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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Unity Global Menu Can Now Be Disabled For Individual Applications [Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr]

After a recent update in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, it's possible to whitelist or blacklist individual applications from using the Ubuntu AppMenu (global menu).

These settings are accessible via Dconf-editor, under com > canonical > unity-gtk-module.

To blacklist an application from using the Unity global menu in Ubuntu 14.04, install dconf-editor:

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

Then open Dconf Editor, navigate to com > canonical > unity-gtk-module and add the class of the application(s) you want under "blacklist" or "whitelist". After adding some application(s) to the blacklist or whitelist, restart that application(s) or log out and log back in.

Example 1: to blacklist Gedit, add the following under com > canonical > unity-gtk-module > blacklist:

['gedit']

Example 2: to blacklist Gedit, Nemo and Audacious, add the following under com > canonical > unity-gtk-module > blacklist:

['gedit', 'nemo', 'audacious']

In the same way you can force applications to use the global menu by adding them under "whitelist". Applications that are blacklisted by default include: Eclipse, Acroread, Emacs and Freeciv.

To find out the window class (which you must add under "blacklist" or "whitelist"), use the following command in a terminal:

xprop | grep CLASS

Then, click on the application you want to blacklist or whitelist and the window class should be displayed in the terminal.

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr Final Beta Available For Download [Video, Screenshots]

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr LTS final beta is available for download, this being the first and only milestone for Trusty. Read on to find out what's new!

Note: this is the first and only Ubuntu 14.04 beta, even though the ISO says "beta 2" however, some Ubuntu flavors already had a beta release so today it's beta 2 for Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Kubuntu for instance.

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta video

Below you can watch an overview of the changes included in the latest Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta:

(direct video link; for more videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel)

Unity changes in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta

Unity has received a lot of changes in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, even more than in the previous Ubuntu release, even though 14.04 is a LTS. Among the new features / improvements are:

Ubuntu 14.04 ships with Unity Control Center and Unity Settings Daemon, forked from GNOME Control Center and GNOME Settigns Daemon so it doesn't interfere with Ubuntu GNOME;
Unity now uses GTK3 CSS themed window decorations, instead of the Compiz decorations. The new decoration support full GTK 3 theming and they introduce improved resizing speed and anti-aliased corners as well as a fix for an old regression: the panel is now right-clickable when a window is maximized with global menu enabled, displaying the same menu that's available when right clicking an unmaximized window titlebar (lets you minimize, unmaximize, set the window always on top, move to workspace, etc.);
two years after this feature was first announced (and then abandoned), Unity finally got locally integrated menus (LIM). Locally integrated menus are displayed in the window decorations for unmaximized windows, instead of the default Unity approach which is to display the menu on the top panel. There is one thing that the default Unity menu and LIM have in common: both are displayed on mouse over and there's no option to make the menu permanently visible, at least not yet. LIM can be enabled via System Settings > Appearance > Behavior > Show the menus for a window > in the window's title bar;
Unity Spread (triggered by clicking on an application icon in the Launcher which already has focus and has multiple windows or for all open windows, by pressing SUPER + W) has received support for filtering windows by title. The search field is not displayed by default in the Unity Spread, but as soon as you start typing, the windows are filtered by their title and a Dash-like search is displayed on top of the spread view;
Unity got its own lockscreen, designed to look like the Unity Greeter (login screen);
a lot of HiDPI work: Unity got improved support for HiDPI screens, though from what I've read, there are still some bugs regarding this (and I can't test it since I don't have an high pixel density display). The UI scale can be set from System Settings > Displays;
you can now set Unity to allow minimizing applications by clicking their icons in the Unity Launcher. This option is not enabled by default and it can be enabled via CompizConfig Settings Manager (Unity Plugin > Launcher > Minimize Single Window Applications (Unsupported)). This feature only works for single-window applications so if an application has two windows, it won't work;
"live" window resizing. Until now, resizing windows in Unity would only display a frame with the new window size and the actual resize would only happen after you were done resizing the window but starting with Ubuntu 14.04, the windows are resized in real time;
the default Ubuntu 14.04 themes (Ambiance and Radiance) no longer use window borders;
Unity global menu can now be disabled for individual applications (via Dconf for now);
the Unity launcher can be scaled down to 8px.

Here are a few screenshots with these changes:

Borderless window decorations

HiDPI (UI scale) settings

Locally integrated menu settings

Locally integrated menu (LIM)

The new Unity lockscreen

Anti-aliased window corners

The new Unity Spread filter

Other changes

TRIM is now enabled by default for Intel and Samsung SSDs. TRIM allows the OS to "inform a solid-state drive (SSD) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally". Without this, the write speed on SSDs becomes very slow over time.

A Unity 8 preview session is available to install via the Ubuntu 14.04 repositories. However, the session is currently broken and installing it may break your system so don't install it for now!

Nvidia Optimus support has improved a lot in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr: nvidia-prime now supports switching between the integrated and discrete GPU and thanks to this, Nvidia Settings itself also supports switching between GPUs. xorg-server was also updated with various Nvidia Optimus fixes, including a patch to fix GPU screen output hotplugging.

Type-ahead is used by default in Nautilus, instead of recursive search

Other new features / changes:

libimobiledevice was updated to the latest Git code, so it now supports iOS 7 properly.;
the volume can now go past 100% (see System Settings > Sound);
the Ubuntu Sound Menu icon turns red if it's muted and some application, like a music play for instance, plays some music / sounds;
Nautilus was updated with a patch that allows switching between the type-ahead find (interactive search) feature that was available in Nautilus 3.4 and the new recursive search that was introduced with Nautilus 3.6. Further more, the default behavior in Ubuntu was set to type ahead find, instead of the recursive search that was used in the previous Ubuntu versions (and which is default in upstream Nautilus).

Of course, these are just a few of the many changes available with Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, far too many to cover in an article.

Default applications

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta ships with the following applications by default: Nautilus 3.10.1, Firefox 28, Thunderbird 24.4.0, LibreOffice 4.2.3, Ubuntu Software Center 13.10, Gedit 3.10.4, Totem 3.10.1, Rhythmbox 3.0.1, Empathy 3.8.6, Transmission 2.82, Deja Dup Backup Tool 29.5, Shotwell 0.18.0 and Brasero 3.10.0, on top of Unity 7.1.2 daily build as of 21.03.14 and GTK3+ 3.10.7.

Trusty beta uses the Ubuntu Linux Kernel 3.13.0-19, Xorg 1.15.0 and Mesa 10.1.0.

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr LTS final beta

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta may not be stable yet, but many (myself included) find it very stable already. That said, this is still beta software, so it's not recommended to install it on production machines!

If you've installed an Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr daily build and you've updated the packages through Software Updater, you already have Trusty fiinal beta, so there's no need to reinstall it.

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr LTS final beta | Release notes

This is the only Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr beta release (not counting the other Ubuntu flavors). Ubuntu 14.04 will be released on April 17th.

Also download / see what's new in 14.04 beta 2 for the Ubuntu flavors:

Nautilus 3.10 Available In Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

Another important GNOME 3 component was updated to version 3.10 for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr: Nautilus, the default GNOME file manager.

Because Nautilus is also the default Unity file manager, it was patched not to use the new header bars under Unity, so if you use Unity (or other non-GNOME desktop environments), you won't notice any differences:

If you're a GNOME Shell user however, Nautilus (Files) should now use the new GNOME header bars, also known as client-side decorations:

Ubuntu 14.04 users: Nautilus 3.10 was promoted from the Proposed repository to Main a few minutes ago so it may take a while until you receive the update.

The only important GNOME components that still need to be updated to version 3.10 in Ubuntu 14.04 are GNOME Control Center (Trusty uses version 3.6.3 at the time I'm writing this article) and GNOME Settings Daemon (currently at version 3.8.6.1 in Trusty).

Install Google Earth In Ubuntu 14.04 64bit [How To]

Many of you already know about this, but since there are many users who are upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04, they might not be aware of what they need to do when a package, like Google Earth, fails to install because it depends on ia32-libs (on Ubuntu 64bit).

The ia32-libs package is no longer available in Ubuntu, starting with Ubuntu 13.10. The package was superseded by multiarch support so you don't need it any more, but some 64bit packages (which are actually 32bit applications) still depend on this package and because of this, they can't be installed in Ubuntu 14.04 or 13.10, 64bit.

Here's an example. Let's say you've downloaded the Google Earth 64bit package and want to install it in Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) 64bit via dpkg. Here's what happens:

$ sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package google-earth-stable.
(Reading database ... 168539 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking google-earth-stable (7.1.2.2041-r0) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of google-earth-stable:
google-earth-stable depends on ia32-libs; however:
Package ia32-libs is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package google-earth-stable (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
..........................................
Errors were encountered while processing:
google-earth-stable

And if you try to install ia32-libs:

$ sudo apt-get install ia32-libs 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package ia32-libs is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  lib32asound2 lib32z1 lib32ncurses5 lib32bz2-1.0

E: Package 'ia32-libs' has no installation candidate

That's because, like I said, the ia32-libs package is not available in the Ubuntu 13.10 and 14.04 repositories.

The "fix" or more specifically the correct way of installing these apps which depend on ia32-libs is to simply install the 32bit package on Ubuntu 64bit. Of course, that will install quite a few 32bit packages, but that's how multiarch works.

The problem with Google Earth is that the 32bit package doesn't support multiarch so it doesn't install all the 32bit dependencies it needs to run on Ubuntu 64bit. Below you'll find instructions on how to properly install Google Earth and its 32bit dependencies on Ubuntu 64bit.

Install Google Earth in Ubuntu 14.04 64bit

To properly install Google Earth (along with the required 32bit dependencies) in Ubuntu 14.04 (or 13.10) 64bit, use the following commands:

sudo apt-get install libfontconfig1:i386 libx11-6:i386 libxrender1:i386 libxext6:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libglu1-mesa:i386 libglib2.0-0:i386 libsm6:i386
cd /tmp && wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

If you simply install the Google Earth 32bit package on Ubuntu 64bit without the extra dependencies from the first command above, you'll get errors when trying to start it, like these:

./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libfontconfig.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libX11.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libXrender.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libXext.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
etc.

For Ubuntu 32bit, simply download Google Earth and install it using Ubuntu Software Center, GDebi, dpkg or whatever you prefer.

via lffl.org

Unity 7 To Get New Window Decorations With Anti-Aliased Corners [Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr]

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr: Unity 7 will get new window decorations inside Unity which will not depend on the Compiz "decor" plugin or a decorator such as gtk-window-decorator.

The new Unity window decorations will support full GTK3 theming, they will introduce improved resizing speed and, something many of you have requested, anti-aliased corners.

Unfortunately, the new Unity decorations will not support changing the window buttons position because "we want a consistent user experience in unity, that covers both the windows and the top panel and here the window buttons are, by design on the top left corner of a window. Always".

If you really need to move the window buttons, that might be possible at some point because Marco Trevisan, who is working on the new Unity decorations, said in a Google+ comment that he "can probably make possible to use old decorations if much requested, but for now we've other priorities".

Besides moving the window buttons, another thing that the new Unity decorations won't support is custom actions on bar clicks but support for this might be introduced later.

If you're wondering how the new Unity decorations will look like, well, they will look basically the same as the current decorations, except for anti-aliased corners obviously. Here are a couple of screenshots via Marco Trevisan @ Google+:

You can find the specifications for the new Unity decorations @ Launchpad.

via lffl.org

Nautilus Type-Ahead Find Feature Enabled By Default In Ubuntu 14.04

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr: Nautilus 3.8 was updated with a patch that allows switching between the type-ahead find (interactive search) feature that was available in Nautilus 3.4 and the new recursive search that was introduced with Nautilus 3.6.

Further more, the default behavior in Ubuntu was set to type ahead find, instead of the recursive search that was used in the previous Ubuntu versions (and which is default in upstream Nautilus).

Type-ahead find allows to type the name of a directory or file in the file manager to select it without searching in the sub-folders while the recursive search is, like the name suggests, a search inside the current folder and all its sub-folders which makes it annoying at times if all you want to do is select a file in the current directory - after all, Nautilus does have a search button you can use if you want to search everywhere.

Type-ahead find (default in Ubuntu 14.04 starting today):

Recursive search (default in upstream Nautilus):

How to switch between type-ahead find and recursive search in Nautilus under Ubuntu 14.04

To switch to recursive search in Nautilus under Ubuntu 14.04, use the following command:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search false

If you want to switch back to type-ahead find ("interactive search"), use the command below:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search true

You can also do this by using Dconf-Editor (yes, the package is called "dconf-editor" in Ubuntu 14.04):

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

Then navigate to org > gnome > nautilus > preferences and set the enable-interactive-search value to what you'd like to use.

If you want to switch between recursive search and type-ahead features in Nautilus under Ubuntu 13.10 or 13.04, see our previous article: How To Disable Recursive Search In Nautilus 3.6 or 3.8 [Patch w/ PPA]

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr Might Get A New Icon Theme

In an Ubuntu Developer Summit session today, Matthieu James (Graphic/Visual Designer at Canonical) presented the design guidelines as well as some of the work done to create a new icon theme for Ubuntu (both desktop and touch).

The main goal is to finalize the new icon theme for 14.04 on touch devices but it's also possible for the icon theme to be available for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr on the desktop.

Here are a few screenshots with some of the slides in Matthieu's presentation (the quality is pretty bad since I took screenshots of the G+ hangout):

Unfortunately, the presentation used in the vUDS session is not yet available, but you can watch the entire session below:

(direct video link)

What do you think?

Also see: Possible Changes In Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr)

Ubuntu 14.04 Gets Locally Integrated Menus (LIM)

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr: After getting new GTK3 CSS themed window decorations and other interesting changes this week, Unity has received yet another new feature: locally integrated menus, or LIM.

Locally integrated menus are displayed in the window decorations for unmaximized windows, instead of the default Unity approach which is to display the menu on the top panel. There is one thing that the default Unity menu and LIM have in common: both are displayed on mouse over and there's no option to make the menu permanently visible, at least not yet.

As for maximized windows, the menu continues to be displayed on the top panel when using LIM.

This type of menu was first announced at the beginning of 2012 and was supposed to be added to Ubuntu 12.04 but it was subsequently delayed until now, when this feature finally landed in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, though it's a bit different: instead of a menu button, the menus are displayed directly in the titlebar.

LIM is is not enabled by default in Ubuntu 14.04 for now, but it can easily be enabled via System Settings > Appearance, on the Behavior tab:

However, according to Marco Trevisan (the developer behind this feature), LIM might become default for Ubuntu 14.04, depending on community feedback:

"As this is an LTS release, before setting this menu mode as the default we wanted to have some community feedback."

Some LIM-related settings such as the click movement threshold or the double click wait are not available in System Settings but can be found in Dconf-editor, under com > canonical > unity > integrated-menus.

Besides LIM, another important set of changes landed in Unity, for HiDPI support. Since I can't test this (I don't have a HiDPI monitor), I'm not sure how well HiDPI is currently supported in Unity and if more changes are required for a proper HighDPI experience.

This update should be available to all Ubuntu 14.04 users in a few minutes.

Pepper Flash Player Installer For Chromium Available In The Ubuntu 14.04 Repositories

A Pepper Flash Player installer for Chromium browser has been added to the official Ubuntu 14.04 repositories.

Pepper Flash Player Chromium Browser Ubuntu Trusty

As many of you already know, the latest Adobe Flash Player is available for Linux only through Google Chrome while other browsers are stuck with version 11.2. Further more, Flash 11.2 will stop working in Chromium because it uses the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI), which Chromium will stop supporting this year.

For these reasons, an Adobe Flash Player Pepper installer has been added to the official Ubuntu 14.04 repositories, imported from Debian.

This installer downloads Google Chrome, unpacks it, extracts Pepper Flash and sets it up so it can be used in Chromium browser.

Install Pepper Flash Player for Chromium in Ubuntu 14.04

1. To use Pepper Flash Player in Chromium browser under Ubuntu 14.04, firstly install the package:

sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree

2. Then, run the following command to install it:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install

The installer can be used to install Pepper Flash Player from either Google Chrome Stable, Beta or Unstable.

For instance, to install Pepper Flash Player from Google Chrome Beta, use:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install --beta --unverified

Or, to install Pepper Flash Player from Google Chrome Unstable, use:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --install --unstable --unverified

If you want to uninstall it, use the command below:

sudo update-pepperflashplugin-nonfree --uninstall

That's it.

I don't know if this installer will be ported for older Ubuntu versions but if you use an older Ubuntu version, you can already use a PPA that does pretty much the same thing. For more information about this PPA and how to install Pepper Flash Player for Chromium on older Ubuntu versions, see: Install Pepper Flash Player For Chromium In Ubuntu Via PPA.

Also see: Enable Hardware Acceleration In Chrome / Chromium Browser

Thanks to towpik for the tip!

Minimize On Click For Unity Launcher Available In Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

Quick update: The Unity 7 minimize on click feature has landed in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

Minimize on click is not enabled by default and to enable it, you need to use CCSM:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

And then, open CompizConfig Settings Manager, click the Ubuntu Unity Plugin and on the Launcher tab, you'll find an option called "Minimize Single Window Applications (Unsupported)".

Later on, this feature will most probably be configurable through Unity Tweak Tool and other such applications.

Like the option name says, the Unity Launcher supports minimize on click for single window applications only so if there are 2 open windows for an application, minimize on click won't work.

Unity Spread Gets Support For Filtering Windows By Title, Live Window Resize [Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr]

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr: Unity 7 and Compiz were updated again today, bringing two improvements: support for filtering windows by title in Unity Spread and "live" window resize mode.

Unity Spread (triggered by clicking on an application icon in the Launcher which already has focus and has multiple windows or for all open windows, by pressing SUPER + W) has received support for filtering windows by title.

The search field is not displayed by default in the Unity Spread, but as soon as you start typing, the windows are filtered by their title and a Dash-like search is displayed on top of the spread view:

Below you can watch a quick video recorded by +Marco Trevisan (the man behind this new feature) in which he demoes the new Unity Spread with keyboard filtering support in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr:

(direct video link)

The second improvement added to Unity and Compiz today is "live" resizing mode. This improvement is possible thanks to the much improved resize speed introduced by the new Unity GTK3 CSS-themed window decorations.

Until now, resizing windows in Unity would only display a frame with the new window size and the actual resize would only happen after you were done resizing the window:

Old window resize

Starting today, Unity uses "live" resize, meaning that the window is resized in real time.

I didn't post a screenshot with the new resize feature because all you'd see would be a simple window, since the frame is no longer displayed.

These changes should be available for Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr users in a few minutes / hours.

Changelogs: Unity | Compiz

Unity Might Finally Get The Minimize On Click Feature [Ubuntu 14.04]

Ubuntu 14.04: A branch that adds the minimize on click feature for the Unity Launcher was proposed for merging in Unity a few minutes ago.

The merge proposal hasn't been approved yet, but since it was proposed by Christopher Townsend, Software Engineer at Canonical, it will most probably be merged and available in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

This branch adds the ability to minimize a single window when clicking on the Unity Launcher icon of that application, a much requested option that was rejected multiple times, even by Mark Shuttleworth... until now, it seems.

This option will be turned off by default, but users will be able to enable it via CCSM (CompizConfig Settings Manager).

Fix Lubuntu 14.04 Network Manager Missing From The Panel

Lubuntu 14.04: The Network Manager icon doesn't show up by default for some users by default. Until the developers fix this, here's how to get the Network Manager icon back.

Get the Network Manager icon to show up on the panel in Lubuntu 14.04 LTS

To fix the Network Manager not showing up on the panel issue, from the Lubuntu menu select Preferences > Default applications for LXSession, then click on the Autostart tab and under "Manual autostarted applications" type "nm-applet", then click the "+ Add" button on the left:

Now log out, log back in and you should see the Network Manager icon on the panel:

fix somewhat via lffl.org

Mark Shuttleworth has announced the codename for the next Ubuntu release (14.04 LTS): Trusty Tahr:

"So our titular totem, our tamper-proof taboo, our tranquil memento of mission and dues, our topical target of both cry and hue, the name for our LTS thoughtful and true: I give you, as Seuss would, with hullabaloo, the temperate and thrifty, the talented and tactful but ultimately, and tellingly, trusty tahr."

- Mark Shuttleworth

According to Wikipedia, "Tahrs are three species of Asian ungulates related to the wild goat", but Mark refers to only one of them: the Himalayan Tahr, also known as a mountain goat, which he says that "for a long time they symbolised hardiness and fearlessness, perched as they were against the cliffs".

As you probably know, the development codename of an Ubuntu release takes the form "Adjective Animal". Initially these weren't in alphabetic order - until Dapper DRAKE (6.06).

Up next: Ubuntu 14.10 U U. Will it be "Unhorned Unicorn" :)? Or maybe Unified Urial, because the full convergence should start with Ubuntu 14.10? We'll find out in 6 months!

For a list of codenames used in previous Ubuntu versions and upcoming release suggestions, see THIS page.

image via Wikipedia

How To Install And Tweak GNOME Flashback Session In Ubuntu 14.04

The Classic, now called Flashback session was quite popular in Ubuntu 12.04 so I though I'd write an article on how to get the same experience in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

The old classic GNOME session, now called "Flashback" is still available and working in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Here's how to install it and tweak a few things.

Here are the results to expect after following the steps below:

Note: the default setup is to use two panels, but I've only used one in the screenshots above. You could the default 2 panels setup with the window list at the bottom, just one panel like in my screenshots, one panel with a dock at the bottom, etc., it's all up to you.

Of course, you don't have to apply all the instructions below, just those that you find useful.

Install and tweak the GNOME Flashback Session in Ubuntu 14.04

1. Install the Flashback GNOME session

To install the Flashback GNOME session, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-flashback

Once installed, log out and select this from the login screen session menu: "GNOME Flashback (Compiz)" if you want to use Compiz or "GNOME Flashback (Metacity)" if you don't need Compiz and want to use Metacity:

2. Fix the Compiz Flashback session (in my test, this only occurred in VirtualBox and not on my Ubuntu 14.04 laptop, but I'll add this anyway, in case it's not a VirtualBox-only issue)

For GNOME Flashback Compiz session only: In my test, logging into the "GNOME Flashback (Compiz)" session, there were no window decorations. But I was able to fix it so if that also occurs on your system, here's what to do. Firstly, install CompizConfig Settings Manager:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then launch CompizConfig Settings Manager from the menu (Applications > System Tools > Preferences), enable the "Copy to texture" plugin, then log out and log back in.

If the window decorations still don't work, you can also try to disable all the plugins from CompizConfig Settings Manager and then re-enable them (remember not to enable the Ubuntu Unity Plugin!).

3. How to add applets to the panel

To add applets to the panel, you must hold the ALT key while right clicking the panel, then select "Add to panel". In some cases, you must hold down both the ALT and the Super (Windows) keys while right clicking the panel so try this if just holding ALT doesn't work.

4. Get a Unity-like appmenu (global menu)

If you want to get an Unity-like AppMenu (global menu), install the following package:

sudo apt-get install indicator-applet-appmenu

Then add the "Indicator Applet Appmenu" to the top panel (I've already explained above how to add applets to the GNOME Flashback session panels):

Note that in my test, adding the Appmenu applet to a panel makes the "Menu bar" applet disappear for some reason. The solution for this is use the "Main Menu" applet or Cardapio (see step 5 below).

5. Get a searchable menu: Cardapio

Cardapio, a menu that comes with a search along with other useful features, doesn't work with Ubuntu 14.04 any more, but I've found a version fixed by Eugene San fixed for Python 2.7 to which I've added a few fixes myself:

fixed the GTK3 bookmarks path;
fixed GNOME session logout/shutdown;
fixed panel icon not being displayed
fixed panel icon padding Cardapio using the wrong icon;
fixed "Applet" tab in Cardapio preferences not being displayed in GNOME Flashback session.

I'm not a developer so I couldn't fix all the bugs: some of its plugins don't work any more and launching Cardapio using the keyboard shortcut, the menu is displayed in the middle of the screen instead of being displayed where it's supposed to - next to the panel (if you manage to fix this, let me know!).

You can install it in Ubuntu 14.04 by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/failsdownloads
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cardapio cardapio-gnomepanel

Or download the debs from HERE.

Then, add Cardapio to the panel (see step 3 for how to add applets to the panel) and configure it to your liking. Note that after changing some settings, such as the ones in the "Applet" tab, you need to remove the applet from the panel and re-add it for the changes to take effect (or log out and log back in).

Xubuntu 14.04 Available For Download [Video, Screenshots]

Xubuntu 14.04, the Xfce Ubuntu flavor, was released today along with the other Ubuntu flavors. Let's take a quick look at what's new.

Xubuntu 14.04 video

Here's a quick video in which you can see the changes in Xubuntu 14.04:

(direct video link; for more videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel)

Xfce changes

Xfce 4.12 was initially supposed to be released in March, 2013, but was delayed and it's not known when it will be released. The Xfce roadmap wiki page mentions that Xfce 4.12 will be released when "is ready".

Because of this, Xubuntu 14.04 ships with a combination of Xfce 4.10 and 4.11. With this release, two more Xfce 4.11 packages were added: Xfdesktop 4.11 and Xfwm 4.11, which bring some new features:

Vsync support for the compositor;
apply wallpaper to all workspaces option;
the Xfce Display Settings now supports monitor hotplugging
individual wallpapers for each workspace;
option to change wallpaper automatically after a given number of minutes/hours/days, etc. as well as a chronological option which will sort the available wallpaper pictures according to their filename and then goes through them in their sort order and spread them equally over one day;
Add an unmount option and notifications when a device is removed;
new accessibility feature: zoom into your desktop using Alt+Scrollwheel;
an option to enable tooltips, which will appear when hovering over icons on the desktop with the mouse.

Here are screenshots with some of the changes mentioned above:

New defaults

Xubuntu 14.04 ships with quite a few new default applications / packages. The most important from an user's point of view is probably WhiskerMenu, which replaces the old Xubuntu menu:

WhiskerMenu is an alternative to the Xfce application menu that tries to make finding and launching applications easier. The tool allows you to quickly search for the application you want to launch or, if you don't know the application name, you can browse all the applications installed on the system by browsing through categories.

Along with Whisker Menu, Xubuntu 14.04 now uses a single-panel layout and it's also important to note that the panel now supports GTK3 indicators so you shouldn't run into Ubuntu incompatibility issues. For instance, the Sound Menu / Indicator now works out of the box:

As you can see in the screenshot above, Xubuntu 14.04 uses the Network, Sound and Power Ubuntu indicators.

MenuLibre, an advanced menu editor "that provides modern features in a clean, easy-to-use interface" was added by default:

MenuLibre is lightweight, doesn't use any GNOME dependencies and can be used with any desktop environment, be it GNOME, LXDE, Xfce or even Unity.

Another important addition to Xubuntu 14.04 is Light Locker, which is the new default screen locker, replacing Xscreensaver. Along with it, Xubuntu 14.04 also ships with Light Locker Settings, a GUI that lets you tweak various lock screen settings such as the blank screen or display off timeout, when to automatically lock the session, etc:

An user configuration tool called Mugshot was added by default in Xubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. The tool allows users to easily set a profile image and enter user details for use with any supported application. Currently only LibreOffice and Pidgin support it though:

Other changes

Other changes in Xubuntu 14.04 include:

as usual, the GTK themes preinstalled with Xubuntu were updated with support for the GTK 3 version available in Xubuntu 14.04 (GTK 3.10);
the LightDM GTK Greeter has a new theme;
new default wallpaper;
improved documentation which is also updated to match new applications and application versions;
the image viewer and organizer gThumb is no longer included by default, Ristretto is still included for photo viewing;
a community wallpaper package is finally available starting with Xubuntu 14.04. In this first release, the package includes 6 beautiful wallpapers.

Here are a few screenshots with the changes mentioned above:

New LightDM GTK Greeter theme

Numix (included by default) was updated to work with the latest GTK, like all other preinstalled themes

The default Xubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr wallpaper

Default applications

Among the default Xubuntu applications, Parole and Catfish have received the most important changes.

Parole (0.6.1) now uses GTK and GStreamer 1.0, it comes with a new UI and more while Catfish (1.0.2) has got an interface refresh along with other changes.

Besides Parole 0.6.1 and Catfish 1.0.2, Xubuntu 14.04 ships with Firefox 28, Thunderbird 24.4, Pidgin 2.10.9, Thunar 1.6.3, Gnumeric 1.12.9, Abiword 3.0.0, gMusicBrowser 1.1.12, GIMP 2.8.10, Ristretto 0.6.3, Transmission 2.82 and XChat 2.8.8.

Like Ubuntu, Xubuntu 14.04 also ships with the 3.13.0-24.46 Ubuntu Linux Kernel, based on the upstream 3.13.9 Linux Kernel, Xorg server 1.15.1 and Mesa 10.1.0. It's also important to note that the default I/O scheduler was changed from CFQ to Deadline.

Catfish

Parole

Download Xubuntu 14.04

Before downloading Xubuntu 14.04, make sure you read the release notes.

Download Xubuntu 14.04 * (will be supported for 3 years)

* Not all the mirrors are ready yet so I suggest getting the torrents.

For how to upgrade to Xubuntu 14.04, see THIS Ubuntu wiki page.

What's new in: Ubuntu 14.04 | Lubuntu, Kubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME 14.04

Also check out our 10 Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr To Get A Near Perfect Desktop article! While it's made with Unity in mind, there are many tweaks that also apply to Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu or Ubuntu GNOME.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta video

Unity changes in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr final beta

Other changes

Default applications

Download Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr LTS final beta

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Install Google Earth in Ubuntu 14.04 64bit

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Thursday, October 22, 2015

How to switch between type-ahead find and recursive search in Nautilus under Ubuntu 14.04

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Install Pepper Flash Player for Chromium in Ubuntu 14.04

Monday, October 19, 2015

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Get the Network Manager icon to show up on the panel in Lubuntu 14.04 LTS

Install and tweak the GNOME Flashback Session in Ubuntu 14.04

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Xubuntu 14.04 video

Xfce changes

New defaults

Other changes

Default applications

Download Xubuntu 14.04