Archives For jimingkui

upgrade Firefox in Ubuntu

Mozilla Firefox has reached version 33.0. It has been made into main repositories for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and derivatives.

See what’s new in the Firefox 33:

  • OpenH264 support (sandboxed)
  • Improved search experience through the location bar
  • Slimmer and faster JavaScript strings
  • Search suggestions on the Firefox Start (about:home) and new tab (about:newtab) pages
  • Windows: OMTC enabled by default
  • New CSP (Content Security Policy) backend
  • Support for connecting to HTTP proxy over HTTPS
  • Improved reliability of the session restoration
  • Azerbaijani [az] locale added
  • Proprietary window.crypto properties/functions removed
  • JSD (JavaScript Debugger Service) removed in favor of the Debugger interface
  • @counter-style rule from CSS3 Counter Styles specification implemented
  • DOMMatrix interface implemented
  • Cubic-bezier curves editor
  • Display which elements have listeners attached
  • New sidebar which displays a list of shortcuts to every @media rule in the current stylesheet
  • Paint flashing for browser content repaints
  • Editable @keyframes rules in the Rules section of the Inspector
  • CSS transform highlighter in the style-inspector
  • Fix incomplete downloads being marked as complete by detecting broken HTTP1.1 transfers (237623)
  • Various security fixes

How to Upgrade Firefox:

Just run regular updates via Software Updater will bring you to the latest Firefox 33. You can choose only upgrade Firefox from the utility if you don’t want to upgrade all your system.

If you don’t see Firefox in the update list, change the download server to Main Server from Software & Updates or Software Sources utility.

LXQt 0.8.0 Released with Full Qt 5 Compatibility

Last updated: October 20, 2014

LXQt, the next generation of LXDE, has just reached release 0.8.0, which brings full Qt 5 compatibility, two beautiful new themes, and a lot of new features.

LXQt is the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, the Lightweight Desktop Environment. It is the product of the merge between the LXDE-Qt and the Razor-qt projects.

According to the release note, LXQt 0.8.0 brings below changes:

  • Full Qt 5 support. Run cmake with -DUSE_QT5 to enable it.
  • New component: lxqt-admin. This brings an optional set of basic admin tools such as configuration for date & time as well as users and groups.
  • New theme: Plasma Next. Based on KDE Plasma Next theme.
  • New theme: Dark Alpha, by Inti Alonso.
  • Much improved support for multiple displays.
  • Support for RGBA transparency if compositing is available.
  • lxqt-config-randr has been removed. It has been replaced by lxqt-config-monitor.
  • pcmanfm-qt: Support single-click to activate items
  • pcmanfm-qt: Support drag & drop on the desktop
  • pcmanfm-qt: Implement integration with the ark archive manager
  • pcmanfm-qt: Improve readability in icon view
  • lxqt-panel: Support reordering of taskbar buttons
  • lxqt-panel: Support “urgency” hint
  • lxqt-panel: Add support for OSS in volume control, if available
  • lxqt-powermanagement: Improved compatibility with systemd/logind
  • Integrate with compton if available (disabled by default)
  • Add support for setting a default UI font
  • Lots of performances improvements.
  • Lots and lots of bugfixes.
How to install LXQt in Ubuntu:

A daily build PPA is available in ppa:lubuntu-dev/lubuntu-daily, so far it supports Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and derivatives.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run below commands one by one to add the PPA and install LXQt session:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-dev/lubuntu-daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install lxqt-metapackage lxqt-session lxsession

Once installed, log out or restart. When you’re at the Unity Greeter choose log in with a LXQt session.

(Optional) To remove this Desktop Environment, run below command in terminal:

sudo apt-get remove lxqt-metapackage lxqt-session && sudo apt-get autoremove

How to Install Sublime Text 2 / 3 in Ubuntu 14.10

Last updated: October 13, 2014

Quick tutorial to install Sublime Text 2 stable, so far its 2.0.2, or Sublime Text 3 Beta in Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn.

Sublime Text is a close-source text and code source editor with an Python API. It may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use.

For the features and supported languages, see the wikipedia page.

Sublime Text 2 in Ubuntu 14.10

Install Sublime Text in Ubuntu:

Thanks to WebUpd8 Team, an installer has been made into PPA that automatically downloads the stable or beta release of Sublime Text from its official site and installs it on your system.

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

To install Sublime Text stable:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-2

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sublime-text

When running the first command, you will be asked to type in user password and there will be no visual feed back.

To install Sublime Text 3 Beta:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-3

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sublime-text-installer

Once installed, launch the editor from the Unity Dash or menu and enjoy!

HPLIP, HP Print, Scan and Fax Drivers for Linux, has recently reached v3.14.10 with Ubuntu 14.10 Beta, and lots of new printers support.

HPLIP (Hewlett-Packard Linux Imaging & Printing) is an HP-developed solution for printing, scanning, and faxing with HP inkjet and laser based printers in Linux. The HPLIP project provides printing support for 2,388 printer models, including Deskjet, Officejet, Photosmart, PSC (Print Scan Copy), Business Inkjet, LaserJet, Edgeline MFP, and LaserJet MFP.

List of new supported printers:

- HP Deskjet 2541 All-in-One Printer
- HP Envy 4501 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 4503 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 4505 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 4507 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 4508 e-All-in-One
- HP ENVY 5534 e-All-in-One Printer
- HP Envy 5640 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 5642 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 5643 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 5644 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 5660 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 5665 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 7640 e-All-in-One
- HP Envy 7645 e-All-in-One
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125r
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M125ra
- HP LaserJet Pro M201n Printer
- HP LaserJet Pro M201dw Printer
- HP LaserJet Pro M202n Printer
- HP LaserJet Pro M202dw Printer
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M225rdn
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M225dw
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M225dn
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M226dw
- HP LaserJet Pro MFP M226dn
- HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M630dn
- HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M630f
- HP LaserJet Enterprise MFP M630h
- HP LaserJet Enterprise Flow MFP M630z
- HP Officejet 5740 e-All-in-One
- HP Officejet 5742 e-All-in-One
- HP Officejet 5745 e-All-in-One
- HP OfficeJet 8040 e-All-in-One
- HP OfficeJet 6810 e-All-in-One  Printer Series
- HP OfficeJet 6812 e-All-in-One  Printer
- HP OfficeJet 6815 e-All-in-One  Printer
- HP Officejet 7612 Wide Format e-All-in-One Printer
- HP OfficeJet Pro 6230 ePrinter
- HP OfficeJet Pro 6830 e-All-in-one
- HP OfficeJet Pro 6835 e-All-in-one
- HP OfficeJet Pro 8616 e-All-in-One Printer

The new release adds support new Distro’s: Debian 6.0.10, Debian 7.6, Ubuntu 14.10 Beta, RHEL 7.0.

Install HPLIP in Ubuntu:

1. Download the latest “hplip-x.x.x.run” package from the link below:

Click to download HPLIP

2. To install the package, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, and run the command below:

sh ~/Downloads/hplip-3.14.10.run

You may change the name of “hplip-3.14.10.run” in the code depends on the package version you downloaded.

3. When the installation process starts, you’ll be asked for some questions. Answer a to select automatic mode, type in your user password (no visual feed back), and continue with the installation wizard until you’re done.

When everything is done, restart your computer and your printer should now work.

Enable Flash for Chromium Browser in Ubuntu 14.10

Last updated: October 10, 2014

If you’re using a Chromium based web browser in Ubuntu, you may find that the Adobe Flash Player installed from Ubuntu Software Center does not work all the time.

Because ‘Aura’ for Linux, which replaces GTK+, lacks coded support for NPAPI plugins, the “old” Adobe plugin in Ubuntu repositories does no longer play Flash content in Chromium based web browser.

As a workaround, you can use the ‘Pepper Flash’ which is bundled with Google Chrome that provides the latest Adobe Flash Player for Linux.

Chromium with Lastest Adobe Flash

1. Click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button:

This will install the package “Pepperflashplugin-nonfree“, which will download Chrome from Google, unpack it and make the included Pepper Flash Player available for use with Chromium.

2. After that, relaunch Chromium browser and Flash should now work. If not, close the browser and run below command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to tell the plugin location:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install

That’s it. Enjoy!

How to Enable Flash for Firefox in Ubuntu 14.10

Last updated: October 10, 2014

Firefox browser does not play flash out-of-the-box in Ubuntu. We need to manually install the Adobe Flash Player and below is how.

As you may know, Adobe abandoned flash for Linux in 2012. For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser. Adobe will provide security updates for Flash Player 11.2 for five years.

The Adobe Flash Player 11.2.x is still available in Ubuntu repositories and below is how to install it in Ubuntu 14.10.

Click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button:

The package doesn’t contain the actual flash player, it’s only an installer that automatically downloads and installs the source tarball from the Canonical Partners repository.

If you have already enabled Canonical Partners repository, available in Software & Updates -> Other Software tab, you can directly install the Flash Player (the real package) package from Ubuntu Software Center:

Once installed, re-launch your Firefox browser and enjoy!

Prefer to launch a cascading menu rather than search application from Unity Dash? Well, here is how to install the classic Gnome Menu in Ubuntu 14.10.

ClassicMenu indicator is a notification area applet for the top panel of Ubuntu Unity that provides a simple way to get a classic GNOME-style application menu for those who prefer this over the Unity dash menu.

To install the applet:

The developer has built the indicator binary into PPA. You can download the .deb package from the link below:

Download classicmenu-indicator_xxx_all.deb

Once the download process finished, double-click the package in file browser to open it with Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button.

Or install it via command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/classicmenu-indicator_*.deb

When done, you can start the classic Gnome Menu from the Unity Dash, or let it open automatically at next log-in.

When the beginners want to customize their Ubuntu Desktops, System Settings may be the thing that first come to mind.

System Settings is available in Unity (left) Launcher out-of-the-box, it provides a group of utilities to configure your Ubuntu desktop settings, such as backups, keyboard and mouse properties, displays, network and security settings, and more.

However, there are a few basic desktop settings that are not covered by System Settings, such as GTK / icon / cursor themes, fonts, desktop icons, system cleaning and so forth.

Below I’ll show you three simple tools that may help you customize your Ubuntu Desktop:

1. Unity Tweak Tool

Unity Tweak Tool was started since Ubuntu 13.04. It provides a clean and easy-to-use user interface to configure the default Unity desktop settings.

The open-source tool provides detailed configurations for Unity Launcher (left sidebar), dash (the search box), top panel, web apps, window effects, themes, fonts, and more.

One of the most notable features of Unity Tweak Tool is that each configuration tab contains a “Restore defaults” button allows to revert original settings.

To install Unity Tweak Tool, click the below button to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click install:

2. Ubuntu Tweak

Ubuntu Tweak was started 6 years ago since Ubuntu 8.04. It’s one of the most popular Ubuntu configuration tools. Unfortunately, it is not made into Ubuntu universe repositories so far.

Ubuntu Tweak features:

  • a quick overview of your system information
  • quick install featured applications.
  • configure themes, fonts, login settings, quicklists (Launcher icons’ context menu), and more
  • clean browser cache, system cache, and old kernels.
  • provide online wallpaper HD.

Ubuntu Tweak .deb installer is available for download at the link below:

Ubuntu Tweak Download Page

3. Gnome Tweak Tool

Gnome Tweak Tool is a basic configuration tool specially designed for Gnome Desktop Environment. It’s a good choice if you’re using Gnome Shell session in Ubuntu. But it looks broken in the default Unity DE due to the new client-side decorations.

Gnome Tweak Tool is available in Ubuntu universe repositories, just search for and install it in Ubuntu Software Center.

QtWebKit web browser QupZilla 1.8.1 has been released recently. Here is how to install / upgrade it in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives.

QupZilla is a free and open source browser that uses QtWebKit engine. Additional effort was put into seamless integration of the browser with the native look and feel of users’ desktops. Some additional features of the browser include the integration of history, web feeds and bookmarks in a single location, the ability to take a screenshot of the entire page, and Opera-like “Speed dial” home page. It is reported to consume fewer system resources than the major general purpose browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

QupZilla 1.8.1 is the first bugfix release since v1.8.0. It fixed:

  • reverted setting DNT header by default

  • autofill not working for some frames

  • saving speed dial in case of crash

  • open file in download option on windows

  • Internet Explorer bookmarks importer

  • building on Mac

Install / Upgrade QupZilla in Ubuntu:

The latest binaries have been made into PPA available for Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10.

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

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:nowrep/qupzilla

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qupzilla

If you don’t want to add the PPA, grab the .deb package directly from this page.

After that, you can launch the browser from Unity dash and receive future updates by running regular update via Software Updater.

Linus Torvalds finally announced the stable release of Linux Kernel 3.17. He wrote on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml.org):

So the past week was fairly calm, and so I have no qualms about releasing 3.17 on the normal schedule (as opposed to the optimistic “maybe I can release it one week early” schedule that was not to be).

However, I now have travel coming up – something I hoped to avoid when I was hoping for releasing early. Which means that while 3.17 is out, I’m not going to be merging stuff very actively next week, and the
week after that is LinuxCon EU…

What that means is that depending on how you want to see it, the 3.18 merge window will either be three weeks, or alternatively just have a rather slow start. I don’t mind getting pull requests starting now
(in fact, I have a couple already pending in my inbox), but I likely won’t start processing them for a week.

Anyway, back to 3.17. Nothing major happened during the last week, as you can see from the appended shortlog. Mostly drivers (i915, nouveau, ethernet, scsi, sound) and some networking fixes. With some misc
noise all over.

Go out and test,

Linus

What’s New in Linux Kernel 3.17:

  • Radeon R9 290 “Hawaii” GPUs finally play nicely with the open-source AMD Linux driver.

  • Microsoft Xbox One controller support.

  • Improvements to the Sony SIXAXIS support

  • Toshiba “Active Protection Sensor” Support, a driver to detect if Toshiba laptops are in a free-fall.

  • New ARM hardware support: Rockchip RK3288 SoC, Allwinner A23 SoC, Allwinner A31 Hummingbird, Tegra30 Apalis board, Gumstix Pepper AM335x, and the AM437x TI evaluation board.

  • Open-source NVIDIA driver improvements.

  • DMA-BUF cross-device synchronization support

  • Broadcom BCM7XXX-based board support

  • ACPI 5.1 activity and other power management improvements.

  • Audio support includes Wildcatpoint Audio DSP on Intel Broadwell Ultrabooks.

Install / Upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.17 in Ubuntu:

Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the binary packages, available for download in the link below:

You may first check out your OS type, 32-bit (i386) or 64-bit (amd64), then download and install the packages below in turn:

  1. linux-headers-3.17.0-031700_xxx_all.deb
  2. linux-headers-3.17.0-031700-generic_3.17.0-031700.xxx_i386/amd64.deb
  3. linux-image-3.17.0-031700-generic_3.17.0-031700.xxx_i386/amd64.deb

For Ubuntu server that does not have a graphical session, you can download and install the kernel by running below commands one by one:

For 32-bit system, navigate to /tmp, download the debs and finally install them via below commands:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-utopic/linux-headers-3.17.0-031700-generic_3.17.0-031700.201410060605_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-utopic/linux-headers-3.17.0-031700_3.17.0-031700.201410060605_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-utopic/linux-image-3.17.0-031700-generic_3.17.0-031700.201410060605_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.17.0-*.deb linux-image-3.17.0-*.deb

For 64-bit system, run:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-utopic/linux-headers-3.17.0-031700-generic_3.17.0-031700.201410060605_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-utopic/linux-headers-3.17.0-031700_3.17.0-031700.201410060605_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17-utopic/linux-image-3.17.0-031700-generic_3.17.0-031700.201410060605_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.17.0-*.deb linux-image-3.17.0-*.deb

When done, restart your computer.

Tip: If you’re using a proprietary video driver, you may need to re-build (or re-install) the driver to get it work with new kernel.

If for some reason, the new kernel does not work properly for you, reboot with the previous Kernel (Grub boot loader -> Advanced -> select previous kernel) and run below command to remove Linux Kernel 3.17:

sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-3.17.0-* linux-image-3.17.0-* && sudo update-grub

That’s it. Enjoy!