UbuntuHandbook | Author Archives

Archives For jimingkui

Blender 2.74 Released with Lots of Improvements

Last updated: April 2, 2015

A new stable release of the open-source 3D software Blender 2.74 was released at the end of March with some new features and numerous improvements.

Blender 2.74 release highlights:

Cycles got several precision, noise, speed, memory improvements, new Pointiness attribute.
Viewport has new cool compositing features, outliner now manages orphan datablocks better.
Modeling now allows custom normals, and transferring data layers between meshes!
Massive improvements to hair dynamics and editing tools: a big step forward with more to come…
A new tool “Cavity Mask” was added to sculpting/painting, along with other improvements.
Great memory consumption optimization in Freestyle NPR stroke rendering.
Grease pencil and Game engine improvements, and more…

Read the detailed changes at this page.

How to Install or Upgrade to Blender 2.74 in Ubuntu:

While Blender website provides a portable version for download, you can always install the latest release via these steps in another post (You may first remove the previous Blender installation).

There are some guys maintaining the most recent Blender release in PPAs. Below are some of them:

Thomas Schiex’s PPA: https://launchpad.net/~thomas-schiex/+archive/ubuntu/blender
hjmooses’s PPA: https://launchpad.net/~heyarje/+archive/ubuntu/blender-2.7

To add a PPA, run below command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository PPA_NAME_HERE

For example, running sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomas-schiex/blender to add the Thomas Schiex’s PPA.

After adding a PPA, open Software Updater and upgrade Blender after checking for updates.

In Howtos blender

How to Fix Screen Brightness Issue in Ubuntu Laptop

Last updated: April 1, 2015

Running Ubuntu on a laptop? You may found that Ubuntu doesn’t memorize your screen brightness level. Every time you reboot or wake the machine up from sleep, it resets the screen brightness to maximum level.

I’ve written how to save screen brightness level in Ubuntu, but it might not work for all video adapters.

Thanks to Norbert, he made a sysvinit-backlight script that automatically remembers your screen brightness level for all video adapters and loads the backlight levels on boot, reboot, or wake up from sleep.

To install the script:

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run below commands one by one to get it from Norbert’s PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nrbrtx/sysvinit-backlight

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sysvinit-backlight

If you don’t want to add PPA, you may grab the script directly from PPA packages page. So far, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 are supported.

For more you may contact the the script author at launchpad.net.

In Howtos screen brightness

Firefox 37 Released with User Rating System [How-to-Upgrade]

Last updated: March 31, 2015

A new stable release of Mozilla’s web browser, Firefox 37, was released today at the end of March.

According to the release note, Firefox 37 brings a heartbeat user rating system to get user feedback about Firefox. Every day a random subset of users are offered a rating widget. After rating Firefox, an ENGAGEMENT page may open in a background tab.

Users can disable this feature by going to about:config, search browser.selfsupport.url in filter box and set value to “”.

Besides that, Firefox 37 comes with below changes:

Yandex set as default search provider for the Turkish locale
Bing search now uses HTTPS for secure searching
Improved protection against site impersonation via OneCRL centralized certificate revocation
Opportunistically encrypt HTTP traffic where the server supports HTTP/2 AltSvc
Disabled insecure TLS version fallback for site security
Extended SSL error reporting for reporting non-certificate errors
TLS False Start optimization now requires a cipher suite using AEAD construction
Improved certificate and TLS communication security by removing support for DSA
Improved performance of WebGL rendering on Windows
Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube (Windows only)
Added support for CSS display:contents
IndexedDB now accessible from worker threads
New SDP/JSEP implementation in WebRT

See the release note for details.

How to upgrade Firefox in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 14.10, Firefox 37 will be available for upgrade very soon through Ubuntu official repositories.

Once the official build of Firefox 37 is available, you can open Software Updater and install available updates after checking for updates.

In News Firefox

Rhythmbox Music Player 3.2 Released [How-to-upgrade]

Last updated: March 29, 2015

The 3.2 release of Rhythmbox, Ubuntu’s default music player, was announced just a few hours ago with some new features, bug fixes and translation updates.

According the the changelog, Rhythmbox 3.2 brings a Soundcloud plugin, support for disc and track total tags, ability to clear, re-fetch and manually set cover art using the song info window.

There are also some bugs has been fixed in the new release:

same songs played after reading a playlist
no easy way to unselect the browse by album,artist,genre option
Unclear string “in” for translation
rhythmbox skips one or two songs after playing certain songs
configure warning: ‘INCLUDES’ is the old name for ‘AM_CPPFLAGS’ (or ‘*_CPPFLAGS’)
Add track count and disc count to the database
data: Add Vorbis aliases as supported mime-types
Failure to build with tdb 1.3
Crash when right clicking the track list in the library
Rhythmbox fails to import MP3 files with ID3 v2.4 tags created by PicardQT
Tracks with no embedded covert art show a random cover art from the music collection
Right click on any file in ‘Tracks list’ clashes the application
Duplicate symbol _rb_metadata_iface_xml
gdkx.h explicitly included; prevents building on Mac
symbolic icon is broken

How to upgrade to Rhythmbox 3.2 in Ubuntu:

The new release is available in fossfreedom’s PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04, and Linux Mint 17.

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

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox

2. After adding the PPA, launch Software Updater (or Update Manager) and install available updates for Rhythmbox after checking for updates.

In Howtos, News rhythmbox

Install Free Music Score App ‘MuseScore’ 2.0 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: March 28, 2015

MuseScore, a free and open-source music composition and notation software, has reached a new major release, MuseScore 2.0, with great new features and improvements.

MuseScore is a scorewriter for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It’s main purpose is the creation, editing and printing of various types of musical scores in a “What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get” (WYSIWYG) environment.

MuseScore 2.0 comes with a brand new start center to simplify score browsing and creation, an inspector window to provide easy access to properties of individual notes and other elements, and customizable palettes to allow you to group your most commonly-used score symbols together.

MuseScore 2 also brings:

a new continuous view mode
some powerful new editing tools.
New notation styles and elements
layout, playback, import and export improvements.

For more, see what’s new in MuseScore 2.

How to install/upgrade MuseScore 2.0 in Ubuntu:

The new release has been made into its official PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04.

To install it, open terminal from the Dash/Menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:mscore-ubuntu/mscore-stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install musescore

In Howtos free music score, MuseScore

Ubuntu 15.04 Final Beta Available for Download

Last updated: September 29, 2017

The beta 2 release of Ubuntu 15.04 Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products was announced today, codenamed “Vivid Vervet”.

Ubuntu 15.04 comes with Linux Kernel 3.19. The default desktop Unity 7.3 brings many bug-fixes and locally integrated menus for unfocused windows. This release also ships Compiz Window Manager 0.9.12 with Nvidia fixes, fully MATE desktop support.

Before Ubuntu 15.04 final to be released on April 23, there will be also a RC release on April 16.

Download Ubuntu 15.04:

This beta release includes images from not only the Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products, but also the Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu Studio, Xubuntu, and a new official flavor Ubuntu MATE.

Here are the download links for:

Ubuntu Desktop, Server, Cloud, Core: releases.ubuntu.com/vivid/

KUbuntu 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/vivid/

LUbuntu 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/vivid/

Ubuntu Gnome 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-gnome/releases/vivid/

UbuntuKylin 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntukylin/releases/vivid/

UbuntuStudio 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/vivid/

Xubuntu 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/vivid/

Ubuntu MATE 15.04: cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/releases/vivid/

Ubuntu 15.04 Beta2 official release note is here.

In News ubuntu 15.04

Valentina – Open Source Pattern Making Software for Clothing

Last updated: March 26, 2015

Valentina is an open source pattern making program for clothing. It allows pattern creation using either standard sizing tables or an individual’s set of measurements. It blends new technologies with traditional methods to create a unique pattern making tool.

Currently, there is a lack of affordable software tools designed for creating patterns. Some people faced with this problem resort to using CAD tools or graphical editors designed for other purposes. However, these tools are inadequate when performing certain pattern making tasks (e.g. adding seam allowance, truing a dart, walking a seam). Moreover, these programs are good enough to create a pattern in a single size, but when you want to make changes for another person, you can’t do it quickly. You need to create the pattern from scratch. This is where traditional methods of pattern drafting can be very useful. Why can’t you tell a program how to change the pattern so you don’t need to do it ever again?

How to install Valentina in Ubuntu:

Open terminal from the Dash/Menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run commands below one by one to install the software from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dismine/valentina

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install valentina

Or you can download the .deb binary from PPA packages page and install it via Ubuntu Software Center.

Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17 are supported so far!

In App Review clothing, pattern makeing

How to Install Komodo Edit 9 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: July 14, 2017

Komodo Edit 9, a new stable release of ActiveState’s free text editor, was released yesterday with new exciting features, e.g. Google’s Go language support, Markdown Viewer, Easier Track Changes.

Komodo IDE and Edit 9.0 was release on March 24 with below changes:

A new left margin, which highlights unsaved changes, as well as any uncommitted SCC changes
A markdown viewer uses GitHub markdown styling.
Initial support for the Go programming language. It provides syntax coloring, code folding, syntax checking (linting) and code intelligence with completions, calltips, outline and goto definition.
Commando pop-up dialog, a combination of the “Fast Open” dialog and “Invoke Tool” dialog.
Share snippets of code via Kopy.io from right-click option. It supports client side encryption.
Notifications now appear in a separate popup panel.
Updated UI icons.
Added support for PHP 5.6, with a new Xdebug module
Added PEP 8 syntax checking
Color schemes has been changed.
Komodo now includes a CSS code formatter

Komodo 9 also includes overhauled APIs, performance improvements, and various fixes. See the changelog for details.

Install Komodo Edit 9 in Ubuntu:

UPDATE: There’s now a PPA repository that contains Komodo Edit 9 for Ubuntu, so you don’t have to do below steps, instead, running below commands one by one in terminal to get it from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:mystic-mirage/komodo-edit

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install komodo-edit

Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Linux Mint 13 and 17 are supported

1. Download the tar.gz archive from the link below:

Download Komodo 9

Depends on OS type, select download “komodo-edit-*-linux-x86.tar.gz” for 32-bit or “komodo-edit-*-linux-x86_64.tar.gz” for 64-bit.

2. Extract the downloaded package through your file browser:

3. Result folder contains an installer script. All you have to do is open terminal from the Dash/Menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run below commands one by one:

Navigate to the extracted Komodo Edit folder via command:
```
cd Downloads/Komodo-Edit-*
```
you may replace Komodo-Edit-* in the code with the full folder name.
Run the installer script:
```
./install.sh
```

4. If you don’t see the launcher icon in Desktop, Unity Dash, or Application Menu, you may run it for the first time from user’s Home folder -> Komodo-Edit-9 -> bin.

In Howtos komodo edit

Install File Transfer App NitroShare 0.3 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: March 23, 2015

NitroShare, a cross-platform network file transfer application, has reached the 0.3 release. Official PPA adds support for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Linux Mint 17.

Nitroshare is an old project started in 2012. The development goes live 2 months ago and the Nitroshare 0.3 is the first stable release that works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Feature:

new icon
written in C++ using Qt5.
remove file size limitations
see announcements for more.

Install NitroShare 0.3 in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu and Linux Mint users, you can install the app either from PPA or via .deb installer.

To install NitroShare from PPA, open terminal and run below commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:george-edison55/nitroshare

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nitroshare

You can also download .deb binary (as well as Windows exe, OSX dmg) from launchpad.net/nitroshare and install it via Software Center.

In Howtos file transfer, nitroshare

Install 3D CAD Model Creator ‘OpenSCAD’ 2015 in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: March 22, 2015

OpenSCAD is a software for creating solid 3D CAD objects. It focuses on CAD aspects rather than artistic ones.

OpenSCAD is not an interactive modeller. Instead it is something like a 3D-compiler that reads in a script file that describes the object and renders the 3D model from this script. This gives the designer full control over the modelling process and enables him to easily change any step in the modelling process or make designes that are defined by configurable parameters.

While Ubuntu repositories provide a very old version, the most recent OpenSCAD 2015.03 was released with a number of new features, improvements and fixes:

Language Features

Added text() module for 2D text
Added offset() module for 2D offsets
Added list comprehensions and let()
Added concat() function
Added chr() function
surface() can now take PNG images as input
min() and max() can now take a vector argument
2D minkowski can now handle polygons with holes
Variables can now be assigned in local blocks without using assign()

Program Features

Added Toolbar icons
New code editor based on QScintilla
Added Splash screen
Added SVG export
Added AMF export
Added --viewall and --autocenter cmd-line parameters
GUI is now translated into German, Czech, Spanish, French and Russian
MDI (Multiple Document Interface) is now available on all platforms
Color schemes for viewer and editor can be user-edited using JSON files
GUI components are now dockable
Added Tickmarks on axes

Bugfixes/improvements

Performance improvement: 2D (clipper), preview, hull, minkowski, surface
Performance improvement: Reduce duplicate evaluation of identical expressions
Better recursion behavior
STL export and import is now more robust
Internal cavities are better supported
New examples
Windows cmd-line behaves better
Better mirror() and scale() behavior when using negative factors

Deprecations

polyhedron() now takes a faces= argument rather than triangles=
assign() is no longer needed. Local variables can be created in any scope

Install / Upgrade to OpenSCAD 2015 in Ubuntu:

OpenSCAD Team provides pre-compiled binaries for Ubuntu users through a PPA repository, so far Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.10, Linux Mint 17 are supported.

Open terminal from the Dash/Menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add OpenSCAD PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:openscad/releases

Then refresh system package cache via:

sudo apt-get update

Finally install the software packages:

sudo apt-get install openscad openscad-dbg

You may skip the second and third commands, instead running Software Updater (or Update Manager) and upgrading OpenSCAD package after checking for updates.

In Howtos OpenSCAD, solid 3D CAD modeller