Tag: Lubuntu

How To: Install Wine In Lubuntu

Today’s article isn’t going to be complicated or long as we are going to cover how you install Wine in Lubuntu. This should be straightforward and work with any modern version of Lubuntu.

I suppose we should start with the basics…

Lubuntu is a distro in the Ubuntu family. This is my favorite distro and I’ve covered Lubuntu-specifics in the past. However, these directions are going to work just fine on Ubuntu or even Linux Mint. They should also work just fine for Debian and any other distro that uses ‘apt‘ and some standard repositories. 

Wine is software used to run Windows software on Linux. It once stood for “Wine Is Not an Emulator” and it is indeed not an emulator. Wine is a compatibility layer that lets you run some Windows software on Linux. Not all Windows applications will run, and things like Windows drivers don’t work, but it can be a handy application for those who still rely on Windows software.

I’ll only cover the basics. There’s a lot to Wine (not WINE, at least according to the project page) and this is only going to cover how to install Wine in Lubuntu. Of course, other distros can use these same few steps, but I only tested in Lubuntu. (It’s a giant amount of software to download and my bandwidth isn’t the greatest.)

If you’ve tested this in other distros, let us know!

And, yes, I did test this in Lubuntu and Wine appears to be installed.

Install Wine In Lubuntu:

You can likely do this with the GUI software installation tools but we’ll do this in the terminal. As you’re using Lubuntu, you can open a terminal by simply pressing CTRL + ALT + T on your keyboard.

Because you’re using Lubuntu, I can surmise that you’re using 64-bit. If you’re not, you’re using a very old version of Lubuntu. You should upgrade to a supported release immediately, or move to a distro that’s still supporting 32-bit hardware.

If you’re not using Lubuntu, you should read this:

Is My System Capable of 32 or 64-Bit Linux?

You’ll need to use a 64-bit CPU and operating system if you want to follow these directions with any hope of success.

The first thing we will do is enable 32-bit software from the repositories. This is just a simple command:

I don’t always remember to suggest you update your device, but it’s a good idea if you update now. You can update with this command:

With all of that done, you only need to install Wine in Lubuntu. That’s easily done:

That’s all there is to it, at least at the basic level. As I don’t use Wine, because I don’t use Windows software, I’m going entirely from my notes and a time when I did try to retain some Windows software. (Crimson Editor, I’m looking at you.)

Closure:

There’s a lot more to this, but that’s the gist of it. If you want to install Wine in Lubuntu, it’s not all that difficult. You may then want to do things like install Plays On Linux or whatnot, but I don’t think that’s technically required. So, this is just an intro to Wine. There’s much more to it.

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Install Flatpaks In Lubuntu

This shouldn’t be a very long article and will apply to other distros, but this is how you install Flatpaks in Lubuntu. This seems like a good article to write as it’s something tucked into my notes and something I’ve not written about before.

This article applies to Lubuntu. It may apply to other distros, especially those in the Lubuntu family. In some cases, such as Linux Mint, recent versions come with Flatpak support. In those cases, you don’t need to do anything special, you can start using Flatpaks as soon as you’d like.

What Are Flatpaks:

Flatpak is a utility for software deployment. It was once known as xdg-app but has used the Flatpak name for going on a decade. This is not something new, even though it has recently grown in popularity. They’re pretty handy.

The thing that makes Flatpaks special is that they run in a sandbox. That means they don’t interact with other software on your system, they run in their own isolated memory space. This is good for security.

They’re also good for easy installation. Not only do they run in an isolated environment, they are self-contained. With Flatpak being what it is, you don’t have to worry about dependencies.

If a Flatpak does need to integrate with the system, this will be set by the developer. The advanced user can change those permissions, though that may cause breakage should you restrict the access levels.

There’s also a central repository that you can use. While you can get a Flatpak from anywhere, and you can add your own repositories, the most common use will be from a central repository which does things like providing updates to the packaged software. 

This is good for developers who want to distribute their software while not having to do so for the various package managers. Rather than a .deb or .rpm version, they can upload and update a Flatpak that’s stored in a centralized repository.

Pretty neat!

Install Flatpaks In Lubuntu:

For the sake of this article, Flatpak is the software type and the delivery mechanism, while Flatpaks are the applications installed via Flatpak. Make sense? I hope so because that’s what I’ve got.

I should probably have mentioned that earlier in the article…

Anyhow, to install Flatpak you’ll need an open terminal. As you’re using Lubuntu, you can open your default terminal by pressing CTRL + ALT + T on your keyboard.

With your terminal now open, let’s install Flatpak so that you can install all the Flatpaks your heart desires. To do that, run this command to install Flatpak:

That will install Flatpak, but you will then want to enable the Flatpak repository. That’s another easy command that you can cut and paste:

Next, you’ll need to reboot. Yes, this one should have a reboot to work properly. Run this command in the terminal:

That’s all you need to do.

Installing Flatpaks:

Now you have enabled Flatpak and you’ve added the default Flatpak repository. You can head to the centralized repository and start browsing for interesting software. You do that here:

Flathub, the Flatpak Repository

I’ll give you an example, to make it easier…

Let’s say you want to install ONLYOFFICE as a Flatpak.

Well, you browse/search for it and end up at the ONLYOFFICE repo page.

Once you’re there, you’ll see an “Install” option in the upper right section of the page. There’s a down-arrow next to it, which is the easiest method. Click that and run the command prompt in your terminal.

In this case, that command prompt would be:

You can then run the application with this command:

No, you shouldn’t need to run the program through the terminal. Because you rebooted, added Flatpaks should appear in your application menu in the appropriate category section. 

Also, it’s a bit more of an interactive process when you’re installing Flatpaks through the terminal. You’ll be given a few options along the way, though I just accept the defaults (by pressing the Y key) and call it good.

You’ll also notice that the applications are much larger. If you have slower internet, you’ll notice this. This is because the Flatpaks are isolated and come with the required dependencies. Because of this, the packages are quite a bit larger.

Once in a while, I’ve noticed that the application won’t appear until a reboot happens. If you run the terminal command once, that seems to help it, and then appears in the application menu. It’s not perfect, at least not here, but it’s definitely ‘good enough’ and it’s a great way to get sandboxed software that doesn’t require hunting around for dependencies.

Closure:

So, that’s how you install Flatpaks in Lubuntu. It’s also probably how you install Flatpaks in ElementaryOS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc… However, if you’re installing Flatpaks in Ubuntu there’s an extra step you can take that lets you integrate Flatpaks better with the GNOME desktop environment.

If you’re using Ubuntu, you can add this command before the reboot step:

I believe that will add Flatpaks to your regular software store, that is the GUI one where you’d go to add software. I’m not sure because I don’t use Ubuntu, but that’s what the command looks like it will do. I’d normally not share any code I haven’t used myself, but I took the command from Flatpak’s site, which makes me think it’s correct.

Anyhow, Flatpaks are easy to install and run more securely. If your OS changes underneath, this won’t matter. The software comes with the appropriate dependencies. Once you’re more familiar with the software, you can change the permissions if you want. I’ve yet to find a single reason why I’d want to modify the permissions – but it’s possible.

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When Did I Install Lubuntu

This won’t be a complicated article, nor will it be a very long article, as we answer the question of, “When did I install Lubuntu?” It’s a rather specific question and one you can answer with a couple of different commands. Fortunately, this is also going to apply to Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, and all the rest that are set up in this manner.

You may not recall the exact date and time when you installed Lubuntu. That’s okay, most of us don’t keep track of that information. At some point, you may want to know that information. It’s not a major data point, but knowing when you installed Lubuntu can be useful.

Yes, this article is about Lubuntu. It’s specific to Lubuntu because I use Lubuntu as I type this. There are other distros where this will work perfectly well. Tomorrow is my birthday and I’m not going to test a bunch of distros.

If you’re unfamiliar with Lubuntu, it’s a Linux distro that I’m a big fan of. It’s not the best Linux distro, it’s the best distro for me. I’ve written a whole lot of Lubuntu articles!

List Installed Software In Lubuntu
Benchmark Your GPU In Lubuntu
How To: Zip Files In Lubuntu
Let’s Mount An .iso In Lubuntu
Disable Window Grouping In Lubuntu
(And many more Lubuntu articles…)

Lubuntu is a great distro that has a familiar interface, great support, a wonderful community and is easy to adapt to. A Windows user can be up and running Lubuntu in an hour – if they take their time. As I say, “Things are where you’d logically expect them to be.

Anyhow, the question is when did you install Lubuntu…

When Did I Install Lubuntu:

This is going to require an open terminal. As we’re using Lubuntu, you can open your default terminal by pressing CTRL + ALT + T on your keyboard. The tools you need will be already installed.

Now, you can identify your storage drives with lsblk but we’ll use the following command, as it’s easier for this task.

From there, you want to find your / partition. For example, here’s my output:

In this case, the output is /dev/nvme0n1p1 and not any of the other choices.

If you were using something like Mint, the output might be similar to this:

In that case, the output is /dev/sda2 largely because I’m using UEFI on that system and the first partition is occupied with that data.

The syntax you’re looking for to find out when you installed Lubuntu is pretty simple. You have two choices that will work. They are as follows:

Or:

So, on my Lubuntu system, the command would look like:

While on Mint it would look like this:

Of course, you can switch it up with the dumpe2fs command, per the instructions.

NOTE: This works on ext* formatted partitions. If you did some sort of weird, non-default, installation, then it may not work for you. I can’t be 100% certain because I didn’t test this.

The tools we’ve used are tune2fs, which is already installed and is described as:

tune2fs – adjust tunable file system parameters on ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystems

And, we’ve used the dumpe2fs command which is already installed and described as:

dumpe2fs – dump ext2/ext3/ext4 file system information

So, I can only assume that other drive formats aren’t going to work and that information simply won’t be stored. They might work. I simply do not know and haven’t taken the time to look into it. That means this will work for the vast majority of users.

Closure:

If you have ever asked yourself, “When did I install Lubuntu?” This is the article for you. I admit, it’s rather specific, but it is what it is. If you want to try this with other systems, go ahead! It won’t break anything and it just might work. If you’ve partitioned your drives with a different formatting, it’s probably not going to work but trying these commands will not break anything.

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List Installed Software In Lubuntu

There may come a point in your Linux journey where you must list the installed software in Lubuntu. This is easily done and I will show you a couple of quick ways to get this list in the terminal. So, if you want to list installed software in Lubuntu, this is the article for you!

I’m writing this article because it’s quick and easy. I won’t make this article as long as I’ve made recent articles. We’re just going to get to the point, more or less. I will show you a couple of different ways, each with its own merits. You can decide which way works for you.

The article headline and related material reference Lubuntu. That’s because I’m using Lubuntu when I write this article. I am a Lubuntu member, after all. It makes sense that I’d be using Lubuntu!

Plus, it’s a weekend. I’ve formalized the idea that articles written during weekends will be easier. I have a life outside of writing articles and doing other things to help the Linux community. (It’s amazing, but it’s true!)

However, you can use these commands on anything that uses dpkg or apt. That means you can use these commands on Debian, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and myriad other distros that use .deb files as their software packages. These commands are fairly universal across those distros and you shouldn’t have any issue running either of them on any of those machines.

Caveat:

The following commands will not show you Snap packages or flatpak packages. Software installed by those means does not show up in these commands. Only software installed with dpkg/apt (which includes all .deb packages even if you used a GUI installation method) will be shown.

Fortunately, that’s not a problem.

To show flatpak applications:

To show Snap applications:

AppImages aren’t really installed and I can find no way to list those that make sense. Sure, we could use the find command and list any .appimage file, but that won’t tell us if you use it. We’ll just ignore those for the sake of simplicity and to stay within the realms of ‘reasonable’.

List Installed Software In Lubuntu:

In the opening paragraph, I mentioned that this was something you’d be doing in the terminal. That means you need an open terminal. As you’re using Lubuntu, you can just press CTRL + ALT + T and QTerminal should open right up.

With your terminal now open, the first command we’ll be using is dpkg. This will not show all the installed applications at the same time. This outputs a nicely formatted list. You can see the version of the software on the right. It’s easy to understand.

It will show you a page at a time and your arrow button lets you scroll down to see them all. To exit the list, you press the Q button on your keyboard. To list installed software in Lubuntu with dpkg, you simply run the following command:

The second command might be a little more useful, but it’s not formatted nearly as nicely. This time around, we’ll be using the apt command. If you don’t know, apt is basically a front end for dpkg. Now you know.

If you want to use apt to list installed software in Lubuntu, you would just run the following command:

That will spit out the entire list, though you could pipe it to the less command. To do that, try this command:

That will output the list a page at a time. Like the above dpkg command, if you want to exit the list, you just press the Q button on your keyboard.

This command is also useful to create a list of installed applications. Again, this won’t list Snaps or flatpaks, but it will list the traditionally installed applications. That means it’s pretty useful to create a list, especially if you want to recreate the system later. To do that, just run this command:

There you go, you now have a handy list of installed applications in Lubuntu! Pretty easy, isn’t it?

That’s all there is to it today. 

Closure:

Yeah, it’s a weekend. This article might just break 800 words, so it’s not nearly as long as many of my recent articles. This time around,  you’ve learned how to list installed software in Lubuntu. It wasn’t even that complicated and you’ve been given the choice between two commands. Just pick the one that works for you and commit it to memory. You’ll be golden and have taken one more step in your route of Linux learning.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

Benchmark Your GPU In Lubuntu

Today we have a simple enough article, meant for fun and information, as we talk about how to benchmark your GPU in Lubuntu. This won’t be a very long and complicated article. Even a new user should be able to follow along.

We all like to know where we stand in life. This is true even with computers. At the very least, we want to know that our computer can accomplish the tasks we need it to accomplish. One of the ways you can do this is to benchmark your computer.

I’ve previously written a couple of articles that involve benchmarking.

Benchmark Your Linux Box With Geekbench 5
Check Disk Speed In The Terminal
Graphically Examine Hardware Info With HardInfo

So, this isn’t a foreign concept to my regular readers (whom I appreciate a great deal).

A benchmark pushes your hardware to the limits and then gives you a score telling you how well it did. Usually, the next step will be using your search engine to find out how well you did against other computers. (Those with older and slow computers may not do this, but I did with a recently purchased refurbished device, and it did not do well – but it still perfectly satisfies my needs.)

Your GPU obviously controls your graphics. I do not need massive graphic capabilities. I’m content with onboard graphics and my benchmark score shows this. At most, I’m going to stream a video, watch a movie, or play a game that doesn’t require high-end graphics.

You should know about Lubuntu already. The directions for this article are for Lubuntu, but will likely work with most other distros. For this exercise, we’ll be using glmark2.

Installing glmark2:

The first step to using glmark2 is opening your terminal. To open your terminal, CTRL + ALT + T. Then, with your terminal now open, enter the following command to ensure your system’s application database is up to date:

Let that run its course and don’t worry about upgrading at this point. You can always do that later, though I’d suggest doing so as soon as realistically possible because updates tend to contain security updates and those are important.

The next goal is to install glmark2 and you do that with this command:

If you’re not using Lubuntu and you’re using a distro with Wayland, then you want a different command. That command might be something like this:

With glmark2 now installed, it would be worth your time to check the man page. This article will only cover the very basic command, literally running the command without any flags, but there are many options available for you. To check the man page, use this command:

As you can see, there are quite a few options available. I will not be doing a deep dive into those options. You can easily figure most of them out on your own. Heck, you can probably figure them all out with a little trial and error.

Now that you have the GPU benchmarking tool, glmark2, installed in Lubuntu you can run the command in the terminal…

Benchmark Your GPU In Lubuntu:

If you’ve installed glmark2 and checked the man page, you’ll see that we’ve chosen the right tool for the job. The man page describes glmark2 as:

glmark2 – OpenGL (ES) 2.0 benchmark suite

So, assuming you’ve kept your terminal open (if not, open it again) then you need to simply use the command’s name to run a benchmark on your system. It’s that simple to benchmark your GPU in Lubuntu. Just try this command:

In theory, you should not do anything with your computer while this runs. I, of course, did not listen to that advice and I’m perfectly okay with that. As I mentioned above, my graphical needs are not high. The Intel graphics are just fine for me.

That’s going to take a while, especially on an older computer like mine – and one with just an onboard GPU. This should open a new window and display a bunch of graphics in that window. If you didn’t do this in full-screen mode, that is without any flags to set that value, you’ll also be able to see quite a lot of information scrolling by in your terminal. Someone smarter than I am can tell you what that information means.

Wait for the benchmark to end, that’s when the new window closes, and collect your score from the terminal. Mine was not very high.

Then, use your favorite search engine to see how well you did compared to other users. If you want to compare your score against other computers, you can try this OpenBenchmarking link. I’m sure there are other sites where you can compare your score with others. That’s just the one I happened to find in a very brief search.

Closure:

So, I don’t know if you actually want to benchmark your GPU in Lubuntu. If you do, now you know how. It’s not terribly complicated and it is something you can do in just a few short minutes.

You’re not supposed to use your computer at the same time, but I had dozens of windows open and was streaming a video during my benchmark. In my case, it doesn’t matter to me. I have no need for more powerful graphics and I’m content with the performance I get from this device. It’s perfectly capable of meeting my needs.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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