SSHMenu is a GNOME panel applet that keeps all your regular SSH connections within a single mouse click. But why use an applet for SHH connections? Well, SSHMenu has a really interesting feature which I for one find it extremely useful: it uses terminal profiles to add something distinct to a SSH terminal so that you don't mix commands between machines:
Imagine if every time you connected to a production server the terminal window had a red-tinted background, to remind you to tread carefully. Using terminal profiles, SSHMenu allows you to specify colours, fonts, transparency and a variety of other settings on a per-connection basis. You can even set window size and position.
I cannot test SSHMenu, as my VDS server account expired so if you try out SSHMenu, please let us know your impression in the comments.
Download and Install SSHMenu
Ubuntu users can install it from the repositories:
sudo apt-get install sshmenu-gnome
However, if you want to install the latest version, add the SSHMenu repository (for Ubuntu/Debian):
Yasst is a cross-platform Twitter client which does not run on Adobe Air, this being the reason I first started using it as I really don't like Adobe Air applications.
If you are used to Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck, you will find Yasst to look pretty similar, with multiple column view, but Yasst has something extra: tabs!
Let's take a look at some important features in Yasst:
multiple tabs with columns: suppose you want to have a tab with mentions, direct messages and your friends stream, another tab with searches for Ubuntu and Linux and yet another tab with CSS, jQuery and JavaScript searches (just examples) so you can always have a something with the same interest on the same tab. Of course, you can use the tabs in many ways and for different purposes
saved searches: you can save searches for certain keywords and follow tweets on those keywords in real-time
themes: Yasst is build on the Qt platform, but it doesn't look as ugly as some might expect as it comes with some nice themes
Twitter lists support
bit.ly api support
you can add multiple Twitter accounts
and basically, everything a decent Twitter client needs
In case you are interested, here is a video with Yasst Twitter client in action:
Unfortunately, Yasst is not open source, so only binaries (for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX binaries) are available. The Linux binaries have been built on Debian 5.0 32bit (64bit not available) and I've tested it and everything seems to work ok in Ubuntu Karmic.
Linux: Please note that you need to have Qt4.6 installed for everything to work correctly. However, you will be able to run Yasst with older Qt version too. To run Yasst on Linux, all you have to do is extract it and run the file names "Yasst" if you have Qt4.6. If you have an older version of Qt, run "Yasst.sh" instead.
Starting with version 1.1, VideoLan Media Player (VLC) will get extensions support, and anyone will be able to write their own - like it is with Firefox extensions:
The difference with other VLC modules consists in the language used to write these Extensions: Lua, a simple a lightweight scripting language, embbeded inside VLC media player.
I must say this is great news but a somewhat expected move since VLC has all the features a media player needs so it's time to give power to the users. Also, just like it is with Firefox extensions: if you would incorporate all the extensions in the default installation, VLC would be bloated, but if you allow users to use extensions, everyone will have the features he wants, without bloating this great app.
There are already some VLC extensions you can try (you will need VLC 1.1 but if you use Ubuntu, fear not: the latest VLC 1.1 from GIT is available in the Web Upd8 PPA, build as of today - read on for installation instructions):
IMDb: read the plot summary, learn about the cast of a movie and get a direct link to the Internet Movie Database.
Last.fm: Read useful information fetched from the artist's page on Last.fm.
Lyrics: Automatically get the lyrics of the current song.
Subtitles: Find and insert subtitles on top of the video in two clicks.
Here are a few screenshots with some of these extensions:
And two concept extensions (or they might already exist, but I couldn't find a link to download):
Wikipedia: get information about the artist, the album or the movie from Wikipedia.
Concerts: Learn about the next concerts of this artist.
Copy each of the .lua files downloaded in step 2, to the following location:
Linux:~/.local/share/vlc/lua/extensions/ (you can enter: sudo nautilus ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/extensions/ in a terminal to open Nautilus with root permissions to the location where you must copy the .lua files).
Windows:%APPDATA%\VLC\lua\extensions
Extensions are scripts running inside VLC, that will popup windows and fetch information on the web for you. To use an extension, all you need is to activate it from the View menu. Then, it should be all self-explanatory:
What do you think of this new feature coming with VLC 1.1? Is is something you've always wanted? Just a nice addition? Let us know your oppinions in the comments!
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DoThisNow is a Linux (w/ Gnome) application which allows you to run tasks at a certain time, like very 5 minutes, on a week day, on a given date, etc. The tasks include: setting a wallpaper, setting the Pidgin status, taking a screenshot, launch application or file, open URL in browser, display a message, run a shell command or play a sound.
As you can see, DoThisNow looks like a bit more advanced CRON, and also comes with a GUI, another useful thing being that you can run graphical applications.
There are a lot of things you can put DoThisNow to do so if you need something done automatically, give DoThisNow a try.
Like you noticed if you are following the development of Opera 10.50, the Opera Browser is undertaking some massive changes to the platform integration that will give significant improvements for all three desktop platforms, but because of this, Windows users will have a beta version a lot earlier than the other 2 platforms (Windows and Mac).
Today's snapshot bring a lot of improvements and bugfixes, Linux builds (finally! they didn't release any for the last 2-3 Windows snapshots), and also the widgets will also run as standalone applications again as previewed in 10.20 alpha.
ATI (AMD) released a new version of it's ATI Catalyst proprietary display driver for Linux. Version 10.1 finally brings support for the new Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, a bit late considering there are only 3 months till Ubuntu Lucid will be released, but it's still good news for a lot of Ubuntu 9.10 users.
Thew new Ati Catalyst 10.1 also brings a few fixes which you can view @ Softpedia.
Mozilla has finally released Weave 1.0, the Firefox extension that provides Firefox user data synchronization which includes complete syncing of bookmarks, passwords, preferences, history, and even open tabs on multiple computers (or multiple operating systems) and even mobile devices.
The Mozilla Weave 1.0 final doesn't come with many changes, but it means Weave is finally open to the large public, even though I find it to be a bit unstable in what concerns the bookmarks sync. For info regarding version 1.0, see the release notes.
Once thing that Mozilla Weave doesn't synchronize is your installed addons, but for that you can try Siphon.
If you're not new to Web Upd8, I'm sure you already know the beautiful Gnome themes from the Bisigi Project which come with an Ubuntu PPA for a one-command installation. Well, today a new theme has been released, called AirLines.
The new theme comes with:
1 animated wallpaper which changes during the day
1 GTK theme
1 Metacity theme
1 icons pack
I've always considered these themes as beautiful, new and fresh, but I find AirLines to be a masterpiece. It looks astonishing. My screenshots don't reveal how nice this theme looks so it's something you must try for yourself. Of course, it's also a matter of taste so please do share your opinion on this new Gnome theme.
Installing AirLines Bisigi Gnome theme in Ubuntu is very easy, as the Bisigi Project has a PPA. If you don't have the PPA added to your sources.list already, see our original post: 12 Great Gnome Themes with Ubuntu Repositories (for Ubuntu Karmic, scroll down for the updated instructions).
Once you add the PPA (or if it is already added), install AirLines in Ubuntu by running the following command in a terminal:
AutoDeb is an experimental script which completely automates compiling and installing software created using autoconf (most programs). It can either directly use the archived source code (.tar.gz or .tar.bz2), or a folder where the application was unpacked or downloaded from svn, bzr, etc. Once the software is compiled, a .deb file is automatically created and installed using checkinstall.
This script is very interesting because it automates the configure process by automatically installing the dependencies needed to build software. That works by running "./configure" and tracking all of configure's attempts to access files. When configure fails, AutoDeb uses AutoApt (more info on AutoAPT) to find out what package needs to be installed and then it runs configure again.
The AutoDeb wiki page explains why it is better than AutoApt:
Contrary to AutoApt, AutoDeb does not just install every file that 'configure' happens to peek at. Instead, it lets 'configure' run and fail, at which point it installs only the last package that 'configure' required, and repeats the process.
Using AutoDeb
Once you download (actually copy the script code to a file called autodeb.sh) AutoDeb - download link at the end of the post-, make the script executable:
Gstyle is a new full Gnome theme manager with some really great features which I am sure you will love if you like to customize your Desktop look constantly. Gstyle can automatically download and install wallpapers, Xsplash, GTK themes, icon themes, full themes, mouse pointers and more from gnome-look, deviantart, customize.org and others, or directly from the software source. But not only that, Gstyle can show you how a theme (any kind of theme: icons, Emerald, Metacity, etc.) actually looks, not just a preview. You will see what I mean in the screenshots below (3rd screenshot).
Gstyle can also apply different Compiz cube (well, actually Sphere) styles called Cubemodels. I'm sure you're going to love them. Of course, there is still work to do, but Gstyle is still in its infancy, this being the first version ever released. I think we'll see more of Gstyle soon.
A few Gstyle screenshots:
Gstyle Gnome Full Theme Manager also comes with a script to install some applications such as AWN, Cairo-Dock and others, but something required by Gstyle too: Compiz GIT, including the latest plugins (many many new plugins!) (required for Cubemodels only). There is a downside to this script which worked flawlessly for me: it's in French. Yes, even though Gstyle is in English, the script to install Compiz from GIT and the latest plugins (among others) is in French so you can either install Compiz from GIT yourself, or learn French or... use Google Translate. But everything is pretty easy to understand even if you don't know French (or so it seems to me).
Before you proceed with the installation, here is a video with Gstyle in action:
Alternatively, watch the OGV version of the video, HERE.
Install Gstyle In Ubuntu
Gstyle installation from GIT is very easy. Simply open a terminal and paste this:
Where "/path/to/gstyle" is the path where you've previously downloaded Gstyle.
Update: if you don't want to install Compiz from GIT (see below), you can simply download and install Cubemodel .deb (Ubuntu Karmic package).
Installing Compiz GIT and others in Ubuntu
If you don't have the latest Compiz from GIT, the first tab called "Cubemodels" will not be available. To enable it, you'll have to run a script called "cfinstall.sh". Don't worry about it being a script, a GUI will pop up so you can do everything very easy.
Along with Compiz GIT, you will also get lots of new plugins (you can see a few of these new plugins in the screenshot below):
Warning: only follow these steps if you know what you are doing and know how to fix your system in case anything goes wrong! You have been warned!
The cfinstall.sh script is available HERE. The instructions are in French, but don't worry, you just have to copy and paste the following commands:
After running this last command, some dependencies and a GUI for cfinstall.sh will be installed. Once everything is done, open cfinstall from Applications > System Tools > 3D desktop installer.
You can simply check Compiz Git and Cubemodel and click OK and the installation will shortly begin. As you can see, you don't have to know too much French to do this.
A note: make sure you do not select to install both COMPIZ GIT and Compiz Depots (Compiz from the PPA)!
After installing Compiz GIT and any other applications you want, log out and log back in.
At this point Compiz will probably be disabled. Enable it through the Compiz Fusion Icon which will be available in the Notification area. Also, the Compiz plugins will be disabled so enable the plugins you want to use (don't forget the very basic ones!). As a note: you may want to enable the "Move window" plugin so you can move the windows and the "Window decoration" plugin!
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Nautilus Image Converter adds a "Resize Image" and "Rotate image" menu items in Nautilus for easy image manipulation. You can use it for a single image or multiple images and while it doesn't have many options, Nautilus Image Converter does what its supposed to... and fast!
It uses ImageMagick convert tool and the difference between this package and the other Nautilus scripts out there is that you get more options, like scaling the image(s) to percentage of the initial image, append ".resized" (or "rotated", depending on your action) to the new image or simply replace it, different predefined image sizes and so on:
Like I said, this is a very simple Nautilus "addon" but very useful for people who constantly have to resize and rotate images - such as myself: I always use it for creating thumbnails for Web Upd8 posts as it's a lot easier than opening GIMP and resizing the images, etc.
To install Nautilus Image Converter in Ubuntu, run the following command in a terminal (you will also have to install ImageMagick, the command solves this too):
There are lots of Gmail notifiers for Linux (a few examples: CheckGmail, gmnotify, GoogSysTray) but I really like the Gmail notifier about which I'm going to talk in this post. Read on!
I don't know how to refer to it as it doesn't have a name except "Gmail Notifier" (how original, right? :) ) but anyway, here's why it seems really useful: it makes use of libnotify and the Indicator Applet in Ubuntu with GNOME.
If you care about security, you will be glad to know that Gmail Notifier uses Gnome Keyring to store your password.
Using Gmail Notifier
After installing it (download link at the end of the post), go to Applications > Internet > Gmail Notifier - Settings and enter your Gmail username and password. Then run it from Applications > Internet > Gmail Nofifier.
After everything has been set up, when you get a new email you'll see a libnotify message pop up and also the Indicator Applet will let you know you have a new email and will include sender information and the email subject.
Finestly Ying and Yang are 2 new proposed Ubuntu Lucid themes which are available @ Ubuntu wiki.
Ying is a very dark theme and Yang - a very bright one, both using the Murrine engine and adjusted for the Humanity icons:
Finestly YING
Finestly YANG
However, it seems there's an error in their names @ Ubuntu wiki, as the correct Chinese terms are "Yin" and "Yang", not "Ying", and in the Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin yang is used to describe how seemingly disjunct or opposing forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn.
Music Player Minion is a client for MPD (Music Player Daemon) which comes as a Firefox extension. Think of it as something like Theory (web based MPD client) but which looks a lot better.
Music Player Minion is a client for the Music Player Daemon network music player. The purpose of MPD and it's clients is to allow music playback on one PC (such as a home media server) to be controlled from another over the network.
Music Player Minion has 3 possible "views":
-mini: you only get the basic play/stop and next/previous buttons on the Firefox statusbar:
-sidebar: to activate the sidebar, right click on your Firefox toolbar, select "Customize" and drag-n-dropb the "Playlist (Sidebar) MPM button. When clicked, this button will display your current MPD playlist:
-new window: the new window button can be added the same as the sidebar (see above) and when clicked, it will open a fully featured Music Player Minion which looks like this:
This interface comes with many options: you can choose the way songs are displayed (with info or basic), browse the music by folder, album, artist and so on, music album covers and well, basically everything you would want in a simple yet really good music player.
For more info on Music Player Minion and download, see it's pages at Mozilla Addons and Google Code.
Note: if Firefox complains about Music Player Minion not being compatible with your current FF version, see THIS.
If you've been reading Web Upd8 in a while, you must have noticed that we like to hand out licenses and other useful things to our readers. Here is another giveaway in which we'll send 10 IP Privacy licenses (6 months free) your way. All you have to do is post a comment using a valid email address (email, not logging in with Twitter and such) requesting a license, and on Monday (February 1st) we'll make a draw and send the licenses to the lucky winners.
Why would you want an IP Privacy license? IP Privacy normally costs $39.95 and it's an Windows application which you can use to hide your IP address and stay anonymous. Using IP Privacy, not only your IP will be hidden, but it will also "unblock" websites for you (if your ISP has blocked websites and such), will bypass firewall and block invasive code. Even more, IP Privacy will clean your online tracks.
One very interesting feature is that you can choose a country specific proxy. I would love to try this feature and see if I could get Spotify to work (Spotify is not available in my country), but I've managed to install Ubuntu at work so I don't have any Windows PC anymore and IP Privacy doesn't work in Ubuntu.
Here are some of IP Privacy features:
Premium proxies: high quality proxies included in IP Privacy allow you to surf the Web safely without affecting your browsing speed.
Add Proxy: manually adding a specific proxy to the current list is an important feature of online anonymity. If you feel the need of using a proxy from a specific country you can find a proxy from that country and get it to the list.
Live Update: even if you add proxies into the list, you can periodically check whether IP Privacy developers had embedded some new proxies to the list.
Already tested proxies: when testing the availability of a specific proxy you can find out the proxy’s response time so you can decide whether to keep it or not. To make this easier there is a list where all the already tested proxies are saved for further use
Online Privacy and Protection: like I said, IP Privacy will also clean your online traces: Internet history, typed urls, clean temporary Internet files, clear cookies, clear auto complete form and password history, clear favorites, block ActiveX and JavaScript attacks.
All these make IP Privacy a great application to secure your online privacy and anonymity.
Contest rules: like I said, the winners should receive their licenses on Monday, February 1st. You must comment using a valid email, and only one comment per person is allowed. The winners will be random, so it's a matter of luck. That is all.
This post is for those of you which have a blog and run Disqus comment system on it.
Firstly, let me tell you the exact story: I haven't noticed this before, but if you look at the source code of a post (post, not main page) of probably all blogs using Disqus (except Web Upd8 and Mashable), and search for some words in the post, you will see them displayed twice: once in the actual post and once in a div with the "disqus_post_message" id, which is not visible on the actual page because it's hidden. This basically means all your posts text exists twice on your blog which is of course not very good in terms of SEO. Even worse, the "disqus_post_message" has the style "display:none", which Google interprets as trying to hide content.
If you take a look at Mashable, this does not occur because they use a very advanced customization of Disqus, with the comments text being actually displayed in the source code of their pages, not only in an embeddable window like on the rest of the blogs (having the comments show up on the actual page and not in an embedded window is very good from the search engines point of view).
How I partially fixed it
I don't know how to make the comments show up on the actual post page, but what I've managed to do - and I'm actually still testing to see if there is something wrong with this - is to remove the disqus_post_message div and with it, the double text that it creates in the pages source code. Please note that I've done this for a blog on the Blogger platform, and I don't know if/how this applies to other blogging platforms.
What I did was to search for this in my blog template (before doing this, I strongly suggest you make a backup to your template):
and completely remove it. Below this line, there is some javascript which looks like this:
<script type='text/javascript'> var disqus_url = '<data:post.url/>'; var disqus_title = document.getElementById('disqus_post_title').innerHTML; var disqus_message = document.getElementById('disqus_post_message').innerHTML; </script>
From which I've removed this part:
var disqus_message = document.getElementById('disqus_post_message').innerHTML;
After removing these, I've also seen improvements in the page load speed.
Which makes the post title be displayed once again for Disqus, but hidden ("display:none"). Some might need this for displayed some Disqus widgets on their blogs, but I don't so I also removed this. Hopefully, everything will run smoothly without it.
That's about it. Hopefully this will help some bloggers out there :)
We've just got an email which points out that there is going work for a new operating system called RevLin OS. This is more of an announcement, because there are no downloads available for now, so I couldn't test it. But I really liked the concept - I must say that it sounds much better than Chrome OS, so I decided to share this news with you. Why better than Chrome OS? Read on!
RevLin OS base is built upon a new kernel called PopCorn which is derived from a re-written version of the well established linux kernel, while still maintaining full binary support for applications and drivers allowing for vast hardware support. The Desktop environment (RaVe) is coded in HTML5, CSS3 and a customized version of the ExtJs library with a brand new widget set, and allows for applications to have backends coded in languages such a C, C++ and java and simple porting of already existant applications. This is the part which I really like: if the Desktop environment is coded in HTML5, CSS3 and ExtJS, it means it doesn't take very much for it to look awesome. However, RevLin OS will not be like the other operating systems which rely on HTML5, CSS3 and JS - the data will not be stored in the cloud but locally and integrated with the cloud so you can access data from anywhere, but you don't rely on an internet connection.
RevLin OS aims for a very short boot time and responsive system that works just as you do. Also, in the future there are plans to integrate the OnLive game streaming service into RevLin's market place which which we have named the RStore, along with digital content (including Ebooks) purchases provided by Amazon.
Update: I've sent a few questions to the RevLin OS developers (regarding the package management, how existing Linux apps will work and if RevLin OS is based on any existing Linux distribution, etc.) and they were kind enough to reply to the email, so I will post some of its content below (I hope they won't mind):
RevLin is not Linux per say, its not just another distribution in any sense of the phrase it is an entirely new os which uses the core elements of linux as its foundation, it will run all applications that are compatible trough Linux and an GUI for the application can be made easily by the developer using our drag and drop interface builder (ala plam's ares) or once the gtk/gt library is installed can use gtk or qt for the interface just like a normal linux app. The whole OS is built from source and is not based on any distribution of Linux. Its something new and allows us not to rely on other, to make improvements to the OS but it being open source bug fixes and changes as well feature requests can be uploaded directly to us. Package management uses a format called .ins which are installation files and you have .app for executing an application. In a .app file you have all of the apps small dependencies and any bigger ones are installed to the library directory in the users home folder meaning you dont need to find a million and one dependencies to install and use an application. Another big change is the layout of the filesystem, instead of hundreds of sub folder in / you have 3 /library /system (which contains drivers , kernel and other frameworks) and /home. a standard on root use can not and will not need to access anything outside there home folder and this allows us to ensure that nothing can get broken and any applications that are, in the unlikely event, infected with malware or are in them self malicious are trapped in a sand box environment rendering them harmless. I hope that this helps you see where we are and where we are going with the OS.
That's all the information available for now. Hopefully we'll be able to test RevLin OS very soon.
Now, about the question in the title: would you use an operating system such as RevLin OS?
That's right, Web Upd8 gets its PPA. But don't get too excited about this, there won't be anything big in it, just small packages which don't have a PPA and I can easily pack. This means that in some of the new posts on Web Upd8, when no .deb file is available, I will try to package it and upload it to the PPA to make things easier for our readers.
I'm not an expert (in fact I'm still a noob at this) packaging so I might not be able to upload everything I want, but it's a nice start anyway.
A friendly note: I advise you not to add the PPA, but instead just download the .deb packages you need, as I might upload some more experimental packages there (currently there are 2 experimental packages: VLC 1.1.0 git and Terminator 0.90 alpha 1).
For now, these packages are available in the Web Upd8 PPA (like I said, just a few at the moment):
- VLC 1.1.0 (latest git code for today - the version states the tomorrow date but that's a small bug in the version, don't worry about it) - VLC 1.1.0 from git has quite a few bugs and in fact it took me a few days to get it to build on the PPA so I advise you not to use it unless you desperate want to try the latest git VLC.
- x264 - the latest x264 from 24 January - required by VLC.
- libtheora - I packaged version 1.1.1 because the version in Ubuntu Karmic is too old and I needed it for something.
- newsbeuter 2.2.1 - command line feed reader which we covered a few days ago.
- switcher - it's the combined desktop and app switcher gnome panel applet which we've also covered not so long ago.
- terminator - Terminator 0.90 alpha 1 (bzr code as of 22 January).
Like I said: nothing big (well, except VLC), but the PPA was basically created to help Web Upd8 users in the future. Hopefully, I will be able to keep it up to date.
You can find the PPA here: https://edge.launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+archive/webupd8 (packages available for Karmic an Lucid, although some packages are already available in the Lucid repositories so that's why they are missing from the PPA).
Google Reader, probably the most used feed reader finally adds a feature that was missing for many of it's users: the option to subscribe to websites which do not provide a feed. Basically, you can now subscribe to any website using Google Reader:
Today we're rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don't have their own feed.
These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated. For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org's latest products, just type "http://www.google.org/products.html" into Reader's "Add a subscription" field. Click "create a feed", and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.
There are already different services which allow you to create a feed for a feedless website, but all have their glitches and are not always reliable. It's really nice to see Google Reader adding features many of us were waiting for.
And a final note: site owners can chose to opt-out, and not allow Google Reader to create a feed for their website. More info on the link below.
I still recommend using Swiftfox over Firefox, but if you really want to use Firefox, there is a PPA (many people might prefer this over the Mozilla Daily PPA which has daily Firefox builds).
Add the Firefox 4 Ubuntu PPA by using the following command:
I see some fixes related to Apparmor and some other changes so if something doesn't work with your current Firefox 3.6 version, try this PPA for Ubuntu!
We've talked about Gnome Gmail a long time ago, and in case you don't remember what it can be used for, here it is: Gnome Gmail is an app which adds support for Gmail to the Linux Gnome Desktop. It allows Gmail to be selected as the default mail application for the desktop. Unlike other solutions on the net, Gnome Gmail supports "To:", "Subject:", "body", "CC:", and "BCC: fields, and is available in deb and rpm format.
Gnome Gmail v1.4 was released a couple of days ago and it brings file attachment support to Nautilus, meaning Nautilus "Sent To..." can be used to automatically upload an email with a file attachment, via IMAP, to your Gmail account. Mailto URL tag handling has also been improved in version 1.4.
Using Gnome Gmail is as easy as it gets: simply double click the .deb or .rpm file and install it, then go to System > Preferences > Preferred Applications and on the "Internet" tab, under "Mail Reader", select "Gmail":
The second alpha of Lubuntu Lucid Lynx has been released. Based on Ubuntu Lucid alpha, it is of course not stable, but everyone willing to test it can download the new Lubuntu Alpha 2 .iso (download link at the end of the post):
Pre-releases of Lucid are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.
In case you don't know, Lubuntu uses LXDE, a very lightweight and minimal desktop environment using the openbox window manager, the PcManFM file manager, and a very select list of default applications. It is compatible with basic freedesktop standards and all needed parts are already packaged in Ubuntu today.
The Lubuntu project started in March 2009, with the purpose of creating a lighter and less resource demanding alternative to the Xubuntu operating system, using the LXDE desktop environment. As we noticed some time ago, Lubuntu is the fastest Ubuntu yet!
Lubuntu Lucid Lynx Alpha 2 does not include many changes, those should come with Alpha 3 which will be released after the feature freeze. Still, Alpha 2 comes with a few nice additions:
LXDE packages up-to-date
LXDM
The new pcmanfm for testing (type "pcmanfm2" in a terminal)
Many wallpapers and start icons from lxde forum, gnome-look or Leszek
Lesner, to be able to switch easily and to test the result
First customization with a splash screen from Leszek Lesner
Installable with ubiquity (but upgrade from this Alpha 2 to next
release is not guaranteed).
And a note: during the Lubuntu installation, OpenOffice.org will be downloaded and installed if you have a working internet connection. You can of course abort this if you don't want to install OOo.
A few screenshots with some of the changes in Lubuntu Lucid Alpha 2
- The new pcmanfm:
- Wallpapers:
-Menu icons:
-Login screen (I guess this needs some more work - but themes should be released pretty soon):
Once thing I would REALLY like to see in Lubuntu Lucid is the New Wave theme, which has been ported to LXDE and looks simply amazing:
(The Lubuntu New Wave theme can be downloaded from Lubuntu Artwork wiki (New Wave image taken from the wiki also)).
Coming next: Lubuntu Lucid Lynx Alpha 3, which should bring lots of changes, like I have mentioned above. For more info, see the Lubuntu wiki.
We are fans of Swiftfox here, at Web Upd8; here is why: Swiftfox is an optimized Mozilla Firefox which has different builds for different processors which makes it much faster than the normal Firefox because that's compiled to work for everybody, but not optimized for a specific processor architecture. For a lot more info on Swiftfox, see our initial article on Swiftfox.
Another reason to go for Swiftfox would be if you are having issues getting Firefox 3.6 to work (like this error). Also, Swiftfox comes with an Ubuntu repository so you can easily get updates (but only stable updates so you won't get pre or alpha builds like from Ubuntu Mozila Daily PPA - which is another great reason to use Swiftfox).
You can download Swiftfox from HERE. Ubuntu installation instructions (with a repository) can be found HERE.
XSplash Background Settings provides a background settings dialog for XSplash and the login screen (GDM) so you can use it to change your XSplash or GDM image and optionally (my favourite): change the XSplash and GDM backgrounds to match your current desktop wallpaper.
XSplash Background Settings comes now with an Ubuntu .deb file so it's very easy to install and a GUI - so you no longer have to run some script to get this to work.
Once installed, you need to restart your computer for the daemon to run (so it can automatically change your XSplash and GDM backgrounds to match your current wallpaper). You will find XSplash Background Settings under System > Preferences > XSplash Background Settings.
Like WebUpd8 reader StoneCut said in a comment on it's previous tip, he wrote yet another post for iPhone owners which use Linux. So here it is:
In our previous tutorial we showed how you to access the iPhone OS 3.x filesystem and read/write to its music database using iFuse and by compiling our own libgpod4. Then we had to create a file on the iPhone, manually mount the phone each time and so on. Maybe a bit complicated for an average user.
However, there is now a lot easier way using GVFS which will automount your iPhone for syncing with Rhythmbox, for example. And you don't need to compile anything anymore. It works for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid (only Karmic tested). The required PPA does not carry any packages for Jaunty, sorry.
Important
If you followed our previous tutorial, you will need to remove anything related to it. Here are the most important steps:
You also need to remove the Jona Beck PPA repository from your Software Sources (deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonabeck/ppa/ubuntu karmic main) ! After that, update all source lists one more time:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
Now, just to be sure: Reboot.
Setup GVFS support for iPhone
For this to work, your iPhone does NOT need to be jailbroken, unless you want to mount the root file system using ifuse for some reason.
4. Now we need to add ourself to the group "fuse" so we can mount the device as regular user (without sudo):
sudo adduser $USER fuse
Additionally, we need to edit a file to allow regular users to mount this device:
sudo gedit /etc/fuse.conf
Find the line that says "#user_allow_other" and remove "#" in front of it so it says: "user_allow_other".
That's it. You can now just plug in your iPhone and use it with Rhythmbox, Nautilus or whatever. You won't need to do anything else. Your iPhone will appear twice on your desktop: Once as the PTP camera device you probably know already and once again with a mobile phone icon from where you can access the file system. Congratulations !
There's one last catch if you installed the optional GTKpod. For GTKpod you will still need to manually mount the device to /mnt/ipod using ifuse.
So let's set things up for that, too:
sudo mkdir /mnt/ipodsudo chmod 777 /mnt/ipod
Ok, now if you want to use your iPhone with GTKpod you will need to mount and umount it manually everytime.
To mount (the just launch GTKpod and let it read the device):
ifuse /mnt/ipod
Make sure you unmount inside GTKpod when you're done and then issue this command:
fusermount -u /mnt/ipod
If your iPhone is jailbroken, then you can also mount the root file system using iFuse but this is not recommended if you just want to sync music. Here's how to do it anyway:
ifuse /mnt/ipod --root
Extra Tip:
If your device is jailbroken and has an SSH server installed you can also access your iPhone via SSH over USB:
sudo iproxy 2222 22
Now you can SSH into your iPhone via USB:
ssh -p 2222 root@localhost
That's all folks :)
[A big thank you to StoneCut for writing this article, all the credits go to him]
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Anton, the developer of the New Wave Gnome theme has been working on a "lighter" version of his amazing theme. For now it's not known if this will be a separate theme or will replace the New Wave theme.
The changes aren't big, but you will feel the difference when using it, as everything seems lighter:
The basic ideas is to free more space by removing some of the borders thus implying the feeling of lightness.
Before downloading it, remember it's an alpha version!
To be able to install it, navigate to your home folder, press Ctrl + H to see hidden files, and in the .themes folder, delete the "New Wave" directory. Then install the .tar.gz theme file like any other theme.
Thanks to StoneCut, here is yet another iPhone tip for Web Upd8 readers. After StoneCut's absolutely amazing post on Mounting Your iPhone On A Fresh Ubuntu Karmic Koala Installation (The Complete Guide), today he sent us another great tip: a Nautilus script for SCP transfers that he uses to quickly copy files to his iPhone and might be very useful for some Web Upd8 readers.
for f in $* do scp $f $user@$machine:"$destination" if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then zenity --timeout 3 --title "File transfer finished" --info --text "$f sent to $destinationi\n\nWindow will autoclose in 3 seconds." else zenity --timeout 3 --title "File transfer failed" --info --text "*** FAILED TO SEND $f ***\n\nWindow will autoclose in 3 seconds" fi done
Before using the script, make sure you have zenity installed:
GDM2 Setup is a GUI configuration tool for the new GDM (2) something that was missed by a lot of people. It doesn't have as many options as the old GDM setup tool, but that's because the new GDM2 doesn't support too many customizations.
GDM2 Setup finally got a nice GUI:
And a PPA you can add using the following command:
Yes, yet another post on Firefox, but I had to write it, as there are probably quite a few people having issues with this.
If you used the Ubuntu Mozilla Daily PPA, and recently did an upgrade on Firefox 3.6 (which is now just "firefox" as a package), it probably fails to start on your computer. This is probably due to AppArmor (more info here).
This is the error you get when trying to run Firefox from /usr/bin:
/usr/lib/firefox-3.6pre/firefox: 59: dirname: Permission denied /usr/lib/firefox-3.6pre/firefox: 88: /bin/pwd: Permission denied /usr/lib/firefox-3.6pre/run-mozilla.sh: 39: dirname: Permission denied /usr/lib/firefox-3.6pre/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libxul.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Here is how I managed to fix this (thanks to jimmyfergus):
1. Press Alt + F2 and enter:
gksu gedit /etc/apparmor.d/usr.bin.firefox-3.6
Scroll down to line 63 which should look like this: "/usr/bin/basename ixr," and under it, paste this:
/usr/bin/dirname ixr, /usr/bin/pwd ixr,
Basically, this would be what's changed (lines 60-67):
# These are needed when a new user starts firefox and firefox.sh is used /usr/lib/firefox-3.*/** ixr, /usr/bin/basename ixr, + /usr/bin/dirname ixr, + /usr/bin/pwd ixr, /sbin/killall5 ixr, /bin/which ixr, @{PROC}/ r,
The two lines with "+" have been added, the rest is the same.
2. Reload AppArmor:
sudo invoke-rc.d apparmor reload
Update: here is also a fix for getting Java to work in Firefox 3.6:
There are now 2 repositories available for Tor (application which enables users to communicate anonymously on the Internet): stable and experimental, for both Ubuntu and Debian. Until now there was only a stable repository.
Please note that the experimental repo Tor packages come with more features, but also more bugs.
These are the two TOR repositories:
deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org <distribution> main deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org experimental-<distribution> main
where you substitute the name of your distro (Debian: etch, lenny or sid; Ubuntu: lucid, karmic, jaunty, intrepid or hardy) in place of <distribution>.
To add the repository key, use the following command:
