Opera web browser for Linux finally goes stable by releasing the Opera 26 which is based on Chromium 39.
Opera for Linux is 64-bit only. It comes with all the same features as Opera for Windows and Mac, including Speed Dial, the Discover feature, Opera Turbo, bookmarks and bookmark sharing, themes, extensions and more.
An official repository for Debian/Ubuntu based system is available for receiving automatic Opera updates.
Install Opera 26 in Ubuntu 14.04 and Other Releases:
Just download the .deb package from the link below and click to open with Ubuntu Software Center and finally install the browser:
While the installing process, you’ll be prompts to add the Opera Stable repository. To enable flash, just search for and install the package pepperflashplugin-nonfree from Ubuntu Software Center.
Want to organize your photographs into a proper date and time based directory structure? Pivot is a free and open-source tool that organizes your images from the hard drive or directly from the camera. The organization is mainly based on the creation date and time of the images.
Pivot features:
copy photographs and videos from the camera to a pre-selected folder on the hard drive
copy photographs and videos from a folder on the hard drive to a pre-selected other folder
flexibly setup up the renaming process of the copying, including sub folders creation (e.g. by year and/or album)
setup albums based on the creation date of files.
adapt time differences of files from different cameras. This includes EXIF meta data adaptation
setup multiple destination targets. For instance, one destination is the actual gallery, the other one a backup path. You can:
(de-)select every file individually for each destination
choose different naming conventions for each destination
preview the copy results, before actually copying
rename existing files to fit with the newly copied files (only changing of numbering, including changing the number of digits to match the overall number)
add comments to files and hence, to the destination copy of the files, as well – if you wish so.
adapt a lot of settings to your need
remember already copied files. Depending on the settings, these files won’t be copied again.
recognize duplicate files based on a MD5 hash. Only one of these duplicate files will be copied – depending on the user settings.
recognize file times on different ways, if no meta data is present (i.e. for videos)
save adapted file data, as well as album data between sessions
take care of raw/jpeg combinations in the way you like (e.g. same numbering)
Screenshots:
Install Pivot Organization Tool in Ubuntu:
The binary package is available in PPA for Ubuntu 14.04. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:
For those who don’t want to add the PPA, grab the .deb package directly from the ppa page and click to open with Ubuntu Software Center and finally install the software.
(Optional) To remove the PPA as well as the software, run:
Sigil EPUB editor finally reaches 0.8.x release recently with new feature Plugin Support and various bug fixes. Here I’ll show you how to install it in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10 and their derivatives.
Sigil is an open-source editor for EPUB e-books, works in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It supports both WYSIWYG and code-based editing of EPUB files, as well as the import of HTML and plain text files.
Sigil features:
Full UTF-16 and EPUB 2 specification support
Multiple views: book, code and preview view
WYSIWYG editing in book view
Table of contents generator with multi-level heading support
Metadata editor with full support for all metadata entries
Spell checking with default and user configurable dictionaries
Full regular expression (PCRE) support for find and replace
Supports import of EPUB and HTML files, images, and style sheets,
FlightCrew EPUB integration for EPUB compliance validator
Integrated API to external HTML and graphics editors
Screenshots:
How to Install Sigil 0.8.2 in Ubuntu:
The developer does not provides the binary packages of Sigil ebook editor for Ubuntu Linux, but there’s a third-party PPA contains the latest builds (Sigil 0.8.2 so far) for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.10.
To add the PPA and install Sigil, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:
For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb package directly from the PPA page and click to open it with Software Center and finally install the software.
(Optional) To remove the PPA as well as sigil epub editor:
Linux Mint Team finally announced the release of 17.1 “Rebecca” Cinnamon and MATE editions, which is a long term support release based on Ubuntu 14.04 that will be supported until 2019.
According to the release note, the Linux Mint 17.1 “Rebecca” comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.
Linux Mint 17.1 features:
Cinnamon 2.4 / MATE 1.8
MDM 1.8
Out of the box support for Compiz (MATE edition)
Linux kernel 3.13
Ubuntu 14.04 package base
Update Manager now groups packages together according to their source package.
Redesigned UI of Language Settings.
Redesigned Login Window Preferences.
System, Artwork, and Other Improvements.
Both the Linux Mint 17 and 17.1 RC can upgrade to the new release through Updater Manager. For the 17.1 RC release just install any level 1 update you haven’t installed already.
This is a step by step tutorial shows you how to install the real Ubuntu OS on USB stick to create a ‘Windows To Go’ style USB drive. Tested with Ubuntu 14.04
Requirements:
Before getting started, you need to prepare something:
A 8GB+ USB Drive.
A Ubuntu Live CD/DVD/USB. In the case below, I created a bootable Ubuntu Live USB from the .iso image.
A computer with an operating system installed.
And always backup your data on the USB flash drive!
To get started:
In my case I have a newly bought 16GB USB stick, a 4GB old USB stick, and a laptop multi-boot with Ubuntu based systems.
1. I don’t have a Ubuntu CD/DVD, so I decided to burn the Ubuntu .iso image into the old USB stick. To do so:
Start UNetbootin, and burn the .iso image into USB
2. Plug in the bootable USB drive to your computer and boot into the Live Ubuntu system.
IMPORTANT: For Windows 8 pre-installed machine, you have to disable “fast startup” and “secure boot” features.
To disable “fast startup”, go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > System Settings > Choose what the power buttons do and uncheck the Turn on fast startup box.
3. Now you’re in the Ubuntu Live system. Plug in the 8GB+ USB stick. Then launch Gparted from the Unity Dash.
In the top-right drop-down box select the USB drive (16GB in my case), and you should see something like below:
I have two USB flash drives plugged in the computer, the Hard Disk is /dev/sda, 4GB Live USB is /dev/sdb, and the 16GB USB drive is /dev/sdc.
4. From the right-click context menu, un-mount partitions on the USB drive and then delete them.
Click the green check mark button to apply changes, finally you have an unallocated flash drive, like:
When done, close Gparted partition manager.
5. Click the desktop shortcut “Install Ubuntu” to bring up the Ubuntu installation wizard.
Follow the wizard until it asks you to choose where to install Ubuntu. Select the last option “Something else” and click Continue to bring up partition table.
6. In the partition table, scroll down and highlight the “free space” under the USB drive (/dev/sdc in the case) and click the plus sign to create below partitions one by one:
a FAT32 (or fat16) partition (required)
must be /dev/sdc1 (or sdX1)
mount point /NAME_HERE (/UDISK in the case)
set the memory size by yourself, it can be used for normal data storage.
leave others default.
a EXT4 partition for Ubuntu (required)
mount point “/” (without quotes)
memory size 5G+
leave others default.
a swap partition (optional).
You can skip this if RAM is large enough and you don’t need hibernation feature.
And very important is select install boot-loader to the USB flash drive (/dev/sdc in the case).
7. When everything’s done, click Install Now and confirm to format the partitions (Pay attention on which partitions to be formatted).
Click continue and finish the wizard. Once the installation complete, restart your computer and boot with the ‘Ubuntu To Go’ USB drive and enjoy!
Lost your Ubuntu user password? Well, it’s not hard to reset your password even you’ve forgot the username and below is how to do it step by step.
1. To get started, you need to boot into Recovery Mode to get a console for running commands.
Start your machine and when you’re at the Grub boot loader, select boot with the entry says something below. You may find it under “Advanced Options for Ubuntu” option:
Ubuntu, with Linux 3.x.x … (recovery mode)
If you don’t see the grub menu, press and hold the Shift key after you pressed the Power button to boot the computer.
2. In the Recovery Mode options list, select “root Drop to root shell prompt” and hit Enter. You should see the black and white command prompt at the end of the screen:
3. Now run below commands one by one:
First remount the file system with read & write permission:
mount -o rw,remount /
If you don’t remember the username, below command will show you:
ls /home
To change user password:
passwd USER_NAME_HERE
Replace USER_NAME_HERE with your username. When it prompts, type in a new password and confirm.
The output “passwd: password updated successfully” means user password has been successfully reset.
Finally run command exit to back to menu (picture in step 2) and select “resume Resume normal boot” to exit Recovery Mode.
Audio-recorder is a handy tool allows to record your favorite music and audio to file. It supports for recording devices, such as microphone, webcam, audio card, music/movie players, Skype calls, browsers, etc.
With the Gstreamer plugins, the recorder supports output formats: OGG, Flac, MP3, AAC, and WAV.
Audio-recorder provides an advanced timer that can:
Start, stop or pause recording at a given clock time.
Start, stop or pause after a time period.
Stop when the recorded file size exceeds a limit.
Start recording on voice or sound (user can set the audio threshold).
Stop or pause recording on “silence” (user can set the audio threshold and delay).
The recording can be automatically controlled by MPRIS2-compatible media players. It can also record all your Skype calls without any user interaction.
Install Audio Recorder in Ubuntu:
This amazing software has been made into PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04. Old versions available from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 13.10.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one to add the PPA, update package lists, and install the recorder:
If you don’t want to add the PPA, you can grab the .deb package from Launchpad Page and click open it with Ubuntu Software Center and finally install the program.
For more output audio formats support, install gstreamer plugins (ubuntu 14.04 & higher):
Xfce desktop session in Ubuntu 14.04 /14.10 does not display Network Manager, Messaging Menu, Keyboard Input, and Power icons on the panel out-of-the-box.
Thanks to Mark Trompell, it’s quite easy to add those icons back to Xfce panel by a small plugin called xfce4-indicator-plugin.
1. To install the plugin, open Ubuntu Software Center, search for and install the package xfce4-indicator-plugin.
2. Once you have the plugin installed, right-click on Xfce panel and navigate to “Panel -> Panel Preferences ….
Under Items tab, add new item “Indicator Plugin” and put it right after the “Notification Area” plugin.
While the plugin includes the time and session menu, you can remove the “Clock” and “Action Buttons” from the list.
3. The xfce4-indicator-plugin includes the Global Menu indicator, which displays application menus on panel.
If you don’t like this feature, right-click on the Network Manager icon and select Properties. When it opens, tick the box after “Application Menus (Global Menu)” to hide the applet.
Oracle finally made the Virtualbox binary packages for Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic available in its official Linux repository. Which means running regular system updates via Software Updater will keep your Virtualbox release always up-to-date.
While Ubuntu 14.10 repositories provide the Virtualbox 4.3.18, the latest has reached the version 4.3.20. For the changelog, see the web page.
How to Add Virtualbox Repository in Ubuntu:
Open terminal from the Unity Dash or just press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste the command below into terminal and run to get the key:
Quick tutorial shows you how to install Android Studio, a new Android development environment developed by Google and based on IntelliJ IDEA, via PPA in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and the next Ubuntu 15.04.
Similar to Eclipse with the ADT Plugin, Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools for development and debugging.
On top of the capabilities you expect from IntelliJ, Android Studio offers:
Gradle-based build support.
Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.
Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine as server-side components.
Install Android Studio via PPA in Ubuntu:
Installing Android Studio in Ubuntu becomes easy. A Ubuntu PPA contains simple script that automatically downloads and installs the latest release from Google download server. So far, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 12.04 are supported.
1. Android Studio depends on Java, and Oracle Java 7 or 8 is recommended. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one: