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Showing posts from May, 2022

Download KompoZer AppImage

What an odd, after many years I remember an old, an ancient app called KompoZer. It was a handy WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) web editor to create HTML web page. Originally, it was a fork, a refinement for an abandoned app called Nvu. But later, KompoZer was also abandoned, following the rise of more dynamic and interactive web development technology. However, it is still usable for us to create a simple web page and I decide to build an AppImage version, based on Ubuntu Precise repository. If you are interested to feel the nostalgia, you could download the KompoZer AppImage from this following URL: KompoZer-0.8.glibc2.15-x86_64.AppImage The packages is built upon Ubuntu 12.04 repository and I've successfully tested it on my Ubuntu 22.04. Enjoy the nostalgia.

Trying the Latest Chromium Browser on Linux

Chromium Browser is the parent of a lot of modern browsers. It is the base of the most used Google Chrome. There are also Brave Browser, Vivaldi, Opera, Microsoft Edge and Falkon, built upon this open source project. Most of those browsers offers us sophisticated features, but basically we crave for a clean, sleek, blazing fast web browser to explore the internet. For this ultimate purpose, Chromium Browser would serve you the best performance. Despite Google has decide to remove the Google synchronization feature, people still find Chromium as one of the best, most practical browser to use. Good news, you can download and try the fresh, newest Chromium Browser on your Linux machine (or Windows and Mac). Installation 1. You can download the Linux binary directly from Google repository at this following page: https://download-chromium.appspot.com/ 2. Extract the archive. There will be chrome-linux folder. 3. Run the binary by clicking it chrome-linux/chrome Performance Every vanilla ver

Krita Segmentation Fault on Ubuntu 22.04

Not as popular as GIMP, but Krita is somehow popular among artists who use pen tablet to draw and edit images. Unfortunately, I found a saddening segmentation fault when opening an image on Krita on my Ubuntu 22.04. Thankfully, there is --again-- an AppImage version at the Krita's official download page and the error doesn't happen. If you're facing same issue with Krita on Ubuntu 22.04, you can grab the AppImage version at https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ Hope this minor bug will be fixed soon.

Error Installing Inkscape 1.2 on Ubuntu 22.04

Inkscape 1.2 has been released. It brings great, long awaited new features, like multiple pages and others. Unfortunately, when I try to install it from its official Inkscape Stable PPA, I got an error like this: dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/inkscape_1%3a1.2+202205241504+da316b6974~ubuntu22.04.1_amd64.deb (--unpack):  trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lib2geom.so.1.1.0', which is also in package lib2geom1.1.0:amd64 1.1-2build1 dpkg-deb: error: paste subprocess was killed by signal (Broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing:  /var/cache/apt/archives/inkscape_1%3a1.2+202205241504+da316b6974~ubuntu22.04.1_amd64.deb From the error message we know that Inkscape 1.2 package comes with lib2geom library and so conflict happens with lib2geom1.1.0 package installed on my Ubuntu 22.04. This hapens because I've already installed Inkscape 1.1 from Ubuntu default repository. If you have Inkscape 1.1 installed on your Ubuntu 22.04, you pr

Microsoft Edge on Linux: Is It Worth to Try?

Years has passed, Microsoft vs Linux dichotomy is now no longer relevant and no longer necessary. No matter your OS preference, in many circumstances you have to deal with other modern operating systems currently exist. Talking about Microsoft, they seems to be more realistic and compromise. There is WSL so you can execute Linux binary on Windows, and the biggest deal breaker is, yes, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Edge is the newest Windows browser, built on the open source Chromium project. From Linux users point of view, their decision to build a completely new browser based on open source technology is a kind of win.  Finally, over years, Microsoft is not only respect open source technology, but use it to build their primary web browser. Not enough, they also release their browser to Linux users so Linux fellows can taste the delicacy. But, is Microsoft Edge legit and worth to try? Installation You can easily download the installer from the official Microsoft Edge download page. If you&

How To Create Application Shortcut Manually

In a very odd situation, sometimes, we need to use a custom binary application to run on our Linux system that doesn't exist in any repository. Let's say, for example, we want to try and install the latest nightly build of Firefox Web Browser. Traditionally, you can easily extract and execute the binary manually by clicking it. But how about install it locally on your user desktop menu? It is easy to "install" your custom binary on your local user folder.  As an example, I want to make the shortcut for Firefox Nightly on my user menu. Here are the steps: 1. Download the binary You can download the latest Firefox binary from its official web page. The binary is compressed as .tar.bz2 format. 2. Extract the binary Using your favorite file manager, right click at the .tar.bz2, and choose Extract. You will get a folder named firefox . 3. Install on your home directory Either use file manager or by command line, put the extracted folder firefox into /home/user/.local/bin

Exaile: A Forgotten Music Player

There were a lot of music players on Linux. Some has been abandonded, some still survive until today. In the early 2007, when I met Linux for the first time, I didn't know how to play my music collection. Ubuntu, Fedora and other major Linux distributions didn't support proprietary multimedia formats like mp3. At the time, I converted all my mp3s into ogg, in order to be able to be played on the default Linux media player. Time passes, later I know that I have to install additional codecs. Also, there are a lot of media players I can use to play music and video. XMMS, Amarok, Rhythmbox and Audacious probably the most popular music player we all know. But among those apps, there is a player called Exaile Music Player. Exaile is a music player originally designed to resemble Amarok 1.4 interface, but built on GTK. I never use the app frequently but I know that it delivers a very similar interface and experience to Amarok 1.4. Happily, after a quite time in dormant status, Exaile

Best Alternative Menus for KDE Plasma 5

Unlike Windows and Mac OS, Linux has more rich desktop environments you can choose to deliver best desktop experience. There are some major desktops now commonly used: KDE, GNOME, XFCE and MATE. Every desktop offers their own beauty and features. I've explored all those beautiful and unique desktops and in the end, I choose KDE Plasma as my main, daily desktop to deliver best Linux desktop experience.  While GNOME offers its own unique Linux experience, KDE has layout similar to Windows desktop: a panel, menu, taskbar and system tray. Both looks good and easy to use, but I personally love the KDE menu at the left bottom panel.  KDE plasma comes with a default menu called Kickoff. The latest Kickoff is already gorgeous and simple and efficient. But there are also alternative menus for KDE you can install easily from KDE Store. In this post, I want to share three most beautiful alternative menu for KDE Plasma. Installation It is super easy to install altenative menu to your KDE Plasm

GIMP Eyedropper Doesn't Work on Ubuntu 22.04

GIMP has became my primary image editor since I found Linux in early 2007. Unfortunately, I found a little issue with GIMP 2.10.30 on my Ubuntu 22.04 LTS: the eyedropper doesn't work. I've been searching for the solution but it seems there isn't any clear, confirmed workaround to fix this. I don't even know what's happening. In my previous Ubuntu 21.10, everything worked seamlessly. After looking around the GIMP forums, I've finally found a "temporary solution". There is an AppImage GIMP repository that I can download and use the package, and thankfully works fine. There are some builds, the latest build for 2.10.x branch is GIMP 2.10.25. If you're experiencing the same issue like me, you can download and use the GIMP AppImage package from this following repository: https://github.com/aferrero2707/gimp-appimage/releases/tag/continuous Hope the issue will be solved soon.  

Strawberry Music Player Review: Great Amarok 1.4 Incarnation

Sweet Nostalgia I've been using Linux desktop as my main OS since 2007. There were sweet and fun memories about how I struggled to learn and use Linux Desktop as my daily system. I've tried several Linux distros, desktop environments and applications. One of my favorite application was called Amarok 1.4. It was a great music player with simple UI but came with the most complete UX you can find in a music player. Amarok 1.4 was a part of KDE sofware version 3.5.x. Unfortunately, when KDE turned to version 4.x branch, Amarok has been changed. Many Amarok fans includes me, are not really happy with the direction. We are still fond of that beautiful Amarok 1.4 and from that point, I switch to Audacious music player. Thankfully, there are kind hearted developers who finally forked Amarok 1.4 to a newer Qt4 application, called Clementine. It is a big news so that several distros include Clementine as their main music player (like OpenMandriva). Time goes on, now we are in the KDE Pla

How To Install Firefox DEB Easily on Ubuntu 22.04

Ubuntu is now pushing its portable package manager (snap) as the default, alternate package management. Started from 21.10, Firefox is now delivered as Snap by default. If you're using a decent machine with SSD, you probably won't notice a significant speed issue. But if you're still play around with an older gear, Firefox snap will load slower than previous, deb version. There are simple ways to install Firefox DEB version on your Ubuntu 22.04: 1. Uninstall Firefox Firstly, of course, you have to uninstall the default Firefox snap version: sudo apt remove firefox 2. Install Firefox ESR Firefox ESR is similar to Ubuntu LTS. It is a stable, longer supported Firefox version you can use safely. There is an official Firefox ESR PPA repository you can use: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa sudo apt update sudo apt install firefox-esr 3. Install Firefox Beta If you prefer the newest Firefox version, you could use Firefox Beta PPA:  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillatea

How To Disable Snap Permanently on Your Ubuntu

Portable software packaging in Linux is now emerging. There are, at least three most popular portable software packages in Linux: AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap. Beside the security promised by the technology, based on my experience, those portable packages are still far from mature, especially the speed. Unfortunately, Ubuntu is pushing Snap as the default alternate package manager beside APT. There are basic apps now delivered as snap by default: Chromium and Firefox. If you prefer APT, you could disable Snap permanently from your Ubuntu system. Here are the steps to get rid snap from your Ubuntu: 1. Uninstal snap sudo apt-get purge snapd* 2. Disable snap in apt preferences Use your favorite text editor: sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref Put this line of codes: Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -10 Save the file. 3. Update apt sudo apt update Now, everytime you try to install a package related or depends on snap, you will get an error. Alternatively, you have to

How To Pin PPA Repository on Ubuntu

Personal Package Archives (PPA) is a great software repository service from Ubuntu to its users, to be able to upload and use personal repository to install various software with specific purposes (mostly used by software developer to store their newest source code). If you want to use the PPA version as default repository in your Ubuntu system, you have to pin the repo so APT will use it as default repository. For example, I want to make Firefox Beta PPA as the default repository to install Firefox Browser on my Ubuntu system. Here are the steps to pin Firefox Beta PPA to be the default repo: 1. Add the repo: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next sudo apt update 2. Find out the repo release sudo apt-cache policy Find the repo release in the output lines. Started with o=LP-PPA     3. Create pin configuration Use your favorite text editor: sudo gedit /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox-next.pref Put this line of codes: Package: * Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam-firefox-next

How To Fix OpenShot Error / Failed To Run on Ubuntu 22.04

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS has been released. Without hesitate, I upgraded my machine to enjoy some new updates. Unfortunately, OpenShot Video Editor was failed to run with these kind of following error messages: INFO Connecting to libopenshot with debug port: 5556 I tried to reinstall the app but was still no luck. This is kind of really sad, because OpenShot is my primary video editor to edit videos casually on Linux. It is simple, fast, but reliable to deliver nice video from your Linux machine, to streaming media. In despair, I randomly installed unstable OpenShot channel trough PPA, and it worked! So basically, these are, for now, the step to fix the OpenShot error and failed to run on Ubuntu 22.04: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openshot.developers/libopenshot-daily sudo apt update sudo apt install openshot-qt python3-openshot