UbuntuHandbook

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Reached the End of Its Life

Last updated: July 26, 2015

Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn finally reached the end of its life on July 23, 2015. No more package updates will be accepted to 14.10. That means 14.10 users won’t get latest software (e.g, Firefox, Thunderbird), security notices/fixes through Software Updater. And Launchpad PPAs will no longer update for 14.10.

Ubuntu 14.10 was released 9 months ago, on October 23, 2014. As a non-LTS release, it has a 9-month month support cycle and, as such, the support reached the end of life on last Thursday. Users of Ubuntu 14.10 may upgrade to Ubuntu 15.04 (ends on January 2016), or install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS which has a 5-year support (until 2019).

To upgrade to Ubuntu 15.04, see:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VividUpgrades

To download Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, go to:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/trusty/

Here’s the support period of the current Ubuntu releases includes the next Ubuntu 15.10 Wily:

Version	Code name	Release Date	End of Life Date
Ubuntu 15.10	Wily Werewolf	October 22, 2015	July, 2016
Ubuntu 15.04	Vivid Vervet	April 23, 2015	January 2016
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS	Trusty Tahr	April 17, 2014	April, 2019
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS	Precise Pangolin	April 26, 2012	April, 2017

In News Ubuntu 14.10

Official Virtualbox Repository Added Ubuntu 14.10 Support

Last updated: November 25, 2014

Oracle finally made the Virtualbox binary packages for Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic available in its official Linux repository. Which means running regular system updates via Software Updater will keep your Virtualbox release always up-to-date.

While Ubuntu 14.10 repositories provide the Virtualbox 4.3.18, the latest has reached the version 4.3.20. For the changelog, see the web page.

How to Add Virtualbox Repository in Ubuntu:

Open terminal from the Unity Dash or just press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste the command below into terminal and run to get the key:

wget -q -O - http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Type in your user password when it asks. Then run command to add the vbox repository for Ubuntu 14.10:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian utopic non-free contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.org.list'

Now install Vbox 4.3 via your package manager after checking for updates. Or just run commands below one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.3

Finally keep your system up-to-date by running regular system updates, which also keep your Virutalbox 4.3 series up-to-date.

In Howtos Ubuntu 14.10, Virtualbox, virtualbox 4.3

How to Speed Up the Unity Dash Response in Ubuntu 14.04 / 14.10

Last updated: November 13, 2014

This quick tutorial shows how to improve your Ubuntu experience by speeding up the Unity Dash (search utility) response in Ubuntu 14.10 or Ubuntu 14.04.

1. Remove undesired search results

By default, the Dash displays Unity lens, scopes, Amazon online search results, and records file and application usage. You can disable some of them via below tips:

Disable online search results:
Launch System Settings and go to Security & Privacy, under “Search” tab turn off the switch which says “When searching in the Dash: include online search results”
Stop recording file and app usage:
Also launch System Settings and go to Security & Privacy, under “Files & Applications” tab first clear records and then turn off the switch:
Remove unwanted Unity lens, scopes:
Open Ubuntu Software Center and search for unity-scope. In the results, check the information of installed scopes and remove the scopes you don’t need.

Do same to Unity lens by searching unity-lens.

2. Reduce Graphics Settings.

First click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click install Compiz Config Settings Manager.

Click to install CCSM

Then launch CCSM from the Unity Dash and do below changes:

Go to Ubuntu Unity Plugin page under the Desktop category. Select No Blur from the drop-down box for Dash Blur.
Go back and then go to OpenGL settings page under General category. Select Fast from the drop-down box for Texture Filter.

Note that this change would affect the whole Ubuntu System graphics and not Unity alone.

To apply all the changes, restart your computer. Enjoy!

In Howtos Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 14.10

Run Windows only applications in Ubuntu? Well, here’s how to install the latest Wine development release with bug fixes and new features in Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic.

For those who don’t know about Wine:

Wine (originally an acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, Mac OSX, & BSD. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop.

Wine began in 1993 under the initial coordination of Bob Amstadt as a way to support running Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Very early on, leadership over Wine’s development passed to Alexandre Julliard, who has managed the project ever since. Over the years, as the Windows API and applications have evolved to take advantage of new hardware and software, Wine has adapted to support new features, all while being ported to other OSes, becoming more stable, and providing a better user-experience.

An ambitious project by definition, work on Wine would steadily continue for 15 years before the program finally reached v1.0, the first stable release, in 2008. Several releases later, Wine is still under active development today, and although there is more work to be done, millions of people are estimated to use Wine to run their Windows software on the OS of their choice.

open Windows .exe file directly with Wine

Install Wine Development in Ubuntu:

While Ubuntu repositories provide the stable Wine 1.6 release, the latest development Wine 1.7 with bug fixes and new supports is available in Wine official PPA. So far, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10 are supported.

To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, paste the command below and hit Enter to run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Type in your user password when it asks.

After added the PPA, install Wine1.7 from Synaptic Package Manger after clicking Reload button. Or just run the commands below in terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install wine1.7

That’s it.

When a future release is out and made into the PPA, running regular system update via Software Updates will automatically upgrade the wine1.7 to the latest.

Enable Hibernate Option in Ubuntu 14.10 Unity

Last updated: October 24, 2014

The Hibernate option is available in Beta and Alpha releases of Ubuntu 14.10, but the final release removed this option in the Unity desktop.

This quick guide is going to show you how to re-enable this feature so that you can hibernate your machine from the shutdown menu (top-right gear button).

1. Before getting started, you may run command below in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to test if hibernate works in your case:

sudo pm-hibernate

After you computer turns off, switch it back on. Did your open applications re-open? If hibernate doesn’t work, check if your swap partition is at least as large as your available RAM.

2. To re-enable hibernate, run command below to edit the configuration file:

sudo nano /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla

When the file opens in the terminal window, scroll down to find out the section started as:

“[Disable hibernate by default in upower]” and “[Disable hibernate by default in logind]”

Change the value of ResultActive to yes in both.

3. To save the changes, press Ctrl+X and type y and finally hit Enter.

When everything’s done, restart your computer.

Tips:

1. If previous steps do not work for you, replace the command in step 2 with:

sudo nano /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla

2. Thanks to Cruz, you can add below lines into the configuration file to make Hibernate work for multiple users:

[Re-enable hibernate for multiple users by default in logind]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate-multiple-sessions
ResultActive=yes

3. If you want to hibernate your laptop when lid is closed, run command to edit the configuration file: