GNOME’s built-in screen recorder is probably the rare (and lone) one that works if you are using Wayland. But that screen recorder has no visible interface and features you expect in a standard screen recording software.
Thankfully, there is a new application in development that provides a bit more feature than GNOME screen recorder and works okay-ish on Wayland.
Meet Kooha: a new screen recorder for GNOME desktop
Kooha is an application in the nascent stage of development. It can be used in GNOME and it is built with GTK and PyGObject. In fact, it utilizes the same backend as the GNOME’s built-in screen recorder.
Here are the features Kooha has:
Record the entire screen or a selected area
Works on both Wayland and Xorg display servers
Records audio from microphone along with the video
Option to include or omit mouse pointer
Can add a delay of 5 or 10 seconds before start the recording
Supports recording in WebM and MKV formats
Allows to change the default saving location
Supports a few keyboard shortcuts
My experience with Kooha
I was contacted by its developer, Dave Patrick and since I desperately want a good screen recorder, I immediately went on to try it.
The screen recording worked in 21.04 but it could still not record the audio from the microphone.
There are a few more things that I noticed and didn’t work smoothly to my liking.
For example, while recording the counter remains visible on the screen and is included in the recording. I wouldn’t want that in a video tutorial. You wouldn’t like to see that either I guess.
Another thing is about multi-monitor support. There is no option to exclusively select a particular screen. I connect with two external monitors and by default it recorded all three of them. Setting a capture region could be used but dragging it to exact pixels of a screen is a time-consuming task.
There is no option to set the frame rate or encoding that comes with Kazam or other legacy screen recorders.
Installing Kooha on Linux (if you are using GNOME)
Please make sure to enable Flatpak support on your Linux distribution. It only works with GNOME for now so please check which desktop environment you are using.
Use this command to add Flathub to your Flatpak repositories list:
You may run it from the menu or by using this command:
flatpak run io.github.seadve.Kooha
Conclusion
Kooha is not perfect but considering the huge void in the Wayland domain, I hope that the developers work on fixing the issues and adding more features. This is important considering Ubuntu 21.04 is switching to Wayland by default and some other popular distros like Fedora and openSUSE already use Wayland by default.
And yet here I am talking about it again. Why? Because the scenario is slightly different and several It’s FOSS readers have asked questions about this particular scenario.
Here’s the scenario: you got a new computer. It comes with a SSD with limited disk space like 120 GB and an additional HDD with 500 GB or 1 TB disk space. This is usually the scene with gaming laptops where large disk space matters for storing game files but SSD is required for faster boot and computing experience. 1 TB SSD would increase the system price a lot and hence this particular combination of SSD and HDD.
Now, if you want to dual boot on a system with two disks, you may get confused about where should you be installing Linux.
You have three options:
Install Linux completely on the SSD. You’ll get full advantage of SSD speed, but then you will have only a limited disk space.
Install Linux completely on the HDD. You’ll have plenty of disk space, but Linux will boot slower, and you won’t get the SSD advantage.
A compromise between SSD and HDD. You keep the root (and thus swap and boot) on SSD and you put your Home directory on HDD. This way, you boot faster into Linux and you have plenty of disk space for your personal documents and downloads.
There is also a fourth option here. You keep root as well as home on SSD. And you make a partition on the HDD and then soft link it to your Music, Videos and Downloads folder. This way, application-specific files like browser caching utilize the SSD and other big files stay on HDD. But this could be complicated to set specially with fast boot enabled on Windows which would mean special efforts to auto-mount the partitions.
I recommend going with the third option for dual booting on separate hard drives and this is what I am going to show you in this tutorial.
Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows on a system with SSD and HDD
I have used an Acer Predator gaming laptop in this tutorial to install Ubuntu alongside Windows. The tutorial should work for other hardware manufacturers and Linux distributions.
I advise reading through all the steps first and then follow the tutorial on your system.
Prerequisite
Here are the things you need in this tutorial:
A computer that comes preinstalled with Windows 10 and has both an SSD and an HDD.
A USB key (pen drive or USB drive) of at least 4 GB in size and no data on it.
Internet connection (for downloading Ubuntu ISO image and live USB creating tool).
Optional: External USB disk for making back up of your data.
Optional: Windows recovery disk (if you encounter any major boot issues, it could be fixed).
Step 1: Make backup of your data
Since you’ll be dealing with disk partitions, it will be wise to make a copy of your important files on an external disk. This is optional but having a backup is always a good idea.
You can use an external HDD (slower but cheaper) or SSD (faster but expensive) and copy the important files and folders on it.
Step 2: Make disk partition for Ubuntu installation
In the Windows menu, search for disk and go to ‘Create and format hard disk partitions’.
You’ll see both SSD and HDD here. You have to shrink both SSD and HDD one by one and make some free space that will be utilized later for installing Ubuntu Linux.
Right click on the SSD and choose Shrink Volume option.
It will give you the largest possible disk partition you can make here. Don’t use it all. Leave some extra space for Windows. I have given it 30 GB which is a decent disk space for the root partition. Anything between 20 and 40 GB is a fair choice.
Repeat the process with the HDD as well. I made around 200 GB of free space for Linux. You are free to decide how much space you want to allocate to Ubuntu.
Here’s what the final disk scenario looks like for my system. 29.3 GB free space on SSD and 195.3 GB free space on HDD.
Step 3: Download Ubuntu
Go to Ubuntu’s website and download the ISO file. If you need torrents, you can find it under the ‘alternative downloads’.
You can easily create bootable Ubuntu USB in Windows, Linux and macOS. Since the focus here is on Windows, you can use a Windows specific tool like Rufus. Etcher is also a good tool in this regard.
Plug in your USB. Make sure it doesn’t have any important data because it will be formatted.
Run the Rufus tool. It automatically identifies the plugged in USB but double check it anyway. Then browse to the location of the downloaded ISO image and ensure that it uses GPT partitioning scheme and UEFI target system.
Hit the start button and wait for the process to complete. Once you have the live Ubuntu USB ready, the next step is to boot from it.
Step 5: Boot from the live USB
You may choose to access the boot settings when the system starts by pressing F2/F10/F12 button but a more robust way is go through Windows.
In the Windows menu, search for UEFI and then click on ‘Change advanced startup options’:
Under the Advanced startup option, click on Restart now button.
On the next screen, click on ‘Use a device’:
Recognize the USB disk with its name and size. It may also be displayed as EFI USB Device.
Now it will power off your system and reboot into the disk you chose which should be the live USB disk. You should see a screen like this:
Step 6: Installing Ubuntu Linux
Now that you have booted from the live USB, you may start the installation procedure. The first few steps are simple. You choose the language and keyboard.
Choose your language
Choose keyboard layout
On the next screen, choose Normal installation. No need to download updates or install third-party software just yet. You may do it after installation completes.
After some time you’ll see the Installation type screen. Here, opt for ‘Something else‘ option:
You should see the free space you had created earlier on the next screen. Select the free space created on SSD (you can guess by its size if nothing else) and click on the + sign to use this free space.
By default, it will take the entire free space which is a good thing. Keep the partition type primary.
What you need to change is the file system type to Ext4 and mount point to / (/ means root in Linux).
Now, select the other free space on the HDD and click the + sign.
This time choose Home as the mount point. Partition remains primary and file type ext4.
You don’t need to worry about ‘Device for boot loader installation’. You have a pre-installed Windows UEFI system. You should have an EFI partitioning (ESP) already (for me it’s 100 MB partitioning with type efi). The Ubuntu installer is intelligent and can automatically detect this partition and use it for Grub bootloader.
This is the final partitioning scheme for my system. If everything looks good, hit the Install Now button.
Things are pretty straightforward from here. Select a timezone.
Enter a username, computer’s name, i.e. hostname and an easy to remember password.
Now wait for like 7-8 minutes for the installation to finish.
Restart the system when the installation finishes.
Restart after installation completes
You’ll be asked to remove the USB disk. Remove the disk and press enter.
Remove USB and press enter
If things go right, you should see the black or purple grub screen with option to boot into Ubuntu and Windows.
You can choose the operating system from the grub screen
That’s it. You can now enjoy both Windows and Linux on the same system with SSD and HDD. Nice, isn’t it?
I hope this tutorial was helpful to you. If you still have questions or facing any issues, let me know in the comment section, and I’ll try to help you out.
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.
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.
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
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.
