Ubuntu 11.10 Will Not Ship With A Classic Gnome Desktop

As you probably know (if you don't, read the Ubuntu 11.04 beta 1 post again), Ubuntu 11.04 will ship with an option to use the classic Gnome Desktop so Unity is not a must if you don't want to use it. All you have to do to use the Gnome panels is to select the Ubuntu Classic Desktop in the login screen.

Well, according to Mark Shuttleworth (see his comment here), there won't be such an option in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot:

We made very good progress on a11y in Natty, but will miss the goal of perfect a11y. We'll nail it in Oneiric. That's OK, because we have the Classic desktop fallback in Natty, but will not in Oneiric.

Mark

Most probably (this is just an assumption) Unity 2D will be used as the fallback in Ubuntu 11.10.

I know this may not sound like good news to many but let me remind you that it will take another 6 months of development after Ubuntu 11.04 is released until Oneiric so even though Unity may seem a bit rough on the edges right now, it has a lot of time to improve.

Besides the obvious, it will also be interesting to see if Linux Mint and other Ubuntu-based Linux distributions that do not want to ship with Unity will still use Ubuntu as a base or switch. Or maybe they could start using Unity?

[Via novatillasku.com]

3 New Equinox Themes Released: Equinox Evolution Dawn, Dusk and Midnight

The Equinox GTK themes is a pack of (now) 5 beautiful themes created by Tiheum (who's also the Faenza icons author). Check out our previous posts about the Equinox GTK themes: here and here.

An update to the Equinox PPA brings 3 new great looking themes: Equinox Evolution Dawn, Dusk and Midnight (which complete the Equinox Evolution series along with the regular Equinox Evolution and Equinox Evolution Light) as well as an updated Equinox GTK engine. The Equinox Evolution Midnight theme is experimental because "Gnome doesn't support dark themes well" says Tiheum.

Each GTK theme comes with a Metacity theme with either rounded or squared buttons.

The new Equinox Evolution themes:

(Equinox Evolution Dawn)

(Equinox Evolution Dusk)

(Equinox Evolution Midnight)

Here are two more screenshots taken by Tiheum:

(Equinox Evolution Dawn)

(Equinox Evolution Dusk)

The themes support Nautilus Elementary breadcrumbs too, but not by default. If you want to enable the breadcrumbs for these themes, you'll have to edit the "gtkrc" file (in each Equinox Evolution theme folder the gtk-2.0 directory; you can find the themes in /usr/share/themes) and uncomment the following line (remove the "#" in front of it):

#include "apps/nautilus-elementary.rc"

If you don't want to do this manually, see the commands at the end of the post.

Install The Equinox Themes in Ubuntu

Add the Equinox PPA and install the latest Equinox Evolution Themes using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-equinox equinox-theme

To also install the Equinox Ubuntu themes, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install equinox-ubuntu-theme

The themes can also be downloaded via Gnome Look: Equinox Evolution themes | Equinox Original themes (but these are no longer maintained)

How to enable Nautilus Elementary breadcrumbs for the Equinox Evolution themes

Like I've told you above, to enable Nautilus Elementary breadcrumbs (and other Nautilus Elementary tweaks) for the Equinox Evolution themes, you need to edit the "gtkrc" file inside the "/usr/share/themes/THEME NAME/gtk-2.0" folder, where "THEME NAME" is each Equinox Evolution theme folder.

To make it easy, I've set up a command for each of the Equinox Evolution theme you can use to enable Nautilus Elementary breadcrumbs (including for Equinox Evolution and Equinox Evolution Light) - only use this if you have installed Nautilus Elementary and have enabled the breadcrumbs in the options (Edit > Preferences, on the "Tweaks" tab, check the "Show like breadcrumbs" box):

sudo sed -i 's/\#include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/g' '/usr/share/themes/Equinox Evolution/gtk-2.0/gtkrc'
sudo sed -i 's/\#include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/g' '/usr/share/themes/Equinox Evolution Dawn/gtk-2.0/gtkrc'
sudo sed -i 's/\#include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/g' '/usr/share/themes/Equinox Evolution Dusk/gtk-2.0/gtkrc'
sudo sed -i 's/\#include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/g' '/usr/share/themes/Equinox Evolution Light/gtk-2.0/gtkrc'
sudo sed -i 's/\#include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/include\ \"apps\/nautilus\-elementary\.rc\"/g' '/usr/share/themes/Equinox Evolution Midnight/gtk-2.0/gtkrc'

Pinguy OS 11.04 Alpha 1 Is Available For Testing

Pinguy OS alpha 1 has been released yesterday, bringing some new default applications and some other interesting changes.

Even though it's based on Ubuntu 11.04, Pinguy OS 11.04 will use the classic Gnome (panels) 2.32.x as the default interface and the final release should be a lot like this alpha 1. What could change is removing the Global Menu with the AppMenu but for the moment there's a memory leak in the AppMenu so that's not an option yet.

Also, Pinguy OS alpha 1 comes with various PPAs for the applications it ships with but the final version will use just one Pinguy OS branded PPA that will have all the packages mirrored from the other PPAs, but tested firstly so this should bring more stability and control over the updates.

Changes in Pinguy OS 11.04 alpha 1

Ultracopier has been added as a default application. It can be used to copy things faster and comes with a resume option for the copy process, speed limitations and more. Also, Oracle Java is now default instead of OpenJDK because "openjdk-6-jre is not allowed with some bank sites".

Other new default applications are: Rapid Photo Downloader, XBMC, Vino, Vineyard and more. The old default applications are there too: Nautilus Elementary, Deluge, Firefox, Thunderbird, Rhythmbox, LibreOffice, MintMenu and so on (basically the same as 10.04.2) but updated to the latest version.

There are of course a lot of other minor new tweaks which you'll discover once you give Pinguy OS 11.04 a try. For example, there's a new Firefox theme:

Also, the latest Pinguy OS 11.04 alpha 1 comes with new ConnMan which has replaced the regular Network Indicator:

Besides the applications, there are some other changes. For instance, because Unity has been disabled, you can't drag a window to the side to move it to another desktop (so says Pinguy, I didn't try this and I'm not sure what are the implications of disabling Unity but still using Compiz). Instead, when draging a window to the sides, the behavior will be the same as in Unity: the window will be resized to half of the desktop and dragging it to the top will maximize the window.

Important note: Compiz has been turned off by default, at least in this first Alpha 1, but you can turn it on from the Startup Applications dialog.

OEM

In Pinguy OS 11.04 you can install it as usual with the username "oem" and the same "oem" for password and once you customize everything on the computer you can run:

sudo oem-config-prepare

Then restart the computer and on the next boot it will ask the user for to setup his account and will delete the original "oem" account.

Download Pinguy OS 11.04 alpha 1

Pinguy OS 11.04 alpha 1 is only available for 64bit. Starting with the beta there should be 32bit ISO images available for download too.

Download Pinguy OS 11.04 alpha 1

If you find bugs, report them @ Pinguy OS forum.

Thanks to Pinguy for the info!

How To Upgrade To Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (With Or Without An Internet Connection)

Since a lot of people want to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal already, I though you'd like to see a video (well actually 2) on how to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04. Remember that starting with Ubuntu 11.04, you can upgrade using the Live CD too.

Before upgrading, make sure you back up all your important files! Also, at the time I'm posting this, Ubuntu 11.04 is still in beta so upgrade at your own risk!

1. Upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal via Update Manager (requires an Internet connection)

Upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 via the Update Manager requires an Internet connection. All you have to do is press ALT + F2 and type:

update-manager -d

The update manager should then notify you that a new Ubuntu release "11.04" is available - click "Upgrade" and follow the on-screen instructions.

Here's a video I've created (in VirtualBox - I've only recorded the important parts) to show you how the upgrade process from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04 works, for those who've never upgraded before:

2. Upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Using A Live CD (doesn't require an Internet connection)

You can upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 even if you don't have an Internet connection (you can use this with or without an Internet connection). All you need is an Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal CD or bootable USB drive (you can create a bootable Ubuntu USB using the built-in Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator in Ubuntu or Unetbootin which works in both Ubuntu and Windows and so on). Once you boot into the Live CD, select to upgrade Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04.

What's weird is that the Live CD will ask you to enter your username and password again which seems pointless since you're upgrading so just to make sure, use the same username and password that you had in Ubuntu 10.10.

Here's a video (trimmed to the important parts) showing the Ubuntu 11.04 upgrade process using a Live CD:

For both videos: please note that when you upgrade, if your hardware supports it you'll see Unity and not the classic Ubuntu Desktop. In my videos, the classic Ubuntu desktop shows up because I'm using VirtualBox and I didn't install the Guest Additions (which by the way are broken for about a week or two).

Unity Gwibber Lens (Place) For Ubuntu 11.04

Firstly, a short introduction of "Lenses" via the Ubuntu wiki: "Lenses used to be known as Places. When referring to code and APIs we still use the term Places, but the user-visible name is Lenses. The Places name will be retired in 11.10".

I've recently came upon a very interesting Unity Lens for Gwibber developed by Ken VanDine and couldn't wait to try it but it didn't really work until the latest Unity update released a few hours ago. You can use the Unity Gwibber Lens to quickly access your Gwibber posts, replies, private messages and so on. And it also comes with a search.

To use it you can click the Gwibber icon on the Unity dock (it also has a keyboard shortcut so you can use Super + G) or directly from Dash but in that case only people will show up and not tweets / posts (I think this is a bug though).

In case that sounds a bit confusing, check out the video below to see exactly how the Unity Gwibber Lens works:

Download Unity Gwibber Lens

Unity Gwibber Lens is still experimental and not everything works. You'll also find some bugs like you can see in the above video (slowness, etc.).

But if you want to use it, you can use the following .deb I've created using the official packaging and the latest BZR code.

Update: you can now install Unity Gwibber Lens from the Gwibber PPA. Add the PPA and install it using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwibber-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-lens-gwibber

Then log out and log back in (makes sure you've already added some accounts in Gwibber before logging out).

You can also get the latest BZR code from HERE.

Kupfer (v205) Gets A New User Interface. Finally!

Kupfer is a quick launcher (like Gnome DO or Synapse) which comes with many very useful plugins but always lacked a nice user interface. Well, an update today finally brings some UI love for Kupfer. Check out the new Kupfer interface:

Further more, you can theme it however you want - see this page for info: http://kaizer.se/wiki/kupfer/GTKTheming.html


You can also select the icon style you want Kupfer to use: GTK+, Ascii or Unicode:

The icon set can be changed from the Kupfer Preferences (no, I don't know who the dude in the Kupfer Preferences window is):

Besides the interface changes, there are some other new features in the latest Kupfer v205 worth mentioning:

• Add context action "Set X as default action for object Y"
• Implement a preedit widget for input methods, also resolving the incompatibility with ibus so it should fix the issues with non-English languages

Install Kupfer v205 in Ubuntu

Add the Kupfer PPA and install the latest v205 in Ubuntu Maverick and Natty using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kupfer-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kupfer

Don't know how to use Kupfer? Check out its new HELP page and user manual. There's also a page with quick usage tips @ Gnome.org.

UMPlayer: New Cross-Platform Mplayer GUI Based On SMPlayer

"UMPlayer (Universal Multimedia Player) is the multimedia player that fills all your needs. With dozens of advanced features and built-in codecs it can handle any media format, and can play Audio CDs, DVDs, (S)VCDs, TV / Radio cards, YouTube™ and SHOUTcast™ streams and even incomplete or damaged media files."

UMPlayer is a new cross-platform SMPlayer fork. Since it uses Mplayer, it can play most video formats and comes with some very interesting features. For instance, it supports CSS skins so it's very easy to theme. For now, there are just a few themes available but more should be available soon.

Here's an example of a UMplayer skin:

Another interesting feature is that it allows you to search, play and save YouTube  videos straight from its interface. However, this seems to be broken for the moment, most probably because YouTube changed something once again, breaking Mplayer.

UMPlayer also comes with ShoutCast support and a huge list of radio stations so if you're missing this being removed from VLC, try UMPlyer. You can find this under Tools > ShoutCast.

Other features include: audio and video equalizers, take screenshot of running video, find subtitles on OpenSubtitles, audio & subtitles delay adjustment and many more. Check out the UMPlayer features page for more info.

Overall, UMPlayer has a great potential, but it's a bit buggy for now. For instance if I play a video, open the equalizer and close it, the video starts from the beginning. I've found a few other minor glitches but overall it looks pretty good and you should definitely give it a try.

Download UMPlayer (available for Linux - .deb and .rpm, Windows and Mac OSX)

Thanks to rAX for the tip!