Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 1 was released and because it features so many visual changes, I decided to make an article with most of them (fresh new screenshots of course), even though I already posted most of them. For easy gallery viewing, wait until the page is completely loaded, click the first image and then navigate to the next / previous images using the arrows at the bottom.

The most noticeable change in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is obviously the new "light" theme pack: Ambiance and Randiance, as well as the now notorious change to put the Metacity controls to the left side of the window as well as inverting the minimize and maximize buttons. This visual change also brought a new wallpaper, a new additional icon pack: ubuntu-mono (monochrome) and a few new purple icons to match the new branding.


In the screenshot in the beginning of the post you can see the Ambiance theme. Here is Randiance:

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This week you voted for: The Best Linux Instant Messaging Client

This time there were less votes than usual, one factor being probably the fact that some Linux users are undecided when it comes to IM clients:

I can't wait to see the results at this poll. I sooo hate pidgin and I'm sooo looking forward to find a very good alternative :D!

or:

I am holding on my vote, in a dilemma between pidgin and empathy. I use empathy at work and pidgin at home! And I love them both ;)

The poll results

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Due to some critical issues with the image rebuilds, the validation for Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 is still in progress, meaning the first Lucid beta will not be released today but tomorrow, March 19.

More info: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-March/000695.html

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If you like the new Plymouth theme Ubuntu Lucid got recently and want to use it in Ubuntu Karmic... you can't (or can but have to install Plymouth) because Karmic doesn't use Plymouth. But you can install this nice XSplash screen called lucid-Xsplash:

To install it, download lucid-Xsplash, then open nautilus as root (press ALT + F2 and enter: gksu nautilus), navigate to /usr/share/images/xsplash and extract there all the contents of the downloaded archive. Then remove all the images in that folder having the name "bg_RESOLUTION.jpg" (where RESOLUTION is a number like 800x600, etc.), and then append "bg_" in front of each resolution file (eg: 1024x768.jpg) file extracted from the archive. You have to do that because it appears the author of this XSplash forgot to add the "bg_" prefix to the files.

Then, to test the new XSplash, type this in a terminal:

sudo xsplash

And pres ESCAPE to exit the XSplash preview.

See also: 8 More Beautiful XSplash Screens For Ubuntu

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After Mark Shuttleworh's recent comment regarding the decision to put the Metacity window buttons on the left, the debate is more intense then ever.

In a recent comment (posted a few seconds ago), Mark Shuttleworth states that:

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I was reading an article on tux-planet.fr about xdotool when I realized I can use this to create a script to focus (activate) the Pidgin conversation window using a shortcut key - something I have been searching for a long time. Being a relatively old ubuntuforums.org member, I also noticed quite a few users were looking for a way of doing this, so I'm guessing this might be interesting for WebUpd8 readers also. Of course, you can use xodotool to focus (or perform many other different actions) any window using the terminal or a script which can be set as a keyboard shortcut, etc.


xdotool is a command line tool for simulating keyboard input and mouse activity, move and resize windows and so on.

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TerminalRun and FoxRunner are two similar Firefox extensions for running a command from a website in a terminal. Because FoxRunner didn't work for me (but it seems to be working for most people so you can try it if you want), I'll review TerminalRun.

Here is a video I've just recorded with TerminalRun in action:

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Amarok 2.3 was released yesterday and I wanted to see how the new version is working, the system resources it uses and so on.

I've installed it (see here Karmic and Lucid PPAs), and then tried to load my ~30.000+ music collection. Now that's a nice memory usage:

and it took Amarok 2.3 about ~30 minutes to index my music collection. So my review ended here. There's no point in using such an application when we have so many to choose from. I'll be sticking with GMPC.


Now, I realize Amarok is a KDE application and I was running it in Gnome, but I used to do that all the time with Amarok 1.4 and it worked just fine.

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dpkg is pretty slow in Debian-based systems, usually because of the many files which are stored in the /var/lib/dpkg/info folder. To speed up things, Luca Bruno created a project called tdpkg which uses an sqlite3 or tokyocabinet database for loading the dpkg .list files in the /var/lib/dpkg/info folder which makes dpkg a lot faster.

The author (Luca Bruno) says that:

I've managed to bring cold startup time from about 14 seconds down to about 2 seconds. I will definitely have fun installing and removing applications back again.

Before installing this, the author clearly states that: "You'd better not install this library, it could make your system highly unstable". However I've made a backup and have been using it for a while and everything works great so if you also want to install it anyway, here's what you need to do!

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First of all, for those not interested in fixing the Ubuntu "Light Themes" or not interested in these themes at all: I'm sorry! But new things just keep coming up. Hopefully everything will calm down soon.

Now, about the fixed Light Themes for Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid: I just posted about a PPA which has a fixed Light Themes package for Lucid, but that PPA doesn't have packages for Karmic and Jaunty and also that package replaces the original Light Themes.

Mohegan asked if we could upload a fixed light-themes package in the WebUpd8 PPA and so we did, but we tried to please as many people as we can, so:

• the package was uploaded under the "light-themes-fixed" name and the themes are now displayed as "Ambiance-Fixed" and "Radiance-Fixed" in the Gnome Desktop Appearance dialog. That means that the "light-themes-fixed" package does not replace the original "light-themes" package so you can have both of them installed and use whichever you want. The original "light-themes" package is of course still available in the WebUpd8 PPA (for Jaunty and Karmic).
  
• we packaged the themes for Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic and Lucid (as well as the latest ubuntu-mono icons, humanity-icons packages and of course the latest Murrine and Aurora engines).
• the advantage of using this PPA is that I will try to update the fixed packages as soon as new versions for the original "light-themes" package in Ubuntu Lucid are released.

In case you didn't understand what this "fixed" does, well, it fixes the border around the minimize/maximize buttons so you can put the Metacity window buttons in the "minimize,maximize,close" order like the buttons were on Ubuntu Jaunty, Karmic and so on.

To install this light-themes-fixed package, add the WebUpd8 PPA:

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