Ubuntu Sharing » General

Gnome Shell Extension: Add Power Off to User Menu

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 05:49:57 +0000

By default the Gnome Shell user menu doesn’t show ‘Power Off’ option. Instead, user need holding the ‘Alt’ key to make the menu show it.

Here’s an entension for Gnome Shell > 3.2 that adds ‘Power Off’ to its user menu.

1. Download the extension poweroptions.tar.gz from this page

2. Put it under $HOME/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/ (create it if not exist), then extract the package. Read the README file for installation and more.

3. You can check your gnome-shell version by this command:

gnome-shell --version

Then, edit the “metadata.json” file and change the “shell version”

4. Restart gnome-shell by Alt+F2 and run r, or log out and back in.

5. Enable this extension in Advance Settings (gnome-tweak-tool), or execute:

gnome-shell-extension-tool -e poweroptions@fpmurphy.com

Wallch – Custom Wallpaper Slideshow (or Live Earth) on Ubuntu 12.04

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:27:36 +0000

Wallch is a wallpaper changer for Gnome which can change the desktop wallpaper after an adjustable time. It has a friendly and easy to use graphical interface. Wallch also supports Live Earth wallpaper which updates every 1/2 hour.

Features:

Live Earth Wallpaper
Picture of The Day
Folder Monitoring
Unity Integration
Statistics
Features JPG, PNG, GIF, and BMP support
Radom image changing
Desktop/Sound notification
History Logging
Taking screenshot
Taking webcam image

Installation and Usage:

Wallch is available in ubuntu 12.04 software center by default. Just search and install it.

Now, launch wallch and you can see the main window (see the top picture). Click Add or Add Folder to add images, adjust timing and finnally click Start.

Wallch must be opened for it to run the slideshow, so click Edit -> Preferences you can ‘enable startup option’

Live Earth Wallpaper, Picture of The Day, and Monitor Folder features can be enabled via Edit -> Extras dialog.

How to Show All Startup Applications in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

admin — Sun, 13 May 2012 03:16:56 +0000

In Ubuntu 12.04 LTS the ‘startup applications’ dialog by default doesn’t show any startup programs. I don’t know why that, but it’s inconvenient to customize your starting up services.

Disabling programs in startup applications dialog may speed up booting your Ubuntu. Don’t disable any program that you don’t know what exactly it does, it may cause problems. Some programs really need be enabled as startup applications.

To make Ubuntu 12.04 Show startup applications, run this in a terminal window:

sudo sed -i 's/NoDisplay=true/NoDisplay=false/g' /etc/xdg/autostart/*.desktop

Install Enlightenment E17 in Ubuntu 12.04 & Previous via PPA

admin — Sat, 12 May 2012 05:11:43 +0000

Enlightenment E17 Desktop is pretty cool desktop environment for Linux. I’m not familiar with enlightenment, here’s just a simple enlightenment installation guide on ubuntu.

What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is not just a window manager for Linux/X11 and others, but also a whole suite of libraries to help you create beautiful user interfaces with much less work than doing it the old fashioned way and fighting with traditional toolkits, not to mention a traditional window manager. It covers uses from small mobile devices like phones all the way to powerful multi-core desktops (which are the primary development environment).

Install E17 in Ubuntu 12.04, 11.10, 10.10, and 10.04

The ppa:hannes-janetzek/enlightenment-svn contains enlightenment packages build from svn.

Open a terminal window and add this ppa by:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:hannes-janetzek/enlightenment-svn

Then update and install e17:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install e17

After installation, log out and select to log-in enlightenment.

For more:

Enlightenment web site: www.enlightenment.org

Enlightenment Themes: exchange.enlightenment.org

Unity-Lens-Pidgin, Search Online Accounts in Dash Home

admin — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:01:30 +0000

Pidgin is a graphical, modular instant messaging client capable of using multiple networks at once.

Just one day ago, Unity lens for pidgin released with the ability to search through Pidgin online accounts by typing in Unity Dash, it displays matched online buddies from one’s list.

To install this Unity Lens, add this ppa by executing this command in terminal(for now, support Ubuntu 12.04 & 12.10):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:scopes-packagers/ppa

Then update and install it by:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-lens-pidgin

How to Save Screen Brightness Settings in Ubuntu 12.04 Laptop

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:33:35 +0000

Due to hardware compatibility problem, some Ubuntu laptops’ screen brightness reset to the lowest or highest on every boot. It’s inconvenient to configure the screen birghtness on every login.

Here’s a way to save the screen brightness settings in Ubuntu laptop.

Just do this at your own risk!

Open a terminal window, and execute this command to edit /etc/rc.local:

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Add this before the last line “exit 0″:

echo 4 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

here number 4 is the value of your screen brightness. Use this command to check the maximum:

cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/max_brightness

Remove Rhythmbox controls from Ubuntu 12.04 Sound Menu

admin — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:43:30 +0000

After a fresh installed Ubuntu, one thing to do is configuring your music player. In Ubuntu 12.04 Precise LTS, if you use other music player to instead the default Rhythmbox, here’s a way to remove Rhythmbox controls from the sound indicator.

1. Install dconf editor.

dconf tools is available in Ubuntu 12.04′s repository, use Software Center or this command:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

2. Launch dconf editor and navigate to com/canonical/indicator/sound

You will see this window:

Remove ‘rhythmbox’ from the value of ‘interested-media-players’, rhythmbox will disappear from sound menu in next login. But rhythmbox comes again if you launch it.
Add ‘rhythmbox’ into the value of ‘blacklisted-media-players’, rhythmbox won’t back any more.

Monitor ‘signal out of range’ problem in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise fresh installation

admin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:52:21 +0000

Since Ubuntu 11.04 Natty, after a fresh Ubuntu installation on my desktop PC, the monitor starts into ‘input signal out of range Change Settings to **x** 60HZ’.

The problem can be fixed by reset the Grub screen resolution ratio. I used to use Startup-Manager, but ‘StartUp-Manager is dead’ it has been dropped in Ubuntu 12.04′s repository.

In Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, we can use grub-customizer to fix the problem:

1. Start your machine, on ‘signal out of range’ screen press Enter. Wait a second (or try Ctrl+Alt+F1, Ctrl+ALt+F7), it will boot into Ubuntu.
2. Once boot into Ubuntu, configure the network and install grub-customize by running following commands in terminal:
```
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer
```
Or directly download and install the deb from launchpad.net
3. Launch grub-customizer. In its Preference window second tab, check and change the resolution. Remember to click ‘Save‘ the configuration

Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0 for Ubuntu Precise 12.04 LTS has released

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 02:27:32 +0000

The popular Ubuntu configuring tool Ubuntu Tweak just released version 0.7.0 ‘Precise Tweak’ just one day before the final release of Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

New version adds more settings to easy tweaking your desktop and the UI is friendlier than before. See the main feature:

Four great features have returned: App Center, Source Center, Templates and Scripts
Source Center is integrated with PPA Purge feature and App Center with “Installed Apps” view
Improved Janitor with cleaning apps cache
Global fuzzy search
QuickLists Editor to edit the Unity Launcher
Login settings for 12.04
More Unity settings and new Workspace settings

Read the release note on Ubuntu Tweak blog

Install Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0 in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and 11.10 Oneiric:

You can download Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0 from the official web site.

Or, install Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0 from Ubuntu Tweak Stable PPA. Run following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

Screenshots of ‘Precise Tweak’:

Install gimp 2.8.0 rc1 in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise & 11.10 Oneiric

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:11:55 +0000

GIMP has released the first release candidate of GIMP 2.8. Here’s the release note:

We released new versions of GEGL and babl, quickly followed by the first release candidate of GIMP 2.8.
GEGL 0.2.0 has some major improvements and breaks API/ABI compatibility with earlier versions for some very good reasons.
Perhaps the most exciting change in GEGL is an initial support for GPU-side rendering and processing via OpenCL. Hardware acceleration makes it possible to leverage many operations to GPUs which can dramatically improve performance.
The foundation for this feature was laid by Jerson Michael Perpetua as the primary objective of his GSoC2009 project. The second part of the project was done by Victor Oliveira during GSoC2011. Victor was also sponsored by AMD to finish the project this winter, with help from GEGL team, Zhang Peixuan and his team from Multicore Ware. Currently you need to run GEGL_USE_OPENCL=yes to use this.
Two new essential operations were contributed to GEGL. Mikael Magnusson implemented perspective transformation, and Jan Rüegg submitted a global matting operation that would be required for a GEGL-based foreground selection tool.
Since this version GEGL also supports internationalization. The final patches for that were delivered by Michael Muré. Translations into German, French, Polish, Russian, Slovenian and Spanish languages are available, and we expect more to follow. Users of GIMP 2.8 will see this in the experimental GEGL operation tool.
The changes in GIMP 2.8rc1 since 2.7.5 are mostly not user-visible. We merely updated the code to work with newer versions of GEGL and babl, fixed GFig rendering issues and used all the translation updates we got to the point. There is still time to review your translations and submit updates, although probably not too much of it.
Please use the Downloads section to fetch source code of GIMP 2.8rc1 and visit gegl.org for source code of GEGL and babl. Let us know if you run into serious regressions that haven’t been reported yet.

Install gimp 2.8.0 rc1 in Ubuntu Precise and Oneiric from ppa:

You can install gimp 2.8.0 rc1 from this untrusted PPA (support for Ubuntu 12.04/11.10). The PPA could break your installed OS, please use it at your own risk.

In a terminal window, execute following commands adding the ppa and install gimp:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp

For Ubuntu 11.10, you may need this package installed frist:

sudo apt-get install libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0