Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Translate Any Text You Select On Your Linux Desktop With A Keyboard Shortcut And Notifications

| Date: March 02, 2016 | View Comments | Tags: bash, featured, google translate, linux, notifications, script, ubuntu, zenity

I recently stumbled upon an interesting tiny old script which can translate any text you select. After highlighting the text, be it in a web browser, Libreoffice or PDF document and so on, upon using a keyboard shortcut, its translation is displayed in a desktop notification.

Google Translate notification Linux

Zenity For Appindicators: Ubuntu Indicator For Commands Or Bash Scripts

| Date: September 19, 2011 | View Comments | Tags: appindicator, bash, cli, linux, ubuntu, yad, zenity

WebUpd8 reader Reda El Khattabi has created a small tool that makes it very easy to create an Ubuntu AppIndicator for Zenity, YAD (a Zenity fork with many improvements) or basically any bash script or command.


Features:
  • supports submenus and separators
  • you can specify a custom icon
  • persistent mode or quit after executing command

YAD: Zenity On Steroids [Display Graphical Dialogs From Shell Scripts]

| Date: December 03, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, gnome, gui, linux, scripts, ubuntu, yad, zenity

Those of you who like writing bash scripts and use Zenity for a GUI should give YAD a try. YAD (Yet Another Dialog) is a fork of Zenity with many improvements, such as custom buttons, additional dialogs, pop-up menu in notification icon and more. I've been using it for Y PPA Manager so if you want to see it in action, give Y PPA Manager a try.

Unfortunately even though Zenity is constantly updated, these updates only bring language updates and fixes. Here is where YAD shines: basically most of the stuff you ever wanted to do in Zenity is available in YAD: you can have as many buttons as you want, each with the text you want, a really nice icons dialog (which I've used as the main Y PPA Manager UI) and many more. Here's an example of a YAD dialog you could never get using Zenity:

YAD

2ClickUpdate 6.0 Adds Ubuntu 10.10 Support

| Date: November 09, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: 2clickupdate, bash, debian, linux, ubuntu, updates, zenity

2CLickUpdate

2ClickUpdate is a front-end for system updates that checks for and installs updates, removes unnecessary files and cleans up after installing the updates. It works on any Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distribution.

2ClickUpdate is a shell script with a GUI provided by Zenity that uses axel (similar to apt-fast) for handling the downloads (so the downloads are a lot faster then regular updates) and NotifyOSD notifications.

Java (JDK) Updater - Script To Update The Java (JDK) Paths After Manual Installation

| Date: October 30, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, Java, jdk, linux, script, zenity

Ubuntu is kind of slow at updating JDK in the official repositories. And not only that but if you've used Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat before the final release, you probably know that Java has only been uploaded to the Ubuntu Partner repository a few days before the final release so you could either use the Ubuntu 10.04 repository or manually install Java.

When you manually install JDK, you have to update the paths to get it to work. For this, you can use a script created by WebUpd8 reader Bruce Ingalls (this is actually a new version as we've already wrote a while back about this script) which uses Zenity and can easily update the Java (JDK) paths - all you have to do is select the folder where you've installed Java and the script will do the rest.

Nautilus Script To Compress PDF Files

| Date: May 25, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, linux, nautilus, pdf, scripts, ubuntu, zenity

Ricardo Ferreira (who sent us quite a few tips before) wrote a nice Nautilus script which comes with a GUI (Zenity) to compress and optimize PDF files called Compress PDF.

The script currently comes in multiple languages: English, Spanish*, French*, Czech* and Portuguese (but you can translate it into your language if you want - there are only 10 short lines to translate) and you can choose between 5 different compression levels: Screen-view only, Low Quality, Hight Quality, High Quality (Color Preserving) and Default:

compress pdf script

Java Update Script For Ubuntu - Version 0.2b

| Date: April 20, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, Java, linux, script, ubuntu, updates, zenity

Bruce Ingalls sent us a new and much improved version of his Java Update script for Ubuntu. The script uses Zenity for a GUI so it's very easy to use.

Initially the script only updated JDK (which included JRE), but now can also update Java Runtime Environment separately.


JDK Linux Update Script

| Date: April 11, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, bruce, jdk, linux, script, ubuntu, zenity

WebUpd8 reader Bruce Ingalls sent us script which should make it easy for users to upgrade JDK. The script doesn't download JAVA or install it, but after you do that it updates the the path to the new JDK location.

Why use it?

Well, for instance JDK 1.6.0_19 was recently released and instead of creating symbolic links after installing it (which is not the recommended way to do it), you can use this script.

Ubuntu 10.04 First Time Use Script 0.2 Released: It Now Comes With A GUI

| Date: April 09, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, linux, lucid lynx, script, ubuntu, zenity

Update 18 Apr. 2010: A new version of the script has been released. Please see: What To Do After A Fresh Ubuntu Install Script - New Version Released [Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx]


If you liked the script in our "What To Do After Installing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx? Run This Script!" post, you'll be glad to know that version 0.2 is out.


What's new in "Ubuntu 10.04 First time use script" (if you come up with an actual name, please do let us know =) ):
  • it now comes with a GUI - well, almost, it uses Zenity so all you have to do is check some boxes and the script will do the rest
  • the script now auto accepts the JAVA license when installing it, so you don't have to do this yourself anymore
  • added Dropbox installation (including the Dropbox repository which is for Karmic for now but it works on Lucid too - it will be updated to the Lucid repository when Dropbox will release it)
  • Install development tools (from build-essential to Subversion and GIT)
  • added gnome-do
  • Remove drive icons from desktop gconf tweak
  • Fix Google Chrome repository slowness for "apt-get update"
  • added a new Gconf tweak: disable the GDM login screen user list - I find it a security leak for Ubuntu to display your username when logging in.
  • the script no longer removes Empathy and the central-european settings for MPlayer and Totem have been removed.
  • it now requires you run it with "sudo"


Zenity + Bash Audio Converter Script Updated

| Date: March 28, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: audio, convert, ffmpeg, linux, nautilus, ubuntu, zenity

zenity bash audio converter script

The script created by WebUpd8 reader Remy which we were telling you about a few days ago just got updated.

The new version can convert to / from two more formats: flv and aac (it used to work for lac, mp3, wav and ogg), and an quality selector for ffmpeg has also been added. This version also checks if a file exists and asks if you want to open Nautilus.


To use it, firstly install zenity and ffmpeg:
sudo apt-get install zenity ffmpeg


And then download and run the script using these commands:
wget http://raymii.org/cms/content/downloads/easyconverter.sh
chmod +x easyconverter.sh
./easyconverter.sh


For more info, check out Remy's post @ raymii.org (thanks once again!).

Zenity + FFmpeg Bash Script To Convert flac, mp3, wav and ogg Audio Files

| Date: March 24, 2010 | View Comments | Tags: bash, convert, ffmpeg, linux, script, ubuntu, zenity

WebUpd8 reader Remy sent us a tip with a bash script which uses Zenity and ffmpeg for easily converting various audio files. It can convert from / to flac, mp3, wav and ogg.


Using the script is very easy so it should be very useful for lots of people. The first thing you need to to to get it working is to install Zenity and ffmpeg. To do this in Ubuntu, simply paste the following command in a terminal:

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