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Archives For November 30, 1999

Gnome-Pie Application Launcher Sees A New Release

Last updated: January 18, 2015

Gnome-Pie

The Gnome-Pie project now goes alive by releasing the version 0.5.6, since the last release was announced in March 2013.

For those who have never heard of Gnome-Pie. It is a circular application launcher which is made of several pies, each consisting of multiple slices. The user presses a key stroke which opens the desired pie. By activating one of its slices, applications may be launched, key presses may be simulated or files can be opened.

See how it works:

The developer announced the 0.5.6 release recently with some fixes and planed to drop any GTK2 support and update Gnome-Pie fully to current software versions (GTK 3.14, Vala 0.27, etc.)

Changes in Gnome-Pie 0.5.6:

  • Transparency under Gnome 3.10+ (thank you, Raphaël Rochet)
  • Pie hotkeys start numbering with one (instead of zero, since the zero key is really hard to press)
  • option windows are now resizable since they are too small with certain window managers (e.g. Gala)

Install Gnome-Pie 0.5.6 in Ubuntu:

The binary packages have been made into PPA repository, available for Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 14.10.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing

Type in your user password when it asks and press Enter to continue.

After you added the PPA, update system package cache and install the app launcher by running below two commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gnome-pie

Once installed, start Gnome-Pie from the Dash. From the indicator applet on panel start its settings window and configure keyboard shortcuts and pie items.

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How to Install Caffeine Indicator 2.8 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: January 18, 2015

Caffeine is a simple indicator applet on Ubuntu panel that allows to temporarily prevent the activation of the screensaver, screen lock, and the “sleep” powersaving mode.

It’s helpful when you’re watching movies. Simply click active option inhibits Ubuntu desktop idleness. Works on Ubuntu Unity, Ubuntu Gnome, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu.

Install Caffeine in Ubuntu 14.04:

The developer has made the latest release (2.8.2 so far) into PPA repository available for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:caffeine-developers/ppa

After that, update package cache and install the indicator by running below two commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install caffeine

If you don’t want to add PPA, grab and install the ‘caffeine_2.8.2_all.deb’ from this page.

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How to Install NVIDIA 346.35 Stable Driver in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: February 25, 2015

NVIDIA 346.35, the first stable release of the 346.xx series driver, has been released with new features, improvements, and numerous bug fixes.

Instead of NVIDIA 340.xx series, the new driver becomes the Latest Long Lived Branch version of NVIDIA Linux drivers.

The 346.35 driver brings:

  • new GPUs support: GeForce 800A, GeForce 800M, GeForce GTX 970M, GeForce GTX 980M.
  • support for X.Org xserver ABI 19 (xorg-server 1.17)
  • support for decoding VP8 video streams using the NVCUVID API on GPUs with VP8 hardware decode support.
  • new EGL extensions support: EGL_EXT_device_base, EGL_EXT_platform_device, EGL_EXT_output_base
  • support for NVENC on GeForce GPUs.
  • the ability to increase the operating voltage on certain GeForce GPUs in the GeForce GTX 400 series and later. Voltage adjustments are done at the user’s own risk.
  • accelerated support for r8g8b8a8, r8g8b8x8, b8g8r8a8 and b8g8r8x8 RENDER formats.
  • support in nvidia-settings for a GTK+ 3 user interface on x86 and x86_64.
  • added the nvidia-settings option –use-gtk2 to force the use of the GTK+ 2 UI library

There are also numerous fixes and improvements, see the release highlight.

How to Install NVIDIA 346.35 in Ubuntu:

Before the xorg-edgers PPA updates for this driver, you can download & install the official NVIDIA package by following below steps:

1. Select download the official installer from links below:

32-bit Linux | 64-bit Linux | 32-bit ARM Linux

32-bit or 64-bit? Check your OS type by going to top-right corner shutdown menu (gear button) and clicking ‘About This Computer’

2. To be able to install the new driver, you have to remove the previous driver by running below command in a terminal window (Open terminal from the Dash or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard):

sudo apt-get remove nvidia* && sudo apt-get autoremove

3. You should also blacklist the open source nouveau driver by running below command to edit the config file:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf

Add below lines to the end and click save.

blacklist nouveau
blacklist lbm-nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0
alias nouveau off
alias lbm-nouveau off

4. You can also disable the Kernel Nouveau by running below commands one by one:

echo options nouveau modeset=0 | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau-kms.conf

sudo update-initramfs -u

5. Finally reboot your computer and when you’re at the login prompt press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2 ~ F6) to switch to command console. Login with your username and password.

6. When you’re at the black & white text console, the graphics session is still there and you can switch back by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7. You have to kill the graphics session by running below command:

sudo stop lightdm

Replace lightdm with gdm, mdm, or kdm for GNOME, Linux Mint, or KUbuntu.

7. At last give permission to the downloaded package and run it:

cd ~/Downloads && chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-*-346.35.run && sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-*-346.35.run

Follow the on screen prompts and when everything’s done reboot your computer. In next boot after log in, run sudo nvidia-xconfig to save your new nvidia configuration.

(Optional) To remove the driver, re-do step 5 & 6 and run:

cd ~/Downloads && sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-*-346.35.run --uninstall

Also undo the step 3 & 4 by removing the

cd /etc/modprobe.d/ && sudo rm blacklist-nouveau.conf nouveau-kms.conf && sudo update-initramfs -u

Good luck!

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Pragha Music Player 1.3.x Available in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: January 16, 2015


The lightweight Pragha music player has reached the 1.3.2 release. PPA updated for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Linux Mint 17/17.1.

For those who have never heard of Pragha, see the description below:

Pragha is a Lightweight Music Player for GNU/Linux, based on Gtk, sqlite, and completely written in C, constructed to be fast, light, and simultaneously tries to be complete without obstructing the daily work. ;)

A tiny history of the project:

Consonance, An excellent player emerged in the archlinux forums, was discontinued. The author, Sacamano said in his blog:

“Which doesn’t mean that it won’t be maintained. I would still be fixing bugs, but major feature additions are not in the pipeline, because I have completed all that I wanted to see in Consonance. It has been a fun project. :)”

Well.. Dissonance is the project to continue developing Consonance, and its result is Pragha Music Player. A New reproducer of music.. ;)

Pragha 1.3.2 was released a few a hours with following new features:

  • Add optional client-side-decorators support trying to follow Gnome3 HIG.
  • Can hide menubar and then append a gear menu on toolbar.
  • Add a infobar when some change on prefrences need restart.

Also there are a few UI improvements, various bug fixes, translations updates in this release. See the release page for details.

How to Install Pragha Music Player in Ubuntu:

The binary packages has been made into my personal ppa, available for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10 (Due to broken dependencies, the 12.04 build has been removed).

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/pragha

After that, check for updates and install the player via:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pragha

If you don’t want to add PPA, download & install the .deb package directly from the PPA page.

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How to Install The Latest qBitTorrent Release in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: January 15, 2015

Quick tutorial shows how to install the latest qBitTorrent client in Ubuntu 14.04 and keep it up-to-date while the default Ubuntu repositories provide an old version.

qBitTorrent is a free cross-platform BitTorrent client written in C++ and Qt. Its optional search engine is written in the Python programming language. It aims to provide a Free Software alternative to µtorrent.

While Ubuntu universe repositories provide the 3.1.8 release for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the latest qBitTorrent release has reached version 3.1.11. For the latest features, fixes and other changes see its news page.

Install/Upgrade qBitTorrent in Ubuntu:

To install the latest version of this Bittorrent client and receive future updates via Software Updater, add the official PPA by running below command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qbittorrent-team/qbittorrent-stable

Type in user password when it asks and hit Enter to continue. Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Linux Mint 13/17 are supported so far.

After that, start Software Updater and install updates to upgrade qBitTorrent. Or install it by running below commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Firefox 35 Released – How to Upgrade in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: January 14, 2015

Mozilla Firefox has reached the 35 release which brings improved “Hello” video chat tool, built-in support for H.264 on OS X via native APIs, improved high quality image resizing performance, support for the CSS Font Loading API, updated PDF.js, and numerous other changes.

Here’s the full list of changes (via the official release note):

  • Firefox Hello with new rooms-based conversations model
  • New search UI improved and enabled for more locales
  • Access the Firefox Marketplace from the Tools menu and optional toolbar button
  • Built-in support for H264 (MP4) on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) and newer through native APIs
  • Use tiled rendering on OS X
  • Improved high quality image resizing performance
  • Improved handling of dynamic styling changes to increase responsiveness
  • Implemented HTTP Public Key Pinning Extension (for enhanced authentication of encrypted connections)
  • Added support for the CSS Font Loading API
  • Resource Timing API implemented
  • CSS filters enabled by default
  • Changed JavaScript ‘let’ semantics to match the ES6 specification
  • Support for inspecting ::before and ::after pseudo elements
  • Computed view: Nodes matching the hovered selector are now highlighted
  • Network Monitor: New request/response headers view (more info)
  • Added support for the EXT_blend_minmax WebGL extension
  • Show DOM Properties context menu item in inspector
  • Reduced resource usage for scaled images
  • PDF.js updated to version 1.0.907
  • Non-HTTP(S) XHR now returns correct status code
  • Various security fixes

Upgrade Firefox in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 14.10, Firefox 35 will be soon made into the official Ubuntu repositories, available for upgrade through the Software Updater:

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How to Install OpenJDK 8 in Ubuntu 14.04 & 12.04 LTS

Last updated: January 13, 2015

OpenJDK Java 8 has been made into official Ubuntu repositories for 14.10 Utopic and higher. For Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and Linux Mint 17 users here’s how to install it from PPA.

OpenJDK 8 was released in March 2014. It’s available in Ubuntu Software Center for Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 15.04. Someone has reported in launchpad asking for packaging openjdk-8 in Ubuntu 14.04, but no luck so far.

As a workaround, you can install OpenJDK 8 from a PPA repository:

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:openjdk-r/ppa

Type in user password when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. After that, update system package cache and install OpenJDK 8:

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

3. If you have more than one Java versions installed on your system. Run below command set the default Java:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Type in a number to select a Java version.

And set default Java Compiler by running:

sudo update-alternatives --config javac

4. Finally check out current Java version by running:

java -version

It outputs something like this:

openjdk version "1.8.0_01-internal"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_01-internal-b04)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.40-b08, mixed mode)
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How to Install Latest Quod Libet Music Player in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: January 12, 2015

Quod Libet is an open-source music player, tag editor and library organizer that is able to handle libraries with over 10,000 songs.

Quod Libet is a GTK+ based audio player written in Python, using the Mutagen tagging library. The main design philosophy is that the user knows how they want to organize their music best and is built to be fully customizable and extensible using regular expressions.

The player works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, it supports most of the features you’d expect from a modern media player: Unicode support, advanced tag editing, Replay Gain, podcasts & internet radio, album art support and all major audio formats.

Install/Upgrade Quod Libet in Ubuntu:

While Ubuntu repositories provide an old version of this software, you can get the latest version (3.3.1 so far) from its PPA repository and receive future updates. Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04 and Linux mint are supported so far.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal and run:

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

After that, upgrade Quod Libet from an old version by running Software Updater and installing updates.

Or run below commands one by one to install it:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install quodlibet
In Howtos ,
 

Install The Official Telegram Desktop Client in Ubuntu

Last updated: January 11, 2015

Quick tutorial shows how to install official Telegram client in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04, Linux Mint, and Elementary OS.

Telegram Messenger is a cross-platform instant messaging system whose clients are open source and servers are proprietary software. Telegram users can exchange encrypted and self-destructing messages, photos, videos and documents (all files types are supported).

The official client for Telegram is available for many different platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Install Telegram Client in Ubuntu:

Ubuntu users can choose install the desktop client for Telegram from either the official binary package or an official PPA.

To install from the official binary package:

1. Download Telegram for Linux at the link below:

Not sure 32-bit or 64-bit? Go to top-right corner shutdown menu (the gear button) and select “About This Computer”, check it out at the Overview tab.

2. Extract the downloaded package in your file browser and run the executable from the result folder.

Don’t see the ‘Run’ option? Go the menu Edit -> Preferences -> Behavior tab -> choose “Run executable text file when they are opened” under Executable Text Files.

The first time running this app creates a desktop shortcut automatically on user’s local folder, so that next time you can directly launch Telegram from the Unity Dash or Application Menu.

To install from an unofficial PPA:

To install Telegram from PPA and receive future updates via Software Updater when a new release made into the PPA.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/telegram

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install telegram

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Linux Mint 17.1 Xfce Released [How to Upgrade]

Last updated: January 11, 2015

Linux Mint team finally announced the Xfce edition of Linux Mint 17.1. All editions (Cinnamon, MATE, KDE and Xfce) can upgrade from Linux Mint 17 to 17.1 via Update Manager.

Linux Mint 17.1 features Xfce 4.10, MDM 1.8, a Linux kernel 3.13 and an Ubuntu 14.04 package base. The Xfce edition also features:

  • Out of the box support for Compiz
  • Xfburn received Blu-Ray support
  • In the application menu, categories are now placed on the left and react to mouse hover by default (these options are configurable)
  • Moving a window towards the edge of the screen now tiles the window by default rather than switching to another workspace
  • Quick launchers for Firefox and the terminal were added by default in the Xfce panel
  • The panel clock applet is now used by default so you can see the current date by placing your mouse over it

The iso images for Linux Mint 17.1 Xfce as well as other editions are available for download at:

Linux Mint Download Page

To upgrade from Linux mint 17 to 17.1 see the official howto.

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