Web Upd8 - Ubuntu / Linux blog

Holo: Android Ice Cream Sandwich Like Theme Pack For GNOME 3 (GTK/Shell)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:41:00 +0000

Holo is a cool new GNOME 3 theme pack created by Tiheum (the Faenza icon theme designer) that tries to mimic the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich theme.

Holo was initially called "Ice Cream Sandwich" and only included a GNOME Shell theme, but a recent update brought matching GTK3 and GTK2 themes too.

The GTK3 theme uses a nice gradient for the menubar, accompanied by an elegant Metacity theme, which unfortunately doesn't work in Unity for now. The GTK2 theme doesn't look so good as the GTK3, but luckily, most applications have already been ported to GTK3.

Install Holo theme pack

Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04 (only tested in 11.10) users can install Holo from the WebUpd8 Themes PPA, using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/themes
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install holo-theme

For other Linux distributions or manual Ubuntu installation: to install Holo, download it from DeviantArt, extract it and copy the folder to the ~/.themes/ folder (".themes" is a hidden folder in your home directory so press CTRL + H to see it; if it doesn't exist, create it).

Then, to apply the new theme, use GNOME Tweak Tool or Ubuntu Tweak 0.6+. After changing the Metacity theme, press ALT + F2 and enter "r" to reload GNOME Shell (or log out and log back in).

Remember, the Metacity (window) theme doesn't work in Unity for now so only install it if you're using GNOME Shell (the GTK theme does work in Unity obviously, but with both the titlebar and menu missing in Unity, the theme won't look like its supposed to anymore). This will hopefully be fixed in a future release.

Note: Holo requires Unico GTK3 as well as Murrine and Pixbuf GTK2 engines, so make sure they are installed before using the GTK theme.

via +Fabio Lo Brutto

Beets Music Tagger: Command Line Tool To Fix Metadata And Organize Your Music Library

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:53:00 +0000

beets is a cross-platform command line music tagger and organizer which you can use to "get your music collection right once and for all".

It can improve your music collection metadata by using MusicBrainz, download cover art for all your albums, reorganize your music files, fix filenames and more.

Further more, beets is extensible through plugins which add extra functionality like embedding or extracting album art from files, fetch lyrics for all your songs, clean up tags and and there's even a HTML5 web player (though it's very basic and can't do too much for now).

While beets tries to automatically get the metadata based on already existing tags, if the similarity is under 95%, beets will prompt you to select the best match so the process is not fully automated (though you can set it to automatically skip albums that need user input). Also, beets might not be able to automatically get the metadata if some albums don't have any tags at all.

In my test, beets worked great to fix bad or missing tags for my music library, but fetching the album art didn't work so great: it was able to download album art for only about 25% of my albums.

Beets introduction video

Here's a introduction video for beets, created by its developer:

Installation

To install beets in Ubuntu, you need to install its dependencies firstly:

sudo apt-get install python-dev python-setuptools python-pip

Then, install beets using the following command

sudo pip install beets

In Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, you can install beets from the official repositories.

For Arch Linux, get the latest version via AUR.

beets installation for other Linux distributions, Windows and Mac OS X: Getting Started with beets.

How to use beets

Firstly, create a new file called '.beetsconfig' in your home directory and open it with a text editor. For instance, run this command if you have Gedit installed:

gedit ~/.beetsconfig

And in this file, copy/paste the following:

[beets]
directory: /path/to/music
library: /path/to/musiclibrary.blb

Where:

"directory" is the path to the directory where your music will be copied after it has been re-organized by beets (to get beets to use your current directory structure and don't copy your music, see below).
"library" is the path do your music library database (the file doesn't initially exist, so just enter the path to where you want it to be stored)

Then save the file. All available configuration options are available HERE.

Now you can start importing your music to the beets library. By default, beets will copy the imported music into the directory you specified in the config file - to start this process (it may take a long time!), use the command below:

beet import /path/to/music

If you want beets to use your current directory structure and don't copy the music to the directory defined in its configuration, use "-C":

beet import -C /path/to/music

To only import files, without autotagging, use "-A":

beet import -A /path/to/music

You can also set beets not to write the tags to the files but keep them in its database only ("-W"), never prompt for input when importing ("-q" - quiet mode) and more.

Enabling acoustic fingerprinting for beets

beets can use acoustic fingerprinting (through Chromaprint/Acoustid), a technique for identifying songs based on audio signal instead of using metadata information via a plugin. There is a downside to using it though: it uses a lot more CPU and memory than the default tagger. If this is not an inconvenient for you, install it using the following commands:

sudo apt-get install apt-get install python-gst0.10-dev gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
sudo pip install pyacoustid

Then, to enable the Chromaprint/Acoustid plugin, open the beets config file (see above) and paste this under "[beets]":

plugins: chroma

For more info about beets, including: using the auto-tagger, more 'beet' commands (list, add, etc), plugins, etc., see the beets documentation.

Thanks to Pablo Jimeno for the tip!

KDE 4.8 Released, Install It In Kubuntu 11.10

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:32:00 +0000

KDE 4.8 has been released today and includes many changes, such as: multiple improvements for Dolphin, Kate, Kmail and Gwenview, adaptive power management, multiple layouts available for the ALT + TAB window switcher, Kwin optimizations and more.

KDE 4.8 also incorporates the cool Icon Tasks Plasmoid (we wrote about it a while back) in the. Using this plasmoid, you get an icons-only taskbar with support for the Unity API (quicklists, progress bars and badges), Dockmanager support and so on:

Check out the official KDE 4.8 release announcements:

Install KDE 4.8 in Kubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

If you've installed Icon Tasks via PPA, remove it before upgrading (sudo apt-get remove plasma-widget-icon-tasks) or else you'll get an error.

The Kubuntu developers have done a great job as usual, and the latest KDE 4.8 is already available in the official Kubuntu Backports PPA, for Kubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Add the PPA and upgrade to KDE 4.8 using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Oxygen GTK3 Engine has not been packaged yet unfortunately, but you can use THIS PPA (not tested) to install it. But please note that using it, you'll also get some other unstable packages.

TeamViewer 7 For Linux Released

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:17:00 +0000

Quick update: the latest TeamViewer 7 for Linux* (application for remote control and desktop sharing) has finally been released today, after being in beta for over a month.

The new Linux version brings support for online meetings and presentations with up to 25 participants, a screenshot tool and more. Check out our previous post on TeamViewer 7 beta For Linux. The Windows version (which has been available for about 2 months) release notes can be found here.

Download TeamViewer 7

* Even though TeamViewer is packaged as a .deb or .rpm, it's not a native Linux application and it actually uses Wine (comes bundled with the TeamViewer package).

Orion: A New, Clear GTK 2/3 Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Orion is a new, clear GTK3 theme created by Satya, who's also behind other beautiful GTK and GNOME Shell / Cinnamon themes like Evolve, Shine, Minty, Ambiance Blue and others.

The GTK3 theme is powered by the Unico GTK3 engine, comes with a modified Boomerang Metacity theme and is compatible with GTK 3.2 (both GNOME Shell and Unity). Orion also includes a GTK2 theme, for compatibility with GTK2 applications.

As usual, Satya has uploaded the theme to his themes PPA so if you use Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, you can install it using the commands below:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:satyajit-happy/themes
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install orion-gtk-theme

For other Linux distributions, download Orion via DeviantArt.

Note: the theme is still work in progress.

Thanks to Satya for the tip!