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Archives For November 30, 1999

Install Firefox Optimized Pale Moon Browser in Ubuntu

Last updated: July 14, 2017

Pale Moon is an open source web browser based on Firefox that’s optimized for performance. It focuses on efficiency and ease of use, by leaving out unnecessary features and making optimizations, while maintaining compatibility with Firefox extensions and themes.

Features:

Optimized for modern processors
Firefox sourced: As safe as Mozilla’s flagship browser
Supported by a friendly, active community of users
Familiar, efficient, fully customizable interface (no Australis!)
Smooth and speedy page drawing and script processing
Increased stability: experience fewer browser crashes
Support for Firefox extensions (add-ons) and themes
Uses slightly less memory because of disabled optional code
Support for SVG, Canvas and downloadable fonts
Extensive support for HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL
More customization and configuration options than Firefox
Able to use existing Firefox profiles with the migration tool

This browser, even though close to Firefox in the way it works, offers a different set of features than its sibling. For example, if you need accessibility features or integration of Windows’ parental controls, then Pale Moon may not be a good browser choice for you.

Install Pale Moon in Ubuntu:

1. Download the latest installer:

Download Pale Moon installer

2. Extract the package and go into the result folder. Run the installer script from that folder:

Can’t find the Run option in the context menu? Go to the file browser’s menu Edit -> Preferences. Under Behavior tab, check the box where it says “Run executable text files when they are opened”.

After that, restart Nautilus to apply changes by pressing Alt+F2 and running nautilus -q in the pop-up ‘run a command’ box.

3. Type in your user password when prompt and choose Install, Uninstall, or Upgrade the browser:

It will ask you some questions and finally download & install the browser in your system. Once Pale Moon is properly installed, you should see the below window:

Open the browser from Unity Dash and enjoy!

In Howtos Pale Moon web browser, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10

Make VLC Remember Last Played Position in Ubuntu Linux

Last updated: July 28, 2015

This quick tutorial shows you how to make your VLC media player remember the position of the last played files with a plugin called srpos.

srpos plugin works for VLC 2.1.x in Windows and Linux. It allows you to automatically save and restore up to 100 last played files position.

How to install this plugin:

For Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17 and their derivatives, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one to install it from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:samrog131/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install vlc-srpos-plugin

For Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 13.10 and their derivatives, you may consider upgrading VLC to the stable release v2.1.4 as the 2.0.x in their repositories are not supported. To do so, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:djcj/vlc-stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install vlc

After that, download .deb package from: Launchpad Page

download vlc-srpos-plugin_0.3~trusty~ppa1_amd64.deb for 64-bit system.
download vlc-srpos-plugin_0.3~trusty~ppa1_i386.deb for 32-bt system.

Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.04 user can also download & install the .deb directly from the launchpad page if you don’t like Ubuntu PPAs.

How to Use the Plugin:

Once the plugin installed:

1. Re-open VLC, and go to menu Tools -> Preferences.

2. Under bottom left corner, select show All settings.

3. Navigate to Interface -> Control Interface on left sidebar.

4. Check the box where it says “Save/restore position of the last played files”

5. Save and close VLC. The plugin will work the next time you launch it.

Plugin website.

In Howtos Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, vlc media player

Install Backup Tool ‘Systemback’ 1.0 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: July 11, 2014

Systemback is a simple backup and restore application for Ubuntu Linux that makes it easy to create backups of system and users configuration files. In case of problems you can easily restore the previous state of the system.

With systemback, you can create a Windows like system restore point by clicking on the Create new button.

It will take a few minutes backing up system files and user configuration data. User files such as documents, pictures and music are excluded. During this time, you can click the Interrupt button to cancel the process.

Once you created a restore point, it will be list in the main window with a name looks like “2014-7-11, 20.50.47” (see the first picture). Choose it and you’re able to click the System restore button. Then you can easily restore your system status to the time you create the point.

Under the function menu, click the green arrow button, you’ll see a button Schedule which allows you to create restore points in a scheduled time.

Besides creating restore points, the tool also allows to:

Copy system from one partition to another
Create new user, set root password, change hostname.
Create a Live CD/DVD/USB from current system with or without user data.
System file repair, Grub2 repair.
Upgrade your Ubuntu to next release

Install Systemback in Ubuntu 14.04:

The latest stable v1.0 (qt5 port) is available in the developer’s PPA for Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.04. A old stable version is also available for Ubuntu 12.04.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one will add the PPA and install Systemback:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nemh/systemback

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install systemback

Systemback on launchpad

In Howtos backup, restore point, Ubuntu 14.04

Nvidia 340.24 Add Support For G-SYNC Monitors

Last updated: July 12, 2014

Nvidia has just announced the release of driver 340.24 for Linux with numerous improvements and fixes. One of the exciting news is the initial support for G-SYNC monitors.

Nvidia 340.24 was released on July 8th, 2014 with following changes:

Fixed a bug that prevented 3D Vision stereo and ultra low motion blur modes from working on G-SYNC capable monitors in some cases.

Fixed a bug that caused the “Allow G-SYNC” checkbox to be displayed in nvidia-settings even if the GPUs in the system are not capable of G-SYNC.

Fixed a kernel crash when running some applications with IOMMU functionality enabled.

Fixed a floating point exception in the OpenGL driver when running “Risk of Rain” under Wine.

Made various improvements and corrections to the information reported to GL applications via the KHR_debug and ARB_debug_output extensions.

Fixed a bug that caused GLX applications which simultaneously create drawables on multiple X servers to crash when swapping buffers.

Updated nvidia-settings to report all valid names for each target when querying target types, e.g. `nvidia-settings -q gpus`.

Added support for controlling the availability of Fast Approximate Antialiasing (FXAA) on a per-application basis via the new __GL_ALLOW_FXAA_USAGE environment variable and the corresponding GLAllowFXAAUsage application profile key. See the README for details.

Fixed a bug where indirect rendering could become corrupted on system configurations that disallow writing to executable memory.

Updated the nvidia-settings Makefiles to allow nvidia-settings to be dynamically linked against the host system’s libjansson. This option can be enabled by setting the NV_USE_BUNDLED_LIBJANSSON Makefile variable to 0.Please note that nvidia-settings requires libjansson version 2.2 or later.

Removed the runlevel check from nvidia-installer: the installation problems formerly associated with runlevel 1 no longer apply.

Added initial support for G-SYNC monitors.Additional details and system requirements can be found at:http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/g-sync

Improved support for running the NVIDIA driver in configurations where writing to executable memory is disallowed.Driver optimizations that require writing to executable memory can be forcefully disabled using the new __GL_WRITE_TEXT_SECTION environment variable.See the README for more details.

Fixed an X driver bug that caused gamma ramp updates of the green channel at depth 15, on some recent GPUs, to be ignored.

Fixed a regression, introduced in the 340.17 public beta release, that caused the NVIDIA X driver to access freed memory when exiting a GLX application that used either of the GLX_NV_video_out or GLX_NV_present_video extensions.

Install Nvidia 340.24 in Ubuntu:

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you’re just looking for a working drive for your Nvidia card in Ubuntu Linux, please search for and install nvidia-current in Ubuntu Software Center.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, do:

1. Remove the previous installed proprietary driver and install the latest updates-dev package. Then restart your computer

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*; sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev

2. Download the driver:

32 bit Linux | 64 bit Linux | 32 bit ARM

Check the release note for the supported GPUs.

3. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (~ F6) to switch to command console and log in.

4. Stop the graphic session by running:

sudo service lightdm stop

Replace lightdm with gdm or mdm if you’re using Gnome display manager or Linux Mint.

5. Now give executable permission and run the downloaded package:

chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-340.24.run && sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-340.24.run

Follow the onscreen prompt and you’re done.

(Optional) If for some reason the new driver does not work properly, remove it via:

sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-340.24.run --uninstall

For easier way, wait the driver to be built into xorg edger PPA. By then, you can install it via 3 commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

In Howtos, News G-SYNC monitors, Nvidia Driver, Ubuntu 14.04

Try Evolve OS Budgie Desktop in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: July 8, 2014

Budgie is a lightweight GTK3 desktop session using libmutter and a bottom panel. It’s the default DE for Evolve OS, a new desktop Linux distribution.

Budgie desktop has a single panel budgie-panel which uses trivial amounts of RAM (in the region of 7MB) when started. However, when you first open the menu, GTK actually loads the images. This needs to be hacked a bit, as it delays the first open, and should be done in an asynchronous manner.

Budgie’s window manager is currently based on libmutter, so naturally with 3.12 will gain support to be a Wayland compositor.

Budgie Desktop integrates with the GNOME stack, and as such requires certain components to operate correctly. Your distribution should provide an autostart file for gnome-settings-daemon in its package.

budgie-session will attempt to parse the file and launch it if it is found, which is guessed to be living in: /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop

If budgie-session cannot locate the file, gnome-settings-daemon will not be launched, and dynamic settings for themes, etc, will not work until it is launched.

Ubuntu users: It is highly likely your theme or Ubuntu setup can affect the usability of budgie-panel.

If you have focus/use issues with the panel (i.e. not taking input), disable overlay scrollbars by running below command in a terminal window:

gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal

Install Budgie Desktop:

NOTE: Budgie is still in early development stage. It has a lot of to-do things, only install it on test machine before it gets table!

To install it (from a third-party PPA), press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sukso96100/budgie-desktop

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install budgie-desktop

If you like Budgie Desktop, please contribute or report to: github.com/evolve-os/budgie-desktop

In Howtos budgie desktop, Ubuntu 14.04

How to Install / Upgrade to digiKam 4.1.0 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: April 24, 2024

digiKam team has announced the release of digiKam Software Collection 4.1.0 one week ago, with many fixes since the stable v4.0.0. According to the announcement, the new release contains below changes:

A huge hack about face management feature have been processed. Some conditions introducing are now closed. Implementations in shared library libkface dedicated to detect and recognize faces are now more robust and suitable for production.
A new overlay have been add to all icon-view to indicate if items has geo-location information. This will help end users to find quickly in album which items use GPS coordinates.
Thumbnails now support large resolution monitor. Thumbs size can be expended to 512 instead 256 previously.

Install / Upgrade to digiKam 4.1.0:

digiKam 4.1.0 depends on the latest opencv 2.4.9 which is not yet available in Ubuntu repository. Fortunately, a third-party PPA, maintained by Philip Johnsson has built them for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty LTS.

To add the PPA and install digiKam 4.1.0, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/extra

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install digikam

digiKam.org

In Howtos digikam, Ubuntu 14.04

How to Install Nvidia Driver 331.89 in Ubuntu 14.04/12.04

Last updated: July 6, 2014

The latest Nvidia proprietary driver for Linux has reached v331.89. According to the changlog, the new release added a new GPU support and fixed a few bugs

Added support for the following GPU: GeForce GT 730
Fixed a race condition in the NVIDIA kernel module that caused some GPUs to sporadically become unresponsive.
Updated the error reporting in the NVIDIA kernel module to include the GPU serial number, when available, in error messages written to the system log.
Fixed a bug that caused blank screens when transforming or rotating displays in an SLI Mosaic layout.
Fixed a bug that corrupted certain software rendering on 32-bit systems.

Below is how to install Nvidia 331.89 in Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 12.04:

First of first, if you’re just looking for a working driver for your Nvidia graphics card, please search for and install “nvidia-current” (without quotes) in Ubuntu Software Center.

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

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*; sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates-dev

It will remove previous installed proprietary driver and install the latest updates-dev package.

2. Restart your computer. When you’re back, download the official package:

32 bit Linux | 64 bit Linux | 32 bit ARM

Check out if your GPU is in the support list at the release page.

3. Switch to command console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2 ~ F6). Then log in with your username and password.

4. Stop the graphical session:

sudo service lightdm stop

For Gnome GDM or Linux Mint MDM, you may replace lightdm with gdm or mdm in the command.

5. Now give executable permission and run the official package:

chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.89.run && sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.89.run

Follow the onscreen prompt and you’re done.

Keep the installer file so that you can remove this driver via below command if for some reason it does not work properly:

sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.89.run --uninstall

In Howtos Nvidia Driver, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04

LiVEs Video Editor 2.2.5 Added Mplayer2 Support [Ubuntu PPA]

Last updated: July 5, 2014

LiVEs video editor and VJ tool has reached v2.2.5 with support for mplayer2 and a crash issue fixed.

LiVEs is a free video editing software and VJ tool written in C, Perl and Python. It allows the user to manipulate video in realtime and in non-realtime. The application also has features which go beyond traditional video editing applications – for example, it can be controlled and monitored remotely over a network, and it has facilities for streaming to and from another copy of LiVES. It is resolution and frame rate independent.

LiVEs uses a system of plugins for effects, decoders, encoders and video playback. The APIs for these are now well defined, and the application can be easily extended.

The latest LiVEs 2.2.5 gets below changes:

Fix crash (regression) in mpegts decoder.
Add support for mplayer2.

Install LiVEs in Ubuntu via PPA:

LiVEs is available in Ubuntu Software Center, but it’s a little old. To install the latest release from PPA, do:

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/lives

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lives

The PPA so far supports Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 and Ubuntu 12.04.

More about LiVEs, go to its website.

In Howtos LiVES, Ubuntu 14.04

Install Desktop Weather Widget ‘Gis Weather’ in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: July 5, 2014

Want to display weather forecast on your Ubuntu desktop? Well, there is an open-source and highly customizable desktop weather widget called Gis Weather.

Gis Weather is a new project, about half a year old, that displays up to 12-day weather forecast on your Linux desktop. So far, supported weather services include gismeteo and weather.com. It has been translated to Spanish, French, Romanian, and Latvian.

Gis Weather has few dependencies: python3-gi, python3-gi-cairo, and gir1.2-gtk-3.0. It works on Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10 and other derivatives.

Features:

View weather for several days – 3 to 12
Detailed weather forecast for today and tomorrow
Fast switching between cities
Select the background and theme weather icons
“Compass” with the wind direction, with adjustable angle of rotation
Highlighting the high wind

Install Gis Weather in Ubuntu:

Just download and install the latest “gis-weather_x.x.x_all.deb” file from the link below:

Download Gis Weather

Once installed, open it from Unity Dash or Menu and set up your location as it prompted.

In Howtos Ubuntu 14.04, weather widget

Cloud Music Player ‘Nuvola’ Now Supports Amazon Prime Music

Last updated: July 4, 2014

Linux desktop music player Nuvola has reached v2.4.1 with support for Amazon Music Prime streaming.

Nuvola is a free and open-source music player that brings many cloud music services, such as Amazon, Bandcamp, Deezer, 8tracks, Goolge Play Music, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, Logitech Media Server, Pandora, Rdio, and This is my Jam.

Changes in Nuvola 2.4.1:

Disabled test suite failing under Fedora’s mock tool.
Added a work-around to get rid of ABOUT protocol source missing dialog.
Fixed a memory leak in Media Player Remote Interface and optimized metadata property.
Added support for Amazon Music Prime streaming.
Updated translations.

Install Nuvola 2.4.1 in Ubuntu:

This player is available in the developer’s PPA for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run below command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nuvola-player-builders/stable

After that, update and install the player as well as the flash support:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install nuvolaplayer nuvolaplayer-flashplugin

If you don’t like Ubuntu PPAs, directly grab the .deb packages from HERE.

In Howtos Nuvola Cloud Player, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04

Archives For November 30, 1999

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