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Marlin File Browser for GNOME - Overview 1 Dec 2011 6:32 AM (13 years ago)

Marlin is a relatively new file browser for GNOME somewhat similar with Nautilus when it comes to features, but with a different default interface.






Features
The default interface is divided into a left panel, which provides fast access to bookmarks and common places, the rest of the area being occupied by the file browser itself. The status bar at the bottom shows the name, type, size, date modified and owner of the currently selected file.



These are the main features:

• tab support
• Nautilus-like location bar
• three file view modes: Icon View, List View and Column View
• networking support (SSH, FTP, Windows share, HTTP and HTTPS)
• customizable toolbar, including toolbar icon size
• single click/double click to open file
• show hidden files
• zoom in/out

Installation in Ubuntu
Marlin is not yet in the Ubuntu official repositories, but a PPA is available. To install it, open a terminal and type in these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:marlin-devs/marlin-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install marlin

The repository contains versions for Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

Conclusion
Overall, Marlin gets the job done. It's nothing more, nothing less than what you'd expect from a simple file manager, it blends well in GNOME, and it's pretty lightweight.

Alien Arena 2011 Released - Overview & Screenshots 16 Dec 2010 9:20 PM (14 years ago)

Alien Arena 7.50 (a.k.a. Alien Arena 2011) was released yesterday and it comes with several new notable features regarding the physics engine, as well as two new maps, updated player and skins models, new music for various maps, revamped in-game IRC client, as well as several bug fixes and improvements.



Alien Arena is a free, open-source first-person shooter for Linux, Windows and Mac which takes place in retro science-fiction environments, with a fast pace, support for single player and multiplayer games, a host of interesting game modes besides the usual DM or CTF, like Team Core Assault, Deathball, Instagib, Vampire, Regeneration, Low Gravity.



Here are the main new features for this release:
- Ragdoll physics using the Open Dynamics Physics Engine
- two brand new maps, Total Annihilation and Neptune's Lost City
- rewritten in-game IRC client
- updated player and skin models
- fixed LOD meshes for all player models
- faster particle rendering
- True Type Font support
- new music for various maps
- various bug fixes, code cleanups and improvements

To compile the Alien Arena source in Debian/Ubuntu, type in a terminal:

sudo apt-get build-dep alien-arena
sudo apt-get install libode-dev
./configure
make
sudo make install

Important notices
The executable is called crx, and it is located in the /usr/local/bin/ directory (if no other path was specified at the command-line to the configure script). To run it type crx in a terminal or press Alt+F2 and type crx followed by Enter in the run box that appears.

The configuration directory for Alien Arena is located in ~/.codered/, where ~ is your home directory (e.g. /home/USER/.codered).

2 Linux Screencasting Applications 16 Dec 2010 1:05 AM (14 years ago)

recordMyDesktop - This is a powerful command-line screencasting application which uses open formats to save the obtaining video (Ogg Theora for video and Ogg Vorbis for audio). recordMyDesktop also provides GTK and Qt frontends, for both GNOME and KDE (the Qt version is not included in Ubuntu's repositories, but it can be downloaded from SourceForge).




However, recordMyDesktop seems unable to record sound, the program hanging there so I had to kill it manually. It will successfully record 3D in Ubuntu if 3D effects are enabled. At start I though it was a video related issue, so I looked in the man page and the bugs section specifies that it will not work unless the --full-shots parameter is specified in the command-line. I did it and no result. I also tried changing the --fps option to 8 fps but still no result, with the program hanging there so I had to kill it manually. I used Ubuntu 10.10 with the version of recordMyDesktop which comes in the repositories (which seems to be unmaintained since 2009). However, I gave it a try by disabling sound recording, and it turned out that was the issue. After I googled it, I also tried to change the sound driver to hw:0,0 but again, no results, this time I got an I/O error. Should this have something with the sound driver? Maybe someone knows a workaround for this.
recordMyDesktop

To use it, just type recordmydesktop in a terminal and hit Ctrl+C when done, then wait for the file to be encoded. By default it will save the video in a file called out.ogv, in the current working directory. Options like --fps, --no-cursor, --on-the-fly-encoding or the output filename can also be specified. For example:
recordmydesktop --no-sound --fps 8 --on-the-fly-encoding myfile.ogv
Will encode a video called myfile.ogv of the entire screen, with no sound, using on the fly encoding and a framerate of 8 fps.
To install it in Ubuntu, type in a terminal: sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop
Or, for the graphical frontend: sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop
The graphical frontend offers a nice graphical configuration window, so some may be more comfortable with this one.
Istanbul - Istanbul is written in Python and it offers a few less features than recordMyDesktop. It allows to select area or window to record, 3D record, enable/disable mouse pointer recording, and choose the size of the video (full, half or quarter width and height). It saves the file as an Ogg Theora video. Again, I had problems with recording sound, I believe I'm doing something wrong here.
To install in Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install istanbul

Another application to include here would be Wink, a freeware software presentation application with ports for both Linux and Windows. Bear in mind though that Wink is not free software. Wink allows to create presentations, include voice recording, explanatory popup boxes, exporting to Flash video. I should also mention the powerful Xvidcap (GTK) and reKordmydesktop (KDE frontend to recordMyDesktop), which, although they don't seem to be maintained anymore, still offer a good amount of features.
Have some more? Please share!

6 Best Linux Terminal Applications 30 Nov 2010 9:10 AM (14 years ago)

Guake - Quake-style terminal for GNOME
A Quake-style terminal is a drop-down terminal which can be shown/hidden just like the console in Quake (and most of the first-person shooter games out there), using the press of a key (~ in Quake). Guake is a terminal application written in GTK which uses the F12 keyboard shortcut by default to show or hide it.

Guake features transparency, tabs, tray icon, configurable shortcuts, fullscreen mode and allows you to change terminal size, transparency level, appearance, font size and default shell interpreter.
Homepage


Terminator - feature-rich terminal emulator
Terminator is a powerful terminal application written in Java with support for features like tabs, automatic logging, text drag & drop support, find function, split the current tab horizontally or vertically, profiles, appearance settings (transparency and background image, colours), plugins and configurable keyboard shortcuts. All in all, Terminator is one of the most powerful terminal emulators out there.
Homepage



Konsole - KDE default terminal
Being the default terminal for the K Desktop Environment, Konsole brings usual features like transparency, profiles, notifications, shortcuts, tabs, appearance configuration, but also bookmarks, monitor for silence or activity.
Homepage

Powerful enough, Konsole usually fits most KDE users who need a terminal to blend into the environment

Yakuake - Quake-style terminal for KDE
Yakuake is the terminal of choice for those who use KDE and like the Quake-style approach. Triggered by F12, Yakuake supports tabs, profiles, transparency, resizing, colour and font size configuration, active tab splitting. A very good alternative to Konsole.
Homepage

Yakuake - drop-down terminal for KDE

GNOME Terminal - GNOME default terminal
GNOME Terminal ships by default with the GNOME desktop environment and it features profiles, configurable keyboard shortcuts, tabs, fullscreen mode, find function, transparency effects, background image.

The default GNOME terminal application

GNOME Terminal allows to configure a profile and change appearance settings (including transparency level, background image, colour scheme or terminal fonts), scrollbar, bell and terminal size.


Tilda - Another Quake-style terminal
Tilda is yet another powerful Quake-style terminal written in GTK which uses by default the F1 keyboard shortcut to show/hide it. It features tabs, transparency effects, build-in text and background color schemes, and powerful configuration options. When first started, Tilda will show the configuration window, where you can change behaviour like showing it on taskbar or start it hidden, change the title and the default web browser to open links, change size, position, enable transparency, choose background image and enable animated pulldown, colour schemes, enable/disable thescrollbar, compatibility options and show/hide keybinding (default F1). The animated pulldown looks kind of ugly though (GNOME 2.32 and Tilda 0.9.6). It doesn't seem to include support for changing the console font, maybe I missed it? Otherwise than that, Tilda is a very good alternative to the ones already mentioned.
Homepage

Tilda - an alternative drop-down terminal for GNOME users

10 Alternatives to Default Applications in Ubuntu 10.10 30 Nov 2010 7:00 AM (14 years ago)

Music player: Rhythmbox (full review here)
Alternative: Banshee (full review here)
Banshee is a feature-rich collection-oriented player which includes Internet services, cover manager, smart playlists, Last.fm integration, 10-band equalizer, tray icon, ratings, fullscreen mode, track metadata editor, support for radio and podcasts, plugins and play queue, to list only a part of them. The version which comes in Ubuntu Maverick is 1.8.0, but at the time of writing a new development version, 1.9.0, is available on the official website and can be easily installed using the Banshee daily builds PPA at Launchpad.
Runners-up: Exaile, Listen, Audacious, gmusicbrowser, Decibel Audio Player, Quod Libet, Foobnix, DeaDBeeF, Sonata, GMPC



sudo apt-get install banshee


Movie player: Totem
Alternative: GNOME MPlayer
GNOME MPlayer is a GTK frontend to mplayer the popular, cross-platform movie player. GNOME MPlayer is provided by the package gnome-mplayer and can play any file that mplayer supports. It has support for subtitles, playlist, video info, and comes with pretty much enough configuration options.
Runners-up:
sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer


File manager: Nautilus (full review here)
Alternative: GNOME Commander
It was a tough choice between this and PCManFM, and finally decided to go for the twin-panel one although the latter is a good replacement too. GNOME Commander is a twin-panel file manager with features like search for files/folders, horizontal layout, SMB support, keyboard shortcuts, bookmarks. It doesn't seem to integrate context menus for various file formats, for example adding/extracting to/from an archive.
Runners-up: PCManFM, Thunar, emelFM

sudo apt-get install gnome-commander


Web browser: Firefox
Alternative: Epiphany
Epiphany is a clean and simple GTK web browser that uses the WebKit layout engine. It includes the usual features like privacy management, bookmarks, tabs, history, fullscreen mode.
Runners-up:
sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser

Word processor: OpenOffice.org Writer
Alternative: Abiword
Abiword is for those who need a word processing application, but without the more advanced features the OpenOffice.org Writer includes and also quite lightweight compared to the latter. It provides a simple, easy-to-use interface and has support for the OpenDocument Text format.
Runners-up:
sudo apt-get install abiword


Image viewer: Eye of GNOME
Alternative: gThumb
gThumb supports a wide variety of image formats and comes with decent features for an image viewer, like bookmarks, basic editing tools (rotate, convert to other formats, resize), extensions.
Runners-up: GPicView, GQview, GImageView

sudo apt-get install gthumb


Terminal application: GNOME Terminal
Alternative: Guake
A few days ago I talked about Yakuake, a KDE Quake-style console application. Well, Guake is its counterpart on the Gnome desktop environment. Guake features transparency effects, keyboard shortcuts (F12 to hide/show the terminal), tray icon, tabs (using the Firefox shortcuts to switch - Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down), configuration options.
Runners-up:
sudo apt-get install guake


Text editor: Gedit
Alternative: Geany
Geany is a very powerful text editor which also offers features for programmers. Geany comes with tabbed support, highlighting for various programming languages, indentation support, projects, plugins and a whole range of configuration options. A respectable replacement for Gedit, and also a valid tool among more advanced IDEs like Emacs.
Runners-up: Scribes, SciTE, Leafpad

sudo apt-get install geany


Photo manager: Shotwell
Alternative: F-Spot
What better alternative for Shotwell than the former default photo manager, F-Spot? F-Spot features camera support, importing and exporting images to various services, tags, extensions to name a few.
Runners-up:

sudo apt-get install f-spot


Email client: Evolution
Alternative: Claws Mail
Claws Mail is a highly configurable email client written in GTK with features like address book, support for POP3 or SMTP protocols, external editor, multiple accounts.
Runners-up: Thunderbird (not GTK but integrates well enough)

sudo apt-get install claws-mail


Final notice
All the alternative applications and runners-up were chosen to blend well in the GNOME environment, which means all of them (except for Thunderbird) are GTK-based.

16 Music Players for Linux 29 Nov 2010 8:52 AM (14 years ago)

Linux came a long way concerning music players in the last couple of years and if in the past there were only few choices for users - XMMS has to be mentioned here - well, now there are so many players to choose from, and if most share the same features, each one provides an alternative by bringing a new feature or a different interface. This I can tell, can satisfy any user's taste. Without further ado, here are no less than 16 graphical music players for Linux.



Each player (except for the last two) have been reviewed before here at TuxArena and there is a link to the review after the application's name.

Amarok - full review
I don't think Amarok needs an introduction. Every long-time KDE user tested it at least once, and most of KDE users use it as their primary music player, not to mention it comes by default in distributions like Kubuntu, the KDE-based branch of Ubuntu. Amarok is a powerful, collection-oriented player, with an interface which, although loved by some and contested by others, looks very good and offers as much information as it could. It comes with dynamic playlist support, cover manager, Internet services, Last.fm integration, scripting support, Internet radio support, media devices support and much, much more.
Homepage

Rhythmbox - full review
Rhythmbox is the default audio player in Gnome and Ubuntu implicitly. Among the top features it comes with are the music library, sortable playlists, plugins, local file cover support, Last.fm integration, support for services like Jamendo or Magnatune. Another feature of Rhythmbox is the integration with Ubuntu One Music Store, the service provided by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu (I don't know if this is Ubuntu-specific only though).
Homepage



Banshee - full review
Some would recommend Banshee as the first option for replacing Rhythmbox. Banshee integrates in Gnome and it comes with a full set of features, offering a media library, 10-band equalizer, Last.fm integration, cover fetching, playlist support, podcasts and a whole bunch of plugins . Banshee also offers a video library and support for playing movies and video formats. Its only problem seems to be stability though, I had some problems with random crashes and fetching local covers doesn't seem to work (Ubuntu 10.10 and Banshee 1.8.0).
Homepage

Banshee is a full-featured player which also includes video capabilities

Audacious - full review
This is the GTK2 replacement for the now deprecated XMMS. It comes with Winamp 2.x skin support, an interface which resembles the Winamp 2 look and feel, support for covers, an equalizer, and more. Version 2.4 offers two view modes available in the View menu: Gtk interface and the Winamp Classic interface (screenshots below).
Homepage

Audacious is a replacement for XMMS which offers two view modes: Gtk and Winamp Classic

Clementine - full review
For those who complain about the direction Amarok 2 took, Clementine can be a very good alternative to Amarok 1.4. Clementine's goal is a port of Amarok 1.4 to KDE4, and until now it's done a good job. Some of the many features of Amarok 1.4 are not yet implemented, but still Clementine offers sortable playlists, cover manager, equalizer, collection manager, file manager, Last.fm song submission. It still lacks support for scripts though.
Homepage #1
Homepage #2

Clementine aims to be the KDE4 port of Amarok 1.4 and does a pretty good job

Qmmp - full review
I was talking about Audacious being the GTK replacement of XMMS. Well, Qmmp is the Qt replacement for it, making it perfect for KDE users. It resembles the XMMS interface, supports Winamp 2.x skins, it allows plugins.
Homepage #1
Homepage #2

Qmmp - the KDE replacement of XMMS

Listen - full review
Listen is another player for Gnome, and it comes with a clean, well-organised interface as well as support for plugins, Last.fm integration, four display modes (small, normal, full and party mode), lyrics fetching, Wikipedia integration for artist and song info.
Homepage

Listen - typical player for Gnome, featuring a well-organised interface

Exaile - full review
Yet another GTK application, Exaile features music collection, lyrics fetching, file browser, radio support, sortable playlist, device manager, 10-band equalizer, queue, covers support. Exaile is also highly configurable via the Edit -> Preferences menu.
Homepage

Exaile is a feature-rich GTK player offering a good alternative to Rhythmbox or Banshee

Jajuk - full review
Well, when I reviewed Jajuk I was really impressed by this audio player. Jajuk is written in Java and it is a full-featured, top notch player with a neat and intuitive interface. Among the many features of Jajuk there are cover fetching, lyrics, file browser, lots of configuration options, statistics, cover manager, highly configurable interface. In my opinion, a must-try.
Homepage

Written in Java, Jajuk is a feature-full player

Decibel Audio Player - full review
Decibel can be described in one word: minimalist. Written in GTK and aiming to stay simple and intuitive, Decibel can look too simple at first, but don't be confused by that. It still offers enough features one would expect from an audio player and most of Decibel's features are available via plugins (bundled by default in it), so go to Edit->Preferences if you want to take advantage of all the features. It has three view modes (full, playlist, mini), cover fetching support, Last.fm song submission, equalizer, library, Twitter status update plugin. The interface offers a playlist and a file manager, which shows folders in a tree-view mode. Adding music to the playlist may seem at little confusing at first, you can do that by selecting a folder in the combo box to the left of the main window.
Homepage

Decibel can be extended using the plugins included by default

Quod Libet - full review
Another player for Gnome with standard features and a clean, good-looking interface and support for Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, MP4, WAV and WMA formats. Quod Libet offers filters, a whole bunch of plugins (actually the plugins extend Quod Libet's functionality a lot, and there are a lot of them), several view modes.
Homepage

Quod Libet

Guayadeque - full review
I featured Guayadeque in my Linux applications with peculiar names article, and found out in the mean time that Guayadeque is a place in Canary Islands. Guayadeque brings nice features also taking a different approach regarding its interface. Features: radio, Last.fm integration, music library, lyrics, dynamic playlists, podcasts support, file browser, ratings. I think Guayadeque does a great job taking a different approach then most of the players out there.
Homepage

Taking a different approach, Guayadeque is a must try if tired of usual players

Foobnix - full review
Another player for Linux, Foobnix is written in Python and uses the GTK toolkit. It offers the usual equalizer, Last.fm song submission, an online search tool and enough configuration options. The current version in Ubuntu is a little buggy, but other than that Foobnix is a good audio player.
Homepage

Written in PyGTK, Foobnix offers enough features

Goggles Music Manager - full review
Goggles Music Manager is written using the FOX toolkit, a library for designing lightweight applications. It features AlbumArt support, tag editing, smart sorting, drag and drop support, Last.fm and Libre.fm song submission, SQLite database for the music collection, system tray integration.
Homepage

GMM is a lightweight music player written using FOX toolkit

JuKIt looks like most of the players in this review are written in GTK, and those for KDE are only Amarok, Clementine, and JuK. This player offers features like cover manager, history, crossfading or the tag editor. JuK is very good for those who want a lightweight audio player for KDE.
Homepage

JuK - a simple KDE player which has been around for years

DeaDBeeF
DeaDBeeF is a player coming with a compact interface and features like an equalizer, tray integration, plugins, global hotkeys. Among the notable plugins are the OSD or the AlbumArt plugin.
Homepage

DeaDBeeF offers a compact interface and an equalizer

Except for those, there are the client-server oriented ones, like XMMS2 and MPD (with clients such as Sonata or GMPC - for MPD and the ones listed here - for XMMS2), or text user interface players which can run in a terminal, like CMus (review here), mp3blaster or moc (review here).

Quick Look at 0 A.D. - Free Linux RTS Game 27 Nov 2010 7:58 AM (14 years ago)

0 A.D. is an open-source, 3D real time strategy game with an ancient warfare theme, developed by Wildfire Games, and using the Pyrogenesis engine.

0 A.D. started originally as a mod concept for Age of Empires II, but in 2009 Wildfire Games licensed the code under the GPL and announced it will be open-source, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.





The game is currently under heavy development, and the latest alpha was released on October 19 2010 (Alpha 2 'Bellerophon') and it currently includes the following features:

- 3D graphics using OpenGL
- 1 civilisation units & buildings
- fog of war
- group movement and basic unit formations
- population limits
- repair command
- minimap
- unit following camera mod
- building rotation keys

Considering it's still in alpha, the game doesn't have yet an AI opponent, however multiplayer works (the in-game manual explains how to play over Internet). Regarding single-player, you can still try the game to see the current features and adjust to the gameplay.

The developers didn't fix a date for the final release, but the final game is expected in 2011 or 2012.


Installation in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

To try it in Ubuntu, use the 0 A.D. PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wfg/0ad
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install 0ad

Run the game by typing 0ad in a terminal or press Alt+F2 and type 0ad in the run box that appears.

7 KDE Apps to Get After Installing Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat 27 Nov 2010 6:10 AM (14 years ago)

Yakuake - Quake-like terminal application - full review
This is a great replacement console for the default Konsole which ships with KDE and implicitly with Kubuntu. The great thing about Yakuake is that is uses a Quake-style show/hide function, which can be accessed by default using the F12 keyboard shortcut. Press F12 to show the terminal, do you work, then hide it again when you don't need it anymore. Yakuake supports profiles (which can be configured the same way like a Konsole profile), global shortcuts, allows to change default size and animation speed, it supports skins, transparency, start-up options (like start with window shown or hidden), transparency. Supported are also multiple tabs, which can be switched by pressing Shift+Right/Left Arrow.
Homepage



sudo apt-get install yakuake

BasKet - powerful notes taking application - full review
BasKet Note Pads is one of the applications that I fell in love with immediately after trying it, ever since it was available only for KDE3. For those who didn't try it yet, BasKet is feature-rich and powerful notes-taking application, but not only. It's not your ordinary notes application, it has much more to it. The workspace can organise your notes in one or more columns, or in custom (free) positions, it supports tags, inserting of images, links, launchers to applications or other disk locations, backup or restore BasKet archives, importing to various notes formats (included here are plain text files, KNotes, Sticky Notes, Tomboy), exporting to HTML file. The configuration window allows to enable/disable the system tray, configure global actions, animate changes in baskets, change the appearance of notes. All in all, if simple is not enough for you and a minimalist application like KNotes doesn't suffice, BasKet is definitely the KDE4 application for it, allowing to build complex projects rather than only text notes.
Homepage

sudo apt-get install basket

Kdenlive - powerful video editor
Kdenlive is a very powerful video editor for KDE4 which bundles a big number of video editing features. It comes with a wide range video and audio effects, support for camcorders and cameras, multitrack support, exporting to formats like PAL, NTSC, h264.
Homepage

sudo apt-get install kdenlive


Krusader - full-featured file manager - full review
Ever since the KDE3 days Krusader was usually the first choice when someone would ask for a replacement for Konqueror. Krusader uses by default a twin-panel interface, and ships with all the whistles and bells one would expect from a complete file manager. It includes support for user actions, including creating archives, calculate checksums, split or combine files, mass rename of files, show previews, sort files by various properties, synchronise directories, search, locate, profiles, tabs, shortcuts, sessions, bookmarks. Krusader is also highly configurable.
Homepage

sudo apt-get install krusader

Krusader 2.2.0 Beta

VLC - complete video player
In my opinion there are three major players for KDE: Kaffeine, SMPlayer and VLC, and all three are very good, and this time I chose VLC, one of the most popular movie players out there, and not only on the Linux platform. VLC offers anything you would expect from a media player, support for DVDs and HD formats, ISO DVD images, audio and video settings, bookmarks, subtitles, effects, plugins, playlists, minimal view mode. The preferences window allows to configure and change the way VLC looks and feels, OSD, volume normalization, hotkeys.
Homepage

sudo apt-get install vlc

VLC 1.1.4

digiKam - photo management application
digiKam is the ultimate photo management application for KDE, with support for a wide range of cameras, importing from PicasaWeb, Facebook, SmugMug or a remote computer, and exporting to a variety of services. It organises photos in albums, itoffers image processing tools and effects, and it's highly configurable.
Homepage

sudo apt-get install digikam

DigiKam 1.4.0

Clementine - KDE4 port of Amarok 1.4 - full review
Kubuntu comes with Amarok 2.2.0, but if you're happier with the look and feel of the older Amarok 1.4, Clementine is the perfect replacement. It offers an interface similar to the one of the KDE3 version of Amarok, and currently it integrates a pretty fair amount of features. Clementine comes with a file browser, radio support, Last.fm song submission, sortable playlists, cover manager, equalizer, cross-fading, tray icon integration, OSD, music library. Considering it isn't included in the Ubuntu Maverick repositories, here is a tutorial I've put up a while ago to install it.
Homepage
Tutorial - Install Clementine in Kubuntu 10.10

Clementine 0.3

Goggles Music Manager - Overview and Installation in Ubuntu Maverick 26 Nov 2010 8:27 AM (14 years ago)

Goggles Music Manager (or GMM for short) is a music player written using the FOX toolkit, with support for Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, MP4, ASF and Musepack. FOX is a fast toolkit for creating graphical interfaces (another application which I reviewed in the past which uses FOX is Xfe - review here - a file manager for Linux).



Note: If you don't want to read the review you can skip directly to the installation instructions below, which show how to compile and install GMM in the latest Ubuntu release, Maverick Meerkat.

Among the features Goggles comes with are:
- support for AlbumArt - embedded in file or separate image on disk
- tag editing - including support for multiple file editing
- smart sorting
- playlists support - including importing/exporting from/to XSPF, M3U, PLS, CSV
- drag and drop support - KDE and GNOME
- uses xine engine
- configurable user interface, including changing default icons
- Last.fm and Libre.fm support
- Replay gain support

Goggles uses SQLite database for the music collection, and it seems to be very fast when it comes to scanning a music collection, at least compared to most of the other existing players with support for music collection.

Regarding the interface, it's plain and simple:

It also supports a so-called Mini Player, which takes up very little desktop space:


System tray support is included too, and Goggles can be configured to show/hide the tray icon and close the application or just minimize it to tray when the main window close button is clicked.

Drag and drop from Nautilus will also work, and the user will be presented with an importing window for the new files to be added to the playlist.

Goggles successfully fetched all the local album covers, however showing them is disabled by default, so you have to set it in Preferences and restart the application.

The playlist can be sorted using various criteria, and the columns can be shown/hidden and rearranged in a different order.

The Preferences window allows to configure the Last.fm and Libre.fm accounts, although when switching from one another in the drop down list the account username and password seem to be lost so you will have to enter them again. Here you can also customise the tray icon, control buttons location (top or bottom), appearance and audio driver to use.


Installation in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Follow these steps:

1. Download the source
Get the source code from the official Google Code page, here (direct link here). At the time of writing the version is 0.11.5, for which this tutorial was made.

2. Uncompress the package
Open up the Terminal and make sure the current working directory is the one where you saved the archive (use pwd and cd to view the current directory and to navigate to your downloads directory e.g. cd; cd Downloads) and uncompress the source tarball using the following command:

tar -xjf gogglesmm-0.11.5.tar.bz2

3. Install the needed dependencies
Type the following two commands:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libfox-1.6-dev libsqlite3-dev libghc6-curl-dev libtag1-dev libxine-dev libdbus-1-dev

The first command will install the tools needed to compile the application, while the second fetches and installs the development packages of various libraries needed by GMM.

4. Install GMM
Type the following commands:

./configure
make
sudo make install

This should be all. To run Goggles, just type gogglesmm in a terminal or press Alt+F2 and type gogglesmm in the run box that appears.

Alternate installation prefix
Alternately, you can specify an installation prefix and install as normal user:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr
make
make install

In which case you will need to include /home/USER/usr (or the prefix of your choice and replacing USER with your username) in your $PATH, by editing the file ~/.bashrc and adding a line like this:

export PATH=/home/USER/usr:$PATH

Then issue:

. ~/.bashrc

Clementine 0.5: New and Improved KDE4 Port of Amarok 1.4 26 Sep 2010 8:35 AM (14 years ago)

Clementine is a port to KDE4 of one of the most beloved music players on Linux, Amarok 1.4. The latest release brings several new features, including iPod, MTP and USB mass storage disks support, queue manager, support for Wii Remote to control it, and numerous bug fixes to already existing features.

Clementine brings the same Amarok 1.4 interface to KDE4, looking good and very familiar. Here is how it looks like:

The main features of Clementine are:
- music library
- powerful playlist
- file browser
- Internet services
- iPod, MTP and USB mass storage disks support
- local cover or Internet cover fetching support
- cover manager
- queue manager
- 10-band equalizer
- customizable OSD (on-screen display)
- projectM vizualizations
- support for transcoding audio files
- 5 analyzers
- system tray integration

As I already mentioned, the interface resembles the one of Amarok 1.4, with the same widget styles and menus. To the left there are four tabs through which the user can access the music library, the file browser, the Internet services or the Devices. The main part of the window is occupied by the playlist itself, while the cover is displayed at the bottom left corner, with the option to show small or larger sizes of the cover.


The media library organizes the music by artists, albums and songs, and allows you to drag and drop any of these items to the playlist. The playlist shows by default the title, artist, album, song length and track number, but you can show as many columns as you want and sort the playlist using any of these.

Clementine also brings the well-known cover manager, which looks exactly like the one in Amarok 1.4:


The playlist shuffle mode allows to shuffle by album too, not only by song, and the repeating mode allows to repeat the current song, album or the whole playlist.

Clementine implements the projectM music visualizer, which features tons of visualizations, and which allows to change the framerate and quality (the highest settings would allow 60 fps using 1024x1024 resolution). In addition to these, Clementine offers control buttons in the visualization window too:

Clementine features projectM visualizations

Regarding Internet services, Clementine offers Last.fm integration and song submission, SomaFM and Magnatune support, and custom radio streams.


The Preferences window allows configuration of cross-fading, replay gain, tray icon, global keyboard shortcuts (also, running in GNOME will allow to use GNOME's shortcuts), OSD (which can be configured to show a Clementine OSD or a specific desktop environment OSD), Wii Remote, Last.fm account, Magnatune account and music library directories.

On-Screen Display and Preferences

Conclusion
If you are unsatisfied with the direction Amarok 2.x took and can't live without Amarok 1.4, then you have two choice. Either stay with it, or try Clementine, which has the advantage that it integrates good with the desktop. Although it still lacks several features (lyrics support, Wikipedia integration or smart playlists come to my mind just now), Clementine is almost the perfect replacement for Amarok 1.4 on KDE4. And even though it may not offer everything now, keep an open eye on it because it will surely implement new features in versions to come.

Homepage #1
Homepage #2
Homepage #3

Shotwell - The New Photo Manager in Ubuntu 10.10 26 Sep 2010 6:18 AM (14 years ago)

As many of you already know, Shotwell will replace F-Spot in the next Ubuntu release, Maverick Meerkat, which is scheduled for October 10. Shotwell is a GTK photo management application which organizes your photos in a collection, allows them to be tagged and rated, and more.

This article is about Shotwell 0.7.2, the latest release, which is included now on the beta release of Ubuntu Maverick. Here are its most important features:

- import photos from F-Spot or from a folder
- view detailed meta info about photos
- set ratings and tags
- filter images
- preview all images, view photos as slideshow, view in fullscreen mode
- sort photos by title, date or rating
- edit in external image editor
- publish photos to Facebook, Flickr or Picasa Web Albums


- export photos to JPEG or PNG, with the possibility to rescale them

Exporting photos

Shotwell will also organize photos using the so-called "events", sorting them depending on the date they were taken.

Very Nice Music Player for GNOME: Decibel Audio Player 26 Sep 2010 5:04 AM (14 years ago)

Decibel is a music player built in GTK which takes a different approach when it comes to the way features are implemented, and that is, Decibel uses only plug-ins which can be enabled or disabled on demand. This makes it either a pretty featured player, or a very simple and basic one, depending on which plug-ins you need enabled.

The first thing I liked after opening Decibel was its slogan, which goes "...And Music for All" (Metallica anyone?)

The interface is clean and simple, and according to the official website, it follows the GNOME HIG (human interface guidelines). To the left there is a tree view listing files and folders which can be be added to the playlist. It also includes three view modes, full mode (shows everything), playlist mode (shows only the playlist), and mini mode (shows only control buttons, cover - if enabled, artist, title and album).


Although Decibel may seem simple at first, this is because all the plug-ins (except the File Explorer) are disabled by default. You can turn Decibel into a pretty powerful player by turning these on. Here is a list of the plug-ins (which can be accessed via the Edit->Preferences menu item) bundled with Decibel:

- Audio CD: plays audio discs
- AudioScrobbler: submit music you listen to Last.fm
- Covers: show album covers
- Desktop Notification: it is an OSD (on-screen display) to show when the track changes

Desktop Notification

- Equalizer: 10-band equalizer (no presets at the moment)
- File Explorer - browse through files and folders and add them to the playlist
- Instant Messenger Status: allows to set what you're listening to in your status message, with a configurable message (e.g. ♫ {artist} - {album} ♫); I tested it with Pidgin and it works, for Empathy it didn't seem to work though
- Library: organizes music by tags
- ReplayGain: normalize volume
- Status File: generates a text file with the current status
- Status Icon: system tray integration (not configurable)
- Twitter: update the status of your Twitter account

Plug-ins and the equalizer

To install Decibel in Ubuntu, type sudo apt-get install decibel-audio-player in a terminal.


Decibel is very nice, and its strong point is definitely its modularity, allowing you to turn it from a basic player into a more complex one.

Krita - The KDE Answer to GIMP 26 Sep 2010 3:21 AM (14 years ago)

I was recently browsing through various Linux news sites and bumped into this article, a taste of a comic done in Krita, the KDE painting and image editor application, which is part of the KOffice suite. Now I rarely use image editors, and I'm totally untalented at it, but when I do, I use GIMP for basic cropping, coloring or other simple stuff. Anyway, I remembered I only tried Krita once, in KDE 3, and I was a little dissatisfied with it (can't remember exactly why), so at the time I decided to stay with GIMP. This is why this article brought Krita again in my attention, so I decided to give it a spin and see how it looks like.



In this overview I'm going to talk about Krita 2.2.2, which comes included in the Ubuntu 10.10 Beta repositories. Being a full-fledged image editor, Krita comes with many tools and features needed by an image manipulation program, and to list a few.
- support for various file formats, including PNG, JPEG, BMP, PDF or TIFF
- selection and painting tools which include various shapes like line, rectangle, ellipse, in addition to freehand paint
- many brush engines
- filters: raindrops, blur, sharpen, mosaic, to list a few

In addition to these, Krita allows you to change brightness/contrast, rescale, crop and rotate images, export the result to various image formats or PDF, take advantage of the split-window option, or work with layers.


When starting Krita for the first time, it will ask you to choose the size and color model for the default template (just like probably 90% of the KDE applications, I had to resize the window and widgets inside it in order to get a good screenshot, but this is off topic).

I mentioned some of the good parts of Krita. Now, I don't know if this is only me, but when applying an effect I got a preview on the image, but after closing the window the image wasn't modified. I tried the Apply and Close button too, but same result. After this, Krita crashed. This happened without exception many times.

Final thoughts: Krita is nice, but it currently crashes a lot. It's frustrating to hit apply to an effect and then watch the program crash, and I think this needs a lot of working, because at the time being, it's in an almost unusable state. Other than that, Krita is a decent replacement to GIMP (or it will be, as soon as they get the crashes fixed), especially if you want an application to integrate well with your KDE desktop.

Collection of 18 Popular APT & DPKG Tips for Debian and Ubuntu 20 Sep 2010 11:49 AM (14 years ago)

This is a guide containing the most popular and useful ways of using the APT and DPKG commands, and it applies to both Ubuntu and Debian (and their derivatives). I mentioned where super user privileges are required, the ones without a mention can be executed as normal user. If you're using Ubuntu, precede a command with sudo in order to gain root privileges (and enter your user password); on Debian, type su, enter the root password, and then type in the commands as shown below.

dpkg -L package_name
This command will show what files package_name installed on your computer. Notice that this works only for already installed packages. Example:

embryo@debian:~$ dpkg -L vorbis-tools
/.
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/ogg123

apt-get build-dep package_name
(needs root privileges)
This is a very useful command, which will install all the development libraries needed by an application. So if you need to compile a newer version of a program than the one included in the repositories, use this command to fetch the dependencies. Notice that the libraries installed will be for the current version coming with the repositories, so you may need to install additional libraries if needed. However, this usually works for most of the applications. Example:

apt-get build-dep wesnoth

This will fetch all the development packages needed for Wesnoth. Keep in mind that your sources repositories must be enabled (they are enabled by default in Ubuntu).

apt-get clean (and apt-get autoclean)
(needs root privileges)
This command will remove the archives installed on your system. Whenever you install a package, it is downloaded and the DEB package is kept inside the /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory. This command removes those packages, freeing up space.

apt-get clean
apt-get autoclean

Regarding apt-get autoclean: this command will remove only the archives which are no longer available in the repositories, and will keep the ones which are currently available. Helpful if you want to get rid of old archives which have been updated, but still want to keep the upgraded ones just in case. To see how much space the archive occupy, use du -h (the -h argument stands for human readable, so it will show sizes in human readable format):

du -h /var/cache/apt/archives/

apt-cache show package_name
Will show information about any package in the repository. You only have to type in the name of it, not the entire name and version. Example:

embryo@debian:~$ apt-cache show vorbis-tools
Package: vorbis-tools
Priority: optional
Section: sound
Installed-Size: 580
...

apt-cache search pattern
Will search and list all the packages which contain pattern in their name or in their description. You can pipe this with grep for more relevant results:

embryo@debian:~$ apt-cache search gnome terminal|grep terminal
gmfsk - MFSK, RTTY and other digital mode terminal for HF/amateur radio
gnome-terminal-data - Data files for the GNOME terminal emulator
gnome-terminal - The GNOME 2 terminal emulator application

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
(needs root privileges)
This is a one-liner to update your packages list and upgrade your system. Since it requires root privileges, if your distribution is Ubuntu use sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. Notice that the second command (after the double ampersand) is executed only if the first one was successful, so if fetching any of the lists fails, the second command will not be executed. If you're running a testing or beta release, use instead the following:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

This will fetch updates even if they depend on newer packages.

dpkg --get-selections
This command will list all the packages installed on a system using the package manager. Example:

embryo@debian:~$ dpkg --get-selections
acpi-support-base install
acpid install
adduser install
akregator install
...

dpkg -S filename
Will list the packages which install filename. Example:

embryo@debian:~$ dpkg -S oggenc
vorbis-tools: /usr/share/man/man1/oggenc.1.gz
vorbis-tools: /usr/bin/oggenc
embryo@debian:~$

apt-get autoremove
(needs root privileges)
This command will remove unnecessary packages (e.g. orphaned packages), which are no longer needed by any of the packages installed in the system. This happens often after you uninstall a certain application, and its dependencies still remain installed on the system. Use this command to get rid of them.

apt-cache dump
This command will list every package in the cache.

apt-cache depends package_name
A very useful command which lists every dependency a package has, including recommended packages.

embryo@debian:~$ apt-cache depends vorbis-tools
vorbis-tools
Depends: libao2
Depends: libc6
Depends: libcurl3-gnutls
...

apt-cache rdepends package_name
Will show dependencies in reversed order, that is, it will list all the packages which depend on the specified package.

apt-cache rdepends mplayer

apt-cache policy package_name
This will list the repository in which a package is located. In Ubuntu, there are four such repositories: main, restricted, universe and multiverse. Debian has main, contrib and non-free. There is a certain policy for each package, and depending on that, the package is included in one of the specified repositories.

apt-cache policy amarok
apt-cache policy sun-java6-jre

apt-cache showsrc package_name
Will show information about a package source.

apt-get -f install
(needs root privileges)
Will try to fix broken dependencies. This usually comes in handy if you try to manually install a DEB package without installing first its dependencies. Run apt-get -f install to fix the missing dependencies and try to install the package again.

apt-cdrom add
(needs root privileges)
Will add a CD ROM to your sources, so you can install packages from it. This command is mostly useful if you have some ISO images, which you don't want to burn to a CD. In order to scan the ISO images, use:

apt-cdrom -d=/cdrom add

This will mount the ISO image inside the /cdrom directory, and then add its contents to the sources.list. Notice that the /cdrom directory has to be empty. You can use any empty directory for this:

apt-cdrom -d=/home/USER/mydir

dpkg -c local_file.deb
The -c argument tells dpkg to list the contents of a DEB package. Example:

embryo@debian:~$ dpkg -c google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
...
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2010-07-30 23:54 ./usr/share/man/man1/
-rwxr-xr-x root/root 3098 2010-07-30 23:54 ./usr/share/man/man1/google-chrome.1
lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2010-07-30 23:54 ./usr/bin/google-chrome -> /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome

dpkg -f local_file.deb
This shows the control file for a binary package. A control file is a file which provides information to the package manager about dependencies, maintainer, homepage, description, and more.

embryo@debian:~$ dpkg -f google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
Package: google-chrome-stable
Version: 5.0.375.126-r53802
...

These are the most popular uses of APT and DPKG. Have some more? Please, share them!

Yet Another Music Player for Linux: Foobnix 20 Sep 2010 10:10 AM (14 years ago)

When it comes to music players, Linux evolved heavily during the last three or four years, and new players are announced on a regular basis. I remember that in 2006, when I was starting up with Linux, there were only a few applications to choose from, like Amarok, Rhythmbox, Listen or XMMS, and a few more less popular and not so full-featured. But times have changed and now the Linux platform benefits from players of all kinds: there are replacements for XMMS for both GNOME and KDE (Audacious and Qmmp), collection-oriented players like Amarok, Banshee, Exaile or Rhythmbox. There are less-known players like Quod Libet, Guayadeque or Jajuk, or the client-server oriented ones like MPD. And the ones I just listed are only the ones which came to my mind at the moment. Some would say having so many players for a single task is a bad thing, but I say it's not. Having enough options to choose from is a great advantage. If you don't like one style, try the next player, if you don't like its approach either, try the next one, and so on.

Considering that over time I reviewed probably over 80% of the players available out there, it's time to get in touch with a new one, namely, Foobnix.

Foobnix is a pretty basic player written in GTK which takes a somewhat different approach organizing the music collection. That is, it organizes the music found in the selected directories in a tree structure. Take a look at the screenshot below:


The screenshot shows the usual Foobnix interface, having the playlist on the right side and the music organized in a tree-like structure to the left. Another thing to notice is the simple and clean organization of the widgets, especially how the menu bar and the control buttons are organized on a single level, at the top of the player window.


Here are some of the features which come with Foobnix:
- tree-like music list
- online music search panel
- lyrics fetching
- album cover fetching
- info panel
- Last.fm song submission
- tray integration, clicking the tray icon shows the user control buttons, including previous and next track
- global hotkeys support
- online radios support

Foobnix looks pretty good. I think the widget spacing needs a little more attention though, because having the lyrics or info panel enabled will put the top of them over the title of the currently playing song, but other than that, it's a very clean and pretty intuitive interface. Also, the option to change the disc cover size in the Preferences window doesn't seem to work.

Regarding features, it currently can't compare with players which offer all the bells and whistles, but it looks promising if development continues.

The only big problem I encountered with Foobnix was regarding several application freezes when performing certain actions, like using the online music search function. Right-clicking the tray icon will show the control buttons, but to make it go away you have to press the OK button, which is not quite a feature. Let's hope these coding problems will be soon solved.

All in all, it's not necessarily a 'must-try' application, and it has a fair share of bugs, but it can fit enough users who will like how the music is organized, or the clean, plain interface.

What Makes Debian One of the Most Popular Distros Out There: 5 Good Reasons 18 Sep 2010 2:07 PM (14 years ago)

Debian is one of the oldest and most popular distributions among the Linux users. There are probably hundreds of distributions which are based on Debian, or others which are based on distributions which in turn are based on Debian. Although I'm not a Debian developer, I use it for over two years or so, and slowly got to love this OS.

This is not a 'Debian is better than X' article, it's just about Debian alone. So, let's proceed and see what makes Debian so popular and loved among the Linux users.

Stability. I know as a Debian or Ubuntu (or why not, some other distribution) user you probably heard this a million times. But yes, stability. Debian is renowned for the fact that its 'stable' version is always released only if all known critical bugs have been fixed and it's been stripped from most of the ones with a lower priority. When you install Debian stable you have the certitude that it will not give you a headache, that it is secure and that all the tools and daemons will work the right way. There is a reason for which Debian is used by so many web hosting companies as their preferred Linux distribution for their servers.

Huge community. From a user's point of view, especially a tech-oriented one, having enough persons from which at least one will know the answer is a blessing. There are the Debian mailing lists, the IRC channels (both the official OFTC one and the Freenode one), the forums. And why not say it, UbuntuForums.org does a great job too in helping Debian. How's that?, you may ask. Well, Ubuntu is so popular and used by so many people that on the online forums you can get a straight, good answer to a question in minutes. And since Ubuntu is based on Debian, over 90% of the questions which apply for Ubuntu will apply for Debian too.

Good documentation. I'm talking here books and books of official online documentation. We have the Debian Wiki, we have powerful manuals written by professionals, and to list some, here are the New Maintainers' Guide, the Debian Policy Manual or the Debian Packing Manual.To say nothing about all the third-party help sites, news sites, blogs and articles referring to Debian. This makes Debian a very rich-documented distribution, and knowing help is out there if you do a little reading is a key aspect for any user.

Debian Free Software Guidelines. The social contract is a major aspect which affected how Debian developed and continues to be developed. Debian is one of the distributions which follow a very specific code from which there is no straying. Debian will always be 100% free, it will be open, it will fulfill the community needs and it will respect the free software standards.

Debian fits perfectly both as desktop or as web server. With high security and stability standards, Debian makes the perfect fit for a web server. But Debian comes with over 17,000 from which a huge amount is made by GUI applications, desktop environments and many other user-friendly tools.

And the list goes on. The true power of Debian lies not only in the few points I listed here, but in its users and mentality. Software done this way will always be there, because it relies on an entire community to survive, and as long as the community is there, then so is Debian. A proof to this is that Debian has been around almost since the beginning of Linux, in 1993, when Ian Murdock, founder of Debian, announced the availability of Debian on August 16, and together with Slackware or Red Hat, it is at the top of the pyramid regarding tradition in the Linux world.

How-To: Install Dillo Web Browser in Ubuntu Maverick Beta 18 Sep 2010 1:23 PM (14 years ago)

Dillo is a simplistic, minimal web browser built using the FLTK2 (Fast Light Toolkit) library, designed especially for a minimal load on resources. It is used successfully by various distributions out there that aim to stay small and fast (the last time I checked it was included in Damn Small Linux for example).

I decided to make a review of Dillo (in the past I reviewed version 2.0 here) but realized that currently Dillo is not included in the Ubuntu Maverick repositories. So this is why I set out to make first a short how-to on how to install it in Maverick. Considering you will also need to compile and install FLTK2 in order to compile Dillo (because the repositories include FLTK 1.1, but not FLTK 2.0), we will use a DEB package to install it. Just follow the steps below.

Download the DEB package from the Dillo PPA archive (direct link) and save it somewhere on your hard disk. Now open a terminal, make sure the currently working directory is the one where you saved it (use the pwd command to print the working directory) and type:

sudo dpkg -i dillo_2.2-0+dillo1~karmic1_i386.deb

That's it! To start Dillo, press Alt+F2 and type dillo in the run box that appears.


Note: This tutorial probably applies for older Ubuntu releases too.

KDocker: Dock Any Application in the System Tray in KDE, GNOME & Xfce 18 Sep 2010 11:21 AM (14 years ago)

I bet at one point or another you felt you missed the system tray integration feature in some application, be it xterm, an audio player, a file manager or any other program. Well, KDocker is just the thing which comes to help: a simple, yet practical docking application built for KDE4 (older KDE3 version can be found here), but not only. Let me tell you how to use this program in a productive and useful manner.

KDocker is a docking application for KDE4 which allows you to dock any application in the system tray. The great thing about KDocker is that it works not only in KDE, but also in GNOME, Xfce and other window managers which are compliant with the NET WM standard.

The project is hosted on Launchpad, being actively developed, with the latest version (4.4) released earlier this year, on July 17. To install it in Ubuntu, type in a terminal sudo apt-get install kdocker, then launch it by pressing Alt+F2 and typing kdocker in the run dialogue window that appears.

Here's how to use: first, start it, then select the window which you want to dock. Below is a screenshot of xterm docked in the system tray using KDocker:

Here are several options KDocker provides besides only docking applications:
- it allows to skip the taskbar or the pager (so the application is not shown on the taskbar/pager)
- make the window sticky
- iconify when minimized/obscured or focus is lost or on close
- show a balloon when the window title changes

KDocker options

Now, one of the real uses KDocker provides is the ability to run it as a command, e.g. kdocker application_name and eventually create a desktop shortcut to this command, or make it start at the login. For example, creating a desktop shortcut in KDE to automatically start Konsole and put it in the system tray can be done like this:

First, create a file on the desktop (well, on the Desktop Folder widget actually) called anything.desktop (or whatever name you like, but with the .desktop extension). Put the following content in it:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=kdocker konsole
Icon=konsole
Name=Konsole (Docked)
Type=Application
Comment=Console

Create a .desktop launcher to anything you want to dock

And save the file. Now, you can click that desktop shortcut to launch Konsole in the system tray.


Let's say you want to launch a terminal-based application inside Konsole, which should be docked in the system tray. The example that follows is for Midnight Commander, the powerful file manager with a text user interface:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=kdocker konsole -e mc
Icon=konsole
Name=Konsole (Docked)
Type=Application
Comment=Console

The -e argument tells Konsole to execute the command mc after starting.

Launching Midnight Commander in Konsole and docking it in the system tray

Have some more uses for KDocker? Please share in the comments below.

Banshee 1.7.5 Review in Ubuntu Maverick Beta 18 Sep 2010 10:12 AM (14 years ago)

Being actively developed, feature-rich, providing access to several useful Internet services and with a pretty decent media library, Banshee has a pretty fair share of users, and it is definitely a powerful music player not to be ignored.


Although Banshee includes support for both audio and video files, and comes with a video library too, its well-known and popular for its music playing capabilities rather than video playback.

The version I'm going to talk about is 1.7.5 (for some reason I couldn't get 1.7.6 to compile in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta - if you can help, I'd be grateful), released on September 1, 2010, which ships in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta.

Banshee improved a lot since the last time I reviewed it, which was over an year ago, back when the version was 1.6 beta. For those who never tried it, here are the main features:

- music library
- support for podcasts
- Internet radio support
- smart playlists
- integrated access to Amazon MP3 store
- Last.fm song submission and Last.fm radio (since the Last.fm radio service became paid a while ago, you will need to have a subscriber account for the radio to work)
- fast access to Miro guide, a website which allows to search and download videos
- cover fetching from the Internet
- system tray support, with a nice mouse-over info report and the ability to control Banshee by right-clicking the tray icon (this includes rating the currently playing song, play next or previous, pause, repeat or shuffle)
- built using GTK2, so it blends well into the GNOME browser


Just a mention about the Amazon MP3 store: it looks like by default either the geo IP detection is not working properly or Germany is selected. To change this, go to Edit->Preferences, click the Source Specific tab in the window that appears, select the Amazon MP3 Store entry in the Source list box, and then select the desired country:


Banshee allows the user to configure several aspects, like gapless playback (to get rid of the short gap on track change), collection organization, services, and enable/disable various extensions. Which are actually quite impressing: Banshee includes Wikipedia extension, Audio CD extension, Internet radio, Podcasts, iPod support, Last.fm, Mini Mode and Notification, these to only list a few. The Mini Mode is quite a delight actually, for those who need just a small window, so it doesn't take up to the whole desktop space:


Smart playlists, the 5-star rating system and the tag editor are another pluses for this great player.

Again, it seems to me that fetching local covers doesn't work properly (or maybe it is not a feature at all?) I tried to open a video file, play it, pause it after a while and then hit the play button ago. At this point instead of continuing the video Banshee started to play the song that was playing before opening the video. In my sole opinion (and this is not only Banshee-specific), having a single button for play/pause is not the best idea. I also bumped into a balloon message reading "Please move your music to /home/embryo/Music" and changing the music directory in the preferences didn't make it go away. I think this is a little inappropriate, since I like my music where it is (and that is not /home/embryo/Music). This has also been reported as a bug on for Maverick here.

Other than that: I found Banshee's usability far greater than some other audio players. Believe me or not, over 50% of the music players for Linux that I tested didn't have a keyboard shortcut to focus the track search field. Banshee uses Alt+S for this.



To conclude, Banshee's state is currently as it has always been in the past two years or so: a very good player, pretty stable now, with a lot of features, which can be a the perfect replacement for other GNOME collection-oriented players, like Rhythmbox.

Guide to Using Finch - Terminal-Based Chat Client 18 Sep 2010 7:13 AM (14 years ago)

Finch is a TUI (text user interface) IM client for Linux which uses libpurple, the same library on which the GNOME IM client Pidgin is based on. Usually, if you have Pidgin installed, you should have Finch too, unless Pidgin was compiled with the text interface option disabled. In addition to this, Finch supports every protocol that Pidgin supports, and even though it is a terminal-based application, it offers enough configuration options, and more can be done using the .gntrc configuration file, which is discussed later in this guide. If not, installing the latest Finch release, even from source, should be easy.

To install it in Ubuntu, open a terminal and type sudo apt-get install finch or use the Ubuntu Software Centre to search for it and install it. On Debian, you can install the older version from the repositories, or use this guide to compile and install the latest version. Yahoo! for example changed its protocol, so the version which comes included in Debian Lenny is not able to connect to it.

A little about installing as a normal user, using a different prefix. I have Pidgin (and Finch for that matter) 2.7.3 installed in Debian Lenny under the /home/embryo/usr prefix, so my binaries are located in /home/embryo/usr/bin/ and the manual pages in /home/embryo/usr/share/man/man1/finch.1/ and /home/embryo/usr/share/man/pidgin.1/ respectively. So in order to launch them I need to include the first path into my $PATH variable. To do so, edit your ~/.bashrc file using a text editor, and add this line at the end:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/USER/usr/bin

Replace USER with your username (and the full path if your prefix was different). Now, I don't know if there is another workaround for this, but i noticed that man finch or man pidgin do not work after installing in a different path than the standard ones. The manual pages for them actually exist, but in the directory /home/embryo/usr/share/man/man1/. So, to access them, use these commands:

man -l /home/USER/usr/share/man/man1/finch.1
man -l /home/USER/usr/share/man/man1pidgin.1

The -l argument tells man to open a manual page (and format it) for a custom file provided by the user.

Now that Finch is properly installed, let's get to work. First, type finch in a console to fire it up:

Navigation
Finch is built using the ncurses toolkit, which is a library designed especially to built text user interfaces. To navigate in a Finch window, use Tab to focus the next widget (option, tickbox, button), Shift+Tab to focus the previous one, Space in order to tick/untick an option, and Enter to 'click' a button. You will also need to press Esc to exit from menus such as the Actions menu.

The first time it starts, Finch automatically opens the accounts window, so you can now select the Add button and press Enter. In the window that appears - New Account - use the arrows to select the desired protocol, and then use Tab to navigate to the next field, fill it in with your data, and so on:

Next, save your newly created account. Now, to close the Accounts window, press Alt+C. You should be now able to see your contact lists since Finch will try to automatically connect to the protocol you specified.



Now, before moving on to configure Finch, first let me list the most important keyboard shortcuts which are useful to navigate, customize and use this application.

Moving around

Alt+Q - just so you know this quits Finch, getting back to console

Alt+A - opens the Actions menu, which contains everything you need to configure Finch: accounts, buddy lists, file transfers, plugins, sounds, preferences and statuses; use the Esc key to close this menu when you're done

Alt+C - closes the currently opened window

Alt+N - switch to the next window; you will need this to switch between chats, and other openend windows

Alt+P - switch to the previous window

Moving and resizing windows
There are two important shortcuts here, which will help you to:

1. Move windows in Finch
For this, use the Alt+M keyboard shortcut. This will highlight the currently selected window so you will be able to use the arrow keys in order to move it anywhere inside the terminal; use Esc to deselect it when you're done.

2. Resize windows in Finch
Press Alt+R in order to highlight the currently selected window, then use the arrow keys to resize it; press Esc to deselect it when you're done.

Configuring Finch
To configure Finch, press Alt+A, which will open the Actions menu. Here you can edit accounts, enable/disable plugins or configure general Finch preferences. For now we will focus on the the Preferences entry:


As you can see, you can configure the:
- Buddy List - to turn on/off showing idle times or offline buddies
- Conversations - to show timestamps or notify buddies when you are typing them a new message
- Logging - the log format, which can be plain text or HTML (formatted), also which types of events to log
- Idle - which will report idle time based only on the last time you typed something in Finch (anywhere in Finch) or since the last message you send; also the number of minutes before becoming idle

Configure this to your liking. A little more about configuration options: they are kept in the same directory for both Finch and Pidgin, and changes done to one of them affect the other. The configuration files and the logs can be found inside the ~/.purple/ directory, where ~ is your home directory. Notice that .purple is a hidden directory, so make sure that your file manager will list those (or use ls -a in console to view them).

Plugins
Finch comes bundled with several useful plugins, like Buddy Notes, TinyURL or the Log Reader:


To open the above window, press Alt+A and go to the the Plugins entry. Configure those as you wish.

The ~/.gntrc file
This file allows you to configure Finch in more detail, including colors for its interface, re-binding keys, change keys for various Finch actions, and even enable mouse support.

Here's how to enable mouse support. Open up a text editor and edit (or create if it doesn't already exist - and it probably won't) the ~/.gntrc file:

nano ~/.gntrc # or gedit ~/.gntrc

Next, add the following lines in this file, then save it:

[general]
mouse = 1

This is all. Notice that if the file is already created, you should find the section [general] and set the mouse option to 1 (true). Although the manual page says the mouse support is still experimental, I found no issues with it. However, manipulating Finch actually seems harder with a mouse after using it exclusively from the keyboard.

Why use Finch at all?
Well, don't if you want avatars and all the beauty a graphical client offers! Use Pidgin, Empathy, Kopete or something else! But if you need for some reason (speed, lack of memory etc) a terminal-based application for instant messaging, then give Finch a try.

This should be all for today. I hope you'll enjoy Finch as much as I do!

Further reading
Don't forget man finch - it has all the info you need (and more about all the ~/.gntrc file, which couldn't be covered in this guide). The official homepage and guide:
Using Finch
Finch homepage

Two Free Linux Civilization-Like Games: Freeciv and FreeCol 18 Sep 2010 4:23 AM (14 years ago)

While most of the proprietary games get all the attention on Windows, on Linux it's the other way around. Of course, this is because we're stuck with only few choices for mainly any type of game, from arcade to shooters or strategies. But there are good, if not great, alternatives in Linux.

Today I will overview two Linux games which are a very good alternative to the famous Civilization series from Windows, Freeciv and FreeCol. They are both open-source, free, and usually come included with every distribution.

Freeciv
Freeciv is based on the client/server model, so the server is started automatically when you start a new game. It provides two different client interfaces: GTK2 and SDL (see below on how to install and launch).

To install in Ubuntu, type in a terminal either one of the following commands:

sudo apt-get install freeciv-client-gtk2 # (for the GTK client) sudo apt-get install freeciv-client-sdl # (for the SDL client)

To launch the game, press Alt+F2 and type freeciv in the run dialogue that appears or go to Applications->Games->Freeciv. If you installed both packages (even though there is no need to do it), to launch it either type freeciv-gtk2 or freeciv-sdl.



The SDL client allows you to run the game in window mode and fullscreen and to change the resolution.



Freeciv Homepage
Freeciv FAQ
Freeciv Forum

FreeCol
FreeCol is written in Java, so it has a slower interface, but other than that, it looks and behaves great. Freecol resembles the Colonization game, under the slogan 'the Colonization of America' but having better graphics and being actively developed. FreeCol runs in fullscreen but it doesn't steal control from the window manager, so it allows you to use Alt+Tab in order to access your other opened applications.


Installation in Ubuntu. Just type sudo apt-get install freecol in a terminal. The version included in the Maverick Beta repositories is 0.9.2.

FreeCol homepage
FreeCol forum

A Different Way to Manage Your Linux Desktop: GNOME Shell Looks Promising 17 Sep 2010 3:44 PM (14 years ago)

GNOME Shell is a window manager designed specifically for the upcoming GNOME 3 desktop, with the intention of offering a rather different way of interacting with the desktop, providing a workspace which hardly resembles the classic desktops.

Currently under heavy development, GNOME Shell is included in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta and it currently looks like this:

The main feature that jumps into attention is the way of organizing and listing opened windows, just like the fast web access from Opera, for example. GNOME Shell also offers virtual desktops.

As you can see, GNOME Shell offers the user easy access to applications, places and devices, a way of searching applications or documents and recently accessed items.

You can switch between the Activities mode (where you can visualize all your opened applications and access more) and the normal way of working by clicking on the top-left Activities button, or just pointing your mouse cursor in the top-left corner.

Accessing your applications

If you want to quit GNOME Shell and return back to your usual GNOME desktop, open a terminal and type the following two commands:

compiz --replace &
gnome-panel restart &

If you don't have desktop effects enabled, use metacity --replace& instead of compiz --replace&.

To install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta, type in a terminal sudo apt-get install gnome-shell, and then to start it type gnome-shell --replace in order to replace your current window manager.


GNOME Shell definitely looks good and from a usability point of view, it really has a lot of potential, especially if we keep in mind that it's not finished yet, so more features will come.

Miro Review - Great Internet HD Video Player 16 Sep 2010 10:32 AM (14 years ago)

Miro is a free, open-source video player with ports for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, designed especially for watching HD videos. Miro bundles over 6000 Internet TV shows and video podcasts, and allows you to download each of them to your computer, so you can watch them without the need of an Internet connection.

In this review I will talk about the latest version of Miro available to date, 3.0.3, as it comes with the Ubuntu 10.10 Beta repositories.

Among the video formats supported by Miro are AVI, WMV, MOV, Ogg Theora, MKV or MPEG. Miro also includes support for subtitles. But Miro was not created to be the usual movie player, it was created having HD Internet TV in mind.

The first time you fire up Miro, a wizard will appear asking you if you want to enable opening Miro at start-up and if you want to let him scan local folders for video content. Here's how the main window of Miro looks like:


As you can see, it includes a mini web browser which points at https://www.miroguide.com/, a place from which you can start searching for videos on the web, view lists of HD video shows or watch the most popular ones.

Miro also includes integrated video search, and allows you to download and view the selected videos:


Another feature of Miro is the media library, where you can organize video and audio files and manage your downloads. In addition to these, Miro offers a BitTorrent client with search capabilities and several audio and video feeds, like the default Global Pulse or Wildlife Highlights, which contains awesome wildlife videos in HD format. You can also create playlists of your content in Miro.

Regarding preferences, Miro allows you to configure thing such:
- system tray integration
- control how feeds are handled
- configure the BitTorrent client
- watch certain directories for changes and show them in the media library


As a final conclusion, Miro is just great firstly because of the awesome HD movie feeds it provides. However, as a movie player it does not offer the more advanced options dedicated movie players provide, like video and audio effects, support for DVDs, etc. But this is not the case, since Miro's goal is not to do these things, but to offer a great way of watching online videos.

Tutorial: Install Clementine Music Player in Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Beta 16 Sep 2010 8:55 AM (14 years ago)

Clementine is a KDE4 port of the beloved music player Amarok 1.4. Although Clementine still needs work done in order to reach Amarok's functionality - like support for scripts, or for example I couldn't get it to add a whole music directory to the playlist - is there a way to do it? - it comes with pretty decent features up to now:

- equalizer
- Last.fm song submission, love/ban buttons
- music library
- file browser
- radio support
- cover manager


Installing Clementine in Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Beta
We will use the packages in the Clementine PPA in order to install it on Maverick. Fire up a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:riccetn/clementine

This command will add the Clementine PPA repository inside your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory.


Notice that the current version in the PPA is 0.3. If you already have an older version of Clementine installed on your system, it is best to remove it first:

sudo apt-get remove --purge clementine

Now update the packages list:

sudo apt-get update

And finally, install Clementine by typing:

sudo apt-get install clementine

And you're done! To start it up, press Alt+F2 and type clementine followed by Enter.

Clementine Homepage
Clementine at Google Code
Clementine PPA at Launchpad.net

Pretty Damn Good Audio Player: Guayadeque 16 Sep 2010 7:59 AM (14 years ago)

Yesterday I put up an article about peculiar application names in Linux, and Guayadeque was on that list. But how about seeing what this application has to offer as a music player, besides a pretty funny spelling.

Guayadeque is built using the wxWidgets toolkit, a popular C++ library designed for writing graphical applications, and is included in the Ubuntu Maverick repositories. Let me list some of the major features Guayadeque offers:

- 10-band equalizer, including presets
- sortable playlists with column attributes which can be added or removed
- music library, which show artists, albums with covers and labels
- static and dynamic playlists
- support for online radios
- Last.fm integration and song submission
- lyrics support
- podcast support
- album browser with covers and various album information
- file browser
- crossfade effect
- fullscreen mode

Last.fm integration

Guayadeque comes with an interface mainly divided in two parts: the left one contains the now playing widget, and the right side, taking most of the space, which is divided in tabs, each tab containing one of the following items: library, radio, Last.fm, lyrics, playlists, podcasts, browser, files. This tab approach makes the interface look pretty clean and uncluttered.

Album browser

Guayadeque also allows you to change the size of its interface widgets and then save the layout as a local file, so you can create several such files and load them depending on your current preference.

Scanning the music collection took around three minutes and a half for a collection of 6000+ FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files on my Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz, using Guayadeque 0.2.7 in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta. Not very slow, nor fast, just around the middle.

Lyrics tab

Although there is a huge number of audio players for Linux to choose from, only a few of them are full-featured, embedding all their features in a fashion that will please the audiophile who wants to have access to all the information regarding his music collection, and also pleasing the user who only wants to get music out of his PC as fast as possible and without any hassle. Guayadeque may be just the right player for this, being a very nice surprise, even though not many people heard about it.