Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Unity Places Files/Applications Is Back, Changes To Ubuntu Classic Desktop [Natty Updates]

Unity Places Files and Applications were available back in Ubuntu 10.10 but were removed when Unity switched to Compiz. An update in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal today finally brings these back:

Natty unity places files
(Unity Places Files)

Natty unity places applications
(Unity Places Applications)

Last 2 Weeks Top Posts (Weeks 3, 4 - 2011)

How To Install Oxygen-Transparent Style In Ubuntu [KDE]

KDE 4.6 Oxygen Transparent screenshot

KDE 4.6 was supposed to ship with a transparent Oxygen style but in the end it didn't make it "due to serious issues (notably with embedded widgets, such as videos) which cannot be fixed at the style level". But that doesn't mean you can't install Oxygen-Transparent. Read on!

XFCE 4.8 Ubuntu 10.04 And 10.10 PPA

XFCE 4.8 was released about two weeks ago, bringing GVFS support for Thunar (so it can now browse remote shares using FTP, Windows Shares, WebDav and SSH), XFCE panel improvements and more.

Install Red Eclipse (The Successor Of Blood Frontier) In Ubuntu [Games]

Red Eclipse fps screenshot

Red Eclipse is a free and open source game single and multi-player FPS game which is the continuation of the now-terminated Blood Frontier project.

The game is based on the Cube 2 Sauerbraten engine and takes advantage of the features like a 6-direction height field world model, real-time map editing, light-maps, shader-based lighting effects, integrated physics support, and a particle engine.


How To Get ADB To Work On Ubuntu [Android]

"adb" (Android Debugging Bridge) is a command line tool that comes with the Android SDK which allows you to perform various actions on your Android mobile device.

Displex-Indicator Reaches Version 0.4, Adds Metacity Compositing And Disper Support

Displex

Displex, an application that provides similar functionality as "fusion-icon", but using an Ubuntu appindicator, was updated to version 0.4.

The new version finally fixes the issue with the appindicator icons - if you use Ubuntu Mono Dark or Light, Elementary Monochrome, Faenza or Faenza Dark -, Displex should integrate nicely with no further tweaking.

Sublime Text 2 Is A Nice TextMate Alternative For Linux (As Well As Windows And Mac OSX)

Sublime Text 2 Linux

Sublime Text 2 is a TextMate-like text editor currently in alpha which is now available for Linux too (as well as Windows and Mac OSX). The application is not free but its evaluation period does not expire.


Sublime Text 2 comes with a very interesting interface: a sidebar for projects or files and Chrome-style tabs as well as multi-pane editing which includes horizontal, vertical and even a quad pane mode:

Yakuake (Quake-Like Terminal Emulator) 2.9.8 Finally Adds KWin Support

Yakuake 2.9.8 screenshot

Yakuake is a very cool Quake-like drop-down terminal emulator for KDE. If you've never seen Yakuake in action before, check out the following video which I've just recorded with Yakuake 2.9.8 in KDE SC 4.6:

Mechanig: Tool To Easily Perform Various Cleaning (And More) Tasks In Ubuntu

Mechanig

WebUpd8 reader Georgi Karavasilev, inspired by our own Y PPA Manager, has created a GUI tool called Mechanig which you can use to refresh the repositories, upgrade packages, clean leftover .deb and unnecessary packages and more.

A Cross-Distro Unified Installer Is On The Way

Developers from Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, and Mageia attended to a conference last week in which they've tried to find a way to make "installing and removing software on Linux suck less."

Gnome Activity Journal 0.6.0 Released With Xchat Support, More

Gnome Activity Journal

Gnome Activity Journal - a semantic file browser based on Zeitgeist - has been updated to version 0.6.0, adding quite a few new features.

Gnome Activity 0.6.0 comes with Xchat and Bazaar version control support, drag and drop for tree view and bookmark/pin area as well as some eyecandy tweaks like a welcome screen, usability tweaks, path's label is now clickable and more.

Ubuntu Software Center Gets Ratings And Reviews Support [Natty Updates]

An update in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal finally brings ratings and reviews to Ubuntu Software Center.

Google Announces Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" Platform Highlights

Android 3.0 honeycomb screenshots

Google just announced the Android 3.0 Honeycomb platform highlights which include tons of new features such as a new "holographic" UI theme, an interaction model that builds on multitasking, notifications, widgets, and many others.

Install KDE 4.6 In Ubuntu 10.10 (With Redesigned Activities System, Faster KWin)

KDE SC 4.6 screenshot

KDE SC 4.6 was released today, brining polish to existing functionality as well as some cool new features and bug fixes.

Probably the biggest change in KDE 4.6 is the redesign of the Activities system which makes it easy to associate applications to activities - once you create some new activities, right clicking an window title you'll have an option to make that application part of a certain activity as you can see in the screenshot below:

Install SubtitleEditor 0.38.0 In Ubuntu Lucid Or Maverick

Subtitle editor

Subtitle Editor is a GTK tool to edit subtitles. It can be used for new subtitles or as a tool to transform, edit, correct and refine existing subtitle. This program also shows sound waves, which makes it easier to synchronise subtitles to voices.

SubtitleEditor 0.38.0 was released about two weeks ago and it includes many bug fixes such as:

Y PPA Manager 0.0.5, Released

Y PPA Manager

Y PPA Manager is a GUI tool to add, remove, purge, list and search for Launchpad PPAs. It works with Ubuntu and Linux Mint.


Y PPA Manager 0.0.5 was released today - the new version finally adds a GUI for the settings:
  • PPA Purge behavior: auto - don't require any user input; manual - opens a terminal window asking the user how to solve the issue (this is the default and highly recommended behavior).
  • Ubuntu version: this only affects the search. So if you want the Y PPA Manager search to display packages for some other Ubuntu version, simply change the Ubuntu version here. Supported versions: karmic, lucid, maverick or natty (use the Ubuntu version names for Linux Mint too!).
  • Downloads folder: This is the folder where Y PPA Manager downloads the file you select from a PPA (default: ~/Downloads/y-ppa-manager).

Y PPA Manager 0.0.5 also adds a repositories backup/restore feature as well as an option to scan and remove duplicate PPAs (this only works for PPAs which are in separate .list files; it doesn't work if you add the PPAs to the sources.list file). You can find the backup/restore and duplicates scanner under "Advanced" - the PPA Purge feature has also been moved here so it doesn't clutter the UI.

Install Y PPA Manager 0.0.5:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install y-ppa-manager yad

If you encounter any bugs, report them @ Launchpad.

BlueGriffon: A New WYSIWYG Editor Which Supports CSS3 And HTML5

BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon is a new WYSIWYG editor which uses Gecko, the Firefox 4 rendering engine for displaying the web pages. It's cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

What I like about it is the built-in HTML5 and CSS3 editing features - you can use it to easily apply transforms, transitions, text and box shadows, linear and radial gradients and so on. Further more, BlueGriffon comes with Google Font Directory and FontSquirrel addons so you can easily apply a custom font to your page.

Zeitgeist For Gnome Shell Goes Public [Video]

Seif posted a video with Zeitgeist + Gnome Shell in action, which you can view below:



The code is now available for anyone who wants to try it out - for now there's no GIT branch or such and instead, you must download an archive and replace the ~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/js folder with the js folder from this archive. You can downloaded it from HERE.

[via Seif]

LibreOffice 3.3.0 Stable, Released

The Document Foundation launched LibreOffice 3.3.0 today, the first stable release of the community developed free office suite.

Gnome Shell Daily Build (January 24th, 2011) Video

Gnome Shell screenshot

As requested by many of our readers, here is a video showing the latest GNOME Shell daily build (as of January 24th, 2011). There have been many changes to Gnome Shell since our last video, including the overview relayout (which is default for some time), notification changes, side-by-side tiling as well a functional notification area and many other changes.

How To Clone (Copy) A VirtualBox .vdi [Quick Tip]

VirtualBox hard disk

If you want to use an existing VirtualBox hard disk (.vdi) for multiple machines you can't just copy the .vdi as you can't have multiple virtual hard disks with the same UUID on the same computer. But luckily you can easily clone an existing VirtualBox hard disk - here's how to do it.


Install VLC 1.1.6 In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Via PPA

VLC 1.1.6


VLC 1.1.6 was released yesterday, bringing security fixes and many improvements. Here's the complete VLC 1.1.6 changelog:

Xubuntu 11.04 To Get A New Default Theme Called Greybird [Screenshots]

Starting with version 11.04 alpha 2 (to be released on February 3rd), Xubuntu will use a new theme called "Greybird" as the default theme. The GTK theme is inspired by Elementary but there are quite a few differences between Greybird and Elementary.


Pardus 2011: KDE SC 4.5.5 With A Pinch Of GNOME In One Of The Best KDE-Based Linux Distros

Pardus 2011 screenshots

Pardus is a Linux distribution funded by the Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey. Even though it uses KDE, Pardus tries to make every user - including those who come from a GNOME Linux distribution - feel like home and in which the user is in control of how his desktop looks like right from the start.

Pardus 2011 comes with its own original tools: YALI (installer), Kaptan - an first boot configuration tool, PiSi (package manager) as well as many tweaks to some already existing tools. Read on to find out more!

WebUpd8 PPAs Updates: Jupiter 0.0.48, Haguichi 1.0.4

Jupiter


Jupiter

Jupiter is an applet which allows you to switch between maximum and high performance and power saving mode, change the resolution and orientation, enable or disable the bluetooth, touchpad, WiFi and so on. But most importantly it allows your Eeepc netbook to take advantage of SHE (Super Hybrid Engine).


Jupiter 0.0.48 has been released yesterday and is now available in the Jupiter WebUpd8 PPA. This update corrects multiple issues with WIFI and Bluetooth toggles. Also, Jupiter now has an website - check it out @ jupiterapplet.org.

GLX-Dock (Cairo Dock) 2.3 Beta Gets MintMenu, Cardapio Applets, Many Other Improvements [Video]

A new version of GLX-Dock (previously known as Cairo Dock) is on the way - 2.3 (currently in beta), which will bing a lot of new applets: MintMenu, Cardapio and Lancelot menus, a translator applet, Thunderbird unread count applet, Transmission, Deluge and Ktorrent applets and more.

RadioTray 0.6.3 Released With Ubuntu AppIndicator Support, Sleep Timer

RadioTray 0.6.3

RadioTray is a minimalistic radio player stat runs in the notification area (system tray).

Finally a new version of RadioTray was released which adds support for Ubuntu appindicator, a new command line parameter "--resume" to play the last radio station before RadioTray was shutdown and a new sleep timer so you can go to sleep while listening using RadioTray. These features were actually included in the 0.6.2 version which was released yesterday but a bug prevented it from running so version 0.6.3 was released to fix that.

Unity Gets A "Places Tile View", More [Natty Updates]

Unity received yet another update today, the most important change being a new "places tile view" - until now, clicking the Ubuntu logo in the top left corner would open Nautilus but this has now been replaced by a tile view:

Unity places tile view screenshot

List Of Daily Builds Launchpad PPAs

If you like testing bleeding-edge software, there's a list with all the daily builds Launchpad PPAs available @ https://code.launchpad.net/+daily-builds. Clicking a recipe you get to see the last builds status and buildlog as well as some other info you may find useful.

How To Install Photoshop CS4 In Ubuntu (Using Wine And PlayOnLinux)

Photoshop CS4 Ubuntu

If for whatever reason you need to install Adobe Photoshop CS4 in Ubuntu, here's the easy way of doing this:

Automatically Install All The Google Web Fonts In Ubuntu Using A Script

Google Font Directory

Here's a script that can be used to download and install all the Google Web Fonts. 

Ozone: New Lubuntu 11.04 Proposed Theme

A new theme called O³ (Ozone) has been proposed for being default in Lubuntu 11.04 (an LXDE unofficial Ubuntu spin). The theme looks a lot like the new Xubuntu theme (introduced in Xubuntu 10.10) and in fact it's based on the same theme: Zuki Blues by Lassekongo.

LibreOffice 3.3.0 RC3, Finally Uploaded To The LibreOffice PPA

LibreOffice 3.3.0

A quick update: LibreOffice 3.3.0 RC3 which was released last week has finally been uploaded to the LibreOffice PPA. Unfortunately the Ubuntu Lucid packages were not updated so only Ubuntu Maverick and Natty users will receive this update.

For LibreOffice installation instructions, see the following post: Install LibreOffice In Ubuntu from PPA Repository

RabbitVCS: The Perfect TortoiseSVN Alternative For Linux, Now With GIT Integration As A Plus

RabbitVCS screenshot

Sure, you can always work with SVN repositories from the command line but sometimes a graphical SVN client is more convenient - for example you can use it to check which files are not added to the repository yet. And when it comes to graphical SVN clients, I'm sure most of you will agree when I say that RabbitVCS, a "set of graphical tools written to provide simple and straightforward access to the version control systems you use" inspired by the famous TortoiseSVN, is probably the best such tool for Linux.

How To Integrate Meld Into Gedit For Easily Comparing Files [Quick Tip]

Gedit compare with Meld

Meld is a great visual diff and merge tool but it can only be used for that and is not suitable for coding. On the other hand, Gedit is a great text editor but it doesn't come with a tool for comparing files. Wouldn't it be great if you could integrate Meld into Gedit? Here is how to do it.

Qt Applications To Be Evaluated For Inclusion On The Ubuntu CD Starting With Natty+1

Ubuntu Qt

Mark Shuttleworth announced on his blog today that starting with Natty+1 (the Ubuntu release after Natty), Qt applications will be evaluated for inclusion on the Ubuntu CD.

Until now Qt applications, even if they were "best-in-class", were not considered for inclusion in Ubuntu because they didn't fully integrated with the GNOME desktop. But that's about to change!


More LibreOffice Mockups: Citrus UI

Speaking of LibreOffice, WebUpd8 reader Nathan Moos mentioned some refreshing mockups called Citrus UI (please note that these are not official mockups!).

Citrus tries to remain somewhat familiar while brining more logic by reorganizing things differently - such as the File menu which currently holds commands that are in no way related to the current file. Further more, the menus are contextual meaning you won't get any grayed-out menus and instead, they are hidden by default.

But you won't really understand until you see some actual mockups so here goes:

Libreoffice Citrus mockups

LibreOffice citrus mockups

Install Pinta 0.6 In Ubuntu [PPA]

Pinta 0.6

Pinta is a simplified image editor based on Paint.NET (and thus it uses Mono), designed to serve as an alternative to GIMP for casual users.

Pinta 0.6 was released about a week ago and includes a huge list of bug fixes but the latest Pinta is not available in its PPA so I've decided to backport the Natty package to Lucid and Maverick.

LibreOffice User Interface Mockups (With Sidebar)

Paulo José posted some very interesting LibreOffice UI mockups at DeviantArt for which he says the main inspiration was the Blender UI:

LibreOffice UI mockup

Displex: Fusion-Icon Alternative With Ubuntu AppIndicator Support

Displex

Displex (indicator-displex) is an application that provides similar functionality as "fusion-icon", but using an Ubuntu appindicator. It can be used to control Compiz, Emerald and the Gnome Display Manager.


Install Geany And Geany Plugins 0.20 In Ubuntu [PPA]

Geany 0.20

Geany is a text editor using the GTK2 toolkit with basic features of an integrated development environment. It was developed to provide a small and fast IDE, which has only a few dependencies from other packages.

Run Unity Qt Panel Or Launcher In A Classic GNOME Desktop

WebuUpd8 reader Anurag sent us a very interesting tip: you can run any part of Unity 2D (Qt) under the classic GNOME desktop. To use the Unity panel or launcher without the whole Unity Qt, you firstly have to install Unity Qt (2D).

Unity QT launcher
(Unity Qt launcher)

Once you've installed Unity Qt, you can launch either the Unity launcher or panel manually, under GNOME. For instance you can press ALT + F2 and enter "unity-2d-launcher" to get the Unity 2D launcher ("dock") which you can use to access the application and file places. If you only want to use the Unity launcher, you won't have a button to leave the application/file places (Dash) but you can press ALT + TAB and it will close.

Last Week's Top Posts (Week 2, 2011)

Weather Indicator Lives On, Gets A New PPA

Weather Indicator

Weather Indicator is an Ubuntu appindicator that displays the current weather. Its development stopped a while back and the PPA was removed but Vadim Rutkovsky brought Weather Indicator back to life - for the past two weeks he's been fixing bugs for the old Weather Indicator and also, he has created a new PPA for easy installation.


Unity 3D Gets New Experimental Options [Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal]

Unity 11.04

Yet another version of Unity (3D) was released yesterday in Ubuntu 11.04 which brings quite a few changes:
  • the Launcher now defaults to intellihide; to bring the launcher when an application is in full-screen you can press the Super key.
  • new experimental Unity options: Backlight always on, launch animation (pulse until running and blink) and urgent animation (wiggle and pulse)
  • some applications start maximized (for example if an application's window approaches the screen size)
  • pinned applications will be imported from popular docks like Avant Window Navigator, Cairo Dock or Docky
  • an option to start Unity from the command line: "unity --replace"
  • the workspace switcher shows a grid of 4 desktops like it was initially designed instead of one big wall like it was in the last few Unity versions

Simple, Easy To Use Facebook Batch Uploader For Ubuntu: Starry Hope Uploader

Starry Hope Facebook Uploader


Starry Hope Uploader is a simple, easy to use Facebook batch uploader. To use it, all you have to do is drag and drop some photos to the uploader drag-n-drop area, select the album (or create a new one) and click "upload". In the preferences window you'll also find an option to upload high resolution photos. For now, these are all the features but expect more in future releases!

Create A Gnome Panel Icon For Triggering The Compiz Expo Plugin (Like In Unity)

Expo Compiz

If you've tried (or seen some video) Unity, you've surely noticed the Compiz Expo icon on the Unity dock (launcher). There is no Gnome panel applet to do this but you can do this thanks to xautomation. Here is how to replicate this behavior in any Ubuntu version, using the normal Gnome desktop.

Orta Window Applets Theme

Window applets Orta

Window Applets is a package that comes with two Gnome panel applets: Window Title and Window Buttons which are controls for windows that are placed on the Panel instead of the window. They provide a clever way to increase vertical screen space. See THIS screenshot to understand what this is about.

To install the Orta Window Applets theme, download it from Gnome Look, extract it, then press ALT + F2 and enter:
gksu nautilus /usr/share/windowbuttons/themes/
and copy the extracted "orta" folder to this directory.

Unfortunately, the Orta Window Applets theme only looks ok with a light Orta panel.



See also: Install Window Applets in Ubuntu from the WebUpd8 PPA.


Screenshot credits: popefalstaff

How To Install Unity 2D (Qt) In Ubuntu 11.04 / 10.10

Unity 2D Qt

Unity 2D (the package is called "Unity-Qt") got an Ubuntu PPA a few minutes ago and it can now easily be installed in Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04. 

I've tried Unity Qt in VirtualBox and I must say I am impressed: it's not identical to Unity 3D but it's A LOT faster! Further more, because Unity 2D seems to have more elements from Ubuntu 10.10 then 11.04 (even though some new stuff from 11.04 is there), it already has Dash (the application launcher / file browser) - something that's currently missing in Unity 3D in Ubuntu 11.04.


Here is a quick video I've recorded with Unity 2D (Qt) in action:

2D Unity To Be Available As An Option In Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal [Screenshots]

"Does Natty's Unity require proprietary graphics card drivers?" was a question posted on AskUbuntu and who better to answer this question then Mark Suttleworth himself (who apparently is quite an active AskUbuntu user)? Mark answered that there will be a a 2D implementation of Unity, available in 11.04 as an option and posted a link to further info and screenshots but unfortunately the link cannot be accessed anymore (update: the post has been restored).


Thanks to Google Reader which caches all the posts (and to Bill Filler who initially posted them), here are some Unity 2D screenshots:

Quick list and integrated window controls in panel:

2D Unity desktop

Download The Ultimate Bashrc File

The Ultimate Bashrc is a custom .bashrc file that comes with tons of aliases, functions and bash settings, all in one file. Here are a few examples: various bash prompts, sudo for entire line, apt history, various conversion functions like temperature, currency (based on Google) and so on, rip audio from video, bookmarks directories, copy/paste for the command line, convert any video to avi, cp with progress bar, translate a word using Google, Deb Extraction / Remaker (extracts a deb file & organizes for easy deb manipulation and repacking using "debremaker"), a "del" alias that moves the files to trash instead of removing them completely, a "site down for everyone or is it just me" function, various computer info and many more.

While you probably won't need everything in this custom bashrc file, I'm sure you'll find some very useful functions that you can use so go ahead and take a look - everything is very well organized and documented so it should be pretty easy to figure what everything does and what's required to get it to work.




Thanks to inameiname for the tip!

Earth Sunrise Is A Gorgeous Plymouth Theme For Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Earth Sunrise plymouth theme


Space Sunrise is a pretty popular Plymouth theme which we've covered a while back. zeckman1138 has tweaked this Plymouth theme further and released "Earth Sunrise", a great Plymouth theme which you can see in action below:

Popular WiFi Scanner For Windows "inSSIDer 2" Is Now Available For Linux!

inssider 2

inSSIDer 2 will display all Wi-Fi access points within range and display their MAC address, SSID, RSSI, Channel, Vendor, Encryption, Max Rate and Network Type. Use the filters feature to quickly sort through long lists of access points.


Great news for Linux users! inSSIDer 2, a very popular free/open source Wi-Fi network scanner for Windows Vista and Windows XP is now available for Linux!


Download inSSIDer 2 for Linux (currently alpha) - includes .deb and .rpm files.


Thanks to Kalyh for the tip | Screenshot credits: inSSIDer blog.

Banshee Is Not Replacing Rhythmbox In Linux Mint 11

Banshee

Clement Lefebvre, the Linux Mint founder, recently talked to Muktware about Banshee - which has replaced Rhythmbox in the recent Ubuntu 11.04 development builds -, and Mono. Banshee is an amazing application but it uses Mono which many consider risky because Microsoft could one day assert its patents against all the free applications that use Mono.

While Clement says he doesn't consider Mono a thread, it looks like Rhythmbox will stay as default in Linux Mint:

Rhythmbox is our default player and we're quite happy with it. If Ubuntu switches to Banshee, we'll of course give it a close look and assess whether the migration is a good move for us too, but as it is now there isn't any plan to change anything.

As you probably already know by now, Linux Mint will not switch to Unity either, keeping the old "classic" GNOME as default.

How To Install Microsoft Office 2007 In Ubuntu (Under Wine)

Microsoft Office 2007 Ubuntu

Today I had to install Microsoft Office 2007 at work. I don't like it but I had to install it because I work with storyboards (created in MS PowerPoint) and apparently these look differently in OpenOffice/LibreOffice and Microsoft Office 2007+. Since some of you are probably in the same situation as me (one way or another) and have to use Microsoft Office, I though I'd let you know how to install and get it to work in Ubuntu - the process is fairly easy but it involves a little "trick" to get PowerPoint to work.


Pandora Plugin For Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox Pandora plugin

Pandora radio is a personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites. You can create custom web radio stations and listen free - available only in the US.


I've recently came across a Pandora plugin for Rhythmbox that uses Pithos for accessing Pandora. While Pithos must be installed for the plugin to work, you don't have to run Pithos to use the Pandora Rhythmbox plugin.

The original plugin doesn't work with the latest Rhythmbox 0.13.2 and the author is currently traveling so he  can't fix it until February so I decided to try and fix it myself, even though I don't know Python and luckily I was able to get it to work with Rhythmbox 0.13.2. However, I'm not sure if it still works with older Rhythmbox versions, so if my fixed plugin doesn't work, try the original plugin.

Features and usage

The Pandora Rhythmbox plugin comes with the same features as Pithos: you can create or delete stations, love, ban, tired songs and so on.

Install gThumb Photo Manager 2.12.2 In Ubuntu

gThumb

gThumb is an image viewer / photo manager for GNOME. It includes options to edit photos, transfer photos from digital cameras, upload photos to websites such as Facebook, PicasaWeb, Photobucket, or Flickr and so on.

Quick update: gThumb 2.12.2 has been released last night and as usual, it's available in our gThumb PPA as well as the main WebUpd8 PPA.

Orta 1.4.0 Released, Atolm Gets A PPA And New Version [Theme Updates]

Orta 1.4.0


Orta GTK Theme

Good news for all the Orta fans: a new version of this beautiful theme has been released today with a new Nautilus Elementary style (configurable from the Orta Settings Manager) as well as many bug fixes. Here is the changelog for the latest Orta 1.4.0:

Y PPA Manager 0.0.4 Released With A New "Deep Search" Feature

Y PPA Manager

Y PPA Manager is a GUI tool to add, remove, purge, list and search for Launchpad PPAs.

Today I've released a new Y PPA Manager version that adds a new feature: deep search. The regular Y PPA Manager search displays all the PPAs that the Launchpad search returns for the word you search for - that includes PPAs that don't have packages for your Ubuntu version, PPAs that only have the searched keyword in the description as well as PPAs in which that package was available but it has been removed recently.


Deep search

The new "deep search" works like this:
  • it scans all the PPAs returned by the Launchpad search and only displays the PPAs that have the exact package you've searched for available at the time you've performed the search
  • the Y PPA Manager displays the exact version for the package you've searched for as well as the PPA in which that package can be found in one place so you don't have to check the packages in each PPA to know the version of the packages returned by the search
  • "deep search" will only return packages available for your Ubuntu version (or whatever version you've specified in the config file)

Please note that the "deep search", just like the regular search makes use of the Launchpad PPA search so if Launchpad doesn't find a certain PPA, Y PPA Manager won't list it either. There's nothing I can do about this.


But enough talk. Here is a screenshot with an example Y PPA Manager deep search results for "nautilus":

Y PPA Manager deep search