UbuntuHandbook

Linux Kernel 3.10.13 Released, Upgrade in Ubuntu 13.04/12.04/Mint

Last updated: September 27, 2013

The Linux Kernel 3.10 LTS series had reached 3.10.13. All users of the 3.10 kernel series are urged to upgrade as soon as possible.

The Kernel 3.10.13 contains lots of fixes and improvements, read the official released note

To install or upgrade to 3.10.13 in Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Linux Mint and their derivatives. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open temrinal. When it opens, follow below instructions:

For 32-bit systems:

Run below commands one by one to download the DEBs:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.13-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.13-031013-generic_3.10.13-031013.201309262117_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.13-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.13-031013_3.10.13-031013.201309262117_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.13-saucy/linux-image-3.10.13-031013-generic_3.10.13-031013.201309262117_i386.deb

Then install them via:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.10.13*.deb linux-image-3.10.13*.deb

For 64-bit systems:

Run commands to download the kernel debs:

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.13-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.13-031013-generic_3.10.13-031013.201309262117_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.13-saucy/linux-headers-3.10.13-031013_3.10.13-031013.201309262117_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.10.13-saucy/linux-image-3.10.13-031013-generic_3.10.13-031013.201309262117_amd64.deb

Install them via:

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.10.13*.deb linux-image-3.10.13*.deb

You can also download the Debs from Kernel PPA

In Howtos kernel, Linux Kernel

FrostWire 5.6.5 Released, it’s highly recommended to upgrade

Last updated: September 26, 2013

The free and open-source FrostWire BitTorrent client has released 5.6.5, it fixed a real nasty bug that will affect many of you who like to select multiple files from the same set of search results when those files happen to belong to the same torrent.

It also updated the SoundCloud meta search and integrated fully to the new SoundCloud.com’s search interface.
If you are a musician and you have a SoundCloud account, remember that if you mark your songs as “Downloadable” they will become available to the millions of FrostWire users worldwide, both on desktop and mobile.

Changelog:

frostwire (5.6.5) stable; urgency=high

Upgrades Soundcloud search, download, streaming.
Fixes issue when starting downloads made of multiple single files
that belong to the same .torrent.
When opening finished transfers on the library with a double click
FrostWire will no longer type the name of the file on the library
search box.

It’s highly recommended to upgrade to FrostWire 5.6.5, here’s the link for Ubuntu and Linux Mint package:

FrostWire 5.6.5 Deb

For other systems, go to the official download page

In Howtos frostwire

Ios 7 style icons theme for Ubuntu & Elementary OS

Last updated: September 26, 2013

This tutorial is going to show you an icon theme called ieos7, which is based on Mac Mountain Lion.

This theme is created for Elementary OS Luna. I’ve tested it on Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Unity, and it works.

For Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and Elementary OS Luna, you can install this icons by running below 3 commands one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-br/projects

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ieos7-icons

For other Ubuntu editions, directly download and install the ieos7-icons DEB package from launchpad.net

Once installed, use Unity Tweak Tool, Gnome Tweak Tool or other system tools to apply the theme.

Enjoy!

In Howtos icons, ios7 style icons, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 13.04

VLC 2.1.0 (Stable) Released, Upgrade in Ubuntu 13.10

Last updated: September 27, 2013

VLC 2.1.0 stable has been released with numerous improvements, new features and bugfixes. 2.1 is a major upgrade for VLC, named RinceWind.

Below is the announcement in VLC website:

VideoLAN and the VLC development team are glad to present the new major version of VLC, 2.1.0, named RinceWind

With a new audio core, hardware decoding and encoding, port to mobile platforms, preparation for Ultra-HD video and a special care to support more formats, 2.1 is a major upgrade for VLC.

Rincewind has a new rendering pipeline for audio, with better effiency, volume and device management, to improve VLC audio support.

It supports many new devices inputs, formats, metadata and improves most of the current ones, preparing for the next-gen codecs.

Rincewind fixes around a thousand bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 140 volunteers..

~~At the moment of writting this tutorial, the release note is still 404 page. I’ll add the link once it’s OK.~~

Features:

AUDIO:

Rewritten audio core, allowing better volume and device management.
Rewrite of the audio modules, to adapt to the new core.
Correct support for multi-channel layouts in all formats: 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1
New audio outputs for Windows Vista, Android, iOS, OpenBSD and OSSv4.
New remapping, gain, stereo widening, downmixing effects.
Higher samplerate, precision, live configuration in the core.
Numerous new audio metadata format supported.

VLC new audio core

VEDIO:

Port the OpenGL output to OpenGL ES.
Support color conversion shaders in glsl on Android and iOS.
New outputs for OpenMax IL on mobile and Decklink Blackmagic.
New video outputs for iOS using OpenGL ES2.
Support for deinterlacing for higher bit depth and XYZ colorspace.
New anaglyph filter for side-by-side 3D.
4K-ready :)

CODECS:

Add hardware decoding for OS X using VDADecoder.
Add hardware decoding for Android using MediaCodec.
Add hardware decoding for GNU/Linux using VDPAU.
Add hardware encoding for Windows using Intel QuickSyncVideo.
Support for G2M4, MSS1, MSS2, TSCC2, CDXL, Ut, VBLE video codecs.
Support for Ulead DV audio, Indeo Audio Coder, RealAudio Lossless audio.
Support for SCTE-27 and complete EIA-608 subtitles

faster video decoding

FORMATS:

Support for fragmented MP4, Wave/RF64 files.
Extended metadata tags and cover art support in Ogg, AVI, MP4 and MKV.
Support FLAC, Atrac, ADPCM, DV Type 1, 12bits DV audio in AVI.
Extended support for AVI, MKV and MJPEG streams.
Better recording of AVI and MKV format.
Audio fingerprinting using AcoustID.

INPUT AND DEVICES:

Support for screen input on OSX Lion and later.
Support for Microsoft Smooth Streaming, developed by Viotech.net
New RTMP input module, using libavformat!
Support for VNC/rfb and Remote Desktop view-only modes.
Important improvements on Blu-Ray, Dash, v4l2 and HTTP inputs.
New AVFoundation OS X and shm framebuffer inputs.

FOR ANIME FANS:

New 6.1 downmixer to 5.1 and Stereo from MKV/Flac 6.1.
Correct YUV->RGB color matrix in the OpenGL shaders.
Improved MKV support for seeking, and resiliancy.
Editions support in MKV.
Better subtitles and metadata support from MKV.
Various ASS subtitles improvements.

FOR MOBILE:

Port to Android, from 2.1 to 4.3, on ARMv6, ARMv7, x86 and MIPS.
New port to iOS, from iOS 5 to 7, on all iPads and iPhones after 3GS.
Partial port to WinRT, for Windows 8, 8.1 and WP8.
OpenGL ES optimized outputs.
Improvements of OpenMAX IL decoders, encoders and renderers.
New audio, video outputs and interfaces for mobiles.

VLC on mobile

FOR DEVELOPERS:

libVLC and most modules are now LGPLv2.1+.
libVLC media framework can now be used in all types of applications.
libVLC SDK packages now exists, in addition to more examples.
Improved libVLC API, for better control.
VLC’s web plugins now support windowless mode, for smoother integration with HTML elements.

VLC 2.1 release note.

The VLC stable PPA is ready for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy. Due to dependency problem, you can’t install VLC 2.1 on Ubuntu 13.04 and older editions.

Run below commands one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to upgrade to 2.1.0 in Ubuntu 13.10:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install vlc browser-plugin-vlc

In News media player, vlc media player

How to Record Animated GIF Screencasts in Ubuntu 13.10/13.04

Last updated: September 25, 2013

Want to make screencasts as animated GIFs on Ubuntu? Well, byzanz is the best choice I ever found.

Byzanz is a small and efficient screencast creator. It records your desktop session or parts of it to an animated GIF, OGG Theora or Flash.

Below is an animated GIF created by byzanz:

It is said that byzanz does not screencast Unity-3D. However, I’ve been using it in Unity for a period of time since I was in Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal.

To install byzanz in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/byzanz

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install byzanz

This is an example I did just now:

byzanz-record --duration=15 --x=0 --y=0 --width=500 --height=350 output.gif

For more options, run:

man byzanz-record

Enjoy!

In Howtos byzanz, Record Animated GIF

Install Cover Art Browser Plugin for Rhythmbox in Ubuntu via PPA

Last updated: September 25, 2013

Cover Art Browser is a plugin gives a visually slick way to browse your music collection in Rhythmbox v2.96-v3.0.

It adds a new CoverArt button to the left pane; Albums are displayed as clickable buttons containing their album cover; Right click menu allows to play, queue & search for coverart for an album.

As well as simply displaying a grid full of album art for browsing, you can:

Drag & Drop cover art on to the browser
Fetch/search for missing album art
Display Album & Artist name under the cover
Double click playing of albums
Sort covers by album name and artist
Adjust cover art size
Multiple user-configurable options to tailor what you see and use.
Examine and change properties for an album/tracks
Set ‘CoverArt Browser’ to Rhythmbox’s default view

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom/rhythmbox-plugins

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-coverart-browser

The PPA supports for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and their derivatives such as Linux Mint and Elementary OS.

After installation, enable the plugin by running below command:

gsettings set org.gnome.rhythmbox.plugins.coverart_browser webkit-support false

Enjoy!

In Howtos Cover Art plugin for rhythmbox

Task Coach Todo Manager landed in Ubuntu 13.10’s Software Center

Last updated: September 24, 2013

As you may know, Task Coach is a free flexible open source todo manager featuring hierarchical tasks. It grew out of frustration about other programs not handling composite tasks well. In addition to flexible composite tasks, Task Coach has grown to include prerequisites, prioritizing, effort tracking, category tags, budgets, notes, and many other features. However, users are not forced to use all these features; Task Coach can be as simple or complex as you need it to be.

Task Coach has reached 1.3.32 with lots of bug fixes. It has been added to Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy’s universe repository, so it can be easily installed via Ubuntu Software Center.

For Ubuntu 13.04 Raring and earlier version, deb package can be download at sourceforge.net

In News task coach, todo manager, Ubuntu 13.10

Install gtk-gnutella 1.0.0 in Ubuntu 13.10/13.04/12.04/10.04

Last updated: September 24, 2013

Gtk-gnutella is the graphical Unix Gnutella client, efficient, reliable and fast, written in C. It has been optimized for speed and scalability, with low-memory consumption. It is meant to be left running 24×7, using little CPU and only the configured bandwidth.

Gtk-gnutella 1.0.0 is a major release correcting a few bugs and adding small but interesting features such as the ability to limit dropping of received UDP messages, making the DHT keys and values persistent across sessions, SDBM file auto-compaction at startup, and last but not least, rarest-chunk downloading to optimize download efficiency when facing partial sources.

New Feature:

Let users define a maximum lease time for UPnP and NAT-PMP mappings.
Made DHT keys and values persistent across sessions.
When there are partial sources for a file, download the rarest chunks first.

Improvements:

[GTK1] Optimize massive updating of the download source list.
[GTK] Dynamically update the list of available chunks in the file (blue line).
Files used to persist information across sessions are now auto-compacted.
The UPnP layer can now monitor more types of Internet Gateway Devices.
After unclean shutdown, rename existing core file in crash directory.
Detect servers that choke when receiving pipelined HTTP requests.
Added the Mersenne Twister Pseudo-Random Number Generator.
Remember when user requests an auto-restart, to keep the same session going.
Increased maximum download buffer size to 1 MiB and default to 128 KiB.

Install gtk-gnutella 1.0.0 via PPA:

The Sourceforge provides the Deb packages for gtk-gnutella, but I can’t install it on my machine due to dependency problem. Fortunately there’s a PPA repository makes it easy to install it in Ubuntu and its derivatives.

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

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:zapman/gtkg

Then update package lists and install the package via:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install gtk-gnutella

Enjoy!

In Howtos gtk gnutella client

How to easily kill a frozen / locked-up app or window in Ubuntu

Last updated: September 23, 2013

This tutorial shows you how to easily kill / force quit an application or window that freezes or stops responding using xkill & shortcut key.

Xkill is a utility for forcing the X server to close connections to clients. This program is very dangerous, but is useful for aborting programs that have displayed undesired windows on a user’s screen. It works on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, and other Linux systems.

You can run Xkill from terminal, Alt+F2 run command box or even via a keyboard shortcut. When it runs, your cursor becomes a cross (‘X’). Click on any window will kill it instantly.

Warning: Don’t click on Desktop and Panel when running xkill, it will also kill them and break your desktop and you need to restart to restore.

To create a shortcut key for xkill, go to System Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcut -> Custom shortcuts. Click add to create the shortcut and give a key combination.

After that, press the key combination and then click on the window you want to kill.

Enjoy!

In Howtos kill frozen window, xkill

Install Qmplay2 Video Player via PPA in Ubuntu 13.10, 13.04, 12.04

Last updated: September 23, 2013

Qmplay2 is a Qt-based Media Video Player for Ubuntu Linux and Windows. It plays all formats and stream supported by ffmpeg and libmodplug (including J2B). It has integrated Youtube browser.

This simple and brief tutorial is going to show you how to install Qmplay2 in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, Linux Mint and Elementary OS via the PPA repository