There’re lots of white dots on default LightDM login screen, which is quite annoying. This quick tip shows you how to remove them in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy.
See the screenshot before and after:
login screen with white dots
login screen without white dots
To get started:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run:
1. Run command to allow user lightdm to create a connection to the X server:
sudo xhost +SI:localuser:lightdm
2. Then switch to user lightdm in the terminal window.
sudo su lightdm -s /bin/bash
3. Finally set draw grid (white dots) feature to false:
gsettings set com.canonical.unity-greeter draw-grid false
That’s it.
If you’re not comfortable with command console. You can use Ubuntu-Tweak, it has an option to turn off this feature under Tweaks -> Login Settings -> unlock -> turn off draw grid.
This quick tip is going to show beginners how to add ‘open as administrator’ or ‘open as root’ into Nautilus context menu in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy.
With this feature enabled, you can quickly open files and folders in Nautilus with root (super user) privilege. This also works on Linux Mint 16 Petra if you’re using Nautilus 3.8.x.
To get started:
1. Open Ubuntu Software Center, search for and install gksu. It allows graphical programs to ask a user’s password to run program as root / administrator.
2. Open Nautilus file browser, press Ctrl+H to view hidden files & folders. Navigate to USER Home -> .local -> share -> nautilus -> scripts.
Create an empty document under this directory named ‘open-as-administrator’
3. Open this file with Gedit, copy and paste following codes into the file and save.
#!/bin/bash
#
# this code will determine exactly the path and the type of object,
# then it will decide use gedit or nautilus to open it by ROOT permission
#
# Determine the path
if [ -e -n $1 ]; then
obj="$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"
else
base="`echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI | cut -d'/' -f3- | sed 's/%20/ /g'`"
obj="$base/${1##*/}"
fi
# Determine the type and run as ROOT
if [ -f "$obj" ]; then
gksu gedit "$obj"
elif [ -d "$obj" ]; then
gksu nautilus "$obj"
fi
exit 0
4. Right-click on this file, go to Properties -> Permissions tab. Check the box which says ‘Allow executing file as program’.
Log out and back in, or restart Nautilus by nautilus -q command. Done.
As you may know, Fotoxx is a free open source Linux program for photo editing and collection management. The goal is to meet most user needs while remaining fast and easy to use. The latest Fotoxx 13.10 has been released with many improvements and bug fixes. See details:
Mashup images and text can be moved, resized and rotated using the mouse.
Trim/Crop and Rotate were combined as one function to improve workflow.
Rotate: click image position to add vertical and horizontal guidelines.
Rotate: the automatic trim option was reinstated.
Flatten and Expand brightness distribution were combined as one function.
Paint/Clone: new option to paint/erase gradually or fully in one stroke.
Gallery thumbnail popup menu: rotate +/-90 degrees was added.
Gallery [Top] button: new option to choose from named collections.
World map zoom: toggle full-size/fit-window without intermediate steps.
Slide Show: allow pause and resume at a selected image position.
Slide Show: an image with the tag ‘pause’ will beep and pause until resumed.
View Metadata: option to show only captions and comments (e.g. for slide show).
Making a named collection from search results (or any gallery) was simplified.
CMYK function: the user interface was simplified.
Warp Linear/Curved/Affine are using multiple threads for faster response.
Bugfix: clickable tabular reports would not scroll with the mouse wheel.
Bugfix: the interactive translation update function was broken.
The Latest Kernel 3.10.15 LTS has been released with lots of drivers updates or fixes, including Radeon, Intel i915, and USB. Same to Kernel 3.11.4, the ARM platform gets a fix for the Thumb-2 bug in the AES assembler code, and two bugs were squashed for the x86 architecture. See the official announcement.
All users of Kernel 3.10 series are urged to upgrade as soon as possible. Here’s how to do it in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, Linux Mint.
Upgrade Linux Kernel 3.10.15
Press Ctrl+ALt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, follow the steps below:
The Linux Kernel 3.11 series has reached 3.11.4, which brings lots of drivers updates or fixes include Radeon, Intel i915, Wireless and USB. The ARM platform gets a fix for the Thumb-2 bug in the AES assembler code, and two bugs were squashed for the x86 architecture. Read the official announcement
All users of Kernel 3.11 series are urged to upgrade as soon as possible. Here’s how to install or upgrade Linux Kernel 3.11.4 in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal and their derivatives.
To get started, press Ctrl+ALt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to download the DEBs:
Yorba, the developer of Shotwell has announced a new release Shotwell 0.15, which brings several enhancements:
Copy and paste color adjustments between photos
Highlights detail adjustment
YouTube plugin now uses OAuth / OpenID
Videos in Missing Files now re-import properly
Improvements when thumbnailing videos
Numerous bug fixes
Upgrade Shotwell in Ubuntu:
The Shotwell 0.15 tarball is available for download. See the installation guide for information on getting Shotwell on your system
The team has built this release on their PPA for Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal and their derivatives, such as Linux Mint 15 & 14.
To get started installing the photo management tool, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shotwell
For Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, you don’t have to do something special. Just open Software Center, search for and install shotwell, which is already the newest.
The developer doesn’t build it for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and its derivatives, because the libraries change so much between versions that it isn’t practical to build on older versions.
wxPackJPG is a simple tool to losslessly compress JPG image files. It can be used to backup image files in the JPEG format. They use about 20% less space, but can be restored to bit-identical files.
wxPackJPG is the GUI for the command-line tool PackJPG. There is already a DotNet-GUI called “PackJPG Options”, but this only runs on Windows and does not use more than one core.
Features of wxPackJPG:
It losslessly compresses JPEG image files. For this it uses the library packJPGlib. That means, the resulting files are 100% compatible to packJPG
Multithreading: wxPackJPG will use every core to compress JPEG files, if multiple files are selected
Multiplatform: Binaries for Windows 32/64 bit (with and without installers) and OS X are provided, source code is available for compilation on Linux and other Unixes.
There is a portable version which stores nothing in ini-files or in the registry
Install wxPackJPG via PPA:
The image compression tool is available in PPA for Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal and their derivatives such as Linux Mint, Elementary OS, etc.
To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway
Then update package lists and install the jpg compressor:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wxpackjpg
If you don’t want to add the PPA, download the Deb from launchpad.net
For Windows and Mac OS installers, go to Sourceforge. Enjoy!
Want the Linux Mint 15 Whisker Menu on your Xfce Desktop? Well, here’s how to do it via PPA in (X)Ubuntu 13.10, (X)Ubuntu 13.04, (X)Ubuntu 12.04 and (X)Ubuntu 12.10.
Whisker Menu is an alternate application launcher for Xfce, which is used as default in Linux Mint 15 Xfce. By default, it displays list of your favorite apps. You can browse through all of your installed applications by clicking on the category buttons on the side. Or you can quickly access your app by the search box.
Install Whisker Menu via PPA:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa
Update package lists:
sudo apt-get update
Install the app launcher:
sudo apt-get install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin
Once installed, right-click on your panel and go to Panel -> Add New Items…. Find out Whisker Menu and click to add it to launcher.
By default, it’s in the right corner. Right-click on the icon and move it to the left. Modify the icon and title in its properties window. Also you can remove the previous ‘application menu’ from its right-click menu.
FocusWriter is a fullscreen word processor. It has a simple, distraction-free writing environment, it utilizes a hide-away interface that you access by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, allowing the program to have a familiar look and feel to it while still getting out of the way so that you can immerse yourself in your work. It’s available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, and has been translated into many different languages.
To install or upgrade to the latest FocusWriter in Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 via PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa
Then update package lists:
sudo apt-get update
Finally install the word processor:
sudo apt-get install focuswriter
If you’re on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, open Ubuntu Software Center and search for and install focuswriter from the universe repository. Enjoy!
As you may know, Kapow is a punch clock program designed to easily keep track of your hours, whether you’re working on one project or many. Simply clock in and out with the Start/Stop button. If you make a mistake in your hours, you can go back and edit any of the entries by double-clicking on the session in question.
Kapow also allows you to easily keep track of the hours since you last billed a client, by providing a helpful “Billed” checkbox–the totals will reflect your work after the last billed session.
Install Kapow punch clock via PPA:
The developer has created a PPA repository for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, and their derivatives such as Linux Mint, Elementary.
To get started installing the app, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
