Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop Picture

10 Major Updates In Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark

20/10/2017

Comments

10 Major Updates in Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark
So there you have it finally, Ubuntu 17.10. The release which we have been talking about because of its switch to Gnome from Unity. We’ve talked about most of its features in a previous article here but let’s again look at the final version of Ubuntu 17.10. At the end of this article, do take a poll and tell us if you’re going to upgrade to Ubuntu 17.10 or not.

What’s New In Ubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark”?

1. GNOME is the default Desktop

​As all of us know that the Canonical had planned to switch to GNOME in its 18.04 version but it could not wait that long. So Canonical has switched to GNOME in 17.10 which is nice. Why wait for something which most Ubuntu users want?

2. Wayland is the default display server

3. Linux Kernel 4.13

4. Dock

Ubuntu 17.10 has a dock using dash to Dock GNOME shell extension. It makes the environment look like unity.
Install Wine to run Windows Apps

Install Wine And Run Windows Apps in Linux

All kinds of software are currently available on Linux but every now and then, there is that Windows software or Game which is not available or has no equivalent on Linux  Wine makes it possible to run those Windows programs and games on your Linux desktop. So let’s look at how to install Wine on Linux and run Windows apps on Linux desktop.

How to install Wine in Linux?

Installing a package on a fresh system is remarkably straightforward. Just download the package available for your distro and install it using your system’s installation utility. Wine works on a huge amount of different Linux distributions and installing Wine should be no more difficult than installing any other software. Chances are that there is a Wine package in your software app for easy installation.

Or you can follow the steps below to install from the PPA.

Install Wine on Fedora or Derivatives

Fedora 24
dnf config-manager –add-repo https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/fedora/24/winehq.repo
Fedora 25
dnf config-manager –add-repo https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/fedora/25/winehq.repo
Fedora 26
dnf config-manager –add-repo https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/fedora/26/winehq.repo
Install one of the following packages:
Stable branch
dnf install winehq-stableDevelopment branch
dnf install winehq-develStaging branch
dnf install winehq-staging

Install Wine on Ubuntu or Derivatives

If your system is 64 bit, enable 32-bit architecture (if you haven’t already):
sudo dpkg –add-architecture i386
Add the repository:
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key
sudo apt-key add Release.key
sudo apt-add-repository https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/
On Linux Mint 17.x, change the last line to the following:
sudo apt-add-repository ‘deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ trusty main’
On Linux Mint 18.x, change the last line to the following:
sudo apt-add-repository ‘deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ xenial main’
sudo apt-get update
Then install one of the following packages:
Stable branch
sudo apt-get install –install-recommends winehq-stableDevelopment branch
sudo apt-get install –install-recommends winehq-develStaging branch
sudo apt-get install –install-recommends winehq-staging

If there are missing dependencies reported by apt-get, install them and do the update and install again.
Timeshift Restore picture

Timeshift System Restore Utility

TimeShift is a system restore tool for Linux. It provides functionality that is quite similar to the System Restore feature in Windows or the Time Machine tool in MacOS. TimeShift protects your system by making incremental snapshots of the file system manually or at regular automated intervals.
These snapshots can then be restored at a later point to undo all changes to the system and restore it to the previous state. Snapshots are made using rsync and hard-links and the tool shares common files amongst snapshots in order to save disk space. Now that we have an idea about what Timeshift is, let us take take a detail look at setting up and using this tool. ​​

How to install Timeshift in Linux?

For Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros such as Mint

Packages are available in my Launchpad PPA for supported Ubuntu releases. Run the following commands in a terminal window:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install timeshift

Keywords:

System Restore Utility, System Restore Utility Programs, System Restore Utility Software, What Is A System Restore Utility, What Is System Restore Utility

Synfig Screenshot

Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Adobe Products for Linux

Adobe provides a number of applications under Adobe Creative Suite, now under Adobe Creative Cloud. It’s not just limited to Photoshop but contains various other software that helps primarily in Web design, logo making, video editing, pdf editing and more.

However, Adobe Creative Suite is a proprietary software costing you a good amount of your money and if you are a Linux user, even if you are willing to spend that money, it’s not available for your OS.

In this article, we are going to cover some of the best Adobe products alternative for Linux.

Best Adobe alternatives for Linux

If you are not in a mood of reading the article, you can watch this video from our YouTube channel. Do subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Linux related videos.

I have included one non-FOSS item in this list. This is because I really couldn’t find a decent alternative to Adobe Acrobat in Linux.

For the rest, here we go!

1. GIMP: Alternative to Adobe Photoshop

GIMP Interface

Adobe Photoshop is the most popular and widely used graphics editing tool both for regular and professional users. It’s an excellent tool for photo editing, website design, and graphics creation.

When it comes to an alternative to Adobe Photoshop, GIMP provides the best replacement.

Read More

Make USB Stick

CREATE BOOTABLE WINDOWS USB STICK FROM LINUX

The WinUSB fork we covered a while back was renamed to WoeUSB recently, while also seeing quite a few releases for the past few days.

 

WoeUSB

 

WoeUSB / WinUSB is a tool that can be used to create a bootable Windows installer USB stick from an ISO or DVD. The application supports Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, as well Windows 10, and can be used either with a GUI or from the command line.
As for supported bootmodes, WoeUSB / WinUSB can create a bootable Windows USB installation stick using the following:
  • Legacy / MBR-style / IBM PC compatible bootmode;
  • Native UEFI booting is supported for Windows 7 and later images (with a limitation: only FAT filesystem can be used as the target filesystem).
Since it was forked from Colin Gille’s WinUSB, the application has seen a major code refactoring, bug fixes as well as some minor new features. The changes include:
  • support for both wxWidgets 2 and 3;
  • use pkexec instead of gksudo for privilege escalation;
  • UEFI boot support;
  • numerous bug fixes.

Some newer WoeUSB changes include:

  • support customizing the –label of the newly created filesystem in –format mode;
  • implement checking on target filesystem in –install mode;
  • command line: check if target media is busy before continuing and bail out when the target partition is mounted;
  • support Linux distributions that uses “grub2” as prefix name, such as Fedora;
  • –install and –format installation options are deprecated in favor of –partition and –device, to be more clear what both options will do. The old options will still be available until WoeUSB v3.0;
  • from now on, GRUB will pause when the ENTER key is used before starting to load Windows. This is useful if you want to see if there are errors in the GRUB loading stage.

Also, since the application name has changed, the executables have changed as well: “woeusbgui” for the GUI and “woeusb” for the command line tool.

You can see what’s new in each new WoeUSB release (there were 13 new releases for the past 2 days) on GitHub.

Despite the major code refactoring and numerous bug fixes, I still encountered an error using the WoeUSB GUI, which I also found in the original WinUSB. When the Windows USB stick is completed, WoeUSB displayed the following message: “Installation failed ! Exit code: 256”. This bug was closed on GitHub and it looks like it doesn’t affect the actual Windows USB stick in any way.

In my test, I was able to install Windows 10 64bit in VirtualBox (on an Ubuntu 17.04 host) despite this error.

Read More

Bluetooth in Linux

Set Up Bluetooth in Linux

Bluetooth is still very important in the world today given that a wide range of devices rely on its protocol to perform various operations. Most laptops come with built-in Bluetooth adapters, but even if yours doesn’t, external Bluetooth dongles are cheap and plentiful in supply.

Having Bluetooth properly set up on your machine allows you to use a Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, headset or any Bluetooth accessories you might own.

Unfortunately, it’s a hit or miss in Linux. I haven’t had Bluetooth working out of the box across the range of hardware and distros I have tried.

But usually once you’ve installed a few packages and made a few tweaks, everything works flawlessly, at least that has been my experience.

So if you’ve had trouble connecting to your Bluetooth accessories from your Linux PC, this post should help.

First, you need to install the required packages on your computer. If you’re on Ubuntu or an Ubuntu-based distro, run the following command:

sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez bluez-tools rfkill

Next, make sure your Bluetooth device is not blocked. You can verify that using the rfkill utility:

Read More

Bluetooth In Linux Mint, Bluetooth In Linux, Bluetooth In Linux Kernel, Enable Bluetooth In Linux, Bluetooth Linux Config, Bluetooth Enable Linux, Bluetooth On Linux Mint, Bluetooth On Linux Ubuntu, Install Bluetooth In Linux System, Bluetooth Virtualbox Linux

Install Ubuntu Linux On Windows 10 In 24 Steps

Introduction

This guide will show you how to download and install Ubuntu Linux on Windows 10 in such a way that it won’t harm Windows. (You can find uninstall Ubuntu instructions here.)

The upside to following this guide is that Ubuntu Linux will only run when you tell it to and it doesn’t require any special partitioning of your disks.

The method used to install Ubuntu is to download a piece of software called Virtualbox from Oracle which allows you to run other operating systems as virtual computers on top of your current operating system which in your case is Windows 10.

What You Will Need

In order to install Ubuntu Linux on Windows 10 you will need to download the following applications:

Steps Required To Run Ubuntu Linux On Windows 10

  1. Download Oracle Virtualbox
  2. Download Ubuntu
  3. Download Virtualbox Guest Additions
  4. Install Virtualbox
  5. Create a Ubuntu virtual machine
  6. Install Ubuntu
  7. Install Virtualbox Guest Additions

What About Windows 7 And Windows 8 Users

Here are some alternative guides for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users

01
of 25

Download Oracle Virtualbox

Keywords:

How To Install Ubuntu Linux On Windows 10, Install Linux Ubuntu With Windows 10, Install Ubuntu On Windows 10 Computer, Install Ubuntu On Windows 10 Uefi, Install Ubuntu Windows 10 Usb

Run Your Browser In Firejail

Objective

Install Firejail and use it to sandbox applications, like web browsers, that interact with the open Internet.

Distributions

This will work with any current Linux distribution.

Requirements

A working Linux install with root privileges.

Difficulty

Easy

Conventions

  • # – requires given command to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
  • $ – given command to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Introduction

The single biggest threat to your Linux system is your web browser. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. A browser is a large and complex piece of software with the ability to execute code, and it accesses the open Internet and executes just about everything that it comes into contact with.

The best way to handle this problem is by compartmentalizing your browser, or any other Internet-facing application, away from the rest of your system. This way, it can’t do nearly as much damage if it is compromised. That’s what Firejail is for. Firejail is a sandboxing program that allows programs to run in individual sandboxes with their own set of parameters, limiting their contact with the rest of your system. Firejail is easy to use, and it’s available in the repositories of nearly every major distribution, except for Fedora and CentOS.

Install Firejail

Debian/Ubuntu

$ sudo apt install firejail

Fedora/CentOS

Download the Firejail .rpm from their Sourceforge page https://sourceforge.net/projects/firejail/files/firejail/, and install it manually.

# rpm -i firejail_X.Y-Z.x86_64.rpm

OpenSUSE

# zypper install firejail

Arch Linux

# pacman -S firejail

Gentoo

# emerge --ask firejail

Basic Usage

To run an application through Firejail, you only need to prefix the command with firejail.

$ firejail firefox

Firefox will start up like it usually would, but contained in it’s own sandbox. This will work with virtually any application that you can think of, including command line ones.

$ firejail tar xpf somefile.tar.gz

Firejail will stay running as long as the application does. Even if you’re using something that’ll be open for a while, you don’t have to worry about Firejail stopping and your application being insecure. Actually, if something like that does happen, the application will stop too. You can also use Firejail along with graphically intensive programs. It won’t slow them down much, if at all.

$ firejail wine64 '~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/World of Warcraft/Wow-64.exe'

Passing Arguments

There are tons of features available through flags in Firejail. You probably won’t ever use most of them, but you can certainly check them out in Firejail’s man page. The couple detailed here are the most common.

–seccomp

The --seccomp flag tells Firejail to filter out and block any of a number of system calls. It has it’s own default list of system calls that it will block by default, but you can also specify them with --seccomp=syscall,syscall. Just add --seccomp to your regular Firejail command to use it.

$ firejail --seccomp firefox

–private

The --private flag acts sort of like a private window in a web browser does. It creates a separate sandbox in temporary storage and deletes itself after you close the application.

$ firejail --private firefox

Of course, you can string them together.

$ firejail --seccomp --private firefox

Firejail Profiles

Firejail has independent configurations for most of the programs that you’d commonly run it with. It refers to them as, “profiles.” These profiles pass specific flags and bits of configuration to Firejail by default whenever the corresponding program is run. You don’t need to do anything for Firejail to use it’s default profiles. If you want to modify the profiles or create your own, you can copy them into your local directory at ~/.config/firejail/.

Firejail By Default

There are a few ways to get Firejail to run by default with a program. The easiest is probably to modify the launchers of the programs that you plan to use Firejail with. That can be tedious, though, and you don’t necessarily need to do it. If you want Firejail to run with every program that it has a default profile for, you can run a simple command as root, and Firejail will set itself up.

# firecfg

If you don’t with that wide range of programs using Firejail by default, you can manually set the ones that you want.

# ln -s /usr/bin/firejail /usr/local/bin/firefox

This creates a symbolic link between firejail and the program being run. Substitute the actual path for your system and program.

Closing Thoughts

Firejail is an excellent way to compartmentalize applications on Linux and keep a potential breach quarantined before it even happens. It also has potential for stopping bugs from bringing down more than just the program that they affect. With how easy it is to use, there’s no reason not to run Firejail your system.

Read Article

Linux iptables

Secure Your Linux Desktop with Iptables

Linux may have a reputation for security, but it isn’t perfect. Many distributions also don’t have the best security defaults, so it’s best to implement some best practices for security. One such example is using a firewall.

There are a few options for firewalls in Linux, but most are actually just wrappers around iptables. For this guide we will show you how to work with iptables directly.

Iptables is the Linux kernel firewall. It comes with every Linux distribution, and it’s the most direct way to control traffic coming into and out of your computer.

Iptables has a reputation for being complex, and it can be. You don’t need to know everything about iptables to use it effectively on your desktop, though. You just need some basic knowledge of how it works and how its rules are structured.

All iptables rules follow the same basic structure. Each rule is a single-line command to iptables that tells it how to handle traffic on a specific port. Take a look at the example below:

-A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED --sport 80 -j ACCEPT

That might look like a lot, but it’s really simple when you break it down. First, this rule begins with -A because it will append onto your iptables rules.

Next, the -i flag specifies the interface that the rule is for. In this case, it’s eth0. When you write your own rules, make sure that you know which interface you’re connected to your network through.

The following flag, -p, names the protocol. This rule is for tcp, which is Web traffic.

The -m flag is a little different. It is used to assert that there is a condition that must be met in order for traffic not to be rejected. The condition in this rule is the state.

State is actually the next flag. You need to give --state a list of acceptable states written in all caps and separated with commas. This rule accepts both new and established connections.

The second to last flag here is --sport. It stands for “source port,” and it tells iptables where the traffic is coming from. There is also a --dport flag that stands for “destination port.” It’s used for OUTPUT rules for handling which port traffic is arriving from.

Finally, there’s the -j flag. It tells iptable which action to “jump” to. In this case it should ACCEPT the traffic that meets the previous conditions.

Read More

Keywords:

How To Secure Your Linux Desktop, Linux Securetty, Secure A Linux Server, Secure A Linux System, Secure Linux, Secure Linux Client, Secure Linux Configuration, Secure Linux Desktop, Secure Linux Distro, Secure Linux Embedded, Secure Linux Installation, Secure Linux Iptables, Secure Linux Mint, Secure Linux Os, Secure Linux Ubuntu, Secure Linux Ubuntu Server, Secure Linux Workstation, Secure Uefi Linux

Speed up your Mint

Speeding up your Linux Mint is fun! That way, you’ll get more performance out of your computer for free.

Note: are you using Ubuntu? There’s a separate page for speed tips for Ubuntu.

There are several tweaks to make Linux Mint 18.x run faster. Some are quite safe, some are risky. Here you’ll find only the safe ones.

I don’t like risky tweaks, because I think that stability and reliability are much more important than a little speed gain. That’s why I’ve collected a couple of speed tips, that you can apply safely and with which you can make your Mint run considerably faster in many cases.

Those tips are mainly how-to’s that can be found elsewhere on this website as well, but scattered all over the site. I’ve bundled them on this page, that only deals with speed gain.

Note: even though you can apply those tips safely, nothing in life is really for free…. You always pay some “price”. You disable a particular system service, a couple of nice visual effects or some feature.

Each tweak therefore has its own “price tag”. So you should consider before you apply a tip, whether you’re willing to pay the “price” for it.

Read More