Install Reading Strip to Help Focus on Reading in Ubuntu

Last updated: March 11, 2024 — Leave a comment

For Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with GNOME Desktop, there’s an extension to help you focus on reading on the screen.

It’s Reading Strip, a free and open-source app written in JavaScript. With it, a horizontal (and/or vertical) strip will be displayed and follow around your mouse cursor.

By settings its background color and opacity, it can highlight the sentence to help focus on reading for people affected by dyslexia.

It also supports focus strip mode, that hides (blurs) the previous and next ones on screen. Which, is great for helping children focus on reading very well.

ReadingStrip Focus mode

How to Install Reading Strip

As mentioned above, reading strip is available as an extension for GNOME Desktop. It so far supports for GNOME from version 3.36 to 44. Sadly, GNOME 45 is not supported due to bug. Meaning it works for all current Ubuntu LTS (20.04 and 22.04), Fedora 37/38, Debian 12, RHEL 9.

For Ubuntu 22.04, first search for and install “Gnome Shell Extension Manager” from Ubuntu Software.

Install Extension Manager in Ubuntu 22.04+

Then, launch the tool and use it to search & install “Reading Strip” under Browse tab.

For Ubuntu 20.04 and other Linux with GNOME, just open web browser and go to the extension page via the link button below:

Reading Strip in EGO

Install the browser extension if it prompts, refresh, and finally use the ON/OFF switch that page to install the GNOME Shell Extension.

NOTE: Debian and Ubuntu may also needs to open terminal and run command sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell to install the agent package first.

Configure & Use Reading Strip

After properly installed the extension, an indicator applet should appear in top-right system tray area.

By clicking on the applet icon or using Ctrl + Super (Windows Logo) + Space key combination can toggle on/off the feature.

To change the strip size, background opacity, color, and/or enable focus mode, just install either Gnome Extensions or Extension Manager from either Ubuntu Software or Gnome Software.

Then, click on setting for the Reading Strip extension and do the changes as you want.

That’s all. Enjoy!

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Cozy Audiobook Player 1.3.0 Ported to GTK4 & LibAdwaita

Last updated: March 9, 2024 — Leave a comment

After almost 2 years, Cozy audiobook player, finally announced new 1.3.0 release days ago.

Cozy is a free open-source application for Linux, allows to listen to your DRM free mp3, m4b, m4a (aac, ALAC, …), flac, ogg and wav audio books.

The new release ported the UI to GTK4 plus LibAdwaita. It now looks more native, well integrated in Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux with recent GNOME Desktop, and automatically switch to dark mode when system switched to dark style.

Other changes include:

  • Improved mobile support
  • Smaller visual refinements to match the state of the art of GNOME apps
  • Dozens of bug fixes and performance improvements
  • Significant cleanup and improvements to the codebase
  • As always, updated translations thanks to all translators!

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HexChat IRC Client Discontinued By Releasing v2.16.2

Last updated: March 11, 2024 — 2 Comments

HexChat, the popular free open-source IRC chat client, discontinued!

HexChat is a IRC chat client forked from XChat. It’s a GTK app written in mostly C programming language. Features include customizable interface, Windows and Linux support, scripting support with Lua, Python, and Perl, multi-network with auto-connect, join, and identify, and more.

By announcing the 1.6.2 release today, the developer TingPing finally discontinued working on the project, after almost 12 years of development.

“This will be the last release I make of HexChat. The project has largely been unmaintained for years now and nobody else stepped up to do that work.“

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Zorin OS 17.1 Released! Education Edition & Better Windows Apps Support

Last updated: March 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

Zorin OS, the popular Ubuntu based Linux Distribution, announced v17.1 this Thursday!

Like Linux Mint, Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu LTS. The latest 17.x release series is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, but features GNOME 43 desktop with custom layout.

It provides an elegant and user friendly desktop appearance targets to users who are switching from Microsoft Windows. And, features 3 editions: Pro (cost $48), Core, and Education.


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LibreOffice 24.2 Available to Install via Ubuntu PPA

Last updated: March 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

For users who prefer native .deb package, LibreOffice 24.2 is finally available to install via Ubuntu PPA!

LibreOffice is the default office suite for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and many other Linux. And, the latest so far is LibreOffice 24.2.x release series that was released a month ago.

The office suite provides official packages for Linux through Flatpak, Snap, Deb/RPM, and AppImage.

However, for Ubuntu users who prefer the native Deb package format, the LibreOffice Fresh PPA maintained by Ubuntu Team members, is a better choice.

“OTOH, it is _way_ _better_ to use packages from this PPA than using the *.deb files that The Document Foundation provides upstream, which are intentionally build against a very old baseline for maximum compatibility. So, _if_ you want to be on the bleeding edge, do it here, not with upstream *.debs.”

And now the PPA finally is updated that contains LibreOffice 24.2.1 for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04. While the Ubuntu 20.04 build is stuck at the last v7.6.5.

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Pithos Pandora Radio Client Released 1.6.2 with Few Fixes

Last updated: March 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

Pithos, the free open-source client for Pandora Radio, released new 1.6.2 version a few days ago.

Pithos is a native app for Linux desktop, allowing to listen to free music through Pandora music streaming service. It’s much more lightweight than the Pandora.com web client, and well integrated with Linux desktop that features media keys, notifications, and the sound menu.

The Pithos 1.6.2 version was released a few days ago with only few bug-fixes. They include:

  • Fix issue where playback would stop after a few songs
  • Fix album art caches never being deleted

Nothing else!


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Kodi 21 “Omega” Gets Its First RC Release

Last updated: March 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

After 3 alpha and 3 beta releases, Kodi media center 21, finally announced its first RC release this Thursday.

Kodi 21 is the next major release that’s still in development. The release features upstream FFmpeg 6.0, adds support for NFSv4, support M3U8 playlist files, AVIF images, HDR10 for Android.

The developer team asks users to try out the new development release and report issues to help to make it better. And, in the current RC1 release, changes include:

  • Allow users to set a subtitle save path
  • Fix that audiobooks showing their last chapter with no duration.
  • For Linux, allow Pipewire to properly identify HDMI for passthrough usage.
  • Implement Hotkeycontroller for media keys on macOS
  • Some color accuracy changes for 10bit SDR/HDR color mapping on Windows.
  • Allows subtitles to be tonemapped to avoid extreme brightness for HDR playback on Android.
  • Fix for icons not being correctly refreshed
  • See github releases page for more.

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GNOME 46 to Add “Variable Refresh Rate” Configure Option

Last updated: March 6, 2024 — Leave a comment

GNOME 46, the default desktop for Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40, will finally have the option to enable Variable Refresh Rate.

Variable Refresh Rate, VRR in short, is a feature for TV, monitor, and other displays, allowing to adjust refresh rate on the fly to match the frame rate of the graphics card. Which, is useful for smoother viewing experience, and reducing screen tearing.

GNOME has the feature request for VRR support 3 years ago. It’s finally merged and planned for GNOME 46, which will be released later this month!

According to this request, it’s an experimental feature. User needs to enable it first either via Dconf Editor or gsettings tool via the command:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['variable-refresh-rate']"

Then, log out and back in. Gnome Control Center, aka Settings, will have the option in “Displays” panel, when you click expand the “Refresh Rate”.

image from gitlab.gnome.org

Once enabled the feature, and selected your preferred value, the Refresh Rate will be displayed as “Variable (up to xxx.xx Hz)”.

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How to Disable CPU Cores to Save Power in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04

Last updated: May 5, 2024 — Leave a comment

This tutorial shows how to disable certain CPU cores in Ubuntu to save power and prevent your machine from overheating.

There are a few tools to manage CPU frequency and save power in Linux today. They include power-profile-daemon (Gnome built-in power mode settings), TLP laptop battery life saving tool, auto-cpufreq, and more.

Besides limiting CPU frequency, turn off few CPU cores is another choice to cool down your PC or laptop. And, Motherboard BIOS settings page usually have a corresponding option. For choice, here’s how to do the job in Ubuntu Linux.

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Varia – Modern New Download Manager for GNOME Desktop

Last updated: March 5, 2024 — Leave a comment

Looking for a download manager for Ubuntu, Fedora, or other Linux with GNOME Desktop? Try Varia!

There are quite a few downloading apps for Linux Desktop. And, uGet is one of them that I prefer, which is however not updated for a few years.

For GNOME, the default desktop in Ubuntu and Fedora Workstation, there’s now a new download manager called Varia. It’s based on aria command line download utility, which is lightweight, super fast (support downloading from multi-sources in parallel), and supports HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, BitTorrent and Metalink.

Varia is written in Python programming language, and uses GTK4 + Libadwaita for its user interface, that’s modern and well integrated with GNOME Desktop.


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