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Install Sopcast Player ‘TV-Maxe’ in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: May 12, 2014

One of my readers was asking how to install Sopcast Player in Ubuntu 14.04. But Sopcast is not available at any PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 at the moment and it’s not easy to build it from source for normal users. So here’s how to install this good alternative TV-MAXE.

TV-MAXE is an application which provides the ability to watch TV stations and listen radio via different streams, such is SopCast. Currently it has a large number of channels, both romanian and international.

tv-maxe in ubuntu 13.04

Install TV-Maxe in Ubuntu 14.04:

Because the official PPA provides the latest packages for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.10, and Ubuntu 12.04, you can easily install the app by running below commands in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:venerix/pkg

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install tv-maxe

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Stunt Rally 2.3 Released With New Tracks & New Look, Ubuntu 14.04 PPA

Last updated: May 12, 2014

Stunt Rally, a free and open-source game based on VDrift and OGRE, with Track Editor, now is at version 2.3. Here’s how to install Stunt Rally 2.3 in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty LTS.

ChangeLog:

  • 153 tracks (7 new, 27 renamed)
  • Common
    • All tracks renewed, new look
    • Terrain
      • New textures, bigger 1k, with CC 0 license, more info in data/terrain/about.txt
      • Blendmap noise with many parameters
      • Fixed triplanar uv swap, also now max 2 layers can be picked
      • Emissive light, on few tracks
    • Grass
      • Channels – different setups for grasses (e.g. white grass in higher mountains)
      • Grass density is a RenderToTexture
    • Tracks tab: list sorting fix, more scenery colors, icons hiding, start position
    • Frames per second limitting option
    • Disabled parallax, broken
    • Updated Compiling Wiki, made Windows pre-built dependencies archive
  • Game
    • Dynamic camera bouncing, camera view angle sliders
    • Boost fuel depending on track length, more boost options
  • Editor
    • Pick window for terrain textures, grasses and vegetation models
      • Tab key show/hide, bigger list, mouse wheel on button picks next/previous
      • Fill settings (marked with .) from presets.xml (optional)
    • Game tab with track settings: gravity, wind, deny reversed, etc.
    • Terrain
      • Test blendmap F9
      • Faster terrain editing, blendmap is now a RTT with shader
      • Swap layer buttons
      • Enter – lock brush position (use for big brushes to avoid blur)
    • Fixed selected objects rotation (many) and copy
    • Start position rotation also global and roll
    • Update button on Layers, Grasses, Vegetation for faster update (same for F8)
    • Vegetation model info: count and real sizes [m]
    • Surface tab for terrain and road surface params (split from Layers tab)
    • Test SceneryID button, shows % difference

Install Stunt Rally:

The new release is available in PlayDeb repository for Ubuntu 14.04 and their derivatives.

To add the PlayDeb repository, 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:

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

Finally update packages lists and install the game:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install stuntrally

That’s it. Enjoy!

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How to Establish An OpenVPN Connection in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: May 11, 2014

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection is an encrypted connection to a server. When you connect to a VPN server and type in a web address, the request is sent via an encrypted signal to the VPN server which then sends you back the web page.

Establishing a VPN connection will keep your ISP or government from recording your browsing history. It can also be used to visit sites that your network administrator has blocked (in some countries like China youtube is blocked). An OpenVPN connection is the most secure type of VPN, because not only is the connection encrypted by
a password, but also by three certificates.

There are many places online that sell VPN services. In this tutorial, I will use vpnbook.com’s service, because it is completely free, and runs entirely off donations.

PART 1: Get A Free OpenVPN Account

Please skip this part if you already have a VPN server set up.

1. Open up your web browser or just click the link to go to www.vpnbook.com.

2. Scroll down and click on the tab that says OpenVPN (as the picture shown below). Download one of the certificate bundles and also remember the username and password.

3. Decompress the downloaded package. Create 3 new empty text files in the result folder and called them: ca.crt, certificate.crt, key.key.

4. Open up one of the .ovpn files (All of the .ovpn files are the same, but with different configurations.) with gedit text editor, here I use vpnbook-us1-tcp443.ovpn as example.

5. In the .ovpn file, do following copy and paste things and finally save the changes.

Copy everything between <ca> </ca> tags and paste into ca.crt file.

Copy everything between <cert> </cert> tags and paste into certificate.crt file.

Copy everything between <key> </key> tags and paste into key.key file.

PART 2: Setup OpenVPN connection:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the command below to install VPN plugin for network manager:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn

2. Go to system area network icon -> VPN Connections -> Configure VPN:

3. Click the Add button in next window and choose OpenVPN in drop-down menu as the connection type.

4. Now in VPN editing window, type in:

Connection name: type a name as you want
Gateway: the IP address in the vpnbook-us1-tcp443.ovpn file.
Type: Password with Certificates (TLS)
Username: see the picture under PART 1 -> step 2.
Password: see the picture under PART 1 -> step 2.
User Certificate: choose the certificate.crt file.
CA Certificate: choose the ca.crt file.
Private Certificate: choose the key.key file.
Private Key Password: leave it empty.

5. NOTE: Advanced settings depend on the .ovpn file you selected in PART 1 (step 4), find the ip, port, cipher and so forth at the top of .ovpn file

Click the Advanced button. Check the boxes which say:

Use custom gateway port: 443
Use LZO data compression
Use a TCP connection

Under Security tab, set Cipher to AES-128-CBC

6. When everything is done, connect to the VPN from network menu:

You’re connected to the VPN if you see this message:

Enjoy!

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Install Miro 6 in Ubuntu 14.04 via PPA

Last updated: October 24, 2014

Miro, formerly named Democracy Player or DTV, is an audio, video player and Internet television application. It integrates an RSS news aggregator and podcatcher, a BitTorrent client (based on libtorrent), and xine media player (or GStreamer) under Linux.

Miro is free software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. While Ubuntu repositories still have Miro 4, the latest release has reached Miro 6 which brings flash support for Linux and big speed improvements for launching the app, navigating, downloading, etc.

Install Miro 6 in Ubuntu 14.04:

I’ve made the packages for Miro 6 into my PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. To install it, follow the steps below:

UPDATE: Sorry that I have moved the packages from the ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps repository to ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/ppa as a workaround , because someone copied my content (without even a link back) and got indexed by google before this post. So my post becomes duplicate in Google’s search result!

I’ve emailed the guy who copied my content to ask a link back, but with no luck. I feel so sad because hours of my hard work has been stolen. Please help me if you know what should I do.

1. 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:ubuntuhandbook1/ppa

2. Because Ubuntu 14.04 started shipping the libav fork instead of FFmpeg, we also need the PPA for FFmpeg libraries.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:djcj/vlc-stable

3. Finally update packages lists and install Miro 6 as well as dependencies:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg miro

That’s it. Enjoy!

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Install Python 3.3.5 or 3.4 via PPA in Ubuntu 14.04 / 12.04

Last updated: October 7, 2014

This quick tutorial is going to show you how to install Python 3.3.5 (or 3.4.0) and set as default in Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04.

Python 3.3.5 was released on March 9th, 2014. It fixed:

  • a 3.3.4 regression in zipimport
  • a 3.3.4 regression executing scripts with a coding declared and Windows newlines
  • potential DOS using compression codecs in bytes.decode()

Python 3.4.0 was released one week later than 3.3.5 with below new features:

  • a “pathlib” module providing object-oriented filesystem paths
  • a standardized “enum” module
  • a build enhancement that will help generate introspection information for builtins
  • improved semantics for object finalization
  • adding single-dispatch generic functions to the standard library
  • a new C API for implementing custom memory allocators
  • changing file descriptors to not be inherited by default in subprocesses
  • a new “statistics” module
  • standardizing module metadata for Python’s module import system
  • a bundled installer for the pip package manager
  • a new “tracemalloc” module for tracing Python memory allocations
  • a new hash algorithm for Python strings and binary data
  • a new and improved protocol for pickled objects
  • a new “asyncio” module, a new framework for asynchronous I/O

Install:

A third party launchpad PPA contains older and newer Python version for Ubuntu. The two Python releases are available in the PPA for Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes

You may read the PPA description in the output and then:

Install Python 3.3.5 via:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install python3.3

Or install python 3.4.0 via:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install python3.4

To set your installed python as default, run the below commands one by one (You may change python3.3 to python3.4 in the code):

rm /usr/local/bin/python  

ln -s /usr/local/bin/python3.3 /usr/local/bin/python
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‘Exit On Close’ Plugin For Rhythmbox Music Player

Last updated: May 8, 2014

Want to really exit Rhythmbox when clicking on the close button? Thanks to fossfreedom, he has written an external plugin that does just this – clicking the close button (window ‘x’ button) really does mean quit.

In the default way of working, Ubuntu has a specific patch to ensure that when music is playing, clicking the close button minimizes the application.

The reason for this is that some people like music to be playing, but they don’t actually want to see the application visibly on the desktop. Control of Rhythmbox then passes to the Sound Indicator.

However, for those that do not like this behavior, you cannot by default quit the application via the close button if something is playing. You have to either, stop what is playing and then quit. Alternatively, use the Menu – File – Quit method.

Install the Plugin:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, follow the steps below:

1. Install git:

sudo apt-get install git

2. Navigate to Rhythmbox plugins directory:

cd ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/plugins

Create the directory if not exist and run the previous command again:

mkdir ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/plugins

3. Get the plugin:

git clone https://github.com/fossfreedom/close-on-hide

4. For Ubuntu 13.10 and earlier with Rhythmbox 2.99 or earlier, edit the plugin file via:

gedit ~/.local/share/rhythmbox/plugins/close-on-hide/close-on-hide.plugin

Change Loader=python3 to Loader=python and save the file.

5. Now open Rhythmbox, go to Tools -> Plugins and enable the line which says “Close on Hide”.

Enjoy!

via:xpress-ubuntu

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LXQt 0.7.0 (LXDE & Razor-Qt) Released, Install it in Ubuntu via PPA

Last updated: May 8, 2014

The first release of LXQt, the Qt port and the upcoming version of LXDE, has been announced a few hours ago. It is the product of the merge between the LXDE-Qt and the Razor-qt projects: A lightweight, modular, blazing-fast and user-friendly desktop environment.

The LXDE and Razor-qt teams are proud to announce LXQt 0.7.0, the first release of LXQt, the Qt Lightweight Desktop Environment. This beta release is considered a stable continuation of the Razor desktop.

It has been almost a year since the Razor-qt project and the LXDE-Qt project decided to merge. Since then, the LXQt desktop has been under active development by 13 developers and dozens of contributors and
translators.

Read the full announcement at sourceforge.net

Install LXQt session in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 13.10, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and run one by one:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gilir/q-project

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install lxqt-metapackage

Once installed, log out current session and select log in with LXQt Desktop:

Links:

LXQt website: lxqt.org
Report issues: github.com/lxde/lxde-qt

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Install or Upgrade to Kernel 3.14.3 in Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Last updated: May 7, 2014

The latest stable Linux Kernel 3.14.3 has been announced by Greg Kroah-Hartman a few hours ago. All users of Kernel 3.14 series are urged to upgrade as soon as possible.

This tutorial will show you how to install or upgrade to this kernel release in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint.

Linux kernel 3.14.3 has gathered more drivers and a host of Arch improvements. See the changelog for details.

Install / Upgrade to Kernel 3.14.3:

For graphical way, download the .deb packages from kernel.ubuntu.com and double-click to install them via pop-up Ubuntu Software Center in the below order:

1. linux-headers-3.14.3-031403_3.14.3-xxxx_all.deb

2. linux-headers-3.14.3-031403-generic_3.14.0-xxxx_i386(or amd64).deb

3. linux-image-3.14.3-031403-generic_3.14.0-xxxx_i386(or amd64).deb

For command line way, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, follow the steps below:

1. For 32 bit system, download .deb packages via:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.14.3-utopic/linux-headers-3.14.3-031403-generic_3.14.3-031403.201405061153_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.14.3-utopic/linux-headers-3.14.3-031403_3.14.3-031403.201405061153_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.14.3-utopic/linux-image-3.14.3-031403-generic_3.14.3-031403.201405061153_i386.deb

For 64 bit system:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.14.3-utopic/linux-headers-3.14.3-031403-generic_3.14.3-031403.201405061153_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.14.3-utopic/linux-headers-3.14.3-031403_3.14.3-031403.201405061153_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.14.3-utopic/linux-image-3.14.3-031403-generic_3.14.3-031403.201405061153_amd64.deb

2. Install the downloaded packages:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.14.3-*.deb linux-image-3.14.3-*.deb

3. If you’re using a proprietary driver, you may rebuild (or re-install) it to make it work with the new kernel.

Finally restart your computer.

Uninstall:

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 3.14:

sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-3.14.3-* linux-image-3.14.3-*

Finally reboot your computer.

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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: File Sharing With Samba

Last updated: May 6, 2014

This tutorial will show you how to install and configure Samba, a free software that allows you to share files, printers and other common resources across a network, in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

1. Install Samba and the graphical configuration tool:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the command below and hit run:

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common system-config-samba python-glade2 gksu

2. Open Unity Dash, search for and open the samba configuration tool:

3. When the tool opens, go to Preferences -> Server Settings.

Under Basic tab:

  • Workgroup. Same to your Windows Workgroup name (case-sensitive). In Windows 7, right-click Computer icon and go to Properties, there you’ll see Windows Workgroup name.
  • Description.This is the name of your computer as seen by Windows Users.

As it is not advisable to allow ‘Guests’ there should be no reason to change the ‘security’ settings tab unless you wish to do so.

Finally click the OK button to save it.

(Optional) 4. Create a special user for network file sharing

Go to System Settings -> User Accounts -> Click unlock -> Click + (plus) icon -> Choose Standard account and type in names.

Remember to set a password to enable the new account.

5. Next go to Preferences -> Samba Users. Click Add User:

  • Unix Username: Select a user on this Ubuntu machine. You’ll access the shares from Windows machine with this user privilege. You can create a special user for file sharing by step 4
  • Windows Username: When accessing from Windows machine, you’ll be asked to type this username and the password below.
  • Samba password: When accessing from Windows machine, you’ll be asked to type the username above and this password.
  • Confirm Samba password.

Finally, restart Samba service and done!

sudo restart smbd && sudo restart nmbd

To share a folder, click the green + (plus) button in Samba Server Configuration tool and you can then easily set the directory, name, read/write permissions and access users.

Tips: If you set the Unix Username to current login user in step 5, you can easily share a folder by “Local Network Share” option in its context menu.

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