Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Quick update for Ubuntu / Linux Mint users: our PPAs were updated today with the latest Tor Browser Bundle 3.5 and Sublime Text 3 beta build 3059.


Tor Browser Bundle 3.5


Tor Browser Bundle 3.5 Ubuntu

For those not familiar with Tor Browser Bundle, this is a web browser based on Firefox ESR (Firefox with extended support), configured to protect users' privacy and anonymity by using Tor which comes bundled with it. The bundle also includes some Firefox extensions, like: TorButton, TorLauncher, NoScript and HTTPS-Everywhere.

For more information, see our initial article: Tor Browser Bundle Ubuntu PPA.

Tor Browser Bundle 3.5 is a major release and comes with the latest Firefox 24.2 ESR (the previous stable Tor Browser Bundle version was using Firefox 17 ESR), updated extensions and Tor as well as other changes and bug fixes.

With this release, a configuration window is displayed the first time your run Tor Browser Bundle, which allows you to select how to connect to the Tor network:

Tor Browser Bundle 3.5 Ubuntu

Also, in the previous releases, launching Tor Browser would also launch Vidalia, resulting in an extra window that you'd had to close to quit Tor Browser Bundle. That's no longer the case with the latest Tor Browser Bundle 3.5 because Vidalia has been replaced with a new Tor Launcher Firefox Addon.

 Changes in Tor Browser Bundle 3.5 (compared to the previous stable release):
  • Update Firefox to 24.2.0esr;
  • Update Tor to 0.2.4.19;
  • Update Torbutton to 1.6.5.2;
  • Update NoScript to 2.6.8.7;
  • Update HTTPS-Everywhere to 3.4.4tbb (special TBB tag) - Tag includes a patch to handle enabling/disabling Mixed Content Blocking;
  • Remove Vidalia; Use the new TorLauncher Firefox Addon instead;
  • Disable health report service;
  • Disable prompting about health report and Mozilla Sync;
  • Disable HTTPS-Everywhere first-run tooltips;
  • Disable Mixed Content Blocker pending backport of Mozilla Bug 878890;
  • Support running Tor Launcher from InstantBird;
  • Support browser directory location API changes in Firefox 24;
  • Clear FF24 Private Browsing Mode data during New Identity;
  • Update cache isolation for FF24 API changes;
  • Properly clear crypto tokens during New Identity on FF24;
  • Support changes to Private Browsing Mode and plugin APIs in FF24;
  • Linux: use LD_LIBRARY_PATH (fixes launch issues on old Linux distros);
  • Linux: fix architecture check to work from outside TBB's directory;
  • Linux: remove libz and firefox-bin, and strip unstripped binaries;
  • Linux: disable Firefox updater during compile time;
  • Support multiple Tor socks ports for about:tor status check;
  • Fix: Tor Launcher hang on TBB exit;
  • Fix: Adblock Plus interferes w/Tor Launcher dialog;
  • Fix: make flash objects really be click-to-play if flash is enabled;
  • Fix: remove polipo and privoxy from the banned ports list;
  • Fix a potential memory leak in the Image Cache isolation;
  • Fix a potential crash if OS theme information is ever absent.
  • More.

The complete changelog for Tor Browse Bundle can be found HERE.

To install Tor Browser Bundle in Ubuntu / Linux Mint, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/tor-browser
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tor-browser
Important reminder: any TorBrowser changes you make (bookmarks, addons you install, etc.) are deleted on upgrade due to the way TorBrowser works, but this will change with a future update. Also, because there are separate packages on Tor Browser Bundle's website for the supported languages, the package in our PPA can only support one language (English).



Sublime Text 3 beta build 3059


Sublime Text 3 Ubuntu

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

After almost 6 months, there's finally a new Sublime Text 3 beta build available: 3059. The latest beta build can be evaluated for an unlimited period of time and it includes the following changes:
  • Added tab scrolling, controlled by the enable_tab_scrolling setting;
  • Added image preview when opening images;
  • Encoding and line endings can be displayed in the status bar with the show_encoding and show_line_endings settings;
  • Added settings caret_extra_top, caret_extra_bottom and caret_extra_width to control the caret size;
  • Added index_exclude_patterns setting to control which files get indexed;
  • Automatically closing windows when the last tab is dragged out;
  • Changed tab close behavior: the neighboring tab is now always selected;
  • When the last file is closed, a new transient file is created automatically;
  • Ctrl+Tab ordering is stored in the session;
  • Added minimap_scroll_to_clicked_text setting;
  • Improved error messages when unable to save files;
  • Auto complete now works as expected in macros;
  • Minor improvements to Python syntax highlighting;
  • Vintage: A block caret is now used;
  • Vintage: Improved behavior of visual line mode with word wrapped lines;
  • Find in Files will no longer block when FIFOs are encountered;
  • Linux: Added menu hiding;
  • Linux: Fixed incorrect handling of double clicks in the Find panel;
  • Linux: Fixed incorrect underscore display in some menus;
  • API: Window.open_file now accepts an optional group parameter;
  • API: Plugins may now call Settings.clear_on_change() within a callback from Settings.add_on_change();
  • API: Calling Settings.add_on_change() from within a settings change callback won't cause the added callback to be run;

Ubuntu / Linux Mint users who want automated updates for the latest Sublime Text 3 beta builds can install the application by using the WebUpd8 Sublime Text 3 PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sublime-text-installer

For more information, see our initial article: Sublime Text 3 Ubuntu PPA. If you want to use Sublime Text 2 instead of 3 (which uses Python 2), there's a PPA for it too.

Remember, you can see the latest WebUpd8 PPA updates @ http://ppa.webupd8.org/