Exciting tips

New to the XFCE desktop environment on Linux and looking to modify the default keyboard shortcuts? Want to add new, custom shortcut commands but unsure how to go about it? We can help! Here’s how to customize keyboard shortcuts on XFCE4!

Default keyboard shortcuts

XFCE4 isn’t loaded with dozens of keyboard shortcuts like other Linux desktop environments, but it does have a lot of them. These shortcuts are tucked away in the “Keyboard” section of the desktop settings. To access this area, open up the XFCE application menu, look for the settings app, and open it. Alternatively, press Alt + F2 on the keyboard to open up the app launcher. Then, enter the command below.

xfce4-settings-manager

In the Settings app, you’ll notice dozens of app shortcut icons, all of which point to different options that you can tweak on XFCE4. Sort through these icons and locate the one that says “Keyboard,” and double-click on the icon to open it.

The default keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard section of Settings can be easily viewed by clicking on the “Application Shortcuts” tab.

Next, to each shortcut for XFCE, you’ll see the keyboard combination under the “Shortcut” column.

Need to learn more about the default keyboard shortcuts? Locate the “Help” button and click on it with the mouse to automatically open up the XFCE Wiki entry on keyboard settings.

Modifying default keyboard shortcuts

The default shortcuts are sane, and the developers have done a good job setting them up in a way that makes sense. However, not everyone using XFCE will be happy with the defaults, so it’s good to know that it’s possible to swap out the shortcuts when needed.

To swap out a default shortcut, locate a command in the list by looking through the “Command” column. Once you’ve found the command, you’d like to modify, move to the “Shortcut” column, and double-click on the key combo with the mouse.

Upon double-clicking on the keyboard combo, a window will appear. Use the keyboard to press the new combination you’d like to set for the shortcut. Repeat this for as many default shortcuts as you’d like. When done, click “Close” to close the app.

Deleting default keyboard shortcuts

Some shortcuts on XFCE are unnecessary. Thankfully, it’s possible to delete them in the “Application Shortcuts” column. To remove a shortcut, look through the “Command” list and click on it with the mouse to select it. Then, click the “Remove” button to delete the shortcut quickly. Repeat this process to remove as many default shortcuts as needed.

Want to restore shortcuts you’ve removed from the system? Find the “Reset to Defaults” button and click it with the mouse. It should restore any shortcuts removed previously.

Create custom keyboard shortcuts

XFCE, like all Linux desktop environments, allows users to create custom keyboard shortcuts. Specifically, users can create custom shortcuts that do specific window actions, desktop actions, launch applications, or even run scripts.

On the XFCE desktop, there isn’t a “custom” section for keyboard shortcuts. Instead, custom keyboard shortcuts are added to the already existing list of shortcuts.

To create your custom keyboard shortcuts, open up the Settings application, click on “Keyboard.” Inside of the “Keyboard” app, look for the “Add” option at the bottom of the window and click on it with the mouse.

By clicking the “Add” button, a window labeled “Shortcut Command” will appear. Find “Command.” Next, to it, there’s a blank box where you can fill out your keyboard action.

In the box, write out the command for the application you’d like to launch with the keyboard shortcut. Or, if you’d like to run a script, write “sh /path/to/script/.”

Note: can’t figure out the command you’d like to write in the “Command” box? Click “Open” to browse for the app on your Linux PC instead. After filling out the command in the “Command” box, click “OK” to move on to the next page.

On the next page in the XFCE keyboard shortcut setup window, you’ll be asked to create the keyboard combination used to access the shortcut. To set the combination, press the keys on the keyboard you’d like to use.

Be sure to repeat the custom keyboard shortcut process outlined above as desired. There is no limit on XFCE for custom shortcuts. When done, click “Close”.

Remove custom shortcuts

To get rid of any custom keyboard shortcuts on XFCE, look through the “Command” column and highlight it with the mouse. After that, select the “Remove” button to delete it from the system.

Alternatively, it is possible to remove multiple custom shortcuts at once by selecting the “Reset to Defaults” button, as it will remove anything not set up by default.

The Apple II was one of Apple’s most popular home computer system. It sold very well, and as a result of the sales, it became an exciting platform for computer games. Many, many types of video games were released on the platform during its lifespan.

In 2019, if you find yourself itching to try out some of the old Apple II games, you’ve got one option: the LinApple Apple II emulator. The LinApple Apple II emulator is an impressive emulator for the Linux platform that allows users to load up ROMs, and enjoy the Apple II experience.

Installing LinApple

For the most part, the LinApple emulator doesn’t exist on any Linux distribution’s packaging system. This means that the program must be compiled from source. In this section, we’ll go over how to get your hands on the latest source code for LinApple, install the dependencies and compile everything so it can be used.

To get compiling the latest LinApple code, open up a terminal window by pressing  Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T. Then, follow the command-line instructions that correspond with your Linux operating system.

Note: the LinApple emulator’s source code is capable of being compiled on every single Linux distribution out there, and not just the ones that we cover. That said, the developer doesn’t specifically list all dependency libraries, only some. So, you’ll need to look into that yourself.

Installing dependencies

The first step in the installation process for the LinApple emulator is installing the various dependencies that the source code needs to build successfully. Pick the operating system you use below and copy the command into a terminal session to quickly install the various dependencies.

Ubuntu

sudo apt git libzip-dev libsdl1.2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev zlib1g-dev

Debian

sudo apt-get git libzip-dev libsdl1.2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev zlib1g-dev

Arch Linux

On Arch Linux, there’s no need to go out of your way to install dependencies. Instead, you can use the AUR to automatically grab the code, the dependencies and build everything without any trouble.

To start, use the Pacman command to install the Base-devel and Git packages on your Arch Linux PC.

sudo pacman -S git base-devel

Once Git and Base-devel are both installed, it’s time to use the git clone command to download the Trizen AUR helper. With this tool, you can quickly load up all of the dependency files without any tediousness.

git clone https://github.com/trizen/trizen cd trizen

makepkg -sri

With the Trizen AUR helper up and running on your Linux PC, install LinApple on Arch.

trizen -S linapple

Fedora

Fedora Linux has a package for LinApple available on the RPM Sphere software repository. That said, this version of the program doesn’t run well. Sometimes it crashes, so it’s best just to install the dependency files and build from source.

Note: if you can’t build LinApple on Fedora, feel free to try the RPM Sphere package, though it may not work. Alternatively, use a distribution like Ubuntu instead.

sudo dnf install git libzip-devel SDL-devel libcurl-devel gcc-c++

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install sudo git libzip-devel libSDL-devel libcurl-devel gcc-c++

Download source code

With the dependencies installed on your Linux system, we can now use the Git tool to clone the latest source code release. Open up a terminal window and use git clone to grab the code.

git clone https://github.com/linappleii/linapple.git

After downloading, use the CD command to move into the code folder.

cd linapple/

Build LinApple for Linux

Compiling the source code for LinApple starts by running the make command. In the terminal, run:

make

Alternatively, if you’d like to compile the code much faster, you can run the make command against all of the cores on your Linux PC, with:

make -j$(nproc)

When the compilation is complete, install the program on your Linux PC by using the make install command.

sudo make install

Using LinApple

LinApple can load up ROM/Disk image directly from the command-line thanks to it’s easy to use command-line structure. To load up a ROM image in the first drive, use ‘d1’. For example:

linapple -d1 /path/to/disk/image -f -autoboot

To load up a ROM in the second slot, use ‘d2’.

linapple -d2 /path/to/disk/image -f -autoboot

Shortcuts

The LinApple emulator operates with keyboard shortcuts. Here are a few important ones that will help during the emulation process.

• F1: shows the help screen, and details information that will help the user better understand LinApple, it’s functions, etc.
• Ctrl + F2: reboots the emulator and turns it back up.
• Shift + F2: reloads your config file for LinApple and reboots the emulator.
• F3: load the disk image from Drive 1.
• F4: load the disk image from Drive 2.
• F6: Fullscreen mode.
• F8: take a screenshot.
• F9: sort through different video modes.
• F10: load a save state snapshot.
• F11: save a snapshot.

The shortcuts above in the list are the ones you’ll need to remember to have a pleasant experience with the LinApple emulator on your Linux PC. However, those aren’t the only ones. For more info on shortcuts, click here.

Microsoft Edge has a few features that other popular browsers do not have. The list is small but it nevertheless means Edge does a few tricks that other browsers can’t do just yet. One rather useful feature that Edge has is tab previews. When you hover your mouse over tabs that are open, you get a little preview of the tab. This is something neither Chrome nor Firefox can do. You can enable tab previews in Chrome via a flag but the feature doesn’t stack up to the one in Edge.

Tab previews in Chrome

Open Chrome and enter the following in the address bar;

Chrome://flags

This will open the Chrome flags page. Click inside the search bar and search for Hover. The search results will list a flag called Tab Hover Cards. Open the dropdown next to it and select Enabled from the dropdown menu. Relaunch Chrome for the flag to be applied.

Using tab previews

I mentioned earlier that this feature isn’t quite like the one in Edge. At present, the the feature doesn’t give you a picture preview of the tab, at least not yet. When you hover your mouse cursor over the current tab, or a tab that’s in the background the preview you see will only show you the name of the website and its URL. It’s hardly the same as the preview you get in Edge.

The feature doesn’t compare to Edge but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. If you open a lot of tabs in Chrome, you know that it soon gets to a point where the tab title quickly becomes impossible to read. The title is cut off by the other tabs that are open. When you hover your mouse cursor over a tab, the title appears making it easier to distinguish which tab is which.

Ideally, the preview should also show you the favicon for the website but I couldn’t get it to show up during tests. It may take a little time for the icons to be cached. Since it’s a feature enabled via a Flag, it will likely improve but that could take quite a while. There’s never any time frame on when a feature from Flags will be improved, or roll out as a stable feature, and in some cases they might just be retired. It’s rare for a flag feature to be retired but it does happen. That said, this feature is still available in the current version of Canary and there’s a second flag that does actually let you enable image tab previews.

Chrome has been threatening a new UI for quite a while now and now that Chrome 69 is out, the interface has arrived. The design isn’t bad but telling tabs apart isn’t as easy as it used to be. This is because, among other things, the Windows accent color is now displayed on the entire title bar, even on the background tabs. The speed dial on the new tab page has also changed. The thumbnail previews are gone. If you don’t like it, you can disable the new Chrome interface.

SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.

Disable The New Chrome Interface

This solution comes via Lifehacker. Open Chrome and paste the following in the URL bar.

chrome://flags/

This will open the Chrome Flags page. In the search bar, enter the following.

UI Layout for the browser's top chrome

Open the dropdown next to it, and select Normal. You will need to restart Chrome but there’s a Relaunch button that makes it easy. This will restore the look of the title bar and maybe one or two other things. What isn’t changed back to the old version is how the New Tab page looks.

The new design can’t be disabled fully. You may not like the New Tab page either but you can now save ten websites to the speed dial and you can edit them so it’s not all bad. That said, you can disable the new design of the New Tab page. To do so, return to the Chrome Flags page and search for the following.

New Tab Page Material Design Icons

Open the dropdown next to it, and set it to Disabled. Relaunch the browser and you will have the old look of the New Tab page back.

With the old design back, your speed dial is reduced to eight websites that are based on the websites you most frequently visit. If you accidentally delete one, getting it back is a bit complicated so while you may want to get the old look of the title bar back, keeping the new New Tab page around is probably a better choice.

Unfortunately, you can’t  get thumbnails back if you want to keep the new design. The old design brings them back. The new design makes use of the favicons or logos of a website which shouldn’t be a problem since, by default, the speed dial is still made up of your most frequently visited websites and you ought to be able to recognize the logo for it.

Google doesn’t plan to support its Drive Service on the Linux desktop. Thankfully, over the years, many third-party sync clients have come on to the scene to bridge the gap. Open Drive is yet another great way to access Google Drive on Linux.

Open Drive isn’t a new concept, but it sets itself apart by offering up an easy to use interface, without charging a fee like Insync, or OverGrive. In this tutorial, we’ll go over exactly how you can set up the Open Drive system on Linux.

Note: To use Open Drive on Linux, you must have a Google account. If you do not already have one, click here to make a new one.

Install Open Drive on Linux

As Open Drive is a third-party sync client to Google Drive, you won’t find a download link to this app on the Google website. Instead, users looking to sync their files on Linux with the app need to get it directly from the developer’s GitHub page.

Officially, Open Drive is available for Ubuntu and Debian via a DEB package, Fedora, and OpenSUSE via an RPM, as well as a Snap package, and AppImage. To start the installation of the application, press Ctrl + Shift + T or Ctrl + Alt + T on the keyboard to open up a terminal window. Then, follow the instructions below that correspond with your Linux OS of choice.

Ubuntu

Those on Ubuntu can download a DEB package to install Open Drive. To get the package, go to your terminal session and use the wget tool to download the latest release of Open Drive.

cd /tmp

wget https://github.com/liberodark/ODrive/releases/download/0.2.2/odrive_0.2.2_amd64.deb

With the package downloaded to the “tmp” folder, use the dpkg installer tool to load up Open Drive on your Ubuntu PC.

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Finish up the installation on Ubuntu by running apt install.

sudo apt install -f

Debian

Open Drive is installable on Debian Linux via a downloadable DEB package file. To get your hands on this package for installation, go to the terminal session and use the CD command to move into the “tmp” directory. Then, run the wget tool to download the latest release.

cd /tmp

wget https://github.com/liberodark/ODrive/releases/download/0.2.2/odrive_0.2.2_amd64.deb

Once the download is complete, use the dpkg installation tool to set up Open Drive on Debian Linux.

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

When the installation of the DEB package is complete, you may run into some errors. Mainly, some dependencies may have failed to install. To fix this, install apt-get install.

sudo apt-get install -f

Keep in mind that some releases of Debian may be too far behind to handle the Open Drive DEB package. Try the AppImage or Snap release if you run into issues.

Arch Linux

It seems that the Arch Linux AUR has every package available for installation. In the case of Open Drive, sadly, there’s no build ready to use. Luckily, Arch Linux supports Snap packages and can run AppImages too. So, if you’re an Arch fan looking to use Open Drive, try those instructions instead!

Fedora Linux

The developer of Open Drive supports RedHat-based Linux operating systems nicely, by providing an RPM file on the GitHub page that users can download. To get it, you won’t need to fuss with any download commands. Instead, take advantage of DNF’s online RPM capabilities.

sudo dnf install https://github.com/liberodark/ODrive/releases/download/0.2.2/odrive-0.2.2.x86_64.rpm -y

OpenSUSE Linux

Want to use Open Drive on OpenSUSE Linux? If so, use the CD command to move into the “tmp” folder. After that, grab the RPM package file with wget.

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/liberodark/ODrive/releases/download/0.2.2/odrive-0.2.2.x86_64.rpm

Once the RPM file is done downloading, install it with:

sudo zypper install odrive-0.2.2.x86_64.rpm

Snap package

Open Drive is up on the Snap store, so if you use a Linux OS that supports Snapd, it’s quick and easy to install. To start the installation, ensure that you have the Snap runtime running on your Linux PC. Then, install with snap install.

sudo snap install odrive-unofficial

AppImage

Any Linux OS can run an AppImage, so if you can’t run Snaps, DEBs, or RPM files, this is a great way to use the app. To get the AppImage release of Open Drive, start by creating a new “AppImages,” folder. Then, download it with wget and start the app!

mkdir -p ~/AppImages cd ~/AppImages wget https://github.com/liberodark/ODrive/releases/download/0.2.2/OpenDrive.0.2.2.AppImage chmod +x OpenDrive.0.2.2.AppImage ./OpenDrive.0.2.2.AppImage

Sync Google Drive with Open Drive

To sync your files with Open Drive, open up the app on your Linux desktop by launching “Open Drive” from your app menu. Once it’s open, follow the step-by-step instructions below to sync files.

Step 1: As the app opens, you’ll see a page that says “Setup required,” with a blue button at the bottom-right part of the screen that says “next.” Click the blue button to continue to the next page.

Step 2: On the next page, you’ll be instructed to connect your Google account to Open Drive. Follow what the app says to get it connected.

Step 3: Following getting your Google account connected to the app, it’ll specify where it is going to download your files to. If you dislike the default location, click “browse.” Otherwise, click “Synchronize” to download your data.

To access your files (or upload items) open up the Linux file manager and navigate to:

/home/username/snap/odrive-unofficial/2/Google Drive/

The KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment is rock solid at this point, and rarely has any breaking issues that make it impossible to use the desktop. However, sometimes, the KDE Plasma panel can freeze up and crash, which is a huge problem.

Unlike Gnome Shell, KDE Plasma 5 has no real built-in restart mechanism for their users to take advantage of. So, if you’re using KDE and you want a quick way to restart a broken or crashed Plasma panel, you’ll need to create your solution. In this guide, we’ll go over how to create a restart tool that can get you out of jams if your Plasma panel crashes.

Restart the panel with terminal commands

KDE’s panel is part of the “plasmashell” process that runs in the background on your Linux PC. So, if you’re having issues with the panel not working, the easiest way to get it back up and running is to deal with that process.

Sadly, it isn’t possible to outright restart the plasmashell process from the command-line. Instead, you’ll need to stop it manually.  The best way to do this is with the killall command, as it will instantly stop every instance of “plasmashell” running. So, open up a terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard and end “plasmashell.”

killall plasmashell

Upon running the killall command, everything will go black. However, you should still have access to the terminal. From here, restart the “plasmashell” process from the terminal. Be sure to add the “&” at the end of the command to send it to the background.

plasmashell &

As soon as the plasmashell command above is run, a fresh KDE Plasma 5 panel will appear on the screen. However, this new panel is dependent on the terminal, since it’s running inside of it. From here, the process needs to be sent to the background. To do this, run the disown command.

disown 

Disown will take the “plasmashell” process,  and send it to the background, giving you a fully functional KDE Plasma 5 panel to use once again.

Creating a restart script

Opening up a terminal to kill the “plasmashell” process can be very tedious. It works in a pinch, but it’s not ideal for most users. A great way to restart the panel if it freezes is to create a quick restart script, that can be run.

To start, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T and Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, follow the step-by-step instructions below.

Step 1: Using the touch command, create a new blank file in your home directory labeled “panel-restart.”

touch panel-restart

Step 2: Use the echo command below to add a shebang to the top of the script. This command is critical because, without it, your Linux system will not know how to interpret the restart script.

echo '#!/bin/bash' > panel-restart

Step 3: Run another echo command to add the main code to the panel-restart script.

echo 'killall plasmashell;plasmashell &' >> panel-restart

Step 4: Update the permissions of the restart file using the chmod command, so that it can run as a program on your Linux PC.

sudo chmod +x panel-restart

Step 5: Place the panel-restart file inside of /usr/bin/ with the mv command. Putting the file here will allow you to call it as a command, much like any other program on Linux.

sudo mv panel-restart /usr/bin/

Close the terminal window. Then, go to the KDE desktop and press Alt + F2 to open up the Plasma quick-launch window. Then, in the window, enter the command below to instantly restart the KDE Plasma 5 panel using the script we just made.

panel-restart

Upon running the command, your KDE Plasma 5 panel should be ready use!

Adding the script to a shortcut

Want to restart the KDE Plasma 5 panel with the press of a few buttons on the keyboard? If so, you’ll need to set up a custom keyboard shortcut. To do this, follow the step-by-step instructions below.

Note: for more in-depth information on KDE keyboard shortcuts, check out this guide.

Step 1: Open up the app menu, search for “custom shortcuts” and open up the item that shows with that name.

Step 2: Inside of the KDE custom shortcut window, locate “Edit” and click it with the mouse. Then, select “New,” followed by “Global Shortcut,” and “Command/URL.”

Step 3: In the “Comment” area, write “KDE Panel Restart.”

Step 4: Click “Trigger,” and assign the new custom shortcut to your favorite key-bind. If you can’t figure out what trigger action to use, consider trying Ctrl + `.

Step 5: Select “Action,” and write the panel-restart command in the “Command/URL” box.

Step 6: Click “Apply” to apply the changes to your Linux PC.

Close the Custom Shortcut window. Then, press your keyboard combo to restart the KDE Plasma 5 panel instantly.

Facebook has a feature called ‘On this day’, which basically shows you memories from the same day from previous years. This is, for the most part, a harmless feature that reminds you of the good times, lets you share them again, and gives you a simple way to find and audit embarrassing posts on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it can also dig up painful memories and put them at the top of your news feed first thing in the morning. Here’s how you can turn off ‘On this day’ memories on Facebook.

There are two ways to turn off painful memories from surfacing on Facebook. You can disable the On This Day feature altogether, or you can selectively remove memories about a particular person or date. If the memories that keep surfacing aren’t related to a person but to an event or perhaps your pet, your best course of action is to turn off On This Day memories.

Turn Off “On This Day” Memories

On your desktop, visit Facebook and from the column on the left, expand the Explore section. Look for Memories and click on it.

On the Memories screen, You will see two buttons at the top; Notifications, and Preferences. The Notifications button will allow you to turn off notifications and in effect turn off these memories. If you want to summarily turn them off, this is what you need to do.

If you want to selectively filter out certain people or certain dates from memories, click the Preferences button.

This will open a little pop-up that allows you to pick certain people to exclude from memories, as well as dates. You can use either one, or both to filter what you see in your memories.

On the Facebook apps, go to the hamburger tab and tap Memories. On the Memories screen, tap the cog wheel button at the top right.

This will open a little menu with two options; Notifications, and Preferences. If you want to disable memories completely, go to the Notifications screen and turn them off. If you want to exclude certain people and/or dates from memories, go to Preferences and add the exclusions.

That’s about it. The settings sync from the website to the apps. If you add exceptions or change your notification settings for memories on the Facebook app, it will apply to the website and vice versa.

If you don’t want to turn off memories completely, but have recent memories that you do not want to see again, exclude memories from the previous year which are normally the highlight image in your feed.

Macbooks have some of the best batteries in the market. You can easily get ten hours of usage if you’re not watching movies. That said, sometimes tame apps tend to drain your battery quite a bit. Browsers are one example. If you have apps that you know take a toll on your battery, you can use Wintertime – Background App Freezer to suspend background apps on macOS.

The app basically checks if an app is using the CPU too much. An app that uses the CPU a lot, will also cause the battery to drain much faster and will be suspended by Wintertime. It won’t check CPU usage for all the apps that are currently running. Instead, you have to give it a list of apps to monitor and when they’re in the background, it suspends them.

Suspend background apps

Download and install Wintertime – Background App Freezer. When you run the app, it comes with a list of apps that it will monitor. You can edit it by clicking inside the list and deleting an app name, or adding one. You can only add one app per line and make sure you include an asterisk (*) after an app so that Wintertime freezes all processes that the app starts.

When you’re done editing the list, click Start Freezing.

To stop the app, you have to click the Stop Freezing button. If at any time you find that an app is frozen, or you encounter some other problem with one of the frozen apps, you can also click the Panic Button on the app. The Panic Button will automatically unfreeze all suspended apps.

Wintertime doesn’t close apps, it only suspends them however, some apps may crash if they remain suspended for too long. Mac apps are normally pretty stable but there are no guarantees when you interfere with an app’s working. For browsers, there’s little risk of you losing data but if you’re using Wintertime to freeze apps like Photoshop, or iMovie, you may want to make sure that you save what you’re working before sending the app to the background.

Wintertime will automatically unfreeze apps when they are brought to the front. You can use it with practically any app but I don’t recommend using it with Safari. It won’t crash the browser but Safari has its own built-in mechanism for offloading tabs that consume too much battery. It’s best to let it self-regulate than to introduce a third-party app to manage it.

The iPhone has long been able to capture HDR photos. HDR photos are basically three photos taken and combined into one to produce a better looking photo. If you want to import HDR photos from your iPhone to your Windows 10 desktop, you’ll find it’s fairly easy to manage. The photos will be imported in JPG format.

iPhone HDR capture settings

Before you can import HDR photos from an iPhone, you need to first make sure that HDR is enabled when you’re taking the photo. Additionally, since you’re on a Windows 10 system, the methods used to import the HDR photos will not highlight them as such so it might be a good idea to turn off the ‘Keep Normal Photo’ option. The iPhone will only save the HDR version of the photo and not the normal, non-HDR version. You will not be able to go back and get a normal version of a photo if saving it was disabled when the photo was taken.

When you’re about to take a photo, tap the HDR option at the top of the camera view finder, and tap on On. The Auto option leaves it to iOS to determine when an HDR photo is needed.

Import HDR photos from iPhone

There are two relatively simple methods for importing HDR photos from an iPhone. The first is by copying it from the camera roll, and the second is by using the Import function in the Photos app. There are loads of other apps that can import these photos but these two options are the simplest and they work out of the box.

Copy from Camera Roll

Connect your iPhone to your PC and open it from File Explorer. Look through the camera roll until you find the image you want to import. Copy it and paste it anywhere you want. If you opted to save the original photo on your iPhone, you will see two copies of it. Copy them both and by comparing them, you’ll be able to tell which is the HDR photo.

Import in Photos

Open the Photos app and unlock your iPhone. Connect it to your PC. Click the Import option at the top right of the Photos app. It will list all devices that you can import photos from. Select your iPhone and allow the Photos app to scan for photos.

Once scanned, select the HDR photos that you want to import. and click ‘Import Selected’.

That will do the trick.

Importing individual HDR photos

Three photos are taken to create the final HDR photo and many users want to get those three photos in addition to the final one. Unfortunately, iOS doesn’t allow you to access them, not even on a Mac. The final photo is all you can get. You can use a third-party HDR app on your iPhone and it may allow you to get all three photos but the stock iOS apps do not.

Microsoft PowerPoint is essential in an office or school setting if you’re required to make presentations. But what if you use Linux and don’t have access to PowerPoint? What do you use? Well, let’s find out with the 5 best Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives for Linux users!

1. Libre Office Impress

Libre Office Impress is a complete MS Powerpoint replacement that makes it easy to create presentations and slideshows on Linux, thanks to its similar user interface, and support for various file formats, including Microsoft’s own Ppt format.

With Impress, you’ll get access to lots of useful features that many come to expect in a presentation tool, such as clip art (both 2D and 3D,) special effect tools and slide transitions.

Notable Features

• Impress gives users access to a wide variety of 2D and 3D clipart for use in presentations.
• Impress has a similar user interface to PowerPoint, so it’s not too hard to learn.
• Impress supports importing and saving in the PowerPoint file format, which is handy.

Download – Libre Office Impress

Libre Office Impress comes as a default program on a majority of Linux operating systems. That said if your Linux PC doesn’t have a copy of Libre Office Impress already set up, head over to libreoffice.org.

On the Libre Office official website, find the “Download” button and click it to reveal the many download options available for Libre Office, including Flatpak, Snap, AppImage, and others.

2. SoftMaker Presentations

SoftMaker Presentations is a freemium cross-platform PowerPoint alternative that comes as part of the SoftMaker FreeOffice office suite. With the app, users can easily make PowerPoint-like slideshows quickly, thanks to the wide variety of default design templates.

Software Presentations isn’t open source, so the software’s free version comes with limited features. Despite this, it manages to offer up some seriously useful things, such as being able to create PDFs from slides, support for PowerPoint file formats, and much more!

Notable Features

• Users can create PDF files from individual presentation slides.
• Various pre-made presentation templates available.
• “Master-page” feature lets users change all slides at once, rather than one at a time.

Download – SoftMaker Presentations

To use Presentations, you’ll need to install the entire SoftMaker office suite, by heading over to softmaker.com. When you’ve made it to the website, click the menu at the top left and choose the “Download” button to move to the downloads page.

On the downloads page, scroll down, look for “Linux” and select it to start the download process. Or, if you need help learning how to get the app downloaded and working, check out our guide on the subject.

3. Calligra Stage

Calligra Stage is the presentation component to the Calligra Office suite. It’s an open source Linux presentation application and comes packed with dozens of plugins and features that are sure to make creating slideshows for projects or the workplace a simple process.

Stage supports a straightforward user interface that allows the creation of slideshows on Linux to be easy, and not tedious. Additionally, it has some great features such as an overview mode for presenters during presentations, support for PowerPoint presentation files, neat transition effects, and a “notes” mode which make it one of the best alternatives to PowerPoint out there for Linux users.

Notable Features

• Works with the OpenDocument file format, and can even work with other open source office applications such as Open Office, Libre Office, and others.
• “Overview” feature lets presenter get an overview of the entire slideshow.
• “Notes” feature allows the presenter to take notes on individual slides.

Download – Calligra Stage

Calligra Stage comes with the Calligra Office suite. If you’re interested in downloading the app on Linux, head over to calligra.org and select the “Get Calligra” button to learn how to get a copy of the app.

Need help getting the Calligra application working on Linux? Check out our guide on how to install Calligra. In the guide, we go over the many different ways to install the Calligra Office suite, which includes Stage.

4. Google Slides

Google Slides is the presentation component for their online office suite available with Google Drive. With Sides, users can create slideshows, use effects, and import existing Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows, as well as the ability to export slideshows in various file formats.

Slides aren’t a Linux application like the other programs on the list. Still, it’s a great option, especially if you don’t plan to make presentations often on Linux. So, if you need a good MS PowerPoint alternative but don’t feel like installing anything on your Linux PC, Google Slides is an option to consider for sure.

Notable Features

• Instant cloud saving and backups via Google Drive.
• Companion Android/iOS app means users can modify and perform slideshows made on PC on the go as well.
• Slides can be downloaded/uploaded in PowerPoint format.

Download – Google Slides

Google Slides isn’t a downloadable app (unless you’re on mobile or Chrome OS). The primary way of using the app on the PC is on the web. So, if you want to access it to create slideshows, head over to Google Drive, or by navigating to slides.google.com.

5. Marp

Marp is an interesting presentation application for the web that lets users create slideshows with the Markdown markup language, rather than a traditional UI like in MS PowerPoint, as well as others on this list.

It’s clear that most users looking for an alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint probably aren’t looking for a text-based slideshow tool. Still, despite being text-based, it manages to offer up some useful slideshow tools, such as exporting presentations, a live preview mode you can check as you go, and more.

Notable Features

• Supports exporting slides as a PDF.
• Live preview lets users check work as they go.
• Also has a Linux app under development that users can use.

Download – Marp

The Marp application isn’t available on Linux per se. Instead, it’s possible to instantly gain access to the tool to create slideshows by heading over to web.marp.app.

Aside from the Marp web app, the developers are working on a desktop version for Linux and other platforms. To get early access to the program (via the source code) click here.

Conclusion

In this list, we went over some of the best Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives for Linux users. What is your favorite MS PowerPoint alternative to use on your Linux PC? Let us know in the comment section below!