Linux

fresh-Wood is lighter Gnome shell theme with a real wood-looking panels, workspace-thumbnail-indicators and backgrounds. The theme is compatible with Gnome 3.2 / Gnome Shell Cinnamon 1.2....

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A new ParallelCPU module allows the N-dimensional array supporting extension to Perl to make better use of systems with many cores when manipulating arrays

Jared Smith has stepped down from leading the Fedora Linux distribution and is being replaced by Robyn Bergeron

The Trimble Yuma from SDG Systems is a rugged dust- and water-resistant tablet computer with a 7-inch touchscreen display that runs the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon is calling for participants to organise hands-on meetings around the world to improve the Linux distribution

Airtime is free open source radio automation software developed by Sourcefabric. It enables you to take the complete control of your radio station via the web. Airtime offers a number of very useful...

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Jonathan Riddell has announced that Canonical will no longer fund his work after Kubuntu 12.04, and Kubuntu will be treated just like Edubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu. This means Kubuntu will be developed exclusively by volunteers.
The reason behind the decision is that Kubuntu "has not been a business success":

This is a rational business decision, Kubuntu has not been a business success after 7 years of trying, and it is unrealistic to expect it to continue to have financial resources put into it.

But it was very hard for Kubuntu to succeed, considering it was already treated as a second class citizen: there were no download links on the ubuntu.com website and no option to log in to Kubuntu in the official Ubuntu flavor, so this isn't exactly a surprise.
Jonathan will continue to work for Canonical, but he will be reassigned to other tasks such as Qt, which is now installed by default in Ubuntu and used by Unity 2D.
via Ars

Impressive is a cross-platform tool to display presentations in a stylish way. The application supports PDF files or a folder containing images and besides beautiful slide transitions, Impressive features some useful presentation tools like: highlight boxes, which can be used to draw attention to a specific part of the slide, spotlight effect which is kind of like a highlight box but dynamic, and a screen overview which you can use to easily select a slide.
Impressive is highly customizable too, but unfortunately there's no GUI front-end (at least, that I know of). However, the default settings should be good enough for most people and to run it, all you have to do is open a terminal and type: "impressive /path/to/some_presentation.pdf" or "impressive /path/to/image/folder/" and the presentation should start.

Basic Impressive usage:

- Use left click to advance to a new slide and right click to go back to the previous slide (the arrow keys work too).

- To create a highlight box, draw a rectangle using your left mouse button:


- For a dynamic highlighting (spotlight effect), press the ENTER key - you can adjust its size using the mouse wheel:


- To zoom in/out, press the "z" key

- For an overview of all your slides, press TAB:


Impressive also comes with many command line options: you can configure the transitions, rotate pages, specify the window geometry, set the start page, change the duration and so on. To see all the available options, type:

impressive --help

You can also check out the Impressive documentation online.


Here's quick video I've recorded, demoing Impressive:


(if the video doesn't show up, click here)

Download Impressive

Impressive is available in the Ubuntu repositories so if you use Ubuntu, simply click the button below to install it:

Install Impressive
If you prefer to install Impressive from the command line, open a terminal and copy/paste the following command:

sudo apt-get install impressive

Download Impressive source or Windows (portable) binaries download it via Sourceforge.

Protected Mode is designed to significantly improve the security of Flash in Firefox and a beta version is now available for download

Linux 3.0.20 and 3.2.5 fix a headline-grabbing problem with the PCIe power-saving technology ASPM

At FOSDEM, Daniel Berrange presented libvirt-sandbox, which sandboxes programs in a VM or a container without first requiring the user to set up an operating system there

Canonical is no longer paying Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell to work on Kubuntu and is making the KDE version of Ubuntu a fully community-supported distribution

A vDSO (virtual dynamic shared object) is an alternative to thesomewhat cycle-expensive system call interface that the GNU/Linux kernelprovides. But, before I explain how to cook up your own vDSO, in this brief jaunt downoperating system lane, I cover some basics of vDSOs, what they are and whythey are useful. more>>

It's the first update since 2006 for the Commons Validator Java library for validating common forms, codes, numbers, addresses and strings, while Commons Configuration moves to requiring Java 1.5 as a minimum to perform

Versions 1.7.5 and 2.5.1 of the open source content management system close two information disclosure vulnerabilities; the update to Joomla! 2.5.x also fixes 30 bugs found in the prevoius release

Here we are, talking about installing stuff from PPAs, but we've never posted more about the PPAs themselves. So here's a short guide on how to use a Launchpad PPA in Ubuntu.
Launchpad PPAs ("Personal Package Archive") are repositories hosted on Launchpad which you can use to install (or upgrade) packages that are not available in the official Ubuntu repositories.
The packages are built on the Launchpad servers (not on the users' computers), for the specified Ubuntu version(s). Because the packages are built against a certain Ubuntu version, it's not recommended to use them in Debian for instance (they might not be compatible and can cause conflicts).

How to add a PPA

A PPA can be added either from the command line or using a GUI.

Add a PPA from the command line: I guess you already know that you can add a PPA using the "add-apt-repository" command, but in case you're new to PPAs, here's how to do it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:someppa/ppa

Example:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3

After adding a PPA, you'll also need to update your software sources, so the packages available in this newly added PPA can be "seen" by your computer. This can be done using the following command:

sudo apt-get update

Add a PPA using a GUI (Ubuntu Software Center / Software Sources): A PPA can be added using a GUI too. To do this, open "Software Sources" - in recent Ubuntu versions, this can be done by going to Ubuntu Software Center > Edit > Software Sources. Then, on the "Other Software" tab, click "Add" and enter the PPA under the same "ppa:someppa/ppa" form. 
The Launchpad blog has posted a video on how to do this, a while back:




As you can see in the video above, adding a PPA this way also updates the software sources so you don't have to run "sudo apt-get update".

How to remove (delete) a PPA

To remove a PPA means to only delete the repository from your system, without removing any packages you may have installed / upgraded from that PPA. 



Here is how to remove a PPA using the command line:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:someppa/ppa

Example:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:webupd8team/gnome3

Remove a PPA using a GUI: A PPA can also be removed by opening Software Sources (Ubuntu Software Center > Edit > Software Sources), then going to the "Other Software" tab, selecting the PPA you want to remove and then clicking the "Remove" button.
Each PPA should have two lines here, one for the compiled packages and one for the source, so remove both lines.
There's also a third method of removing a PPA: by deleting the .list file from /etc/apt/sources.list.d (see below).

The PPA .list file

When you add a PPA, a new .list file is created under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/. The files are named based on the PPA name and your Ubuntu version, like this: "someppa-ppa-oneiric.list".

Example: when adding the ppa:webupd8team/gnome3 PPA in Ubuntu Oneiric, the list file should look like this "webupd8team-gnome3-oneiric.list".

Here's how a .list file content looks like:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/gnome3/ubuntu oneiric main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/gnome3/ubuntu oneiric main

Like I've explained above, each PPA should have two lines here, one for the compiled packages (first) and one for the source code (second).

It's good to know where these .list files are located in case you add a PPA and want to edit it: either because of a bug that doesn't add it correctly (I've seen it quite often), or because you want to modify the Ubuntu version (in my example above, you would need to replace "oneiric" with some other Ubuntu version) in case you move the PPAs to another computer running a different Ubuntu version, manually enable/disable the PPAs (adding "#" in front of a PPA line disables it) and so on. Some of thse operations can also be performed using Software Sources (already covered in this post).

How to disable a PPA

Disabling a PPA means you won't receive any updates from that PPA anymore, but it does not remove any installed / upgraded packages. The advantage of disabling a PPA instead of removing it is that you can easily re-enable it.
To disable a PPA, open Software Sources (Ubuntu Software Center > Edit > Software Sources) and uncheck the box next to the PPA you want to disable. Remember to disable both lines: the main and the source code line.

In the same way you can also re-enable a PPA.

How to purge a PPA

Purging a PPA means not only to disable the PPA, but also to downgrade any packages you've upgraded from that PPA, to the version available in the official Ubuntu repositories.


Here's an example: let's say you've added the Unity Staging PPA in Ubuntu 12.04 and upgraded to the latest Unity from trunk. Something goes wrong and you want to go back to the Unity version available in the official Ubuntu 12.04 repositories - in this case, you can use PPA Purge to purge the Unity Staging PPA and all the packages upgraded from this PPA should return to the version available in the official Ubuntu 12.04 repositories.
To be able to purge a PPA, you need to install "ppa-purge":

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

To purge a PPA, you must use the following command:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:someppa/ppa

For example, to purge the Unity Staging PPA, you would use:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:unity-team/staging

If the 'ppa-purge' command fails for some reason, you can't run 'ppa-purge' again unless you re-enable the PPA - see how to re-enable it above (under "How to disable a PPA").

Purging a PPA can be a bit tricky sometimes, because if a package installed from a PPA doesn't exist in the official Ubuntu repositories, it can't be downgraded and PPA Purge won't remove it either, so you'll have to remove it manually. But the PPA Purge purpose is to restore the original packages from the Ubuntu repositories in case something goes wrong when upgrading some packages from a PPA, and for this purpose, PPA Purge usually works great.

Also see: Y PPA Manager, a tool you can use to easily add, remove, purge, search for PPAs and more.

gMusicBrowser is a highly customizable music player that works great with large music libraries. The application comes with built-in layouts which can make gMusicBrowser look like Exaile, Rhythmbox, Audacious and so on, MPRISv2 support and it even has simple mass-tagging and mass-renaming, among many other features.
gMusicBrowser 1.1.9 has been released with new layouts (some you may already know if you've used the Shimmer Project PPA), MPRISv2 fixes, updated cover finder plugin and more.

Most important changes in gMusicBrowser 1.1.9:

• new layouts and layout fixes
• add SongInfo & PictureBrowser widget
• improve songs-from-album menu
• mpris2 plugin fixes
• m4a tags fixes
• fix problems with ubuntu overlay scrollbars
• cover finder plugin: update google image parsing
• fix "presenting" window not working in some cases
• fix lyrics3v2 tags ignored
• write to all tags when multiple id3v2 tags are present
• more

According to its developer, gMusicBrowser 1.1.9 is a release candidate so you might find bugs - if you do, report them @ GitHub.

Download gMusicBrowser (includes .deb and source files)

Arch Linux users can get the latest gMusicBrowser via AUR.


via Lffl.org

{lang: 'en-GB'} The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. The Precise Pangolin Alpha 2 Release of Ubuntu 12.04 is a developer snapshot to give you a very early glance at the next version of Ubuntu. (...)Read the rest of Ubuntu [...]

WiFix for Linux is a great tool that aims to simplify wireless card detection and driver installation under Linux by downloading, compiling and installing the appropriate driver for a user’s...

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The Battle of wesnoth just got a lot tougher, compelling and better, as this fascinating game got its latest stable release- Battle of Wesnoth 1.10. With newer features and Campaigns will continue to...

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LinuxMint 12 KDE has been released, this edition comes with the latest and recently released KDE 4.7.4. This is the first release of Linux Mint using Hybrid ISO images. Traditionally, tools such as...

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Last week we took a brief look at what major changes we should be expecting with the upcoming release of Ubuntu 12.04 ‘Precise Pangolin’ in April. This week, we’re going to take a...

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Unity 5.2 has just been uploaded to the Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin repositories, bringing multi monitor support, a new SUPER+TAB Launcher switcher, per workspace alt-tab switcher, a new shortcut hints overlay, "push to reveal" launcher behavior, a new home dash and the window auto-maximize functionality has been disabled on monitors with a resolution above 1024x600.
The new version was already available for testing in the Unity PPA and we've already covered some of these new features a while back (for a keyboard shortcuts hints overlay and SUPER+TAB Launcher switcher video, see THIS post).
The most important change in the latest Unity 5.2 is multi monitor support - a launcher with screen edge detection is now displayed on every monitor, so you don't have to travel to another display to launch or switch applications:

Unfortunately I only have one monitor so I couldn't test this new feature.


In Unity 5.2, the launcher uses a new "push to reveal" mode to avoid revealing the Launcher by accident. The new reveal mode can be further tweaked using CompizConfig Settings Manager:


Dash has a new home lens which displays recent files and applications, replacing giant shortcuts to files, applications and so on, which I'm sure many never actually used:


And here's the shortcut hints overlay again (it's displayed when pressing and holding the SUPER key), in case you've missed our previous post:


And finally, there's a new default behavior for the ALT + TAB switcher which now displays applications on the current workspace. This is configurable and you can use a multi-workspace ALT+TAB switcher by disabling the "Bias alt-gab to prefer windows on the current viewport" checkbox:

Besides the improvements above, there's also a huge list of bug fixes - you can read the complete changelog for Unity 5.2 here.

via Didrocks; credits for the first screenshot: slo-tech.com

{lang: 'en-GB'} DownVerter® is free and easy to use application to download and convert videos from YouTube. DownVerter® allows you to choose between mkv and mp4 files to download from YouTube. You could choose to just download the file or download it convert it into MP3, AVI, 3GP, MP4, MOV or WMV format. (...)Read the [...]

Humble Indie Bundles are a popular package that is growing in popularity with each release. The previous release of Humble Indie Bundle 4 was in December last year, this time around it is a special,...

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Bitwig, the Germany based international software music software company founded by music enthusiasts, has announced their new product: Bitwig Studio. The software provides natural environment to...

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Last week saw the release of the much-awaited Oil Rush game by Unigine Corp. It is a unique real-time basedTower defense game that is developed on the proprietary cross-platform Unigine...

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A content management system is a centralized repository for your content. A Web site is a composite of decentralized fragments that are assembled on the edge, in just-in-time fashion as the content is being delivered to users. If it's not a Web site, what does a CMS do? more>>

Mozilla Thurnderbird 10.0 has been released, the new release comes with some imrovements and bug fix. This new version of Thunderbird come with the following changes, New ability to search the Web,...

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{lang: 'en-GB'} OpenShot Video Editor is a free, open-source video editor for Linux. OpenShot can take your videos, photos, and music files and help you create the film you have always dreamed of. Easily add sub-titles, transitions, and effects, and then export your film to DVD, YouTube, Vimeo, Xbox 360, and many other common formats. [...]

Creating a live Linux USB stick isn't anything new. And, in fact, the ability to have persistence with a live CD/USB stick isn't terribly new. What many people might not be aware of, however, is just how easy it is to make a bootable USB stick that you can use like a regular Linux install. more>>

Razor-qt is a new desktop environment based on the QT toolkit. I installed it from the PPA and gave it a quick go. It’s early days for the project, but it might eventually become a refuge for lovers of KDE 3 in the same way that Xfce has become popular with people who want to recreate the Gnome 2.x experience. more>>

{lang: 'en-GB'} Mounting disc image files (.iso, .img, .dmg, etc) in Ubuntu isn’t hard. There are a number of applications available designed to carry out the task.But Mounty, a system tray applet, is probably the easiest of them. (...)Read the rest of Mounty - Simple disk image mounting tool (26 words) © admin for Ubuntu [...]

{lang: 'en-GB'} XNOISE is a media player for Gtk+ with a slick GUI, great speed and lots of features. Unlike Rhythmbox, Banshee or itunes, Xnoise uses a tracklist centric design. The tracklist is a list of video or music tracks that are played one by one without being removed. This gives you the possibility to [...]

Portability is a huge advantage that Linux enjoys over most other desktop operating systems as most major distros work very well when installed to a flash drive. However, there are still machines in service that just won't play ball when it comes to USB booting. Fortunately, I found a nice little utility that can work around this problem. more>>

{lang: 'en-GB'} Ubuntu is a free, open-source computer operating system with 20 million users worldwide. This 30 page guide was written for beginners and will tell you everything you need to know about the Ubuntu experience. You will learn how to install and setup Ubuntu on your computer, find technical support in your community, understand [...]

{lang: 'en-GB'} A wallpaper for those who are new to Ubuntu and want to know some command lines. (...)Read the rest of Ubuntu Noob Command line Guide (13 words) © admin for Ubuntu Geek, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: desktop, Ubuntu Noob Command Guide Related posts Zik - [...]

Perl has been around for more than 20 years. During that time, it has receivedits share of both praise and criticism, and lots ofmisconceptions surround it. Much of this stems from long-outdatednotions of what Perl used to be, but have nothing to do with what Perlactually is today. more>>

{lang: 'en-GB'} This tutorial will explain how to show desktop from command line in ubuntu.You can use xdotool to do this. xdotool lets you programatically (or manually) simulate keyboard input and mouse activity, move and resize windows, etc. It does this using X11′s XTEST extension and other Xlib functions. (...)Read the rest of Ubuntu Tip:How [...]

I've realized I've missed out on a huge area of computationalscience—chemistry. Many packages exist for doing chemistryon your desktop. This article looks at a general tool calledavogadro. It can do computations of energy and gradient values.Additionally, it cando analysis of molecular systems, interface to GAMESS and import andexport from and to several file formats. more>>