Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Skippy-XD: Expose-Like Window Picker For Xfce, LXDE, Etc.

Skippy-XD is a lightweight full-screen window picker for X11, similar to the Mac OS X "Exposé" feature, useful for desktop environments like as Xfce or LXDE, which don't have such a feature by default.

Whisker Menu Update Brings Support For Opening The Menu Using A Keyboard Shortcut, Other Enhancements [Xfce]

Whisker Menu is an alternative to the Xfce application menu that features a search function so you can easily find the application you want to launch. The menu also supports browsing apps by category, you can add applications to favorites and more. The menu is used by default in Linux Mint 15 Xfce.

The application was updated recently, getting a much requested feature: you can now open the menu using a keyboard shortcut (though you must add the keyboard shortcut manually - see below), along with other enhancements and fixes.

whisker menu

Google Drive Client `Insync` For Linux Out Of Beta, Gets Selective Sync Support

Insync is an unofficial Google Drive client that "extends Drive's web functionality to your desktop by integrating tightly with Windows, Mac and Linux so you can get work done".

Insync for Linux: Nautilus integration / Ubuntu appindicator

Insync for Linux is out of beta and it now offers the same features available for the Windows and Mac clients: 

Wine 1.6 Released With ~10,000 Changes

After 16 months of development, a new stable Wine version has been released: 1.6, bringing around 10,000 changes, including full support for window transparency, a new Mono package for .NET application support well as a new Mac driver.

Wine 1.6

Dota 2 Officially Released For Linux [Steam]

Quick update: the much awaited Dota 2 game has been officially released for Linux (Steam). This isn't the "Dota 2 Test" but the real thing so you can play with regular Dota 2 users, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Dota 2 Ubuntu Steam

Popular Task Management App `Wunderlist` Available As Chrome Packaged App

Wunderlist is a popular to do list manager that supports reminders, recurring tasks, subtasks, collaboration and more.

Fuzzy Window Switcher For Ubuntu

Fuzzy Window Switcher is a tool inspired by Sublime Text's Ctrl+P, useful for those who keep a lot of windows open: it allows you to switch between windows by typing a few letters that match the window title.

BitTorrent Sync Beta Adds File Versioning, Android App [PPA]

BitTorrent Sync, a secure peer-to-peer file synchronization tool available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and NAS devices, has entered beta status. 

BitTorrent Sync WebUI

How To Create A Bootable Windows PE ISO Under Linux

Windows PE (Windows Preinstallation Environment, also known as WinPE) is a lightweight Windows version that runs from memory and can be booted from the network, used to deploy workstations and servers or for system maintenance.

Windows PE

Windows PE can may be needed for various reasons, like installing Windows from the network, booting Windows PE from the network or simply running some Windows application without installing Windows or using WINE.

I needed a live Windows PE ISO to be able to update my Dell BIOS, because all the other methods of updating the BIOS on my Dell XPS L702x from Linux I found had failed (and I don't have Windows installed on my laptop). Whatever reason you have to build a customized bootable Windows PE image, here's how to create it from Linux.

PuddleTag (Linux Audio Tag Editor) 1.0.2 RC1 Released

PuddleTag, a Linux audio tag editor similar to the popular Windows tool Mp3Tag, has been updated recently with new features and bug fixes.

PuddleTag

PuddleTag comes with a highly customizable interface and a spreadsheet-like layout, making it easy to edit all the tags you want. Using it, you can easily batch edit your music files tags, rename files based on tag information, supports adding album covers to your files, can import tags from Amazon, Discogs, FreeDB, AcoustID and MusicBrainz and more. It even supports Mp3Tag tag sources.

Conky Manager Gets New Options, 4 New Themes

Conky Manager, a graphical font-end for managing Conky configuration files, has been updated to version 1.2 yesterday, getting 4 new Conky configurations / themes, as well as some new options.

Conky Manager

Pair Logitech Unifying Receiver Devices In Linux With Solaar

The Logitech Unifying receiver supports connecting up to six compatible wireless mice and keyboards however, only the device that comes with the receiver is already paired (and thus, only that device will work out of the box with the receiver).

Logitech provides a tool for pairing additional devices to the Unifying receiver but it's only available for Windows and Mac OSX so if you want to pair new devices or if you want to use a new receiver (in case you lose the old one for instance) and you're using Linux, you can use a third-party tool such as Solaar.

Solaar Logitech

Solaar is a Linux tool that allows you to manage Logitech Unifying Receiver mice and keyboards, that comes with both a GUI and command line interface.

How To Download And Install The Windows 8.1 Fonts In Ubuntu

If for whatever reason you need to use the latest Microsoft Windows 8.1 (or 8) fonts in Ubuntu and you don't have a Windows partition to copy the fonts, here's how to download and install them.

MS Windows 8.1 fonts Ubuntu

Installing the Windows 8.1 fonts in Ubuntu means you'll get any new fonts that Microsoft included in the latest Windows Preview (like Segoe UI Black, Segoe UI Emoji and a few others) as well as the latest version of popular fonts like Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Segoe UI, Verdana, Times New Roman and so on.

Below you'll find instructions for downloading the Windows 8.1 Preview ISO from Microsoft, extracting the fonts from the ISO (because the fonts can't be redistributed) using 7zip and Wimlib and installing the fonts in Ubuntu, either system-wide or for your user only. The instructions are based on / adapted from the tt-ms-win8 AUR package (thanks to reflexing!).


Dota 2 Test Available For Linux [Steam]

Dota 2 Linux

Dota 2 has been officially released for Windows a couple of days ago and today, Valve has released "Dota 2 Test" for Linux:

How To Get XCF Thumbnails In Nautilus 3.x [Quick Tip]

Quick tip: You can get XCF thumbnails in Nautilus by using GNOME XCF Thumbnailer. However, the tool needs a fix to work with the latest Nautilus 3.x. This should also work with Nemo, the default Cinnamon file manager.

XCF thumbnails Nautilus 3.8

XCF (eXperimental Computing Facility) is the native image format used by GIMP image editor.

Light Locker: A New Session Locker For LightDM

Light Locker is a new session locker for LightDM forked from GNOME Screensaver (3.6.1). The tool doesn't have any desktop-specific dependencies and it locks and unlocks the session via ConsoleKit / UPower or logind / systemd.

Genymotion: Fast, Easy To Use Android (x86) Emulator With OpenGL Hardware Acceleration Support

Genymotion is a fast Android emulator which comes with pre-configured Android (x86 with OpenGL hardware acceleration) images, great for application testing. The project has evolved from the old AndroidVM and compared to it, Genymotion comes with a new player design, installer and more.

Command Line Video Download Tool `youtube-dl` Gets Support For 17 New Websites

Youtube-dl is a command line tool that allows downloading videos from YouTube and other similar websites.

Please note that I update youtube-dl from the WebUpd8 PPA a few times a week, so if YouTube or another website make changes that break it, run an update and it's very likely that a new youtube-dl version will be available, which fixes the issues.

QGifer Converts Video To GIF, Supports Cropping, Adding Text And More

QGifer is a Qt tool available for Linux and Windows, that can convert part of a video to an animated GIF file.

QGifer Ubuntu

QGifer isn't just a simple video to GIF converter. Thanks to its feature set, the application feels almost like a video editor, except it doesn't produce videos but animated GIF files: you can easily set which part of the video should be used in your GIF, crop the video, add text or images, apply filters and more.

Install Audacious 3.4 In Ubuntu Via PPA

Audacious Media Player GTK

Audacious 3.4 has been released recently and is now available in the main WebUpd8 PPA for Ubuntu 13.10, 13.04, 12.10 and 12.04. The new version doesn't come with major changes, but there are many small new features and tweaks.

Audacious is an open source audio player for Linux and Windows, that ships with numerous plugins and can use either a GTK or a Winamp2-like interface, supporting Winamp Classic skins.

Whisker Menu: Fast Application Launcher Featuring Search Function For Xfce

Whisker Menu is an alternative to the Xfce application menu that tries to make finding and launching applications easier.

The tool allows you to quickly search for the application you want to launch or, if you don't know the application name, you can browse all the applications installed on the system by browsing through categories.

Whisker Menu Xfce

Sublime Text 3 Ubuntu PPA (Now Available To Non-Registered Users)

Sublime Text is a popular text editor somewhat similar to TextMate, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Sublime Text 3 Ubuntu

Fedora 19 Available For Download

Fedora 19 screenshots

Fedora 19 "Schrödinger's Cat" has been released today, featuring the latest stable GNOME 3.8, a new initial setup and other interesting changes.

Conky Manager: A GUI For Managing Conky Configurations

Conky Manager

Conky Manager is a GUI that allows you to easily manage Conky configurations. The latest version - 1.1 -, lets you choose from 7 such configurations / themes.

Slick GTK3 Theme `Numix` Updated With Dark Theme Assets

Numix, a modern, flat GTK3 theme, has recently been updated with dark theme assets, along with other tweaks and fixes. The theme is compatible with GTK 3.6 and 3.8.

Numix GTK3 theme
Numix GTK3 theme under Unity