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How to Install LibreCAD 2.0 Stable in Ubuntu Linux via PPA

Last updated: December 31, 2013

LibreCAD, free and open-source 2D-CAD application finally released version 2.0.0. At the moment, there’s no official announcement in its website. But the download links for Windows and Mac OS X and Ubuntu PPA are ready.

According to the official blog, LibreCAD 2.0.0 will has below features:

better spline and Bezier curve support;
complete conic section support after adding of hyperbola and parabola entities;
draw a circle/ellipse tangential to two selected circles/ellipses.

Install LibreCAD 2.0.0:

This release has been made into Ubuntu 14.04’s universe repository, so Trusty user can easily install it from Ubuntu Software Center.

For Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, (Ubuntu 12.04 build are failed) run commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install from PPA:

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

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install librecad

For Windows, Mac OS packages go to LibreCAD Homepage

In Howtos Librecad

Xfce4 Whisker Menu Added Dragging Launchers to Panel or Desktop

Last updated: December 30, 2013

Whisker Menu, the default application launcher of Linux Mint Xfce Desktop now is at version 1.3.0. According to the changelog, now you can drag app launchers from Whisker Menu to Panel or Desktop.

Whisker Menu 1.3 ChangeLog:

Fix menu artifacts when switching categories
Fix undefined behavior in slots
Add command to launch menu editor
Add command to switch users
Add hiding commands
Add browsing for commands
Add hiding category and launcher icons
Add loading default settings from a file
Add search actions
Add running arbitrary programs in PATH
Add dragging launchers to panel or desktop
Add support for custom menu files
Defer loading applications until window is shown
Merge configuration dialog tabs
Rearrange source files to match standard layout of Xfce plugins
Reduce unnecessary reloading of applications
Rewrite search model code
Use a single row in Xfce 4.10 panel
Use empty file for saving settings
Translation updates: Asturian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Taiwan), Dutch, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Malay, Nepali, Norwegian Bokmål, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek

Click “Mark Executable” button if you get below window. The desktop icon will work properly next time you open it.

Install Whisker Menu:

If you’re on Xfce Desktop with Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint 13/14/15/16 and their derivatives. Whisker Menu can be easily installed from PPA.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin

For Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE and other Linux, go to whisker menu homepage

In Howtos drag launcher to desktop, Whisker Menu, xfce4

Install Foobnix, Foobar2000-Like Music Player in Ubuntu Linux

Last updated: February 25, 2015

Foobnix is a light and functional music player with Foobar2000-Like user interface available for Linux and Windows. It supports all popular formats, flac, lossless, CUE, 5000+ radios from box, online music for free, Last.fm and Vkontakte and more.

Foobnix has below features:

Support for CUE (also wv, iso.wv) is the best under Linux (zavlab)
Formats MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND …
Converter any format to any (mp3, ogg, mp2, ac3, m4a, wav)
Scrobbler tags with music and radio
Find and play music and videos
Equalizer
Online music download manager
Shortcuts
Displays the album cover, lyrics, photo artist
Integration with VKontakte (displaying all the friends and their music, downloading music from the group vkontakte)
Integration with Last.FM (Show plays the best songs, favorite songs, artists)

Screenshots:

Foobnix custom themes

Foonix compact foobar2000 like

Foonix Local Music view

foobnix watch video

Install Foobnix in Ubuntu:

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

UPDATE: So far supports Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.10. Old release also available in the PPA.

For stable release (~~Support Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10, 12.04, 10.04~~):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:foobnix-team/foobnix-player
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install foobnix

For development release (Support Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10, 13.04, 12.04):

sudo apt-get remove foobnix
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:popsul1993/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install foobnix

To install from source:

sudo python setup.py install
# or
sudo make install
# or
./install

More information at GitHub page

In Howtos Foobar2000

How to Install Simple Screen Recorder in Ubuntu via PPA

Last updated: December 29, 2013

SimpleScreenRecorder is a Linux program to record programs and games. It aims to be powerful and really simple to use. It’s ‘simple’ in the sense that it’s easier to use than ffmpeg/avconv or VLC, because it has a straightforward user interface.

This recorder has below features:

Graphical user interface (Qt-based).
Faster than VLC and ffmpeg/avconv.
Records the entire screen or part of it, or records OpenGL applications directly (similar to Fraps on Windows).
Synchronizes audio and video properly (a common issue with VLC and ffmpeg/avconv).
Reduces the video frame rate if your computer is too slow (rather than using up all your RAM like VLC does).
Fully multithreaded: small delays in any of the components will never block the other components, resulting is smoother video and better performance on computers with multiple processors.
Pause and resume recording at any time (either by clicking a button or by pressing a hotkey).
Shows statistics during recording (file size, bit rate, total recording time, actual frame rate, …).
Can show a preview during recording, so you don’t waste time recording something only to figure out afterwards that some setting was wrong.
Uses libav/ffmpeg libraries for encoding, so it supports many different codecs and file formats (adding more is trivial).
Can also do live streaming (experimental).
Sensible default settings: no need to change anything if you don’t want to.
Tooltips for almost everything: no need to read the documentation to find out what something does.

Install SimpleScreenRecorder Ubuntu:

The developer has created a PPA for Ubuntu and Linux Mint users. Currently supports Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Mint 13/14/15/16.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

# if you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system:

sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386

For Arch Linux, Gentoo, OpenSUSE and other Linux packages, refer to the app homepage

In Howtos record games in Ubuntu, Simple Screen Recorder

Lubuntu-Tweaks – Simple Tweak Tool For Lubuntu [PPA]

Last updated: December 29, 2013

Lubuntu users now have a new configuration tool “Lubuntu-Tweaks“, which allows to do simple tweaks. Right now it only has options to enable Computer and Trash icon on Desktop, and allows to reset Openbox configuration.

Screenshots:

Install Lubuntu Tweak:

This little app is still in early stage. If you would like to install it, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-dev/non-official-apps

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-tweaks

Currently supports Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10.

Lubuntu Tweaks on Launchpad

In Howtos Lubuntu Tweak

How to Install FreeFileSync via PPA in Ubuntu Linux Mint

Last updated: December 29, 2013

FreeFileSync a folder comparison and synchronization tool that provides highly optimized performance and usability without needless user interface complexity.

Key Features of FreeFileSync:

Detect moved and renamed files and folders
Copy locked files (Volume Shadow Copy Service)
Detect conflicts and propagate deletions
Binary file comparison
Configure handling of Symbolic Links
Automate sync as a batch job
Process multiple folder pairs
Comprehensive and detailed error reporting
Copy NTFS extended attributes (compressed, encrypted, sparse)
Copy NTFS security permissions
Support long file paths with more than 260 characters
Fail-safe file copy
Cross-platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X
Expand environment variables like %USERPROFILE%
Access variable drive letters by volume name (USB sticks)
Native 64-bit support
Keep versions of deleted/updated files
Prevent disc space bottlenecks via optimal sync sequence
Full Unicode support
Highly optimized runtime performance
Include/exclude files via filter
FreeFileSync portable and local installation available
Handle daylight saving time changes on FAT/FAT32
Use macros %time%, %date%, et al. for recurring backups
Case-sensitive synchronization
Built-in locking: serialize multiple jobs running against the same network share

Install FreeFileSync in Ubuntu:

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freefilesync/ffs

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install freefilesync

Currently support Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint. Go to the launchpad page to check out if your Ubuntu release is supported.

In Howtos folder comparison, FreeFileSync, synchronization tool

Open Movies in Fullscreen in Ubuntu with Default Totem Player

Last updated: December 28, 2013

Playing videos with Ubuntu’s default Totem player? Well you may want to open movies directly in full-screen mode.

Totem doesn’t provide an option to open in full-screen, but it’s not hard to tweak this setting since Ubuntu Unity uses .desktop files to manage application launchers. All you need to do is change a parameter in totem.desktop file.

To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, copy and paste below command and hit enter:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/totem.desktop

Type in your user password when prompt (Terminal won’t display your password, just type in mind and hit enter to get pass).

You’ll see the totem.desktop opened with Gedit editor. What you need to do is add --fullscreen parameter to Exec value:

Save the file and now your movies will be opened directly in fullscreen mode with Totem player.

Enjoy!

In Howtos Totem open in fullscreen

System Restore App TimeShift 1.3 Released, Install it via PPA

Last updated: December 10, 2022

TimeShift is a Linux app that provides functionality similar to the System Restore feature in Windows and the Time Machine tool in Mac OS.

TimeShift takes incremental snapshots of the file system at regular intervals. These snapshots can be restored later to bring your system to the exact state it was in at the time when the snapshot was taken.

Snapshots are taken using rsync and hard-links. Common files are shared between snapshots which saves disk space. Each snapshot is a full system backup that can be browsed with a file manager.

TimeShift is designed to protect only system files and settings. User files such as documents, pictures and music are excluded. This ensures that your files remains unchanged when you restore your system to an earlier date.

TimeShift 1.3 was released recently with Ubuntu 12.04 build error fixed. The TimeShift PPA is ready for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint and their derivatives.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:teejee2008/timeshift

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install timeshift

For Fedora, OpenSuse, ArchLinux and other Linux Operating Systems, you may use the .run installer from TimeShift website.

TimeShift Homepage

In Howtos system restore for Ubuntu Linux, TimeShift PPA

Install Linux Mint Device Driver Manager in Ubuntu

Last updated: January 23, 2015

Device Driver Manager is one of Linux Mint application makes it easy to manage open source and proprietary graphics, wireless drivers. Currently Nvidia, ATI, Intel, VIA and Broadcom are supported. It also checks whether or not the PAE kernel can be installed on multi-processor 32-bit systems.

The Device Driver Manager is an independent application, boot the application will scan your system for any available drivers, just select a driver or kernel, DDM will download and install the appropriate packages uses available repositories on your system.

To install this app, download the DEB package from ~~Linux Mint webpage~~

In Howtos Device Driver Manager

Tools to Display System & Hardware Information in Ubuntu Linux

Last updated: January 9, 2019

Want to check out your system and hardware information? Well, here are two tools that display detailed information about Ubuntu Linux and your computer hardware. They are: HardInfo and I-Nex

I-Nex

UPDATE 2019-1: I-Nex support ends at Ubuntu 17.04! Use Hardinfo instead which is available in Ubuntu Software

I-Nex has a CPU-Z similar interface that displays CPU, GPU, MotherBoard, Audio, Drives, System, Kernel, Memory, Network, USB info in tabs.

I-Nex collects real-time CPU temperature and Memory usage, it also allows to take a screenshot or generate (print) report.

To install I-Nex, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one to get it from PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:i-nex-development-team/stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install i-nex

Works on Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04 and Linux Mint.

HardInfo:

HardInfo is a system information and benchmark tool available in Ubuntu’s universe repository. It displays a summary of your system information and detailed devices, network, benchmarks. It allows to generate printable reports either in HTML or in plain text formats.