BirdFont is a free font editor that lets you create vector graphics and export TTF, EOT & SVG fonts. It’s an open-source editor written in Vala.
BirdFont is developed by Johan Mattsson with a good number of people contributing translations and patches. The editor now is at version 1.3 and has around 42 000 lines of code.
BirdFont has been made into default Ubuntu repositories since 14.10 Utopic. But the packages are old at the moment.
I’ve upload the latest build into PPA with the debian files belong to Ubuntu official. The PPA so far supports Ubuntu 14.10 and derivatives, such as Linux Mint 17.
To install the latest BirdFont (1.3 so far) in Ubuntu:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and run one by one:
Nvidia has just announced a new version of graphics driver 343.22 for Linux with new GPUs support and various fixes.
According to the release highlights, Nvidia 343.22 added support for GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980, removed support for G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs, and motherboard chipsets based on them. Ongoing support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 340.* legacy releases through the end of 2019.
The new drive contains various fixes and/or new features:
Fixed a bug that prevented the “sync to vblank” setting from being honored for EGL applications.
Fixed a bug that could cause some OpenGL programs to encounter out of memory during a mode switch.
Fixed a bug that prevented the NVIDIA OpenGL driver from honoring the __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH environment variable.
Fixed a bug that caused disabled displays to be implicitly included in the target selection for some queries and assignments on the nvidia-settings command line interface, in the absence of any explicit target selection.
Added a new attribute to the NV-CONTROL API to query the current utilization of the video decode engine.
Fixed a bug where the Exchange Stereo Eyes setting in nvidia-settings didn’t work in certain stereo configurations.
Worked around a Unigine Heaven 3.0 shader bug which could cause corruption when tessellation is enabled by implementing an application profile that uses the “GLIgnoreGLSLExtReqs” setting. See the documentation for the __GL_IGNORE_GLSL_EXT_REQS environment variable for more details.
Fixed a memory leak when destroying EGL surfaces.
Added support for multiple simultaneous EGL displays.
Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-installer to unsuccessfully attempt to delete the directory containing precompiled kernel module interfaces, on packages prepared with –add-this-kernel.
Updated nvidia-installer to log uninstallation to a separate file from the installation log, and to attempt uninstalling previous driver installations using the installer program from the previous installation, when available.
Install or Upgrade to Nvidia 343.22 in Ubuntu:
NOTE: Ubuntu provides “nvidia-current” driver, available in Software Center, which may interact better with your distribution’s framework, and you may want to use this rather than NVIDIA’s official package.
There are two ways installing this driver in your Ubuntu system, using the official .run installer or a third-party PPA repository.
To install Nvidia 343.22 via official installer:
1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, run command below to download the driver:
For 32-bit system, run:
cd ~/Downloads/ && wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/343.22/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-343.22.run
For 64-bit system, run:
cd ~/Downloads/ && wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/343.22/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-343.22.run
2. , run command to remove the previous driver and install latest update-dev package:
3. When back, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2~F6) to switch to command console and log in with your user name and password. There will no visual feedback when typing a password, just type in mind and hit enter.
4. When you’re logged into command console, stop the graphics session by running the command below:
sudo service lightdm stop
For Ubuntu Gnome edition and Linux Mint, you may replace ligthdm with gdm or mdm
5. After the graphics session closed, you can now starts the official Nvidia installer, by running below commands:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-343.22.run && sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-343.22.run
Follow the onscreen prompt and done!
6. (Optional) To uninstall this driver, run below command in console:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-343.22.run --uninstall
To install the driver from PPA repository (easier way):
First check out the PPA page to see if the packages are ready: xorg-edgers PPA. Check out the package version of “nvidia-graphics-drivers-343”.
Once the driver is made into the PPA, you can run below commands one by one to install it in Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 14.10:
Enlightenment 0.19.0 stable has been released recently. One of the best new features in E19 is the full wayland support.
In this quick tutorial I’ll show you how to install the Enlightenment window manager 0.19.0 (E19) in Ubuntu easily with a bash script. Tested in Ubuntu 14.04.1 64-bit.
Enlightenment E19 session in Ubuntu 14.04
Before getting started, you may take a look at what’s new in the latest E19 release:
greatly improved wayland support
E_WL_FORCE environment variable for forcing output types
e_uuid_store: Add infrastructure to store window/surface properties.
Add a tiling profile.
per-screen desklock logo visibility config
Tiling: Merge the tiling module rework..
check udisks1 DevicePresentationHide flag
ACTIVATE_EXCLUDE window active hint policy
show video resolution in filepreview widget
add fileman option to clamp video size for video previews
handle xrandr backlight using a single, accurate handler
blanking options for wakeup on events (urgent + notify)
packagekit module for package manager integration
ibar now optionaly triggers its menu on mouse in
selective redirection toggling
new focus option “raise on revert focus”
add PIN-style desklock for lokker module
make desklock hookable, break out current desklock into module, move pam stuff to separate file
revive personal desklock passwords
allow moveresize visuals to be replaced
allow desk flip animations to be handled completely externally
E16-style live pager returns!
comp config is no longer a module
E_FIRST_FRAME env variable
new compositor API
add E_MODULE_SRC_PATH for setting current module src path without needing to install modules
use non-recursive makefiles for entire build system
filemanager popups no longer span multiple monitors
system operations no longer dim screen until action has begun
window stacking and focus restore is more accurate across restarts
gstreamer1 is now used for media previews
improved multiple monitor setup reliability
shaped windows now render more accurately
Install Enlightenment E19 in Ubuntu 14.04:
UPDATE: The link to the script is broken. As an alternative, install E19 from PPA by running below commands one by one from PPA:
Thanks to batden, there’s now a bash script to make it easy to install / upgrade / uninstall the E19 (git version) in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. All you need to do is download & install the script and answer on screen prompts during the installing process.
1. To download the script, right-click the link below and click “Save link as …” and save the file nineteen.sh to Downloads folder..
2. After you downloaded the script, make it executable and run it.
To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:
cd ~/Downloads/ && chmod +x nineteen.sh && ./nineteen.sh
3. When the script starts, type a number to select install, update, or uninstall E19 (see above picture.) and hit Enter.
After that, it will pop up a information dialog and then ask you to insert your user password. Not that, terminal does not give visual feed back when typing a password, just type in mind and hit enter.
4. After that, the script will update & upgrade your system, download all Enlightenment packages, and finally compile them on your system. Depends on your internet connection, the process will cost a few minutes.
During this period of time, it will ask two or three questions, so don’t go too far away!
5. When everything’s done, you should see something like below.
Restart your computer and select log in with Enlightenment when you’re at Unity Greeter and enjoy!
Looking for a computer cleaning software? Well, BleachBit is the best free and open source cleaner for Linux desktop.
BleachBit was originally designed for GNU/Linux to free cache, delete cookies, clear Internet history, shred temporary files, delete logs, and discard junk you didn’t know was there. It’s the best Linux alternative to Windows’ CCleaner.
BleachBit is started in 2008, it’s written in Python and uses PyGTK. Since version 0.5.0, it added support for Windows XP, 7, and 8.
Features:
Simple operation: read the descriptions, check the boxes you want, click preview, and click delete.
Multi-platform: Linux and Windows
Free of charge
Free to share, learn, and modify (open source)
No adware, spyware, malware, or browser toolbars
Translated to 61 languages
Shred files to hide their contents and prevent data recovery
Shred any file (such as a spreadsheet on your desktop)
Overwrite free disk space to hide previously deleted files
Portable app for Windows: run without installation
Command line interface for scripting and automation
CleanerML allows anyone to write a new cleaner using XML
Automatically import and update winapp2.ini cleaner files (a separate download) giving Windows users access to 1700+ additional cleaners
Frequent software updates with new features
Download & Install BleachBit:
1. For Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, you can always download the latest installer from its website:
Applist.py is a basic python script that allows to browse all the applications available in Ubuntu Touch App Store through a web browser.
Meizu MX4, to be released few months later, will be the first mobile devices with pre-installed Ubuntu Touch OS. In addition to the default core applications, there are already quite a few third-party apps available in the App Store.
With a simple python script, desktop users can search and view all the Ubuntu Touch applications available in App Store.
Download the script from Github page:
Once you downloaded the package:
Extract and go into the result folder.
Right-click on the script file and select Properties, under Permissions tab, check the box between “Execute:” and “Allow executing file as program”.
Finally run the script from the context menu and you’ll see the window in above picture.
If you don’t see the Run option in file’s context menu, go to File Browser Menu -> Edit -> Preferences -> Behavior tab, check the box where it says “Run executable text files when they are opened”. You might need to run command nautilus -q to restart Nautilus to take place.
Want to shutdown, restart, or hibernate your Ubuntu machine automatically on a schedule? Well, it can be done easily by a graphical tool called ComplexShutdown.
ComplexShutdown is a simple python script for those who hate Linux commands to schedule shutdown Ubuntu desktop with an easy to use graphical interface.
This simple GUI features:
Automatic Shutdown, Log off, Restart, Standby (Suspend), Hibernate, and run a custom command.
Supports sound and message notification, Unity integration,
Run action in days:hours:minutes:seconds.
Run action after computer idled days:hours:minutes:seconds.
Run action in select date and time.
Install ComplexShutdown in Ubuntu:
Download the latest .deb package from the link below. Then double click to open it with Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button.
Once installed, open it from Unity Dash and enjoy!
Tip: due to bug, options for “after idle” and “at” are grayed out. I got it fixed in my 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04 by accident. See what I did:
Downloaded & installed the complexshutdown_0.5_all.deb
Run the app for a while and found that “after idle” and “at” options not available.
Removed complexshutdown 0.5 by running below command in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove complexshutdown
Installed the complexshutdown_0.4_amd64/i386.deb (available in above link)
Run the app and found that “at” option worked, but “after idle” not.
Finally I removed complexshutdown_0.4 and reinstalled the 0.5 version. Found that all works!
Cinelerra video editing and compositing software now is at version 4.6. The 64-bit binary for Ubuntu 14.04 is available from Heroine Warrior.
The Cinelerra HV version is produced by Heroine Virtual, and is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Cinelerra also includes a video compositing engine, allowing the user to perform advanced compositing operations such as keying and mattes.
What’s New in Cinelerra HV 4.6:
Split pane editing.
OpenGL supported on Intel HD.
Titler improvements.
Bugfixes.
Install Cinelerra 4.6 in Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit:
1. Download the 64-bit binary from the link below:
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the command below to open Archive Manager with root permission:
gksudo file-roller
When the Archive Manager opens:
Click the Open icon, navigate and select open Cinelerra package.
When the package opens, click the Extract button, select extract to /opt/ folder.
When done, you can start the Cinelerra video editor by running command /opt/cinelerra/cinelerra in terminal.
3. Create launcher shortcut for Cinelerra
Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run command to create a launcher file and open it with Gedit text editor:
QuiteRSS news reader now is at version 0.17.0. The new release allows to browse feeds in newspaper layout.
QuiteRSS is a free and open source RSS/Atom feed reader available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It aims to be quite fast and comfortable to user, and features embedded browser (Webkit core), Unity indicator, adblock, click to flash, and more.
According to the release note, since QuiteRSS 0.17.0 it allows to switch between the classic and newspaper layout mode through menu View -> Layout.
It has been found that the newspaper mode has an issue on news deletion. The developer commented that it will be fixed in next release.
Besides the newspaper mode, this release contains:
Added: Socks5 proxy support
Changed: News opening in external browser
Fixed: Sorting by feed title in news list
Install / Upgrade QuiteRSS in Ubuntu:
The latest release has been made into the official PPA repository, available for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and run one by one will add the PPA and install the latest QuiteRSS packages:
The latest SMPlayer 14.9 has been released recently with Youtube playback fixed. The official PPA is ready for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 14.04.
SMPlayer is a free and open-source GUI for MPlayer based on QT. It features audio and video filters & equalizer, multiple speed playback, configurable subtitles (Internet fetch), build-in Radio, TV, and Youtube browser support.
The new version 14.9 was released recently on September 7, 2014. According to the release note, the new release brings:
a new fix for Youtube playback
improved the option to search for subtitles
ability to shut down the computer after playback.
Install / Upgrade SMPlayer in Ubuntu:
The new release has been made into the PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives.
To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
After that, update the system package lists and install the player:
Faenza is a legendary icon pack for Gnome provides monochromatic icons for panels, toolbars and buttons and colourful squared icons for devices, applications, folder, files and Gnome menu items. Four themes are included to fit with light or dark themes/panels.
The icon theme is created by tiheum. The sources can be downloaded from Google Code.
The creator has built the Ubuntu binaries into PPA so that we can easily install the Faenza icon theme in Ubuntu via below steps:
1. Click the link below to download the .deb package from the developer’s PPA repository:
2. Double-click the package to open with Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button:
3. After installed the theme, open Unity Tweak Tool (install it from Ubuntu Software Center) and navigate to Appearance -> Icons.
You’ll see the Faenza themes available in the list. Choose one to apply the icons immediately.
