How to Upgrade to VLC 2.2.0 (Stable) in Ubuntu 14.04

February 28, 2015 — Leave a comment

VLC 2.2.0

VLC 2.2.0, codename WeatherWax, finally goes stable. Here’s how to upgrade it in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS or Linux Mint 17.1 while it’s already made into Ubuntu repositories for 14.10 Utopic and 15.04 Vivid.

VLC 2.2.0 was released a few hours ago with numerous new features, fix more than one thousand bugs and improves the scope of the formats supported. Here are some of the new features:

  • Auto-rotation of phone movies, to fight Vertical Video Syndrome
  • Resume playback where you left off in all versions
  • Extensions API and repository to download extensions directly from the application
  • GPU 0-copy support for decoding and displaying using hardware
  • Subtitles download from the web, using OpenSubtitles
  • Audio core upgrade, notably to support short samples
  • Improved support for UltraHD codecs, H.265 and VP9
  • Support for BD-Java menus and overlay in Blu-Ray
  • Acceleration of VP9 and H.265/HEVC decoders
  • Support for encoding in H.265, Opus and VP9
  • Rewritten support for WMV, Ogg, MP4 and AVI, notably for seeking
  • Support for WebVTT, Ogg/VP8, Opus/MKV
  • Support for Digital Cinema Packages and encrypted DCP with KDM
  • Support for THP, Renderware videogames files
  • GPU accelerated auto-rotation, in OpenGL, Direct3D and Mediacodec
  • GPU 0-copy decoding-rendering for Linux using VDPAU
  • Support for HLSL shaders in Direct3D video output
  • OpenMAX IL improvements for Android, Linux and rPi
  • Support GStreamer codecs
  • Support for MMS split streams for audio selection (European Parliament)
  • Support FTPS (FTP/TLS) protocol
  • New decoder for VP8 and VP9 using libvpx for Linux distributions without avcodec
  • Improvements on Teletext, Subrip, and Tx3g subtitles
  • Support for MSN audio, Atrac3+, VP7, Bink, TAK, On2 AVC, DK3, DK4
  • Support for IMC, Vivo g723.1, Smacker, FIC, Auravision, Canopus Lossless
  • Support x264 and FFv1 codecs RGB modes
  • Support drag’n drop in the skins2 interface
  • Support of audio ducking in various audio outputs
  • Full list of features HERE

Install / Upgrade to VLC 2.2.0 in Ubuntu 14.04:

The 2.2.0 release is available in the Software Center for Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 15.04 out-of-the-box. Thanks to Doug McMahon, VLC 2.2.0 for 14.04 Trusty is available in this PPA.

1. To add the PPA, open terminal from menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media

Please read the PPA description before press Enter to continue adding the PPA.

VLC 2.2.0 PPA for Ubuntu 14.04

2. After adding the PPA, run below commands one by one to upgrade to the 2.2.0 release from previous version:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If you don’t have an earlier version installed, run:

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-*

Uninstall/Downgrade VLC:

To downgrade to previous release, install ppa-purge and purge the PPA which also downgrade packages installed from it:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:mc3man/trusty-media

To remove VLC, just run:

sudo apt-get remove vlc vlc-plugin-*
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Install Tethered Shooting App Entangle 0.6.1 in Ubuntu 14.04

February 27, 2015 — Leave a comment

Entangle Tethered Shooting

Entangle is an open-source software for “tethered shooting”, aka taking photographs with a digital camera completely controlled from the computer.

With a digital SLR camera Entangle allows:

  • Trigger the shutter from the computer
  • Live preview of scene before shooting
  • Automatic download and display of photos as they are shot
  • Control of all camera settings from computer

entangle tethered shooting for camera

Entangle is available in Ubuntu Software Center out-of-the-box, but Canonical does not provide updates for this software. Since Ubuntu repositories provide the 0.5.4 release for 14.04 LTS, Entangle has reached the 0.6.1 release recently with below changes:

  • Require GTK >= 3.4
  • Fix check for GIO package in configure
  • Add missing icons to Makefile
  • Follow freedesktop thumbnail standard storage location
  • Refactor capture code to facilitate plugin script automation
  • Fix bug causing plugin to be displayed more than once
  • Make histogram height larger
  • Strip trailing ’2′ from widget labels to be more friendly
  • Completely rewrite control panel display to show a small, user configurable subset from all the camera controls.
  • Remember custom list of camera controls per camera model
  • Hide compiler warnings from new glib atomic opertaions
  • Update to newer gnulib compiler warnings code
  • Remove broken double buffering code that’s no required when using GTK3
  • Remove use of deprecated GtkMisc APis
  • Allow camera picker list to show multiple lines
  • Remove crufty broken code from session browser that was breaking with new GTK versions
  • Disable libraw auto brightness since it totally overexposes many images, generally making things look worse
  • Fix memory leak handling camera events
  • Add keywords to desktop & appdata files

Install or Upgrade Entangle:

Entangle 0.6.1 is available in a third-party ppa for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10 and Linux Mint 17.1.

Open terminal from the Dash or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway

Entangle ppa

Then run below commands one by one to install Entangle. Or you can upgrade it through Software Updater if you’ve an old version installed.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install entangle

For photographers, there are more useful tools available in this PPA.

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Install / Upgrade to Krita 2.9 in Ubuntu 14.04/12.04/14.10

February 26, 2015 — 2 Comments

krita 2.9

The digital painting program Krita 2.9 was released today. This is the biggest Krita release that brings dozens of new features, improved functions, fixed bugs, spit and polish all over the place.

According to the official release note, eleven of the twelve Kickstarter-funded features are in the 2.9 release, and the last one will be included in the Krita 2.9.1.

Krita 2.9

Krita 2.9 comes with support for viewing images with multiple documents, ilustration transformation improvements, HDR painting support, painting and workflow improvements, filter and layer improvements, 3D texturing and image support, and many other changes. See the official release note for details.

Install Krita 2.9 in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 12.04, the latest Krita is available in the Krita Lime PPA.

UPDATE: Ubuntu 14.10 users can now upgrade to calligra 2.9 (include Krita 2.9) through Kubuntu Backports PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

To add the ppa, open terminal from the Dash or application menu. When it opens, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dimula73/krita

Then update system package cache:

sudo apt-get update

Finally install the latest Krita packages:

sudo apt-get install krita-testing krita-testing-dbg

NOTE: Krita 2.9 will be installed in /opt/ directory, you have to manually install the icons and launchers:

In terminal run below command to copy the launcher (.desktop) files from /opt/ to system directory:

cd /opt/project-neon/share/ && sudo cp -r applications/ /usr/share/

Then copy Krita icons to system icons directory:

cd /opt/project-neon/share/ && sudo cp -r icons/ /usr/share/

Finally create soft link to the Krita executable:

sudo ln -s /opt/project-neon/bin/krita /usr/bin/krita

Restart computer and you should be able to start Krita 2.9 from menu.

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Nvidia 346.47 Released With New GPUs Support and Fixes

February 25, 2015 — Leave a comment

Nvidia 346.47

Nvidia has recently released a new driver version 346.47 for Linux with new GPUs support and a few bug fixes.

According to the release highlight, Quadro K620M, Quadro K2200M, and GeForce GTX 965M GPUs are added supported in this driver release.

And below bugs are fixed:

  • Fixed a bug that could cause rendering corruption in GLX clients using PBOs and/or VBOs when using GLX indirect rendering.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Xinerama layouts which included X screens with ‘Option “UseDisplayDevice” “none”‘ to be represented incorrectly in the nvidia-settings control panel.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause glXSwapBuffer() to block for longer than necessary in multi-threaded GLX applications using the GLX_NV_delay_before_swap extension.
  • Fixed a bug that caused OpenGL applications using the NV_path_rendering extension to crash after a modeswitch event.
  • Fixed a bug that caused DisplayPort audio to stop working after monitors are hotplugged.

If you want to install or upgrade this Nvidia driver, download it from THIS PAGE and follow this guide to install it on your Ubuntu.

Or wait it to be built into Xorg Edge PPA.

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How to Install Ubuntu Touch’s Music App 2.0 in Ubuntu 15.04/14.10

February 25, 2015 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu Touch Music App 2.0

For those who are running Ubuntu 14.10 or Ubuntu 15.04, here’s how to easily install a desktop preview of the Music App 2.0 which will be installed on Ubuntu Touch devices.

I’ve tried this Music App a few days ago in Ubuntu 14.10, but got ‘std::runtime_error’ similar error although the bug has been marked as fixed.

Now the player works in my laptop. Don’t know why, all I did is remove the .cache/mediascanner-2.0 folder under my Home folder and restart computer when I was first time trying the app. Here are the screenshots:

Ubuntu Touch Music App main window

Music App playing

Install Music App via PPA in Ubuntu 15.04/Ubuntu 14.10:

1. Open terminal from the Dash or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:vthompson/ppa

Ubuntu Touch Music App PPA

2. After that, update package cache and install the Music App by running below two commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install music-app music-app-autopilot

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb packages directly from launchpad page.

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