Senin, 12 Februari 2018
Sabtu, 10 Februari 2018
Rabu, 07 Februari 2018
Resize Images with Right Click on Ubuntu and Other Linux Distributions [Quick Tip]
Brief: A Quick tip that shows how to resize images with right click menu in Linux quickly. The trick should work on any Linux distribution that uses Nautilus file manager.
How do you resize an image on Linux? Do you use GIMP or Shutter? Or perhaps you use ImageMagick in the terminal.
As I often need to resize the image before uploading them on It’s FOSS, Shutter was my favorite tool for this task until now. Shutter is an excellent screenshot tool that allows some quick editing features. However, if you just need to change the size, length and width of an image, opening an entire tool and going through menu options can be saved by using a nifty Nautilus plugin.
What’s Nautilus? Nautilus is a file manager used by GNOME and several other desktop environments. This is where you visually see your files. It’s equivalent to Windows Explorer in Linux.
There are several Nautilus plugins available that enhance its capability. They are not installed by default as they server specific purpose and users can choose to install them as per their needs.
One such Nautilus plugin is called Image Manipulator and it allows you to rotate or resize images by right-clicking on an image and choosing the option of rotating or resizing.
Quickly resize images with right click in Linux
Before you try to install the Nautilus plugin for quickly resizing images, I advise that you verify if your Linux system uses Nautilus file manager or not. To check that, use the command below:
nautilus --version
If you get an output with version numbers, you have Nautilus file manager on your system. Else, your Linux distribution is using some other file manager.
Once you have made sure that you have Nautilus file manager on your system, you can install the plugin using the command below:
sudo apt install nautilus-image-converter
If you are using Fedora, Arch or other non-Debian Linux, you can use your distribution’s package installing command.
Once installed, restart Nautilus using the command below:
nautilus -q
Now if you right click on an image, you’ll see two new options of resize and rotate in the context menu.
You can choose the resize option to resize the image right from the right-click menu quickly. It will present you a few options for resizing the image. It doesn’t retain the aspect ratio though.
It might not be a path-breaking trick but it does save you a few clicks.
To remove the plugin, you can use the command below:
sudo apt install nautilus-image-converter
And then restart the Nautilus. Simple!
I hope you liked this quick tip. If you know some neat little trick, do share with rest of us.
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SoftMaker Office 2018 is Now Available for Linux
Brief: Premium office suite SoftMaker has released its latest version for Linux. The new version comes with ribbon interface, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office and several other improvements.
Last week we saw the release of LibreOffice 6.0. This week we have SoftMaker 2018 office suite released for Linux.
SoftMaker is a premium office suite available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is neither free nor open source and this is the reason why I didn’t include it in the list of best open source office suites for Linux.
However, if you don’t care for the open source part and you are not happy with LibreOffice, you can have a try at SoftMaker. It is a feature rich office product with a modern and intuitive UI. Compatibility with Microsoft Office is a big plus for SoftMaker office.
SoftMaker office has four products:
TextMaker: Word processing application
PlanMaker: Spreadsheet application
Presentations: Presentation application
Thunderbird “powered by SoftMaker”: Thunderbird with plugins to manage emails, tasks and appointments
New features in SoftMaker 2018 Linux
Here are some of the new features in SoftMaker 2018:
- Includes modern ribbon interface with option to switch to the classic view
- Uses GNOME’s standard file dialogs
- Documents can be tabbed with option to drag them to open in a new window
- Uses DOCX, XLSX and PPTX natively to provide seamless compatibility with MS Office documents
- New 2D and 3D animations and slide transitions based on OpenGL
- Includes “presenter view” where presenter’s monitor displays current and upcoming slides while the viewers see the current slide in full view
- Available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. This is the first 64-bit release for Linux.
Download SoftMaker 2018
With my conversation with a number of Linux users, I know that many people have to deal with MS Office for business purposes. LibreOffice, though excellent, is not often the best solution in such cases. Going back to Windows just for an office product should be avoided. One can either use something like CrossOver or SoftMaker and keep on using Linux happily.
As I mentioned earlier, SoftMaker is proprietary software and the pricing starts at 70 Euro for a one-time license for five computers. Upgrade to a new major version is sold separately but you can choose to continue using your existing purchased version.
Good thing is that you don’t have to throw your money without trying. SoftMaker offers a 30 days free trial period.
You can easily install SoftMaker using the DEB and RPM packages for Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora. There is also a tar package for installing SoftMaker for other distributions.
SoftMaker 2018 is already released for Windows while work is in progress for macOS version.
Quick Note: I know this question will be raised (again) as to why I am covering a non-FOSS product on a website called “It’s FOSS”. To clarify, at It’s FOSS we have the focus on two things: Open Source and Linux. As a desktop Linux user, I cover stuff that relates to Linux even when it is not FOSS. But if it helps an average Linux user, then why not.
By the way, which office suite do you use on Linux?
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Senin, 05 Februari 2018
How to Install VLC 3.0 in Ubuntu and Other Linux Distributions
Brief: The upcoming major release of VLC is going to bring a number of improvements including Chromecast support. Here’s how to install VLC 3.0 in Ubuntu Linux right now.
The open source video player VLC 3.0 has been in the development for several years now. The good news is that development is 97% complete for the upcoming version and we should be seeing VLC 3.0 stable release in some days or weeks, hopefully.
VLC 3.0 Features
Here are some of the main new features coming to VLC 3.0:
- Chromecast support
- Limited 360-degree video and audio support
- HTTP/2 support
- Now uses OpenGL
- Support for network browsing with Samba, FTP/SFTP, NFS, and other protocols
- Autodetect external audio tracks (ac3, m4a, aac, dts…), similar to subtitles
- Adaptive streaming
- Improved support for Wayland
- Support for more codecs
You can find all the changes in VLC 3.0 in the release note.
How to install VLC 3.0 on Linux right now
Please note that VLC 3.0 is not stable yet. If you opt to use the unstable VLC 3.0, you may encounter some issues like program crash or poorly behaving functionalities. If you want a stable system with things working normally, avoid using an unstable application.
If you are a little impatient and want to try VLC 3.0 before its release, you can use the official PPA of the daily build. However, I would advise waiting for the final stable release.
This article is written using Ubuntu and the commands mentioned should work for other Linux distributions.
The easiest way is to use Snap package of VLC. You can use it alongside your current VLC install. The default channel of VLC snap package uses VLC 3.0 release candidate.
If you are using Ubuntu 16.04 or higher, you should already be able to use Snap packages. But for other distributions like Linux Mint, elementary etc, you can use the command below in a terminal to enable Snap package support:
sudo apt install snapd
Once you have made sure that your system has Snap package support, time to install VLC 3.0. All you need to do is to use the command below:
sudo snap install vlc
Install VLC 3.0 on Ubuntu when it is released (stable)
VLC 3.0 stable is not released yet.Even when VLC 3.0 stable version is released, it will be some time before your Linux distribution makes it available. So either you download VLC 3.0 from its website or you can use the stable PPA (if you use an Ubuntu-based distribution).
At present, this PPA will just install (or upgrade to) latest stable VLC release.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc
Install VLC 4.0 in Ubuntu right now (highly unstable and not recommended at all)
It is surprising that even though VLC 3.0 stable is not released, the work on VLC 4.0 has already started. I won’t recommend using it unless you have strong reasons to try out the unstable release.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/master-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc
I also recommend reading this article about removing PPA so that you can uninstall the applications installed using a PPA.
What say?
I had been waiting for VLC 3.0 for some years because it had Chromecast support. Which would mean I could cast the local media to the TV using Chromecast. Alas! As VLC 3.0 is close to its final release, I don’t have a Chromecast anymore. The charm of VLC 3.0 is lost on me.
What about you? Are you looking forward to VLC 3.0? Will you install VLC 3.0 before its release?
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