The development of Birdie 2.0, an open source desktop Twitter client, drops other Linux support and now is focusing on Elementary OS.
“Birdie is no longer a Twitter app for GNU/Linux, instead, it will be the best Twitter app for elementary OS.”
The Birdie Team has recently announced that the development of Birdie 2.0 is now focusing on Elementary OS and advised all other Linux users to try Corebird.
Nathan Dyer, explained why Birdie 2.0 switches to Elementary OS in the announcement:
Birdie 2.0 is built on APIs that are exclusive to elementary OS
It will integrate with Pantheon Online Accounts for system-wide login
data can be shared between all your favorite services and apps with advantage of both Contractor and Pantheon Online Accounts.
Open source painting and drawing software, MyPaint, sees a new stable release after a long time of development.
The developer announced the release of MyPaint 1.2.0 yesterday, along with Ubuntu binaries available in PPA for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and their derivatives. MyPaint 1.2.0 features:
New intuitive Inking tool for smooth strokes.
New Flood Fill tool.
Automated backups of your working docs, with recovery on startup.
Improved symmetry-setting and frame-setting modes.
New workspace UI: two sidebars, with dockable tabbed panels.
Smoother scrolling and panning.
New brush pack.
New brush and color history panel.
New layer trimming command in frame options.
Added layer groups.
New layer modes: several masking modes added.
Add display filters: greyscale, simulate dichromacy for trichromats.
New color wheel options: Red/Yellow/Blue, Red-Green/Blue-Yellow.
Uses dark theme variant by default.
Clearer icons, prettier freehand cursors.
Device prefs allow glitchy devices to be restricted.
Eraser mode no longer changes the size of the brush.
New vector layers, editable in an external app (Inkscape recommended).
New fallback layer types: non-PNG image, data.
More kinds of images now work as backgrounds.
Improved Windows support
Ported to GTK3.
Accelerator map editor has moved to preferences.
Many other bugfixes, translations, and code quality improvements.
How to Install MyPaint 1.2.0 in Ubuntu:
1. Open terminal from Unity Dash, App Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut key. When it opens, paste below command and hit run:
3. (Optional), for any reason you want to remove the software, remove PPA by launching Software & Updates and navigate to Other Software tab, and uninstall MyPaint via Software Center.
Linus Torvalds finally announced the release of Linux Kernel 4.4 yesterday afternoon. He wrote on LKML:
Nothing untoward happened this week, so Linux-4.4 is out in all the usual places.
The changes since rc8 aren’t big. There’s about one third arch updates, one third drivers, and one third “misc” (mainly some core kernel and networking), But it’s all small. Notable might be unbreaking the x86-32 “sysenter” ABI, when somebody (*cough*android-x86*cough*) misused it by not using the vdso and
instead using the instruction directly.
Full shortlog appended for people who care or are just curious.
And with this, the merge window for 4.5 is obviously open, even if I won’t start actually pulling until tomorrow.
Linux Kernel 4.4 features:
initial AMD Stoney APU Support
numerous AMD GPU additions for AMD Carrizo, Tonga, or Fiji graphics processor
Raspberry Pi KMS driver for kernel mode-setting
VirGL VirtIO 3D GPU driver added to Gallium3D
many Network, WiFi, and eBPF updates
64-bit ARM updates, nouveau improvements, and much more.
How to Install Kernel 4.4 in Ubuntu:
Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the binaries a few hours ago, available for download at the link below:
For any reason you want to remove this kernel, restart your computer and select boot with the previous Kernel (under Advanced Options) when you’re at Grub boot menu, after logged in run below command in a terminal:
The first alpha of Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus LTS has been released. Features images for Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and UbuntuKylin.
Ubuntu 16.04 Alpha 1 comes with Linux Kernel 4.3. As an alpha pre-release, it is only recommended for developers and those who want to test by finding, reporting, and/or fixing bugs.
Linux cloud music player Nuvola Player 3 finally goes stable. Its official repository is ready for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and derivatives.
Nuvola Player 3 supports various services such as Google Play Music, 8tracks, Amazon Cloud Player, Bandcamp, Deezer, Jango, KEXP Live Stream, Logitech Media Server, Mixcloud, Plex Music, Spotify, TuneIn, Yandex Music.
The new release has been rewritten from scratch and contains plenty of improvements over Nuvola Player 2. It features:
built on top of WebKit2Gtk+ so it doesn’t need any hacks to support Flash plugin
run multiple services side-by-side, the software creates a desktop application shortcut when a particular service starts
Mixxx has an official PPA repository, which contains the binaries for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and derivatives.
1. Add the PPA.
Open terminal from Unity Dash, App Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut key. When it opens, paste below command and hit run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mixxx/mixxx
Type in your password (no visual feedback just type in mind) when it asks and hit enter to continue.
2. Install or upgrade the software.
If you have a previous release installed, launch Software Updater after added the PPA to check for updates and upgrade Mixxx.
Or, run commands below one by one in terminal to do the update and install things:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mixxx
3. (Optional)
After installation, you may keep the PPA for receiving future updates, or disable/remove PPA via either Software & Updates -> Other Software tab, or command:
SuperTux, a classic Super Mario-like 2D jump ‘n run sidescroller game, has reached the 0.4.0 release, a new STABLE release since 0.1.3 after more than 10 years of development.
Compared to 0.1.3, this release features:
a nearly completely rewritten game engine based on OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL2, …
support for translations
in-game manager for downloadable add-ons and translations
Bonus Island III, a for now unfinished Forest Island and the development levels in Incubator Island
a final boss in Icy Island
new and improved soundtracks and sound effects
new badguys, bonuses and power-ups (air-, earth- and ice-flower)
a halloween tilemap
new graphic effects (glowing objects, particles, …)
levels and worldmaps are scriptable using squirrel
much more game objects: trampolines, switches, portable stones, wind, moving platforms, … – most of them have scripting APIs
improved statistics
many invisible changes, like unit tests, efficiency improvements and more bugfixes
much more..
Compared to the latest beta, 0.3.5a, SuperTux 0.4.0 features updated translations, many bugfixes, more levels, and much more. See the release notes for details.
How to Install SuperTux 0.4.0 in Ubuntu:
For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the new release has been made into the official Ubuntu repositories, just search for and install the game via Software Center.
For Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Mint 17.x, run below commands one by one in terminal to install it from third-party PPA:
Mozilla Firefox web browser has reached the 43 release on Tuesday, available for upgrade in Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and their derivatives.
What’s new in Firefox 43:
Private Browsing with Tracking Protection offers choice of blocking additional trackers
Improved API support for m4v video playback
Firefox 64-bit for Windows is now available via the Firefox download page
Users can choose search suggestions from the Awesome Bar
On-screen keyboard displayed on selecting input field on devices running Windows 8 or greater
Firefox Health Report has switched to use the same data collection mechanism as telemetry
Also various security fixes and developer improvements are included in this release. See the release note.
How to Install / Upgrade:
Canonical has made the new release into the updates & security repositories for all current Ubuntu releases.
To install it, just run Software Updater and click install available updates after checking for updates:
Don’t see it in the list? Launch Software & Updates, select download from ‘Main Server’ and make sure the security and updates repositories are enabled in Updates tab.
KeePassX, a native Linux port of KeePass password manager, finally reached the 2.0 release after several years of development.
KeePassX 2 has been rewritten from scratch. It uses the new .kdbx (same as KeePass 2) database format. You can import your .kdb database from 0.4 series from menu Database > Import KeePass 1 database.
The official KeePassX PPA does not update at the moment, but a third-party PPA has built the KeePassX 2.0 for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Ubuntu 15.04, and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
1. Add PPA
Open terminal from Unity Dash, App Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut key. When it opens, paste below command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:eugenesan/ppa
Type in your password when it asks (no visual feedback just type in mind) and hit Enter to continue.
2. After that, upgrade KeePassX by running Software Updater. Or run below commands one by one in terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install keepassx
For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb installer directly from HERE.
3. (Optional) As a third-party PPA, it also contains many other applications. You may remove the PPA after installation by either using Software & Updates -> Other Software tab, or running below command in terminal:
MuPDF, a free, open-source, and lightweight PDF and XPS viewer, now reaches the 1.8 release with new features, improvements and various fixes.
MuPDF is a lightweight PDF viewer and toolkit written in portable C, which also reads XPS, OpenXPS and EPUB documents. It works on Windows, Android, and Linux.
The renderer in MuPDF is tailored for high quality anti-aliased graphics. It renders text with metrics and spacing accurate to within fractions of a pixel for the highest fidelity in reproducing the look of a printed page on screen.
Ghostscript proofing mode (source only; not in shipped binaries).
EPUB improvements:
User style sheets.
GIF images (also for CBZ).
Table of contents.
CJK text.
Page margins.
Many bug fixes.
Bug fixes:
Updated FreeType to version 2.6.1.
Various font substitution bug fixes.
Fix setjmp/longjmp behaviour which could cause optimizing compilers to misbehave.
In addition, mudraw has been merged into mutool, use mutool draw to use mudraw.
How to Install MuPDF 1.8 in Ubuntu:
There are Android, Windows installers, and source tarball available in its official download page.
For Ubuntu and derivatives, you can either build the viewer from the source or use my personal binaries in PPA.
Method 1:
Open terminal from Unity Dash, App Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut key. When it opens, run below commands one by one to add my PPA and install MuPDF:
Finally click install the packages via Ubuntu Software Center.
How to Use:
The PDF viewer doesn’t have a launcher. To use it, right-click on the file and select it from the “Open With” option.
To set default, go to file’s context menu -> Properties -> Open With tab -> select MuPDF from list -> finally click ‘Set as default’ button.
For mouse behavior and key bindings run man mupdf command in terminal.
Uninstall:
You may remove the PPA by launching Software & Updates and then navigate to Other Software tab. Also remove MuPDF via Ubuntu Software Center if you want.
