Install Sezen, A New Zeitgeist Based File Browser Inspired By Shell And Unity [Ubuntu PPA]

Sezen is... well, let's call it a file browser, but not in the classic sense. You can use it to browse files by their last access time, type (document, image, music and so on) and has an integrated search. It's heavily inspired by Unity and GNOME Shell and is developed by Seif Lotfy. Sezen makes use of the awesomeness of Zeitgeist and in it's design also contributed DanRabbit (Elementary Project) and Jason Smith (Docky):

It started evolving more after some intense hack + design sessions with DanRabbit (Elementary Project) + Jason Smith (Docky)

Sezen was presented by Seif about 2 weeks ago. Here's is the video he recorded back then:

Install Sezen in Ubuntu

But enough with the introduction! Sezen was just added to the Zeitgeist PPA so it's not just a mockup anymore! You can install it in Ubuntu by using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeitgeist/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zeitgeist sezen

Then simply run "sezen" either via a terminal or by pressing ALT + F2. The package is available for Ubuntu Karmic, Lucid and Maverick.

Thoughts

If you tried out the latest Unity launcher which landed in Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 this week (screenshot above), you will notice Sezen looks very familiar: it's basically the exact same concept as the Files tab in Unity, except it's a stand-alone application.

Although I love the concept and all, I don't get one thing: what's exactly the difference between Sezen and GNOME Activity Journal (other then a different design and less features)?

Your thoughts?

Note: As you can see in the screenshots, the "Websites" tab is not active - it most probably needs a browser extension to work.

Font Manager 0.5.5 Released With Individual Font Families And Style Configuration, Alias Editor

Font Manager is a simple application which allows you to manage fonts. Using Font Manager, you can preview and compare fonts - including a complete character map, install or remove, activate and deactivate fonts and even group fonts into "Collections", and easily activate or de-activate groups of fonts.

Font Manager 0.5.5 which was released a couple of days ago fixes several issues but also adds 2 important new features:

• A fontconfig editor which allows users to configure settings for individual families and styles. This can be used to set anti-alias, hinting, spacing and other advanced settings only for some font families.
• An alias editor which allows users to configure font substitution. Font substitution is the process of using one font in place of another when the intended font either is not available or does not contain glyphs for the required characters. Font substitution is aided by classifying fonts into families, such that for example a sans serif font is substituted by another sans serif font.

Download Font Manager (includes Ubuntu .deb files for both 32bit and 64bit)

Thanks to Ubuntips for the heads up!

How To Enable The New "Unified" Wrench Menu In Chromium

Google is testing a new "unified" menu for Chromium which combines the options and wrench menus into a single menu to save space. What I find very interesting about this "unified" menu is that it uses buttons for cut, copy and paste as well as for the zoom controls.

To use the unified menu in Chromium in Ubuntu, all you have to do is install the latest Chromium build from the daily PPA, then edit the Chromium shortcut and add "--new-wrench-menu" to the run command, so basically the command looks like this:

chromium-browser --new-wrench-menu

See also: How To Enable (Encrypted) Password Sync In Chromium / Google Chrome

Animation, Curves Symmetry And More Come To AWN Lucido

AWN Lucido was already amazing, but you ain't seen nothing yet. Just check out the video below with the latest AWN Lucido from AWN Lucido PPA (build as of today):

So what's new in AWN Lucido? Well, the new version adds animation, Curves Symmetry as well as a new config key for the 3D style: thickness.

To install the latest AWN Lucido, check out our AWN Lucid installation instructions post.

As usual, Alberto, the AWN Lucido developer (which is now an official AWN developer) wants your feedback before merging this into the main Avant Window Navigator. So what do you think of the updated 3D style? What about Curves Symmetry? You can suggest any improvements to Alberto in the comments below.

Update: Alberto made some more changes to Lucido - see them here.

Many thanks to Alberto for the info, video and screenshot!

Download 175 Amazing Widescreen HD Wallpapers [HD Wallpaper Pack 3]

Sckyzo posted yet another amazing HD wallpaper pack for wide screens. The pack comes with 175 wallpapers, most of which are at least 1920 x 1200 pixels.

Download WallPaper HD WideScreen Pack 3

Once you download the wallpapers, you can use Wally or CreBS to automatically rotate these wallpapers on a given interval.

You may also want to take a look at the first 2 Widescreen HD Wallpaper packs: 1 2.


Note: I'm not aware of the license these wallpapers come with.

Many thanks to Sckyzo for the wallpaper pack!

Ubuntu Software Center Receives Major User Interface Update, More [Ubuntu 10.10]

An update in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat today brings a changed look for the main Ubuntu Software Center pane.

The main view was completely redesigned: the category buttons are now smaller, the Featured category was moved to the bottom and it doesn't have the next/previous buttons anymore. However, the Featured applications category still has the nice autoscroll feature it got a while back.


The category and subcategory views were also updated and the double pane view was removed. Also, a new category called "What's New" was created - this will be the category where the new applications from the extras.ubuntu.com repository we were telling you about will be available.

(Ubuntu Software Center subcategories)

This is how Ubuntu Software Center used to look about 2 weeks ago:

But those are only the UI changes. Ubuntu Software Center got a lot of features and tweaks like information about "upgraded" packages has been added to the history pane and something very useful and much needed: support detecting a broken apt cache and repairing it.

(Information about "upgraded" packages in the history pane)

The new Ubuntu Software Center version (2.1.4) also feels a lot faster!

A complete changelog for Ubuntu Software Center 2.1.4 can be found here.



Want to try out the latest Ubuntu Software Center 2.1.4 in Lucid? We could have build it in a PPA but that takes too long for something so trivial, so you can simply download a .deb package (you'll also need these dependencies: aptdaemon, python-aptdaemon-gtk and python-aptdaemon) - all debs work for both 32bit and 64bit - and install it.

The package will also probably be available in the guido-iodice PPA later today.

Clementine 0.4 Released (Amarok 1.4 Style Music Player For Linux, Windows And MacOS X)

Clementine is a port of Amarok 1.4, the famous and still very popular KDE music player. But Clementine also runs under GNOME with no need to install the KDE libraries thanks to Qt4; further more, Clementine runs on Windows and Mac OSX too.

Clementine 0.4 was just released, bringing some very interesting new features such as: support for multiple, tabbed playlists, support for loading and saving XSPF, M3U, PLS and ASX playlists, global hotkeys, fullscreen visualisation support using projectM, music transcoder that can convert your music to mp3, ogg, flac, spx, 3gp or m4a from any format that's supported by Clementine, replayGain support for volume normalisation, a playlist search field and many other features and fixes.

Just like Amarok, Clementine is not a lightweight music player - memory wise - as it uses around 32 MB of RAM on my system (tested on a music database of 1500 files). Still, that's not that much either. But the interface is clean and overall it still feels light. If you loved Amarok 1.4, you should definitely give Clementine a try!


Clementine 0.4 is not yet available in its official Ubuntu PPA, but you can download Ubuntu .deb packages via Clementine's Google Code page. (.rpm. .dmg and .exe files are also available for download from the same location)

Shotwell 0.6 (Photo Manager) Released With Basic Support For RAW Images

Shotwell, the photo manager which will replace F-Spot in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, just reached version 0.6. You already know most of the new features since we wrote about the Shotwell 0.6 development and also backported the Maverick packages to Lucid a while back. But now you can install the stable Shotwell 0.6 release.

New in Shotwell 0.6:

• Basic support for RAW images, including import support for all common formats like CR2 and DNG
• Full support for working with PNG images
• Users can now zoom into photos to reveal latent detail
• A new preferences dialog
• Users can now open photos in an external editor, such as the GIMP, from within Shotwell
• Photo tags and titles are imported and exported automatically via XMP and IPTC metadata
• A new photo trash can
• Numerous bug fixes and improved language support

If you are using Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, all you have to do is install/upgrade Shotwell from the official Ubuntu repositories (it has not been made default just yet).

You can upgrade to Shotwell 0.6 in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx using the official Shotwell PPA (Yorba):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shotwell

(If you have the WebUpd8 Shotwell Backposts PPA added, all you have to do is run "sudo apt-get upgrade").

How To Enable (Encrypted) Password Sync In Chromium / Google Chrome

After getting encrypted passwords in Linux, Chromium users can finally synchronize passwords across multiple computers.

All you have to do is install Chromium from the Chromium Daily PPA and then launch it with the "--enable-sync-passwords" option (and of course, also use the encrypted passwords option!!).

WebUpd8 reader Nikola writes:

BUT, there is one more thing: it's important to get it work - you must stop the previous synced account and to set it again. It's the only way I made it work here. So here is my Chromium code I use to start it:

/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --password-store=gnome --enable-sync-extensions --enable-sync-passwords --sync-url=https://clients4.google.com/chrome-sync/dev

Many thanks to Nikola for the tip and screenshot. For some reason his email ended up in the spam folder in Gmail so if we don't reply to your email, blame it on Gmail!

Download All The KDE SC 4.5 Wallpapers

The wallpaper contest for KDE SC 4.5 ended today resulting in 12 new beautiful wallpapers.

You can download these 12 new wallpapers as well as the old wallpapers (most of them coming in many resolutions so they should fit any screen) from HERE.

Shutter 0.86.3 Adds UbuntuOne Image Export

Shutter is a screenshot taking application for Linux which comes with many options such as annotating the screenshots, export them to different image sharing websites, many effects and so on.

Shutter 0.86.3, currently only available for testing adds Ubuntu One image export and ImageShack export fix as well as some other fixes.

The latest version also brings new humanity icons which means you'll finally have a monochrome Shutter notification area icon:

You can install Shutter 0.86.3 in Ubuntu via Shutter testing PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shutter-testing-team/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shutter

To be able to use the Ubuntu One export feature, you also need to install libnet-dbus-glib-perl:

sudo apt-get install libnet-dbus-glib-perl

Also, some libraries don't come as dependencies for Shutter anymore so you cannot edit images without manually installing them. To get this feature (as well as some other features), you need to install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install libgoo-canvas-perl gnome-web-photo

Opera 10.60 RC1 Released

Opera 10.60 final is getting closer! Opera 10.60 RC 1 was just released for Windows, Mac and Linux and you can download it via Opera dev blog.

If Opera crashes on close (in Ubuntu), try to completely remove it before installing it, using the following command:

sudo apt-get remove --purge opera

Download Thunderbird 3.1 Ubuntu .DEB

If you found the Ubuntuzilla way of installing Thunderbird 3.1 in Ubuntu a bit too hard, here is a .deb file you can download and install Thunderbird 3.1 in Ubuntu.

Note: this is the unmodified Mozilla release binary of Thunderbird, packaged into a .deb by the Ubuntuzilla project. This means they were only able to package it for 32bit since Mozilla does not provide 64bit binaries.

Download Thunderbird 3.1 Ubuntu .deb (32bit)

Many thanks to WebUpd8 reader eMcE for the tip!

Exaile 0.3.2 Has Been Released [PPA]

Exaile 0.3.2 has been released, just 10 days after the release of RC1. The final version doesn't come with new features, only bug fixes.

As usual, the latest version (0.3.2) is available in the WebUpd8 PPA so you can install it using the commands below (for Ubuntu Karmic, Lucid and Maverick):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install exaile

How To Save WebM Videos From YouTube And Play Them In Ubuntu

Now that YouTube supports WebM (actually, since it supports HTML5), it's easier than ever to download the videos - all you have to do is look at the page source (remember to enable HTML5 for YouTube first) and search for "videoPlayer.setAvailableFormat": you should see some links and next to it, the video quality is displayed, like so:

Once you find the link for the video quality you want to download (unfortunately 1080p is not available in WebM yet), simply paste it in a new browser tab, then save it to your desktop and rename it to something .webm (whatever name you want, but append the .webm extension).

Here is a link example for a 720p video:

http://v11.lscache3.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?ip=0.0.0.0&sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Calgorithm%2Cburst%2Cfactor%2Coc%3AU0dWTFNPT19FSkNNNl9LSVND&fexp=902303%2C900036&algorithm=throttle-factor&itag=45&ipbits=0&burst=40&sver=3&expire=1277341200&key=yt1&signature=725573BEE680BE61FC7219EE7DEC403E9D9FAFDA.6A2978DB9D871FAEE833082A2D16A9A3927F09CB&factor=1.25&id=3888ed5b82778824

To be able to play the video, you need a WebM capable video player. The easiest way is to install the latest Gstreamer packages and then simply use Totem ("Movie player"):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

You will get an error when upgrading to the latest gstreamer packages but don't worry, it can be fixed by simply running the following command:

sudo apt-get -f install

Note: Don't worry, installing the latest Gstreamer packages from the Gstreamer dev PPA will not break the audio/video playback for any media players!

You will also need the gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad package to be able to play WebM videos:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad

Now the only thing left to do is set Totem as the file association for .webm files - you have to do this manually by right clicking a .webm file and then selecting Propreties > Open With and add Totem ("Movie Player"). That's it!

DockBarX 0.39.4 Released

DockBarX, a taskbar with grouping and group manipulation which works with both the GNOME Panel and Avant Window Navigator, reached version 0.39.4. The new version brings some WINE fixes: better pin and it now recognizes WINE application launchers automatically.

Another change in DockBarX 0.39.4 is the complete redesign of the preferences dialog which now takes less space so it's a lot more usable on a netbook.

Starting with this version, we won't support DockBarX in the WebUpd8 PPA - until now we did this because the official DockBarX PPA didn't package it for Karmic users but unfortunately the latest version doesn't work on Karmic (I have no idea why) thus packaging it ourself became useless.

Install DockBarX 0.39.4 (Ubuntu Lucid only!):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dockbar-main/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dockbarx

The DockBarX PPA now also provides a package of some amazing extra themes you can install using the following command:

sudo apt-get install dockbarx-themes-extra

To install DockBarX in Avant Window Navigator, see THIS post.

The Unity Launcher Looks Gorgeous [Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10]

Before taking a look at the Unity launcher, a small off-topic message: like we announced on Facebook, the whole WebUpd8 team (even though I'm the only one posting lately, we're all there :D ) will be unavailable for 3 days because of THIS. I will however try to catch up during the night. Thanks for understanding & rock on!

We knew how the Unity launcher will look from the mockups Mark Shuttleworth posted 2 months ago, but I bet nobody imagined it will look so gorgeous:

And it's not just the looks, it's also smart because it integrates Zeitgeist.

The Ubuntu logo in the top left corner is not for Expose anymore, and it now triggers the Unity launcher which comes with 2 tabs: one for the applications - which you can see in the screenshot above, and another tab for files grouped by day and by type, using the power of Zeitgeist, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Unfortunately the Unity launcher is not very functional for now. In fact Unity itself it's very buggy: a white screen is displayed on my computer when logging in (although it used to work just fine before) so I have to launch both Unity and Mutter manually. And the Unity launcher needs a lot of work: there's no indicator telling you that you actually clicked a file / application and the search is not functional for now. But hey, it looks great, right?

If you want to try out Unity in Ubuntu 10.04, see the instructions @ Ubuntu Wiki.

Docky Will Finally Get A Main Menu: GnoMenu

GnoMenu 2.9 will run in Docky:

There is no more info available for now. But finally, Docky will have a main menu!

How To Install Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1 (Final) In Ubuntu

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1 was just released featuring faster search, quick filter toolbar, better migration assistant and many other improvements. A complete list of what's new can be found @ Mozilla's website.

There is no PPA for Ubuntu providing the latest Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1 for now and there are no plans to push an update in the existing Ubuntu versions (that means Lucid too) like it happened with Firefox so the only way to install it is manually, or by using Ubuntuzilla (it works with any Ubuntu version).

So to install Thunderbird 3.1 in Ubuntu, firstly install Ubuntuzilla. You can download a .deb file from HERE.

Once Ubuntuzilla is installed successfully, to install Thunderbird 3.1, all you have to do is run the following command in a terminal:

ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p thunderbird

During the installation, Ubuntuzilla will ask you to choose the localization you want to install, so it will install Thunderbird 3.1 in your language!

If you used the manual method to install Thunderbird 3.1 we were telling you about not so long ago, then all you have to do is select "Check for updates" from the Thunderbird About menu.

Update: you can also download a Thunderbird 3.1 Ubuntu .DEB file!

Update 2: There is now a PPA repository for Thunderbird 3.1 available for Ubuntu (both 32bit and 64bit) users.

Thanks to Linux Freedom For Live

Xnoise Media Player Gets A PPA, New Version Released

Xnoise, the lightweight Linux media player (or should I say music player?) we wrote about 2 days ago, got a PPA and a new version. That also means that now there are official deb files for both 32 and 64bit.

Add the Xnoise PPA and install the latest Xnoise version:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shkn/xnoise && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xnoise xnoise-plugins-core

Unfortunately I couldn't find a changelog and I didn't notice anything new so I can't tell you what's new in the latest 0.1.8 version.

New Ubuntu Unity Launcher Video And More Info

Unity is the new Ubuntu Netbook Edition interface which will be available for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

The new Unity Launcher (which they say its not a dock, but still looks like one to me) will use 2 styles: compact and an accordion style so that it can reach its goal: 40 entries on a 600px-tall screen. Also, you'll be able to scroll the launcher in 3 ways: using the scroll-wheel, auto scroll (activated when the cursor approaches the edges) and dragging + inertia (my favourite).

The Unity Launcher also has keyboard support: if you hold the Super key for a moment, shortcuts to launch applications will appear as overlays, tilting the icons accordingly.

Here is a video provided by design.Canonical with the Unity Launcher in action:

Note: the bottom icon, in this case to switch to Windows, will be present only in dual-boot contexts - Ubuntu Light.

Also, in the video a new more purple-ish wallpaper can be spotted. Could that be the new Ubuntu 10.10 wallpaper? Edit: most probably not, since the Ubuntu wallpaper is usually not branded.

What do you think?

Via design.Canonical

How To Install nVidia 270.18 / 270.26 Display Drivers In Ubuntu (From A PPA Repository)

nVidia released the new 270.18 beta display drivers. nVidia 270.18 graphics drivers highlights:

• Updated the NVIDIA kernel module to ensure that all system memory allocated by it for use with GPUs or within user-space components of the NVIDIA driver stack is initialized to zero. A new NVIDIA kernel module option, InitializeSystemMemoryAllocations, allows administrators to revert to the previous behavior.
• Added preliminary support for xserver 1.10.
• Reorganized the NVIDIA driver's /proc file system layout to better reflect current needs: /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0..N has been moved to /proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/0..N/information
• Added new shared library: libnvidia-ml.so.
• NVML provides programmatic access to static information and monitoring data for NVIDIA GPUs, as well as limited managment capabilities. It is intended for use with Tesla compute products.
• Added a new X configuration option "3DVisionDisplayType" to specify the display type when NVIDIA 3D Vision is enabled with a non 3D Vision ready display.
• Fixed several bugs relating to hardware-accelerated gradients, which were causing visual corruption in some of the default Ubuntu GNOME themes.
• Modified colormap updates to no longer be synchronized to vblank. This allows applications to send XStoreColor and XStoreColors requests faster than the screen's refresh rate.

And many other improvements and bug fixes. The complete release notes can be found HERE.


Important note before trying to upgrade: these drivers will only work with GeForce 6 and above!

The easiest way to upgrade to the latest nVidia 270.18 display drivers in Ubuntu (Maverick and Lucid) is to use the following PPA (just copy/paste the commands in a terminal).

Before adding the PPA, please note that it currently holds nVidia 270.18 for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 and nVidia 270.26 for Ubuntu 11.04!


1. Add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

2. Install the nVidia display drivers in Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 or 11.04:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-current-modaliases nvidia-settings

Then go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers and make sure "Nvidia current" ("current" means latest so that would be 270.18 for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 and 270.2 for Ubuntu 11.04) is activated.

And finally, restart.

If for some reason the new drivers do not work properly, use PPA Purge to remove the PPA and revert all the changes.


To find our if your graphics card is supported, go HERE and click on the SUPPORTED PRODUCTS tab.

BTRFS + Compression: A Lot Faster Than EXT4 [Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat]

BTRFS support for the installer came in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat a few days ago so the folks @ Phoronix ran some tests comparing BTRFS and EXT4.

The results between BTRFS with the default options and EXT4 were pretty close but once the zlib compression was activated (this feature is only available for BTRFS), BTRFS was 2x faster than EXT4 in the 4GB write IOzone test and 4x faster than EXT4 for the 4GB read IOzone test.

Check out the full tests results @ Phoronix.


Update: the results for this test may be wrong. Also, it seems BTRFS has a serious bug. Read the comments below!

[image credits: Phoronix]

Ubuntu Won't Become A Rolling Release Distro

/This is just a small update

The "New applications" mystery has been cleared by Rick Spencer in a comment to our New Post-Release Repository For New Applications Starting With Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat post:

As the blueprint author, I can clear up the ambiguity. I apologize for the lack of clarity. It will be cleared up as we document the process.

To be clear, this blueprint covers delivering *new* apps into a current release only. By "new", these are apps that are not in a Main or Universe when a version ships. It does not make Ubuntu a rolling release. You will not be able to get the latest versions of apps like Firefox, Open Office, etc... from this method. You will still need to get latest versions of those apps from their respective PPAs or upstream sources.

Update: However, like Starks (thank you!) points out in a comment, this won't be the case for Firefox, as Ubuntu Hardy, Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid will be getting Firefox 3.6 soon. Further more, Hardy, Karmic and Lucid will also get the new Firefox 4.0 (Jaunty is still uncertain).

Poll: The Most Awaited Linux Project Of The Year

This week we're going to have a different kind of poll. It's a bit weird because it includes applications, a Linux distribution (Ubuntu) and a desktop environment: GNOME Shell. But I think it's a really interesting poll. To make it more interesting, we've also added uTorrent for Linux to the list even though the release date is not known yet.

You can vote below:

And of course, you can vote for a different application, Linux distribution or whatever you want by selecting the "Other" option. If it's a really interesting suggestion, we might include it as an option in the poll.

This poll was suggested by WebUpd8 reader Linards (thanks!) a while back - we forgot to post it so we missed VLC (which has already been released) - sorry.

qBittorrent 2.2.10 Released (Now Available For Windows Too!)

qBittorrent is probably the most actively developed Linux Bittorrent client, with new versions being released constantly fixing lots of bugs but also adding nice features to make you forget uTorrent is coming to Linux. But actually qBittorrent is not just for Linux anymore: recently the Mac development started again and it is now also officially available for Windows too.

qBittorrent 2.2.10 was released today bringing lots of bug fixes so it's advisable to upgrade to the latest version. In Ubuntu, you can install qBittorrent using the following PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hydr0g3n/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

For now 2.2.10 in the PPA is only available for Ubuntu Lucid, while for Karmic users the latest version in the PPA is 2.2.6.

For other Linux distributions, Windows and MacOS X, see the qBittorrent download page.

Chromium Finally Gets Encrypted Passwords (Linux Only)

A message on the Chromium dev group points out that the Chromium Linux builds got encrypted passwords which use GNOME Keyring or KDE KWallet. Until now, Chromium / Google Chrome used to store the passwords unencrypted which combined with the fact that Chromium doesn't use a master password can be seen as a major security flow.

The passwords have always been encrypted on Mac and Windows, so now it's time for Linux to get this feature too.

To use the new feature, you need the latest Chromium daily build (r50475) and then run Chromium using:

--password-store=gnome
--password-store=kwallet
--password-store=detect

The last option ("detect") will try to autodetect if Chromium should use GNOME Keyring or KDE KWallet and this will eventually be the default option:

For now, without the flag, we will continue to use the built-in unencrypted store. With the flag, we will now try to use the requested store (or autodetect one, and use that) to store passwords, and we will migrate existing passwords to this store. This requires GNOME Keyring > 2.22 (which rules out Ubuntu 8.04) or KDE 4. In the event of failure to initialize the encrypted store, we fall back on the built-in store.

In my tests using Ubuntu 10.04 with GNOME and the latest Chromium from the Chromium Daily builds PPA, the passwords are still not encrypted. To check if Chromium encrypts your passwords, run this in a terminal:

cat ~/.config/chromium/Default/Login\ Data

Does the new Chromium password encryption work for you?

[Thanks to Download Squad!]

How To Install VLC 1.1.0 (Final) In Ubuntu From A PPA (deb)

Like you already know, VLC 1.1.0 (final) has been released yesterday. I will take this opportunity to clarify some things regarding vaapi (GPU acceleration). Read on!

Before installing VLC 1.1.0 in Ubuntu, please note that the build in this PPA does not come with vaapi support so you won't get GPU acceleration!

Install VLC 1.1.0 in Ubuntu

To install VLC 1.1.0, simply paste the following commands in a terminal (for now, the VLC package is only available for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and 10.10 Maverick Meerkat users):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/vlc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

Important notes: Gnome Media Player and Linux SopCast Player will stop working if you upgrade to VLC 1.1.0 because both packages currently depend on VLC 1.0.x!

Remove VLC 1.1.0 and install VLC 1.0.x from the official Ubuntu repositories

If you want to revert the changes made by this PPA and install the VLC package from the official Ubuntu repositories, all you have to do is download and install PPA Purge (don't worry about the package name saying "Karmic" - it works in Lucid and Maverick too) which by the way is also available in the WebUpd8 PPA so you can install it from there if you have the PPA added to your sources.list, and then simply run the following command:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:ferramroberto/vlc

-----------------------------------------------------------

Everything below is not related to the PPA above (I felt the need to clarify this so people don't get scared =) ).

Now, regarding vaapi (GPU acceleration): you basically can't compile VLC 1.1.0 with vaapi support without breaking stuff. To get it to work with vaapi, it would need newer ffmpeg packages which would mean every package using the ffmpeg packages in the Ubuntu official repository would be broken unless it is compiled against the same ffmpeg package (so you would need to either compile every package that uses ffmpeg yourself or a PPA should package all these packages - which is practically impossible).

There is a PPA which packages VLC 1.1.0 with vaapi support as well as fixed mplayer to work with the new ffmpeg/gstreamer. But since this PPA only has VLC and mplayer, it means that other video players / video editors will stop working if you use the following PPA and for this reason I won't post instructions for installing it here. You can however find both the PPA and exact instructions for installing VLC 1.1.0 with vaapi support, HERE. Remember: using it, a lot of applications will be broken! Also, the VLC package in the Cutting Edge Multimedia PPA (not the PPA in this post - that's stable and doesn't break anything!) doesn't yet have the latest VLC 1.1.0 but a GIT version dating back to June 16 - that's still very close to the final version.

Update: I've updated this post with a new PPA as the old one has been removed.

Xnoise: A New Lightweight Linux Music Player (Can Play Videos Too!)

Xnoise is basically an music player but it can also play videos too and unlike other Linux music players, it uses a tracklist centric design:

The tracklist is a list of video or music tracks that are played one by one without being removed (right side of window). This gives you the possibility to enqueue any track in any order, regardless if they are on the same album or not.

I didn't call it a "media player" because even though it can play both audio and video files, it seems to be designed more towards playing music. Xnoise can in fact play any audio / video format supported by Gstreamer and what I like about it is that in the hierarchy view you have both music and videos - so if you have some videos along with your music, you can play the videos too, something I've always been looking for in a music player (using VLC for playing music just doesn't feels right for me). And the way this is implemented seems just right - the videos are automatically added to a separate group so they don't get mixed with the music files.

And it's very lightweight too! It's true I didn't add too many music files while testing (around 300) but it only uses around 9,5 MB of RAM while playing a video!

Xnoise also comes with plugins support and even though it's still in its very early development stages, there are a few plugins available already: lyrics, Last.fm covers, notifications and mediawatcher (watches folders for changes).

Like I said, Xnoise is still very new so there might be bugs and also, there aren't too many features for now, but I love the very clean interface and the overall usability. Xnoise started on the right track, hopefully it will continue to improve but still keep its simplicity and clean interface.

Download Xnoise (Ubuntu .deb files included) | 64bit users can download Xnoise .deb file from HERE and the plugins from HERE. (thanks to CokiDVD!).

Update: there is now an Ubuntu PPA repository available for Xnoise (obviously, for both 32 and 64bit).

Many thanks to Ubuntu Tips for the heads up!

YouTube Uploader Nautilus Script Using The New GoogleCL

With the release of GoogleCL, a command line tool to access most Google services, it was obvious a lot of scripts would start to be created.

The first such script - for uploading videos to YouTube - has been posted to GNOME Look and is very easy to use and install.

Before using the script, you must install GoogleCL. Instructions can be found HERE. Also, before using the script you must run the Google YouTube command line interface at least once so you can authorize YouTube. To do this, simply use an example from HERE.

It's a Nautilus script so you must place it in the "~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts" folder. You can download the script from HERE. Once you place it in the Nautilus scripts folder, make it executable:

chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/youtube-upload.sh

Then, to upload a video to YouTube, all you have to do is right click a video and select your script via the Nautilus context menu. Note that GoogleCL does not provide a way to see the upload progress, but the script will notify you when the upload finishes!


You can of course play with the source code of this script and extend it, modify it for uploading pictures to PicasaWeb or anything to Google Docs and so on.

Download the script

GNOME Shell Log Out And Shut Down Mockups

I won't say anything regarding the usability, but GNOME Shell does seem to be heading to the right direction - from the design point of view (the mockups we've seen so far are using the default theme - remember how the default GNOME 2.x theme looks?) -, especially now when many applications (and even Linux distributions - Ubuntu) focus on a better default design (and usability) as opposed to how things used to work: lots of customization options but ugly / almost non-usable default look in some cases.

After we've seen some GNOME Shell Login / Lock screen mockups, here are some logout, shutdown and restart mockups to go with it (which have been posted to the live.gnome.org today):

And here's the user menu too:

See also (Gnome Shell mockups):

• Gnome Shell Might Add Real Multiple Desktops
• Possible New GNOME 3 System Status Area Changes [Mockups]

Mockups via live.gnome.org/GnomeShell

Victory Is An Amazing, Fully Customizable GNOME / XFCE Theme [New Version Released]

Victory is an amazing minimalistic GNOME / XFCE theme that is easily customizable so you can use whatever colors you want.

A new version was released today with many changes which include: re-themed panel, all menus have been themed - this includes the GNOME MenuBar, GNOME Main Menu, SUSE Slab, USP, mintMenu, Cardapio -, many Metacity tweaks and lots of fixes.

Here are some Victory theme variations:

You can find more screenshots, HERE. But of course, you can use whatever colors / icons you like.

The Victory theme requires Murrine from GIT (20100323 or newer) with GNOME 2.30 - this means it will not work for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic users (and below). It is recommended to use Nautilus Elementary to get the nice breadcrumbs you see in the screenshot.

Optionally, you can also install the Moblin icons. In Ubuntu, you can install them via Ubuntu's repositories:

sudo apt-get install moblin-icon-theme

You can also use this modified Moblin Icon theme (but it doesn't play nice with the GNOME Panel - resulting in huge panel icons but you can fix it by merging it with another icon theme).

To fix the OpenOffice icons, there is a tweak included in the theme - see the instructions on Victory's Gnome-Look page (link below).

Download Victory GNOME / XFCE theme

Many thanks to Ubuntu Life for the Victory theme link!

BTRFS Ready For Testing In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Btrfs is a new copy on write file system for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. More info, here.

Colin Watson (Ubuntu Development Manager) just announced on the Ubuntu-Devel mailing list that you can now perform installations with a BTRFS root filesystem using the latest Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat daily ISO (only available in the alternate ISO!).

The BTRFS fileystem is only available through the manual partitioning for now. Also, you cannot boot from a BTRFS filesystem for now (although the devs are working on it) - just like I was telling you when we tested MeeGo, so you must create a separate /boot partition (ext3 or ext4) and set it as the boot partition.


Even though it seems Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat will get BTRFS support after all, Ext4 will remain the default filesystem in Maverick.


Important: this is only available for testing purposes for now. Be very careful as it may erase all your data!

VLC 1.1.0 (Final) Has Been Released!

Quietly, VLC 1.1.0 final (stable) was posted to the VLC git a few minutes ago. VLC 1.1.0 brings extensions support as well as GPU and DSP decoding among many other new features. Read on!

What's new in VLC 1.1.0:

• GPU and DSP decoding on selected platforms
• New support for codecs, demuxers and muxers
• Lua extensions and Lua content extensions (luaSD)
• Improved interfaces
• Video Output rework
• Removal of lots of modules, rewrite of many
• Improved performances, in CPU, RAM and I/O
• New libVLC and bindings
• New or improved ports on misc platforms
• And many other features and bugs fixes

VLC 1.1.0 final is only available for download via GIT for now (it's not even available @ the VLC website), but Ubuntu users can install VLC 1.1.0 RC4 which was released only about a week ago (so there shouldn't be any major changes between VLC 1.1.0 RC4 and the final VLC 1.1.0) - UPDATE: this PPA now has the latest VLC 1.1.0 final! - via Christoph's Korn PPA (available for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:c-korn/vlc && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

This PPA will most probably be updated with the latest VLC 1.1.0 soon. We'll keep you updated when the final version will be available to download via the VLC website and an Ubuntu PPA!

Important: The VLC package in this PPA is not compiled with vaapi support. Read the explanation here for more info and find a link to a PPA with VLC compiled with VAAPI.


Update: the VideoLAN website has been updated and you can now download the latest VLC 1.1.0 for Windows.


(Note: We no longer maintain VLC in the WebUpd8 PPA!)

New Post-Release Repository For New Applications Starting With Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

When a developer creates a new application, he must start writing it very early in the Ubuntu development stages to be able to get his application in the official Ubuntu repositories (Universe) or else the only way he can provide that application to the current Ubuntu release is through a PPA - which is not easy discoverable by the users.

But Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat wants to change the game: according to the whiteboard of the "Implementation of delivering apps post-release" blueprint, a new Ubuntu repository "extras.ubuntu.com" will be created and new applications will be uploaded to this repository even for the already released Ubuntu versions. The new applications will have to be approved by the Application Review Board.

This will only be applicable to applications that are not dependencies for other applications and not for content, documentation, media or developer tools and libraries.

Ubuntu Software Center will get a section especially designed for this, called "What's New" so these application will become easily discoverable. The new "extras.ubuntu.com" repository is planned to be added to the default sources.list starting with Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Alpha 3 along with a prototype UI in the Ubuntu Software Center.


There are quite a few advantages for the new post-release repository: for users: proper packaging - less likely to break applications, no malicious code risks, easier to discover new applications through the Ubuntu Software Center; for developers: they don't have to release their applications in time for the Ubuntu development which could mean less bugs, more attention to details and so on.

What's not clear - at least for me - is rather the new extras.ubuntu.com repository will include exclusively new applications (with no existing version in the Ubuntu repositories) or if it will also include applications updates. But more details should become available really soon.

The "New applications" mystery has been cleared by Rick Spencer (thank you!) in a below:

As the blueprint author, I can clear up the ambiguity. I apologize for the lack of clarity. It will be cleared up as we document the process.

To be clear, this blueprint covers delivering *new* apps into a current release only. By "new", these are apps that are not in a Main or Universe when a version ships. It does not make Ubuntu a rolling release. You will not be able to get the latest versions of apps like Firefox, Open Office, etc... from this method. You will still need to get latest versions of those apps from their respective PPAs or upstream sources.

What do you think of this new approach towards new applications starting with Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat?

Install F-Spot 0.7.0 In Ubuntu (Photo Manager)

Unless you don't like Mono, you'll probably agree that F-Spot is a good Linux photo manager / organizer. At least that's what 16% of those who voted in our best Linux photo manager poll think.

F-Spot 0.7.0 comes with a completely rewritten import feature to make it less crash-prone. Besides this, the latest F-Spot also comes with duplicate detection that actually works, fixed Facebook support, uses a lot less memory and reparenting and detaching of versions - a feature that allows you to combine multiple similar photos (e.g. bursts of photos) and many more. A complete changelog can be found here.

But these are not the only changes between the latest F-Spot 0.7.0 and the version in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx (0.6.1.5). Version 0.6.2 which was released back in May introduced lots of bug fixes which are not available in Ubuntu 10.04, so if you use F-Spot, I advise you to upgrade to the latest 0.7.0.

To install F-Spot 0.7.0 (Ubuntu 10.04 only!), simply use the following commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:f-spot/f-spot-ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install f-spot

Last Week's Top Posts (Week 24, 2010)

1. ConkyWizard: GUI To Set Up Conky Automatically
2. Linux Trojan Goes Unnoticed For Almost A Year (Unreal IRCd)
3. AWN Lucido Gets Its Own PPA
4. Ubuntu Control Center Brings Simplicity To The Ubuntu Settings [Version 0.3 Released]
5. Linux SopCast Player 0.4.1 Released - P2P Application For Watching TV Online
6. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta 64bit For Linux Discontinued
7. The Unity Panel Won't Allow Any Kind Of Customizations [UNE 10.10]
8. Indicator Applet Now Available In Avant Window Navigator
9. Jupiter: Take Advantage Of Asus Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) In Linux [Ubuntu .deb]
10. Pastie - Very Simple Clipboard Manager With Application Indicator Support [Ubuntu]

Browse all our weekly top posts.

Gnome Activity Journal 0.3.4 Available in The Zeitgeist PPA (Linux Activity Browser)

GNOME Activity Journal is an activity browser that uses Zeitgeist to display the recently used files in a smart way. The new version (which was actually released a while back, but only now is available in the PPA) comes with a minimal mode, status icon and blacklist manager - all available through the GNOME Activity Journal preferences.

Other changes in GNOME Activity Journal 0.3.4.1 (since 3.3):

• New timeline view that now based on a gtktreeview.
• Revamped multiple day view
• Better support for Dark themes
• Widgets using themes with pixbuf backgrounds are now drawn correctly
• Added a More Information window which displays a description of the event, its subject, and other events related to the event.
• Context menu now works in all widgets
• Improved rendering in thumbnail view

You can install the latest version of GNOME Activity Journal and Zeitgeist from their official PPA (which was finally updated with the latest GAJ and ZG):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeitgeist/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install zeitgeist gnome-activity-journal

Once installed, you will find Gnome Activity Journal under Applications > Accessories > Activity Journal.

Install An Updated Aptitude (With GUI) In Ubuntu

For some reason, the Aptitude version in Ubuntu 10.04 is 0.4.11 while Aptitude already reached version 0.6.2.1. The most important feature which misses from Ubuntu is Aptitude GTK - a GUI for Aptitude.

But you can install an updated Aptitude version which comes with Aptitude GTK from a PPA (available for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yofel/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get install aptitude-gtk

Note: the commands above use apt-get and not aptitude as one would expect for a post about aptitude because Ubuntu 10.10 won't come with Aptitude by default.

To run the GTK interface for Aptitude, all you have to do is press ALT + F2 and enter:

gksu aptitude

New 3D Style Available In AWN Lucido [Avant Window Navigator]

Alberto, the author of AWN Lucido style rewrote the 3D style that comes with the default Avant Window Navigator. This change is available in the AWN Lucido PPA, but has nothing to do with the Lucid style - only the 3D style was rewritten.

You can install AWN with all these changes via the AWN main PPA - you can find exact installation instructions HERE.

Here is a video with the new 3D style in AWN Lucido:

Alberto wants feedback on this new AWN 3D style: do you like it? Hate it? Have any suggestions? Let us know in the comments!