Posts Tagged ‘System software’
Linux Mint 20 Beta is Ready
Linux Mint announced the immediate BETA release of its upcoming version Linux Mint 20 “Ulyana”.
Scheduled for the end of June 2020, Linux Mint 20 promises plenty of new features in its primary three flavors XFCE, Cinnamon, and MATE.
This beta release is the pre-final version to iron out last-minute bugs and is available for download immediately.
Before you hit download, here are the upcoming changes in the Linux Mint 20 which you should check out now before your final experience with Linux Mint 20.
What’s New in Linux Mint 20
Linux Mint 20 is dropping support for 32-bit images officially and only to be available as a 64-bit image. That means the older computers will not be able to run the latest Linux Mint. But if you are having an older system setup running Linux 18.x, 19.x – they will continue to run but will not be getting security and other updates when support ends.
It is based on the current Ubuntu 20.04 LTS release and available with three desktop environment variants – Cinnamon, XFCE and MATE.
Linux Mint, Linux Mint Cinnamon, Linux Mint Editions, Linux Mint Mate, Linux Mint Releases, Linux Mint Upgrade
List Installed Packages on Debian
Apt is a command-line interface for the package management system and combines the most commonly used functionalities from apt-get
and apt-cache
including option to list installed packages.
To lists all packages installed on your system run the following command:
sudo apt list --installed
adduser/stable,now 3.115 all [installed] apt/stable,now 1.4.8 amd64 [installed] apt-listchanges/stable,now 3.10 all [installed] apt-utils/stable,now 1.4.8 amd64 [installed] autoconf/stable,now 2.69-10 all [installed] automake/stable,now 1:1.15-6 all [installed] autotools-dev/stable,now 20161112.1 all [installed,automatic] base-files/stable,now 9.9+deb9u5 amd64 [installed] base-passwd/stable,now 3.5.43 amd64 [installed] bash/stable,now 4.4-5 amd64 [installed]
The command will display a list of all installed packages including information about the packages versions and architecture. The rightmost column in the output shows whether the package was automatically installed as dependency of another package.
Since the packages list is long it is a good idea to pipe the output to the less
command to make it easier to read:
sudo apt list --installed | less
To find out whether a specific package is installed use the grep command to filter the output. For example to find whether the tmux package is installed on the system you can use:
sudo apt list --installed | grep tmux
tmux/stable,now 2.3-4 amd64 [installed]
The output above shows that you have screen tmux 2.3-4 installed on your system.
List Installed Packages with dpkg-query
dpkg-query
is a command line that can be used to display information about packages listed in the dpkg database.
To get a list of all installed packages type:
sudo dpkg-query -l | less

The command will display a list of all installed packages including the packages versions, architecture and short description.
You can filter the dpkg-query -l
output using the grep
command:
sudo dpkg-query -l | grep package_name_to_search
Create a List of all Installed Packages
The following command will store the list of all installed packages on your Debian system to a file called packages_list.txt
:
sudo dpkg-query -f '${binary:Package}n' -W > packages_list.txt
Now that you have the list, you can install the same packages on your new server with:
sudo xargs -a packages_list.txt apt install
To find out how many packages are installed on your system you can use the same command as when creating a packages list but instead of redirecting the output to a file you can pipe it to the wc
command to count the lines:
sudo dpkg-query -f '${binary:Package}n' -W | wc -l
The output will show the number of the installed packages:
466
Read More
Apt-get Add Repository
Debian Apt, Debian Linux, Debian Or Ubuntu, Debian Packages, Debian Ubuntu
Install & Manage Flatpak Applications
You might have realized almost all Linux distros provide the same software but differing versions. One such example is, a distro comes bundled with the latest version of LibreOffice (let’s say v6.0.3) and another distro comes bundled with LibreOffice but not the latest (let’s say v5.2.7). Flatpak is here to eradicate that issue.
But alas there’s this situation when the computer doesn’t belong to you; you’re on a standard user account, and you encounter a situation in which the computer asks administrative password to install the program. Great news! Flatpak applications can be installed for a standard user account also called per-user mode and not system-wide. Read on below how you can achieve that.
Browsing Flathub
Install Flatpak from Flathub
How To Uninstall Flatpak
So the actual syntax for uninstalling any flatpak app is:
flatpak uninstall <app name> –user
The disadvantage with installing and uninstalling any flatpak app is their very long weird application names. And in case you forget what the name for the application was you installed a long time ago, you could execute the command below to see the list of currently installed flatpak applications on your standard user account:
Conclusion
Flatpak Apps, Flatpak Chrome, Flatpak Example, Flatpak Install, Flatpak Linux, Flatpak On Ubuntu, Flatpak Repo, Flatpak Store, Flatpak Ubuntu
Install Paperwork on Ubuntu
Objective
The objective is to install Paperwork on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
Operating System and Software Versions
- Operating System: – Ubuntu 18.04
- Software: – Paperwork 1
Requirements
Privileged access to the operating system
Difficulty
MEDIUM
Conventions
- # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of
sudo
command - $ – given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user
Introduction
Paperwork is a note-taking and archiving alternative to Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Google Keep, with the advantage of being FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), meaning it that can be hosted on the user premises, which is a requirement for people and businesses worried about privacy.
Paperwork is comprised of collections
that contain notebooks
of notes
. Notes can be shared with other users. Tags can be assigned to notes that can also have documents attached to them. The user interface has translations to 23 languages. It’s also worth mentioning that there is an API that is useful for integration with other software.
The project web page mentions that version 2 is a major rewrite that is at an early development stage, meaning it’s not usable yet. While we wait for the shiny new version, we’ll cover how to have version 1 running on the latest Ubuntu LTS release.
Version 1 was released in 2014 and is written in the LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP) using Laravel 4 framework and other Web technologies, like AngularJS and Bootstrap.
For this article we first tried to build a docker image, using the docker-compose file listed in the project’s Git repository, but the build is broken in multiple ways. We then reverted to the conventional form of installation, adapting the 16.04 manual for installing Paperwork in Ubuntu to version 18.04, and it proved to be a rather long, but easy sequence of steps to follow. The major setback is that 18.04 Bionic Beaver comes with a newer PHP (version 7.2) and the extension mcrypt
has been deprecated and moved to PEAR (a repository of PHP code) — but you will see that this difficulty can be easily overcome.
Before committing few hours to have your own instance running, it may be worth having a taste of Paperwork at a cloud-hosted provider, namely Sandstorm or Cloudron.
Once you’re ready to install Paperwork, notice that the steps below assume a clean installation of Ubuntu Server 18.04 Bionic Beaver. For Ubuntu Desktop the guide will be almost the same, except for the first step.
Instructions
Add Universe Repository
For Ubuntu Server, you have to add the Universe repository to install some packages (npm, nodejs, php-mbstring). Ubuntu Desktop already has the Universe repository enabled so this step can be skipped.
# add-apt-repository universe
Install package dependencies.
It will download 87.1 MB which will use 449 MB of disk space. Here we notice some differences from the set of packages required for 16.04.
# apt install wget git npm zip libmcrypt-dev mysql-server php-mysql nginx php-fpm curl php-cli php-gd nodejs php-xml php-mbstring php-pear php-dev
Install mcrypt
The mcrypt
PHP extension has long been abandoned and has been moved to PEAR. As it’s a dependency for Paperwork version 1, it needs to be installed with pecl.
sudo pecl channel-update pecl.php.net sudo pecl install mcrypt-1.0.1 (when asked, just press enter)
You also have to add extension mcrypt.so
to php.ini for both, the cli
and fpm
instances. Two methods are shown below. Notice that php-fpm will only load (and be aware of) mcrypt
after it’s reloaded in step 13. Adjust the below PHP version number where appropriate.
# sed -i.bak '927iextension=mcrypt.so' /etc/php/7.2/cli/php.ini # sed -i.bak '927iextension=mcrypt.so' /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
Or
# pico /etc/php/7.2/cli/php.ini # pico /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini Add extension=mcrypt.so
Install composer
Composer is a dependency manager for PHP.
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
Download Paperwork
Download Paperwork from GIT.
# cd /var/www/html/ # git clone -b 1 https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork.git
Function mcrypt_get_iv_size deprecated
Besides the entiremcrypt
extension, the functionmcrypt_get_iv_size
has also been deprecated. As a consequence, an error message will be thrown later into the user interface when the application is accessed by the browser. We must instruct PHP ignore it by adding a line to app/config/app.php.
# cd paperwork/frontend/ # sudo sed -i.bak '3ierror_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_DEPRECATED);' # app/config/app.php
Prepare the database
Create the database and a database user
# mysql DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS paperwork; CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS paperwork DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON paperwork.* TO 'paperwork'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'paperwork' WITH GRANT OPTION; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; quit
Populate the database
When asked, answer with “y”.
# php artisan migrate
Install PHP dependencies
Install PHP dependencies through composer.
# composer install
Install gulp and bower
Then install npm and bower dependencies.
sudo npm install -g gulp bower sudo npm install sudo bower install --allow-root sudo gulp
Change the ownership of files
Change the ownership of Paperwork directory to www-data
.
sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/
Nginx configuration
Edit or replace Nginx default site.
# pico /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
server {
listen 80;
# listen 443 ssl;
root /var/www/html/paperwork/frontend/public;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com;
# server_name example.com;
# ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/server.crt;
# ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on the php-fpm socket
location ~ .php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Restart services
Restart Nginx and PHP.
$ sudo service nginx restart $ sudo service php7.2-fpm restart
Access Paperwork
Now you can open Paperwork in your browser using localhost if the installation is local, or the IP address of the machine where it is installed. You should see a welcome page that initiates the setup wizard.
Run the Wizzard
First, the wizard checks that all dependencies and assets are in place. Then it sets the database connection (server, port, username, password, database). Next, it will ask for the definition of some system settings. And, finally, it will ask for the registration of the first user account.
Login
Login with the newly created user account, and happy note-taking!
Conclusion
Paperwork is being rewritten from scratch, with different technologies (mostly Javascript), and will be completely different than version 1. While we wait, version 1 can be installed in Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver by following a long, but easy sequence of commands to follow.
In the end, Paperwork is a great FOSS alternative to proprietary software that can be installed on the user premises. It has some interesting features and let us excited waiting for the next version.