Linux Mint Cinnamon vs MATE vs Xfce: Which One Should You Use?

Linux Mint is undoubtedly one of the best Linux distributions for beginners. This is especially true for Windows users that walking their first steps to Linux world.

Since 2006, the year that Linux Mint made its first release, a selection of tools has been developed to enhance user experience. Furthermore, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, so you have a large community of users to seek help.

I am not going to discuss how good Linux Mint is. If you have already made your mind to install Linux Mint, you probably get a little confused on the download section on its website.

It gives you three options to choose from: Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. Confused? I’ll help you with that in this article.

If you are absolutely new to Linux and have no idea about what the above things are, I recommend you to understand a bit on what is a desktop environment in Linux. And if you could spare some more minutes, read this excellent explanation on what is Linux and why there are so many of Linux operating systems that look similar to each other.

With that information, you are ready to understand the difference between the various Linux Mint editions. If you are unsure which to choose, with this article I will help you to make a conscious choice.

Which Linux Mint version should you choose?

Briefly, the available choices are the following:

• Cinnamon desktop: A modern touch on traditional desktop
• MATE desktop: A traditional looking desktop resembling the GNOME 2 era.
• Xfce desktop: A popular lightweight desktop environment.

Let’s have a look at the Mint variants one by one.

Linux Mint Cinnamon edition

Cinnamon desktop is developed by Linux Mint team and clearly it is the flagship edition of Linux Mint.

Almost a decade back when the GNOME desktop opted for the unconventional UI with GNOME 3, Cinnamon development was started to keep the traditional looks of the desktop by forking some components of GNOME 2.

Many Linux users like Cinnamon for its similarity with Windows 7 like interface.

Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop

Performance and responsiveness

The cinnamon desktop performance has improved from the past releases but without an SSD you can feel a bit sluggish. The last time I used cinnamon desktop was in version 4.4.8, the RAM consumption right after boot was around 750mb. There is a huge improvement in the current version 4.8.6, reduced by 100mb after boot.

To get the best user experience, a dual-core CPU with 4 GB of RAM as a minimum should be considered.

Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon idle system stats

Pros

• Seamless switch from Windows
• Pleasing aesthetics
• Highly customizable

Cons

• May still not be ideal if you have a system with 2 GB RAM

Bonus Tip: If you prefer Debian instead of Ubuntu you have the option of Linux Mint Debian Edition. The main difference between LMDE and Debian with Cinnamon desktop is that LMDE ships the latest desktop environment to its repositories.

Linux Mint Mate edition

MATE desktop environment shares a similar story as it aims to maintain and support the GNOME 2 code base and applications. The Look and feel is very similar to GNOME 2.

In my opinion, the best implementation of MATE desktop is by far Ubuntu MATE. In Linux Mint you get a customized version of MATE desktop, which is in line with Cinnamon aesthetics and not to the traditional GNOME 2 set out.

Screenshot of Linux Mint MATE desktop

Performance and responsiveness

MATE desktop has a reputation of its lightweight nature and there is no doubt about that. Compared to Cinnamon desktop, the CPU usage always remains a bit lower, and this can be translated to a better battery life on a laptop.

Although it doesn’t feel as snappy as Xfce (in my opinion), but not to an extent to compromise user experience. RAM consumption starts under 500mb which is impressive for a feature rich desktop environment.

Linux Mint 20 MATE idle system stats

Pros

• Lightweight desktop without compromising on features
• Enough customization potential

Cons

• Traditional looks may give you a dated feel

Linux Mint Xfce edition

XFCE project started in 1996 inspired by the Common Desktop Environment of UNIX. XFCE” stands for “XForms Common Environment”, but since it no longer uses the XForms toolkit, the name is spelled as “Xfce”.

It aims to be fast, lightweight and easy to use. Xfce is the flagship desktop of many popular Linux distributions like Manjaro and MX Linux.

Linux Mint offers a polished Xfce desktop but can’t match the beauty of Cinnamon desktop even in a Dark theme.

Linux Mint 20 Xfce desktop

Performance and responsiveness

Xfce is the leanest desktop environment Linux Mint has to offer. By clicking the start menu, the settings control panel or exploring the bottom panel you will notice that this is a simple yet a flexible desktop environment.

Despite I find minimalism a positive attribute, Xfce is not an eye candy, leaving a more traditional taste. For some users a classic desktop environment is the one to go for.

At the first boot the ram usage is similar to MATE desktop but not quite as good. If your computer isn’t equipped with an SSD, Xfce desktop environment can resurrect your system.

Linux Mint 20 Xfce idle system stats

Pros

• Simple to use
• Very lightweight – suitable for older hardware
• Rock-solid stable

Cons

• Outdated look
• May not have as much customization to offer in comparison to Cinnamon

Conclusion

Since all these three desktop environments are based on GTK toolkit, the choice is purely a matter of taste. All of them are easy on system resources and perform well for a modest system with 4 GB RAM. Xfce and MATE can go a bit lower by supporting systems with as low as 2 GB RAM.

Linux Mint is not the only distribution that provides multiple choices. Distros like Manjaro, Fedora and Ubuntu have various flavors to choose from as well.

If you still cannot make your mind, I’ll say go with the default Cinnamon edition first and try to use Linux Mint in a virtual box. See if you like the look and feel. If not, you can test other variants in the same fashion. If you decide on the version, you can go on and install it on your main system.

I hope I was able to help you with this article. If you still have questions or suggestions on this topic, please leave a comment below.

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/3t61T01
via IFTTT

How to Update openSUSE Linux System

I have been an Ubuntu user for as long as I remember. I distrohopped a little but keep on coming back to Ubuntu. But recently, I have started using openSUSE to try something non-Debian.

As I keep exploring openSUSE, I keep on stumbling upon things that are slightly different in SUSE-worse and I plan to cover them in tutorials on It’s FOSS.

As a first, I am writing about updating openSUSE system. There are two ways you can do that:

• Using terminal (valid for openSUSE desktops and servers)
• Using a graphical tool (valid for openSUSE desktops)

Update openSUSE via command line

The simplest way to update openSUSE is by using the zypper command. It provides full functionality of patches and updates management. It takes care of the file conflicts and dependency problems. The updates also include Linux kernel.

If you are using openSUSE Leap, use this command:

sudo zypper update

You may also use up instead of update but I find it easier to remember.

If you are using openSUSE Tumbleweed, use the dist-upgrade or dup (in short). Tumbleweed is rolling release distribution and hence it is advised to use dist-upgrade option.

sudo zypper dist-upgrade

It will show you the list of the packages to be upgraded, removed or installed.

You’ll be notified if your system requires reboots.

If you just want to refresh the repositories (like sudo apt update), you may use this command:

sudo zypper refresh

If you want to list the available updates, you can also do that:

sudo zypper list-updates

Graphical way to update openSUSE

If you are using openSUSE as a desktop, you’ll have the additional option of using the GUI tools for installing the updates. This tool may change depending on which desktop environment you are using.

For example, KDE has its own Software center called Discover. You can use it to search and install new applications. You can also use it to install system updates.

In fact, KDE notifies you of available system updates in the notification area. You’ll have to open Discover explicitly because clicking on the notification doesn’t automatically take you to Discover.

If you find that annoying, you may disable it using these commands:

sudo zypper remove plasma5-pk-updates
sudo zypper addlock plasma5-pk-updates

I wouldn’t recommend it though. It’s better to get notified of available updates.

There is also the YAST Software Management GUI tool which you can use for more granular control on package managements.

That’s it. It was a short one. In the next SUSE tutorial, I’ll show you some common zypper commands with examples. Stay tuned.

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/3sUwsps
via IFTTT

Use gImageReader to Extract Text From Images and PDFs on Linux

Brief: gImageReader is a GUI tool to utilize tesseract OCR engine for extracting texts from images and PDF files in Linux.

gImageReader is a front-end for Tesseract Open Source OCR Engine. Tesseract was originally developed at HP and then was open-sourced in 2006.

Basically, the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine lets you scan texts from a picture or a file (PDF). It can detect several languages by default and also supports scanning through Unicode characters.

However, the Tesseract by itself is a command-line tool without any GUI. So, here, gImageReader comes to the rescue to let any user utilize it to extract text from images and files.

Let me highlight a few things about it while mentioning my experience with it for the time I tested it out.

gImageReader: A Cross-Platform Front-End to Tesseract OCR

To simplify things, gImageReader comes in handy to extract text from a PDF file or an image that contains any kind of text.

Whether you need it for spellcheck or translation, it should be useful for a specific group of users.

To sum up the features in a list, here’s what you can do with it:

• Add PDF documents and images from disk, scanning devices, clipboard and screenshots
• Ability to rotate images
• Common image controls to adjust brightness, contrast, and resolution
• Scan images directly through the app
• Ability to process multiple images or files in one go
• Manual or automatic recognition area definition
• Recognize to plain text or to hOCR documents
• Editor to display the recognized text
• Can spellcheck the text extracted
• Convert/Export to PDF documents from hOCR document
• Export extracted text as a .txt file
• Cross-platform (Windows)

Installing gImageReader on Linux

Note: You need to explicitly install Tesseract language packs to detect from images/files from your software manager.

You can find gImageReader in the default repositories for some Linux distributions like Fedora and Debian.

For Ubuntu, you need to add a PPA and then install it. To do that, here’s what you need to type in the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sandromani/gimagereader
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gimagereader

You can also find it for openSUSE from its build service and AUR will be the place for Arch Linux users.

All the links to the repositories and the packages can be found in their GitHub page.

gImageReader

Experience with gImageReader

gImageReader is a quite useful tool for extracting texts from images when you need them. It works great when you try from a PDF file.

For extracting images from a picture shot on a smartphone, the detection was close but a bit inaccurate. Maybe when you scan something, recognition of characters from the file could be better.

So, you’ll have to try it for yourself to see how well it works for your use-case. I tried it on Linux Mint 20.1 (based on Ubuntu 20.04).

I just had an issue to manage languages from the settings and I didn’t get a quick solution for that. If you encounter the issue, you might want to troubleshoot it and explore more about it how to fix it.

Other than that, it worked just fine.

Do give it a try and let me know how it worked for you! If you know of something similar (and better), do let me know about it in the comments below.

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/30m6DT5
via IFTTT

How to Install Nvidia Drivers on Linux Mint [Beginner’s Guide]

Linux Mint is a fantastic Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that aims to make it easy for newbies to experience Linux by minimizing the learning curve.

Not just limited to being one of the best beginner-friendly Linux distros, it also does a few things better than Ubuntu. Of course, if you’re using Linux Mint like I do, you’re probably already aware of it.

We have many beginner-focused Mint tutorials on It’s FOSS. Recently some readers requested help with Nvidia drivers with Linux Mint and hence I came up with this article.

I have tried to mention different methods with a bit of explaining what’s going on and what you are doing in these steps.

But before that, you should know this:

• Nvidia has two categories of drivers. Open source drivers called Nouveau and proprietary drivers from Nvidia itself.
• Most of the time, Linux distributions install the open source Nouveau driver and you can manually enable the proprietary drivers.
• Graphics drivers are tricky things. For some systems, Nouveau works pretty well while for some it could create issues like blank screen or poor display. You may switch to proprietary drivers in such cases.
• The proprietary driver from Nvidia has different version numbers like 390, 450, 460. The higher the number, the more recent is the driver. I’ll show you how to change between them in this tutorial.
• If you are opting for proprietary drivers, you should go with the latest one unless you encounter some graphics issue. In those cases, opt for an older version of the driver and see if that works fine for you.

Now that you have some familiarity with the terms, let’s see how to go about installing Nvidia drivers on Linux Mint.

How to Install Nvidia Drivers on Linux Mint: The Easy Way (Recommended)

Linux Mint comes baked in with a Driver Manager which easily lets you choose/install a driver that you need for your hardware using the GUI.

By default, you should see the open-source xserver-xorg-video-nouveau driver for Nvidia cards installed, and it works pretty well until you start playing a high-res video or want to play a game on Linux.

So, to get the best possible experience, proprietary drivers should be preferred.

You should get different proprietary driver versions when you launch the Driver Manager as shown in the image below:

Basically, the higher the number, the latest driver it is. At the time of writing this article, driver version 460 was the latest recommendation for my Graphics Card. You just need to select the driver version and hit “Apply Changes“.

Once done, all you need to do is just reboot your system and if the driver works, you should automatically get the best resolution image and the refresh rate depending on your monitor for the display.

For instance, here’s how it looks for me (while it does not detect the correct size of the monitor):

Troubleshooting tips

Depending on your card, the list would appear to be different. So, what driver version should you choose? Here are some pointers for you:

• The latest drivers should ensure compatibility with the latest games and should technically offer better performance overall. Hence, it is the recommended solution.
• If the latest driver causes issues or fails to work, choose the next best offering. For instance, version 460 didn’t work, so I tried applying driver version 450, and it worked!

Initially, in my case (Linux Mint 20.1 with Linux Kernel 5.4), the latest driver 460 version did not work. Technically, it was successfully installed but did not load up every time I booted.

What to do if drivers fail to load at boot

How do you know when it does not work? You will boot up with a low-resolution screen, and you will be unable to tweak the resolution or the refresh rate of the monitor.

It will also inform you about the same in the form of an error:

Fortunately, a solution from Linux Mint’s forum solved it for me. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Access the modules file using the command:

xed admin:///etc/modules

2. You’ll be prompted to authenticate the access with your account password. Once done, you just need to add the following lines at the bottom:

nvidia 
nvidia-drm
nvidia-modeset

Here’s what it looks like:

If that doesn’t work, you can launch the Driver Manager and opt for another version of Nvidia driver. It’s more of a hit and try.

Install Nvidia Driver Using the Terminal (Special Use-Cases)

For some reasons, if you are not getting the latest drivers for your Graphics Card using the Driver Manager, opting for the terminal method could help.

It may not be the safest way to do it, but I did not have any issues installing the latest Nvidia driver 460 version.

I’ll always recommend sticking to the Driver Manager app unless you have your reasons.

To get started, first you have to check the available drivers for your GPU. Type in the following command to get the list:

ubuntu-drivers devices

Here’s how it looks in my case:

non-free refers to the proprietary drivers and free points at the open-source nouveau Nvidia drivers.

As mentioned above, usually, it is preferred to try installing the recommended driver. In order to do that, you just type in:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

If you want something specific, type in:

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-450

You just have to replace “450” with the driver version that you want and it will install the driver in the same way that you install an application via the terminal.

Once installed, you just need to restart the system or type it in the terminal:

reboot

To check the Nvidia driver version and verify the installation, you can type the following command in the terminal:

nvidia-smi

Here’s how it may look like:

To remove the driver and its associated dependencies, simply mention the exact version of the driver:

sudo apt remove nvidia-driver-450
sudo apt autoremove

And, simply reboot. It should fallback to use the open-source nouveau driver.

install the open-source driver using the following command and then reboot to revert to the default open-source driver:

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau

Installing Nvidia Drivers using the .run file from Official Website (Time Consuming/Not Recommended)

Unless you want the latest version of the driver from the official website or just want to experiment the process, you can opt to download the file (.run) and install it.

To proceed, you need to first disable the X server and then install the Nvidia driver which could turn out to be troublesome and risky.

You can follow the official documentation if you want to explore this method, but you may not need it at all.

Wrapping Up

While it’s easy to install Nvidia drivers in Linux Mint, occasionally, you might find something that does not work for your hardware.

If one driver version does not work, I’d suggest you to try other available versions for your Graphics Card and stick to the one that works. Unless you’re gaming and want the latest software/hardware compatibility, you don’t really need the latest Nvidia drivers installed.

Feel free to share your experiences with installing Nvidia drivers on Linux Mint in the comments down below.

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/3bg2LsM
via IFTTT

How to Turn Off Automatic Brightness on Ubuntu [Quick Tip]

Some new laptops come with built-in integrated light sensor. Operating systems use this sensor to measure the ambient light conditions and change the screen brightness automatically. This helps in reducing eye strain.

You can see that this is a useful feature. But not everyone might like it all the time. For example, while watching Netflix on Linux at night, it reduces the screen brightness at the lowest for me. This makes the movie scene quite dull.

This is one of the many cases when you probably would not want automatic brightness. Turning off automatic brightness on Ubuntu is quite simple. I’ll show that to you in this quick article.

This tutorial is valid for GNOME desktop environment. The command line method should work for MATE desktop as well. If you are not certain, check which desktop environment you are using.

Turning off automatic brightness on Ubuntu

You can find the option to toggle automatic brightness under Power settings.

Press the Windows (also known as Super or Meta key in Linux world) key. This will bring the Activities area and you can search for Settings here.

In the Settings application, go to the Power settings from the left sidebar. Under the Power Saving option, you can see the Automatic Brightness option.

Toggle the button to turn it off or on.

It’s super easy with the GUI, right? Now let’s take a look at the command line method as well.

Alternate method: Turning off automatic brightness in Ubuntu using terminal

GNOME based desktop environments can also access the brightness settings via command line.

Open a terminal in Ubuntu and use the following command to turn off the automatic brightness:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power ambient-enabled false

Similarly, you can set the value to true to enable the automatic brightness again:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power ambient-enabled true

Automatic brightness helps in saving the battery life but it could also become an annoyance, as I had mentioned earlier. I so wish that there was a way to make the automatic brightness not go beyond a certain level.

How about you? Do you prefer using automatic brightness on Ubuntu or other Linux distributions or on your smartphone?

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/3uU6XXa
via IFTTT

You Can Now Install Official Evernote Client on Ubuntu and Debian-based Linux Distributions

Evernote is a popular note-taking application. It was a revolutionary product at the time of its launch. Since then, there have been several such application that allow you to save web clippings, notes etc into notebook formats.

For years, the desktop client of Evernote was not available for Linux. Evernote promised a Linux application some time ago and its beta version is finally available for Ubuntu-based distributions.

Non-FOSS alert!

Evernote Linux client is not open source. It’s been covered here because the application is made available on Linux and we cover popular non-foss applications for Linux users from time to time. This helps with regular desktop Linux users.

Installing Evernote on Ubuntu and Debian-based Linux distributions

Go to the following page on Evernote’s website:

Evernote Linux Beta Program

Scroll down a bit to accept the terms and conditions of ‘early testing program’. You’ll see a ‘Install Now’ button appearing on the screen. Click on it to download the DEB file.

To install the application from the DEB file, double-click on it. It should open the Software Center app and give you the option to install it.

Once the installation completes, search for Evernote in the system menu and launch it.

When you start the application for the first time, you’ll need to log in to your Evernote account.

The first run brings you to the ‘Home screen’ where you can organize your notebooks for even quicker access.

You may enjoy using Evernote on Linux now.

Experiencing the beta version of Evernote Linux client

There are a few annoyances here and there with the software being in beta.

As you can notice in the image above, Evernote Linux client detected the dark mode in Ubuntu and switched to dark theme automatically. However, when I changed the system theme to light or standard, it didn’t change theme application theme immediately. The changes took into effect only after I restarted Evernote app.

Another issue is about closing the application. If you click on the X button to close the Evernote application, the program goes in background instead of exiting.

There is an app indicator that seems like a way to launch a minimized Evernote application, like Skype on Linux. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It opens the Scratch Pad for you to type a quick note.

This gives you another note taking application on Linux but it also presents a problem. There is no option to quit Evernote here. It is only for opening the quick note taking app.

So, how do you quit the Evernote application? For that, open the Evernote application again. If it is running in the background, search for it in the menu and launch it as if you are opening it afresh.

When Evernote application is running in the foreground, go to File->Quit Evernote.

This is something the developers should look to improve in the future versions.

I also cannot say how will the beta version of the program be updated in the future. It doesn’t add any repository. I just hope that the application itself notifies about the availability of a newer version so that users could download the new DEB file.

I do NOT have a premium Evernote subscription but still, I could access the saved web articles and notes without internet connection. Strange, right?

Overall, I am happy to see that Evernote finally made the effort to bring the application to Linux. Now you don’t have to try third-party applications to use Evernote on Linux, at least on Ubuntu and Debian-based distributions. You may, of course, use an Evernote alternative like Joplin that are actually open source.

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/2NVt26Y
via IFTTT

Guake Terminal: A Customizable Linux Terminal for Power Users [Inspired by an FPS Game]

Brief: Quickly access your terminal that is customizable and powerful for a variety of users with Guake Terminal emulator.

Guake Terminal: Top-Down Terminal for GNOME Desktop

Guake is a terminal emulator that’s tailored for GNOME desktop with a top-down design.

It was originally inspired from the terminal seen in an FPS game (Quake). Even though it was initially built as a quick and accessible terminal, it is much more than that.

Guake terminal offers a ton of features, and customizable options. Here, I’ll highlight the key features of the terminal along with the process of getting it installed on any of your Linux distribution.

Features of Guake Terminal

• Keyboard Shortcut (F12) to launch the terminal anywhere as an overlay
• Guake terminal runs in the background for persistent access
• Ability to split tabs horizontally and vertically
• Change the default shell from available options (if any)
• Re-alignment option
• Change appearance of the terminal from a wide selection of color palettes
• Ability to save the content of the terminal to a file using GUI option
• Toggle Full screen option when needed
• You can easily save the tabs or open new tabs when needed
• Ability to restore tabs
• Option to configure and learn new keyboard shortcuts to quickly access the terminal and perform tasks
• Change colors of specific tabs
• Easily rename the tabs to quickly access what you already need
• Quick open feature to open text files directly from your terminal on your favorite editor with a click
• Ability to add your own command or scripts when starting up or showing up the Guake terminal
• Multi-monitor support

Just to have fun, you can do a great deal of things. But, I also believe that power users can make use of the features to make their terminal experience easier and more productive.

For the time I used it to test out a few things and write this article, I felt like I was summoning the terminal to be honest. So, I definitely find it cool!

Installing Guake Terminal on Linux

Guake Terminal is available through the default repositories on Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch.

You can follow its official instructions to know the commands you can use or if you’re using an Ubuntu-based distro, simply type in:

sudo apt install guake

Do note that you may not get the latest version using this method. So, if you want to have the latest version, you can opt to use the PPA by Linux Uprising to get the latest version:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/guake
sudo apt update
sudo apt install guake

In either case, you can also get it using Pypi or from source by referring to the official documentation or the GitHub page.

Guake Terminal

What do you think about Guake Terminal? Do you think of it as a useful terminal emulator? Anything similar that you know of?

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments down below.

from It's FOSS https://ift.tt/3bODGo8
via IFTTT