The Movies and TV app on Windows 10 is the stock media player on the OS. It’s not as feature-rich as Windows Media Player but it does support the MKV format, supports extensions, lets you trim a video, and extract a frame from it which the latter did not. The app isn’t just a media player though; it can keep track of your entire media library. All you have to do is add folders to the Movies & TV app that contain your media files. These folders can be folders located on local drives, or external drives. Here’s how it works.
Add folders and server to Movies & TV
Open the Movies and TV app. The interface you see when you’re not playing a video in the app has three tabs; folders, removable storage, and servers.
Folders are local ones or folders on external drives. To add a folder, click the ‘Add folders’ button and then navigate to the folder you want to add. You should add folders instead of entire drives when the drive has different file types. Move the media files to a single folder on that drive, and then add it. You can add multiple folders from the same drive.
If you go to the Removable storage tab, it will list all removable drives that are currently connected to your system, as well as other devices that you can access media files from e.g., a phone.
Go to the Server tab to add a server. Make sure your Windows 10 PC is able to see/connect to the server. The app should be able to find it if your PC can connect to it from the Settings app. Select a server and you will be able to browse the media on it.
The Movies and TV app isn’t just a media player. It has a library management feature that allows you to quickly access the media saved on your system, on a network drive, or a server. You can browse the media and select whatever it is you want to play. The advantage of adding items to the library is that you can quickly move to the next or previous item within a folder. For example, if you’re watching a series, the app will automatically play the next episode in a series, or you can quickly move to the next item within the folder by clicking the arrow button on the right. Likewise, you can move to the previous item by clicking the arrow button on the left.
Windows 10 has two command-line apps; PowerShell and Command Prompt. It’s also got a new Terminal app that you can try out. The Terminal app is great if you use multiple command-line tools. If you don’t feel like using Terminal because it is still in Beta, but you need a Linux shell, you can install Linux on Windows 10. You’ll be surprised to see just how well the Linux Shell is integrated with Windows 10. Here’s how you can open a Linux shell directly to a folder.
Open Linux shell in folder
First, make sure you have Ubuntu/Linux installed on your Windows 10 system. You must have the Linux feature enabled and not a Linux installation dual-booted on your system.
That is really all you need. Open File Explorer and go to the folder that you want to open a Linux Shell in. Hold down the Shift key and right-click in an empty area. You will see an ‘Open Linux shell here’ option. Click it.
A Linux terminal window will open at the folder location. The title bar will show you the path to the folder and you will also see it in the Terminal window.
Moving between directories in the Linux terminal app isn’t hard and if you like using the Terminal over a GUI, you won’t think much of it. That said, it’s still really helpful to have this option. If nothing else, it is quicker than typing out a path or even pasting it.
Windows 10 has its problems, many of which are old and still unresolved but Microsoft appears to have committed to adding Linux to their OS. These little things are a testament to it. Windows 10 no longer has the ‘Open command prompt’ option in this context menu but it has an option to open a Linux shell.
It’s not clear what version of Windows 10 this was added in but it was definitely there in 1903 which is the Windows 10 May 2019 update. The Windows subsystem for Linux is an app and like any other app it can be run with admin rights. To that end, you cannot open a Linux Shell with admin rights from the context menu. It opens with ordinary user rights and that is definitely the downside of it. It’s also why users might prefer to just use the shell to switch to a different directory.
You may want to consider using the new Terminal app. It may be in beta but it’s still pretty good and you will like the tabbed interface if you need to work in multiple directories.
If you need to fetch search engine results—in particular those from Google—one way to do it is to run an actual search on google.com and try to parse the intricate HTML code that you’ll get as a result. It can be done but it’s quite an endeavour. If you want to take an easier route, why not use a dedicated SERP API that you can feed with your search term and that will return the results in a format that can easily be parsed. One such product is the Serpstack API from apilayer. It takes your search query string and parameters as input and returns the search results in JSON format. Let’s have an in-depth look at the product.
We’ll start off as we often do by discussing SERP in general. Next, we’ll explain what it is and describe a few of the different types of results that are typically available from search engines. We will also explore some reasons why one would use a SERP API. And once we’re all on the same page, we’ll have a detailed look at the Serpstack API. We’ll have a quick look at some of its main features before we dig into how to use the API. And before we conclude, we’ll explore the service’s pricing structure and available plans.
SERP In A Nutshell
First things first, SERP is an acronym for Search Engine Results Pages. These are the web pages that are served to users when they search for something online using a search engine such as Google or Bing. The user specifies their search query using specific terms and phrases that are commonly referred to as keywords and then the search engine presents them with a SERP.
Every SERP is unique. This is even true of multiple search queries performed on the same search engine using the same keywords or query text. The main reason for that is that virtually every search engine customizes the experience for their users by presenting results based on a wide range of factors that go well beyond their search terms. These factors can include the user’s physical location, his browsing history and social settings, etc. And while two SERPs may appear identical and may contain many of the same results, they will often feature subtle differences.
Search engine providers such as Google, Bing or other players are constantly evolving their services and technologies and experimenting with their results. Their goal is to offer their users a more responsive and intuitive experience. As new technologies are introduced in the search space—and they are at an amazing pace, the SERPs’ appearance change, and they are today quite different from what they once were.
Organic Results
SERPs will normally contain two types of content: organic results and paid results. Organic results are listings of web pages that appear as a result of the search engine’s algorithm. More on this in a moment. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the science—or is it rather an art—of manipulating content to trick search engines into listing our website for a specific keyword or search string.
About Search Algorithms and Ranking Signals
So, back to organic results. In a nutshell, they are listings that have been indexed by the search engine based on a number of factors that are collectively referred to as “ranking signals.” For instance, the search algorithm used by Google features hundreds of ranking factors. Search engine providers tend to keep the details of their ranking system secret. So, while nobody outside of Google—and possibly not that many people inside—know precisely what the ranking signals are, some are considered to be more important than others.
Why use a SERP API?
There are several reasons why anyone would have a use for a SERP API. There’s the obvious need for periodically retrieving SERP data for your products and websites and keeping track of it over time as it is an essential part of any SEO strategy. With rankings constantly fluctuating and search keywords becoming more or less applicable and valuable in the course of time, there is only one way of staying on top of these changes and that is to use a ready-made Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that implements SERP data directly into your own applications or websites using a SERP API like Serpstack.
In a nutshell, the main difference between using a browser to retrieve SERP data and using a SERP API such as Serpstack is the format of the response. The Serpstack API will return JSON data that is easily parsed by your in-house software. Using it frees you from having to extract the meaningful data from all the surrounding web formatting.
Introducing Serpstack
In one sentence, Serpstack is a real-time and accurate Google Search results API. Trusted by some of the largest brands worldwide, this JSON REST API is lightning fast and easy to use. The product is built and maintained by apilayer, a software company based in London, United Kingdom and Vienna, Austria. Originally created out of an internal need to keep track of search engine positions in an automated fashion, the product has grown to become one of the most trusted SERP APIs available on the market. As for apilayer, this is the company behind some of the most popular API and SaaS products worldwide, including Currencylayer, Invoicely and Eversign.
The Serpstack API retrieves SERP data from search engines in an automated fashion by using a proxy network and a proprietary scraping technology whenever API requests are made. The resulting SERP data is publicly available and anyone can access it. Furthermore, the Serpstack API supports nearly all the search result types returned by Google, including web results, image results, video results, news results, shopping results, sponsored ads, questions, and much more.
Built on top of apilayer cloud infrastructure, a system that some of the world’s most popular real-time API services are running on, the Serpstack API is highly scalable and flexible at any stage. It was built to offer a way of scraping Google SERP data in real-time and at any scale. Implementing the service takes just a few minutes using a simple HTTP GET URL structure, and results are returned either in JSON or CSV format.
Main Features Of Serpstack
Feature-wise, the Serpstack API leaves nothing to be desired. First and foremost, the service is highly scalable and always queueless. Apilayer’s powerful cloud infrastructure was simply built to withstand high volume API requests without the need for a queue. It has been at the core of several of the company’s products. It is also highly customizable. Since no two customers have identical needs, you can tailor your automated search queries based on a series of options, including location, language, device, and more.
Using this product, gone is the worrying about global IPs, browser clusters or CAPTCHAs. Thanks to a powerful underlying proxy network, this SERP scraping API has got you covered in pretty much every single situation. And it’s also easy on the budget. You get up to 100 monthly requests for free and, should you need more than that—and you’ll most likely do—paid plans start at only $29.99 a month. We’ll cover the product’s pricing in greater detail shortly.
Here’s an overview of some of the product’s most important features:
Simple Integration
Using the Scrapestack API could hardly be easier right from the get-go. It only takes a few minutes to create customized queries and start scraping SERP pages at any scale using custom locations, devices, languages, and more.
High Level of Security
All data streams sent to and received from the Serpstack API are encrypted using 256-bit SSL Encryption. This is the same type of security that is used by banking sites or most e-commerce platforms. You can rest assured that your data will remain protected.
Unparalleled Speed and Availability
With a near-perfect availability score, you can rest assured that the Scrapestack API will be there when you need it. And apilayer never compromises on speed. API requests sent to the API are processed in a matter of milliseconds. Of course, how fast the results come is also dependent on Google’s response times.
Choice of Output Formats
To make suing the SERP data even easier, the Serpstack easy-to-use REST API offers a choice of JSON or CSV responses. That makes it compatible with any programming language.
World-Class Support
It is often said that a product is only as good as its technical support structure. Again, this is a place where Scrapestack shines. If you have any technical questions, a trained team of specialists is there to assist you with any requests you might have. The response is quick and the service works rather well.
Extensive Documentation
Just as important as the support, the Documentation will often be your primary way of learning how to use a product. Serpstack offers extensive API documentation that is waiting to be explored. Using it will get you started within just a few minutes and make you an expert in a matter of days, not weeks or months.
Using Serpstack
Enough bragging about the product’s great features—and they truly are, let’s have a look at how you can actually use the product and the different types of requests you can make and the corresponding responses you can expect.
The Basics
To use the Serpstack API, you’ll first need to sign up for an account. This is free and as a result, you’ll be assigned a unique API access key. This is what you’ll use from now on to authenticate with the API via simple HTTP GET requests to access any of the available endpoints. So, to use the API you simply need to append your API key to the base URL using the “access_key” parameter. Here’s what a typical—albeit very basic and totally useless—request looks like:
For added security, all paid plans allow for the use of 256-bit SSL encryption. To use it, all you need is to send HTTPS requests instead of HTTP requests. For instance, the above example with encryption would become:
Whenever an API request fails, the Serpstack API will return a JSON object containing details about the error. For example, here’s what would be returned by the API if the maximum allowed API request limit has been reached or exceeded. Each subscription plan has a different limit to the number of requests one can make.
{ "success": false, "error": { "code": 104, "type": "usage_limit_reached", "info": "Your monthly API request volume has been reached. Please upgrade your plan." } }
API Request and Parameters
Unless specified otherwise, the Serpstack API will always default to delivering search results from Google. Consequently, if you want to query the API for Google search results, all you need to do is append the “query” parameter to the API’s base URL and set it to a search query of your choice. Here’s how a query using “mcdonalds” as the search term looks like with authentication and encryption:
As you can see, this is a rather simple syntax. There are, as you certainly would have imagined, a ton of optional parameters that can be appended to a request to further narrow down the search results. We’ll explore a few of them in a moment but a detailed list of all of them is available in the online API documentation.
API Responses
The responses you’ll get from the Serpstack API will strongly depend on your search query and the parameters you choose to use. A basic query with no filtering specified will return a ton of data. Here’s the beginning part of the response you’d get from the example query above.
The purpose of the above sample is just to give you an idea of what the results may look like. I’ve only included the first 25 lines of the response which, in its entirety is over four hundred lines long.
As you may have noticed when using Google search, a typical search result page has different sections, each displaying a different type of results. You’ll have paid ads results, organic results, images, videos, etc. Furthermore, a ribbon at the top of the page will let you display specific types of results such as maps, news, shopping or books, just to name a few. Various optional parameters will allow you to specify what type of search results you’re interested in getting, making the parsing of the resulting JSON file much simpler. Let’s have a deeper look at some of the different types of results you can get.
Ad Results
Whenever there are sponsored ads for your search query—and there will most often be, the API response will come with an ads object. It contains all the ads in the order they are shown in the search result. It includes both ads that are shown at the top and at the bottom of the search result.
Organic Results
Organic search results are the main search results provided by Google, and they are likely those you’ll be particularly interested in. They are determined by a series of factors, such as web traffic, back-links, social media presence, and much more, with the exact algorithm kept secret by Google in order to keep its competitive edge. These results are parsed by the API in detail and returned as “organic_results”.
Image Results
Just as there are two ways to get image results from a Google search, there are two ways images can be returned by the API. When doing a standard web search, some images are provided by Google within the search results. These images—which are referred to as inline images—are returned by the Scrapestack API within an “inline_images” array.
If, on the other hand, images are searched specifically, with the type parameter being set to images, images are returned as an “image_results” array. In these situations, the API returns 100 images by default.
Video Results
The exact same considerations we just went over for images are also valid for video results with the availability of both inline videos withing the global search results or dedicated video results
We could go on for pages and give you detailed information on the various types of results that the Serpstack API can return, but we think you’re getting the picture. Suffice to say that whatever type of results are returned by a typical Google search is also available within the API’s response. In addition to the types of results already described, the API will return, news results, shopping results, and local results as well as the contents of the results page’s answer box, weather box, events, top carousel, top stories, etc.
Supported Programming Environments
One of the best things about the Serpstack API is that you can easily use it from within most environments, Whatever the language you are using, as long as you can send HTTP requests, you should be good to go. All the popular web languages such as PHP or Python are supported. In fact, the API’s documentation includes examples of how to use it from PHP, Python, Nodejs, jQuery, Go, and Ruby.
Here is, for instance, the PHP code to print the total number of search results as well as each organic search result returned by the Serpstack API.
The Serpstack API is available under several plans depending on your needs. The most basic plan is the Free plan. As its name implies, it is free but, although it is not time-limited like typical trial versions it is feature-limited as well as usage limited. You’ll only be able to run up to 100 searches per month.
The next three levels are full-featured and vary only by the maximum number of monthly searches you’re allowed to run. The Basic plan will give you 5000 for $29.99/month, the Business plan at $99.99/month brings it up to 20 000, and the Business Pro plan lets you run a whopping 50 000 searches for $199.99 per month. If none of these plans suit you, there’s also a variably-priced Enterprise plan that can be customized to your exact needs. If you choose yearly billing instead of monthly, you’re entitled to a 20% discount, making the service even more affordable.
Wrapping Up
In a nutshell, the Serpstack API is an easy-to-use, full-featured product that you can put to good use whenever you need to fetch SERP data from Google. Its stellar uptime and impressive response time are some of its best assets. Backed by apilayer which has brought us other excellent APIs, we’re confident that this one will deliver the results you expect. This is a product that we can only recommend.
Users choose which apps are installed on their system however some apps come bundled together. When you install one app, it installs a few others. Often, you do not have the option to skip installing some of the apps in the bundle. This might not be that big a deal if those extra apps didn’t run on their own but they tend to run automatically. Here’s how you can block an app on Windows 10 from running.
Block an app on Windows 10
Apps are blocked from the Windows registry which means you need admin rights to do this. Use the Win+R keyboard shortcut to open the run box, and in the run box type ‘regedit’. Tap Enter. Once the registry editor is open, go to the following key.
There should be a key under Policies called Explorer. If it isn’t there, right-click Policies and select New>Key from the menu. Name it Explorer.
Right-click the Explorer key and select New>DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the value DisallowRun. Double-click the DisallowRun value and enter 1 in the data box.
Next, right-click the Explorer key and select New>Key from the context menu. Name the new key DisallowRun. Right-click the DisallowRun key and select New>String Value. Give it a numerical name e.g., name it ‘1’.
Double-click it and in the Value box enter the name of the EXE of the app that you want to block e.g., if you want to block Notepad from running, you will enter the following.
notepad.exe
To block several apps, you will need to create a separate String value under the DisallowRun key. Give them numerical names, and enter the name of the EXE of the app you want to block. After you’ve added all the values, you need to restart your system for the change to be applied.
When you run the app, whether it’s from its EXE or from a shortcut or tile, it will not open. You won’t get any sort of error message or prompt telling you that the app has been blocked. If any other app tries to run/open the blocked app, it will not be able to run it. Be warned that some apps might depend on other apps to be installed and running for them to work. If you block an app that other apps are dependant on, you might not be able to use them.
You can undo this change by removing the string value that you created under the DisallowRun key. Make sure you restart your system afterward.
Linux is an open-source operating system. As a result, it is missing some critical components that users of proprietary operating systems enjoy. One big thing that all Linux operating systems miss out on is proprietary fonts.
The most used proprietary fonts out there today are the Microsoft Core Fonts. They’re used in many apps, development, and even graphics design projects. In this guide, we’ll go over how to set them up on Linux.
Note: not using Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, or OpenSUSE? Download the generic font package here and install the fonts by hand.
Ubuntu installation instructions
Ubuntu Linux users have it very easy when it comes to the Microsoft core fonts, as there is an easy-to-use installer that can be downloaded directly through the Ubuntu “Universe” software repository.
If you’re using Ubuntu Linux, it doesn’t matter what version (14.04, 16.04, 18.04, or newer) you will be able to start the setup process by using the command line. Press Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard to launch a terminal window. Then, use the Apt command below to get the “tff-mscorefonts-installer” package.
sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Upon running the Apt command above, Ubuntu will download and install the Microsoft Core Fonts installer to your PC, and bring up a text-based EULA. Read this EULA, and select “OK” to agree with it. You must agree to access the fonts!
After selecting “OK,” you will see another text page. Select the “Yes” option to continue.
Once you’ve selected “Yes,” the Microsoft installation tool will download all Microsoft Core Fonts to Ubuntu, install them, and set them up.
Debian installation instructions
Debian Linux, much like Ubuntu Linux, has an easy to install Microsoft font installer package in their software repositories. To start the installation, ensure you are using Debian 8, 9, or 10. For information on upgrading, click here.
Note: in addition to upgrading your Debian Linux system, you must also enable the “contrib” source. For help enabling it, read this page.
After upgrading your Debian Linux release, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, use the Apt-get command below to get the “ttf-mscorefonts-installer” package set up.
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Once the Microsoft Core Fonts installer package is set up on your Debian Linux PC, the installer will automatically download several Microsoft fonts to your system and set them all up. Sit back and be patient. When the download is done, the fonts are ready to use!
Arch Linux installation instructions
On Arch Linux, there isn’t an official Microsoft installation package like on Ubuntu or Debian. However, there is an unofficial Arch Linux User repository package that downloads all of the fonts and installs them. To start the Microsoft Core Fonts installation process, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T on the keyboard. Then, use the Pacman package manager to install the Base-devel and Git packages.
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
After installing the Base-devel and Git packages, use the git clone command to download the Microsoft Core Font package.
From here, use the makepkg command to build the package, and install the various fonts on your Arch Linux system.
cd ttf-ms-fonts
makepkg -sri
Fedora/OpenSUSE installation instructions
On Fedora Linux or OpenSUSE Linux, there isn’t currently an official package available that makes installing the Microsoft Core Fonts easy. Instead, we must rely on the RPM packages and source files on SourceForge.net.
To start the installation process, open up a terminal window on your OpenSUSE or Fedora PC by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Once you’ve got a terminal window open, follow the RPM installation instructions down below that correspond with your operating system.
Fedora
The first step in installing the MS fonts on Fedora is to download the RPM package they’ve got available on SourceForge. To do this, use the following wget download command.
Once the RPM package file is downloaded to your Linux PC, you can run the Dnf package manager to load up and install the Microsoft Core Fonts instantly.
Note: you may see warnings during the installation. Ignore them, as they don’t matter.
To get the fonts working in OpenSUSE Linux, you must download the RPM package file from the internet. To do this, use the following wget download command.
Let the package install. Once it is complete, it will go through the process of automatically downloading and installing Microsoft Core Fonts to your OpenSUSE Linux PC.
When you use Google Maps for navigation, it gives you an accurate measure of how far you’ll be traveling. The distance is not vector distance; it takes into account the route you’ll be taking. It stands to reason that if Google Maps can accurately measure distance, it should also be able to measure the area of a place. All you need is the right tool for the job and the tool is built into Google Maps. Here’s how you can calculate the area on Google Maps from your desktop.
Calculate area on Google Maps
Visit Google Maps and pan to the place you want to calculate the area for. Make sure you can see the roads or the edges of the place you want to find the area for. Right-click anywhere on the map and from the context menu, select the ‘Measure Distance’ option.
Once you do that, the path marking tool in Google Maps will activate. Go ahead and trace the boundaries of the place you want to calculate the area for. Click at the corners and bends and mark it until the path is complete and closed. A popup at the bottom will appear when you activate the tool and as you trace a path, it will update with the distance of the path. When you close the path, this popup will also show you a new measurement for the area that the path encloses. The area is given in both square miles and square kilometers.
Generally speaking, this area is going to be accurate, however, if you’re marking roads you’re already giving Google Maps more area to calculate than is actually part of a particular location. To work around this, you will have to zoom in further until you can see the boundaries and then mark them. Google Maps doesn’ t force you to mark just roads. Its path marking tool is for making routes and these routes can very well be off-road if you need them to be.
While this is going to be accurate, you probably will not be able to use it for legal purposes. For general, non-legally binding purposes though, you should be good. This tool is fairly old. It’s not publicized much and you won’t hear about it unless you’re looking for walking routes or hiking trails. You can also measure the area on Google Maps from its mobile apps. Drop a pin at the starting point of where you’d like to start measuring from, and then open the details panel for the pin. You will see a ‘Measure distance’ option. Use it to create a path and calculate the area.
Ubuntu 19.10 has recently been released. It’s an amazing release, filled with the latest Gnome Shell, newer drivers, and even some excellent features such as ZFS on root, easy media sharing, screen sharing and more. In this guide, we’ll go over how to upgrade your Ubuntu PC to the new release!
Upgrade from the command-line – 18.04 LTS
If you’re using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, plan to upgrade to 19.10 and would like to use the command-line to do it, follow these instructions. Please back up any important files (pictures, videos, and other personal data) to an external flash drive, USB stick, or cloud service. A backup will prevent data loss if anything goes wrong.
Once everything is backed up, the upgrading process can begin. To start, open up a terminal window on the desktop. To launch a terminal press Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the step-by-step instructions below to upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 19.10.
Step 1: Install any pending upgrades to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. To install any updates, you must run the update and upgrade commands.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade -y
Let the upgrades download and install it on your Ubuntu PC. Then, move to the next step.
Step 2: Following installing the pending software patches for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, you must run a distribution upgrade with the dist-upgrade command. This will install more upgrades that have been kept back.
sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
Step 3: With the distribution upgrade taken care of, it is time to change Ubuntu 18.04 LTS’s software sources so that they reflect the new 19.10 release. To do this, use the sed command.
sudo sed -i 's/bionic/eoan/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
Step 4: Following the change of software sources for 18.04, the update command must be re-run. This will complete the software source modification done with sed.
sudo apt update
Step 5: When the update command finishes, your Ubuntu 18.04 LTS PC will be using Ubuntu 19.10 software sources. This also means that new software upgrades will become available. To install them, use the upgrade and dist-upgrade commands.
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
The upgrading process will take a long time. Sit back, monitor your terminal and allow Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to transition to 19.10.
Step 6: The upgrading process is almost complete. The last step of the process is to reboot. To do this, run the reboot command.
sudo reboot
When you log back in after the reboot, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be Ubuntu 19.10!
Upgrade from the command-line – 19.04
Are you using Ubuntu 19.04, and looking to transition to the new 19.10 release of the operating system. Prefer to do it with the command-line? Follow along below to learn how to upgrade!
Before we begin, please back up any personal files (videos, pictures, and other sensitive data) to an external hard drive, USB stick, or cloud service to prevent data loss in case the upgrade breaks.
To start the upgrading process on Ubuntu 19.04, launch a terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard, and follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Step 1: It is imperative to install any pending software patches for Ubuntu 19.04 before transitioning the system to 19.10. To do this, use the update and upgrade commands below.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
Step 2: Following installing software updates for 19.04, you must run a distribution upgrade. This command will install patches that the upgrade command cannot.
sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
Step 3: With all the 19.10 software patches out of the way, it’s time to change Ubuntu 19.04’s software sources over to 19.10’s. To do this, use the following sed command.
sudo sed -i 's/disco/eoan/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
Step 4: Now that Ubuntu 19.04’s software sources have been switched over to the new Ubuntu 19.10, it’s time to re-run the update command. This will refresh all software sources, and download the latest version of Ubuntu to your PC.
sudo apt update
Step 5: Following the update command, you must re-run the upgrade and dist-upgrade commands to install the latest Ubuntu 19.10 packages onto Ubuntu 19.04. It will take quite a bit of time. Be patient.
Step 6: Once the upgrades are installed to your PC, it is time to reboot the PC. To reboot, use the following reboot command.
sudo reboot
Upon logging back in, you will be using Ubuntu 19.10!
Upgrade with the graphical user interface
It is possible to upgrade to 19.10 from the graphical user interface in Ubuntu. To do it, ensure your important files are backed up to an external hard drive, USB stick, or cloud service. Then, follow the step-by-step instructions below.
Step 1: Open up your app menu, search for “Software & Updates” and launch it to open up Ubuntu’s update settings.
Step 2: Find the “Updates” tab and click on it to access Ubuntu’s upgrade settings.
Step 3: Change “notify me of a new Ubuntu version” to “For any new version” and close “Software & Updates.”
Step 4: Open up your app menu, search for “Software Updater” and open it.
Step 5: Allow the updater app to check for updates. It should then detect a new version of Ubuntu. Click “Upgrade” and follow along with the prompts to upgrade to 19.10!
The system tray can show one clock and by default, it shows the time for your current time zone. The time zone is set when you set Window 10 up but you can always change it if you need to. If you need more than one clock on Windows 10 though, you can add it. The only limitation is that you will still only see one clock in the system tray. You will have to expand the date and time shown in the system tray to view your second, or third clock.
Multiple clocks on Windows 10
You can add multiple clocks on Windows 10 from the Control Panel. Go ahead and open it and go to the Clock and Region group of settings. Click ‘Add clocks for different time zones’.
In the window that opens, go to the Additional Clocks section. You can enter two more clocks that will appear in addition to the default clock for your current time zone. Enable the ‘Show this clock’ option and open the dropdown under it. Select the time zone you want to add the clock for, and for your own convenience, give the clock a name. This name is what the clock will show up with when you access the time and calendar panel. Add a third clock if you need to.
Once you’re done, click Apply, and then OK. On the task bar, click the clock/date in the system tray and the date/calendar panel will open. The second clock will appear under the first, primary clock and it will be noticeably smaller.
As far as supporting clocks for multiple time zones go, this is the extent of it. The Alarms & Clock app on Windows 10 has nothing to do with the new clock(s) that you add. The alarms will all still target the primary time zone that is set on your PC. If you want to set an alarm clock for a different time zone, your options aren’t good. The stock alarms app won’t do the job and the many third-party clock/alarm apps available for Windows don’t seem to have anything like it either.
You only have two choices; change the time zone for the primary clock, or manually factor in the time difference between the time zones and create an alarm accordingly. The problem with this approach is that there is going to be room for error every single time you create an alarm. Time zones go both ways; a country can be ahead or behind your current location.
Whether you are managing a blog, an online store, or a website that offers a service, you need high-quality branding to make it popular and attract as many web users as possible. One of the main ingredients of a robust brand is a logo, and in this blog, we will shed light on the top 5 tools that allow you to create attractive logos for free.
So, let’s just jump right into reviewing all of them, one at a time:
1. Tailor Brands
Tailor Brands is easily one of the most powerful online logo makers today. This is mainly because of the unique AI algorithm it uses that makes logo designing a breeze. All you have to do is share a few basic details about your business including its name, vision, and a few design preferences so that the program is able to determine the best designs tailored for you. And that’s it! The entire process takes no longer than 5 minutes, and you get more than a few perfect designs to choose from!
Tailor Designs is a free tool and you only have to pay a subscription fee which is very modest and only applicable after your design is ready and you wish to download it.
Click here to try this free logo generator.
2. Gimp
Unlike Tailor Brands, GIMP is more of a photo editor which means that it comes with way more tools and features.
If you want to do more than logo designing, then GIMP is your right choice. It comes with a customizable interface that not only covers cosmetics, but also the behavior of the various tools that it has. There are photo enhancement tools that help you to get rid of image distortions, colors, and other imperfections. Another benefit is support for multiple file formats viz. JPEG, PSD, PNG, and GIF.
Click here to download GIMP photo editor
3. Design Bold
Need stunning designs but don’t want to pay an arm and leg? If your answer is yes, then you need to check out Design Bold. It’s a premium design service that comes with free signup even though you can check out the pro features for as little as $9.99 a month. Either way, you get a whopping 10,000+ free layouts and 40+ million premium stock photos. There are tons of attractive fonts and color options that you can use to create high-quality logos in a matter of minutes!
Click here to get Designbold pricing & free sign up.
4. PicMonkey
PicMonkey is an online photo editor with skin retouching, customizable filters, and blur effects. While most online tools in this category are largely limited in their functions, PicMonkey stands out with a rather impressive toolkit.
PicMonkey has all the basic editing features like color effects, image cropping and resizing, etc. However, there are many advanced effects like touch up, enhancement filters, and access to over 2,400 customizable templates, 3,000 graphics, 200 fonts, and 100 textures. You can use it to design logos, business cards, postcards, etc.
Click here for a free trial of PicMonkey.
5. Easil
Easil touts itself as a DIY design toolkit that can offer all the brand tools you need. It comes with a wide range of professionally-designed templates that you can customize in a matter of minutes. You can create banners, GIFs, posters, and more! Of course, there are plenty of tools for designing a perfect logo. Since the UI is user-friendly, you don’t need to be tech-savvy to get started- a big plus for sure!
Click here to start using Easil for free.
Conclusion
We have come a long way in graphics design today. There is no need to master challenging software like Adobe Photoshop, as there are easier and simpler options like the ones above. They are easy to get started with, and they are free or affordable. So, which one are you going to try first? Let us know!
OieIcons is a fun modification of the KDE Breeze icon theme, mixed in with Numix, Papirus, and others. It’s a beautiful icon theme to use on KDE Plasma 5, Gnome Shell, or other desktops if you’re looking for something neat and fresh. Here’s how to install it on your system.
Get Git on Linux
The OieIcons icon theme is hosted on Opencode. To interact with this website, you must use the Git application. To use the app, it needs to be installed. Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, follow the command-line instructions that correspond with your Linux operating system to get
Ubuntu
sudo apt install git
Debian
sudo apt-get install git
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S git
Fedora
sudo dnf install git
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install git
Generic Linux
If you need to install the Git application on a Linux operating system that was not covered in this post, please go over to Pkgs.org to get your copy of the program. Or, download the source code here to get it working on your system.
Download OieIcons icon theme
The OieIcons theme is hosted on Opencode.net, a website that developers can use for source control. It is identical to GitHub, in that if you want to download files from it, you must use the git clone command. So, use the following command below to get your copy of OieIcons.
The downloading process will not take long. When everything is done, everything will be in the “oieicons” directory. You can run the ls command below to verify all of the files are there.
ls oieicons
If the ls command shows that all files are in the “oieicons” directory, move on to the next step in the installation process. Otherwise, re-run the git clone command and try again.
Install OieIcons icon theme
Installing icons on Linux can be done in two ways. The first way is known as “single-user,” as only one person will have access to the icon theme. The second way is called “system-wide,” which means that every user on the system can access it. In this guide, we’ll go over both.
Single-user
To install the OieIcons theme on your Linux PC, you must first create a new directory in your home folder with the name of “.icons”. To create this new folder, use the mkdir command below.
mkdir -p ~/.icons
After creating the new folder, you can verify that it is in the home directory with the ls -a command below.
ls -a
When you’ve verified that the new “.icons” folder is in your home directory, it’s time to start the installation of OieIcons. Using the mv command, place the “oieicons” folder into the “.icons” folder you just made.
mv oieicons ~/.icons/
Once the files are moved into the “.icons” folder, you can verify that the installation was successful by using the ls command and the grep pipe.
ls ~/.icons | grep "oieicons"
Running the ls command above along with grep will print out “oieicons” if it was indeed installed correctly. If it wasn’t, follow the installation instructions again, as something may have gone wrong.
System-wide
Installing the OieIcon theme on Linux in system-wide mode means directly interacting with the system directory on your PC. To gain access to this folder, you must log in with the Root account. Using the sudo -s command, log in as root.
sudo -s
After logging into the terminal as the root user, the icon theme installation can finally begin. Using the mv command, place the “OieIcons” folder into the “/usr/share/icons/” directory.
mv oieicons/ /usr/share/icons/
Once the icon files have been moved to the “/usr/share/icons/” directory, you can verify that the installation was successful by running the ls command along with the grep pipe.
ls /usr/share/icons/ | grep oieicons
The command above will filter through the icons directory for the OieIcon theme. If the files are correctly installed, it will show “oieicons” in the results. If nothing comes up, the installation has failed, and you must follow the instructions again, as something may have gone wrong during the setup process.
Enable OieIcons icon theme on Linux
OieIcons is installed on your Linux PC, but it is not enabled as the default icon theme. You must manually enable OieIcons on your system for it to be your icon theme.
Enabling the OieIcons theme on the Linux desktop is easy. To do it, start by opening up “System Settings.” Once open, look through for “Icons” or “Appearance.” Then, change the current icon theme to “OieIcons.” It should instantly apply to your desktop environment.
Need help getting the OieIcons working on your Linux desktop environments? Check out our list below for help applying icon themes.
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