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PPA Install Skippy-XD, Exposé-like task-switcher for Xfce, LXDE

Last updated: November 10, 2013

Mac OS Exposé-like window picker

Skippy-XD is a program for X which provides Mac OS Exposé-like features. It is a standalone application for providing a window picker with live previews (including live video) on Linux desktops that run an X server with composite support. Thus it is not part of the window manager, and the composite is not being used all the time.

To use Skippy-XD, you need Xfce (xfwm4) or a NetWM compliant window manager (LXDE, Openbox-based window managers, etc.).

This tutorial shows you how to install this task-switcher via PPA in (X)Ubuntu 13.10, (X)Ubuntu 13.04, (X)Ubuntu 12.10, (X)Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint Xfce.

Mac OS X’s Exposé windows picker in Ubuntu 13.10 Xfce 4.10

Install Skippy-XD:

The Skippy-XD code has been released in 2004, and only slightly improved in 2011. Currently Skippy-XD is under (somewhat) active development and the latest GIT code is available in the PPA below.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:landronimirc/skippy-xd-daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install skippy-xd

Once installed, start the daemon via:

skippy-xd --start-daemon &

And activate the windows picker:

skippy-xd --activate-window-picker

Add Keyboard Shortcuts for Skippy-XD

Typically, it is helpful to set up keyboard shortcuts for skippy-xd. For Xfce4:

1. Go to Settings Manager -> Settings Editor -> xfce4 keyboard shortcuts.

2. Click on New, and type in:

  • Property: /commands/custom/<Alt>1 #You may change <Alt>1 to other key combination.
  • Type: String
  • Value: skippy-xd --activate-window-picker

xfce4 add custom shortcut key

Auto start Skippy-XD daemon at login:

Go to Settings Manager -> Session and Startup -> Application Autostart. Click on Add button, type in name and command skippy-xd --start-daemon

In Xfce , ,
 

Take screenshot of Login Screen in Ubuntu, Elementary & Pear OS

Last updated: November 10, 2013

This simple tutorial shows you how to capture screenshot of the LightDM / GDM login screen in Ubuntu, Elementary OS, or Pear OS.

Besides installing your system as Virtualbox or Vmware Guest OS, we can follow the steps below to capture and share our login screens.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command blow to check out your display manager:

cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager
handbook@handbook-1310:~$ cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager 
/usr/sbin/lightdm

By default:

  • Ubuntu Unity and Elementary OS Luna uses LightDM
  • Pear OS 8 and Ubuntu Gnome uses GDM

2. Check out the value of $DISPLAY:

echo $DISPLAY
handbook@handbook-1310:~$ echo $DISPLAY
:0

3. Now create a simple script

echo 'sleep 20; DISPLAY=:0 XAUTHORITY=/var/run/lightdm/root/$DISPLAY xwd -root' > /tmp/shot.sh

You may change:

  • 20 : the seconds of delay.
  • :0 : the value of $DISPLAY. In my Pear OS 8, the value of $DISPLAY changes every login ($DISPLAY=$DISPAY +1).
  • lightdm : the display manager.

4. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and log into TTY1.

5. Run command below to start the script:

sudo bash /tmp/shot.sh >/tmp/shot.xwd

6. Return to GUI mode by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1.

7. Logout by normal way. While you can see login screen, wait for some seconds.

8. Login by normal way. Install imagemagick if you don’t have it installed yet.

sudo apt-get install -y imagemagick

9. Run command below and finally you can check out the image under user Pictures folder.

convert /tmp/shot.xwd ~/Pictures/loginscreen.png
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How to Install Pear OS 8 from USB Stick

Last updated: July 25, 2014

Pear OS 8, a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and inspired by iOS7 has been released today. It aims to be reliable, efficient and innovative.

It’s hard to run Virtualbox Guest OS on my old laptop, so I installed Pear OS 8 as a quintuple-boot. Now I have Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Linux Mint 15 Olivia, Elementary OS Luna, Windows 7 and Pear OS 8.

Tutorial Objectives:

  • Install Pear OS 8 from USB Stick
  • Enjoy!

Preparation:

  • Format your USB Stick (2G+) to FAT32 format without ‘Quick Format’ enabled.
  • Download Pear OS 8 from its official download page

Create bootable Pear OS USB from ISO image

The first step is going to burn the Pear OS iso into USB, so that you can boot up and start the install wizard. There are a few tools can do this job, here I used Unetbootin.

1. Download unetbootin executable from unetbootin.sourceforge.net. For Ubuntu, you can also install it in Ubuntu Software Center.

2. Plug-in your USB stick, then open Unetbootin. Choose Diskimage and browser to select the iso image.

create bootable bear os 8 usb

3. Click on OK button and wait a few minutes for the burning process.

Install Pear OS 8 from the bootable USB

Insert the USB stick into the target computer. Start the machine and choose to boot up via USB in BIOS. You’ll see a blue background with a few options, choose to boot with ‘Start the installer directly’.

bootable pear os usb

When you’re in the live system, you can totally follow this Ubuntu step by step installation guide to install Pear OS 8 on your machine.

NOTE: If you have Ubuntu based system previously installed as dual or triple boot, you may choose to install boot loader to local partition rather than whole hard disk.

Pear OS 8 Screenshots:

pear os 8 gdm login screen


pear os 8 app launcher


pear os 8 my pear 6 & contacts


pear os 8 nautilus file manager 3.4


pear os 8 ppa manager & synapse indicator

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Yarock 0.9.64 released, Install it in Ubuntu Linux Mint

Last updated: November 9, 2013

Yarock, a Qt4 Modern Music Player designed to provide an easy and pretty music collection browser based on cover art now reached a new version with new features and improvements. One interesting feature is add support to drag from playqueue to file browser in order to copie music file to folder.

What’s New in Yarock 0.9.64:

  • New : add support for multiset album (grouping or not)
  • New : add support to drag from playqueue to file browser (in order to copie music file to folder)
  • New : add standalone vlc audio engine (without phonon layer)
  • New : add option to choose color scheme
  • BugFix : fix multithreading issue when populating playqueue
  • BugFix : fix cover searcher threadmanager
  • BugFix : fix crash on media item context menu access
  • BugFix : fix lyricsmania extraction rule
  • BugFix : fix echonest artist image download
  • BugFix : fix context view item layout update
  • BugFix : fix seek bar and time label widget spacing
  • Change : reorganise code structure
  • Change : rewrite file dialogs
  • Change : replace navigator bar by a menu icon bar
  • Change : lot of minor ui improvement

    • Install Yarock:

    There’s a PPA repository contains yarock packages for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives. The new release will be available soon in this PPA.

    To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T and run command in terminal:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:samrog131/ppa

    Then install the player:

    sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install yarock

    Yarock source code: launchpad.net/yarock

    In Howtos
     

    QtQR: graphical tool to Create and Read QR codes in Ubuntu

    Last updated: November 8, 2013

    This tutorial shows you a graphical tool for generating and reading QR codes in Ubuntu Linux. It’s QtQR, a GUI front-end of qrencode made in Python & Qt, which provides a simple and easy to user interface to encode text, url, bookmark, Email, telephone number, phonebook, SMS, MMS, Geolocalization and decode from image file or webcam.

    QtQR QR code generator & reader in Ubuntu 13.10

    What is QR code?

    A Quick Response code is a two-dimensional pictographic code used for its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of any kind of data (e.g., binary, alphanumeric, or Kanji symbols)

    Install QtQR

    This simple application is available in Ubuntu universe repository since Ubuntu 12.10. Just search for and install qtqr in Ubuntu Software Center (Works for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Linux Mint 14/15/16).

    For Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04, Elementary OS Luna, run commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install this tool from PPA:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:qr-tools-developers/qr-tools-stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qtqr
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    HPLIP 3.13.11 released, Install it in Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian

    Last updated: November 8, 2013

    HPLIP, HP Linux Imaging and Printing released v3.13.11 with many new HP printers and Debian 7.2/6.0.8 support. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint.

    As you may know, HPLIP 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 over 2,080 printer models–including; Deskjet, Officejet, Photosmart, PSC (Print, Scan, Copy), Business Inkjet, LaserJet, Edgeline MFP, and LaserJet MFP.

    The latest v3.13.11 added support for the following new printers:

    • HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M176 series
    • HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M176n
    • HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M177 series
    • HP Color LaserJet Pro MPF M177fw
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750 Printer series
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750n
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750dn
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750xh
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855 Printer series
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855dn Printer
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855xh Printer
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M855x+ Printer
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise flow M880 Multifunction Printer series
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise flow M880z Multifunction Printer
    • HP Color LaserJet Enterprise flow M880z+ Multifunction Printer
    • HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127 series
    • HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fn
    • HP LaserJet Pro MFP M127fw
    • HP Officejet 2620 All-in-One
    • HP Officejet 2621 All-in-One
    • HP Officejet 2622 All-in-One

    Also added supported for Debian 7.2, Debian 6.0.8, and added Pin Printing support for HP LaserJet m5035 MFP device.

    Install HPLIP:

    The .run installer is available in sourceforge.net. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run:

    wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/hplip/hplip-3.13.11.run

    Then give executable permission:

    chmod +x hplip-3.13.11.run

    Finally start the installing process and follow the prompts. It will automatically install this tool and configure your connected HP printers.

    sh hplip-3.13.11.run

    In Howtos ,
     

    Install Nvidia 304.116 for Legacy GPUs in Ubuntu, Linux Mint

    Last updated: November 8, 2013

    The latest Nvidia Legacy GPU driver 304.116 has improved compatibility with recent Linux kernels. Here’s how to intall it if you have an old graphics card that is no longer supported in the regular NVIDIA Unified Graphics Driver.

    What’s New in Nvidia 304.116:

  • Updated nvidia-installer to consider the “libglamoregl.so” X loadable extension module to be in conflict with the NVIDIA OpenGL driver. This module can cause the NVIDIA libGL to be loaded into the same process (the X server) as the NVIDIA libglx.so extension module, which is not a supported use case.
  • Improved compatibility with recent Linux kernels.
  • Updated the NVIDIA OpenGL driver to write temporary files to $TMPDIR if it is set, instead of unconditionally writing to /tmp.
  • Updated a fallback of writing temporary files to $HOME/.nvidia to use $HOME/.nv instead, as the latter path is already used for other NVIDIA driver related files.

    • Install Nvidia 304.116:

    Before getting started, remove previous installed Nvidia proprietary drivers in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

    sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current

    Then download the driver from official links below:

    Nvidia 304.116 for Linux 32 bit

    Nvidia 304.116 for Linux 64 bit

    Follow the steps below to install it:

    1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to command console. Login with your username and pasword.

    2. Kill the graphic session with the command below:

  • For default LightDM: 
    sudo service lightdm stop
  • For Gnome GDM: 
    sudo service gdm stop
  • For Linux Mint MDM: 
    sudo service mdm stop

    • 3. Give executable permission to the installer:

    chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-304.116.run

    4. Start the installer and follow on screen prompts:

    sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-304.116.run

    5. Restart and done.

    sudo reboot

    If for some reason the driver does not work properly for you, re-do step 1 & 2 and followed with command below to uninstall this driver:

    sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-304.116.run --uninstall
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    Blender 2.69 PPA is ready for Ubuntu & Linux Mint

    Last updated: June 9, 2021

    Blender 2.69, the latest stable release of the popular 3D creation software finally is available for Ubuntu & Linux Mint via PPA one week after Blender 2.69 was official announced.

    What’s New in Blender 2.69:

    Modeling:

    A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.

    Cycles Rendering:

    Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring. Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.

    Motion Tracker:

    The Motion tracker now supports plane tracking, which can be used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things in footage.

    More Features:

    Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.

    Addons:

    FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).

    Bug Fixes:

    In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

    Install or Upgrade Blender 2.69:

    The PPA has updated for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Linux Mint 13/14/15/16.

    PPA now works for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.10 and Linux Mint 17 / 17.1.

    To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:

    sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install blender

    NOTE that the packages doesn’t include pre-compiled CUDA kernel. If you want to use the Cycles renderer with CUDA support, you have to install the CUDA toolkit on your system to do runtime compilation of the CUDA kernel:

    sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit

    blender 2.69 in ubuntu 13.10

    In Howtos ,
     

    Show / Hide all ‘hidden’ startup applications in Ubuntu 13.10

    Last updated: November 7, 2013

    This quick tutorial is going to show you how to display or re-hide ‘hidden’ startup applications in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander.

    There’s a built-in utility in Ubuntu, which allows to add, remove, and edit additional startup applications. By default the system auto-start services are hidden, here’s how to show it in the box.

    Before:

    no apps in startup applications utility in ubuntu 13.10

    After:

    show hidden apps in startup applications

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

    sudo sed -i 's/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g' /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

    Then re-open the utility and you’ll see all ‘hidden’ apps.

    If you just want to change some settings and then hide them again, run this command in terminal:

    sudo sed -i 's/NoDisplay=false/NoDisplay=true/g' /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

    That’s it. Enjoy!

    In modify ubuntu ,
     

    Nvidia Driver 331.20 released, Install it in Ubuntu & Linux Mint

    Last updated: November 7, 2013

    The latest Nvidia Driver for Linux 331.20 has been released today with lots of changes. Here are new features and how to install it in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint.

    What’s New in Nvidia Linux 331.20:

    This Long Lived Branch version 331.20 brings following changes:

  • Added support for NVIDIA OpenGL-based Framebuffer Capture (NvFBCOpenGL). This library provides a high performance, low latency interface to capture and optionally encode the composited framebuffer of an X screen. NvFBC and NvIFR are private APIs that are only available to approved partners for use in remote graphics scenarios.  Please contact NVIDIA at GRIDteam@nvidia.com for more information.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented configuration files containing application profiles from being loaded when directories were present in the application profile configuration search path.
  • Deferred initialization of libselinux in the NVIDIA OpenGL driver, in order to avoid a problem where libselinux might not be ready when the NVIDIA libGL shared library is first loaded.
  • Fixed a bug that could lead to memory exhaustion in OpenGL applications running on 32-bit systems.
  • Added nvidia-uvm.ko, the NVIDIA Unified Memory kernel module, to the NVIDIA Linux driver package. This kernel module provides support for the new Unified Memory feature in an upcoming CUDA release.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the X server to fail to initialize when DisplayPort 1.2 monitors were assigned to separate X screens on the same GPU.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a deadlock when forking from OpenGL programs which use some malloc implementations, such as TCMalloc.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Warp & Blend settings from being retained across display configuration changes.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented some settings changes made via the nvidia-settings command line interface from being reflected in the nvidia-settings graphical user interface.
  • Changed the clipping behavior of the NVIDIA X driver on Trapezoids and Triangles for some RENDER operations to match the behavior in newer versions of Pixman:
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pixman/2013-April/002755.html
  • Fixed a bug in MetaMode tracking that could cause spurious error messages to be printed when attempting to add or delete Metamodes via NV-CONTROL.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the NVIDIA X driver to attempt to load the X11 “shadow” module unconditionally, even in situations where the driver had no need to use the module. This could result in the printing of spurious error messages, on X servers where the module was not present.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented display configuration changes made with xvidtune(1) from working correctly.
  • Fixed a bug that occasionally caused display corruption in GLX applications while changing the display configuration.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented glReadPixels from working correctly when reading from Pixel Buffer Objects over indirect rendering, when the image width is not a multiple of 4.
  • Added a new NV-CONTROL attribute, NV_CTRL_BACKLIGHT_BRIGHTNESS, for controlling backlight brightness.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented nvidia-settings from creating display device configuration pages for newly connected DisplayPort 1.2 Multi Stream Transport downstream devices.
  • Added GPU utilization reporting to the nvidia-settings control panel.
  • Fixed a bug in the nvidia-settings control panel that prevented users from configuring stereo, when stereo was not already configured.
  • Added support for reporting the tachometer-measured fan speed on capable graphics boards via nvidia-settings and the NV-CONTROL API. The preexisting mechanism for reporting fan speed reports the speed of the fan as programmed by the driver.
    For example, `nvidia-settings –query=[fan:0]/GPUCurrentFanSpeedRPM`.
  • Fixed a regression that caused GPUs that do not support graphics to not appear in nvidia-settings.
  • Fixed a bug that caused DisplayPort 1.2 multi-stream devices to stop working if they were unplugged and plugged back in while they were active in the current MetaMode.
  • Added support for multiple NVIDIA kernel modules. This feature allows users to assign different GPUs in the system to different NVIDIA kernel modules, potentially reducing the software overhead of coordinating access to multiple GPUs.
  • Added support for the EGL API on 32-bit platforms.  Currently, the supported client APIs are OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0, and the only supported window system backend is X11.
  • Add a new option, AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration, which allows the X server to start even if no connected display devices are detected at startup.  This option can be enabled by running “sudo nvidia-xconfig –allow-empty-initial-configuration”
    This option is useful in RandR 1.4 display offload configurations where no display devices are connected to the NVIDIA GPU when the X server is started, but might be connected later.
  • Updated nvidia-installer to provide a scrollable text area for displaying messages from the /usr/lib/nvidia/alternate-install-present and /usr/lib/nvidia/alternate-install-available distro hook files. This allows for longer messages to be provided in these files.
  • Updated nvidia-installer to avoid recursing into the per-kernel “build” and “source” directories when searching for conflicting kernel modules in /lib/modules.
  • Added a system memory cache to improve the performance of certain X rendering operations that use software rendering fallbacks.  The X configuration option “SoftwareRenderCacheSize” may be used to configure the size of the cache.
  • Removed the “DynamicTwinView” X configuration option: dynamic reconfiguration of displays is always possible, and can no longer be disabled.
  • Fixed a bug that caused nvidia-settings to display incorrect information in its display configuration page when all displays on an X screen were turned off.
  • Updated nvidia-installer to only install the libraries libvdpau and libvdpau_trace if an existing installation of libvdpau is not detected on the system. This behavior can be overridden with the –install-vdpau-wrapper and –no-install-vdpau-wrapper options.
    Future NVIDIA Linux installer packages will no longer include copies of libvdpau or libvdpau_trace: VDPAU users are recommended to install these libraries via other means, e.g. from packages provided by their distributors, or by building them from the sources available at: http://people.freedesktop.org/~aplattner/vdpau/

    •  

    Download & Install Nvidia 331.20:

    First download the drivers from the official links below:

    Nvidia 331.20 for 32 bit Linux

    Nvidia 331.20 for 64 bit Linux

    Nvidia 331.20 for 32 bit ARM Linux

    For FreeBSD, Solaris, go to Unix Drivers download page

    Once downloaded, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 on your keyboard to switch to command console and login with your username and password. Remove previous Nvidia’s proprietary drivers if any:

    sudo apt-get purge nvidia-current

    You required to run command below to stop / close graphic session before installing process:

  • For Ubuntu LightDM (default): 
    sudo service lightdm stop
  • For Gnome GDM: 
    sudo service gdm stop
  • For Linux Mint MDM: 
    sudo service mdm stop

    • Give permission to execute the downloaded installer:

    chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.20.run

    Finally start the installer and follow on screen prompts:

    sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.20.run

    Don’t remove the installer after installation, because if for some reason this driver does not work properly, you can remove Nvidia 331.20 via command below in TTY console:

    sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-331.20.run --uninstall
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