Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn finally reached the end of its life on July 23, 2015. No more package updates will be accepted to 14.10. That means 14.10 users won’t get latest software (e.g, Firefox, Thunderbird), security notices/fixes through Software Updater. And Launchpad PPAs will no longer update for 14.10.
Ubuntu 14.10 was released 9 months ago, on October 23, 2014. As a non-LTS release, it has a 9-month month support cycle and, as such, the support reached the end of life on last Thursday. Users of Ubuntu 14.10 may upgrade to Ubuntu 15.04 (ends on January 2016), or install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS which has a 5-year support (until 2019).
The 2.1.1 release of Audacity audio editor and recorder was released more than a week ago with some new features and fixes. Now it’s ready in PPA for Ubuntu users (unofficial).
Release highlights of Audacity 2.1.1:
The most visible new feature is scrubbing and seeking, including backwards play. Updates to Quick-Play also help with finding a precise position in the audio.
You can now install plug-ins without restarting Audacity or add and remove any effect or generator from the menus.
Over 50 bugs have been addressed with this release. Edits are now processed much faster in longer projects of a few hours duration.
Effects now have presets. A new Limiter replaces the Hard Limiter effect. There’s a new version of Vocal Removal, a cross-fade effect for combining clips on the same track and ‘classic filters’ available as an opt-in effect.
There’s also been lots of work behind the scenes, including VI usability enhancements and upgrade to new libraries.
The 2.1.1 release is available in PPA for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and their derivatives. Due to the old libsuil-0-0 library, Ubuntu 12.04 is excluded but the 2.1.0 release is available.
1. To add the PPA repository, open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command:
A new chapter selector window allows you to visually browse and select chapters from mkvs and other containers that support chapters.
Adaptive seeking (aka Skip Steps). The more times you press a button to seek in a period of time, the larger the jump forward or backward will be.
Audio and Subtitle Lists. For content that includes multiple audio and subtitle choices, you can select from a full list of choices, rather than manually searching through a spinner.
Language Add-ons and Expanded International Preferences. Now language translations get regularly updated to all users as the add-ons themselves update.
Improved Add-on Manager to make finding the add-ons you are looking for easier.
The new release also brings other improvements include: ffmpeg 2.6.3 update, improved Closed Captioning support in Live TV, fixed music video queuing, allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched, and Windows DXVA HEVC hardware decoding support.
Install / Upgrade Kodi 15.0 in Ubuntu:
Ubuntu 12.04 support has been dropped in Kodi PPA. Packages for Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17 and Elementary OS Freya will be made into PPA very soon.
1. To add PPA, open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
2. After adding PPA, you can install or upgrade Kodi as well as the encoder, addons via commands:
Quick tutorial shows how to install SopCast Player, GUI for SopCast p2p TV streaming, in Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid using PPA.
SopCast Player is designed to be an easy to use Linux GUI front-end for the p2p streaming technology developed by SopCast. It features an integrated video player (VLC), a channel guide, and bookmarks. Once SopCast Player is installed it simply “just works” with no required configuration.
Install SopCast Player in Ubuntu:
There’s a PPA repository available for Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04 and their derivatives (e.g., Mint 13/17, and Elementary OS Freya).
1. To add the PPA, open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. When it opens, run command:
Corebird, a native Gtk+ Twitter client for Linux desktop, gets a new release recently though there’s even not a release note.
Corebird 1.0.1 was released silently without a release note and even changelog file in its source tarball. The only change I can tell is that it now provides minimize, maximize, and close at top-left corner in Ubuntu 15.04 both Unity and Gnome Shell.
For Elementary OS Freya, the global menu (gear button) has been merged into header bar.
Install Corebird 1.0.1 in Ubuntu:
For Ubuntu 15.10 and Ubuntu 15.04 user, open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below commands one by one to get it from PPA:
For Elementary OS Freya and those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb installer from launchpad page.
UPDATE: Ubuntu 14.04 is not supported! If you REALLY want this app, first add Gnome Testing PPA (USING THE PPA COULD BREAK YOUR SYSTEM OR MAKE IT UNSTABLE!) and update your system cache, finally install the .deb from the previous link.
Gnome Terminal used to have an “Open Tab” option allows to open new terminal windows in tabs. Now the option is gone in Ubuntu 15.04.
The “Open Tab” option has been merged into “Open Terminal” option in Ubuntu 15.04, so it opens new terminals in either new windows or new tabs depends on the Preferences settings under General tab:
The shortcut key does not change, so you can now open Gnome Terminal in a new tab via either Ctrl+Shift+T or “Open Terminal” option:
Quick tutorial shows how to install latest FileBot, the ultimate tv renamer / subtitle downloader / sfv validator, in Ubuntu, and Linux Mint.
FileBot is the ultimate tool for organizing and renaming your movies, tv shows or anime, and music well as downloading subtitles and artwork. It’s smart and just works.
FileBot provides a simple user-interface tuned for drag-n-drop, renames and moves hundreds of media files in a matter of seconds, fetches episode info from TheTVDB, AniDB or TVRage, and auto detects names for Series/Anime and Movies.
It also features:
Powerful and full-featured cmdline interface and scripting interface for any kind of automation
Accurate and robust and simply awesome file / episode matching logic
Powerful and highly customizable episode naming scheme
Supports language preferences for series and episode titles
Supports movie identification and renaming via TheMovieDB
Reverse rename files using internal history or the original torrent file
Download subtitles from OpenSubtitles
Advanced logic for matching files to most suitable subtitles
Find exact subtitles on OpenSubtitles
Upload subtitles with movie hash to OpenSubtitles
Integrated subtitle viewer for srt, ass and sub files
and more …
Install FileBot in Ubuntu:
FileBot is available in Ubuntu Software Center, but it costs $9.95. To install the latest release (4.6 so far) for free, follow below steps.
1. Install Oracle Java. Since version 4.5, Oracle Java >= 8 is required for this software.
Open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste and run below commands one by one:
Laptop Mode Tools, a Linux power-saving package, gets an update recently with many important bug-fixes. All users are recommended to upgrade to the new release.
Laptop Mode Tools controls the “laptop mode” feature of the Linux kernel. It saves power by spinning down hard drives, and in addition, it can be configured to tweak all sorts of other power-related things.
Version 1.67 was released 10 months after the last 1.66 release, which brings more reliably check for Device Mapper based devices, which is common these days with Crypt and LVM. See changes:
Relax minimum window size to accomodate low res screens
Fix variable name to comply with our “constants” assuptions
Get more aggressive in power saving for Intel HD Audio
Account Device Mapper devices
Add swsusp freeze support
Switch battery-level-polling default to True
Detect ethernet carrier, early and relibaly
changes the boolean setting *_ACTIVATE_SATA_POWER to a customizable *_SATA_POLICY, with backward-compatible defaults and documentation
How to Install Laptop Mode Tools 1.67:
NOTE: Laptop Mode Tools conflicts with TLP (they are doing the same thing). You have to remove TLP if installed before installing this software!
Open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below commands one by one to install it in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17, or Freya from PPA:
Oracle finally announced the stable release of Virtualbox 5.0, which provides increased security with encryption and improved performance.
According to the press release, the 5.0 release supports the latest guest or host operating systems including: Mac OS X Yosemite, Windows 10, Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, other Linux operating systems, and legacy operating systems. Oracle Virtualbox 5.0 also features:
Paravirtualization Support for Windows and Linux Guests
Improved CPU Utilization
Guest os can directly recognize USB 3.0 devices and operate at full 3.0 speeds
On all host platforms, Windows, Linux and Oracle Solaris guests now support “drag and drop” of content between the host and the guest.
Disk Image Encryption, using the industry standard AES algorithm with up to 256 bit data encryption keys (DEK).
There are also numerous of other changes and bug fixes, including:
New User Interface settings page for customizing status-bar, menu-bar and guest-content scaling
VMs can be started in separate mode.
VM guest-content scaling support (including 3D acceleration)
Hotplugging support for SATA disks
support for Linux distributions using systemd without sysv emulation
upgraded to rdesktop-vrdp 1.8.3
To see the full list of changes, go to the wiki page.
How to Install Virtualbox 5.0 in Ubuntu:
1. Before installing the new release, you may first remove the previous release on your system via Synaptic Package Manager, Software Center, or by running below command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):
select i386 for 32-bit, or amd64 for 64bit system. Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 12.04 are supported so far.
3. After downloaded the package, click to open with Software Center/Gdebi and finally install the Virtualbox 5.0
Addition, to receive future updates and fixes for VBox 5 through Software Updater or your Package Manager, you may add the official Virtualbox repository for Linux
The command creates a separate source file for VBox and writes the repository address into it. $(lsb_release -cs) automatically detects your release name, Linux Mint and Elementary OS users have to replace it (e.g., trusty for Mint 17.x and Freya, precise for Mint 13 and Luna).
Also download and insert the keyring so that Ubuntu trusts the package from that repository:
Xpad is a sticky note application for Linux desktop with a simple and nice design. Each xpad session consists of one or more open pads and you can set different fonts and colors on each of them.
By toggling the toolbar and window decorations, you can easily change the look of the pads. A pad can contain different stylings. Keyboard shortcuts and undo/redo are supported.
There’s also a help option shows you how to use this simple sticky notes application.
install xpad in Ubuntu:
Xpad is available in Ubuntu universe repositories. You have to do nothing special, just open Ubuntu Software Center search for and install the xpad package.
