Web Upd8

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 Released [Screenshots Tour]

2010-03-19T17:20:00.006+02:00

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 was released and because it features so many visual changes, I decided to make an article with most of them (fresh new screenshots of course), even though I already posted most of them. For easy gallery viewing, wait until the page is completely loaded, click the first image and then navigate to the next / previous images using the arrows at the bottom.

The most noticeable change in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is obviously the new "light" theme pack: Ambiance and Randiance, as well as the now notorious change to put the Metacity controls to the left side of the window as well as inverting the minimize and maximize buttons. This visual change also brought a new wallpaper, a new additional icon pack: ubuntu-mono (monochrome) and a few new purple icons to match the new branding.

In the screenshot in the beginning of the post you can see the Ambiance theme. Here is Randiance:

You will be seeing both of these themes throughout all the screenshots in this post.

To match the new themes, Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx also has a new boot splash:

As well as a new login screen (which I very much hope is not finished yet):

And a new logo:

More about the new Ubuntu Branding.

Lucid Beta 1: Special attention also received some of the Gnome panel applets:

- the sound applet look has been improved:

- the MeMenu finally allows the user to set an picture:

- The applications in the Indicator Applet were renamed to Chat, Email, etc.:

Ubuntu Software Center was redesigned in Lucid Beta 1

Ubuntu software Center now has a new design as well as a "Featured Applications" category as well as many other improvements, but it's far from being finished, the ultimate goal being a lot different (like we wrote HERE).

It also now features larger, clickable screenshots for applications:

Redesigned Shut Down, Log Out and Restart dialogs

The Shut DOwn, Log Out and Restart dialogs were updated and the biggest improvement is that the nagging 60 seconds timer displayed when trying to perform one of these 3 actions was finally removed:

Other Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 changes

Empathy got a new default theme to match the Gwibber look:

(Empathy)

(Gwibber)

The terminal background was also changed in Ubuntu 10.04 beta 1:

Ubuntu One Music Store is still not available in Rhythmbox, but it got an icon in the latest beta 1:

After having the tabs moved to the bottom, Nautilus was updated and the tabs are now back on top:

When booting the live CD, a splash screen is displayed:

and if you don't click any key, it boots to a dialog where you can chose to try Ubuntu 10.04 or install it (as well as read the release notes and update the installer):

And lastly: not a default package, but the following community themes also got an update: Kin, Night Impression, Impression, Hanso and Turrican. The "community-themes" package now also has 2 new GTK themes: Wasp and Sorbet as well as a new Metacity: Homosapien. All about the community themes in Lucid.

There were some other minor changes in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1. Hopefully I've managed to cover the most important / interesting ones.

You can download Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 from here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1 (as well as find out some technical details about what's new in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx so far).

Useful info related to Ubuntu Lucid:

If you're running Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 and want to upgrade to 10.04 Lucid Lynx, all you have to do is type this in a terminal:

update-manager -d

If you already have an Ubuntu Lucid ISO file (Alpha 1, 2, 3 or a daily ISO), you can update this ISO without downloading it all again. More info

You can provide feedback regarding the Metacity buttons being placed on the left, HERE.

Poll Results: Best Linux Instant Messaging Client

2010-03-19T13:29:00.003+02:00

This week you voted for: The Best Linux Instant Messaging Client

This time there were less votes than usual, one factor being probably the fact that some Linux users are undecided when it comes to IM clients:

I can't wait to see the results at this poll. I sooo hate pidgin and I'm sooo looking forward to find a very good alternative :D!

or:

I am holding on my vote, in a dilemma between pidgin and empathy. I use empathy at work and pidgin at home! And I love them both ;)

The poll results

And now to answer yet another dilemma we talked about last week:

There was a great debate when Pidgin was replaced with Empathy in Ubuntu and it will be interesting to see if Ubuntu users actually started using Empathy or they are still using Pidgin.

Well, it seems a lot of people started using Empathy, but Pidgin still rules them all:

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, even though Empathy is now default in Ubuntu (and most WebUpd8 readers use Ubuntu), Pidgin is still used by 59% of WebUpd8 readers and even though Empathy came second, it only got 13% of votes.

This week we got a lot of "Other answer" votes, the most notable being: qutIM (13), Gajim (12 votes), aMSN (12), PSI (8), Kmess (5) and the rest got less then 5 votes.

Now, considering that last week VLC won by a large margin the best Linux movie player poll and now Pidgin the best Linux IM client by a large margin also, it makes you wonder what are the criteria for picking a default application for Linux distributions since neither VLC or Pidgin are default in Ubuntu (and other distributions).

Last but not least, I would like to thank you once again for voting on our weekly poll series. The next poll should come sometime tomorrow.

Ubuntu Lucid Beta 1 Delayed Until March 19th

2010-03-18T22:36:00.001+02:00

Due to some critical issues with the image rebuilds, the validation for Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 is still in progress, meaning the first Lucid beta will not be released today but tomorrow, March 19.

More info: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-March/000695.html

Lucid XSplash For Ubuntu Karmic

2010-03-18T15:26:00.001+02:00

If you like the new Plymouth theme Ubuntu Lucid got recently and want to use it in Ubuntu Karmic... you can't (or can but have to install Plymouth) because Karmic doesn't use Plymouth. But you can install this nice XSplash screen called lucid-Xsplash:

To install it, download lucid-Xsplash, then open nautilus as root (press ALT + F2 and enter: gksu nautilus), navigate to /usr/share/images/xsplash and extract there all the contents of the downloaded archive. Then remove all the images in that folder having the name "bg_RESOLUTION.jpg" (where RESOLUTION is a number like 800x600, etc.), and then append "bg_" in front of each resolution file (eg: 1024x768.jpg) file extracted from the archive. You have to do that because it appears the author of this XSplash forgot to add the "bg_" prefix to the files.

Then, to test the new XSplash, type this in a terminal:

sudo xsplash

And pres ESCAPE to exit the XSplash preview.

See also: 8 More Beautiful XSplash Screens For Ubuntu

Mark Shuttleworth: "This is not a democracy"

2010-03-17T23:30:00.003+02:00

After Mark Shuttleworh's recent comment regarding the decision to put the Metacity window buttons on the left, the debate is more intense then ever.

In a recent comment (posted a few seconds ago), Mark Shuttleworth states that:

> It'd have been nice if this comment had been made some time ago,
> together with a deep reasoning on the concrete changes that are in mind.
>
> We are supposed to be a community, we all use Ubuntu and contribute to
> it, and we deserve some respect regarding these kind of decisions. We
> all make Ubuntu together, or is it a big lie?

We all make Ubuntu, but we do not all make all of it. In other words, we delegate well. We have a kernel team, and they make kernel decisions. You don't get to make kernel decisions unless you're in that kernel team. You can file bugs and comment, and engage, but you don't get to second-guess their decisions. We have a security team. They get to make decisions about security. You don't get to see a lot of what they see unless you're on that team. We have processes to help make sure we're doing a good job of delegation, but being an open community is not the same as saying everybody has a say in everything.

This is a difference between Ubuntu and several other community distributions. It may feel less democratic, but it's more meritocratic, and most importantly it means (a) we should have the best people making any given decision, and (b) it's worth investing your time to become the best person to make certain decisions, because you should have that competence recognised and rewarded with the freedom to make hard decisions and not get second-guessed all the time.

It's fair comment that this was a big change, and landed without warning. There aren't any good reasons for that, but it's also true that no amount of warning would produce consensus about a decision like this.

> If you want to tell us
> that we are all part of it, we want information, and we want our opinion
> to be decisive.
>

No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But we are not voting on design decisions.

Mark

Update: he also states that the decision to move the window controls to the left wasn't his:

Some members of the design team asked that the window controls be grouped on the left, and presented the visualisation. So it wasn't that I "prefer it that way". I didn't like it initially, anticipating that it would generate a great deal of resistance. However, it does line things up nicely for work I would like us to do in future. And the major argument against it appears solely to be "we're used to it here", which is important, but not overriding.

I'm going to let you comment on this.

Script To Focus The Pidgin / Empathy Conversation Window Using A Shortcut Key [Linux]

2010-03-17T15:52:00.003+02:00

I was reading an article on tux-planet.fr about xdotool when I realized I can use this to create a script to focus (activate) the Pidgin conversation window using a shortcut key - something I have been searching for a long time. Being a relatively old ubuntuforums.org member, I also noticed quite a few users were looking for a way of doing this, so I'm guessing this might be interesting for WebUpd8 readers also. Of course, you can use xodotool to focus (or perform many other different actions) any window using the terminal or a script which can be set as a keyboard shortcut, etc.

xdotool is a command line tool for simulating keyboard input and mouse activity, move and resize windows and so on.

To set a keyboard shortcut to focus the Pidgin or Empathy conversion window (of course, it also works for other application with a bit of tweaking), all you have to do is create a script somewhere (like in your home folder), let's call it "winfocus" and paste this inside the newly created file:

#!/bin/bash
WID1=`xdotool search --class "Pidgin" | head -1`;
WID2=`xdotool search --class "Pidgin" | head -2 | tail -1`;
if [[ $WID2 > $WID1 ]]
  then xdotool windowactivate $WID2
fi
if [[ $WID2 < $WID1 ]]   
  then xdotool windowactivate $WID1 
fi

You can replace "Pidgin" with "Empathy" if you want.

Update: thanks to jordansissel, here is an even lighter version of the above script:

#!/bin/bash
WID=`xdotool search --class "Pidgin" | head -2 | sort -rn | head -1`;
xdotool windowactivate $WID

Use this instead of the first version. Of course, again: you can replace "Pidgin" with "Empathy" if you want.

Then save the script and make it executable using this command:

chmod +x /path/to/winfocus

Replacing /path/to/ with the exact path to the newly created "winfocus" file.

For the script to work you basically must not have more than 2 Pidgin / Empathy opened windows (the contact list and conversation window) - if you want to use more windows, the script needs to be tweaked. For further help using xdotool, see THIS page.

Of course, make sure you have xdotool for the script to work. In Ubuntu you can install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install xdotool

Then you can set a keyboard shortcut for running the script.

1. If you use Compiz, go to System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager, activate the "Commands" plugin then click it and on the first tab called "Commands" enter the exact path to the "winfocus" script and go to the second tab called "Key Bindings" and for the exact same line click on the "disable" button, select "Enable" and then "Grab key combination" to set your shortcut. This is a lot easier than I've explain here but I though I'd cover this also, for those who don't know to set up a keyboard shortcut using CCSM.

2. For Metacity (if you don't use Compiz):

Press Alt + F2 on your keboard and type:

gconf-editor

Then navigate to: apps > metacity > keybinding_commands and choose a "command_x" parameter which is empty. I choose "command_2". Right click it, select "Edit" and enter the exact path to the "winfocus" script.

Now go to apps > metacity > global_keybindings and if you choose "command_2", then right click "run_command_2" and select "Edit", then enter the keys combination you want to use for activating the Pidgin / Empathy conversation window.

TerminalRun Firefox Addon Allows You To Run Shell Commands From Websites Via Right Click [Linux]

2010-03-17T12:00:00.003+02:00

TerminalRun and FoxRunner are two similar Firefox extensions for running a command from a website in a terminal. Because FoxRunner didn't work for me (but it seems to be working for most people so you can try it if you want), I'll review TerminalRun.

Here is a video I've just recorded with TerminalRun in action:

TerminalRun hasn't been updated to be compatible with Firefox 3.6, however it works with any Firefox version. To install it you can use Nightly Tester Tools which allows you to install Firefox addons not compatible with your FF version, and then get TerminalRun from HERE.

Once installed, you can configure what terminal to use and some other options:

Besides commands, TerminalRun can also execute scripts and has the ability to detect malicious scripts and warn users when a command requires administrative privileges to run:

Such warning can be turned off from TerminalRun preferences.

Some other TerminalRun interesting features are:

Running multine scripts
Detecting the best shell to run the script
Easily saving scripts to local files
Debugging mode
Integration with ubuntuforums.org with auto script detection
support for help.ubuntu.com
special handling for apt-get commands and APT repositories.

(Ubuntuforums.org support)

One thing I noticed about TerminalRun: it doesn't detect scripts very well. Another drawback is that if there are more commands (each on a different line), TerminalRun will run them as one line and thus will fail -> however, if you select all the commands and select "Edit script", you can then edit it and run all of them in a terminal with very little user input.

Overall, TerminalRun is a great tool for newbies but also for ordinary people trying to save some time running commands from different websites / forums.

Amarok 2.3

2010-03-17T01:06:00.000+02:00

Amarok 2.3 was released yesterday and I wanted to see how the new version is working, the system resources it uses and so on.

I've installed it (see here Karmic and Lucid PPAs), and then tried to load my ~30.000+ music collection. Now that's a nice memory usage:

and it took Amarok 2.3 about ~30 minutes to index my music collection. So my review ended here. There's no point in using such an application when we have so many to choose from. I'll be sticking with GMPC.

Now, I realize Amarok is a KDE application and I was running it in Gnome, but I used to do that all the time with Amarok 1.4 and it worked just fine.

Speed Up DPKG With TDPKG (Using A Tokyocabinet Or Sqlite3 Database) [ Ubuntu / Debian ]

2010-03-17T00:50:00.000+02:00

dpkg is pretty slow in Debian-based systems, usually because of the many files which are stored in the /var/lib/dpkg/info folder. To speed up things, Luca Bruno created a project called tdpkg which uses an sqlite3 or tokyocabinet database for loading the dpkg .list files in the /var/lib/dpkg/info folder which makes dpkg a lot faster.

The author (Luca Bruno) says that:

I've managed to bring cold startup time from about 14 seconds down to about 2 seconds. I will definitely have fun installing and removing applications back again.

Before installing this, the author clearly states that: "You'd better not install this library, it could make your system highly unstable". However I've made a backup and have been using it for a while and everything works great so if you also want to install it anyway, here's what you need to do!

1. Backup the /var/lib/dpkg/info/ folder. I've copied the entire folder in an info.backup folder in my home directory so you can do the same:

cp -r /var/lib/dpkg/info ~/info.backup

2. Download the tdpkg package and install build-essential and one of the 2: libsqlite3-dev (for the sqlite3 backend) and libtokyocabinet-dev (for libtokyocabinet). I've installed both of them to try out each one.

sudo apt-get install build-essential libsqlite3-dev libtokyocabinet-dev
git clone http://git.gitorious.org/lethal-works/tdpkg.git

3. Compile tdpkg

Compiling tdpkg is very easy. However, decide if you want to compile it with sqlite3 or libtokyocabinet. tokyocabinet is faster and sqlite handles concurrency better.

For sqlite3:

cd tdpkg/
make CACHE=sqlite

For libtokyocabinet:

cd tdpkg/
make

4. Now to get it working, you must create a simple alias in your .bashrc file. To edit the .bashrc file, enter this in a terminal:

gedit ~/.bashrc

And at the end of the file, enter this:

alias dpkg="LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/tdpkg/libtdpkg.so /usr/bin/dpkg"

Of course, replacing "/path/to/" with the path to the tdpkg/libtdpkg.so file (make sure you use the absolute path to libtdpkg.so). If you used the exact commands in this post, the file should be in: /home/YOUR_USERNAME/tdpkg/libtdpkg.so

Now save the file and reload the .bashrc file using this command:

cd && source .bashrc

That's it!

If dpkg doesn't pick up the alias, you can put the alias in the /etc/bash.bashrc file and then run "bash" in a terminal to reload it.

An amazing thing would be to use this with apt-fast to make an incredibly fast package manager for Debian based systems but I can't seem to get tdpkg to work with apt-get in the first place. If you manage to do this, let us know in the comments!

Via OssBlog.it and Luca Bruno's website.

Fixed Ubuntu Light Themes Metacity In WebUpd8 PPA [Lucid, Karmic, Jaunty]

2010-03-16T15:10:00.000+02:00

First of all, for those not interested in fixing the Ubuntu "Light Themes" or not interested in these themes at all: I'm sorry! But new things just keep coming up. Hopefully everything will calm down soon.

Now, about the fixed Light Themes for Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid: I just posted about a PPA which has a fixed Light Themes package for Lucid, but that PPA doesn't have packages for Karmic and Jaunty and also that package replaces the original Light Themes.

Mohegan asked if we could upload a fixed light-themes package in the WebUpd8 PPA and so we did, but we tried to please as many people as we can, so:

the package was uploaded under the "light-themes-fixed" name and the themes are now displayed as "Ambiance-Fixed" and "Radiance-Fixed" in the Gnome Desktop Appearance dialog. That means that the "light-themes-fixed" package does not replace the original "light-themes" package so you can have both of them installed and use whichever you want. The original "light-themes" package is of course still available in the WebUpd8 PPA (for Jaunty and Karmic).
we packaged the themes for Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid (as well as the latest ubuntu-mono icons, humanity-icons packages and of course the latest Murrine and Aurora engines).
the advantage of using this PPA is that I will try to update the fixed packages as soon as new versions for the original "light-themes" package in Ubuntu Lucid are released.

In case you didn't understand what this "fixed" does, well, it fixes the border around the minimize/maximize buttons so you can put the Metacity window buttons in the "minimize,maximize,close" order like the buttons were on Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic and so on.

To install this light-themes-fixed package, add the WebUpd8 PPA:

Ubuntu Lucid and Karmic:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

Ubuntu Jaunty:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nilarimogard/webupd8/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 4C9D234C

Then, to install it in Ubuntu Lucid:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install light-themes-fixed

Or to install it in Ubuntu Karmic and Jaunty:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install light-themes-fixed gtk2-engines-murrine ubuntu-mono gtk2-engines-aurora

Once you install and use this fixed package, if you have the wrong button order in Metacity (maximize,minimize,close), simply paste this in a terminal to fix it:

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

Or use Mwbuttons to play around with the Metacity button order.

For the fixed Radiance theme I used the package I released about a week ago: Download Radiance With Minimize And Maximize Buttons Back To Normal and for the Ambiance theme I used the fix from Marcoc2 (so all the credits go to him).

'Fixed' Ubuntu Light Themes PPA [Lucid Only]

2010-03-16T12:44:00.001+02:00

In the same bug report as the one where Mark Shuttleworth commented on yesterday regarding the reason for moving the Metacity window controls to the left, there is a comment which points to a 'fixed' Ubuntu Light themes PPA (for Ubuntu Lucid only). By 'fixed' I mean you can put the buttons in the same order as you are used to from Karmic, etc. : "minimize,maximize,close" instead of "maximize,minimize,close", without having a broken border around the minimize button.

I don't know if the PPA will be maintained further or not (so that it includes each update to the ubuntu-light package, but with fixed Metacity), but I find it to be a great idea for those who don't want to use the new Metacity button order but still want to be up to date with the themes.

To add the PPA, simply paste this in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stownsend42/light-themes

Then do an upgrade:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

If you're not using Ubuntu Lucid, you can download the fixed themes package from the PPA (manually downloading the .deb file) or from HERE (but obviously, you'll have to do this on each new release of the light-themes package if you want to stay up to date).

Once installed, you can finally set the Metacity button order to "menu:minimize,maximize,close" using the following command:

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

Or you can use Mwbuttons (a GUI for moving the Metacity window buttons wherever you want which also comes with presets).

Exaile 0.3.1 Has Been Released! [And Available In WebUpd8 PPA]

2010-03-16T11:51:00.004+02:00

Exaile 0.3.1 has been released today. There are no new features since the beta, but a lot of bugs have been fixed.

Exaile 0.3.1. brings some pretty exiting new features (since 0.3.0):

A completely revamped and much more powerful tag editor
An equalizer!
Collection panel should now be faster
Better support for non-standard filename encodings
A standalone lyrics pane plugin
Plugins for DAAP music sharing support
Better display of compilation albums

You can download Exaile 0.3.1 source files from HERE. There is also an Ubuntu PPA, but there are no Exaile 0.3.1 packages available yet. However, you can install beta 4 from Exaile PPA. Because we didn't want to wait for the official Ubuntu builds, we've uploaded Exaile 0.3.1 in the WebUpd8 PPA for Ubuntu Karmic and Lucid.

To add the WebUpd8 PPA (which has many experimental packages so check it out before using it!), paste this in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

Then install Exaile 0.3.1:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install exaile exaile-plugin-moodbar exaile-plugin-contextinfo

You can of course just download the .deb files instead of adding the PPA if you want: https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+archive/webupd8/+packages

Notes:

the db for 0.3.1 is not backwards compatible with 0.3.0. A backup of any existing 0.3.0 db will be made when you upgrade to enable easy downgrades, but it is advised that you make you own backup as well if you care about saved ratings, playcounts, etc.
the 64bit packages in the WebUpd8 PPA will start being built in about an hour.

qBittorrent 2.2.0 Brings Some Interesting New Advanced Features

2010-03-16T00:02:00.000+02:00

qBittorrent is a multi-platform lightweight but fully featured BitTorrent client, very similar to uTorrent.

It features a µTorrent-like User Interface, torrent labels, WebUI, µTorrent spoofing to bypass private trackers whitelisting, advanced RSS support with download filters and many other really nice features.

qBittorrent 2.2.0 was released yesterday and it brings some cool new features for advanced users such as:

User can set alternative speed limits for fast toggling
Bandwidth scheduler (automatically use alternative speed limits for a given period)
Added "Added/Completed On" columns to transfer list
Added "Upload/Download limit" columns to transfer list
Torrent files can be exported to a given directory
Outgoing ports range can be customized (for QoS)
User can choose to apply transfer limits on LAN too
User can choose to include the protocol overhead in transfer limits
Torrents can be automatically rechecked on completion
If 2 torrents have the same hash, add new trackers/URL seeds to the existing torrent
Trackers can be added from Web UI
Global transfer information are displayed in the new Web UI status bar
Allow to change the priority of several files at once
Support for multiple scan folders

Also, a lot of bugs have been fixed since qBittorrent 2.1.0

Even though I used to be a fan of Deluge, I recently switched to qBittorrent due to some bugs Deluge has since it's early stages which torrent checking: every once in a while it starts re-checking all my torrents and when you're seeding ~100+ torrents that can get very annoying. I'm now only seeding 1-2 torrents so that might not matter so much anymore, but I like to know I won't be hit by that bug anymore. And qBittorrent also has a feature I always look for in a BitTorrent client: the ability to label torrents.

How to install qBittorrent in Ubuntu

-Ubuntu Karmic:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hydr0g3n/ppa

-Ubuntu Jaunty:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/hydr0g3n/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 47B4D1C4

Then for either Ubuntu Karmic or Jaunty, to install qBittorrent simply paste this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

For other Linux distributions, Mac OS X and FreeBSD, see the qBittorrent download page.

And The Reason Why The Metacity Window Buttons Are On The Left In Ubuntu 10.04 Is...

2010-03-15T21:30:00.003+02:00

...from Mark Shuttleworth himself:

The default position of the window controls will remain the left, throughout beta1. We're interested in data which could influence the ultimate decision. There are good reasons both for the change, and against them, and ultimately the position will be decided based on what we want to achieve over time.

Moving everything to the left opens up the space on the right nicely, and I would like to experiment in 10.10 with some innovative options there. It's much easier to do that if we make this change now. I appreciate that it's an emotive subject, and apologise for the fact that I haven't been responding in detail to every comment - I'm busy moving house this week. But the design team is well aware of the controversy, your (polite) comments and more importantly *data* are very welcome and will help make the best decision.

When we have a celebrity bug report like this, it's a real exercise for our values of communication, civility, and ubuntu. Thank you to those who have pointed to the code of conduct when things get heated. And thanks even more to those who FELT heated but didn't let it show :-)

So the buttons might be moved to the right somewhere between beta 2 and the release of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid depending on the data gathered data, but that would be a bit in the way of the changes planned for Lucid+1 (10.10).

What do you think Mark Shuttleworth is planning on introducing to the top right corner of the windows starting with Lucid+1? Could it be some indicator messages or some sort?

Some News On VideoLAN Movie Creator

2010-03-15T21:15:00.000+02:00

Remember VideoLAN Movie Creator (VLMC)? Many people (including myself) got really exited on the news that the VLC team is working on a video editor but then everything seem to fade away and there weren't any news about it. That until now, when a blog post from one of the VLMC developers is pointing out that VLMC 0.1 was supposed to be released yesterday but some bugs on Windows prevented this from happening.

However, I find this to be great news and can't wait for the first version of VLMC to be released. Of course, don't expect a lot of features and an equivalent to VLC but for video editing already. Especially since only 2 developers are working on VideoLAN Movie Creator.

In case you were checking the website or was subscribed to the VLMC mailing list: those were down for a while but should be up and running again soon. However, the VLMC website is just a bug tracker for now.

Hopefully we'll hear more often about VLMC.

Keryx 0.92.4 (Offline Installer For APT-based Systems) Released

2010-03-15T17:54:00.003+02:00

Some time ago we told you about Keryx, an amazing cross-platform (yes, it also works on Windows - so you can download the packages from Windows and install them in Ubuntu/Debian, etc.) application which can be used for offline package download and installation for APT-based systems (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.). Basically Keryx provides a graphical interface for getting updates, packages and dependencies for offline installation.

The latest version (0.92.4) brings 2 new features which should be very helpful for those with limited internet connectivity:

No more dependencies. Now Keryx is truly portable so all you have to do is download the package from its website, put it on an USB memory stick and use it on a computer with an internet connection to get updates, packages and so on, and then install them on another computer.
No more "sudo dpkg -i --force-all *.deb" to install the packages downloaded by Keryx. Now Keryx comes with its own package installation tool.

Download Keryx 0.92.4 | How to use Keryx (ignore the "sudo dpkg -i" step) | official tutorial

How To Get GIT Working Behind A Firewall [Using A SOCKS Proxy]

2010-03-15T11:54:00.001+02:00

Some GIT servers support the http protocol but some don't and if you're behind a firewall like me (at work - so I don't have control over it and most ports are blocked) you basically can't access GIT.

But with the help of WebUpd8 reader RKV and this post, I got GIT working behind a firewall using TOR.

If you don't know how to set up TOR, see the post about using Spotify and Pandora using TOR (post by rkv). You can of course use a different SOCKS proxy, but I prefer TOR for this job.

Once you have TOR up and running, enter this in a terminal:

sudo gedit /usr/bin/proxy-wrapper

And paste this in the newly created file:

#!/bin/bash
nc -xlocalhost:9050 -X5 $*

Then save the file and make it executable using the following command:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/proxy-wrapper

If you use Ubuntu, your version of netcat probably doesn't support the -x and -X flags. But you can install netcat-openbsd instead:

sudo apt-get install netcat-openbsd

And finally, make GIT use a SOCKS proxy using the following command:

export GIT_PROXY_COMMAND="/usr/bin/proxy-wrapper"
bash

Install Linux Mint (Slab Fork) Main Menu in Ubuntu

2010-03-14T22:52:00.009+02:00

If you ever used or seen some screenshots of Linux Mint, I'm sure you noticed how amazing it's menu is. I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to install it in Ubuntu. Sure, you could install Gnome Main Menu ( sudo apt-get install gnome-main-menu ) but I don't find it to be nowhere near as useful as the Linux Mint main menu.

Note (thanks to Ryan Peters for his clarifications): mintMenu is based on a fork of Slab, but the two are not the same thing, mintMenu being a lot nicer.

Here is how Gnome Main Menu looks like:

And here is the Linux Mint menu:

One of the things I like the most in the Linux Mint menu is the filter and to get this option in the Gnome Main Menu you'd have to click the "Control Center" menu item which is too many clicks away.

I also like the customization Linux Mint menu offers (right click the menu and then select Preferences): you can choose to display or not to display the recently used items (while those are always displayed in the Gnome Main Menu) but not only that; you can also toggle on/off the side pane, chose the icon size, colors, number of favourite items and so on. Basically everything is customizable.

You can also click the header of a section to make it go away, and have just a button for it on the left pane:

Of course, you can also change the Linux Mint icon and use an Ubuntu logo instead of it and even set the key to bring down the menu, directly from within the Linux Mint menu preferences:

Another great feature is the "favourite" applications - but both menus come with that - which you can use to put all your frequently used apps so you don't need to place icons on the gnome panel, etc.

Convinced? Here is how to install this great menu in Ubuntu.

Install Linux Mint (Slab) menu in Ubuntu

To install the Linux Mint Slab menu in Ubuntu, all you have to do is paste this in a terminal to download and install it:

wget http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/main/m/mint-translations/mint-translations_2010.02.02_all.deb
wget http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/main/m/mint-common/mint-common_1.0.5_all.deb
wget http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/main/m/mintmenu/mintmenu_4.9.4_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

Then, to add the Linux Mint menu to a Gnome panel, right click a panel and select "Add to panel", then search for "mintMenu" and add it.

Mwbuttons: Complete GUI For Customizing Metacity Window Buttons Order

2010-03-14T19:34:00.003+02:00

Mwbuttons (Metacity Window Buttons) is very easy to use yet complete GUI for customizing the Metacity window button order. I really like the way this was implemented because it is very intuitive and easy to understand by new Ubuntu users.

Using Mwbuttons you basically have a horizontal line with all the buttons and you can chose which button and it's placement, exactly the way it will be displayed in Metacity:

Another nice feature for new Ubuntu users is that Mwbuttons comes with presets: Lucid Style (buttons on the left ordered: maximize, minimize, close), Karmic style (the normal style with buttons on the right ordered: minimize, maximize, close) and OSX style (buttons on the left ordered: close, maximize, minimize) as well as a "restore style" option:

I really hope that either Mwbuttons or Alex Eftimie's idea to put an option in the Gnome Appearance Properties for customizing Metacity buttons order will be included in Lucid!

To download and run Mwbuttons, simply run this in a terminal:

wget http://launchpad.net/mwbuttons/trunk/v0.2/+download/mwbuttons
chmod +x mwbuttons
./mwbuttons

[via LinuX Freedom for Live]

How To Get Plymouth Working With Nvidia Proprietary Drivers [Ubuntu Lucid]

2010-03-14T19:01:00.004+02:00

Reading the Ubuntu Lucid development forum, I noticed most people can't get the new Plymouth to work with Nvidia proprietary drivers. Some get just some errors, some see just some blue progress bar, etc.

But here is a very easy solution for getting Plymouth working with proprietary Nvidia drivers (and it works in VirtualBox too). Being so easy, I don't understand why they haven't included this tweak in Ubuntu Lucid yet, but I suppose there is a reason behind this so be aware of this before proceeding.

WARNING: Only follow this how-to if you know what you are doing. If you make any mistakes, Ubuntu might not start!

Here is what you have to do to get Plymouth working with proprietary Nvidia drivers:

Step 1: we must edit the /etc/default/grub file.

Open a terminal and paste this:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

On line #18, uncomment (uncomment = remove the "#" in front of the line( "#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480" and change the resolution to whatever you want. Here is how it should look:

GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768

Step 2: edit the /etc/grub.d/00_header file.

sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/00_header

And find the following line: "gfxmode=${GRUB_GFXMODE}" (it's line 103 on my computer) and under it, paste this:

set gfxpayload=keep

Step 3: update Grub 2:

To update the GRUB, simply run the following command:

sudo update-grub

Once you complete the above steps, restart the computer and you should see the nice Plymouth screen like in the screenshot in the beginning of the post.

Last Week's Top Posts (Week 10, 2010)

2010-03-14T18:06:00.000+02:00

Previous weeks top posts

UbuntuTweak 0.5.3 Released With Easier Window Titlebar Layout Buttons Arrangement

2010-03-14T13:46:00.000+02:00

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.3 was released in an attempt to stay up to date with the 'trend' and make it easier for new Ubuntu users to place the window titlebar buttons on the left / right, enable or disable buttons and change their order.

This feature was already in Ubuntu Tweak since version 0.5.0, but it was improved to allow more customization.

For Ubuntu Tweak installation instructions via a Launchpad PPA, see THIS post.

Alternatively, you can simply download .deb files:

-Ubuntu Lucid: ubuntu-tweak_0.5.3-1~lucid1_all.deb

-Ubuntu Karmic: ubuntu-tweak_0.5.3-1~karmic1_all.deb

Metamorphose Is Great Mass File And Folder Renamer For Linux, Mac OS X And Windows

2010-03-13T21:03:00.001+02:00

Metamorphose is a free, open source program to mass rename files and folders for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

The application has many great features such as using photo EXIF data or mp3 ID3 tags for renaming, undo renaming operation in case of mistakes, preview every item to be renamed before applying changes and of course basic features like adding a prefix, suffix, etc to files, mass replace, insert or modify, length modification and so on. Basically most of the option can also be found in pyRename, but I find Metamorphose easier to use (and Metamorphose working on Windows and Mac OS X is another difference).

A full list of features can be found @ Metamorphose homepage.

Metamorphose mass rename download and installation

Ubuntu users will be glad to know that Metamorphose comes with an Ubuntu PPA. Because I have way to many PPAs I simply downloaded the .deb file but if you want to add the PPA, you can find it here: Karmic | Jaunty.

Metamorphose comes with two versions: stable (metamorphose1) and beta (metamorphose2) so install the one you feel most comfortable with. I got an error when installing the beta (.desktop file error) but it worked anyway and Metamorphose is still accessible under Applications > Accessories.

For your convenience, here are direct .deb download links:

Ubuntu Jaunty: stable | beta

Ubuntu Karmic: stable | beta

For other Linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows, see the Metamorphose download page.

So What's The New "Synchronize On Ubuntu One" Right Click Menu Item For? [Ubuntu 10.04]

2010-03-13T20:30:00.001+02:00

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx has a new (well, not very new) Nautilus right click menu item called "Synchronize on Ubuntu One" which I suspected for what it's for, but it's nice to have a confirmation.

Matt Griffin posted the following answer @ Ubuntuone-users mailing list:

This will enable you to mark folders outside of the Ubuntu One folder for synchronization. It's only supported in Lucid and we haven't build the website experience yet but many were asking for this feature. You can mark any folder in your home folder for synchronization.

Now that's a really nice option! Now if only Ubuntu One would work on a standard port so I could use it on any computer...

Humanity Icon Theme Updated To Match The New Ubuntu Branding

2010-03-13T15:25:00.008+02:00

The Humanity Icon Theme got a really nice update in Ubuntu Lucid today which brings integration with the new branding (purple that is) as well as a new Banshee monochrome icon for the panel.

You can preview the updated icons below:

If you're not using Ubuntu Lucid, you'll be glad to know that the updated Humanity Icon Theme is already available in WebUpd8 PPA. Alternatively you can download THIS deb file.