Smuxi is a free and user-friendly IRC / Twitter / XMPP client inspired by Irssi, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
Smuxi supports nick colors which are identical across channels and networks, a Caret Mode as seen in Firefox that allows to navigate through the messages using the keyboard, theming with colors and fonts, configurable tray-icon support, optional stripping of colors and formattings and convenience features like CTCP support, channel search and nickname completion. It has a tabbed document interface, tabbed user interface, and support for multiple servers.
Smuxi 0.10 was released recently with new navigation, scripting support and enhanced Twitter. See the release note for details.
Smuxi 0.10 in Ubuntu Gnome Desktop:
Smuxi 0.10 in Ubuntu Unity Desktop:
Install Smuxi via PPA:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below to add the PPA:
This simple tutorial shows you how to install the Sublime Text 3 in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty LTS via PPA repository.
Sublime Text is a popular text and source code editor somewhat similar to TextMate, available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X.
The Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. Webupd8 Team has made an installer script into PPA which automatically downloads the Sublime Text 3 archive from its website and installs it on Ubuntu. The PPA does not host any Sublime Text 3 files.
Install Sublime Text 3:
To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, copy and paste below command into terminal and hit enter:
Qmmp 0.7.4 (Qt-based Multimedia Player) has been announced a hour ago. This release, the WinAmp-like music player brings Windows support. As well as that, Qmmp 0.7.4 added ffmpeg 2.1 support and various bug fixes.
Changes in Qmmp 0.7.4:
added Galician translation
added ffmpeg 2.1 support
added m3u8 playlist extension
improved ReplayGain support
fixed 24/32 bit mode
added clipping to prevent overflow
improved cdaudio plugin
added Windows support
added track cache
fixed proxy support
fixed localization of the wildmidi plugin
fixed case sensitivity while checking file extensions
fixed gcc 4.8 warnings
fixed memory leak
fixed several Windows-only bugs
fixed parsing of the m3u files with backslashes
fixed problem with absolute paths
fixed adding files from command line under Windows
fixed Meta/Win modifier in the global hotkey plugin
fixed Japanese translation.
Install Qmmp 0.7.4 in Ubuntu:
To install the latest Qmmp 0.7.4 in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint and their derivatives, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run commands below one by one:
Instantbird, the instant messaging client now is at version 1.5 which has updated to Mozilla 25 and brings various improvements. This simple tutorial is going to show you how to install Instantbird in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, and Ubuntu 12.04.
What’s New in Instantbird 1.5
Creating a new conversation tab has been made easier.
Clicking the ‘+’ button in a conversation window shows a list of conversations that can be started with a single click.
The list is sorted with a frecency algorithm, taking into account how often and how recently you’ve talked to each contact.
This list also automatically includes the channels advertised by the IRC servers you are connected to.
New tooltips that better fit the style of Instantbird
Improved Multi-user chats user interface:
Participants now have context menus that allow you to open private conversations or add them as buddies.
Highlighted nicks in chat rooms now have tooltips and context menus.
Auto-joined chat rooms that have been put on hold will stay on hold after a restart.
A list of alternate nicks for IRC can be configured, in case your preferred nick is taken when you connect.
about: pages (e.g. about:config) can now easily be opened with the /about command (e.g. /about config).
Retina display support on Mac OS X.
Google Talk and Hangouts Android users are now shown as mobile.
Google Hangouts users will no longer appear as always typing.
Better support for displaying RTL languages in conversations.
The vKontakte protocol was removed as the vKontakte service dropped support for connecting with an XMPP client.
New for developers: New API to add tab panels with arbitrary content to conversation windows: in-code documentation.
Updated to Mozilla 25.
Various minor bugs and a few crashers fixed.
Install Instantbird in Ubuntu
Ubuntu Unity users can ALWAYS do below steps to install instantbird. If you’ve already installed a previous version, remove it.
5. Now you’re able to launch instantbird from Unity Dash. For 64 bit system, you may install run below command in Ubuntu 13.10 and higher (install ia32-libs in Ubuntu 13.04 and earlier,):
Want to change your Linux notebook desktop to an unsupported resolution? Well, there’s a small Nautilus script called newrez. It provides an graphical interface and lets your type in a resolution even higher than your display’s physical dimensions!
Newrez does NOT “over-drive” the actual hardware. Instead, it defines a higher-resolution display on the netbook’s VGA port, and scales it to the LCD.
You are not restricted to “standard” resolutions. Values like 1100×730 or 1350×900 or even 1400×700 will work just fine (and a few-pixel adjustment automatically applied if needed). Setting to ‘default’ will return everything back to normal.
This script can also be run directly from the command line, as in “newrez 1280×800” or “newrez default”. This makes it a simple matter to switch to create scripts or icons that set your most common resolutions, or to include resolution changes into other scripts or launchers.
NOTE: At present, this will not work if you use the vendor-supplied Nvidia or ATI driver.
If the laptop lid is closed and re-opened, you MAY find the the mouse is constrained to an area the size of the default resolution. This is caused by xrandr. Re-execute newrez to fix this.
Linux Mint 16 “Petra” KDE & Xfce has been released on 22 Dec. Both releases feature Xfce 4.10 / KDE 4.11, MDM 1.4, a Linux kernel 3.11 and an Ubuntu 13.10 package base. Let’s see what’s NEW in these two release and how to upgrade from a previous version of Linux Mint.
Nomacs is a small and fast image viewer which handles the most common image formats including RAW images. Additionally it is possible to synchronize multiple viewers on same computer or via LAN. It allows to compare images and spot the differences (e.g. schemes of architects to show the progress).
Nomacs image viewer works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. The latest version now is at 1.6.2 and here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint and their derivatives via PPA repository.
New features added in Nomacs 1.6:
Grid View for Thumbnails
Image Mosaicing Tool
Gif Player (Pause Animated Images and View Frame by Frame)
WebP on all platforms
Customizable Mouse Wheel
French Translation
Video:
Install Nomacs:
Ubuntu and Linux Mint users can easily install the latest version from PPA repository.
To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:
Enlightenment desktop environment 0.18 was finally released. It’s been exactly one year since the last major release of Enlightenment.
According to the announcement, the compositing window manager is more stable than E17 and now has Wayland client support along with a new teamwork module.
Enlightenment DR 0.18 also has a new music-control module, bluez4 BLuetooth module, an AppMenu DBus module, and a conf_comp module for controlling compositor settings.
Making this annual Enlightenment update more exciting is also better systemd integration, the internal theme merged into Elementary, RandR and binding config domains have been split into separate files, and many file-manager improvements. Enlightenment’s file manager improvements for version 0.18 include UDisks2 support, more accurate directory listings, and other improvements.
Install E18 via PPA in Ubuntu:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one to install e18 from PPA (coming soon) in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and their derivatives:
SoundKonverter, the KDE audio converter, Replay Gain tool and CD ripper now is at version 2.0.5 and 2.0.90 (2.1.0 rc1).
According to the changelog, soundKonverter 2.0.5 added Catalan, Swedish, Chinese (Taiwan), and Romanian translations. 2.0.90 added following new features:
Hide main window when started with –replaygain argument
Option to eject CD after ripping has been completed (enabled by default)
New space holder for the “meta data” naming mode that contains the source directory
Configuration options for cdparanoia
icedax ripper plugin
Copy album artist tags
Remember last folder for add files/directory/playlist dialogs
Add symlinked files to file list
SoundKonverter Features:
Convert audio files between many formats
Change sample rate and sample size during conversion
Apply effects like normalize during conversion
Convert the audio stream from video files to audio files
Convert multiple files at once
Calculate Replay Gain for many formats
Replay Gain tool for calculating and removing Replay Gain tags
Calculate Replay Gain for multiple files or file stets at once
Conversion and Replay Gain calculation is very scalable, the conversion of 10000 files or more is not a problem
Copy tags and covers when converting files (note: for ogg/METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE, flac and asf/wma files, taglib 1.7 or higher is needed)
Rip multiple audio CDs at once
Retrieve audio CD information from CDDB and MusicBrainz
Easy to use, just choose a file format and a quality level
Detailed control, if you want to choose the conversion settings in more detail, simply switch to the “detailed” tab
Manage your preferred conversion options with profiles
Contextual help, e.g. if you don’t know what the speex format is, just click on the “info” button next to it.
Or if you want to add a file that isn’t supported, soundKonverter will tell you how to enable the format if possible.
Possibility to configure which backend shall be used for which codec – or let soundKonverter optimize that for you.
Every time you install or remove backends soundKonverter will suggest optimizations if possible.
Possibility to integrate soundKonverter in other applications or scripts by using its command line interface
Data recovery in case of a crash
Install SoundKonverter in Ubuntu Linux:
The installers for CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, RedHat, OpenSuse, Ubuntu are available in this page.
For Ubuntu users, use the Deb package for xUbuntu 12.04 which works good in my Ubuntu 13.10 64 bit machine.
Looking for a calendar app? Besides Google Calendar, there’s a good choice for Ubuntu Linux users, called rainlendar, which a highly customizable desktop calendar that keeps your events and tasks and reminds your with alarms.
Rainlendar supports events and tasks which both are kept in separate lists.
You’ll get notified in advanced before the event is due so that you don’t forget your important events. It is also possible to snooze the alarm if you want to get reminded about it later.
Rainlendar Alarm
All the data is stored in the standard iCalendar format (RFC2445) which means it easy to transfer the events between most calendar applications.
Rainlendar comes with a few skins, you can get some from internet. There’s a link in settings page.
Install Rainlendar:
This app works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. EXE, DEB, DMG files and source code are available in this page
Ubuntu users need to install the required package tofrodos which is available in Ubuntu Software Center.