After around 4 and a half years of inactivity, a new Kupfer (quick launcher) version was released 3 days ago, followed by 3 more releases since then.

The application has a new developer who ported the application to Python 3, GTK 3 and GObject Introspection, while also fixing various bugs.

`Albert`, a quick launcher for Linux, has received quite a few updates lately, fixing many of the bugs you may have encountered in the early versions, along with other changes.

Albert allows you to quickly run applications, open files or bookmarks (Chromium only), search the web, calculate and more. The application is inspired by Alfred (Mac), is written in C++ and based on the Qt framework, and it's desktop environment agnostic so you can use it with any desktop environment.

`Albert` is a relatively new quick launcher for Linux, which might remind you of Alfred (Mac) or Synapse (Linux). Using it, you can quickly launch applications, open files or perform web searches.

After finally getting themes support about 2 weeks ago, another Kupfer version (v206) was released today bringing a huge list of bug fixes and more importantly, reduced memory usage. The changelog says the Kupfer runtime memory should be reduced by 10-30% thanks to the reimplementation of icon cache.

Kupfer is a quick launcher (like Gnome DO or Synapse) which comes with many very useful plugins but always lacked a nice user interface. Well, an update today finally brings some UI love for Kupfer. Check out the new Kupfer interface:

Synapse, the new awesome looking quick-launcher for Linux reached version 0.2.2 today, getting some of the features many of you have requested:

• Most importantly, Synapse got a relevancy service - the applications you use the most will be on top of the search results (Zeitgeist is used for this).
• Support for basic transliteration when searching for applications - therefore you shouldn't need to type accents (if your language has them)
• 3 new plugins: Open Search (search the web - it currently supports Google search and Google Maps), Locate (find files on your filesystem) and Gnome Screensaver (this was already available in the version in the PPA for some time).

(Synapse 0.2.2 - Google Search plugin)

After getting the famous comma trick back in February, Kupfer got lots and lots of new features and plugins such as Twitter (browse friends and timeline), Gmail, Picasa, Google Search, Evolution and many more, but because the plugins which require authentification didn't work for some users (Twitter, Gmail, Picasa), we didn't post about it.

Launchy 2.5 Beta 2 was released and the new version includes bug fixes, performance overhauls, and new shortcuts and controls but also a version for Mac OS X too (previously, Launchy was only available for Windows and Linux).

While I don't really see the purpose of Launchy for Mac, were Quicksilver rules all quick launch applications, Mac users will still be glad to know they now have an alternative.

Kupfer Pandora's Box 1 had been released. We haven't talked about Kupfer on Web Upd8 so I would like to introduce Kupfer first.

Kupfer is an alternative to Gnome DO, which will remind you of Quicksilver for Mac (if you used a Mac). In fact, even Kupfer developers say it's heavily inspired by Quicksilver.

But what does Kupfer do? Well, you ca use it to summon an application or document quickly by typing the first parts of its name. It can also do more than getting at something quickly: there are different plugins for accessing more objects and running custom commands.


Kupfer Pandora's Box 1 finally introduces some of the advanced features found Quicksilver such as commands with many objects and global hotkeys to any custom command.

Let's take a look at the important changes in Kupfer version Pandora's Box 1: