Tag Archives: ubuntu

Ubuntu with Gnome extensions for productivity

Posted on by

Time ago I’ve written about KDE configuration. I’ve been using KDE for a while in my personal laptop, but never really got into using KDE in my workstation. Simply I find Gnome much more productive environment in the long-term. (Disclaimer: likely I’m very biased here since I’ve been using Gnome-like desktops for over 10 years now and those seem natural to me. Still I think KDE is fantastic.)

Gnome3 came with extensions. Those are really cool, but be aware that some extensions may brake from release-to-release. Also some may have certain incompatibilities. Below I’m describing briefly which extensions I’m using currently and why (those should be working fine with both, Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04):

  • Workspace Matrix will arrange your virtual desktops into 2D grid and you can switch easily between rows/columns with Ctrl+Alt+any arrow.
  • Unite (No Title Bar – Forked and PixelSaver have problems with Ubuntu 22.04) will get rid of window titlebar. That’s very useful for small laptop screens, but I’m also using it with dual monitor at work as titlebar is just waste of space…
  • system-monitor will show details about system usage (CPU, RAM, I/O) right in your system tray.
  • Bing Wallpaper Changer gets really good wallpapers daily. You can read a bit more about each picture here – it’s really great resource if you’re looking for some want-to-go places in your vicinity!

On top of that, definitely try:

  • guake is a drop-down terminal. It’s super useful if you need to get quick access to the terminal across multiple desktops. Funny enough I’ve felt in love with yakuake in KDE first and learnt Gnome version is closer to my ideals 😛
  • glances (I’ve discussed GPU support earlier) or htop for process viewing
  • screen (or even better tmux) for terminal multiplexing. This comes handy especially if you work remotely a lot.
  • workrave will remind you to have a break once in a while. Try it, it’s really healthy!

If you find installation/updates of packages slow, definitely check apt-fast

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apt-fast/stable 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get -y install apt-fast

Finally I’d recommend to isolate windows from individual workspaces, both for the dock and app-switcher (this will show only windows from current desktop in the dock and when Alt+TAB / ` are pressed): 

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock isolate-workspaces true
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.app-switcher current-workspace-only true

Above we’ll result in desktop similar to this

Do you have any recommendations or Gnome-related tricks?

Edits:

In order to get rid of terminal title-bar, follow this.

To get extension to work with newer versions of Gnome, edit config file as explained here.

How to setup NVIDIA / CUDA for accelerated computation in Ubuntu 18.04 / Gnome / X11 workstation?

Posted on by

I’ve experienced a bit of difficulties when I’ve tried to enable CUDA in my workstation. Those were mostly related to system lags while I’ve been performing CUDA computations. That was because Gnome/Xserver were using NVIDIA card. I’ve realised you’d be much better of using your discrete graphic card for the system and leaving NVIDIA GPU only for serious tasks 🙂 Note, this will disable NVIDIA GPU for GNOME / X11 and also for gaming, so be aware…

Below I’ll describe briefly how I’ve installed NVIDIA drivers and configured Ubuntu 18.04 with Gnome3 and Xserver for comfortable CUDA computations.

The best if you install CUDA toolking and drivers before you plug the card, as just plugging the card may cause issues with running Ubuntu otherwise (it did in my case). In order to install NVIDIA drivers, just follow official Nvidia guide. 

Then after reboot plug the card to your computer and in the BIOS select integrated card as your main card. In my BIOS it was under Advanced > Built-in Device Options > Select Boot card > CPU integrated or Nvidia GPU.

If you experience any problems, uncomment WaylandEnable=false in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf to use X11 for GDM and Gnome. Don’t do that, if you plan to use Wayland!

Now make sure you have Nvidia plugged in and working. 

# show available graphic cards
lspci -k | grep -A 2 -i "VGA"

If you installed the drivers from NVIDIA website, you may need to restore java

sudo rm /etc/alternatives/java
jpath=/opt/java/jre1.8.0_211/bin
sudo ln -s $jpath/java /etc/alternatives/java

Make sure to switch to integrated graphics card using either

  • nvidia-settings  > PRIME Profiles and select Intel (Power Saving Mode) (this should work for both, X11 and Wayland)
  • or by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf to something like that (if you use Wayland, this won’t work!)
Section "Device"
         Identifier "Intel"
         Driver "intel"
 Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
 EndSection

Reboot your system and make sure Gnome isn’t using NVIDIA GPU (there should be no processes running on your GPU after reboot). 

# check processed running on GPU
nvidia-smi

Now, when you run any CUDA computation, your system shouldn’t be affected by high NVIDIA GPU usage.

Moving to KDE – is it worth it?

Posted on by

I’m Ubuntu enthusiast. However, since Gnome introduction as default in Ubuntu, I’ve been experiencing stability issues. I don’t mind to reboot my laptop from time to time, but my workstation is a different story – often many weeks without reboot.

After many discussions with my friend, I’ve decided to give a try to KDE. I’ve been experimenting with KDE years ago and I found it not straightforward to use. But apparently since version 5 it’s possible to customise KDE to look & feel nearly whatever you like. And I have to admit, I got sucked by it after just a few hours. First of all, it’s very stable, quite lightweight and very practical. It’s also pretty – it doesn’t matter that much for productivity, but it’s nice add-on. I felt in love with drop-down terminal. Setting everything so migration from Gnome was smooth took me a few hours for the first time. But it paid off rather quickly, cause I’m way more productive than before. That’s how my screen looks like more or less.

If you want to try it, I’d recommend trying KDE Neon instead of Kubuntu, as Neon is developed by KDE Community, therefore it’s the purest KDE experience you can get. Below, you can find a list a widgets, applications and customisations which made my life easier (again, big thanks to Maciek for helping with the migration!).

Widgets:

  • (Add widgets)
    • system load viewer [set compact view]
    • Global menu
  • (Add widgets > Get new widgets > Download new plasma widgets)
    • event calendar (replace standard clock & calendar)
  • from github
    • https://github.com/jsalatas/plasma-pstate

Applications (installed through Discover)

  • thermal monitor
  • redshift + redshift control
  • latte
  • dropbox
  • netspeed widget

Terminal

  • yakuake (drop-down terminal activated with F12)
  • workrave
sudo apt install yakuake workrave htop
yakuake &
latte-dock &

Tweaks

I’ll try to keep it up-to-date. Hope someone will find it useful. I did already, while installing Neon on the second and third machine 😉

Copy data from Android phone with broken screen

Posted on by

The screen of the phone broke and you want to retrieve your contacts / files… Quite typical story. While getting your photos / files is quite trivial, plugging your phone to computer and copying necessary files would be enough.
The situation with getting out your contacts (if you happened not to sync them with Google) is slightly more complicated. Here is what I did in the case of Samsung S4 mini with broken screen. Note, the digitizer (touch screen) worked, but the USB debugging was OFF. Also, S4 mini has no video output. If your phone happens to have HDMI or MDL, just get the cable and plug it to your TV / monitor 😉

  1. Enable USB debugging

    2. This is hard part and can be done only manually! But it’s quite complicated with broken screen. You need to repeat 3 steps until you reach what you want: make a screenshot (HOME + POWER button in S4 mini), see what’s on the screen (navigate to you Phone storage > Pictures > Screenshots), do some action and repeat… This is extremely tedious, but proved to work with me.
    In Android 4.4 which my phone had, you need to enter Settings > About, scroll down and press many times (~7 should work) Build Number. This will enable `Developer options` in Settings. You need to enter it and tick `USB Debugging` and press OK (here I needed to rotate the screen, as the right side of my digitizer didn’t work…).
    I recommend clicking `Revoke access` and OK, as my computer couldn’t connect till I pressed it.
    Then unplug the mobile phone and plug it again. New dialog asking for permission to access for your computer will appear on the screen. You should tick `Always allow access` and OK. From now on, the access through ADB is possible. You can check it with: 

    # install ADB
sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb

# connect
adb devices
adb shell

    Note, if your digitizer is working only partially (my case), it’s usefull to enable autorotation first.

  2. Screencast Android to computer monitor
    3. # install seversquare
sudo apt-get install qt4-qmake libqt4-dev libqtcore4 libqtgui4
git clone https://github.com/yangh/sevensquare
cd sevensquare

# for Ubuntu 16.04 replace 5th line of Makefile with 
	(cd build && qmake-qt4 -o Makefile ../seven-square.pro)

# compile
make

# and run
build/seven-square &

    Now, you should see the mobile screen and be able to interact with it your mouse & keyboard. Now exporting contacts should be trivial, right?

I have tried to dump userdata partition, but on original system version there is no root access and getting one would erase the data…

Let me know if there is any simpler solution!

Create Windows USB stick under Ubuntu

Posted on by

Today, I needed to create Windows 10 USB key in order to install it in the laptop. I found it not so straightforward under Ubuntu… But quickly I found a simple solution, WinUSB. 

# install WinUSB
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 && sudo apt update && sudo apt install winusb

# without USB formatting
sudo winusb --install Win10.iso /dev/sdd

# with USB formatting - this didn't work for me, due to boot loaded installation fauilure
sudo winusb --format Win10.iso /dev/sdd

Source: webupd8.

Raspberry Pi2 with Ubuntu Sever and Drupal?

Posted on by

I decided to celebrate 25th B-day of Linux by putting the latest Ubuntu 16.04 on my Raspberry Pi 2 and setting up a webserver.
This is how I did it:

  1. First, get Ubuntu armf image and prepare memory card
    2. # get image
wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases/16.04/release/ubuntu-16.04-preinstalled-server-armhf+raspi2.img.xz

# make sure your SD card is on sdb ie by df -h
xzcat ubuntu-16.04-preinstalled-server-armhf+raspi2.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb
  2. Configure new user & setup Drupal8 webserver
    3. # create new user & change hostname
sudo adduser USERNAME && sudo usermod -a -G sudo USERNAME
# edit /etc/hostname and add `127.0.1.1 newHostname` to /etc/hosts
sudo reboot

# generate locales
sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

# install software
sudo apt install htop apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-sqlite3 php-curl php-xml php-gd git sqlite3 emacs-nox

My first impressions?
sudo apt is veeery slow. At first, I thought it’s due to old SD card I’ve been using, but it’s also true for newer SD card.
Some packages are missing (ie. git-lfs), but you can get them using some workarounds.

But everything just works!
You can check the mirror of https://ngschool.eu/ running on RPi2 here.
Maybe it’s not speed devil, but it stable and uses almost no energy 🙂

Cheers!

Inspired by Ubuntu’s Insights.

Stream audio & video from webcam using VLC

Posted on by

Yesterday, I’ve posted about streaming webcam image to www using motion. This solution, although very simple, has many limitations, lack of sound, usage of high bandwidth and low image quality, just to mention a few. In a way, motion stream is just a set of jpeg files.
In order to solve all of these, I have spend quite some time playing with VLC, an open source cross-platform multimedia player, that is able to transcode and stream audio & video.
Streaming can be started from graphical interface, just go to:

Media >> Stream… >> Capture Device, select your devices, Add HTML destination (ie. :8080/webcam.ogg), select Video-Theora + Vorbis (OGG) profile & press Stream.

You stream will be available at: http://localhost:8081/webcam.ogg

But normally, using command line is preferred under Linux: 

vlc v4l2:// :input-slave=alsa:// :v4l2-standard=1 :v4l2-dev=/dev/video0 :v4l2-width=1280 :v4l2-height=720 :sout="#transcode{vcodec=theo,vb=2000,acodec=vorb,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:http{dst=:8081/webcam.ogg}" -I dummy

Initially, I had problem with streaming sound along with video. Adding, `:input-slave=alsa:// :v4l2-standard=1` solved this. You can try another values for `:v4l2-standard` ie. 0, 1 or 2, depending which microphone you want to use.

Above command will stream HD video (1280×720) in .ogg format (natively suported by most browsers) @ ~2Mbps (2000kbps). If you have slower connection, you can change `vb=2000` to `vb=1000` (~1Mbps) and play with lower resolutions. You can check available resolutions of your camera by:

lsusb -v | egrep -B10 'Width|Height'

This stream, however, is available to everyone. To limit it only to localhost, you can use iptables: 

sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s localhost --dport 8081 -j ACCEPT && sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8081 -j DROP && vlc v4l2:// :input-slave=alsa:// :v4l2-standard=1 :v4l2-dev=/dev/video0 :v4l2-width=1280 :v4l2-height=720 :sout="#transcode{vcodec=theo,vb=2000,acodec=vorb,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:http{dst=:8081/webcam.ogg}" -I dummy

Now, you can create apache2 proxy, similarly to previous post:

# install apache2-utils
sudo apt install apache2-utils
 
# setup new user & passwd
sudo htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/.htpasswd webcam

# configure apache2 - add to your VirtualHost config
    # webcam
    <Location "/webcam.ogg">
        ProxyPass http://localhost:8081/webcam.ogg
        ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:8081/webcam.ogg
        # htpasswd
        AuthType Basic
        AuthName "Restricted Content"
        AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.htpasswd
        Require valid-user
    </Location>

Enable HTTPS for your domains in 5 minutes & for free!

Posted on by

For a while, I’ve been thinking about encryption domains, like this one. But cost & complications associated with enabling SSL encryption prohibited me to do so…
Today, I’ve realised, Let’s encrypt, new certificate authority, that is completely free, automated and open, makes SSL encryption super easy!
Try it yourself (this if for Ubuntu 14.04 & Apache, for another system configuration check https://certbot.eff.org/): 

sudo apt-get install git

sudo git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt /opt/letsencrypt
cd /opt/letsencrypt
sudo ./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d DOMAIN1 -d DOMAIN2

# setup weekly cron autorenewal on Monday at 2:30
sudo crontab -e
# and paste `30 2 * * 1 /opt/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto renew >> /var/log/le-renew.log`

If you wish to redirect all traffic domain through HTTPS, do following:

# enable mod_rewrite engine in apache2
sudo a2enmod rewrite

# add to your apache conf file
    # redirect to HTTPS
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOUR_DOMAIN\.COM*
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/$1 [L,R=301]

# reload apache2 configuration
sudo service apache2 reload

Voilà!

Inspired by digitalocean.
Thanks to @sheebang for underlining the importance of renewing the certificates!

Working with large binary files in git

Posted on by

Git is great, there is no doubt about that. Being able to revert any changes and recover lost data is simply priceless. But recently, I have started to be concerned about the size of some of my repositories. Some, especially those containing changing binary files, were really large!!!
You can check the size of your repository by simple command: 

git count-objects -vH

Here, git Large File Storage (LSF) comes into action. Below, I’ll describe how to install and mark large binary files, so they are not uploaded as a whole, but only relevant chunks of changed binary file is uploaded.

  1. Installation of git-lfs
    2. # add packagecloud repo
curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/github/git-lfs/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

# install git-lsf
sudo apt-get install git-lfs 

# end enable it
git lfs install
  2. Marking and commiting binary file
    3. # mark large binary file
git lfs track some.file

# add, commit & push changes
git add some.file
git commit -m "some.file as LSF"
git push origin master