This is our FLOSS apps recommendation for Android users who use F-Droid alternative play store. You will find many of these apps similar to what we Ubuntu users already benefit from for years. Enjoy!

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Web browser: 

In F-Droid you do not find Firefox. We recommend Fennec, it is the Firefox Mobile for Android with ability to use Firefox add-ons and got proprietary software stuffs removed.

 

File Manager: 

We recommend File Manager by axet described as the File Manager with root browser as it is a fast and full featured Android file manager which is actively developed, than can replace the proprietary built-in one.

NewPipe, Your Tube App:

We also recommend NewPipe, a free and fast alternative that you might say better than official YouTube app. It features search, download, playlist, shuffle and repeat, and queue with privacy (meaning, without Google recording your life). Using this, you can play videos online and offline too. You can store the files in MP4, M4A, WEBM, and OPUS format.

Video player: 

VLC is everyone's tool to watch movies, listen to musics, and play any of these kinds. It features playlist, repeat and shuffle, and quick gestures. It is able to play anything including MP4 and MP3 as well as WEBM and OGG.

 

Games: 

Games are available in F-Droid and we recommend Apple Flinger: it is an Angry Birds-like game with many levels and challenges to play with one or two players. You use tap and swipe to shoot the apple. Play this with your kids!

 

Document Viewer: 

We recommend Document Viewer: it is just works PDF reader for Android. It presents your books in a shelf and simply tap to read each one without further configurations needed. It works with multiple formats including pdf, djvu, epub, and cbz.

Email App: 

We recommend K-9 Mail, with this great email client, you can access Gmail, Yahoo or any other email services right within your phone and read emails offline. You can read your inbox, send emails, join email groups, search and archive mails, even further use encryption with it.  

Social media:

For Facebook and Twitter: Frost and TwidereX are actively developed FLOSS apps you can use enjoy these two social networks respectively for you who need them. For Mastodon: Tusky is a Mastodon app, you can experience great Fediverse social media interactions with it.

Communication:

There are multiple ways to communicate online at these modern era. F-Droid provide all kinds of them including the popular ones you might already use. Below we listed cross platform choices. 

Telegram FOSS: fast messenger your family and friends can use.
Element: all in one messenger, based on Matrix tech, your family can use.
Conversations: XMPP messenger that is very user friendly and recommended by many.
Jami: modern peer-to-peer messenger part of GNU OS with video call. 

 

Utilities:

DiskUsage: a utility everyone should have, it is your disk usage analyzer for Android. This is similar to Disk Usage Utility (Baobab) on your Ubuntu. This scans your storages to present you ranking of folders which use most free space. This helps a lot to maintain your filesystem off of unused folders and files.  

KDE Connect: for Kubuntu users, this app pairs with KDE Connect preinstalled on your computer to help you transfer files, remote controlling, and more. For example, you can further use your phone as remote of your presentation in front of your colleagues.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This article is for you who wants to know about libre mobile phone. Continuing the previous overview, this article now briefly overviews the central technologies of this topic, namely Ubuntu Touch, and PostmarketOS, and Plasma Mobile. These are all GNU/Linux family and not Android. By discussing these software pieces we will understand and introduce ourselves to practical secure, private communication with software freedom.

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

See also our Libre Software Phones.

What is Ubuntu Touch?

(Picture source)
Historically, Ubuntu Touch operating system was born in 2011 in the hands of Canonical, the U.K. company who founded Ubuntu. It features convergence, that is, ability to chameleon itself as desktop if connected to a monitor. In short, by 2017, Canonical officially discontinued the OS and shortly after then the community took it over. Today, Ubuntu Touch is developed under the lead of UBPorts with the great help of Hong Kong based hardware manufacturer Pine64 that successfully made Ubuntu Phone a reality. All convergence OSes existed after it, like Librem 5's one, simply followed Ubuntu Touch's ideas.

Features:
- Ubuntu-based, Ubuntu user experience
- Convergence
- Lomiri user interface
- Canonical legacy
- Promised privacy and security
- Supported by Pine64 as well as Volla hardware manufacturers
- KLIK (.klik) package file format
- A lot of apps available at OpenStore App Center
- UBPorts Installer, desktop app to help user installs Ubuntu Touch to mobile phones

Website: ubports.com, ubuntu-touch.io
 

What is PostmarketOS?

(Picture source)
A mobile OS with full GNU/Linux Desktop user experience based on Alpine. Just like our distros, postmarketOS can be used on our phone with choices, yes, choices of user interface, available between Plasma Mobile (KDE-like), Phosh (GNOME-like), and Sxmo (Openbox-like) and keep increasing! It supports hundreds of devices, far more than Replicant if you want comparison, so that you can install it to your Zenfone, Galaxy, or Xperia if you have one just like everyone installs Android. Technology-wise, postmarketOS is a very important yet revolutionary project everybody is admiring today in the mobile phone field. 

Features:

- Based on secure, small, simple Alpine Linux OS
- Promised security and privacy
- Available for a lot of mobile devices
- Mass produced (PinePhone)
- Friendly to GNU/Linux enthusiasts
- GNOME-like, KDE-like, and Openbox-like experiences
- APK (.apk) package file format
 

Website: postmarketos.org

What is Plasma Mobile?

(Picture source)

A user interface choice for mobile OSes that is mostly found with postmarketOS and Manjaro Mobile today. Thus, it is not an OS but a UI. Another choice is Phosh by Librem 5's company (that is not covered here) which both, thus, are similar to KDE and GNOME choices to us GNU/Linux users.

Features:
- Equal experience with Plasma Desktop
- Fully free/libre open source software
- Can be installed to either postmarketOS or Manjaro ARM
- Created with Qt and Kirigami
- Promised privacy and security
- Native applications available (akin to KDE Apps to KDE)
- Widgets

Website: plasma-mobile.org

Afterwords and Further Readings

That's all the overview of the three. From this, we find postmarketOS Plasma, a combination other than postmarketOS Phosh, aside from the monolith Ubuntu Touch with Lomiri user interface. Both OSes can be installed to a lot of mobile devices you might have one or simply purchased from either Pine64 or Volla as of today. Finally, to learn more or join the development, you can read these readings:

- Ubuntu Touch FAQ
- postmarketOS FAQ
- Plasma Mobile FAQ

I hope you'd enjoy this all!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This article is a list of several stuffs that can help you selfhosting simple, quick and easy so that even your family and parents would be able to use. Selfhosting means making your own online services at home rather than borrowing someone else's server, for example, you can build your personal website, search, video broadcasting, even email, social media network and file sharing too. This list includes all-in-one hardware and software solutions, like Freedombox and Yunohost, and excludes individual components like RaspberryPi and Apache. All tools mentioned here are free libre open source software explained at the end. These technologies hopefully can save you time and resources to setup to achieve just work as close as possible. Finally, you are hoped to have the basic knowledge in server computing. Enjoy! 

Freedombox, fastest way to selfhosting

freedombox.org

Freedombox is the hardware and the software and here we meant the hardware: it is a portable computer bundled with complete software packages to create your own online facilities at home. It allows to create your own internet services, either it is like Search (Searx), Blogger (WordPress), Ngrok (PageKite), YouTube (PeerTube), Hangouts (Jitsi), Meet / Slack (Matrix or XMPP) or else. It features a beautiful control panel so you can also add more applications to your Freedombox. The operating system is Debian GNU/Linux modified in a certain way to suit selfhosting.

Mail In A Box, email selfhosting

mailinabox.email

"Mail-in-a-Box lets you become your own mail service provider in a few easy steps. It’s sort of like making your own gmail, but one you control from top to bottom." That's the crystal clear explanation from its website. Please note, according to them, email system is complex so (unless for limited use) you cannot make a home email server otherwise other email servers will often consider mails from you as spam. Alternatively, there are another FLOSS selfhosting mail tool namely iRedMail, Mailcow. and Modoboa.

Yunohost, all-in-one selfhosting software

 

yunohost.org

Why you do no selfhosting? That's Yunohost spirit, it is a complete software suite based on Debian GNU/Linu that once installed to a machine it became a server of choice for the user no matter whether it is an email, website, broadcasting, video conferencing or file sharing server, even social media network (Mastodon) or beyond. By this view, Yunohost is pretty suitable to knowledgeable users with ability to setup the system. However, today Yunohost is software only and we cannot buy one device preinstalled with it unlike Freedombox.

Nextcloud,

nextcloud.com

Libre server suite able to replace Google Cloud (Calendar, Contacts, Drive, Docs, Meet). Create your own online storage under your full control in your personal or corporate custody. To have a Nextcloud at home, you may want to buy a Nextcloud Device explained next section or install it yourself with Yunohost.

Features:
- online storage
- file sharing
- video conference
- desktop sync
- phone sync
- calendar
- add-ons

Nextcloud Devices

nextcloud.com/devices

Purchasable portable computers with Nextcloud preinstalled. This is one of the quickest ways to selfhost Nextcloud at home or your company.

Awesome Directory

 

selfhosted.libhunt.com 

A searchable information directory all about selfhosting. 

Awesome List

github.com/awesome-selfhosted

An awesome is a big list of useful things and this one is a big list of selfhosting software, services, and hardware curated by the community. When you find this article is too short, you can always refer to awesome. Hint: use Ctrl+F to find what you want there. 

 

Podcast 
selfhosted.show

Yes, there is a podcast for selfhosting people! It is called Self-Hosted and part of Jupiter Broadcasting, same network that publishes the legendary popular podcast Linux Unplugged, hosted by Chris and Alex. Want recommendation? You can start listening their 36. Google Docs Replacement.

Choice of Technology

This list mentions Yunohost not Cloudron because the former is libre software and the latter is proprietary software. We choose and prefer software that is free rather than proprietary. To understand the difference, one can read Free Software Definition.

Further Links

This article is based upon my Self-Hosting Resources Made Simple.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This article is for you who want to know about free software phones. They are mobile devices with GNU/Linux or Android family operating systems inside with more libre software, less proprietary ones and made safer from surveillance. Today, talking about these also involves talking about the software systems inside. This article lists out several the top of them namely Librem 5, Ubuntu Phones, /e/ Fairphone, PinePhone, NitroPhone and mentions also several related software projects like microG. I write this in twenty twenty one so in the future we would certainly see changes going in and out in the world and this article might become obsolete quick. Nevertheless, I hope you would enjoy this!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

See also our Ubuntu Phone Recap 2020.

 

About Privacy

For most people, PrivacyToolsIO is a good read to know the background behind today's rising of worldwide privacy awareness in form of creation of secure, privacy hardware and software like pioneered by Purism and Ubuntu Touch. In short, privacy is important and currently Libre Software Community is building the solutions everyone can adopt it in real life.

 

Librem 5

The shining luxurious brand of GNU/Linux phone from a U.S. community crowdfunded company who develop their own hardware as well as software. Librem Five is one family to other privacy-branded products by Purism namely laptop, PC, server, and PureOS. Librem 5 is for you who want an alternative to Apple or Samsung but with strong privacy coupled with your favorite libre OS instead. [Specifications] [Shop]

PinePhone

Branded as "a true Linux phone", they are cheap, usable and hackable. It promotes user privacy to the hardware pieces. PinePhone manufacturer cooperated with many software projects to make available phones with more than 10 GNU/Linux distros and 5 desktop environment today (and still increasing). They ship Manjaro Phone, Ubuntu Touch, as well as postmarketOS and many other choices. You can own one for under $200 -- interesting, right? [Website] [Shop]

Manjaro Phone, a mobile phone with the green rolling release OS everyone knows. It is available with Plasma Mobile user interface by default. [Website]

Ubuntu Phone, in the past (and perhaps will in the future once again) Pinephone shipped their mobile devices with Ubuntu Touch OS. See our past review.

postmarketOS, the original OS of Pinephone, based on Alpine Linux, that runs on really a lot of different mobile devices (600 today and still increasing) and successfully allowed other excellent mobile technology like Plasma Mobile to function. To be clear, it is a non-Android GNU/Linux-like OS, so you can run your normal desktop apps like Gimp and LibreOffice on it. This OS runs on PinePhone itself and Librem 5, as well as devices from Acer, ASUS, even Google (Pixel), Samsung, Sony, Volla and Xiaomi. As a user, you can install postmarketOS on your phone if it is supported.

 

Volla Phone

Volla Phone is a German company who produces Ubuntu Phones (GNU/Linux based) in collaboration with UBPorts as well as ships its own Volla OS (Android based). Like Purism, Volla also built their products with community crowdfunding however it's done in Indiegogo. Like PinePhone, Volla also cooperates with many parties including Manjaro Project and Pine64 themselves. [Website] [Shop]

Fairphone and /e/

The /e/ Fairphones are the European privacy-branded fully degoogled mobile devices coming from Fairphone and /e/ Foundation cooperation. The great thing comes first from the OS, called /e/ (what a unique name in my opinion) founded by Mandriva's founding father, that is a heavily free-from-Google Android-based system with microG technology inside. The second greatness comes from hardware, that is Fairphone, the environment friendly and hackable phone from Netherlands. [Fairphone] [/e/] [Shop]

 

NitroPhone

NitroPhone is a new Android-family phone from German manufacturer of secure devices and laptops, Nitrokey. Its operating system is known as GrapheneOS, formerly CopperheadOS. It is first launched September 2021. [Specifications] [OS Details] [Shop]

 

The Software Systems

A software system here means either a user interface (UI) alone or a complete operating system (OS) as we have both. Uniquely, there is also a subsystem (set of important components inside the OS), not UI, not OS either, like microG. As such, Plasma Mobile and Phosh are UIs, not OSes, where Ubuntu Touch and postmarketOS are OSes, not UIs, not phone devices either.

(Screenshoted from postmarketOS Wiki)

Plasma Mobile (UI), the KDE desktop for phone, you can imagine Kubuntu users find it enjoyable to find their mobile phone has the same experience as their desktop. To try it out, you can download postmarketOS/Plasma.

Phosh (UI), the GNOME desktop for phone developed by Librem 5 manufacturer, with successful convergence feature. To try it out, you can grab postmarketOS/Phosh.

Ubuntu Touch (OS), the convergence Ubuntu OS for mobile phone originally developed by Canonical currently continued by UBPorts. For Ubuntu users, it looks a lot like Unity with Compiz 3D we ever loved but without Snap as its own package format is Klik.

postmarketOS (OS), the Alpine Linux based OS developed solely for mobile phone with excellent success in cooperation with PinePhone making Ubuntu Phone, KDE Phone and Manjaro Phone a reality people can purchase and enjoy. Its website and wiki have excellent amount of information about Libre Software Mobile you can see this for example.

LineageOS (OS), the more-free Android distro which is a base of another OSes including Replicant, /e/ and Android-x86 as well.

/e/ (OS), the without-Google Android distro with microG technology.

GrapheneOS (OS), the security oriented Android distro now shipped by NitroPhone.

Replicant (OS), the fully free software mobile phone OS with few (and increasing) hardware devices supported and can be purchased. Replicant is what Trisquel to Ubuntu is. It is based on LineageOS with all proprietary software removed and Google connection removed. Replicant Phones are considerably older and few in numbers and can be purchased online. [Shop]

microG (subsystem), Android without Google, that's what Reddit describes it with. microG is a set of software internal to Android-like OS that is libre that can replace Google's proprietary software components in Android. Example system that uses microG is /e/.

 

Related Projects

F-Droid - alternative play store that is completely Free software.

Interesting Links

List of open source mobile phones, Wikipedia

Free Your Android, a valuable article by FSF Europe

DROID-BREAK, High-Quality Privacy Apps for Android

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Do you know Android-x86? It is a version of Android OS that runs on your PC and laptop rather than phone. It is a Free, Open Source Software of its kind that is actively developed. You might find it very similar to Ubuntu thanks to its LiveCD feature although it is not a GNU/Linux. This article introduces you to it by downloading, running, and trying it out on a real computer as well as a virtual machine. We will take benefit of it to run completely Free Software apps by adding F-Droid, an alternative play store. To give you the bigger picture, we will try running web browser, video player, YouTube downloader and other apps on it with software freedom. Finally, I hope someday we could enjoy a Replicant-x86 perhaps by someone reading this article. Now let's try!
Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.
Introduction
Android-x86 is an operating system from Android family developed ("ported") to run on x86 32-bit and 64-bit computers rather than its original ARM architecture smartphones. It is a source code available, open source project, published under Free Software Apache License, however, it contains several non-open source non-free software components namely Google Chrome and Play Store. Its website is https://android-x86.org.

F-Droid is an alternative to Google Play Store that offers Free Libre Open Source Software apps safe from malwares and without ads or user trackings. Many GNU/Linux users use F-Droid to get high quality useful apps like KDE Connect, Telegram FOSS and VLC and amusing games like Apple Flinger. It is available to download and install at https://f-droid.org.

Download
Download Android-x86 from their download central https://osdn.net/projects/android-x86. Features

• Easy to use as Android.
• Fast to boot, admittedly faster than Ubuntu. 
• Fast installation, far more faster than Ubuntu.
  
• Runs on PCs and laptops and can empower the older ones (32-bit).
• Gratis to download, free to share.
  
• Source code available, open source project, and licensed under a Free Software license (there is possibility to make a derivative that is fully free like Replicant).
• Touchscreen support.
  
• Can be used offline.
• Can be used without Google Accounts, Play Store, and Services.
• No Proprietary Software Agreement at the startup, unlike Phoenix nor RemixOS.

Before continuing, you have the right to know it has features you might not like for example Google Privacy Policy agreement at startup, inclusion of proprietary software, and Google Search by default.

Related Projects
Other than Android-x86, there are several similar OS projects in the Android family:
- Replicant, the fully free software Android for phone and is actively developed. No desktop version.
- LineageOS, formerly Cyanogenmod, the mostly free software Android for phone and is actively developed. No desktop version.
- PhoenixOS, proprietary software Android for desktop. Similar to Android-x86 but nonfree and seems discontinued.
- RemixOS, proprietary software Android for desktop. It is not free libre open source software and discontinued.
- BlissOS, the mostly free software Android for desktop and is actively developed. Derived from Android-x86 and seems to be more free.
- MicroG, not an OS but a libre software replacement to the proprietary software components inside of Android family OS.
- /e/, the mostly free software Android for phone created by the founder of Mandriva, mass produced by Fairphone and uses MicroG.

Releases
Android-x86 initially started in 2009 and released versions below:

• Release 9
• Release 8.1
• Release 7.1
• Release 6
• Release 5.1
• Release 4.4
• Release 4
• Release 2.2
• Release 1.6r2
• Release 1.6

Components
Android-x86 version 9 contains several components listed below. Several are nonfree software and tied to Google Online Services.

• Google Chrome
• Play Store
• Google Play Service (software)
• Google Services Framework (software)
• Bluetooth
• Calculator
• Calibration
• Camera
• Clock
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Email
• Files
• Gallery
• Music (LineageOS Eleven)
• Notepad
• Taskbar
• Default Print Service
• Terminal Emulator (termoneplus)

 Alternative Components F-Droid offers apps licensed under Free Software licenses below:

• F-Droid, replacing Play Store
• File Manager by Axet, replacing the stock one
• Camera Roll, replacing Gallery / Image Viewer
  
• DuckDuckGo Browser, replacing Chrome
• K-9, replacing email client (software)
• NewPipe, replacing YouTube (software)
• Document Viewer, to read pdf and ebook
• Apple Flinger, game similar to Angry Bird
• Telegram FOSS, the fast messenger used by millions
• Jitsi Meet, replacing Zoom 
• Gasflow, download speed indicator like on Redmi
  

These are just a tip of an iceberg -- as there are many many more available!
 How To Download Go to download page above and simply download the ISO image file version 8. If you have more internet access, you can download as many ISOs as you wish.  How To Make Bootable You can make a USB bootable of Android-x86 the same way you make it for Ubuntu and other GNU/Linuxes. Follow this tutorial using Disk Utility or this tutorial using Rufus/Unetbootin program to do so. 
 How To Run the OS You can run Android-x86 the same way you run Ubuntu from the USB. Insert the flash drive to your computer, boot it up to USB, and you should see Android-x86 bootloader. Once again, this bootloader is just the same as Ubuntu's bootloader, that is, GNU GRUB.
(The bootloader of Android-x86)

How To Start
First startup will ask you in several steps:Step 1. Choose language.Step 2. Choose SKIP under wifi connection. Step 3. Create your username.Step 4. Disable all choices and accept Terms of Services.Step 5. Enter the desktop.  (Initial screen we will always see right after entering LIVE or finished the installation)
  
Enter Android Desktop
Welcome to Android Desktop! This is how it would look like. It is from a LiveCD session and no different after it installed to the computer.  
Open Start Menu
This is the full screen start menu of Android-x86. 
 How To Enable Internet
In Android-x86:Step 1. Click top panel, as usually you did on phone. Step 2. A drop down menu appears, as usual too. Step 3. Click Wifi (Network) button.Step 4. Network Settings will open. Step 5. Click the wifi or network available to enable it.Step 6. Internet access enabled.  (Network Settings on Android-x86 showing the ON/OFF toggle button at top and VirtWifi enabled as the internet access)

How To Install F-DroidIn Android-x86:1. Open web browser.
2. Go to https://f-droid.org. 3. Download the APK.4. Install the APK (as usual from the top panel).5. Accept every permission request.6. F-Droid installed. 7. Run F-Droid. IMPORTANT: at the first time, unfortunately it cannot be helped to use Chrome (it is proprietary software) as it is the only web browser. But once F-Droid installed, you can later install free software browser as replacement.
 
(F-Droid running on Android-x86 showing several apps like AuthPass, Linwood, and LibreHealth)
 How To Install Applications
Firstly, we will install a web browser and here we choose DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser:1. Open F-Droid.2. Search for "web browser" keyword.3. Results will show and one of them is DuckDuckGo Browser. 4. Click Install and accept everything else after. 5. Application installed.6. Run the application.7. Make it default browser. 

 Second, we can install any other application and here we choose NewPipe, the best YouTube replacement today:1. On F-Droid, search for "newpipe".2. Click Install on Lightweight YouTube Frontend. 3. App installed. 4. Run NewPipe and try to play some videos.5. You can also download every video. Enjoy!  Third, to complete this example we will install File Manager (by Axet):1. On F-Droid, search for "file manager". 2. Click Install on the one by Axet.3. App installed. 4. Run File Manager. 

How To Virtualize You can run Android-x86 on AQEMU, VirtualBox, or similar virtual machine software. Why? Of course, because it is x86, the same architecture to Windows and Ubuntu systems you have.  1. Create a new "Linux" virtual machine. 2. Create for it a 2 cpu, a 2GB memory, and a 20GB disk.3. Add the Android-x86 image file.4. Power on the virtual machine. 5. Android-x86 runs in the VM.
(Android-x86 operating system running inside AQEMU virtual machine under my Ubuntu host computer)

 See Also- Fairphone, Google-Free Android Phones  - /e/, Google-Free Android Phones with MicroG
- BlissOS, another desktop distro of Android-x86 
- Ubuntu Touch, The Ubuntu OS for Phones- Volla, The Real Ubuntu Phone- Librem, The Real GNU/Linux Phones 
- PinePhone, Real Phone with GNU/Linux OSes Further Readings Do you want to know more? You can start by reading these:
- Android and Users' Freedom 
- Mission Impossible, Hardening Android Security- microG, Android without Google- Android-x86 Official Website 
 
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This tutorial explains the steps to install elementary OS 6 to your computer. This offers you several modes you might want to choose, including dualbooting with Windows, dealing with either UEFI or BIOS Legacy, and even installing it to a blank USB flash disk drive. For your information, in this version we meet the brand new installer and is divided into two stages will be explained below. Time to install!
 Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

Requirements
A >= 8GB USB flash drive as the bootable media,
A >= 16GB USB flash drive as the storage (if you want external drive install) or
A >= 20GB hard disk drive free space (if you want normal install instead),

Where bootable media is equal to installer CD/DVD or floppy disk in the past; normal install is the way most people would install OS with; external install is installation by using external disk like USB flash drive as storage instead of computer's internal HDD. 

Note: beginners would find external install as the safest, easiest, and cheapest way in most situation and we strongly recommend it by using a newly purchased USB flash drive. It is one of the clearest ways to avoid deleting hard disk data when installing.

Preparations

• For BIOS computer, the storage must be MBR.
• For UEFI computer, the storage must be GPT.
• For hard disk, the file system is EXT4.
• For USB or SSD storage, the file system is EXT2.
• For normal install, you only need a bootable USB.
• For external install, you need a USB as bootable and another USB as storage.
• Your computer must be 64-bit otherwise you cannot install elementary OS 6.

Download elementary OS 6
Click here to download elementary OS 6. Note: you might also want to purchase elementary OS PC or laptop now shipping worldwide.

Making Bootable USB
You can make bootable USB with Disk Utility (from GNU/Linux) and click here to learn it with Rufus or Unetbootin program (from Windows or MacOS).

Step 1. Start First step is to prepare language and keyboard input. Under Select a Language, choose English and continue.


Under Select Keyboard Layout section, select English (US) and continue.



Step 2. Disk Partitioning
Second step is disk partitioning. This is the most important part and you must pay attention closely.
For empty computer installation (single boot UEFI):
You should create three partitions which are smallest - middle - biggest in the disk storage.1. Select the disk (it should be empty since the beginning).2. Create new partition. 3. Create smallest partition, by size: 300MB, by type: EFI System Partition, OK. 4. Create middle partition, by size: 1000MB, by type: SWAP, OK. 5. Create biggest partition, by size: let it as is, by type EXT4 Filesystem, by mount point: slash character ( / ), OK. 6. Correct partitioning will look like picture below.  
For dualboot installation (UEFI):Same as empty installation above but do that in the empty partition in the disk that has been prepared beforehand and do not delete nor use the Windows partition.
For external disk installation (UEFI):Same as empty installation but do that in the external disk drive (USB flash drive) and not the internal one. 
For BIOS legacy installation (non-UEFI):Same as empty installation above but with only two last partitions without the smallest aka EFI System Partition, and simply use the internal disk for internal installation or use the external disk (USB flash drive, external HDD) for external install.

Once finished partitioning, click Erase and Install.
Step 3. Installation Process and Reboot
Third step is waiting for the installation process and then restart to go to the second installation stage. This process should be no more than 15 minutes with a healthy, normal HDD or USB flash drive and should be even more faster with an SSD.


Step 4. Username Password Creation

Fourth step is the second stage, that is, creating your username and password and Continue.

Step 5. Finish

Congratulations, you have installed elementary OS 6 onto your computer!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This is a continuation to Email Encryption Made Easy with a hope to be more straightforward and useful. Here we will learn how to encrypt Gmail, the mail service used by millions today, in our computer with Thunderbird mail client. The purpose of encryption is security so that your mails can only be read by your recipients and vice versa by disabling other parties, including Google company, ability to read them.

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

 

About This Tutorial

This article is a rewrite to the Made Easy because of three reasons, first because BitMessage Mail service is discontinued, second because Gmail is used by nearly all people in the world (that means you and me), and third because Thunderbird now has its own encryption system without Enigmail anymore. This tutorial uses Thunderbird version 78 and security-wise you should please update your version first before continuing. We strongly recommend you to not practice this alone but do with at least one friend of yours using the same Thunderbird so you can completely practice sending as well as receiving encrypted emails.

 

Get Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a mail client program that is free-libre-open-source-software (FLOSS) and also cross-platform.

- Ubuntu users can run Thunderbird from start menu. 

- Windows users can download it from Thunderbird Download.

- MacOS users can download it from Thunderbird Download.

 
Step 1. Setup Gmail

First step is to get Gmail inbox into Thunderbird. The result is you can read mails offline and send mails with encryption. More specifically, this is important to keep your data in your own custody and keep copies at Google's server at minimum.

1. Open Thunderbird. 

2. Menu > New > Existing Mail Account > email setup will open.

3. Type your full name, your email address, and the email's password.

4. Click Continue > a web browser will open Gmail access > accept it.

5. Your email setup finished.

 

Step 2. Create and Save Keys

Second step is to make your Gmail keys -- in order to secure your emails, you first must have keys (security experts call them GPG keys) consisted of public key and private key. Public key for other person to mail you, private key to read email sent to you (public is okay to share, private must be kept safely in your computer).

1. Right-click your email address > Settings > End to End Encryption.

2.  Click add key > Create a new OpenPGP key > Continue > Generate > follow everything else accordingly.

3. You get a pair of keys.

4. You are ready to receive encrypted mails sent to you. 

Still in second step, you should save public key of your friend (who are willing to mailing securely) in order to send secure mail to him/her. 

1. Receive an email with public key attached from him/her.

2. Click OpenPGP button > Import Key > accept everything accordingly > his/her key imported. 

Or alternatively, download the attached public key > save to a folder > saved as a plain text .asc file.

Go to menubar Tools > OpenPGP Key Manager > File > Import Public Key from File > select that .asc file > his/her key imported.  

3. You are ready to send encrypted email to him/her.

Step 3. Send Email

Third step is to send email. Here we have not yet encrypted our mail. To start your new life, share your public key to your friends who are willing to mailing securely with you. In this exercise, send a copy of public key to your friend.

1. Create a new email, 
2. type the recipient's email address, 
3. type the subject, 
4. type the content, 
5. attach your public key file (.asc), 
6. send it to him/her,
7. recipient will save your key.

Step 4. Receive Email

Fourth step is to receive email. Here we also have not yet encrypted our mail. To complete your new life, ask your friend to send his/her public key to you -- otherwise you cannot send encrypted email to him/her. Once received, follow step 2 to save his/her public key. Later, you should ask more friends to send you their public keys too.

An unencrypted email will show Message Is Not Encrypted sign under the OpenPGP button without any green color.

Step 5. Send Encrypted Email

Fifth step is to send encrypted email. It means you use recipient's public key to send email to him/her. This process is automatic in Thunderbird once you saved his/her public key.

1. Create a new email,
2. select Security to be OpenPGP,
3. enable Require Encryption,
4. type recipient's address, subject, and mail content as usual,
5. send,
   
6. recipient can read your email (after decrypting it with his/her private key; and this process is also automatic in Thunderbird).
   

To verify this step, your friend should be able to read your secure mail in Thunderbird but not in Gmail in web browser, and that means your encryption is successful.

Step 6. Receive Encrypted Email

Sixth step is to receive encrypted email. It means your friend uses your public key to send email to you -- then, only you can open it.

1. Ask you friend to send encrypted email to you,
2. he/she should follow step 5 above,
   
3. you receive the mail,
4. you read the mail.

To verify this step, you should be able to read it in Thunderbird but should not be able to read it in Gmail web browser, and that means our encryption is successfully achieved. An encrypted email will show Message Is Encrypted sign below the OpenPGP green check mark.

 

Step 7. Invite Friends to Secure Emails

If you reached this step, congratulations! You managed to secure your Gmail. Now you can share this article to your friends so they can follow you to secure their Gmail too (as well as other emails if they have, like Yahoo! or MSN, if they are willing to). If you are a school teacher, please consider teaching this to your students. More people willing to means more "herd security" we will have for our emails and --not less important-- more accustomed we are to email security. Lastly, we all need chances and exercises to make ourselves familiar with email encryption. I hope this article really makes it easier for you to encrypt emails. 

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Zorin OS, the computer operating system from Ireland, released version 16 at Tuesday, August 17th, 2021. Currently available as Pro and Core, with Lite and Education Editions to come, it is the successor to the last year version 15.3. This GNU/Linux system is suitable for most computer users, organizations, schools and offices. Below you will find the download links, mirrors, a torrent, checksums, and how to proceed further to the installation. Finally, we congratulate Zorin OS official for nearly 3 million downloads since two years ago and it's our time to celebrate. Now let's download Zorin OS!

 

 

Purchase Zorin Laptop

Want Zorin OS? You can simply purchase a laptop or desktop with Zorin OS preinstalled. Fortunately, these computers are already available (just like Windows and MacOS boxes). Currently, everyone can order from two shops, namely LaptopWithLinux and StarLabs, shipping from Netherland and United Kingdom respectively. They already ship computers with Zorin OS 16!

Download Pro Edition

We respect the decision of Zorin GNU/Linux to make one edition a paid product. You can purchase Pro Edition (Ultimate) for $39. Alternatively, you can just order a laptop with Pro Edition preinstalled from store mentioned above. We wish you success, Zorin OS.

Download Core Edition

Zorin-OS-16-Core-64-bit-r1.iso

 

Download Lite Edition 

Currently in development, please wait the information at Zorin Downloads.

Download Education Edition

Currently in development, please wait the information at Zorin Downloads. 

Mirrors 

Below are several alternative download links of Zorin OS 16 Core Edition.

North America, by Ibiblio, North Carolina.

South America, by Universidad De La Frontera, Chile.

Asia, by Truenetwork, Russia.

Asia, by Kakao, South Korea.

Europe, by IRCAM, France.

Europe, by 23media, Germany.

Torrents

Official Zorin OS does not publish torrents. However, unofficial torrents are made available (currently Core Edition only with previous 15.3 versions also available) by FossTorrents https://fosstorrents.com/distributions/zorin-os.

Checksums

Your downloaded file should be verified and checked the checksum to match its original checksum from Zorin OS so then you can safely use it -- otherwise your file copy is broken and corrupted. You can follow this tutorial to do this verification.

Zorin OS 16 Core 64-bit eabd2a222175f3556f277a0722664af1f11230285c4ce6bf69984ac40c48b1c3
Zorin OS 16 Pro 64-bit 1addffb6100a5ba340266b709b367ded7094aa563143dd98ba577aaf00498590

 

How To Make Zorin OS Bootable

You can use either Disk Utility or Unetbootin or Rufus program to burn the image file to a USB to make a Zorin OS bootable media. Follow Disk Utility tutorial or Unetbootin/Rufus one to do it. This media later can be used to install it to your computer. 

How To Install Zorin OS

You can follow Ubuntu Installation Guide to install Zorin OS 16 as the walkthrough is basically the same. This guide can result in either normal or dualboot, either for UEFI or BIOS Legacy installation, and either on internal or external storage (an empty USB flash drive for example) for you.

Further Readings

Official Announcement

Switch Your Organization to Zorin OS

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This tutorial explains Debian 11 installation procedures. This tutorial is suitable for everyone who wants either dualboot, UEFI or BIOS Legacy, normal or external storage method in installing Debian 11. The result expected from this installation is a ready to use Debian 11 with GNOME user interface, LibreOffice, Firefox and other daily software packages and you can have it stored not in internal hard disk in computer but a USB flash drive instead.

 

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

Requirements

• An empty >= 8GB usb flash disk drive as bootable.
  
• An empty >= 16GB usb flash disk drive, or,
  
• An empty >= 20GB hard disk with GPT technology, or,
• An empty >= 20GB hard disk with MBR technology as the storage.
  
• A PC or laptop with at least Intel Pentium 4 (or equal) and 2GB RAM.
• Patience, as the installation requires time, effort and electricity.
  

If you have no idea on above requirements, contact a nearby person with good OS installation knowledge & experience to help you with this installation.

Download Debian 11

Click here to download Debian 11 DVD for 32 bit and 64 bit.

Make Debian Bootable

Use Disk Utility (GNU/Linux) or Unetbootin (Windows and MacOS) program to write Debian into a USB flash drive by at minimum 8GB capacity. Click respective links to learn how to do it.

Boot The Installer

1. Plug your Debian bootable USB in.

2. Power on the computer. 

3. Debian 11 displayed on screen like picture below. 

4. If not, reboot and immediately enter BIOS.

5. Setup the BIOS so the computer boots first to USB.

6. Press F10 (Save) and reboot.

7. Press Enter to Graphical Install choice.

8. Debian 11 installation mode started, continue to the next section.

1. Boot

Select Graphical Install option by pressing Enter.

2. Select a language

Choose English US, then click continue.

3. Select your location

Choose United States, for example, then continue.
 

4. Select your keyboard

Choose English US then let it prepare everything for a moment.

5. Select network choice

Choose No ethernet card, then continue. 

The point is, don't connect to the internet. This will result in "No network interfaces were found" or similar message. Next step will appear on screen.

6. Create username, password and computer name

• This will ask you to create machine's name, username, password. 
  
• Name your computer with a name
• Empty the root passwords (this will apply sudo to your system)
• Fill your full name
• Name your username
• Create your password (this will be your sudo's password)

7. Configure the clock

Select your time zone, Eastern for example, then let it prepares the partitioner.

8. Partition disks

• This step will display choices between guided and manual. 
  
• Select MANUAL (it is the last in the list)
• For usb flash drive installation, select the empty USB flash drive.
• For Hard Disk installation, select the hard disk, for example, here it is 21.5 GB ATA QEMU HARD DISK, continue.
• For USB installation, answer YES to create a new partition table, continue.
• For hard disk installation, answer NO instead, continue. 

For computers manufactured in 2011 up to today, follow 1st-2nd-3rd partition creation below. For computers manufactured before 2011 and 32 bit ones, follow only 2nd-3rd instead. 

Creating first partition:

• Select FREE SPACE, continue.
• Select CREATE NEW PARTITION, continue.
• Type 200 MB by size, continue.
• Select Beginning, continue.
• Change Use as to EFI SYSTEM PARTITION, continue.
• Click Done setting up the partition, continue.

Creating second partition:

• Select FREE SPACE remaining, continue.
• Select CREATE NEW PARTITION, continue.
• Type 1 GB by size, continue.
• Select BEGINNING, continue.
• Change use as to SWAP AREA, continue.
• Click Done setting up the partition, continue.

Creating third partition:

• Select FREE SPACE remaining, continue.
• Select CREATE NEW PARTITION, continue.
• Let the size as is, continue.
• Select BEGINNING, continue.
• For USB installation, change use as to EXT2, otherwise
• For Hard Disk installation, change use as to EXT4
• Change mount point to slash ( / )
• Change label to DEBIAN 11 BULLSEYE
• Click Done setting up the partition, continue.
• Select Finish partitioning, continue.
• Answer YES to the question about write changes to disk, continue.
• Installation process will take place and this needs 30 minutes.

Final partitioning will look like this picture:

Next step will ask you about package manager. 

9. Configure the package manager

• This will ask you about technical setup that is configurable later.
  
• Answer NO to the question about scan media, continue.
• Answer NO to the question use network mirror, continue.
• It will scan your installer (bootable USB here).
• Answer YES to the question about participate package survey, continue.
• Next step will ask you about software selection.
  

10. Software selection:

• This is the setup of your Debian Desktop.
  
• Select three choices: 1st is Debian desktop environment, 2nd is GNOME, and 3rd is Standard system utilities (these are the defaults), continue.
• Installation process will continue progressing.

Finish:

Installation complete, continue. 

Final bootloader:

This installation will create you an option (to enter which OS) every time you power on your computer that is called a bootloader. 

Result:

Finally, here's Debian 11 desktop.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Debian 11 Bullseye operating system finally released on Saturday, 14 August 2021. This is a Long Term Support release with five years of support and has been developed for two years since the previous release Debian 10. It includes full and complete set of tens of thousands of software packages including the digital tools to help combating COVID-19 for health care professionals. This release following the loss of three honorable Debian developers Robert, Karl, and Rogerio who passed away between these years -- to them we would love to offer condolendes and say thank you for all your contributions to us all.  Bullseye is available for almost all types of computer available in the world and we can download it for desktop and laptop for both 64-bit and 32-bit as detailed below plus further instructions. Let's download Debian!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

About Debian 11

Debian GNU/Linux version 11 is the eleventh stable release of the universal operating system Debian as a successor to 10. It is a computer operating system that is the basic software which the purpose is the same as Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and Android to each respective devices. Its official website is https://www.debian.org and official download page is Getting Debian. It is available in almost all computer architectures exist in the world namely PC 64-bit, PC 32-bit, ARM32, ARM64, MIPS, PPC, and S390X. In the real world, these architecture supports mean Debian can run on all kinds of computer from Raspberry Pi, smartphone, PC and laptop, to server, mainframe and even supercomputer. However, in this article, only PC 64-bit and 32-bit versions covered.

 

Debian 10 DVD Full

To download, click one link below and Save.

For 64-bit computers:

debian-11.0.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso

For 32-bit computers: 

debian-11.0.0-i386-DVD-1.iso 

Debian 10 Live Desktop Flavors 

To download, click one link and Save.

For 64 bit computers:

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-kde.iso

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxde.iso

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-mate.iso

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-xfce.iso

For 32 bit computers:

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-cinnamon.iso  

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-gnome.iso 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-kde.iso 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxde.iso 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxqt.iso 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-mate.iso 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-xfce.iso

 

Torrents

Downloading Debian 11 via torrent is very recommended as it is faster and more reliable to the users and also in many ways helping the community. To download a torrent, follow the instructions on the next section.

Torrents for Debian Full DVD:

debian-11.0.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso.torrent 

debian-11.0.0-i386-DVD-1.iso.torrent

Torrents for Debian Live 64-bit:

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-kde.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxde.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxqt.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-mate.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-xfce.iso.torrent
 

Torrents for Debian Live 32-bit:

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-cinnamon.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-gnome.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-kde.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxde.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxqt.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-mate.iso.torrent 

debian-live-11.0.0-i386-xfce.iso.torrent

Checksums

You should make sure (verify that) every file you downloaded from the above matched with the official checksums by SHA256SUM below. If the file's checksum matched with the original checksum, then the file is correct and safe to use -- otherwise the file is corrupted and you might need to redownload it. Follow this guide to do verification.

89699678ac432ec8f43afc5fc1e1f088b1651f436520cc46dc79c1e14af6b816 debian-11.0.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso
2b6d2cf276703dfd5eee6f0f8a03e1fbf1ece5585019ffcfe18990edc5c59fa0 debian-11.0.0-i386-DVD-1.iso
e90f17192f340a56f40b556253ff22d1e40cb66bb28c1ca4c76825517028068e debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso
60d1576e7cb59a5a2dd59e96d98338f58f5dcfc93ed94e9eafcec7cf7939bfad debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso
3c598b9ed64ddb49731fd363e3b2322275db09c12d819200fb9f1f73305c4abc debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-kde.iso
b2624770a52fc34beaea647f7f2b12216b6f2b2a2c39e85900eaee04134146ca debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxde.iso
43d364f987856075abb7eae87d225c533a018c72d538cf9048a654a62c6e59e8 debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxqt.iso
eb24747a3906457fd855df2ad60c1643b9fc1f90e9835bdc6e1da6e5992e5c5f debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-mate.iso
57413320bc685cd698c8b6381019e159118679946d9cfacd2dd779334934c83b debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-xfce.iso
a2312ccfc63488f7873b88559f53824ff0252857ea331abe7cfeb5205f2cecb1 debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-cinnamon.iso
291fa5a29cd8aec26aa732c9c27d0f4551644566b7dfde069c6acc2f6d75d39c debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-gnome.iso
9a8c19377707cf3450f959d17dc5c19c8fc0b4382dde0cd7f1b17aaceadb8b73 debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-kde.iso
b26d379f6e431ab240817490303f4940d803d2bb6a8468d8891333ea41d14bd6 debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxde.iso
6988135b7ccfa3d71d04f292c4f9a93178e946cb6ac38e99d7e6461477abff9b debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-lxqt.iso
b83952229d6db62df20acfb3d616c35e230fa86e560b8180abee5987ccc81ce5 debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-mate.iso
5201b1d4d105b63d00b11260ac7d385e32264185b154e6f7de79e2fc22ed38a8 debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-xfce.iso
3a816dcc73a36606160d7d29128c47d613265ceba53f05e776d7b07f11018381 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-cinnamon.iso
139e6892b532aea74cc12b20a017010bd2e2e5332d984dde70513faaf095f489 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-gnome.iso
e1a0a1e6b96bd072e18adf8fe6a1f9bcfbd32888723fb52975753b75c9b1174c debian-live-11.0.0-i386-kde.iso
a1014875aa6179d28196a9d872a20cd1b6cbff9b4048fe8e5b1294e6e51c86f4 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxde.iso
46021491076ce2d7a61c308e889ccef75a24f200b7a6facbcf8d286345e6b73c debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxqt.iso
d3d0e2bd2c5fd9181af9655e9ad6cc40e7f65a5051d8cf58307745498c804e33 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-mate.iso
81cf90b783818c7504b49e965d9c32438e622c680ed5c73164bab03325da8e03 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-xfce.iso
e7a32a7b62189b4eaba31de2f2bd31c20a43e7abcf78825d472fcc25607311b5 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-cinnamon.iso
b24de4c2e0d58ceb787277ef22c104724b8bf3edab753b3742f6f397e4879b77 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-gnome.iso
e0206f5e26ed8fa1012ffbde37e2574b6ac3f2bcaf2d1a657e79cd542038dc7f debian-live-11.0.0-i386-kde.iso
5a1104fb3ad9632373dfeb8b705b6899fb35f1711941a646e8cfe9eef599af07 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxde.iso
2b7d42a63f384f8f95d0742f3d53d21ce3f5cc161750176536cc2910a08bd34c debian-live-11.0.0-i386-lxqt.iso
7e523ed47f0d6466de37e73aca02e99b3b05d445fd12c7335d044df349e43bd4 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-mate.iso
f5bc5132360824570723033b349f355883bb4c55cccdd4f209cabaf768564065 debian-live-11.0.0-i386-xfce.iso

How To TorrentDownloading with 4MB/s speed

To download Debian 11 via BitTorrent way, an alternative way to download files, you use Transmission, KTorrent, uTorrent or such programs then do these:

- Download a torrent file from the above list.
- You got a small sized file with .iso.torrent extension to its name.
- Double click the file.
- Your torrent program will open.
- Start downloading the actual file of Debian 11 e.g. by 4GB size.

How To Verify Downloaded File

Your downloaded file of Debian 11 should have exactly the same SHA256SUM value with the collection of checksums above. Follow this guide to verify.

 

How To Make Debian Bootable USB

Once downloaded, you can make bootable a USB flash drive to install Debian 11 to your computer and you can bring it everywhere. Follow this guide to do so. 

 

References

In the future, the download links will change and you can read these references to get Debian 11.

- Announcement

- Release Notes

- Download Page (All)

- Download Page (DVD)

- Download Page (Live) 

- Download Page (Torrents)

- Mirrors

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Did you use Speedtest.net to test your upload download speed? Now you can use LibreSpeed.org instead, a lightweight alternative to it, that just works without Flash and Java. Let's try it and share!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates. Test Your Speed

1. Visit librespeed.org 

2. Click START button.

3. You see the results.

For example, here's my test result between Indonesia and United States by download 18 mbps and upload 18 mbps (or around 2MB/s and 2MB/s) approximately. You may want to do a test several times, or change between destination countries, to get more accurate result.

For Server Administrators

Do you want to publish your own speed test like Ooklas' one? You can do it with Libre Speed Test as it is free libre open source software. The official guide includes a tutorial for Ubuntu Server admins. Follow the guide at its development website.

Happy testing!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Finally, elementary OS 6 released at 10 August 2021. It is the continuation of elementary OS 5 released three years ago. Here's a very short glimpse of it with the official links, torrents, and how to download it for everyone plus a web store to buy a laptop with elementary OS. We're happy with this release and now let's try it together!

 Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

About elementary OS 6

This is how it looks like on a computer with a wide screen.

Download Link

Officially, elementary OS 6 codenamed Odin is available to download at https://elementary.io. 

 

Buy elementary Laptop

elementary OS is already mass produced and shipping worldwide! Visit store.elementary.io to see the vendors where you can order one. Today, there are already three vendors namely Laptop With Linux (Netherlands), Slimbook (Spain), and Star Labs (United Kingdom). Purchasing from these vendors will help elementary OS development. However, please be patient at the moment as elementary OS 6 laptops might only be available some moments from now on.

How To Download

To download the official way:

- click custom price button

- insert zero dollar price

- click download

- you are downloading it

To download by also giving donation to elementary OS Project:

 - click $10 price, for example, or type any other amount

- click purchase elementary OS

- proceed to the payment with your credit card

- you donated to and is downloading elementary OS 6

 

This donation will help further elementary OS development.

How To Download via Torrent

Above official link is the normal download way, while this one is the BitTorrent way -- an alternative download way -- which is very recommended thanks to its faster speed. To download via torrent:

- Do the normal download above before clicking download button. 

- Click the magnet button instead i.e. the " U " button beside Download. 

- Your BitTorrent program will open. 

- Start download.   

How To Verify 

Finally, your downloaded file of elementary OS 6 should have exactly the same SHA256SUM value from the official source. Follow this guide to verify. 

elementaryos-6.0-stable.20210810.iso 3e978b9c5dfbf8aaa9cd2fa6fc3780d5bdf0eacc1a147572357960b36267bee1
Happy downloading!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Remember Invidious? You can watch and download YouTube videos with it without ads and tracking (technically, without JavaScript). There is playlist feature in it and in this tutorial we will discuss how to create one, add videos to it, and play the videos automatically one by one. 

 

About This Tutorial

This tutorial assumes you are using Invidious (visit https://ytprivate.com) and know that everything is applicable to another Invidiouses. In the future, there might be changes and you can use another Invidious (visit redirect.invidious.io for choices).

Register and Login

To make playlists, you should first have an account on Invidious. Signing up to Invidious, unlike YouTube, is anonymous and no email nor phone number required.

1. Click LOGIN.

2. Type a username, type a password, click REGISTER.

3. You are registered. Once registered, if you have not, you have to login first:

4. Click LOGIN.

5. Type your username, your password, login.

6. You are logged in. 

For example I have an account named iloveinvidious and it looks like below. 

Create Playlist

For example, we want to make a playlist of wild life videos like the popular Primitive Technology and similar people are doing. To create playlist:

1. Go to your Invidious. 

2. Click PLAYLISTS.

3. Click CREATE PLAYLIST, give it a name, make it Private, create, and click plus button.

4. In the search page displayed, search videos you want. In this example, wild life videos, by keywords around "primitive technology" ". 

5. Click plus button on each video of the videos displayed. 

6. Playlist created.

NOTE: you can make it Public playlist by selecting Public instead of Private.
 

Play the Playlist

1. Go to your Invidious. 

2. Click PLAYLIST. 

3. Your playlist(s) displayed.

4. Click one playlist. In this example, WILD LIFE.

5. Videos inside this playlist displayed. Click the first video. 

6. Video plays.

7. Next video will be automatically play. 

8. This playlist will end automatically at the last video.

Fediverse is what Diaspora, Mastodon, PeerTube and other federated social media altogether being called. These relatively new style of social networking is growing rapidly, as people demand more independence to their own hands, and now everyone of us can overview how large its growth or simply how big one part of it grows with nice statistics and charts. I hope this helps you to find a fediverse you want with either crowded or less crowded population. Let's see!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.

Poduptime

https://podupti.me

This site overviews current statistics, charts, and maps of the whole fediverse including Mastodon and PeerTube. From the statistics served, we know that today the fediverse's top platform is Mastodon by population, and the one with the most users is pawoo.net, a social networking site (SNS) from Japan. From the map server, we know that the US and the EU are two places where most of fediverse platforms originated while in the Asia, Japan is the leading country.

Fedidb

https://fedidb.org/network

Fediverse Database (Fedidb) is actually a collection of tools for developers and sysadmins of the fediverse platforms, however it also serves nice statistics of them all. The data is presented only in table with choices between All and individual platform and with open registration choice. For example, you can help yourself to find an open registration Pleroma place to signup, with largest population, and start your journey with The Fediverse.

 

The Federation Info

https://the-federation.info

Four millions of users is the rough number of the whole Fediverse today according to The Federation Info. Furthermore, there are 500 millions posts, 12 millions comments, and 1 million active users (including me) in the past six months. Most of the number goes to Mastodon, followed by Pleroma, then PeerTube. The chart overviews nine things, from number of servers ("nodes") to active user ratio.

Fediverse Party

https://fediverse.party

Prefer to measure them one by one? You can visit this site and click one name, for example Mastodon, and learn the metrics. Click another name to see its metrics, and so on. At the moment, speaking about registered and active users, Mastodon's population is 2 millions and 900 thousands, Friendica's ten and five thousands, and Hubzilla's almost nine and two thousands among the others.

 

Fediverse Trends

Lastly, @feditrends along with @fedifollows and @feditips are our friends at Mastodon who often share many things about The Fediverse and the first is the one focusing in statistics. You can follow him (he is actually a bot) to see his weekly Fediverse's Top 10 Hashtags like below. For example, at the moment we know that recently #apple is the hottest topic across three thousands Fediverse instances (not only Mastodon) being spoken by three hundreds different users. This is another way to measure The Fediverse.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

KDE Plasma 5.22 with its tagline Stability, Usability, Flexibility released last June is the latest desktop technology of KDE and Free Software Community. It features new looks to the desktop, System Settings and many other improvements. Want it? If you would love to try it or further install it for daily use, here's how to.

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Availability

See: https://repology.org/project/plasma-desktop/versions

To widen our point of view, above is a wide information of Plasma availability on all GNU/Linux distros. Based on that page, at the moment, several distros like Arch, Rawhide, Tumbleweed already ship with 5.22 while the others like Kubuntu have not yet. With this article, you will have information on having it with the ways Ubuntu users familiar with.

First Choice: KDE Neon

Download: https://neon.kde.org/download

This is the easiest way. Simply download the User Edition, make it USB bootable with a flash drive, then boot it on your computer to test Plasma 5.22 -- and you can use it too as a daily OS by installing it (read how to install Neon). 

Second Choice: Kubuntu with PPA

You do not need to delete your OS then reinstalling a new one if you are already using Kubuntu at least version 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo), by adding a PPA. However, this would require a lot of internet access and time e.g. more than 1GB download by two hours.  Visit the Kubuntu Backports PPA. To do the installation of Plasma:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade

Third Choice: Kubuntu Impish Indri

Download: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/

Next release of Kubuntu is version 21.10 also called Impish Indri and the development version is already containing Plasma 5.22. The differences to Neon is that Kubuntu is full of built-in features with LibreOffice and others included. If you use this, you have the chances to help the development of Plasma by reporting bugs and issues you might find automatically. You can learn here how to make a bootable Kubuntu USB and further installing Kubuntu. This download will exist as long as 21.10 has not been officially released.

Links

• Announcement
  
• Full Information of Plasma 5.22
  
• Live Images

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 

This is the sixth part of Inkscape for Students the series. After previously we learn Drawing and Coloring, now we will learn about drawing once again but with guide lines and snapping mainly to help us place objects and make copies of them tidily. Let's exercise!

 

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Tools

Guides, the fine lines to line up your objects either horizontally, or vertically, or diagonally.

Snaps, Shift+5, the automatic snapping of objects either to another object or to guides.

 

The Basics

Practice these before doing the exercises:

1. Click drag ruler to bottom, you made a horizontal guide. 

2. Click drag ruler to right, you made a vertical guide.

3. Click drag ruler corner, from top-left to bottom-right, you made a diagonal guide.

4. Click Snap button (Shift+5), you enabled / disabled Snapping.

5. Move a rectangle to a guide line, it snaps.

6. Hover cursor to a guide line, Delete to delete it. 

7. Press Shift+Backslash to hide / show guide lines if any. 

8. Create a rectangle, press Shift+G, to create guide lines automatically following its shape and size.

 

Exercise 1

• Create two horizontal guides, top and bottom.
• Create 3 objects with same height side by side between guides.
  

Exercise 2

• Write three letters on top of each objects.
• Create vertical guide on each of three objects.
• Use SNAP BOUNDING BOXES, enable SNAP MIDPOINTS OF BOUNDING BOX EDGES, fix each vertical guide to fit middle point of each object.
• Fix the position of each letter to align center of each object.
• Feel the snapping.
  

Exercise 3

• Create two more horizontal guides inside the first two.
• Shrink each letter's size to follow the new two guides.
• Feel the snapping. 
  

Exercise 4

• Create five rectangles to the left touching exactly each others. 
• Duplicate them to bottom.
• Change the forms to circle, triangle, pentagon, and star with the help of vertical and horizontal guides.
• See example below.
  

Exercise 5

Create a picture like below with all techniques above and icons you can download below. We will create banners to promote computer applications useful to us namely Inkscape, Firefox, and LibreOffice.

• First, create the first artwork like this with guides, centering and snapping.
  

• Then, duplicate the first artwork, but edit them with another icons and text and colors like below.

• Finally, export the artwork either as a whole all banners in one or individually per banner with Ctrl+Shift+E. Below is the example of PNG export final result with 96 dpi. 

Downloads

Download icons below simply right-click each logo and Save Link As.

Download SVG you can edit with Inkscape:

libre-software-banners.svg

See you next time!

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

This list collects popular computer applications which are free software (also known as libre software) licensed under GNU GPL license. You will find here Blender 3D, VLC, WordPress, GNU OS itself and The Penguin Kernel, among others, including how to install the apps on Ubuntu. Let's share!

Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates.GNU Operating System

The first and only free operating system developed to win user's freedom in their computing. Its mascot is an African animal wildebeest (a gnu). GNU is often found in a combination with the kernel, Linux, as a unity called GNU/Linux. GNU OS is consisted of multiple components with various licenses and most of them are licensed under GNU GPL. The origin of GPL license is of course GNU just like the name suggest.

Linux

The world most well known kernel with penguin logo is under GPL. It is the kernel of hundreds of operating systems, including Ubuntu and Android, that empowers almost all known computers from the smallest to the biggest ones, including smartphones and supercomputers.   

 

GNU C Compiler

In computing field, a compiler is a program that translates software from its source code into binary code -- so the program is ready for the users. GNU C Compiler (GCC) is the most famous free compiler and all (or at least most of) GNU/Linux operating systems are produced with it. GCC is a part of GNU OS. It is licensed under GPL. 

Plasma

KDE Plasma 5 is under GNU GPL. It is the user interface of Kubuntu operating system, as well as many other OSes.   

 

GNOME

GNOME is under GNU GPL too. It is the official user interface of GNU Operating System, and its distributions like Ubuntu, as well as RHEL. The name GNOME was an abbreviation of GNU Network Object Model Environment.

Qt 

In computing field, a software development kit (SDK) is a collection of everything that helps user to create software. Qt is a world class SDK, that is, the material that built Kubuntu, KDE Plasma, and also Telegram aside from so many other great software. Qt is licensed under GNU GPL.

 

OpenJDK

OpenJDK is a choice of Java libraries with free license that can be used to develop Java applications by software developers. It is the library that is used usually with Netbeans or Eclipse IDE. It is licensed under GPL.

Telegram

It is a GPLv3+ instant messaging and full featured communication app that is fast and cross platform. Telegram is developed with Qt, the same material that built KDE and Kubuntu.

 

GNU R

GNU R is the world class statistics software and tools suite, part of GNU operating system. It is popular among scientists and academics people aside from having large user base, a CRAN, and an annual international conference.

Blender

Blender is a 3D modeler and animator, the world most successful free software on desktop. It had been used to produce 3D movies like Sintel and Tears of Steel as well as to draw real architectures (CAD). It is licensed under GPL.

Gimp, Inkscape and Scribus

GNU Image Manipulation Program (Gimp) is the GNU's Photoshop, the professional image editing program of free software. Inkscape (formerly Sodipodi) is illustrator and vector drawing program. It features RGB colors, international standard SVG and can read CorelDRAW's as well as AI's document formats. Scribus is a desktop publishing, page layout design program. The three of them are all GPL licensed and cross platform.

 

VLC

The infamous, orange colored audio video player that everyone use is also under GPL. It is an exemplary software for being cross platform -- it runs on all major OS including Android and iOS as well --  and truly popular too -- it counts 29 million downloads at the time this article being written.

Krita and MyPaint

Krita, the professional 2D digital painting and animation program and it is originally part of KDE. MyPaint is a free style 2D digital painting program. They are licensed under GPL. 

GEDA, KiCAD and LibrePCB

GPL Electronics Design Automation (GEDA) is an electronics suite licensed under GNU GPL just as its name suggests. KiCAD is a user friendly, professional 2D and 3D electronics design tool. LibrePCB is a new, user friendly, KiCAD-like electronics design tool. They are licensed under GNU GPL.

 

Super Tux Kart

Just like penguin is often a symbol of GNU/Linux system, Super Tux Kart is the symbol of gaming on libre software community. It is a fun 3D racing game with characters representing our Libre Software like Gnu (GNU), Tux (Linux), Puffy (OpenBSD), and the others.

WordPress 

The world infamous website software. If you know WordPress.com service, it runs with WordPress software inside. With it, one and an organization may create their own website quickly, beautifully, and with full customization. WordPress is licensed under GNU GPL, but not only that, as all thousands Plugins and Themes distributed are licensed under GNU GPL too.

 

How To Install

For the applications mentioned above, you can install them on Ubuntu by pressing Enter after typing this command line accordingly.

$ sudo apt-get install gcc

For other application, change gcc into one of these instead:

• OpenJDK: default-jdk
• GNU R: r-base 
• Blender: blender
• GIMP: gimp
• Inkscape: inskcape
• Scribus: scribus
• Super Tux Kart: supertuxkart
• VLC: vlc
• Krita: krita
• MyPaint: mypaint
• GEDA: geda
• KiCAD: kicad

Follow these tutorials to install Telegram, LibrePCB, and WordPress.

For either GNOME or KDE, we suggest you to not install either one on top of existing OS, but you better use Ubuntu if you want GNOME, use Kubuntu if you want KDE.

Afterword

That's all. Actually, there are too many other software not mentioned above deliberately to invite everyone to seek more themselves or not deliberately because I didn't know of them yet. All in all, I hope this list encourages everyone and all to love Libre Software and distribute them more to the others. Let's share once again!

About GNU General Public LicenseGNU General Public License (GNU GPL) is a computer software license published by The GNU Project (the team that develops GNU OS) that can be used used by any software developer for their own programs to be free. Learn more about free software (often called libre software as well) here. The special characteristics of GPL is called copyleft, a concept to fight copyright with copyright, that means a software with GNU GPL license will always GNU GPL forever when it distributed to the people, in both ways changed or unchanged, and will never changed to any other license forever. Today, there are three versions of GPL namely version 1, version 2, and version 3. Ubuntu consists of and does distribute many software licensed under GNU GPL. References - GNU GPL Licenses
- GPL Frequently Asked Questions- Free Software Directory

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Primitive FTP is an Android app to enable your phone to transfer files from and to Ubuntu computer and other devices over wifi or USB tethering. It is very easy to setup and do. Let's try!

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Preparations

Pick up your phone.

Open F-Droid. 

Search for Primitive FTPD and install it.

Note: if you don't have F-Droid yet, kindly read this tutorial.

Connecting Phone and Computer

Set out a wifi, if no one existed yet.

Connect both phone and computer to that wifi.

On Phone, run Primitive FTP.

Click Play button to the top of interface.

Now your phone is ready.

 

Browse Files

To see files stored in Android phone is done with your Ubuntu computer. To do so:

1. Open Files.

2. Press Ctrl+L.

3. Press Enter after typing IP address of your phone, for example,

sftp://192.168.68.3:1234

4. Answer with YES if Ubuntu system asks you to access this device. If you have set username password on Primitive FTP, you will be asked of them as well, so answer accordingly.

5. Connection established, now all Android files and folders are visible.

6. For example, in Android you can find DCIM folder (where all photos are stored), Download folder (where all your downloaded files stored), etc.

Done.

Transfer Files

To copy files from phone to Ubuntu computer, 

1. Browse files like instructed above. 

2. Find the folder, for example, DCIM (where all photos stored), and open it.

3. Copy the files you want to copy.

4. Paste the files into Ubuntu computer's folder you want as destination.

Done. 

To copy files from Ubuntu to phone:

1. Copy Ubuntu's files you want to send to phone. 

2. Browse files just like above.

3. Find the folder in the phone you want.

4. Paste the files into that Android's folder.

Done. 

 

I hope this tutorial will be useful for you and all.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ubuntu offers games, not only the educational ones, but also the purely fun and amusing ones like these aircraft shooting genre. You will find both 2D and 3D ones, Astro Menace and Chromium BSU, as examples beside the others. All of these games are libre software licensed and available on Ubuntu repository. This article offers short descriptions and instructions to install them. Let's see them all and play!

 
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Astro Menace
A beautiful, 3D space ship adventure battle game. You can customize your ship, buy/sell weapons, defeat all enemies and clear all levels. You can upgrade your ship to the better ones over the time!
Chromium BSU

(Not to be confused with Chromium Browser)

Love arcade? Chromium BSU is for you. It's a true arcade style modern aircraft shooting with health point (HP), dropped items, and of course a lot of enemies. Your ship won't be destroyed just by crashing one or two enemies as you have HP but when your HP is empty it destroyed. You play with mouse alone to move the aircraft and shoot the enemies level by level.

 

Endless Sky

Adventuring, trading and battling space ship game with a lot of stories. In short, press M to view map and select a destination, J to jump, N to select nearby space ship, and T to talk to that ship aside from TAB to fire. It is a complex game and you are suggested to read the how to play first.

KOBO DELUXE

An old-school arcade space shooting with map, front-rear fires, and a lot of space mazes and enemies to defeat. It offers 5 lives with no HP, so when you bump an enemy your ship will be destroyed (unlike Chromium BSU). To play, hold Ctrl by quickly repeatedly pressing arrow keys.

Kraptor

This game is made in Argentina and proudly created with free/libre game making tool called Allegro. It is a classic, arcade- or SEGA-styled aircraft shooting game with HP and weapon buying/selling features. The story begins in the future where world war happens and our objectives are to defeat the imperial by piloting battle aircrafts. Use mouse to move and shoot, while Z and X and C keys as your friends. Bu default you carry a gattling gun, but you can buy bomb and missiles as additions. Be careful, as you lose when your HP is empty and your weapons are not unlimited. 

M.A.R.S.

Ridiculous, that is this unique space shooting game. You will move a spaceship ruled by gravity to destroy enemy spaceships or a second player's. You are offered with various game mode including deathmatch. Use keyboard arrow keys to move (except Down) and Ctrl to shoot but be careful not to crash a planet. You are suggested to play the tutorial first, reduce game speed to minimum, and change the control keys to your convenience before playing the real matches otherwise you might find it difficult ("ridiculous") to play. 

Open Invaders

This game will remind you to the golden era of SEGA and Nintendo consoles! This is a classical, retro game to shoot all enemies with our space ship. Use keyboard arrow keys to move and Shift to shoot, P to pause and Q to quit. Thanks to its simple gameplay, your kids may love to play it too! Defeat all enemies and unlock the locked items. Lastly, this is also developed with Allegro like Kraptor. 

Powermanga

It is a classic, for kids-looking spaceship shooting game. You are equipped with HP and score bar to the top and weapon choices to the right. It just plays, no preferences whatsoever, with keyboard arrow keys for movements (no mouse), Space to shoot, and Ctrl to enable a highlighted weapon. There are gems and your task is to grab as many as you can to power up your ship. Uniquely, you'll find it's very interesting to see a casual game with great dedication to Free Software Community under its "Order" menu. Lastly, despite its name this game contains none of nor related to Japanese comics at all.

Val and Rick

Lastly in this list, one more space adventure shoot them up game with interesting gameplay and weapons. Hold Ctrl and use arrow keys to move to destroy all space enemies by avoiding every single enemy's fire.

How To Install

Ubuntu comes without any of mentioned games. To play one, you should install it. Press Enter after typing a command line below to install each game and change the name with the game name you want to install.

$ sudo apt-get install chromium-bsu

Change chromium-bsu above with either one of these: 

- astromenace
- marsshooter
- kobodeluxe
- kraptor
- open-invaders
- powermanga
- val-and-rick

Further Information

Libre Game Wiki -- the home of all FLOSS games.

Allegro - the game programming library which created some games above.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Persepolis and Download Navi are two download manager apps for Ubuntu and Android, respectively. They can help the users accelerate download speed and keep track of what files had been saved. This tutorial will explain how to use them to download files from the internet after installing them to desktop and phone. I hope this tutorial helps Ubuntu users who have computer and phone altogether.

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About The Applications

Persepolis Download Manager (PDM) is a free libre open source, cross platform, IDM-like program available officially on Ubuntu since version 20.04 Focal Fossa.

Download Navi is an Android phone app, available freely at F-Droid app store (read our quick guide). It is a very fast download accelerator and manager for mobile users. 

Features of both apps:

• Accelerate download speed up to 16x splits
  
• Automatic naming of files (Navi)
  
• Pause and resume
• Dark theme 
• Browser integration (Persepolis)

 

Installing Download Managers

On Ubuntu:

• Open Terminal.
• Press Enter after typing the command line below. 
• Persepolis installed.

$ sudo apt-get install persepolis

 

On Android:

• Open F-Droid. 
• Search for Download Navi.
• Click INSTALL and accept everything else. 
• Download Navi installed.

Basic Downloading

Now we learn how to download a file over the internet regardless it is a document, a program, a video or audio, or anything else. The basic is you just need to get the link (URL) on web browser and insert that link into the download manager. Let's practice with this exercise website https://file-examples.com.

To download a video: 

• go to Video Files Page, 
• select a video, 
• right-click a Sample Video File,
• Copy Link,
• paste link in the download manager program, finally
  
• start the download;
• for the other files repeat steps above.
  

I think it is clear and easy to do. Now, let's jump to the next practice.

Download YouTube Videos

INVIDIOUS (website) is a convenient way to download YouTube videos. For example, let us see this one hour Beautiful Nature Scenery video.

On Ubuntu:

• Right-click the playing video. 
• Copy Video Link.
• Open Persepolis and add new download. 
• Paste the link.
• Start download. 
• It downloads. 
• Once completed, the video is saved in Downloads.

 

On Android: 

• Open browser to the video above.
• Click Download.
• It plays on new tab in dark background.
• Copy the URL from the address bar.
• Open Download Navi, add new download.
  
• Paste the URL.
• Start download.
  

The Progress and The Result

Here's how both downloads happening and finishing. Once again, for the other types of file, the ways to download are just the same.

Progressing with about 7MB/s speed:

Resulting in saved videos:

That's all. I hope this will be useful for all dear readers.

This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.