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How to Install Brightness Indicator in Ubuntu 14.10

Last updated: November 17, 2014

The Fn brightness control doesn’t work on your Ubuntu Laptop? Try indicator-brightness, an applet on panel to set your screen brightness, which also supports keyboard shortcuts.

The indicator-brightness is inspired by the original Gnome brightness applet, it allows the Unity users to set screen brightness by using the indicator menu or the scroll wheel of your mouse over the indicator icon. With it, you can assign custom keyboard shortcuts to control brightness with your keyboard.

Install Brightness Indicator Ubuntu 14.10:

It’s easy to install the applet though the developer doesn’t update the package for Ubuntu 14.10. And it works good on my laptop.

To install it, click the link below to go to the developer’s PPA package repository and download the .deb installer for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty.

Download indicator-brightness

Select download the “indicator-brightness_0.4~bzr11~ubuntu14.04.1_all.deb”. Once downloaded, double-click the package to open it with Ubuntu Software Center and finally click the “install” button.

Once installed, start the applet from the Unity Dash and enjoy!

To add custom shortcuts to control screen brightness:

Open System Settings and navigate to “Keyboard -> Shortcuts tab -> Custom Shortcuts”.

Click the plus sign to add two new shortcuts with:

name: Brightness up
command:

/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/indicator-brightness/indicator-brightness-adjust --up

name: Brightness down
command:

/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/indicator-brightness/indicator-brightness-adjust --down

Assign shortcut keys to them and done!

In Howtos brightness control, brightness indicator

How to Speed Up the Unity Dash Response in Ubuntu 14.04 / 14.10

Last updated: November 13, 2014

This quick tutorial shows how to improve your Ubuntu experience by speeding up the Unity Dash (search utility) response in Ubuntu 14.10 or Ubuntu 14.04.

1. Remove undesired search results

By default, the Dash displays Unity lens, scopes, Amazon online search results, and records file and application usage. You can disable some of them via below tips:

Disable online search results:
Launch System Settings and go to Security & Privacy, under “Search” tab turn off the switch which says “When searching in the Dash: include online search results”
Stop recording file and app usage:
Also launch System Settings and go to Security & Privacy, under “Files & Applications” tab first clear records and then turn off the switch:
Remove unwanted Unity lens, scopes:
Open Ubuntu Software Center and search for unity-scope. In the results, check the information of installed scopes and remove the scopes you don’t need.

Do same to Unity lens by searching unity-lens.

2. Reduce Graphics Settings.

First click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click install Compiz Config Settings Manager.

Click to install CCSM

Then launch CCSM from the Unity Dash and do below changes:

Go to Ubuntu Unity Plugin page under the Desktop category. Select No Blur from the drop-down box for Dash Blur.
Go back and then go to OpenGL settings page under General category. Select Fast from the drop-down box for Texture Filter.

Note that this change would affect the whole Ubuntu System graphics and not Unity alone.

To apply all the changes, restart your computer. Enjoy!

In Howtos Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10

Midori Browser 0.5.9 Released With Important Bug Fixes

Last updated: February 16, 2018

The Midori Browser 0.5.9 “Ballet” was released recently with various important bug fixes. The developer announced in the blog post:

Seven months of sweat and tears… oh well, not quite so dramatic. In any event Midori 0.5.9 is out!

We’re already scheming… I mean planning for the next cycle. We want to go WebKit2 and GTK+3 only now and do away with the fourfold compatibility setup. Anyone who finds this thrilling is more than welcome to join in; the fun is going to start soon.

According to the changelog, the 0.5.9 release brings below changes:

Fix the problem that Downloads do not work with WebKit2
about:new in urlbar for new tabs has been fixed.
Fix visibility of SpeedDial, Toolbar, Bookmarkbar context menu items
Fix crash right-clicking forms on local pages
Fix crash when activating the edit menu
Fix “open all in tabs” for bookmarks
Fix crash when saving with associated resources
Fixes tab history undo
Fix a few simple leaks
Show search menu upon left icon click in location bar
Connect bookmarks-db singleton correctly to fix menus
Make middle clicking reload button duplicate the current tab, similar to other browsers

For the detailed changes, read the ChangeLog file from the Source Code page.

How to Install / Upgrade to Midori 0.5.9:

The 0.5.9 release is ~~not yet~~ now available in the official PPA. ~~If you really want to install or upgrade to the new release, use the Development PPA~~. Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.04 are supported so far.

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

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:midori/ppa && sudo apt-get update

2. After added the PPA, install the package via below command:

To install the GTK+2 version:

sudo apt-get install midori

~~To install the GTK+3 version:~~

sudo apt-get install midori-gtk3

3. (Optional) To remove the PPA as well as midori:

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

sudo apt-get remove midori

In Howtos, News midori lightweight browser

Install Windows Like Start Menu in (X)Ubuntu XFCE Desktop

Last updated: November 12, 2014

Quick tutorial that shows you how to install and use Whisker Menu, a Windows like Start Menu for Linux, in (X)Ubuntu Xfce4 Desktop.

Whisker Menu is an alternate application launcher for Xfce Desktop. It is the default app launcher in Linux Mint Xfce edition since Mint 15 Olivia. With it, you can search for and browse through all of your installed applications.

Install Whisker Menu:

For (X)Ubuntu 15.04, (X)Ubuntu 14.10, and (X)Ubuntu 14.04, just click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button.

Click to Install Whisker Menu

For (X)Ubuntu 12.04, install it from the developer’s PPA by running the commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin

To add the menu to panel:

Right-click on panel and navigate to panel -> panel preferences …
When the preferences window opens, navigate to Items tab
Click on the green plus sign to add new item.
Search for and add Whisker Menu to the Items list.
Finally click the arrow button to move it to the top.

Set Windows (Super) key to launch Whisker Menu:

Start Settings Manager from the menu, and navigate to Keyboard
When the Keyboard utility opens, navigate to Application Shortcuts tab.
Add new shortcut with command xfce4-popup-whiskermenu
Press the Super/Windows key when it prompts.

Theming Whisker Menu: See the developer’s post.

In Howtos xfce4

How to Remove Desktop Shortcut Icons in (X)Ubuntu XFCE4

Last updated: November 12, 2014

Quick tutorial that shows beginners how to remove the shortcut icons from Xfce4 Desktop in (X)Ubuntu 14.10, (X)Ubuntu 14.04.

Xfce4 shows Home, Devices, Trash icons on desktop out-of-the-box. You can’t simply remove them from the right-click context menu. But it’s easy to hide or disable them via the Desktop Settings utility.

1. Open Desktop Settings from the Application Menu. Or right-click on desktop and select it from the pop-up context menu.

2. When the utility opens, navigate to Icons tab. Un-check all the boxes under Desktop Icons.

Note that you might need to re-size the window so that you can see the checkboxes.

This should remove user’s Home, Trash, and Devices icons.

If you want to hide all desktop icons besides removing application shortcuts from ~/Desktops folder, just set Icon Type to None. Note that this also changes the desktop right-click menu.

In Howtos, Xfce desktop shortcuts, xfce4

Yarock Music Player 1.0 Released with New Design [Ubuntu PPA]

Last updated: November 8, 2014

Yarock, a Qt4 Modern Music Player, has just reached 1.0 release, which brings new clean and elegant design, adds artists images, album cover support, and fixes a few bugs.

Yarock is a music player in c++/Qt designed to provide a clean, simple and beautiful music collection based on album cover art. It features:

Music collection database (SQLite 3)
Browse your local music collection based on cover art
Easy search and filter music collection
Manage favorites item (album, artist)
Play music directly from collection or playqueue
Simple Playqueue
Smart playlist generator
Support mp3,Ogg Vorbis,flac music files (depending on phonon backend)
Support load/save playlist file (m3u, pls, xspf)
Play radio stream (tunin, shoutcast, dirble, …)
Mp3Gain tag support for volume normalization
Cover art download
Last Fm scrobbler
Command line interface, Mpris interface
Clean and simple user interface
No GNOME or KDE dependancies

The 1.0 release was announced a few hours ago with below changes:

new clean and elegant design, new icon set, new app icon
add support for artists images (new view, download artists images)
save rating to file
add advanced library search
add album cover for playqueue widget
add stars rating for playqueue widget
add multiple tracks edition
rewrite now playing widget
improve browser view multiple selection with SHIFT key
improve artist/album/track tags edition
support more scalable ui items
file dialog various improvements
improve file system view performance
fix “open with” yarock from KDE menu
fix playqueue restoration at startup
fix translation installation path
fix rating mp3 tag reading
minor fix for genre sorting view

How to Install Yarock 1.0 in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Yarock 1.0 is available in a launchpad PPA repository.

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/apps

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install yarock

For those who don’t want to add the PPA, grab the installer directly from the Launchpad Page. Depends on your OS type, select download & install i386 (32-bit) or amd64 (64-bit) deb.

In Howtos yarock music player

Nvidia Driver 340.58 Released, How to Install it in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: November 7, 2014

Nvidia Graphics Driver for Linux has just released version 340.58 with new GPUs support and a few bug fixes.

The latest long lived branch release Nvidia 340.58 was released this Wednesday with below changes:

Added support for the following GPUs:
- GeForce GT820M
- GeForce GTX 760A
- GeForce GTX 850A
- GeForce 810A
- GeForce 820A
- GeForce 840A
Fixed a bug that could cause VT-switching to fail following a suspend, resume, and driver reload sequence.
Fixed a bug that caused incorrect colors to be displayed on X screens running at depth 8 on some GPUs.
Fixed a bug that prevented GPUs from being correctly recognized in MetaMode strings when identified by UUID.
Implemented support for disabling indirect GLX context creation using the -iglx option available on X.Org server release 1.16 and newer. Note that future X.Org server releases may make the -iglx option the default. To re-enable support for indirect GLX on such servers, use the +iglx option.
Added the “AllowIndirectGLXProtocol” X config option. This option can be used to disallow use of GLX protocol. See “Appendix B. X Config Options” in the README for more details.

How to Install / Upgrade to Nvidia 340.58:

The Xorg-Edgers PPA provides the binary packages of the driver for Ubuntu 14.10, and Ubuntu 14.04.

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

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

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

Above commands will add the PPA and install the new driver. After that, restart your computer to take effect.

If for some reason, the new driver does not work properly. Open terminal or log into command console (Ctrl+Alt+F2), run below commands to install ppa-purge and purge the PPA:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Above commands should remove Nvidia Driver 340.58 and revert your graphics driver to original.

In Howtos nvidia, Nvidia Driver

Install Latest Tomahawk Music Player in Ubuntu 14.04/14.10

Last updated: March 19, 2015

Tomahawk social media player has recently released version 0.8, which features redesigned UI, Beats and Google Play Music support and more.

Tomahawk is a music player that not only plays your local collection, but also streams from SoundCloud, Beats, Spotify, Google Play Music, YouTube and many more. You can even connect Tomahawk with your friends via Jabber / GTalk and share your playlists and collections.

What’s new in Tomahawk 0.8:

Redesigned – Shiny new interface. Simplified. New icons.
Added Friend Feed.
Now Playing notifications (OS X & Windows) – support for OS-level notification systems (e.g. Notification Center) with fallback to its own native notification system.
Many actions now available in context menu – including Favorite and Send to a Friend.
Drag and drop support for iTunes, Deezer, Beats Music, Rdio, Spotify, SoundCloud links (into Tomahawk) for playlists/tracks/artists/album links.
Support for clicking source icon for currently playing track in audio controls to take user to associated page on source’s site
Added Hatchet plug-in.
Added Google Play Music and Beats Music support.
Add links to Support site, Bug Reports and Translations to Help menu.
Add “What’s New” page to display on first launch (or until user dismisses it) – also available from Help menu.
Changed label from “Resolvers” and “Services” to more generic “Plug-Ins”.
Clarified some labels, help text and status messages.
Changed icon color a bit.
Added “Acoustic” and “Electric” songtypes to Stations options.
Removed some stale Chart sources.
Playback Queue now saves its state across sessions.
Queue now moved to sidebar
Added “Inbox” feature, showing incoming song recommendations. Dropping a track on a user in the sidebar sends a recommendation to them.
You will now be asked whether you want to trust invalid SSL certificates.
Improved connecting between Tomahawk peers and support having multiple IPs (including IPv6).
Removed Top Loved from sidebar.
Removed Spotify playlist syncing (will be back in future versions).
HTTP(S) streaming is now done by Tomahawk instead of the Phonon backend (fixed HTTPS streaming on MacOS).
Heavily reduced memory footprint during and after indexing the database.
Retina display and DPI scaling fixes.
New Collection views. Re-added support for tracklist view of Collection.
Added Telepathy support.
Plugin refactoring (and .AXE resolver binaries).
Removed Twitter due to change in Twitter’s API.
Removed auto-playlists.
Improved error messages.
Added basic remote control API.
Add support for Opus codec (requires TagLib 1.9).
Support rtmp:// streams.
Support custom headers in CustomUrlHandler.
Fuzzy search indices for JS Resolvers.
Add metadata retrieval of HTTP(S) streams in JavaScript resolvers.

How to Install Tomahawk in Ubuntu:

While Ubuntu repositories provide an old version of Tomahawk, you can always install the latest release from its official PPA. So far, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10, and Linux Mint 17 are supported.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tomahawk/ppa

Then install Tomahawk 0.8 via Synaptic Package Manager or commands below:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install tomahawk tomahawk-dbg

After that, you can receive future updates by running regular updates via Software Updater.

More:

1. You can remove Tomahawk either from Ubuntu Software Center or by running the command below:

sudo apt-get remove tomahawk

To remove the PPA repository run:

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

2. To remove Tomahawk controls from Sound Menu:

Install dconf-editor from Ubuntu Software Center.
Launch dconf-editor and navigate to com -> canonical -> indicator -> sound
Remove ‘tomahawk.desktop’ from the value of interested-media-players.
To prevent it from showing in Sound Menu again, add ‘tomahawk.desktop’ to value of blacklisted-media-players.

In Howtos tomahawk

Racing Game ‘Stunt Rally’ 2.5 Released [How to Install]

Last updated: November 5, 2014

Open Source racing game Stunt Rally got a new release with new tracks, sceneries, and other features. Here is how to install it in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10.

Stunt Rally is an open source racing game with a track editor. It focuses on closed rally tracks with possible stunt elements (jumps, loops, pipes).

The 2.5 release was announced the day before yesterday, and below is the changelog:

167 tracks (20 New)
5 New sceneries: Surreal, Stone, Space, Alien, BlackDesert
Common
- Renamed all tracks with 3 letter prefixes, showing short name in list
  On Replays tab there is a button to “Rename All Old” replays,ghosts and records
Game
- New challenges and championships
- Solid fluids (e.g. ice, lava, added in editor fluids mode, but solid and flat)
- Rewind cooldown, after rewind 1 sec delay until next use is possible
- Fixed game setup update in multiplayer (before was updated only after track change)
GUI – Tracks list
- Now with short name, difficulty and length ratings (in default short view)
- Selectable columns, and filtering, button Y, Ctrl-F twice to toggle
Common
- Fixed black terrain on ATI/AMD Radeon cards
- Many smaller fixes
- Changed translations, more info for strings, own program to generate .pot, topic, Wiki
- New user log files with errors and warnings only, ogre.err and ogre_ed.err
Editor
- Easier on pipe creating, mark (key 8) now also moves pipe down (ctrl-8 the old way)
- On pipe sections now marked on minimap as orange
- Up/down keys working in pick window and objects lists, buildings groups list
- Checkbox to ignore all “Wrong checkpoint” messages on track (for curly tracks where checks overlap road)
- Better checkpoints in pipe, now in center and radius 1
Tweak
- Reference graph for tires, loading tires
Code
- Reworked Road_Rebuild.cpp, cleaner, data stucts, split to Road_Prepass.cpp
- Split common .cfg to settings_com.h and cpp
- specMap_rgb option in .mat (for rgb only specular maps)
- Check if tracks and cars exist before replay load
- Fixed most CppCheck warnings

How to Install Stunt Rally:

2.5 release will be available in PlayDeb repository very soon, so far it’s Stunt Rally 2.4, available for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Linux Mint 17. Check out the webpage.

1. Enable PlayDeb repository.

For Linux Mint, go to Start Menu -> Software Sources -> Additional repositories -> check out the box that says “archive.getdeb.net”.

For Ubuntu, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu trusty-getdeb games" >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/playdeb.list'

Then get the key by command:

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

2. After checking for updates, you can install Stunt Rally from Synaptic Package Manager. Or run below commands one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install stuntrally

That’s it.

In Howtos stunt rally

Install Latest Release of Exaile Music Player in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: November 6, 2014

Quick tutorial shows that how to install the latest release of Exaile Music Player in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.10 and/or Linux Mint 13/17.

Exaile is a music player that was originally conceived to be similar in style and function to KDE’s Amarok 1.4, but uses the GTK+ widget toolkit rather than Qt. It is written in Python and utilizes the GStreamer media framework.

Exaile incorporates many features from Amarok (and other media players) like automatic fetching of album art, handling of large libraries, lyrics fetching, Last.fm support, advanced tag editing, and optional iPod and MSC device support via plugins.

In addition, Exaile supports plugins that provide features such as ReplayGain support, an equalizer with presets, previewing tracks via a secondary soundcard, iPod support, and Moodbar integration.

So far, the latest release is Exaile 3.4.1 which was released on Nov 1, with below changes:

Works on OSX Mavericks and Yosemite
Fix the bug that Exaile did not work properly because of font issues in GTK
Other minor fixes

Install Exaile in Ubuntu:

Thanks to Web Upd8 Team, you can get the latest Exaile release from the PPA.

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

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install exaile exaile-plugin-contextinfo exaile-plugin-ipod exaile-plugin-moodbar

Above command will add the Web Up8 Team Main PPA, update your system package lists, and finally install exaile as well as plugins. After that, you can receive future updates by running regular updates via Software Updater.

For those who don’t want to add the PPA, grab the .deb installer for exaile and plugins from launchpad page.

In Howtos Amarok, Exaile