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Fotoxx faster workflow

 

Fotoxx, a free and open source photo editing software has reached version 14.02 recently with improvements and bug fixes.

As you may know, Fotoxx is a Linux program for photo editing and collection management. The goal is to meet most user needs while remaining fast and easy to use.

Version 14.02 changelog:

  • Index Image Files (aka Synchronize) runs faster. Intermixing image files with
    100K other files under /home/user/… has little effect on speed.
    Startup time is also faster for the normal case of few new image files.
  • Retouch Combo: sliders were added for fast adjustment of overall brightness,
    contrast and color. The curves can then be hand-tuned if needed.
  • Slide Show: a new transition type simulates turning a book page.
  • Slide Show: images are clipped to exactly fit the monitor if the difference
    in aspect ratio is less than a predefined limit.
  • Slide Show: optionally show captions/comments above each image.
  • The batch Rename and Convert functions were combined for convenience.
  • Batch Convert has a new option to automatically sharpen images.
  • Paint/Clone: a “shadow” paintbrush tracks the source of copied pixels.
  • Retouch Combo, Trim/Rotate and Resize can recall prior settings for easier application to multiple images needing similar treatments.
  • Mashup: resizing/rotating an overlay image with the mouse is smoother.
  • Editing in a selected area: edge blending was made a bit smoother.
  • Search Images: select a gallery (thumbnails) report or a tabular report for
    listing desired metadata along with a thumbnail image.
  • Block metadata edits for image types not supporting this (e.g. bmp, gif).
  • Bugfix: Texture function converted RGB 0/0/0 pixels into illegal values.
  • Bugfix: Bogus error message about exceeding geotag limits.
  • Bugfix: Trim function left temporary image remnants on the window.

Download:

The official download page provides the DEB packages for Ubuntu and its derivatives.

Fotoxx Download Page

Fotoxx 14.01 ubuntu 13.10

Clementine OS

Hello dear readers. As you may know, Pear Linux OS, the Ubuntu based distribution that mimics Apple’s OS X completely, is discontinued because the developer David Tavares has sold this distribution to an undisclosed company that will develop the Linux-based operating system for its own products.

All the download links have been removed from the official website, which is no longer active. Fortunately, a new team will continue the Pear OS by developing a new OS called Clementine OS.

pear_os_8_wallpaper

Clementine OS 10.8 will start development in April of 2014 based on the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The official website is out and now provides iso images for Pear OS 8.

Clementine OS WebSite:clementineos.hj.cx.

UPDATE 1: The developer received a letter from an American company that forced him to abandon the project. He later said that it was not Apple, but another major company. He could not disclose its name, however.

UPDATE: I found that the website is down after I spread this news around. If you’re interested in this OS, you can follow the developer on Google +

Install Light Table IDE 6.0.2 Ubuntu

Both Light Table IDE 0.6.1 and 0.6.2 were released yesterday which bring various bug fixes and a few improvements.

Light Table is a new interactive IDE developed by Chris Granger, it lets you modify running programs and embed anything from websites to games. It provides the real time feedback we need to not only answer questions about our code, but to understand how our programs really work.

Light Table IDE is now open source since version 0.6.0. The current releases are the first updates and below is the changelog:

##0.6.2

  • FIX: styling bug that caused light themes to be unusable

##0.6.1

  • FIX: build instructions for all platforms. Add in build scripts for each.
  • FIX: active line in solarized theme (Gozala)
  • FIX: re-enable workspace behavior diffs
  • FIX: Plugins should not say they need an update if there’s no version available on the server
  • FIX: Read keymaps safely so that errors are reported.
  • FIX: remove readlink -f from the mac startup script
  • FIX: provide skin/theme shold work correctly now (joshuafcole)
  • FIX: Catch errors while walking the file system (zoranzaric)
  • FIX: look in 64bit dirs first in the linux64 run script and add other dirs to fix openSUSE (wesleywiser)
  • FIX: line-endings were not being added correctly to the ends of files.
  • FIX: set the default screen size to be smaller so that LT doesn’t open off screen
  • FIX: type in plugin dialog (rmunn)
  • FIX: Add SQL file type back in
  • FIX: External browsers don’t disconnect correctly
  • FIX: remove inconsistencies in the plugin manager
  • FIX: pmeta in :- keymaps didn’t work
  • FIX: better error handling in the local client
  • FIX: make functions return correctly from external browser connections
  • FIX: add LightTable.app to .gitignore (DomKM)
  • FIX: dramatically better line numbering styles for the default theme
  • FIX: line numbers now correctly size and stay right-aligned.
  • FIX: remove use of rtl that causes very weird file name display behavior in navigator.
  • CHANGE: Auto-complete is now auto-show by default
  • ADDED: lt.objs.plugins/find-plugin for use in finding the current plugin dir
  • ADDED: `Console: set buffer size`
  • ADDED: Code folding with `Editor: fold code at cursor` command (efuquen)
  • ADDED: travis-ci (sieben)
  • ADDED: set the save dialog’s first location to a sensible path (can3p and ndr-qef)
  • ADDED: .zsh and .zshrc file extensions
  • ADDED: `App: Disable metrics` behavior
  • ADDED: LiveScript file type
  • ADDED: platform specific startup scripts
  • ADDED: typing : in a keymap or behavior file will now complete based on the command/behavior id
  • ADDED: `Editor: Toggle line wrapping` command for one off wrapping
  • ADDED: Tabsets are now styled as active
  • ADDED: The body gets an “active” class when the window is focused
  • UPDATED: Latest codemirror
  • UPDATED: CLJS 2138

Install:

1. Download the IDE at lighttable.com. You may check out your OS type by going to System Settings -> Details

2. Extract the Linux package in your file browser and you’ll see the result folder LightTable in Downloads directory.

3. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run below command to move LightTable to /opt/:

sudo mv ~/Downloads/LightTable /opt/

4. Now launch the IDE via:

/opt/LightTable/LightTable

5. To create a launcher, run:

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

Paste below section into the file and save it.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=LightTable IDE
Comment=
Exec=/opt/LightTable/LightTable
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/LightTable/core/img/lticon.png

Ubuntu 14.04 Alpha 2

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, the next Long Term Support hits alpha 2 release. Though regular Ubuntu doesn’t take part in the alphas , the following flavours are participating in this second round of alphas:

  • Edubuntu
  • Kubuntu
  • Ubuntu GNOME
  • Ubuntu Kylin
  • Xubuntu
  • Ubuntu Cloud

Download Links: releases.ubuntu.com

  • Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 Alpha2
  • Kubuntu 14.04 Alpha2
  • Edubuntu 14.04 Alpha2
  • Ubuntu Cloud 14.04 Alpha2
  • Xubuntu 14.04 Alpha2
  • Ubuntu Kylin Alph2

If you’re on Ubuntu 13.10, you can also upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 Alpha to help testing this development release via this post. Note that don’t do this on production machines.

The Ubuntu 14.04 will hit its first beta release at next month, see the release schedule:

  • Alpha 1 – December 19th (for flavours) – released
  • Alpha 2 – January 23rd (for flavours) – released
  • Beta 1 – February 27th (for flavours)
  • Final Beta – March 27th
  • Release Candidate – April 10th
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Final – April 17th

clamtk 5.03, clamav gui

The native Linux virus scanner ClamTK (ClamAV GUI) has released version 5.03. In this release, the scheduler was re-added by demand, it’s mostly the same as it was in the 4.xx series. It also updated requirement for some distros with gnome-icon-theme and brought lots of clean-up.

ClamTK 5.03 changelog:

  • Re-add scheduler (Google Issue #1). This adds cron or cronie back as a dependency.
  • Update requirement for some distros to gnome-icon-theme-full, and gnome-icon-theme for some distros (Google Issue #2); for Fedora, it seems we need gnome-icon-theme-legacy. Depends on the distro.
  • Remove extra gettext subs
  • Fix ugly copyright symbol
  • Update year in multiple places, 2013 -> 2014
  • Minor help documentation and man page tweaks.
  • Translation updated

ClamTK 5.03 in Ubuntu

Download ClamTK:

Download .deb packages for Ubuntu and .rpm packages for Fedora from the links below:

ClamTK main packages

ClamTk Thunar plugin

ClamTK KDE Dolphin plugin

ClamTK Nemo plugin

Liferea Linux

Liferea, Linux Feed Reader has just released a new version 1.10.5 with a few bug fixes. Let’s see what’s new and how to install / upgrade it in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint.

As you may know, Liferea is a news aggregator for GNOME desktop that aims to be fast, easy to use, and easy to install. It supports the major feed formats including RSS/RDF and Atom and can import and export subscription lists in OPML format.

Liferea 1.10.5 brings below bug fixes:

  • Fixed Honor preferences when opening links
  • Fixed missing installation of liferea.convert file
  • Fixed Redhat popup notification only for new items

I’ve updated this build into Launchpad PPA, so we can just run below commands one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install/upgrade it in Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install liferea

You can also build it from source tarball.

liferea ppa

Rawtherapee 4.0.12 Ubuntu

RawTherapee, a cross-platform raw image processing program now is at version 4.0.12. The new release brings many new tools, a whole bunch of speed improvements and bug fixes.

RawTherapee 4.0.12 should be considered a release candidate for version 4.1. That will be the first officially stable version which will be released later this month if no major issues are found with 4.0.12.

What’s New in RawTherapee 4.0.12:

  • Graduated Filter
  • Post-crop Vignette Filter
  • Powerful Black-and-White tool
  • New curves:
    • Luminance according to hue (LH)
    • Chromaticity according to hue (CH)
    • Hue according to hue (HH)
    • Chromaticity according to luminance (CL)
  • Contrast by Detail Levels tool (wavelet decompose) now has 5 levels
  • Auto Levels improved
  • Image dimensions added to (i) info
  • White Balance slider non-linear for easier control of low and high values
  • Noise Reduction tool allows targetting of specific colors (e.g. remove yellow blotches)
  • Pre-demosaic automatic removal of chromatic aberration improved
  • New output queue template variables %s(0-9)
  • New File Browser shortcuts, revision of existing shortcuts (refer to RawPedia)
  • New Custom Profile Builder parameters
  • Bundled and user profiles in separate submenus
  • camconst.json for immediate addition or correction of raw file format support
    • White and black levels
    • Color matrix
    • Crop coordinates
  • dcraw 9.19
  • The main histogram now shows color levels using the Output Profile
  • Enhanced lens info and filter possibilities for manual Nikon lenses
  • Added support for
    • Kodak DCS 760 and 760s
    • Various medium-format backs
  • New DCP profiles for
    • Canon PowerShot S110
    • Fujifilm FinePix S9500
    • Pentax K-5
    • Pentax K-5 II
    • Pentax K-r
  • Support for Capture One ICC profiles
  • All Bundled Processing Profiles (PP3) revised

There’s also a notable change that Ctrl+q is used to (q)uit RawTherapee and Ctrl+b is used to send the currently open image in the Editor tab to the (b)atch Queue since this release.

Install / Upgrade RawTherapee in Ubuntu:

Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint users can install / upgrade RawTherapee via PPA.

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

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install rawtherapee

via:rawtherapee.com

Install Light Table IDE 6.0 Ubuntu

Light Table IDE 0.6.0 has been announced recently with the exciting news that Light Table is now Open Source. All the code is now on Github.

Today Light Table is taking a huge step forward – every bit of its code is now on Github and along side of that, we’re releasing Light Table 0.6.0, which includes all the infrastructure to write and use plugins. If you haven’t been following the 0.5.* releases, this latest update also brings a tremendous amount of stability, performance, and clean up to the party. All of this together means that Light Table is now the open source developer tool platform that we’ve been working towards.

What’s New in Light Table 0.6.0:

  • ADDED: Light Table is now open source
  • ADDED: Plugins!
  • ADDED: Plugin manager via Plugins: Show plugin manager
  • ADDED: Plugins: Submit a plugin command
  • ADDED: Split all the languages into separate plugins
  • ADDED: Beautiful new default theme
  • ADDED: All user settings/plugins are now stored in user data
  • ADDED: Performance tweaks that should make everything faster
  • ADDED: Editor: Jump to definition at cursor command
  • ADDED: Editor: Jump back to where you jumped from command
  • ADDED: Editor: On change execute command behavior
  • ADDED: Editor: Set CodeMirror flags behavior
  • ADDED: Editor: Disconnect clients attached to editor command
  • ADDED: Editor: Open current file in browser command #956
  • ADDED: You can now drop folder/files onto the workspace tree
  • ADDED: a popup asking if you want to update when one is available
  • ADDED: the statusbar is now in it’s own container with find on top of it.
  • ADDED: more hints for the starting state of no workspace
  • ADDED: Jump to definition, and syntax aware autocomplete for Clojure and ClojureScript
  • ADDED: Style: Provide editor theme and Style: Provide skin behaviors so that theming can be done via plugin
  • ADDED: all editors are now backed by first class documents
    • mac: ~/Library/Application Support/LightTable
    • linux: ~/.config/LightTable
    • windows: %APPDATALOCAL%/LightTable
  • CHANGE: All behaviors that were previously lt.objs.langs.* are now lt.plugins.*
  • CHANGE: lt.objs.langs.clj is now lt.plugins.clojure
  • CHANGE: Emacs and Vim are now both plugins to be downloaded via the plugin manager
  • FIX: better LT stacktraces
  • FIX: multiple popups won’t drop focus as they’re closed now
  • FIX: Highlight line is now much faster
  • FIX: scrolling in the command and navigate panes should be orders of magnitude faster.
  • FIX: Auto-complete is now significantly faster
  • FIX: \r\r\n at the end of files on windows #912
  • FIX: :searcher.replace/:searcher.replace-all are missing #949
  • FIX: Light Table won’t open files if editor’s for removed files remain #941
  • FIX: Console sized to zero #932
  • FIX: cljs connection broken with latest CLJS #932
  • FIX: html eval isn’t refreshing the browser #929
  • FIX: Wrap resets after changing tab #905
  • FIX: can’t connect to nrepl in android project #902
  • FIX: The mac .app is now fully self-contained
  • FIX: Tons of clean up to prepare to open source
  • UPDATED: Latest node-webkit
  • UPDATED: Latest CodeMirror
  • UPDATED: Latest vim/emacs mode

See the official announcement.

See this post if you have problem installing the IDE on Ubuntu.

XnViewMP Ubuntu

XnViewMP image viewer 0.64 has been released recently. This release improved the database so that it loads thumbnails really fast now!

XnViewMP 0.64 also fixed a large number of bugs and added various requested features:

  • “Cut” option is missing in Linux
  • Linux deb install in sbin
  • Switching between Browser/Viewer by keyboard
  • Can’t rename a filename if it contains a colon in Linux
  • Added file associations to the shipped .desktop file
  • Hidden folder not shown on linux
  • Right-click on folder tree doesn’t select
  • Import and copy feature
  • “Properties” don’t work on folders
  • On Windows, when dragging a file into folder treeview, use Move by default if same partition
  • Batch convert and folder with only subfolder
  • DB infos get lost with rename in conflict dialog
  • Paste on selected folder
  • Wrong data in information pane
  • XMP/ExifTool pane slow with long XMP data
  • Browser can’t be closed with mouse click
  • Rating/label shortcut can be modified now
  • Layout saved now contains thumbnail size
  • Filters and adjustements use current selected area
  • Keyboard/mouse settings in Interface pane
  • Synchronize with files (to reload Metadata)
  • and more

Download & Install XnView MP:

For Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian, download the .deb package:

XnViewMP-linux.deb (For 32 Bit)

XnViewMP-linux-x64.deb (For 64 Bit)

Windows, Mac OS and other packages are available in official announcement

XnViewMP Ubuntu

GnuCash 2.6 Stable

The latest stable release of GnuCash, a personal and small-business financial-accounting software now is at version 2.6.x, announced on 29th Dec 2013.

What’s New in GnuCash 2.6:

New Features:

Preferences have been migrated from GConf to GSettings. This is a simpler and more robust backend which writes to the OS’s native prefs — defaults on OS X and the Registry on MSWindows — and allows us to remove several troublesome dependencies including GConf, ORBit, and DBus. The change includes a migration script that will run at Gnucash startup.

New date handling which allows GnuCash to use dates after March 2038.

Guile-2 compatibility: GnuCash now requires either Guile-1.8 or Guile-2.0 Documents outside of GnuCash, images of receipts for example, can now be linked to transactions, with the facility of opening them in the default application for the document type.

Cutsom Reports can now be saved without renaming the report, and modifications can overwrite an existing report.

The import assistant now finishes much more quickly after assigning contra-accounts.

GnuCash now requires Gtk+-2.24.0 and GLib-2.26.0. Most of the dependencies on obsolete libraries have been removed; only libgnomecanvas remains. Unfortunately the effort to rewrite the register code to use GtkTreeModel wasn’t completed in time, so GnuCash is not on the cusp of converting to Gtk3.

The Business Module has been substantially revamped, including support for Credit Notes and import of customers and vendors from a CSV file.

The Num field in the register display is now optionally per-split, so for example a check number can be entered for the checking account split and an invoice number for the expense account split.

GnuCash can now open locked books read-only so that more than one user can view a file. GnuCash still does not support multiple simultaneous writers.

By agreement of all authors, GnuCash is now licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2 or later rather than simply Version 2. This allows derivative works to be licensed under the GPL Version 3 if the author of such a work so desires.

Bug fixes since 2.5.10:

  • Asset account’s “total” value should use most recent transaction prices
  • libofx can supply broken UTF-8 for account id
  • GnuCash should sanitise UTF-8 before serialising files to avoid writing broken unparseable XML.
  • General Ledger – Can’t Enter Transaction Amounts
  • The Tip of the Day preference isn’t getting saved
  • New Book Tabs on Windows

Other Changes:

  • Don’t create a second account hierarchy page when cancelling the Hierarchy Assistant or when using Actions->New Account Hierarchy on an already open book.
  • Reset Warnings dialog: show translated warnings
  • The locale-names for Help and the Tutorial and Concepts Guide have been renamed to language-only so that, for example, someone using the Swiss-German locale will be shown help in German instead of English.

Download & Install GnuCash 2.6:

Source Code and Windows EXE file are available in sf download page.

For Ubuntu users, build GnuCash 2.6 from source or wait for Canonical updating the universe repository.

GnuCash Website