1. Home/
    2. Archives /
  2. News

Archives For News

Free open-source software updates and Linux news

Light Table IDE 0.6.0 Released, Now It’s Open Source

Last updated: January 9, 2014

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.

In News ,
 

XnViewMP 0.64 Released with Database Improved, Install in Ubuntu

Last updated: January 9, 2014

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

In News ,
 

Free Accounting Software GnuCash 2.6.0 Stable Released

Last updated: July 25, 2014

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

In News ,
 

Virus Scanner ClamTk 5.02 released, Install in Ubuntu

Last updated: December 30, 2013

ClamTk, a GUI front-end for ClamAV Virus Scanner recently released version 5.02. This release brings a little UI improvements, bug fixes as well as translation updates. See the changelog:

  • Add gnome-icon-theme to requirements (mostly affects KDE-based systems like Kubuntu; it’s pretty standard with most distros)
  • Update statusbar after saving update preferences
  • Add missing icon in Nautilus context menu
  • Remove unused (notify-send and more) code from App.pm
  • Ensure FileChooserButton cannot be clicked with nothing (due to inability to reset)
  • Remove deprecated encoding pragma.
  • Updated language files: Bulgarian (bg), Czech (cs), Slovak (sk), Chinese (zh_CN), Irish (ga)

Download & Install ClamTk:

For Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint user:

ClamTk main package

thunar-sendto-clamtk (Xfce Thunar plugin)

clamtk-kde (KDE Dolphin plugin)

nemo-sendto-clamtk (Linux Mint Nemo plugin)

NOTE: previous packages only work for Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and higher. For Ubuntu 12.04, install ClamTk 5.00

For Fedora, CentOS, Source Tarball, go to ClamTk googlecode page

In News , ,
 

Cloud Music Player ‘Nuvola’ Seems to Be Active Again

Last updated: December 28, 2013

Nuvola Player, app that integrates Google Music, Bandcamp, Deezer, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, 8tracks, Pandora, Rdio and Amazon Cloud Player with Linux desktop recently released version 2.3.0.

As you may know, the developer has announced that Nuvola Player is discontinued until a new developer is found or a funding goal ($59.00 per week) for the current maintainer is reached. Now, the developer receives $60 per week and Nuvola Player seems to be active again!

What’s New in Nuvola Player 2.3.0:

Service updates manager, which can be used to download and install updates of service integrations providing hot fixes for breakages caused by sudden changes in a web interface of streaming services. Purpose of these updated is to provide these fixes faster without waiting for new Nuvola Player release.

Detection of Flash plugin and GStreamer issues has been improved with links to the new help site. JavaScript API was given methods to check format support and version was increased to 2.2.

Google Play 4.4: fixed sandbox pattern to enable Flash object for playback.

Added donation bar.

Updated VAPI files and added libnotify.vapi from Vala 0.22.1 tarball to fix build error.
Google Play 4.5: Fix next/previous action broken by a recent web app update.

Install Nuvola Player:

The PPA is ready for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nuvola-player-builders/stable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install nuvolaplayer

Nuvola Player Homepage

In News
 

Security – Ubuntu Stores You Wi-Fi Password in Clear Text

Last updated: December 27, 2013

A user has pointed out on the mailing list that the Wi-Fi passwords in Ubuntu are not encrypted because they are stored in a folder outside of Home, which can be encrypted during the installation of the operating system.

I recently stumbled over the fact, that NetworkManager by default stores Wifi profiles *including clear text passwords* under ‘/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/’.

I think that is not what one expects when he/she turns on home folder encryption and should because of that be corrected somehow.

If you’re using the default Wi-Fi settings in Ubuntu Linux, open Nautilus file browser with root (Press Alt+F2 -> type gksudo nautilus, hit enter). Then you’ll see list of available Wi-Fi connections under Computer -> etc -> NetworkManager -> system-connections

The password is shown as clear text in your Wi-Fi connection file.

A Ubuntu developer has explained that this issue is caused by the fact that the option “All users may connect to this network” is enabled by default. Which means, untick “All users may connect to this network.” under network indicator -> Edit connections -> Select network -> Click edit -> General tab will fix this issue.

softpedia

In News
 

KDE Audio Converter CD Ripper soundKonverter 2.0.5 & 2.0.90 released

Last updated: December 22, 2013

 

SoundKonverter, the KDE audio converter, Replay Gain tool and CD ripper now is at version 2.0.5 and 2.0.90 (2.1.0 rc1).

According to the changelog, soundKonverter 2.0.5 added Catalan, Swedish, Chinese (Taiwan), and Romanian translations. 2.0.90 added following new features:

  • Hide main window when started with –replaygain argument
  • Option to eject CD after ripping has been completed (enabled by default)
  • New space holder for the “meta data” naming mode that contains the source directory
  • Configuration options for cdparanoia
  • icedax ripper plugin
  • Copy album artist tags
  • Remember last folder for add files/directory/playlist dialogs
  • Add symlinked files to file list

SoundKonverter Features:

  • Convert audio files between many formats
  • Change sample rate and sample size during conversion
  • Apply effects like normalize during conversion
  • Convert the audio stream from video files to audio files
  • Convert multiple files at once
  • Calculate Replay Gain for many formats
  • Replay Gain tool for calculating and removing Replay Gain tags
  • Calculate Replay Gain for multiple files or file stets at once
  • Conversion and Replay Gain calculation is very scalable, the conversion of 10000 files or more is not a problem
  • Copy tags and covers when converting files (note: for ogg/METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE, flac and asf/wma files, taglib 1.7 or higher is needed)
  • Rip multiple audio CDs at once
  • Retrieve audio CD information from CDDB and MusicBrainz
  • Easy to use, just choose a file format and a quality level
  • Detailed control, if you want to choose the conversion settings in more detail, simply switch to the “detailed” tab
  • Manage your preferred conversion options with profiles
  • Contextual help, e.g. if you don’t know what the speex format is, just click on the “info” button next to it.
    Or if you want to add a file that isn’t supported, soundKonverter will tell you how to enable the format if possible.
  • Possibility to configure which backend shall be used for which codec – or let soundKonverter optimize that for you.
    Every time you install or remove backends soundKonverter will suggest optimizations if possible.
  • Possibility to integrate soundKonverter in other applications or scripts by using its command line interface
  • Data recovery in case of a crash

Install SoundKonverter in Ubuntu Linux:

The installers for CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, RedHat, OpenSuse, Ubuntu are available in this page.

For Ubuntu users, use the Deb package for xUbuntu 12.04 which works good in my Ubuntu 13.10 64 bit machine.

In News , ,
 

FrostWire 5.6.9 Gets Faster Cloud Search & Memory Optimizations

Last updated: December 9, 2013

FrostWire, a free and open source BitTorrent client recently released v5.6.9 with big improvements. See the changelog:

  • Insanely faster cloud search results.
  • Significant memory optimizations on search result parsing and display.
  • Removed jDownloader libraries, less complexity, lighter app.
  • Cloud audio downloads are much smaller, no audio demuxing necessary from video services.
  • Cloud video DASH download support.
  • Smarter playlist name suggestion algorithm takes into account ID3 tags.
  • Fixes bug where new playlists wouldn’t be saved if default name was used.

If you use Frostwire on Ubuntu Linux as your Bittorrent client, it’s strongly recommended to upgrade to this release. To do so, just go to the official webpage, download and install the the DEB package.

In News
 

Xfce4 Whisker Menu updates with fixes & improvements [PPA]

Last updated: November 20, 2013

The Whisker Menu for Xfce recently released version 1.2.1 with bug fixes and improvements.

As you may know, Whisker Menu is an alternate application launcher for Xfce. With it, you can browser, search, and marked as favorites through all of your installed applications. Changes in version 1.2.1:

  • Fix incorrect comparison for checking icon sizes
  • Add window title to allow identifying menu window
  • Add tips to README for popup script and compiz workaround
  • Improve build system files
  • Translation updates: Asturian, Catalan, Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, German, Estonian, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish

whisker menu in Ubuntu 13.10 Xfce4

For Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 12.04, Linux Mint and their derivatives you can easily install or upgrade to this release by running commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin

For Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Debian, Fedora, and other Linux, get the Whisker Menu from its website

In News ,
 

TORCS 1.3.5 released with a new 4 speed stock car added

Last updated: November 17, 2013

TORCS, The Open Racing Car Simulator recently released versiono 1.3.5. The most important changes in 1.3.5 are:

  • the ability to modify/store/load car setups during practice and qualifying sessions (screen reachable when you hit escape, “Car Setup, Restart” or during a pit stop, “Setup”)
  • improved content (totally reworked racetrack e-track-2, improved e-track-6 and wheel-2)
  • the ability of robots to change the car setup during a pit stop
  • new Robottools API calls for handling car setups
  • improvements to the simulation engine (1.5 way LSD, third element)
  • adjustments to the car categories and physical models
  • a new 4 speed stock car and category
  • improvements to the TORCS Racing Board
  • many little improvements and bug fixes.

Full lists of changes can be found at Torcs 1.3.5 release note

So far, the only way to get Torcs 1.3.5 running on Ubuntu is build from the source code.

Or you can install the old version from Ubuntu Software Center.

In News ,