Multimedia, Games and Crypto Archives

How to install Starcraft 2 on Ubuntu Linux

30 May 2021 by Lubos Rendek

In this Linux guide you will learn how to install Starcraft 2 on Ubuntu Linux. The Starcraft 2 game has been released free of charge for anyone with registered Battle.net account. Before you proceed with the installation make sure that you have correctly installed an appropriate VGA driver whether it is for your NVIDIA or Radeon graphic card.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to install Wine
How to install Lutris
How to install Battle.net and prerequisites
How to download and install Startcraft 2 via Lutris

How to take screenshots using maim on Linux

22 May 2021 by Egidio Docile

On Linux there are many utilities we can use to take screenshots. Every complete desktop environment, such as GNOME, KDE or XFCE has its integrated application specifically designed for this task, but many other small
desktop-independent programs exist. In this tutorial we talk about a very lightweight and versatile command-line application, maim (make image), and we see what are the many options we can use to modify its behavior.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to install maim on the most used Linux distributions
How to take a screenshot of all the screen
How to save the screenshot in a specific format (png/jpg)
How to select a region of the screen interactively
How to take a screenshot of a window by passing its id to maim
How to take screenshots with a delay
How to use maim in a pipeline

Successful Phoronix Test Suite installation on Manjaro 21 Linux

How to install Phoronix Test Suite on Manjaro 21 Linux

7 May 2021 by Lubos Rendek

Phoronix Test Suite is a video graphic card (VGA) benchmark tool for Linux. In the following tutorial we will perform an installation of Phoronix Test Suite on Manjaro 21 Linux from Arch User Repository using command line tools makepkg and pacman .

In this How to install Phoronix Test Suite on Manjaro 21 Linux tutorial you will learn:

How to clone the latest Phoronix Test Suite AUR repository.
How to Build Phoronix Test Suite package.
How to install Phoronix Test Suite AUR package.

VNC Remote-Screen Utilities for Linux

8 April 2021 by Roel Van de Paar

If you manage more than one computer, you may have wanted, at one point or another, a “remote keyboard,” a “remote mouse,” and a “remote screen” for that far-away computer, even if it is just up or down the stairs in your house.

VNC (Virtual network computing) can help here. Think about it as your screen, a keyboard, and a mouse at a remote workstation, controlled via the network and quite usable in terms of speed, even on somewhat slower connections.

A VNC setup usually consists of two or more computers, where the computers which need to be remotely controlled run a server (the VNC server) and the clients which need to connect to it (with the possibility to do so simultaneously in many cases) running a client (the VNC client(s)).

In this tutorial, you will learn:

A list of the most prominent VNC utilities available for Linux
Which VNC server/client utility we like the best

How to download online videos from the command line using Youtube-dl

How to download online videos from the Linux command line using Youtube-dl

24 February 2021 by Egidio Docile

Nowadays a lot of video sharing platforms exist online. Some are really popular, like Youtube , and others are a little more “obscure”. Different types of content can be found on these platforms, but is not always possible to download them via the native web interface. In this tutorial we will see how to use a small command line utility: youtube-dl. This command line utility is able to download said videos for us using a very simple syntax. The following tutorial aims to demonstrate the capabilities of the program, however it should be used only where appropriate, in order to respect copyright laws.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to install youtube-dl
How to download videos using youtube-dl
How to list the available formats for a video
How to download a specific format
How to stream a video directly to a media player
How to save downloaded files using template patterns
How to specify options into the youtube-dl configuration file

How to download online videos from the command line using Youtube-dl

How to install the NVIDIA drivers on AlmaLinux 8

4 February 2021 by Lubos Rendek

In this article we will be perform an installation of the NVIDIA Driver on AlmaLinux. Nvidia driver is needed by your NVIDIA Graphics GPU to function with better performance. To do this we are first going to identify your NVIDIA graphic card, download an appropriate NVIDIA driver , disable the default nouveau driver by modifying the GRUB boot menu and finally install a official NVIDIA driver.

To install Nvidia driver on other Linux distributions, follow our Nvidia Linux Driver guide.

How to rip an audio CD from the command line using cdparanoia

30 January 2021 by Egidio Docile

Nowadays we are surrounded by devices able to read digital audio, and there are many services such as Spotify which allow to stream content legally. However if you like to buy music on physical support (compact disc), you may want to extract the audio tracks so they can be used on your smartphone or favorite device, or just for backup purposes. There are man tools on Linux which can be used to accomplish such task, but in the vast majority of cases they are just frontend to cdparanoia. In this tutorial we will learn how to use this tool.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to install cdparanoia on the most used Linux distributions
How to retrieve drive information
How to rip all the audio tracks from a compact disc
How to rip specific tracks and/or a specific segment of a track
How to pipe the output of cdparanoia to tools like flac or lame to compress the audio tracks

How to rip an audio CD from the command line using cdparanoia

How to listen to music from the console using the cmus player on Linux

30 December 2020 by Egidio Docile

Cmus is a fantastic ncurses-based music player written in C. It can be used on all Unix-based operating systems, and so also on Linux. It has a series of very nice features like gapless playback, and supports a variety of file formats; among the others: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Opus, Musepack, WavPack, WAV, AAC, and MP4. It also support adding features via extensions. In this tutorial we will learn its basic usage.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to install cmus on the most used Linux distributions
How to add songs to the library
How to reproduce a song, and the various reproduction modes
How to add and remove songs from the queue
How to create,rename,delete,import and export a playlist
How to add and remove songs from a playlist

Firefox vs Firefox ESR on Linux

27 November 2020 by Korbin Brown

Mozilla Firefox is a really popular browser to use on Linux systems, with many or most distros even including it as the default web browser. It even edges out Chrome and Chromium, at least in the Linux world.

Some Linux distributions, like Kali or Debian include a different version of Firefox, called Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release).

In this guide, we’ll be comparing Firefox to Firefox ESR. This will include a look into why some distros come with ESR instead of the normal version of the browser, and also what the pros and cons are of both browsers.

In this tutorial you will learn:

What is Firefox ESR?
Why do some distros use Firefox ESR?
How to download Firefox ESR

How to improve Firefox font rendering on Linux

26 November 2020 by Korbin Brown

For one reason or another, Mozilla Firefox may not render fonts as intended on all Linux systems. Fortunately, Firefox gives us a lot of control over the font configuration, so we can fine tune these settings until it looks better.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to access Firefox’s font settings to improve rendering. We’ll also go over some more advanced options in case the usual ones don’t work for you.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to configure Firefox font settings
Advanced font settings in about:config
Operating system level font tweaks

VA-API setting enabled in Firefox on Linux

Firefox with VA-API on Linux

25 November 2020 by Korbin Brown

The Video Acceleration API, developed by Intel, has been enjoying widespread support in a variety of software, including the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox. The VA-API is an API for hardware acceleration that allows a computer to offload video decoding and encoding tasks to a system’s video card, a task that historically has taken place in the CPU.

In this guide, we’ll talk about Firefox’s VA-API setting. This will include a brief introduction to what it is and how it works, as well as how to enable or disable the setting on a Linux system. Keep reading if you want to give the VA-API setting a try, potentially speeding up your web browser’s video playback a great deal.

In this tutorial you will learn:

What is Video Acceleration API in Firefox?
How to enable or disable VA-API

Enable Firefox dark mode on Linux

25 November 2020 by Korbin Brown

Dark mode is all the rage these past few years, with nearly all operating systems and applications now offering the feature. Mozilla Firefox is no exception, and it’s pretty simple to enable dark mode inside the web browser. This can help reduce eye strain, especially when using your PC in a dimly lit room.

In this guide, we’ll take you through the step by step instructions to enable dark mode in Firefox on a Linux system. You’ll also see how to select from a variety of other themes or restore the classic brighter theme.

In this tutorial you will learn:

How to enable or disable dark mode (and other themes) in Firefox