UbuntuHandbook

Got local music files in your Ubuntu PC/laptop? Here’s how to transfer them to your iPhone.

It’s NOT hard to install iTunes in Ubuntu using Wine in today’s Linux. However, iTunes running in wine does not detect my iPhone, at least in my case in 22.04.

If you just want to transfer music from PC to your iOS device, then you don’t have to struggle with iTunes in Linux. There are easy alternatives! And, VLC is a very popular one of them.

This tutorial is tested on iPhone with iOS 16.1.1, and Ubuntu 22.04 with default GNOME.

Transfer Music from PC to iOS via VLC

1. First, go to “App Store” and install the free open-source VLC media player in your iPhone or other iOS device.

VLC media player in App Store

2. Not sure if it required, but you may launch VLC in iOS for the first time to generate app folder.

3. Now, connect your iPhone or other iOS device into Ubuntu. Then, open “Files” and go to the mounted folder from left panel.

In my case, it’s a phone icon with text “Document on iphone”. In that folder, click VLC icon. Finally, drag’n’drop your music files into the VLC sub-folder.

When done, you can now open VLC in iphone/iOS, and find out the local music files under “Audio” bottom tab.

4. (Optional) If you want to use Apple Music or other app for music playback, then you can save songs to files.

First, navigate to “Songs” tab in VLC. Then, tap top right “circle with 3 dots” icon, and click “Select” to choose all the files.

Finally, use the bottom right icon to open menu to “Save to Files” for all selected music files.

This simple tutorial shows how to install Zoom video communication client in Ubuntu 24.04 desktop.

Zoom is a popular app for video/audio conferencing meetings and live chat. It works on Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS.

For Ubuntu users, Zoom can be installed either via native .deb package and universal Flatpak package. Choose either one that you prefer.

Continue Reading…

There are quite a few ways to transfer files between different machines. For Ubuntu and most other Linux, here’s an easy way for choice.

Usually, I use a USB cable or a messenger app for transferring photo images between my personal PC and mobile devices.

However, my USB cable is always NOT near at hand and I hate to scan QR code again and again on PC for logging 3rd app. In this case, creating a temporary http file server with Python is an easy and good choice.

Upside and downside

Python is pre-installed in most Linux Distros. So this is an universal method for Linux. It also works in Windows and macOS with Python programming language installed.

As a simply http server, any devices with a web browser can download (or upload) files from/to the server side either over local network or internet.

However, http is NOT designed for transferring files. It’s OK to handle small files (e.g., photo images and short videos less than a few hundred MB). But for large files with a few GB or more file size, it may not work! As well, it’s NOT secure for accessing important files outside from local network.

Single command to create a Python http server:

For those who are new to Linux, user may first open file manager, navigate to the folder that contains the files to share with other device, right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal”.

It will open a terminal window and automatically navigate to that folder as working directory.

Or, you can also open terminal from start menu and run cd command to navigate directory. For example, run the command below to navigate to user’s Pictures folder:

cd ~/Pictures

Then, run the single command to start a http file server (For some Linux, replace python3 with python in command):

python3 -m http.server

By default, it listens to port 8000. If the port is already in use, use python3 -m http.server 9090 to set another port number (change number 9090 as you want).

After that, visit http://ip-address:8000 (change number 8000 if you set another port) in any device via a web browser. You can then open and/or right-click save as to download any file from that folder.

Create python http server with upload support

1. If you want to send files from any device to Ubuntu Linux, open terminal and run command:

python3 -m pip install --user uploadserver

Install pip first via sudo apt install python3-pip if the command above does not work. This command will install a Python module uploadserver.

NOTE: For Ubuntu 24.04, this pip install command does NOT work due to policy change. You may either follow this tutorial for workaround, or use the command below instead:

python3 -m pip install --user uploadserver --break-system-packages

2. Then open or navigate to your desired folder in terminal window, and run command to create simple http file server with both download and upload support:

python3 -m uploadserver

Also specify port number if you want, for example, python3 -m uploadserver 9990

3. Finally, visit http://ip-address:8000 in any device via web browser can access and download files. Or, go to http://ip-address:8000/upload for uploading files.

For security reason, you may add a token authentication so client machines need to verify before being able to upload a file. To do so, run the command below instead in Ubuntu Linux:

python3 -m uploadserver -t password_here

Looking for a peer to peer file transfer app that works outside the local network? Warp is the stupid simple application to do the trick for Linux.

There are a few applications for LAN file transferring, such as Warpinator and Dukto. For sending date all over the world, Warp is a new GTK4 app for transferring any arbitrary-sized files and directories without struggling with Linux command or using a cloud service.

The app provides a stupid simple interface with 2 tabs: Send and Receive. Simply click on the “send file” (or folder) button and select your data, it will generate a transmit code.

On another machine with the app installed, type the code in “Receive” tab and click “Receive File” button will start transferring data.

Every file transfer is encrypted using the Magic Wormhole protocol. And, it will directly transfer files on the local network if possible. Though, an internet connection is required to connect to rendezvous server so sender and receiver can find each other over the internet.

How to Install Warp in Linux:

NOTE: The app is in early age that may have bugs. At the moment of writing, it provides binary package for most Linux systems and Chrome OS using Flatpak package.

For Ubuntu, firstly press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the command to install flatpak daemon:

sudo apt install flatpak

Other Linux & Chrome OS may follow this setup guide to install the daemon.

Next, install the app using command:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/app.drey.Warp.flatpakref

For first time installing Flatpak app on Ubuntu 22.04, you need a system restart to make the app icon available in search result.

Once installed, either press Super/Windows key on keyboard and search for and open the app, or run command flatpak run app.drey.Warp to start it from terminal.

Remove Warp file transfer

To remove the app, run command in a terminal window:

flatpak uninstall --delete-data app.drey.Warp

And clean un-used run time via: flatpak uninstall --unused.