This quick tutorial shows you how to install the latest release of Quassel IRC client in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives via PPA.
Quassel is a modern, cross-platform, distributed KDE / Qt IRC client. One (or multiple) client(s) can attach to and detach from a central core. It’s much like the popular combination of screen and a text-based IRC client such as WeeChat, but graphical.
While Ubuntu 14.04 Software Center provides Quassel 0.10, the latest release has recently reached 0.11. See what’s new:
Completely revamp the build system, making use of “new” CMake features
Install Quassel IRC Clien via PPA:
Thanks to Michael Marley, a PPA repository has been created with the latest stable builds of Quassel packages for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives.
1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the command below to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mamarley/quassel
Type in your user password when it asks. Note that there is no visual feed back when you’re typing a password.
Once installed, open the irc client from Unity dash or application menu and you can receive future updates by running regular update via Software Updater.
Have tried multiple media players in Ubuntu and found that the sound menu is full of player controls? Well, below I’ll tell how to clean it up by removing unwanted players from the menu.
Remove unwanted players from sound menu
To get started, we need a simple tool called dconf-editor. If you don’t have it on your system, click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button.
Once you have it installed, open the tool from Unity dash or left launcher. When dconf-editor opens, navigate to com -> canonical -> indicator -> sound.
Double click the closed brackets next to ‘interested-media-players’ and remove the names of the players ended with .desktop.
For me, after removing ‘tomahawk.desktop’, ‘pragha.desktop’, ‘gnome-music.desktop’, ‘rhythmbox.desktop’, ‘pithos.desktop’, ‘nuvolaplayer.desktop’, only VLC media player is left under the sound menu.
If you later launch a player after you “removed” it, it will be added back to the sound menu automatically. To prevent this happens, add it into blacklisted-media-player.
In my case, pragha and gnome music player will be never listed in the sound menu, even you’re listening with one of them.
This tutorial shows how to install Pithos, a native Pandora Internet Radio client, in Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 14.10 via its PPA repository.
Pandora Radio is a music streaming and automated music recommendation service which is only available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. The service plays musical selections of a certain genre based on the user’s artist selection.
Pithos is an open source Pandora Radio client for Linux. It’s much more lightweight than the Pandora.com web client, and integrates with desktop features such as media keys, notifications, and the sound menu.
The client features:
Play / Pause / Next Song
Switching stations
Remembering user name and password
Cover Art
Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down / Tired of this song
Notification popup with song info
Launching pandora.com song info page and station page
Reconnecting when pandora session times out
Editing QuickMix
Creating stations
Media Key support
Proxy support
Last.fm scrobbling
The latest release has reached v1.0.1, you can get the detailed changes from the github page.
Install Pithos in Ubuntu 14.10 / 14.04:
The developers have created a PPA repository that provides the latest packages for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and their derivatives such as Linux Mint 17.
To install the client, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, paste commands below and run one by one:
Using Unity’s Default Network Manager with a little hack. See below
Below I will show you how to use Unity’s default network manager to create a wireless hotspot with Android devices support, tested in 64-bit Ubuntu 1404 with Nexus 4 and Sumsung Galaxy ace3.
1. Disable WIFI and plug in an internet cable to your laptop so that your Ubuntu is connect to a wired internet and wireless is disabled.
2. Go to Network Icon on top panel -> Edit Connections …, then click the Add button in the pop-up window.
3. Choose Wi-Fi from the drop-down menu when you’re asked to choose a connection type:
4. In next window, do:
Type in a connection name. The name will be used later.
Type in a SSID
Select mode: Infrastructure
Device MAC address: select your wireless card from drop-down menu.
5. Go to Wi-Fi Security tab, select security type WPA & WPA2 Personal and set a password.
6. Go to IPv4 Settings tab, from Method drop-down box select Shared to other computers.
When done, click the save button.
After above steps, a configuration file created under /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections directory. File name is same to the connection name you typed in step 4.
Now press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and hit enter to edit the configuration file:
Replace wifi-hotspt with the connection name you typed in step 4.
When the file opens, find out the line mode=infrastructure and change it to mode=ap. Finally save the file.
When everything’s done, enable WIFI from Network Manager icon on the panel. It should automatically connect to the hotspot you created. If not, select “Connect to Hidden Wi-Fi Network …” and select it from the drop-down box.
Now you can search and connect the access point from your Android mobile and enjoy!
Yorba Team has recently announced its Geary Mail Client 0.8 with lots of new features and improvements. Here’s how to upgrade it in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
According to the release note, Geary 0.8 now looks a lot sharper and more modern than before. The compose new message and reply window are now inline the main window. You can still pop the composer out into a separate window through the Detach button.
Compose new message and Reply window are now inline the main window
Another new feature is that signature support has been made into Geary. It will automatically insert a signature of your design into an email, whether new or replying to another.
Geary with signature support
Also the new release brings great improvement on database speed and IMAP connection stability, and more:
Saving drafts to server can be disabled
Improved interface, now using GtkHeaderBar and modern widgets
Database speed optimizations to reduce lags and improve read times
Improved connection handling and reestablishment
Show attachments lacking a Content-Disposition
Important bug fixes
Updated translations
Install Geary 0.8 in Ubuntu 14.04 or Linux Mint 17:
UPDATE: The step below is outdated! See how to guide instead.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:
Above commands will add the official PPA and install the latest geary packages in your Ubuntu. For those don’t want to add the PPA, you can grab the .deb directly from the Launchpad Page.
Nvidia has just announced a new version of graphics driver 343.22 for Linux with new GPUs support and various fixes.
According to the release highlights, Nvidia 343.22 added support for GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980, removed support for G8x, G9x, and GT2xx GPUs, and motherboard chipsets based on them. Ongoing support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 340.* legacy releases through the end of 2019.
The new drive contains various fixes and/or new features:
Fixed a bug that prevented the “sync to vblank” setting from being honored for EGL applications.
Fixed a bug that could cause some OpenGL programs to encounter out of memory during a mode switch.
Fixed a bug that prevented the NVIDIA OpenGL driver from honoring the __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH environment variable.
Fixed a bug that caused disabled displays to be implicitly included in the target selection for some queries and assignments on the nvidia-settings command line interface, in the absence of any explicit target selection.
Added a new attribute to the NV-CONTROL API to query the current utilization of the video decode engine.
Fixed a bug where the Exchange Stereo Eyes setting in nvidia-settings didn’t work in certain stereo configurations.
Worked around a Unigine Heaven 3.0 shader bug which could cause corruption when tessellation is enabled by implementing an application profile that uses the “GLIgnoreGLSLExtReqs” setting. See the documentation for the __GL_IGNORE_GLSL_EXT_REQS environment variable for more details.
Fixed a memory leak when destroying EGL surfaces.
Added support for multiple simultaneous EGL displays.
Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-installer to unsuccessfully attempt to delete the directory containing precompiled kernel module interfaces, on packages prepared with –add-this-kernel.
Updated nvidia-installer to log uninstallation to a separate file from the installation log, and to attempt uninstalling previous driver installations using the installer program from the previous installation, when available.
Install or Upgrade to Nvidia 343.22 in Ubuntu:
NOTE: Ubuntu provides “nvidia-current” driver, available in Software Center, which may interact better with your distribution’s framework, and you may want to use this rather than NVIDIA’s official package.
There are two ways installing this driver in your Ubuntu system, using the official .run installer or a third-party PPA repository.
To install Nvidia 343.22 via official installer:
1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, run command below to download the driver:
For 32-bit system, run:
cd ~/Downloads/ && wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/343.22/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-343.22.run
For 64-bit system, run:
cd ~/Downloads/ && wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/343.22/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-343.22.run
2. , run command to remove the previous driver and install latest update-dev package:
3. When back, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2~F6) to switch to command console and log in with your user name and password. There will no visual feedback when typing a password, just type in mind and hit enter.
4. When you’re logged into command console, stop the graphics session by running the command below:
sudo service lightdm stop
For Ubuntu Gnome edition and Linux Mint, you may replace ligthdm with gdm or mdm
5. After the graphics session closed, you can now starts the official Nvidia installer, by running below commands:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-343.22.run && sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-343.22.run
Follow the onscreen prompt and done!
6. (Optional) To uninstall this driver, run below command in console:
sudo sh ~/Downloads/NVIDIA-Linux-*-343.22.run --uninstall
To install the driver from PPA repository (easier way):
First check out the PPA page to see if the packages are ready: xorg-edgers PPA. Check out the package version of “nvidia-graphics-drivers-343”.
Once the driver is made into the PPA, you can run below commands one by one to install it in Ubuntu 14.04 or Ubuntu 14.10:
Enlightenment 0.19.0 stable has been released recently. One of the best new features in E19 is the full wayland support.
In this quick tutorial I’ll show you how to install the Enlightenment window manager 0.19.0 (E19) in Ubuntu easily with a bash script. Tested in Ubuntu 14.04.1 64-bit.
Enlightenment E19 session in Ubuntu 14.04
Before getting started, you may take a look at what’s new in the latest E19 release:
greatly improved wayland support
E_WL_FORCE environment variable for forcing output types
e_uuid_store: Add infrastructure to store window/surface properties.
Add a tiling profile.
per-screen desklock logo visibility config
Tiling: Merge the tiling module rework..
check udisks1 DevicePresentationHide flag
ACTIVATE_EXCLUDE window active hint policy
show video resolution in filepreview widget
add fileman option to clamp video size for video previews
handle xrandr backlight using a single, accurate handler
blanking options for wakeup on events (urgent + notify)
packagekit module for package manager integration
ibar now optionaly triggers its menu on mouse in
selective redirection toggling
new focus option “raise on revert focus”
add PIN-style desklock for lokker module
make desklock hookable, break out current desklock into module, move pam stuff to separate file
revive personal desklock passwords
allow moveresize visuals to be replaced
allow desk flip animations to be handled completely externally
E16-style live pager returns!
comp config is no longer a module
E_FIRST_FRAME env variable
new compositor API
add E_MODULE_SRC_PATH for setting current module src path without needing to install modules
use non-recursive makefiles for entire build system
filemanager popups no longer span multiple monitors
system operations no longer dim screen until action has begun
window stacking and focus restore is more accurate across restarts
gstreamer1 is now used for media previews
improved multiple monitor setup reliability
shaped windows now render more accurately
Install Enlightenment E19 in Ubuntu 14.04:
UPDATE: The link to the script is broken. As an alternative, install E19 from PPA by running below commands one by one from PPA:
Thanks to batden, there’s now a bash script to make it easy to install / upgrade / uninstall the E19 (git version) in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. All you need to do is download & install the script and answer on screen prompts during the installing process.
1. To download the script, right-click the link below and click “Save link as …” and save the file nineteen.sh to Downloads folder..
2. After you downloaded the script, make it executable and run it.
To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:
cd ~/Downloads/ && chmod +x nineteen.sh && ./nineteen.sh
3. When the script starts, type a number to select install, update, or uninstall E19 (see above picture.) and hit Enter.
After that, it will pop up a information dialog and then ask you to insert your user password. Not that, terminal does not give visual feed back when typing a password, just type in mind and hit enter.
4. After that, the script will update & upgrade your system, download all Enlightenment packages, and finally compile them on your system. Depends on your internet connection, the process will cost a few minutes.
During this period of time, it will ask two or three questions, so don’t go too far away!
5. When everything’s done, you should see something like below.
Restart your computer and select log in with Enlightenment when you’re at Unity Greeter and enjoy!
Want to shutdown, restart, or hibernate your Ubuntu machine automatically on a schedule? Well, it can be done easily by a graphical tool called ComplexShutdown.
ComplexShutdown is a simple python script for those who hate Linux commands to schedule shutdown Ubuntu desktop with an easy to use graphical interface.
This simple GUI features:
Automatic Shutdown, Log off, Restart, Standby (Suspend), Hibernate, and run a custom command.
Supports sound and message notification, Unity integration,
Run action in days:hours:minutes:seconds.
Run action after computer idled days:hours:minutes:seconds.
Run action in select date and time.
Install ComplexShutdown in Ubuntu:
Download the latest .deb package from the link below. Then double click to open it with Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button.
Once installed, open it from Unity Dash and enjoy!
Tip: due to bug, options for “after idle” and “at” are grayed out. I got it fixed in my 64-bit Ubuntu 14.04 by accident. See what I did:
Downloaded & installed the complexshutdown_0.5_all.deb
Run the app for a while and found that “after idle” and “at” options not available.
Removed complexshutdown 0.5 by running below command in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove complexshutdown
Installed the complexshutdown_0.4_amd64/i386.deb (available in above link)
Run the app and found that “at” option worked, but “after idle” not.
Finally I removed complexshutdown_0.4 and reinstalled the 0.5 version. Found that all works!
Cinelerra video editing and compositing software now is at version 4.6. The 64-bit binary for Ubuntu 14.04 is available from Heroine Warrior.
The Cinelerra HV version is produced by Heroine Virtual, and is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Cinelerra also includes a video compositing engine, allowing the user to perform advanced compositing operations such as keying and mattes.
What’s New in Cinelerra HV 4.6:
Split pane editing.
OpenGL supported on Intel HD.
Titler improvements.
Bugfixes.
Install Cinelerra 4.6 in Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit:
1. Download the 64-bit binary from the link below:
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the command below to open Archive Manager with root permission:
gksudo file-roller
When the Archive Manager opens:
Click the Open icon, navigate and select open Cinelerra package.
When the package opens, click the Extract button, select extract to /opt/ folder.
When done, you can start the Cinelerra video editor by running command /opt/cinelerra/cinelerra in terminal.
3. Create launcher shortcut for Cinelerra
Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run command to create a launcher file and open it with Gedit text editor:
QuiteRSS news reader now is at version 0.17.0. The new release allows to browse feeds in newspaper layout.
QuiteRSS is a free and open source RSS/Atom feed reader available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It aims to be quite fast and comfortable to user, and features embedded browser (Webkit core), Unity indicator, adblock, click to flash, and more.
According to the release note, since QuiteRSS 0.17.0 it allows to switch between the classic and newspaper layout mode through menu View -> Layout.
It has been found that the newspaper mode has an issue on news deletion. The developer commented that it will be fixed in next release.
Besides the newspaper mode, this release contains:
Added: Socks5 proxy support
Changed: News opening in external browser
Fixed: Sorting by feed title in news list
Install / Upgrade QuiteRSS in Ubuntu:
The latest release has been made into the official PPA repository, available for Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, paste the commands below and run one by one will add the PPA and install the latest QuiteRSS packages:
