Ubuntu Software Center Lets You Test-Drive Applications Without Installing Them [Ubuntu 11.04]

Ubuntu Software Center got a really cool feature in Ubuntu 11.04: it lets you test drive applications without having to install them.

To get this to work you firstly must install a package called "qtnx":

sudo apt-get install qtnx

Then when you open Ubuntu Software Center you should see a new "Test drive" button next to the application screenshot. The applications run on a remote server so you must have a decent Internet connection and also, this is not available for all the applications in the Ubuntu Software Center, but nevertheless, this feature sounds awesome. Here's a video I've just recorded so you can see exactly how it works:

Thanks to Novatillasku for the news!

[Poll] Do You Want Customizable Categories In Synapse?

Do you like Synapse and want to help? Alberto, one of the Synapse developers wants to make the Synapse categories customizable but before proceeding, he wants to hear your opinion about it so head over to Alberto's blog and check out his mockup, then vote! You can also leave a comment telling him if you like it or what he can do to improve it.

I want customizable Categories, do you?

System Monitor Indicator Puts The CPU And Memory Usage On Your Panel

System Monitor Indicator is a new appindicator that displays your system CPU and memory usage on the panel - be it the regular Gnome panel or the new Unity top bar.

The info is displayed directly on the panel, without having to click anything. This may not sound like a good idea if you use a netbook, but if you have a 20'' or larger monitor, you probably have plenty of space on your top panel.

Maybe some option to display the info in a drop-down or chose what info is displayed (with the other being displayed upon clicking the appindicator) would be nice though. But this is the first System Monitor Indicator release so it has plenty of time to improve.

The System Monitor Indicator developer welcomes all ideas / suggestions so if you have an idea for a cool feature, leave a comment! Or submit a bug.

Download

System Monitor Indicator is available in a PPA but for Ubuntu 11.04 only so if you use Natty already, simply add the PPA and install "indicator-sysmonitor".

For Ubuntu 10.10 (I've actually only tested it in Maverick), simply download and install THIS deb file (for both 32bit and 64bit).


Want more AppIndicators? See here.

gImageReader (Tesseract OCR GUI) Gets Multipage Recognition Support

gImageReader (runs on Linux and Windows) is a GUI for tesseract-ocr, a free software optical character recognition (OCR) engine which you can use to extract text from PDF documents or images.

gImageReader allows you to select columns, part of a document, spell check the output and more but it didn't recognize a whole document at once. But the latest gImageReader 0.9 adds multipage-recognition support for multipage PDF. You can also set gImageReader to extract the text from a page range if you don't need it to recognize a whole document.

Besides this very useful (and much needed!) new feature, gImageReader 0.9 also comes with:

• new language profiles: chinese, korean, japanese, hebrew, arabic, croatian
• all formats supported by gdk_pixbuf to file filter for open dialog
• option to cancel the recognition
• fixed auto-installing new dictionaries (new dictionaries would not appear in main language selector until program restart)
• many other minor improvements and bug fixes

How about the speed you may ask. Well, in my test, gImageReader was able to recognize a 36 page PDF document in 1,10 minutes (on a kind of slow computer I have at work).

For a slightly more detailed post on gImageReader which also includes installing the latest Tesseract OCR in Ubuntu 10.10 and 10.04 (which comes with more languages and much improved recognition but is experimental!), see: Extract Text From PDFs And Images With gImageReader, A Tesseract OCR GUI

Download gImageReader (.deb, .rpm and .exe files available)

Thanks to lffl.org for the news!

Unity 3.6.8 Video: Grab Handles, New Icons, More [Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal]

Unity (and Ubuntu 11.04 in general) got a lot of minor new features lately. Nothing big, but there are a lot of them. Here is a video with some of these changes in the latest Unity 3.6.8 (as of today):

In the above Unity video you'll notice:

• new icons for Unity Places Files / Applications, workspace switcher as well as the top left Ubuntu logo
• double clicking top panel restores maximized window
• new scrollbars in Dash
• Ubuntu Software Center now asks if you want to add a shortcut for the newly installed application to the launcher
• Unity grab handles (for touch devices tough I've used it on a regular netbook)
• drag icon trash - removes it

The video also includes the new experimental overlay scrollbars (here's how to set them default in Ubuntu 11.04) which are not yet default in Ubuntu 11.04.

There are a lot more minor changes to Unity then the ones I've included in the above video. Check them out here.

Overall, Ubuntu 11.04 is feeling a lot more stable lately, however there are a lot of incomplete (or completely missing) features. I've already upgraded to Natty on my netbook but I'm still thinking if I should do it already on my main computer. How about you, have you upgraded to Natty already?

Browse all the Ubuntu 11.04 updates we've posted.

Ubuntu Font Family Adds Light And Medium Variants [PPA]

The Ubuntu Font Family package has just been updated in Ubuntu 11.04 and it now includes 2 new variants - light and medium:

That's not all that's new in the new version: there were also a lot of bugs fixed as well as other slight changes. Check out the full changelog HERE.

As usual, the latest Ubuntu Font Family package is available in our Ubuntu Font Family PPA - add it and install the latest Ubuntu Font Family using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/ubuntu-font-family
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-font-family

Ubuntu 11.04 Community Wallpapers Revealed, Default Wallpaper Slightly Modified [Download]

The "ubuntu-wallpapers" package has just been updated in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and it now includes wallpapers from the Ubuntu 11.04 community contest:

These seem like the best community wallpapers so far and I'm really glad they've finally decided to include some non-photos as wallpapers (we've had enough flowers in 10.10).


The default Ubuntu 11.04 wallpaper has been slightly modified:

I have made subtle changes and introduced new light refractions. We can continue to add light streams and re-balance with each release - the landscape becomes gently lighter and brighter and gains in complexity to reflect our drive towards 12.04 :)

IMHO as we move towards becoming more of a 'household' platform and with the great changes coming with Unity (launcher/dash) general users will get reassurance from the familiarity of the wallpaper and will also identify with it as part of our personality in new screenshots.

-via LP

Download all the Ubuntu 11.04 community wallpapers from HERE (I didn't link to the .deb because it would replace your current community wallpapers package).