Hotshots is a screenshot tool with some editing features. It is particularly suitable for writing documentation (as used in the following chapters) but you can use it to highlight some details on a map image or what ever you want. Because HotShots is written with Qt, it runs on Windows and Linux (MacOSX isn’t tested yet).
Current features:
Grab current screen, all monitors (in case of multi-monitors configuration), current window or a part of the desktop.
Save the screenshot in multiple formats (PNG, JPG, BMP, …).
Automatically save the screenshot to clipboard, disk or launch the editor tool.
Automatically scale the screenshot to a given size.
Use “system” shortcuts to take a screenshot.
Add automatically some “post-effects” to the screenshot (drop shadow, rotation, border, …).
Can be minimized to system tray and work in background.
Can be launch at system start-up (Windows).
Export edited image in multiple formats (PNG, JPG, BMP …).
Save/Restore edited image in proprietary format.
Send image directly to printer.
Install Hotshots via PPA:
Hotshots is available in a launchpad ppa for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and Linux Mint 13 Maya, 15 Olivia, 14 Nadia , 16 Petra and other Ubuntu derivatives.
To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway
After that, update package lists and install the tool:
The Latest Long Time Support Linux Kernel 3.10.17 has been released. 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, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint 13 / 14 / 15 /16.
Linux Kernel 3.10.17 includes architecture updates, including arc, ARM, mips, parisc, PowerPC, s390, SPARC and x86, various Radeon and Intel i915 updates, some Btrfs and EXT4 filesystem fixes, and sound improvements. See official release announcement.
Install / Upgrade Kernel 3.10.17:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. Follow the steps below by copying and pasting the commands into terminal and hit run.
CTorrent is a lightweight command-line bittorrent client which is written in the C++. Original ctorrent’s upstream has stopped its development and now it’s kept updated with new releases/bug fixes by a new developer. It’s built as a console program and it can be even used remotely in a machine that provides outside ssh access. Other main features are:
Support for large files (>2GB) and large torrents (>255 files).
Strategic selection of pieces to request for download.
Continuous queueing of download requests, tuned based on latency and throughput for each peer.
Improved download performance, including parallel requests in initial and endgame modes.
Improved bandwidth regulation.
Improved compatibility with other peers.
Performance optimization and bug fixes.
An interface for monitoring and managing multiple clients.
Dynamic cache allocation and management, including prefetch.
Install cTorrent:
You don’t have to do something special to install cTorrent, just search for and install the package from Ubuntu Software Center.
The DeadBeef music player now is available for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander in its PPA repository after Canonical released the Ubuntu 13.10 Final.
As you may know, DeedBeef is a free audio player for Linux only. It has following features:
mp3, ogg vorbis, flac, ape, wv/iso.wv, wav, m4a/mp3 (aac and alac), mpc, tta, cd audio, and many more
nsf, ay, vtx, vgm/vgz, spc and many other popular chiptune formats
SID with HVSC song length database support for sid
tracker modules – mod, s3m, it, xm, etc
ID3v1, ID3v2.2, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, APEv2, Xing/Info, VorbisComments tag reading and writing, as well as reading many other tag/metadata formats in most supported formats
automatic character set detection for non-unicode id3 tags – supports cp1251, iso8859-1, and now chinese cp936 (optional), as well as SHIFT-JIS and MS-DOS CP866 for selected formats
unicode tags are fully supported as well (both utf8 and ucs2)
cuesheet (.cue files) support, including charset detection/conversion
clean fast GUI using GTK2 and GTK3, you pick what you like more!
no GNOME or KDE dependencies
minimization to system tray, with scrollwheel volume control, etc
drag and drop, both in playlist, and from other apps
control playback from command line
global hotkeys
multiple playlists using tabbed interface
album cover display
OSD notifications about current playing songs
18-band graphical equalizer and other DSP plugins
built-in high quality tag editor, with custom fields support
customizable groups in playlists
customizable columns with flexible title formatting
streaming radio support for ogg vorbis, mp3 and aac streams
gapless playback for correctly encoded files
lots of plugin, such as global hotkeys, last.fm scrobbler, converter, and many more, sdk is included
comes with advanced Converter plugin, which allows to transcode files to other formats
was tested on x86, x86_64, powerpc, arm, mips architectures, should work on most modern platforms
new features are being added all the time — check for updates frequently!
Install Deadbeef Music Player:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
As you may know, BitTorrent protocol client that offers multiple torrent downloads, queuing/priority systems (on torrents and files), start/stop seeding options, and instant access to numerous pieces of information about your torrents. It includes an embedded tracker that is easily set up and ready to use.
Vuze in Ubuntu’s default repository is old. Here’s how to install the latest v5.1.0 in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy or Linux Mint 16 Petra using getdeb repository.
Enable GetDeb repository
For Ubuntu 13.10, press Ctrl+ALt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below commands one by one:
This simple tutorial is going to show you how to disable laptop camera in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy. Cameras are controlled by the uvcvideo kernel module, so all you need to do is block it from loading.
After this tutorial, you’ll get a blank screen in Cheese:
blank screen after disabled camera
To get started:
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run command to disable the camera until reboot:
sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo
You will be asked for your password, and after typing it, if there are no errors shown in the terminal, your webcam should be disabled.
To enable your webcam again, run:
sudo modprobe uvcvideo
If you want to permanently disable camera, run below command to block the kernel mode by adding to config file.
echo 'blacklist uvcvideo' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
qBittorrent 3.1.0 has been released with a lot of new features and bugfixes. This tutorial shows you how to install or upgrade it in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Linux Mint 16/15.
What’s New in qBittorrent 3.1.0:
Add command line option to daemonize qbittorrent-nox (ngaro)
Add “Shutdown qBittorrent” button to Web UI (ngaro)
Add setting to copy .torrent files for finished downloads (Driim)
Add option to start qBittorrent on Windows startup (sledgehammer999)
Add context menu to Web seed list (Gelmir)
Add support for tracker tiers / groups to creator (Gelmir)
Allow clearing execution and ban logs (Gelmir)
Add option to use random port on each startup (ireallylikeher)
Expose the cache expiry to the user (Gelmir)
Support Atom feeds (Gelmir)
Add “save path” column (John Peterson)
Add μTorrent-compatible “Flags” column in the peer tab(sledgehammer999)
Load magnet metadata in the background while the “Add New Torrent” Dialog is showing (Gelmir)
Allow to enter only an info-hash for download(sledgehammer999)
Bring the “Add New Torrent” Dialog to the front(glassez)
Add confirmation dialog for “Force recheck” action (closes #131)
Calibre, the free and open source e-book computer software application suite has reached v1.6 with handy mark-book feature.
What’s New in Calibre 1.6:
Temporary marking of books in the library
This allows you to select books from your calibre library manually and mark them. This ‘mark’ will remain until you restart calibre, or clear the marks. You can easily work with only the marked subset of books by right clicking the Mark Books button. To use this feature, go to Preferences->Toolbars and add the ‘Mark Books’ tool to the main toolbar.
Get Books: Add Wolne Lektury and Amazon (Canada) ebook stores
DOCX Input: Handle hyperlinks in footnotes and endnotes
Driver for Sunstech reader
Allow using both uri: and url: identifiers to create two different arbitrary links instead of just one in the Book details panel
E-book viewer: Make all keyboard shortcuts configurable
Conversion: Add an option to not condense CSS rules for margin, padding, border, etc. Option is under the Look & Feel section of the conversion dialog.
calibredb: Allow setting of title sort field
ebook-meta: Add an –identifier option to set identifiers.
Fix a locking error when composite columns containing formats are used and formats are added/deleted.
EPUB Output: Do not strip <object> tags with type application/svg+xml in addition to those that use image/svg+xml.
Cover grid: Fix selecting all books with Ctrl+A causing subsequent deselects to not fully work
HTMLZ Output: Fix long titles causing error when converting on windows.
Content server: Fix OPDS category links to composite columns
E-book viewer: Fix regression that broke import/export of bookmarks
E-book viewer: Use the default font size setting for the dictionary view as well.
DOCX Input: Avoid using the value attribute for simple numbered lists, to silence the asinine epubcheck
HTML Input: Images linked by the poster attribute of the <video> tag are now recognized and processed.
DOCX Input: Fix erorr when converting docx files that have numbering defined with no associated character style.
EPUB Metadata: Implementing updating identifiers other than isbn in the epub file from calibre when polishing or exporting the epub
Amazon metadata download: Fix parsing of some dates on amazon.de
New news sources
Various Uruguayan news sources by Carlos Alves
Improved news sources
National Geographic Magazine
New York Review of Books
Focus (PL)
Carta Capital
AM 730
Ming Pao (HK)
Neu Osnabrucker Zeitung
Install / Upgrade Calibre:
For Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Linux Mint users, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, copy and paste below codes and hit enter to run:
sudo python -c "import sys; py3 = sys.version_info[0] > 2; u = __import__('urllib.request' if py3 else 'urllib', fromlist=1); exec(u.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read()); main()"
It automatically download the source code and install it on your system.
This quick tutorial is going to show you how to disable overlay scrollbars and switch back to old fat regular scrollbars in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander.
Since Ubuntu 13.04, there’s an option in Dconf Editor allows to switch on / off this feature. Follow steps show you how:
1. Open Ubuntu Software Center. Search for and install dconf Editor.
2. Open dconf Editor, navigate to com/canonical/desktop/interface. Change the scollbar-mode to normal
If you’re familiar with command line, just run one command in terminal:
gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal
The latest Linux Kernel 3.11.5 has been released. It fixed a security issue: ipv6 ipsec encryption bug in sctp_v6_xmit. Also there’re a lot of bugfixes and drivers udpates. See the changelog.
All users of kernel 3.11 series are urged to upgrade as soon as possible. Here’s how to upgrade in Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10 and Linux Mint 13/14/15/16.
Upgrade Linux Kernel 3.11.5:
At the moment of writing this tutorial, the kernel PPA is not ready for this kernel. I’ll update this post once the PPA updated.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, follow the steps below:
