Cinnamon, one of the default desktop environments for Linux Mint, now is available in the official repositories of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn.
Which means you don’t have to add any third-party PPA, just search for and install cinnamon from Ubuntu Software Center. Available version is v2.2.14.
Cinnamon is a GTK+ 3-based desktop environment. The project originally started as a fork of the GNOME Shell. It was initially developed by (and for) the Linux distribution Linux Mint.
As the description says:
Cinnamon is a desktop environment which provides advanced innovative features and a traditional user experience.
The desktop layout is similar to GNOME 2. The underlying technology is forked from gnome-shell. The emphasis is put on making users feel at home and providing them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience.
Once you installed it from Software Center. Log out current session and select log in with cinnamon in the greeter:
digiKam, open-source image organizer and tag editor, has reached version 4.2.0 one days ago on August 5th. The developer team announced in the website:
Dear digiKam fans and users,
The digiKam Team is proud to announce the release of digiKam Software Collection 4.2.0. This release includes important features to simplify photograph workflow :
As usual, we have worked hard to close your reported issues since the previous stable release 4.1.0. A list of the issues closed in digiKam 4.2.0 is available through the KDE Bugtracking System.
Install / Upgrade to digiKam 4.2 in Ubuntu 14.04:
Besides building from the source tarball, you can upgrade digiKam through this third-party PPA.
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 or upgrade digiKam in Ubuntu 14.04:
This quick tutorial shows you how to mount and map your Box.com storage in Ubuntu desktop so that you can access your cloud storage within Nautilus file browser.
There are many cloud storage services available for Ubuntu Linux. Box.com is one of them that provides 10 GB free web space with 250 MB file upload size. It allows to access directly through WebDav protocol.
There is an open source project Box2Tux, it makes the configuration of WebDav protocol easy. All you need to do is insert your Box account name and password, then it allows you to access the cloud storage directly in Nautilus file browser by mounting it automatically at start up.
NOTE that normal user only have read permission to the mounted storage, you need to open Nautilus with root for full access (drop and drop to upload, delete, etc…). To do so, run gksudo nautilus in terminal or in Alt+F2 ‘Run a command’ dash.
Mount Box.com Storage in Ubuntu:
1. First of first, install davfs2 (WebDav) from Ubuntu Software Center.
You can click the link below to bring up Softare Center and click the install button.
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and run one by one:
Reconfigure davfs2 and select Yes to allow non-root user to mount the WebDav resource:
The latest Linux Kernel 3.16 has been released. Linus Torvalds wrote in the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml.org):
So nothing particularly exciting happened this week, and 3.16 is out there.
And as usual (previous release being the exception) that means that the merge window for 3.17 is obviously open. And for the third time in a row, the timing sucks for me, as I have travel coming up the second week of the merge window. Many other core developers will be traveling too, since it’s just before the kernel summit in Chicago.
So we’ll see how the next merge window goes, but I’m not going to worry about it overmuch. If I end up not having time to do all the merges, I might delay things into the week of the kernel summit, but I’ll hope to get most of the big merging done this upcoming week before any travel takes place, so maybe it won’t come to that. So this is just a heads-up that the merge window *might* be extended.
Anyway, back to the changes since -rc7: it’s really fairly small stuff randomly all over, with a third being architecture updates, a third drivers, and a third “misc” (mainly mm and networking). The architecture stuff is small ARM updates (mostly DT), some x86 Xen fixups, some random small powerpc things. The shortlog gives a good idea of what kind of stuff it all is, but it’s really just 83 commits (plus merges and the release commit) and about a third of them are marked for stable.
So while 3.16 looked a bit iffy for a while, things cleared up nicely, and there was no reason to do extra release candidates like I feared just a couple of weeks ago.
What’s New in Linux Kernel 3.16:
Samsung Exynos multi-platform support so that the Samsung ARM SoC kernel support is on-par with many other ARM SoCs and the ability to have a single kernel image support multiple ARM devices.
Better upstream Jetson TK1 ARM development platform support.
Broadwell support within Intel’s P-State driver.
Dell free-fall driver support to see if your Latitude laptop is falling.
A new Synaptics input driver.
Blk-mq is nearly feature complete as the multi-queue block layer implementation.
For those still with an old Nokia N900 smart-phone, the modem is now supported by the mainline Linux kernel.
Initial GK20A support as the NVIDIA Kepler-based GPU within the Tegra K1 SoC. The ARM hardware support in general has improved a fair amount with this new kernel.
Nouveau support for Kepler GPU re-clocking albeit the support varies and there’s more improvements to be made.
Intel Cherryview support for the upcoming Intel Atom SoC succeeding Bay Trail / Valley View graphics.
AMD Radeon graphics are faster with DRM improvements made in this latest kernel release.
Be aware that proprietary drivers may or may not work correctly with this kernel version. You need to rebuilt (or install) your video driver after kernel update.
The Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the .deb installers which are available at:
Check your OS type (32-bit = i386, 64-bit = amd64) via System Settings -> Details and download the generic or low latency packages and install them in below orders:
If for some reason this kernel release doesn’t work properly for you, reboot into previous kernel (Grub -> Advanced -> select previous kernel) and run this command to remove Linux Kernel 3.16:
LibreOffice, the default office suite in Ubuntu, has finally reached version 4.3 with a large number of improvements and new features.
The packages has been made into 4.3 series PPA – available for Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 – which will provide future minor release updates (4.3.1, 4.3.2, 4.3.3 …).
What’s New in LibreOffice:
Better OOXML interoperability, and support of legacy Mac file formats
Better comment management, and highly intuitive spreadsheet handling
3D models in Impress, and support for “monster” paragraphs
LibreOffice 4.3 also support “monster” paragraphs exceeding 65,000 characters
2. Open Software & Updater from Unity dash. After checking for updates, you’ll see the latest LibreOffice packages available in the update list. Click the Install Now to install updates.
You can also run the commands below to do the upgrade process:
Texmaker, an open source LaTeX editor with an integrated PDF viewer, has finally reached v4.3 with new features and translation updates.
Texmaker is entirely a Qt app that works on Windows, Linux and Macos. The editor includes full unicode support, inline spell checking, auto-completion, code folding and rectangular block selection. Regular expressions are also supported for the find-and-replace actions.
The latest Texmaker 4.3 was released on August 1st, 2014 with below changes:
a visual diff view has been added to the “source viewer” (differences between the current files loaded in the editor and in the “source viewer”) based on jsdifflib from Chas Emerick (BSD license)
when a command fails, the command is now displayed with the error message “Could not start the command”
an “reload all documents from file” option has been added to the “File” menu (users request)
if a “completion.txt” file is found in the same directory than texmaker.exe on windows, in the “/usr/share/texmaker/” folder on linux and in the “Resources” subdirectory of the .app package on macosx, all items from this file will be added automatically for the autocompletion (the syntax must be the same than for the .”Customize completion” option of the “User” menu.
an option to launch the “Clean” tool when exiting the program has been added (users request)
a texmaker man page and a texmaker.menu file have been added in the “utilities” directory of the source (thanks to Bernd Warken for the man-page)
the cs, el, es, hu and se translations have been updated (thanks to all the translators)
Install Texmaker 4.3 in Ubuntu:
The official website provides .deb installer available for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, and Ubuntu 12.10.
First check out your OS type, 32-bit (i386) or 64-bit (amd64), by going to System Settings -> Details.
Then download the package that matches your Ubuntu edition and os type:
Finally double-click the package in file browser to open it with Ubuntu Software Center and click install.
The latest skype for Linux 4.3 was released in the middle of June with updated UI, new cloud-based Group chat experience. Now it’s available in the Canonical Partners repository for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives.
From now on, enable Canonical Partners repository via Software & Updates utility, then you are able to upgrade to Skype 4.3 by running regular system updates via Software Updater
What’s New in Skype 4.3:
An updated UI
Our new cloud-based Group Chat experience
More reliable file transfer support when using multiple devices at once
Greater accessibility by blind and visually impaired users
There are a few applications for Linux desktop that change the wallpaper automatically. Webilder is one of them that rotates your wallpaper with photos directly downloaded from flickr and webshots.com.
The application provides an indicator applet for Ubuntu Unity and GNOME that allows you to downloads the most interesting photos from Flickr, browser photo collection, and select next photo (as wallpaper).
In its preferences window, you can set Webilder to automatically download photos every day, download Flickr photos that match your given tags, view and download Webshots photos with an account.
Features:
downloads the most interesting photos from Flickr.
view Webshots photos on your Linux desktop (requires Webshots account).
downloads Flickr photos that match tags (for example: beach,party)
downloads photos from Flickr users of your choice.
automatically downloads new photos for you every day.
change your wallpaper every few minutes.
import webshots collections (wbz or wbc formats).
photo collection browser that will let you view the images in fullscreen, or set them as a wallpaper.
browser integration for Webshots – downloaded images are automatically added to your collection.
command-line photo downloader webilder_downloader
Install Webilder in Ubuntu:
The website provides the .deb package for Ubuntu and its derivatives, download it from the link below and double-click to open with Ubuntu Software Center and finally click install:
Once installed, open Webilder indicator form Unity Dash or app menu. It will start automatically the next time you log in.
XT7-Player is currently one of the best multimedia video player for KDE / Kubuntu. Here are the main features and how to install it.
Xt7-Player is an open source gui to mplayer. While there are plenty out there, it’s hard to find one which gives access to all mplayer options. This is what Xt7-Player aims to be, a complete graphical interface to mplayer, focusing on usability.
Among the main features of XT7 player include support for video playback from DVD, DVB-T support for allowing us then to be able to watch TV channels through a PCI card or USB for digital terrestrial connected to our personal computers. XT7-Player enables us to search and play videos from YouTube (also support for multiple playlists and offline mode for playback of favorite videos even when you’re not connected to the Internet by accessing the happy cached Flash system), we can also manage and play web radio, podcasts, and also there is also the Media Info section with details about our media files.
Simple and functional, XT7 Player has many customizations as well as a useful video and audio equalizer, support for Karaoke mode and the introduction of custom filters, there is also the shutdown mode that allows us to Turn off the PC after playback of a playlist or video in progress and much more.
Install XT7-Player in Kubuntu via PPA:
So far, the latest release is available in PPA for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04 and their derivatives.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste below command and hit enter to add the gambas3 PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gambas-team/gambas3
Then paste the command below to add the XT7-Player PPA:
App Grid is an Ubuntu Software Center alternative that aims to be lightweight, fast, clean and simple.
Every day we use USC (Ubuntu Software Center) to install, remove, buy, and manage applications, but it works really slow and freezes frequently in my old laptop.
App Grid provides a clean and simple interface and delivers stunning startup speed, and swift reactions throughout. It has almost all features that USC provides: install, launch, remove button, screenshots, a short description along with user comments, Ubuntu One login and more.
Install App Grid in Ubuntu:
This project provides an official PPA for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 12.04.
To install it, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:
