News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
GNU Emacs text editor released new 30.1 version on Sunday with many new features.
Emacs is finally ported to Android operating system. Though, it requires to be compiled on another computer with Android NDK, SDK and Java compiler. See the “INSTALL” file under java sub-folder of the source for details.
Geany, the small and fast IDE, released version 2.0 hours ago! Here are the new features as well as how to install guide for Ubuntu users.
Changes in Geany 2.0 according to the official release note:
Geany does not provide official packages for Linux. Besides building from source code, user can choose to use the universal Flatpak package or an unofficial Ubuntu PPA.
Option 1: Flatpak package
The Flatpak package is an universal package format can be installed in most Linux, however it runs in sandbox.
To install Geany as Flatpak package, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run the 2 commands one by one:
sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.geany.Geany.flatpakref
After installation, search for and launch Geany from either overview screen or start/application menu depends on your desktop environment.
NOTE: For first time installing Flatpak app, needs a log out and back in to make app icon visible.
Option 2: Ubuntu PPA
For those who hate running app in sandbox, I’ve uploaded the package into this unofficial PPA. So far, it supports for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, and Ubuntu 23.10 on x86_64, arm64/armhf CPU architecture types.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When terminal opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/geany
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2. Linux Mint users may need to manually refresh system package cache after adding PPA, though it’s done automatically in Ubuntu 20.04 and higher.
To do so, run command:
sudo apt update
3. Finally, install Geany 2.0 as well as plugins by running command:
sudo apt install geany geany-plugins
After successfully installed the packages, search for and launch the IDE from overview or application menu and enjoy!
For Geany IDE installed as Flatpak package, just run the command below to remove it:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.geany.Geany
Also, run flatpak uninstall --unused to clear useless run-time libraries.
For the IDE installed from Ubuntu PPA, remove it by running command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):
sudo apt remove --autoremove geany geany-plugins-common
Also, remove the PPA either by running command in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/geany
Or, use “Software & Updates” by removing the source line under ‘Other Software’ tab.
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 xtermThere are as well new ex commands, functions, variables and operators. See more about Vim 9 via its news page.
Vim offers official AppImage package, along with the source tarball they are available to download at the link below:
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
This simple tutorial shows how to install the GNU Emacs text editor 29.3 and keep up-to-date in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04.
GNU Emacs text editor has reached v29.x release series for few months, though Ubuntu still has v27.1 in its universe repository. For those would like to install/upgrade the editor, here are 3 different ways to do the trick in Ubuntu and its based systems.
Snap is an universal Linux package format that runs in sandbox. It works on most Linux, and updates automatically when a new release is published. GNU Emacs is available as Snap with support for amd64 modern PC/laptop, arm64/armhf, ppc64el and s390x processors.
Ubuntu user can simply search for and install the package from Ubuntu Software. There are multiple app packages in software center, select install the one from “Snap Store”.
Install Emacs from Ubuntu Software
For other Linux, it’s available to install via https://snapcraft.io/emacs
For those do NOT like applications run in sandbox, there’s an Ubuntu PPA contains the native .deb package for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 24.04.
Like the Snap and Flatpak packages, it’s a third-party repository. Though the maintainer has been working on the PPA for more than 5 years. Also, it supports for amd64, arm64/armhf, and ppc64el CPU architecture types.
1. Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Run command to remove the old emacs package if any, since it conflicts to the package from PPA.
sudo apt remove --autoremove emacs emacs-common
2. Then, run the command below to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/emacs
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
3. Then run the command to update system package cache, which should be done automatically in Ubuntu 20.04 and higher during adding PPA.
sudo apt update
4. Finally, install Emacs via command:
sudo apt install emacs emacs-common
Here you may replace emacs with emacs-nox for text-only interface.
The text editor is also available as the universal Flatpak package which runs in sandbox. Like Snap, the package runs in most Linux and it’s easy to update. However, it takes more disk space due to run-time libraries.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to install the flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
2. Then, install Emacs as Flatpak via command:
flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gnu.emacs.flatpakref
The Emacs Snap, Flatpak and Deb packages can be installed all together in your system. So, there may be duplicated app icons when you try to launch the editor.
To remove the Snap package, either use Ubuntu Software or run command in terminal:
sudo snap remove emacs
To remove the Flatpak package, use command:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.gnu.emacs
And clear useless runtime via flatpak uninstall --unused.
To remove the Deb package, run command:
sudo apt remove --autoremove emacs emac-common
And remove the Ubuntu PPA via command:
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/emacs
The free open-source text and source code editor, Atom, is reaching the end of life!
Github, who is behind the editor, announced on June 8:
Today, we’re announcing that we are sunsetting Atom and will archive all projects under the organization on December 15, 2022.
Atom is cross-platform code editor developed by Github, the code hosting platform itself. It’s promoted as a “hackable text editor for the 21st Century”, as it is fully customizable in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The end-of-life announcement explained that Atom has no significant feature development for the past several years. The community involvement has declined significantly. So, they decided to sunset the project.
You know, Atom is a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Visual Studio (VS) Code. And, Microsoft acquired Github on June 4, 2018. That could be the real reason (IMO) though it takes 4 years 😄.
Anyhow, there are 6 months until the developer team archive the atom/atom repository. It’s time for those still using Atom to migrate to an alternative solution.
There are quite a few good alternatives to Atom. Though I’m not a software developer, there are Sublime Text, Visual Studio (VS) Code, PyCharm, Brackets, Notepad++ as I know.
Ghostwriter, free and open-source markdown text editor, released version 2.1.0 with some new features. Here’s what’s new and how to install in Ubuntu.
Ghostwriter is a cross-platform, aesthetic and distraction-free Markdown editor works on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. It comes with live HTML preview, dark and light mode, focus mode, hemingway mode, autosave, MathJax, and built-in Cheat Sheet in the sidebar (toggle via F1) in case you forgot some Markdown syntax.
By releasing v2.1.0, it now auto-saves untitled documents to a draft folder, and provides a button in ‘Preferences’ to open that folder (it’s user Documents folder in my case).
And, it loads the last opened file on startup while providing an option to toggle on/off this feature. The bottom status bar can now display a different statistic. By clicking on it, you may choose to display how many words, characters, pages, sentences, paragraphs, or read time, write time, wpm, etc.
The text editor has an official PPA that so far supports for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 21.04. The Ubuntu 21.10 package is somehow not updated at the moment, you may check the link page though.
1.) Add the PPA:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run the command below to add the PPA repository:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wereturtle/ppa
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.
2.) Refresh system package cache by running command in terminal. This is done automatically in Ubuntu 20.04 & higher while adding PPA, but some Ubuntu based systems may not.
sudo apt update
3.) Finally install ghostwriter via command:
sudo apt install ghostwriter
The software team also maintains Copr repository for Fedora 33/34/35 and rawhide users. Simply open terminal and run commands below one by one will install it in Fedora:
sudo dnf copr enable wereturtle/stable
sudo dnf install ghostwriter
To remove the markdown editor, open terminal and run command:
sudo apt remove --autoremove ghostwriter
And remove the Ubuntu PPA using “Software & Updates” utility under Other Software tab:
This tutorial shows how to install the lightweight text editor Textadept via ppa in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and Linux Mint.
Textadept is a fast, minimalist, and ridiculously extensible cross-platform text editor for programmers. Written in a combination of C and Lua and relentlessly optimized for speed and minimalism over the years, Textadept is an ideal editor for programmers who want endless extensibility without sacrificing speed or succumbing to code bloat and featuritis.
Features:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
Update package lists:
sudo apt-get update
Install the Editor:
sudo apt-get install textadept
Enjoy!
Highlights of Emacs 24.3 include:
There are many more changes; for a summary see the etc/NEWS file, which you can view from Emacs with `C-h n’.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cassou/emacs
Then update package lists on your system:
sudo apt-get update
After that, you can install or upgrade via synaptic package manager, which is available in Ubuntu Software Center. Or just run below command:
sudo apt-get install emacs24
Enjoy!
