome shell components with more settings? Shell Configurator is now updated with GNOME 41 & 42 support.
It’s an extension for add, remove, configure, and customize GNOME Shell with advanced settings. With it, you can:
Select login into blank desktop, overview or app grid.
Hide or auto-hide top bar.
Show/hide panel elements, e.g., Activities, clock, app menu, system menu (aggregate menu).
Change height size of top-bar.
Move top-bar to bottom.
Enable/disable Dash (the dock).
Remove the separator in dock between favorite and running apps.
Show or hide search in overview.
Set how many rows and columns in app grid.
Change looking glass size and postion.
Change notification bubble, OSD position and time out.
Show the new screenshot UI in top.
How to Install Shell Configurator:
For Ubuntu 22.04, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run the command below to install Extension Manager:
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
Then, click “Activities” on top bar, search for and open the app:
Finally, navigate to ‘Browse’ tab, search and click install the “Shell Configurator” extension:
To open the settings dialog, switch back to “Installed” tab in Extension Manager and click on the gear button for the extension.
For other Ubuntu edition as well as Fedora, Debian with GNOME, use the on/off switch to install extension in the link page below, after installed the chrome-gnome-shell agent:
For those don’t like to have the ‘date and time’ menu in the center of top panel, here’s how to move it to either left or right in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
Ubuntu, definitely the GNOME desktop, does not have option to configure the clock menu position. But, there are a few extensions can do the job. And, here I’m going to show you how to install and use them.
Tip: Extensions introduced in this tutorial should work on all Linux uses GNOME 42, e.g, Fedora 36, Arch Linux, Manjaro.
Step 1: Enable ability to install Gnome Extensions
Usually, we install Gnome shell extensions by visiting extensions.gnome.org and use the ON/OFF switch to install or remove an extension. Since Ubuntu 22.04, there’s also an “Extension Manager” app is available in system repository to make life easy.
Option 1: Prepare for installing extension through web browser
NOTE: the pre-installed Firefox in Ubuntu 22.04 is a snap package, which so far does not support this thing. You may either use another browser and go “Option 2”.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install the agent to enable the ability to install Gnome Extension via browser, and the app for managing them.
For the first time, you need to go to exensions.gnome.org and follow the “Click here to install browser extension” link to install the browser extension.
Option 2: Install Extension Manager
The Extension Manager app allows to search for, install, and manage extensions all in one. To install it in Ubuntu 22.04, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run command:
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
After that, click on top left “Activities”, then search for and open the app to get start.
Step 2: Select install Extension to move Clock
There are a few extensions can do the trick in GNOME. Choose one from the options below that you prefer!
Option 1: Just Perfection
This is a tweak tool to customize GNOME Shell, change the behavior and disable UI elements. They provides many useful toggle options, including moving the clock menu position.
To install the extension, either search for and click install it via “Extension Manager”:
Or, use the ON/OFF switch by visiting the web page below in your browser:
After installed it, open its ‘settings’ dialog either via “Extension Manager” under Installed tab or use “Gnome Extensions” app. Scroll down, and you’ll find the option to move clock position via “Customize” tab.
Option 2: Left Clock or Sur Clock
Just Perfection is a bit heavy if you don’t need the other options. There are a few other extensions that designed specially for moving clock position:
“Clock Left” or “Left Clock” – Move clock to left and replace “Activities”.
Sur Clock – Move clock to left or right via preference option.
To install one of the extension, simply search for and click install in “Extension Manager”:
NONE of the previous extensions will move clock to far right corner. If you insist, try “Top Bar Organizer”.
This extension is designed to organize all items on top-bar. It was created for GNOME 40, but no longer updated!! However, it works on current GNOME 42 desktop with few tweak.
1.) First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. And, run command to disable version validation, since it does not support Ubuntu 22.04:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-extension-version-validation true
2.) Then, either search for and install it in “Extension Manager”:
Or, turn on the slider icon in the link page below to install it from web browser:
3.) The Extension preference does not work for GNOME 42. However, the dconf editor options do work.
First, run command to install dconf editor:
sudo apt install dconf-editor
Then, search for and launch “Dconf Editor” from the overview screen. And, navigate to org/gnome/shell/extensions/top-bar-organizer.
To make clock menu show in right corner, write ‘dateMenu‘ as value of right-box-order. And, put it to the end for far right.
NOTE: The change will persist even after removed the extension. To restore, erase the keys in Dconf Editor and restart GNOME Shell (log out and back in)
Would like to display digital clock and date in your desktop? Desktop Clock is a new extension to do the job in GNOME 42.
It’s an extension that so far works on Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora 36, Arch and Manjaro Linux. With it, you have the date and time display on desktop with customisable appearance.
It supports border and background with user selected color, border width and corner radius. Allows to change time and data color and font size, as well as shadow color and offset. All colors can set to has an alpha channel (RGBA), which specifies the opacity.
And, the date is customisable with format codes, to display as whatever style as you want. See the all code here.
How to Install Desktop Clock in Ubuntu 22.04 / other Linux
Ubuntu 22.04 user may first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When terminal opens, run command to install extension manager app:
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
Then, click top-left ‘Activities’ and search for and open the tool from overview screen:
Finally, navigate to ‘Browse’ tab in extension manager, search for and install “Desktop Clock”:
NOTE: It support drag moving clock position, however you need to disable “Desktop Icons NG” extension temporarily for the action, then re-enable it. The developer is working to fix the conflict.
For Fedora and other Linux, the extension is available to install via the toggle icon in the web page below:
There are quite a few audio tag editing applications for Linux. Tagger is a new one with modern GTK4 user interface.
Kid3, puddletag, and easytag editors are really good. But for GNOME (the default desktop environment for Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation), Tagger looks more native due to GTK4 and libadwaita.
Tagger light mode
The app provides a simple and easy to use interface that follow system light and dark color scheme. With it, you can:
Edit metadata and audio tag including Filename, Title, Artist, Album, Year, Track, Album Artist, Genre, and comment.
Insert album cover art from file.
Remove tag.
Convert filenames to tags and tags to filenames with ease
And download tag data from internet via MusicBrainz.
filename to tag conversion
It support multiple music file types, such as mp3, ogg, flac, wma, and wav. And, it can edit tags and album art of multiple files, even across subfolders, all at once.
Tagger Dark Mode
How to Install this Tag Editor in Ubuntu & Other Linux:
The app provides official binary package through the universal Flatpak, which works on most Linux distributions.
1. For Ubuntu, firstly press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When terminal opens, run the command to install the Flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
Type user password for sudo authentication, though there’s no asterisk feedback.
Fedora, Linux Mint, Pop! OS, etc have flatpak support out-of-the-box. Other Linux may follow this setup guide to get it.
2. After setup the daemon, run the single command below will install the app in your Linux:
Has a webcam connected in your Linux PC or laptop? Here’s a graphical tool to configure the camera exposure, white balance, brightness, contrast, power line frequency, gamma, etc.
It’s cameractrls, a new open-source tool that provides Python CLI and GUI (GTK, TK) to set the Camera controls in Linux. It can set the V4L2 controls and it is extendable with the non standard controls.
Currently, it has a Logitech extension (Led mode, led frequency), Kiyo Pro extension (HDR, HDR mode, FoV, AF mode, Save), Systemd extension (Save and restore controls with Systemd path+service).
Cheese and Cameractrls
As the picture shows, it has the slider bars to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, and hue, which also configurable via the default Cheese app.
Basic settings page
There are as well options to switch between Aperture Priority Mode and Manual Mode to adjust camera exposure, backlight compensation, toggle HDR. White Balance temperature is also configurable in both auto and manual mode.
Advanced settings page lets you select power line frequency, toggle focus, AF mode, and adjust Pan, Tilt, Zoom, FoV if your web camera support them.
Cameractrls Advanced
How to Install the Camera Control App in Ubuntu & Other Linux:
This is a Python app that should work on all recent Linux distributions. To install it, open terminal from start menu (Ubuntu user may just press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard) and run the command below one by one:
1. Firstly, run command to install git in case you don’t have it:
sudo apt install git
The command is only for Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint based systems. Fedora user replace apt with dnf.
Have your Ubuntu PC connected with multiple monitors? Here’s how to enable the top bar in all the displays.
In Ubuntu 22.04, you may easily enable the left Dock in all displays via System Settings ->Appearance -> Dock -> show on ‘All Displays’.
However, due to GNOME’s design issue, the top panel only appears in the primary display. So I’m writing this tutorial that could help.
Method 1: Multi Monitors Add-On
There was an extension called “Multi Monitors Add-On” to do the job, which however discontinued. Contributors keep forking the project with new Gnome versions support, and here’s the one for GNOME 42.
NOTE: The extension has an issue in my case that indicators and top-right system menu do not display in external display.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to grab the source tarball.
3. To avoid error in extension manager, disable the version validation check by running command:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-extension-version-validation true
4. Before being able to enable the extension, you have to restart GNOME Shell. For default session, you need to log out and back in. If you’re running the classic Xorg session, press Alt + F2, type r in pop-up ‘Run a command’ box and hit Enter.
5. Finally, use either Gnome Extensions app or Extension Manager (both available to install in Ubuntu Software) to enable and configure this extension to display top panel on multi-monitors.
Method 2: use dash to panel
If you’re OK to merge the left dock and top-bar into a single panel. The popular “Dash-to-panel” extension can do the job with a simple on/off switch.
Dash to Panel
To install the extension, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard and run command in pop-up terminal to install ‘Extension Manager’:
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
Then search for and launch extension manager in ‘Activities’ overview screen:
Finally, search for and install ‘Dash to panel’ extension from the app window under ‘Browse’ tab.
Once successfully installed the extension, your panels change automatically. And, you can right-click on panel and select the last menu option to open the configuration dialog.
GIMP image editor released a new update for its stable 2.10 release series. Here’s what’s new and how to install in Ubuntu.
GIMP 2.10.32 comes with BigTIFF file import/export support, which is an evolution of the original TIFF format allowing files bigger than 4GiB. It also supports for importing 8 and 16-bit CMYK(A) TIFF in this release.
The release also backported the JPEG XL file format support from the 2.99.8 development release. It’s so far only has import ability, though a third-party plugin is available with both import and export support.
Other changes include:
New “Flip the image vertically on export” on DDS export dialog.
Support loading transparent EPS files
Improved support of TGA indexed images with alpha channel
new PDB procedure file-bmp-save2 for plugin developer.
Add localized glyphs (locl) support for Text tool.
on-hover indicator around the eye and link toggles
Add “Include mouse pointer” option for Screenshot tool in Windows.
How to Install GIMP 2.10.32 in Ubuntu:
GIMP as Flatpak:
GIMP offers official Linux package via universal Flatpak package.
For, Ubuntu 20.04 and higher, simply press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and run the command below one by one to install it:
For those do not like sandboxed applications, I’ve uploaded the new release package into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and Ubuntu 20.04 with amd64 and arm64/armhf CPU architecture types support.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
Type user password (no visual feedback) when it asks for sudo authentication and hit Enter to continue.
2. Then, refresh system package cache by running command:
sudo apt update
3. And, finally install or update GIMP using command:
sudo apt install gegl gimp
Or, upgrade GIMP image editor via Software Updater after adding the PPA repository:
NOTE: Due to build failure of libjxl library for arm64. The official JPEG-XL plugin is excluded in this PPA for Ubuntu 20.04. You can however run the command below to install the third-party plugin mentioned above to get .jxl file import/export support.
There are quite a few music player applications for Linux. Amberol and G4Music are two of them with really good looking UI design.
Amberol:
Amberol is a GTK4 app uses libadwaita library as well as gaussian blurred cover background for the beautiful app window.
The player aims to be as small, unintrusive, and simple as possible. No music collection or playlist management, no metadata editor, no lyrics.
It just play local music, with basic functions like shuffle and repeat, MPRIS integration, drag and drop from file manager and GNOME integration.
G4Music
G4Music is Amberol inspired music player with quite similar user interface.
It’s so far a single developer software project, while Amberol has a small group of contributors. However, it has more features, including search music from large collection, sort by album/artist/title or shuffle. And, it supports samba and any other remote protocols as well as pipewire audio sink.
How to Install Amberol or G4Music in Ubuntu & other Linux:
The players are available to install as universal Flatpak packages, which work in Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and most other Linux systems.
1.) Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run the command below to install the flatpak daemon:
