Excellent Utilities: Extension Manager - Browse, Install and Manage GNOME Shell Extensions

This series highlights best-of-breed utilities. We cover a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides. Part 22 of our Linux for Starters series explains how to install GNOME shell extensions using Firefox. Because of a bug, our guide explains that it’s not possible to install the extensions using the Snap version of Firefox. Instead, you need to install the deb package for Firefox (or use a different web browser). However, if you have updated to Ubuntu 22.04, you’ll find that trying to install Firefox using apt won’t install a .deb version. Instead, it fetches a package that installs the Firefox Snap. You can install a Firefox deb from the Mozilla Team PPA. But there has to be an easier way to install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions.

Mozilla Firefox 102 Is Now Available for Download, Adds Geoclue Support on Linux

Firefox 102 is now here to introduce support for Geoclue on Linux, a D-Bus service that provides geolocation services when needed by certain websites. It also improves the Picture-in-Picture feature by adding support for subtitles and captions for the Dailymotion, Disney+ Hotstar, Funimation, HBO Max, SonyLIV, and Tubi video streaming services, and further improves the PDF reading mode when using the High Contrast mode.

Why I think the GNOME designers are incompetent

But GNOME folk didn't know how to do this. They don't know how to do window management properly at all. So they take away the title bar buttons, then they say nobody needs title bars, so they took away title bars and replaced them with pathetic "CSD" which means that action buttons are now above the text to which they are responses. Good move, lads. By the way, every written language ever goes from top to bottom, not the reverse. Some to L to R, some go R to L, some do both (boustrophedon) but they all go top to bottom.

The guys at Xerox PARC and Apple who invented the GUI knew this. The clowns at Red Hat don't.

There are a thousand little examples of this. They are trying to rework the desktop GUI without understanding how it works, and for those of us who do know how it works, and also know of alternative designs these fools have never seen, such as RISC OS, which are far more efficient and linear and effective, it's extremely annoying.

Devices With GNU/Linux and Hardware Hacking

• Introducing ESP32-C5: Espressif’s first Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 MCU

  ESP32-C5 packs a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) radio, along with the 802.11b/g/n standard for backward compatibility. The Wi-Fi 6 support is optimised for IoT devices, as the SoC supports a 20MHz bandwidth for the 802.11ax mode, and a 20/40MHz bandwidth for the 802.11b/g/n mode.

• Compulab’s new IoT gateway is based on NXP’s i.MX.8M processor and runs on Linux, MS Azure IoT and Node RED [Ed: Compulab should shun spyware from Microsoft. Bad neighbourhood.]

  The IOT-GATE-IMX8PLUS is an IoT gateway made by Compulab that is based on the NXP i.MX.8M Plus System on Chip (SoC) for commercial or industrial applications. The device features dual GbE ports, Wi-Fi6/BLE 5.3 support, LTE 4G, GPS and many optional peripherals.

  Compulab’s new IoT gateway provides support for two processor models, the C1800Q and the C1800QM. Both come with a real time processor but only the C1800QM includes the AI/ML Neural Processing Unit. 

• Want A Break From Hardware Hacking? Try Bitburner

  If you ever mention to a normal person that you’re a hacker, and they might ask you if you can do something nefarious. The media has unfortunately changed the meaning of the word so that most people think hackers are lawless computer geniuses instead of us simple folk who are probably only breaking the laws meant to prevent you from repairing your own electronics. However, if you want a break, you can fully embrace the Hollywood hacker stereotype with Bitburner. Since it is all online, you don’t even have to dig out your hoodie.