FILES DOWNLOAD: elementary os

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Thursday, October 22, 2015

Try Vocal, A Podcast Manager Designed For elementary OS

Vocal is a podcast manager designed to integrate tightly with the elementary OS desktop, which supports both audio and video podcasts, with built-in video playback.

The application doesn't have every feature you can think of and instead it focuses on what it's supposed to do: play podcasts while taking care of everything automatically, without going through N tabs of settings.

For instance, Vocal can stream episodes without having to download them locally however, if you want to save some episodes for offline listening, Vocal can do that too - it can even automatically check for and download new episodes in the background.

Another useful feature is its library management: Vocal can automatically delete old downloads so you don't have to worry about doing this yourself.

Also, since the app was designed for elementary OS, it integrates perfectly with the Pantheon desktop: it comes with native notifications, launcher count and progress bar support, media keys support and Sound Menu integration.

Other Vocal features include:

you can assign custom skip intervals for the skip forward and backwards buttons, useful if for instance you've missed something or to jump past an advertisement;
episode position saving, you can can easily start an episode from where you left off;
supports library import/export (can import from iTunes, gPodder, etc.).

For those are new to podcasts, the Vocal website offers "starter pack" which contains a selection of great podcasts which you can add either individually or as a complete .opml pack which you can import into Vocal. Note that in my test, the imported podcasts didn't show up in Vocal until I restarted the application.

While the app reached version 1.0 recently, there are a couple of missing features: Vocal lacks a search/filter and it can't download feeds which require authentication, but hopefully they'll be added in a future release.

It's important to note that while Vocal was designed for elementary OS, it should work on any desktop environment that supports header bars (also known as client side decorations) and has GTK 3.14 or newer. As far as *buntu is concerned, Vocal should work on the following:

Ubuntu GNOME / Xubuntu 15.04;
Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 with GNOME 3 updated to version 3.14 via PPA.
Ubuntu 15.04 (with Unity) - partially, because the app won't have any shadows and to avoid various parts of the app being transparent (bug caused by overlay-scrollbar), you'll need to launch the app like this: "LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 vocal".

The app should also work on elementary OS Freya (obviously), Fedora 21 or 22, etc.

Download Vocal

Download Vocal (packages available for Fedora and Ubuntu-based distros)

Important: you'll also need to download the Granite framework packages (available on the Vocal downloads page) if you're not using elementary OS or Ubuntu 15.04, or else you won't be able to install the app.

If you encounter bugs, report them @ Launchpad.

Tune Up elementary OS 0.3 Freya With `elementary Tweaks`

elementary Tweaks is a tool especially created for elementary OS, which allows adjusting various "hidden" settings, such as changing the themes and fonts, accessing various Plank or Files settings and much more.

From elementary Tweaks, users can access the following settings:

Appearance: change the window, GTK, icon and cursor themes, change the window buttons layout;
change fonts;
disable animations or change various animations duration;
change focused/unfocused window shadows;
Plank: change the dock's screen position, alignment, theme, hide delay and hide mode, icon size, enable Plank for the current workspace only, lock items and more;
Files: disable single click, change date format and sidebar icon size;
Slingshot: change the number of rows and columns;
add/remove Cerbere watched processes (Cerbere monitors a predefined list of processes and relaunches them if they end);
Terminal: change opacity and color scheme;
more.

Since elementary Tweaks is available as a Switchboard plug (System Settings), it doesn't show up in the menu and instead, you'll find it in System Settings > Tweaks:

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with elementary Tweaks but with the elementary OS 0.3 Freya release, the distro will get many new users which will look for ways to change the themes, move the dock or change the window buttons layout and they might not know about this small but very useful tool.

Install elementary Tweaks in elementary OS 0.3 Freya

To add the elementary Tweaks PPA and install the app in elementary OS Freya, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mpstark/elementary-tweaks-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install elementary-tweaks

Report any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.

via lffl.org

elementary OS Freya Beta 2 available For Download [Screenshots]

Six months after the first beta, elementary OS Freya beta 2 was released yesterday. Based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (which is supported until April 2019), Freya beta 2 comes with various UI improvements, UEFI/SecureBoot support along with other interesting changes as well as almost 600 bug fixes.

For those not familiar with elementary OS, this is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution which ships with its own shell, called Pantheon, and applications that respect the elementary OS philosophy: beautiful, fast and minimalistic.

Changes in elementary OS Freya beta 2

elementary OS Freya beta 2 ships with quite a few user interface improvements and even though most of them are minor, they should improve usability and bring even more polish to the Pantheon desktop. Among the applications that have received various UI improvements in this beta release are applications like Calendar and Photos (now with header bars) as well as Slingshot and System Settings:

Also, Freya beta 2 ships with a brand new calculator app:

Besides updated elementary-specific applications, 3rd party apps like Geary, Simple Scan, Document Viewer (which now uses header bars) and more were also updated:

Furthermore, two new System Settings plugs were added - Notifications (which allows disabling notification bubbles and/or sounds for specific apps and there's also a switch to enable a "Do Not Disturb" mode) and Firewall -, which you can see in the screenshots below:

A minor but useful change in the latest elementary OS Freya beta 2 is the addition of the window overview (called Multitasking view, which is a combination between the workspace switcher and scale) launcher to Plank (the dock), which should make this very cool feature more discoverable:

Other changes in elementary OS Freya beta 2 include:

better support for Samba in Files;
updated development libraries (including GTK 3.14);
security and stability improvements;
Audience media player is now called Videos in elementary OS, following the elementry OS naming scheme;
UEFI/SecureBoot support;
many of stylesheet and icon changes and fixes.

Here are a few more elementary OS Freya beta 2 screenshots: