News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
Loupe is the core image viewer app for GNOME since version 45, but it’s so far not made default in Ubuntu.
It’s a fully adaptive image viewer that supports mobile form factors. It’s touch-friendly that supports 2-finger swipe left/right to navigate, 2-finger pinch/stretch to zoom out/in, and 2-finger gestures to rotate images.
Other features of Loupe include fast GPU accelerated image rendering, tiled rendering for vector graphics, sandboxed image decoding, and more.
GNOME 46, the default desktop environment for next Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40, now is in Beta stage. It’s now the best time for developers to test their applications and shell extensions.
Gnome 46 features explicit Global Search for the Files, redesigned Privacy settings page, added new System panel in Gnome Control Center, and support headless remote login. See more new features about GNOME 46.
The Beta release was announced few days ago, and it marks the start of the UI, feature and API freezes. The changes in the release include:
Songs view, and drop old-style selection modeFor more about the beta release and installer image for testing purpose, see the official announcement. And, the final release of GNOME 46 will be available in next month, see the Wiki page for schedule.
This simple tutorial shows how to get rid of the “Mobile Broadband” menu option from the upper right system status menu in GNOME Desktop.
GNOME, the default desktop in Ubuntu and Fedora Workstation, has built-in support for mobile broadband. If your computer (usually laptop) has a built-in SIM card slot, then it will show you the “Mobile Network” page in Settings and “Mobile Broadband” option in upper right menu.
For those who rarely use this feature, the option is useless but makes the menu longer. So, it’s a good choice to completely disable it!
This simple tutorial shows how to install and enable the Classic Gnome 2 style desktop session in Ubuntu 22.04 and/or Ubuntu 24.04.
Though the title said for Ubuntu, this tutorial also works in Debian 12 & 11. Fedora, Arch, and their based systems also have corresponding packages for the similar job.
As far as I know, there are 3 ways to get back the classic Gnome 2 layout. They include:
gnome-flashback -traditional desktop session based on GNOME technologies.gnome-shell-extensions – Classic Gnome 2 layout through some Gnome Shell extensions.MATE Desktop – a free open-source fork and continuation of Gnome 2 Desktop.
GNOME 46 reached UI, ABI/API, and feature freeze stage today. Let’s see the top new features in this popular desktop environment.
GNOME 46 will be the default desktop environment for Fedora 40 Workstation, Ubuntu 24.04, and optional in Arch, Manjaro, etc Linux.
It continues polish the desktop appearance by redesigning the improving the core app experiences.
GNOME Files, aka Nautilus, to have explicit Global Search mode, allowing to find files and folders in all search locations. And a “Search Settings” button is available to filter search results.
This simple tutorial shows how to disable (or auto-delete) “recent” files tab in left side-bar of file manager in Ubuntu 24.04 & 22.04.
GNOME Files, aka Nautilus file manager, has a “Recent” tab in left side-bar, which include all the recent opened photos, videos, and documents.
It’s useful for user or applications to quickly re-open recent edited files. However, when working at a public place, it can be better to disable this feature since it may contain sensitive data.
GNOME announced the first alpha of the next 46 release few days ago on last Friday.
Let’s see what’s new in the desktop for next Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
First of all, every Gnome release has a new default wallpaper. This time, it’s a blue background embrace the rounded triangle. And, in this release GNOME backgrounds now favors JPEG-XL as a format. I don’t have any photo images in .jxl format. But it seems that Gnome now supports for setting the file format as background wallpaper.
Gnome 46
GNOME Remote Desktop now supports headless remote login via GDM, through for RDP only. And, a systemd service is introduced for single user headless setups. As well, Gnome-Control-Center and classic session are allowing to run in headless mode.
Don’t remember how many tools, I’ve written about, for monitoring CPU, RAM, Network, and other system resources usage in Ubuntu. But, there’s a brand-new for GNOME, the default desktop environment.
It’s Astra Monitor, a free open-source tool provides highly customizable interface on Gnome top-panel, to monitor CPU, GPU, RAM memory, disk storage, network usage, as well as hardware temperature, voltage, and fan speed.
It supports displaying the data in real-time bar, history graph, percentage number, with user selected order, in left, center, or right corner of panel.
Aster Monitor on GNOME Panel
Besides having quick glance at system resource usage, user can also click on the indicator icon to pop-up a rich drop-down menu with detailed information. By moving cursor over the menu can also display even more about the hardware, resource load, processes, and so forth.
Continue Reading…
Gnome Files, aka the default Nautilus file manager in Ubuntu & Fedora workstation, keeps moving with new features!
In the passed few month, there are minor but beginner friendly features merged into this popular file manager. They include “Enter Location” menu option, sidebar toggle button in sidebar, and badge icon to folder icon in ‘properties’ dialog.
NOTE: The new features introduced in this post are merged to master branch but NOT released yet! They may be available in next GNOME versions, backport to current, or even removed!
Fedora workstation displays Fedora logo on the desktop for the default wallpaper, now there’s an extension that can do the similar job in Ubuntu Desktop, Arch, and Manjaro Linux with GNOME 42 ~ 46.
It’s “Desktop Logo”, which allows to add any user selected image into desktop as background logo, resize and place it in top-left, top-center, top-right, center, bottom-left, bottom-center, or bottom-right of screen.
