If you’ve used Linux for any amount of time, you’ve probably come across a PPA. A PPA is short for Personal Page Archive. If you’re looking for a specific piece of software not available in the official software store for your distro, you might look into adding a PPA. Most software that is offered via PPA includes the installation instructions to add their PPA and get everything installed. However, not every software includes instructions on how to remove their PPA and uninstall everything. In this tutorial, we’re gonna learn how to remove a PPA via the command line.
Side Thoughts
As far as I’ve heard on forums and StackOverflow and pretty much everywhere else, it’s typically not the best idea to install software using a PPA. I did it a few years ago when I was first getting into linux, but I don’t do it at all anymore. Generally speaking, PPAs aren’t the safest thing to be using and I really don’t have much need for them anymore. In fact, on of the biggest reasons I switched to Manjaro a while back was because of the massive AUR (Arch User Repository). There you can find a massive community of Arch users who have created a ton of software and configured it just for Arch. Still getting the hang of it, but so far it’s been amazing.
Now for the Actual Tutorial
If you happen to know the exact URL of your PPA, you can remove it by using the --remove flag:
In this video, we learn the steps to install blender on Windows 10. There are several ways (some more advanced than others) to do this, but in this video, we’re just sticking with the basics.
Update: Blender has been released since the recording of this video. Also, Mantaflow has been merged into the master branch of blender.
Installation steps are still the same.
As mentioned in the video, you can check out builder.blender.org for the latest, bleeding edge versions of Blender, but if you’re not up for experimentation, or a beginner just wanting to stick to the basics for now, you can check out the latest, official stable releases from blender.org/download
Note: graphicall.org has since become part of Blender.community, which is a great place to chat and learn new tips and tricks and dive deep into all things Blender.
That pretty much covers it, I know that was probably too much information, but the simple way is to just download the .msi on Windows, the .dmg on Mac, or the tar.gz on Linux. Extract and run the .msi or .dmg on Windows or Mac, go through the installer like any other program and you’re good to go. On Linux, there is no installer. You literally just extract and launch the executable. Linux is dope like that.
The simplest and quickest way to get up and running with DaVinci Resolve on Manjaro is to simply open the default package manager that comes with Manjaro and searching for davinci-resolve. This will give you a few results, because Resolve comes in free and paid versions. If you want to install and use the paid version, search davinci-resolve. If you have an activation key or USB key for the paid version of Resolve, then just search for davinci-resolve-studio. Click on the package you want, click “Build”, type in your password, and you’re good to go!
Method 1:
This is likely the more common way to install Davinci Resolve 16.1 on Manjaro. Just head over to the official Blackmagic site to guarantee yourself the latest and greatest version of DaVinci Resolve. From there, you can register and download the latest .zip file. Once you unzip, the installation is pretty easy, just execute the file named “DaVinci_Resolve_{yourVersionNumber}_Linux.run”. That’ll launch an installation wizard that will walk you through the terms and conditions, licensing agreements, and installation process.
The only catch with this method is that there’s a chance you might not have all the required dependencies in order to run Resolve on your machine. In order to avoid this… I’d recommend the second method.
Method 2:
Use the user-created AUR package. This can’t be found inside the “Add/Remove Software” program that comes with Manjaro, as it’s not an officially supported repository. However, as of the writing of this post, it’s up-to-date and appears to be pretty well maintained. To install DaVinci Resolve 16.1 on Manjaro using this method, there is one prerequisite. You’ll need a group of packages called base-devel and git. To install these, just run:
sudo pacman -Syu base-devel git
You’ll be prompted for your password, and pacman will automatically go and grab all the required packages you need. Once that’s done, go to the official AUR package page and find the GIT Clone URL (usually linked at near the top of the page on the left).
Copy that link, because you’ll need it in just a second. Next, create a new folder in your home directory called Programs, and inside Programs, create a new folder called DavinciResolve. Next, open a terminal window in your newly created DavinciResolve folder, and type git clone and paste that URL you copied earlier like so:
Once you hit enter, you’ll create a copy of the AUR repository on your machine. Inside your folder, there should be a file called PKGBUILD just for peace of mind, you can optionally run less PKGBUILD to take a look at the script, just to make sure that you’re pulling official copies of Davinci Resolve 16.1 from Blackmagic’s official website. Once you see the official URL in the code, you’re ready for the final step!
To build and install DiVinci Resolve 16.1 on Manjaro, all you need to do now is run makepkg -si. That will begin building resolve, -s to sync your local repositories with the remote ones, and -i to install the packages once you’ve built them. And that’s it! You’re now running Davinci Resolve 16.1 on Manjaro. Have fun!
Projects disappear after updating Resolve. Oh crap.
So this happened to me this week. I started a project in Resolve 15, got to a good stopping point, was waiting on client reviews before I could move forward, and figured I’d update to Resolve 16 while I wait on feedback. My bad. As soon as I opened up the new version 16, all my projects disappeared after updating Resolve.
Windows 10
After doing some serious digging and scouring every online resource I could find, I finally figured it out. In short, Resolve references your project database in a crazy long file path buried under AppData. This is your ACTIVE database directory. Resolve is always referencing this file path for all your projects. In my case, this directory was empty, resulting in my blank projects panel when I launched Resolve. The full file path is:
C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Blackmagic Design\ DaVinci Resolve\Support\Resolve Disk Database\Resolve Projects\
The Fix
To fix this, I found my projects in a similar, but different file path under ProgramData. Inside the following filepath, I found all my projects! Yay! They exist!
C:\ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\Resolve Disk Database\Resolve Projects\
So all I did was copy everything inside the last folder \Resolve Projects\ and pasted inside my empty \AppData\ directory. That fixed it!
Here’s how to fix write permissions for DaVinci Resolve.
Oh snap
To fix this, just open a terminal and run:
chmod -R 766 /your/problem/drive/or/directory
What’s Going On?
On linux, security is brilliantly built in. By default, files and folders that you create have a set level of permissions (defined by the umask command). Typically, the default is the user (you) have permission to read and write files that you own, as well as search directories you own. All others have read-only access to your files and directories.
Knowing this, other applications (aka Resolve) do not have permission by default to write to hard drives, folders, or files that you (the user) own. So how do we change this?
chmod
To change permissions of a single file or a whole directory, use the chmod command. chmod gives you the ability to change permissions using short, 3-digit number formats. These are known as octal numbers.
Octal Number
Permissions
File Listing
7
read, write, and execute
rwx
6
read and write
rw-
5
read and execute
r-x
4
read only
r–
3
write and execute
-wx
2
write only
-w-
1
execute only
–x
0
none
—
So in the chmod command, you use the above table to define permissions for the file user/owner, members of the file group, and other people, in that order. The -R flag used in the code above, simply makes the command recursive, applying to every single file and folder inside the directory you apply the command to.
Examples
Readable by owner only: chmod 400 examplefile.txt
Allow the owner and group to read, write, and execute, and anyone else to read and write: chmod 776 examplefile.txt
Also, there’s an awesome tool for those of you, like me, who can’t keep all those chmod codes straight!
After this post made it to Twitter, @rohit_bmd made a great point- check Davinci Resolve > Preferences and under the Media Storage tab, you’ll see a list of drives on your system. Make sure you have read/write privileges on the drive at the very top of that list, because that’s where Resolve will be storing all your cache files. Here’s the the tab:
If you’re new to Resolve on Linux, feel free to check out my other posts.
Let’s locate files using the terminal! This is just a cool little trick you can use if you’re doing a bunch of stuff in the terminal, and you don’t want to leave, or you’re just interested in cool terminal tricks. Let’s say you’re looking for a file, anywhere on your machine, but you don’t know exactly where it is. You can install a very cool search package called mlocate (or merging locate).
Install
On Ubuntu/Debian you can run:
sudo apt-get install mlocate
Or if you’re on that Manjaro/Arch life:
sudo pacman -S mlocate
Syntax
To locate files in the terminal by using mlocate, just type:
locate [name of the file] [directory in which you want to start recursively searching]
If you’re using mlocate for the first time, it’s not gonna work just yet. mlocate is actually a pair of tool bundled into one. The other half of mlocate is called updatedb. So by running updatedb, you’re essentially creating/updating an index so that you can run your search. So any time you want to run a locate command and it’s not giving you the results you are expecting, there’s a good chance your index is outdated, so you can just run updatedb, then run your locate search again, and you should be good to go.
Update your junk by running updatedb then run locate [file] to get your mind blown!
Bonus Tip
If the results of your locate command are crazy long, like… CRAZY long…. too long to view everything in the terminal because your terminal only has a finite history, here’s a tip: You can print the results of ANY command to a text file and save it anywhere by using >. For example:
The above command will run a system-wide search for anything matching myfile.txt recursively from the root directory / and print the results to searchresults.txt on the Desktop.
Good luck and have fun! Now that you’ve found the file you’re looking for, perhaps you want to do something cool with it! If you wanna learn more cool stuff you can do in the terminal, check this out.
I hadn’t planned on turning my Chromebook into an N64 over the weekend, but it’s what happened. Turned out working pretty well, so I thought I’d share my victory with everyone!
Prerequisites:
Chromebook (or any laptop)
a real operating system (not Chrome OS, but preferrably Linux)
a controller of gamepad of some sort. I used my brother’s old PS3 controller.
I thought I wrote a post on how I hacked my Chromebook to run GalliumOS, but It may have gotten deleted. If you’re interested, just drop a message in my contact for and I’ll get on it!
Step 1: Find an Emulator
This is how you’re gonna play your favorite games. There’s a bunch of them out there for all different operating systems. I’m running GalliumOS, so I went with Mupen64Plus. You can either build it yourself, or you can find some precompiled versions out there. Once you’ve got an emulator, you’re nearly there!
Step 2: Grab a Controller
Pretty much any controller will work. The only tricky thing will be finding a driver to work with your controller. I dug around and found a driver called QtSixA. After installing it, I realized I didn’t actually need it because GalliumOS just recognized my PS3 controller right out of the box. Awesome!
Step 3: Get some ROMS
A quick internet search for “N64 ROMS” should definitely get you pointed in the right direction. Grab whatever ROM you want, but just keep in mind, if you’ve set up a N64 emulator on your laptop, you’re gonna want to use N64 roms with that.
Yo, that’s pretty much it. It took me about 3 hours to set everything up, but it’s mostly because I started off trying to install Emulation Station and RetroArch with no luck. Those emulator front ends pretty much launched and immediately froze for whatever reason. Eventually I just decided to download just an N64 emulator and a GUI launcher (Mupen64Plus-QT found in synaptic package manager, I think). Once I launched it and pointed it to my ROM library, I was off and running.
Ranger is an open source Github project that aims to streamline and simplify directory navigation on any computer. If you’re relatively new to the terminal or only use it rarely, this may not be a big deal for you. However, if you use the terminal on a regular or even daily basis, this tool may be invaluable. Unlike a typical GUI layout found on Windows or Linux machines, Ranger gives you 3 columns of folders at once. This allows you to see one directory up, your current working directory, and one directory down.
Why is this Awesome?
If you’ve used Apple’s Finder, you’ll know there’s a file view called “Column View” that allows you to navigate in and out of folders with speed, just using the arrow keys. Ranger essentially brings this speed to every platform, inside the terminal.
Column view in Apple’s Finder window
If You’re New to Terminal
If you’re like me and just starting to use the terminal for the first time, there’s a good chance you know the commands “cd” and “ls” (on linux or mac) or “dir” for Windows. Those commands absolutely do work, and you can still use them if you like. However, it’s also nice to know of some nice alternatives! So instead of typing out long directory paths and risking typos, now you can just run “ranger”. In addition to fast file navigation, you can also get ASCII previews of image files, text previews of documents, and even look inside zipped files!
Just Scratching The Surface
Finally, this article is meant to be a very shallow, surface-level introduction to what Ranger is and what it does in a very general sense. Be sure to check out the full documentation to discover the VAST amount of control you can get out of Ranger. That’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for reading!
Rclone is a cross-platform terminal-based application that allows you to manage cloud storage services from virtually any machine, regardless of which OS you’re running. I really like it because it offers a TON of functionality and compatibility with loads of different services from Amazon, Google, Box, Dropbox, and more.
Some may be intimidated by the fact that this program doesn’t have a front end and is only usable inside the terminal or command line. However, if you’re familiar with just the most entry-level basics of how the terminal works, then this program shouldn’t be that difficult for anyone to use. After all, the main purpose of the program is just to move files around to different places. How hard could it be?
The Basics
In my admittedly limited experience with Rclone, I’ve used it pretty much exclusively with Backblaze. Once you download and install Rclone to your machine of choice (I’ve never seen so many operating systems supported!), you can get a brief overview of what Rclone is and how it works just by running this on a Mac or Linux:
man rclone
That will pull up the manual for the program. Also, I just learned in Windows, you can type the name of any command (in our case, rclone), followed by a forward slash and a question mark to bring up the manual page for that command in the windows command prompt. Like this:
rclone /?
Configuring Rclone
Next, you’ll want to set up rclone with whatever service you want to use. To do this, you can run:
rcone config
This will bring up the configuration options for rclone.
In the above example, you can see that I’ve already set up rclone to run with my Backblaze account. Any configured accounts will appear at the top when you run:
rclone config
At this point, you can run through the prompts to set up a new account by selecting your service from the WIDE list of compatible services, entering your account login credentials, and you’re good to go!
Basic Commands
Once you’ve got rclone configured to use basically any and every service you like, you’re ready to start transferring files! The basic syntax can be found in the manual page either online or in the terminal using commands mentioned above. Here’s how it works:
In the manual page, the syntax is listed like so:
[options] subcommand [parameters] [parameters]
Kinda clear, but also kinda confusing. Luckily, there are a few examples listed immediately after the generic syntax format:
rclone ls remote:path # lists a remote repository
rclone copy /local/path remote:path # copies /local/path to the remote
rclone sync /local/path remote:path # syncs /local/path to the remote
It took me a few tries to figure it out, but when you’re configure your storage service (Amazon, Google, etc) it prompts you to give it a name. You can name it Google or anything you want. Just be aware that rclone is case sensitive when it comes to remote names. So if you configure rlcone and name your remote BackBlaze, typing backblaze or Backblaze will not work.
Let’s say you want to copy fluffykitty.jpg to the kitties folder on your Dropbox account. You’ve configured rclone and named your Dropbox configuration boxlyfe. So with that in mind, first you type rclone to call the program. Then you type a subcommand. What do you want to do with rclone? Copy files, so type copy. Copy what? Type the file path to the file or directory you want to copy. Copy to where? Type the name of the remote (boxlyfe), colon, and the directory you want to put it in. So your command will look something like this:
The –dry-ryn flag at the end will test the command without copying anything. That way you can correct any typos in your command before actually executing it. Once everything looks good, you can replace –dry-run with –verbose to get text output updating your on the progress of your upload.
rclone copy works with individual files as well as directories and all directory copies are recursive by default, meaning rclone will grab EVERYTHING inside that folder, and all subfolders. Also, you can reverse the copy command to download stuff as well. Wanna get that kitty picture back? Just run:
What’s a BAT? What’s Brave? How does all this work?
Brave is an internet browser built off Google’s Chrome browser. So what makes it different? Brave’s mission is to solve the ever-growing problem of ads that track you and follow you around wherever you go. Brave’s goal is to pay its users every time they view an ad. Seriously? Yes, seriously. They also want to give users the opportunity to pay their favorite internet publishers directly in exchange for an ad-free experience online. It comes with a built-in ad blocker as well as a built-in wallet to keep all your loot when you browse. Why not try out Brave for yourself?
What’s BAT?
BAT stands for Basic Attention Token. It’s a cryptocurrency used to pay Brave’s users and Brave’s publishers. When you first download Brave, it’ll ask you if you want to create a wallet. As a promotional effort aimed at early adopters, for a limited time Brave would fill your wallet with as much as 25 BAT (about $12 at the time of this writing)! You may not get a wallet full of BAT now, but as a normal user, Brave keeps track of how many HTTPS upgrades, ads and trackers blocked. Every now and again you’ll see an ad while using Brave, but odds are they are ads that verified on Brave’s network. In other words, these are ads that clients pay the users (through Brave) to see. So check your wallet every now and again!
How Do I earn BAT?
As previously mentioned, BAT can be earned simply by viewing ads on Brave’s network. However there’s even more opportunity as a verified Brave publisher. As a content creator working with Brave, you can create your stuff like normal (YouTube videos, Twitch streams, blogs, etc), but if another Brave user stumbles across your content, Brave allows those users to pay you directly! Users can make one-time tips to your favorite publishers, or schedule monthly contributions at any amount you like.
As a user, you feed your wallet using an external crypto account using BTC, ETH, LTC, or BAT. As a publisher, your earned BAT tokens end up in an account managed by Uphold. If you don’t have an account with Uphold, you will be required to create one when signing up for the Brave publisher rewards program. Once the coins are in your Uphold account, you can do with them whatever you like. Either spend them, invest them, or put them into your own Brave wallet.
