Fast Loading Image Viewer for Ubuntu Linux: Mirage

These days when it comes to image viewers, GNU/Linux has a whole bunch of very competitive ones + if you use Ubuntu, then it comes with an excellent, fully featured image viewer (and a simple editor included) called Shotwell which was so good that it replaced the previous contender F-Spot.

There's certainly nothing wrong with Shotwell... but if you're searching for something loads a bit faster but doesn't come with a lot of features (don't be fooled, it's quite powerful!) then Mirage is a pretty good one.

But before we go further along this road ;-), just remember, if you have a huge list of albums to manage, then this is not the one to go for.

Main features...

*. Uses the GTK+ toolkit that integrates flawlessly with the Ubuntu Unity, Gnome classic desktop and other GTK+ based ones such as LXDE & Xfce (heck, you can even use it under Qt/KDE as well). .

*. Supports a lot of file types (including both raster and vector graphics) such as: png, jpg, svg, xpm, gif, bmp, tiff and many others.

*. Zoom/Out, Flip and Rotate, Full screen and a small thumbnail window to the left, etc. 

*. It may be a simple app yet you can do basic image editing such as : Cropping, Resizing and color changing too.

*. View image properties.

*. Save in different formats.

*. Take screenshots.

*. Rename, Delete pictures.

*. Image pre-loading (which helps to reduce the loading times).

*. Slide-show support.

*. Change between image scaling algorithms.

*. Change thumbnail size and background colors... man, so much for "simplicity" :P.

You can install Mirage in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install mirage

But remember, unlike with Shotwell or F-Shot, etc Mirage is not built to let you easily handle lots of image libraries (because that's not its purpose). Yet, all you want is a fast loading, pretty simple image viewer that has some useful features, then Mirage is a pretty good looking app nonetheless.

A Simple Screen Recorder for Ubuntu: Kazam

Screen recording is a great way to reach your audience (especially if you're ugly like me and don't wanna share your "face" :D). For instance, let's say that I wanted to show-off the new features in the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10. Then rather than writing a painfully long article, I can create a simple screen-record of my entire desktop which would explain a lot, easily.

Although if you use Ubuntu, then yet it doesn't come with a one pre-installed (it probably never will since screen recorder is not something that not everyone will use) but I'm pretty sure there are a lot you can find.

But if you've been looking for a very simple screen recorder that does nothing else (you know, without advanced video editing, cropping, etc) then Kazam is an excellent little tool.

Main features...

*. It's written in the GTK+ tool kit and uses the ffmpeg multimedia library for the recordings.

*. You can record both video (from your Computer screen of course) + an audio channel if you wanna add a voice as well.

*. Once you push the "Record" button it'll start to record whatever is on your desktop screen and you can use it's icon that runs in the notification area to Pause or Stop the recording.

*. As said, it doesn't have a video editing function (other than a basic one, more below) but since Ubuntu come with a pretty good one called Pitivi, Kazam will ask you to whether you wanna edit the video using Pitivity or just save it to disk.

You can directly open the recorded video in PiTiVi...

*. Kazam also has a YouTube video uploader (including a basic editor) which you can use to easily upload your content to YouTube and VideoBin services.

*. Saves the recorded multimedia file in .MKV container format.

You can install Kazam in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the daily unstable PPA channel (the stable channels doesn't have packages for Ubuntu 11.04) + 11.10 is not yet added. Open your terminal window and enter the below commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:and471/kazam-daily-builds

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install kazam

So if you're searching for an easy to use, simple screen recorder for Ubuntu, then give a try to Kazam, it's pretty darn good!.

A File Type Editor for Ubuntu: assoGiate

assoGiate is actually a file type editor for the Gnome desktop but since the Ubuntu Unity desktop still uses a lot of Gnome technologies (especially Nautilus as the file management utility), we can use it under Ubuntu for editing/adding new file types with ease nonetheless.

Anyhow, every time you install a new application (say in Gnome desktop) and if that newly installed utility comes with a file types of its own which is not presented in the OS, then it manually registers those file types thus these applications are rarely needed for the newbies But...

... assoGiate is intended for the system administrators who want to manually change the configuration of the file types in Gnome/Ubuntu (or in any GNU/Linux distribution that uses Gnome), but of course dudes (ladies included :D) like you and me also can use it to play around the system settings (yikes!) a little bit as well.

Main features...

*. Search for the default file-types.

*. Edit the already consisting ones.

*. Add a New file type with Categories, related types, file names (also known as "extensions"), XML elements and other advanced options such as changing priority values, etc are also included.

*. Switch between User and System database (system database is only "shown" if you run it with administrative privileges).

*. Remove existing types (only available in the administrative mode).

*. Import/export the database... are the main features to mention.

You can install assoGiate in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install assogiate

That's it, be safe ;-).

Fast Loading PDF Reader for Ubuntu: ePDFView

Ubuntu Linux (Unity desktop included) comes with a built in PDF viewer called Evince (more than a PDF viewer, a document viewer actually) which loads fast and does its job quite well.

But if you're looking for PDF reader that loads even faster (not by a huge margin, slightly faster) + that doesn't depend on Gnome desktop libraries as with Evince... then ePDFView a pretty good utility.

Main features...

*. A very basic/simple GUI (one of the reasons behind that speed, I guess).

*. Search for Text.

*. Switch between the Scroll or the Text selection modes (although while I used it, I couldn't select text at all. I was able to select the text but as soon as I let go of the left-mouse button, the text got unselected!).

*. Show/Hide the PDF index.

*. Send to Print.

*. Save as a Copy.

*. Rotate, zoom-in/out, Full screen, etc.

*. Tool-bar (which includes the above mentioned tools + next/previous page tools, etc).

*. Change the Web Browser that opens the URL links inside the PDF content.

That's about it for the features actually. So, don't hope for a shi* load of features since it's not the idea behind ePDFView. According to the developers, they just wanted create a fast loading, resources friendly PDF viewer that has very little dependencies.

You can install epdfview in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install epdfview

Again, this is certainly not the best but if you have a "thing" for speed ;-), then ePDFview deserves giving a try (except for that above mentioned Text related, bug which can make it pretty useless for some, especially if you want to copy the content to a separate text file).

How to Install Gnome-Paint in Ubuntu?

Gnome-Paint is a simple and very basic painting application designed for the Gnome desktop which you can also use in Ubuntu Linux as well (obviously). But remember, this is not an advanced tool and some "must have" type features such as Text tool and the Zoom in-out tools are not completed yet thus you can't use them!.

But if you're looking for an application that you can use to draw "stuff" to kill some time :) and okay with not having the ability to add text (although you can use the pencil tool though) or Zoom them, then Gnome-Paint is a decent application. But as said before, please remember, this is not a professional painting application by any means.

Main features...

*. Since it's designed by Gnome geeks :D, it has a simple yet easy to use GUI (designed using the GTK+ toolkit).

*. To your left you'll see a list of tools such as: Crop, color picker, eraser and few types of selection tools. But you cannot use Text and the zoom tools, yet.

*. Undo/Redo.

*. Flip, rotate and load various types of images.

*. Invert colors.

*. Save in different formats... are the main features.

You can install Gnome-Paint in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install gnome-paint

Again remember, this is still under development and the overall application responsiveness was not bad but I did encounter few slowish type issues. For instance, after using a tool (say the eraser), it took a small (very small but noticeable) delay to "update" it on the image.

Not "everything" is fully implemented yet...

This however is not a professional software by any means... but if you're looking for something that lets you create basic drawings under Ubuntu or GNU/Linux in general, then Gnome-Paint is a decent application which really needs some developing to be considered as a fully featured one in my opinion.

Flush: A Torrent Client for Ubuntu

Although original idea behind the BitTorrent protocol has nothing to do about "illegal" stuff but all about sharing legal (also known as legal torrents), online file sharing between computer users using this revolutionary and awesome protocol.

Anyhow, I don't actually remember the exact data, but it was said that BitTorrent protocol has its fare share of the Internet bandwidth (more than a "fare share" :D) thus some ISP even had to come up with their own tools to block the applications that uses this protocol in order to save this "excessive" usage of their bandwidth.

Then the developers got a bit angry and came up with their own method to make it really hard for the "bad" ISP to block the BitTorrent protocol. It's called the BitTorrent encryption. Now, some people took it the wrong way and thought the developers were helping other to "steal" but as anyone can see, they were just defending A idea, rather than users.

Flush BitTorrent client in Ubuntu...

Anyhow, unlike many other protocols, within the very short period of its first introduction, BitTorrent has a pretty colorful history (+ idealistic conflicts, still going strong :D). 

Although, not surprisingly, MS Windows does not come with a BitTorrent clients installed but almost all GNU/Linux distributions (their recent versions) do come with at least one installed by default. Apparently Ubuntu also comes with one called "Transmission" which is pretty darn good too.

But out of your boredom, if you're looking for something else :), then "Flush" is a pretty decent one. But the biggest drawback of Flush is that I couldn't find any option to enable the above mentioned "Protocol encryption". Maybe it enables the encryption by default... but other than that, it's a fast loading, easy to use BitTorrent client nonetheless.

Main features...

*. Change Upload/Download speeds.

*. Show share ratio.

*. Availability.

*. Show Seeds & Peers.

*. Change communication ports (or set to automatically use a random port at each startup).

*. Manual tracker updates (which is another important thing that helps to speed up things a bit).

*. Run in system tray.

*. IP filtering.

*. Max connections per torrent.

*. Create a torrent file from scratch... are just a few to mention.

You can install Flush BitTorrent client in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install flush

That should do it.

How to Mount an ISO Disk Image in Ubuntu?

ISO image file is actually a form of an archive. That's why if we have an archive manager installed in whatever your OS is, we can read the content of an ISO disk image file with ease.

Although unlike other standard archive formats such as .tar.gz, .rar, .zip, etc the data inside an ISO disk image is not compressed thus we can make an ISO image out of any CD/DVD or even Blu-Ray disk by using a disc authorizing software on-the-fly, without having to wait till the data get compressed.

It has many benefits such as, say that you have a disk that's filled with thousands of image files and you want to copy that disk to your HDD to be burned to another disk at later times. If you however follow the usual copy-paste method in this instance, it should take some considerable amount of time to copy the whole disk content because the OS has to carefully copy and paste hundreds or thousands of individual files into your HDD, one by one.

However, if you went with the "create an ISO image" using your burning software, then it'll only take extremely less amount of time which is somewhat closer to copying a single file that's equal to the size of the CD/DVD's data that you're trying to copy!.

Another benefit of an ISO disk image is its ability to mount itself as a "virtual disk drive". It's just like burning an ISO disk to a CD/DVD and then after the burning process is over, when you open the disk, you no longer see a single ISO file but the true content of ISO file itself.

Anyhow, if all you need is to mount the ISO file just so you could access its content with your file manager (without the use of any archive manager whatsoever) just like with accessing a partition, etc... in Ubuntu, then there's a small yet extremely useful tool called "Gmount-iso".

This is actually GTK written GUI aimed at the Gnome desktop but you can use it in the latest Unity desktop + many others without any problems whatsoever as well.

After mounted, you can browse/open the ISO image just like a normal CD/DVD drive, using the file manager...

Main features...

*. Extremely simple GUI.

*. Mount/Unmount ISO images.

*. Manually assign the mount location.

*. Mount more than one image.

Yep... that's about it. You can install Gmount-iso in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 (perhaps in the latter version too) by entering the below command in your terminal window.

sudo apt-get install gmountiso

I don't think anyone needs a guide on how to use it :). But if you're having troubles, just throw in some comments!.

How to Create a USB, Bootable ISO image in Ubuntu?

Although the optical disk ain't gonna be dead anytime sooner ;-) yet because of the popularity of netbooks or Tablet PC type electronic gadgets and when it comes to installing Ubuntu operating system in on them, USB devices (such as pen drives for instance) is the least expensive and sometimes the only way to perform the installation.

Even if you have an Optical drive, still trying a GNU/Linux liveCD on a USB drive is the best option in my opinion when compared with a original method of burning it into a CD/DVD because there are few advantages.


1. They're noiseless!:

Well, if you want the experience the best performance while trying the LiveCD and if you're burning a CD/DVD, then you should go for the maximum amount of Burning speed so the LiveCD/DVD will be able to perform tasks in a much speedier way.

But that'll also make it a bit noisy, don't you think?. But a USB drive is noiseless!.

2. Faster than CD/DVDs (most of the time):

Unless you have a bit older USB stick/pen-drive, most never pen drives have really higher MB output thus you'll be experiencing a much more faster LiveCD "experience" in comparison with the CD/DVD method. Although not at its best, this will also help you to get a better idea of the actual (close) performance of the OS it self.

But as said, this might not always be the case since SATA or SSD drives are a hell lot faster than most of the USB drives nonetheless :).

Anyhow, in that sense, if you have already installed Ubuntu in your Netbook for instance, but wondering how to create/burn the recently downloaded never version of the Ubuntu ISO image into your USB disk... did you know that Ubuntu comes pre-installed an application called "Usb-Creator" (which is basically a GTK front-end that uses the "usb-creator" command-line tool) that lets us does exactly that!.

Main features...

*. As said, it's a default app thus if you're running a never version of Ubuntu, this you don't have to manually install it (comes pre-installed in Ubuntu 8.10 and above).

*. Lets you burn Ubuntu ISO images to any USB media. Although I'm not sure but you might also be able to use a different GNU/Linux (other than Ubuntu) with it too... but not sure though.

*. Save your documents: Unlike with a LiveCD, with a USB disk, by using this tools we can manually assign how much of MB to be reserved for saving our documents that we create while using the Live Ubuntu OS which we can retract at a later time. Again this is impossible with a LiveCD.

Requirements...

*. You must have an Ubuntu version 8.10 or above.

*. At last 1GB of free space.

*. The image has to the Ubuntu desktop edition (which is the most commonly downloaded one anyhow).

As said, to launch this, you first need a Computer that's already have Ubuntu installed.

Then log-into your desktop and put an insert an empty USB disk to your computer. Then press "Alt" + "F2" keys and put the below command and press the enter key. 

usb-creator-gtk

1. Now, this should open up a window similar to the below one. From the GUI, under "Source disk image...", open your ISO image by navigating to the location OR if you have an Optical drive with a LiveCD already loaded, this it'll display it too and let you burn the content of that LiveCD directly to the USB disk as well.

3. As with my screenshot, if you found that the options to manually enter documents space is disabled, that's because (in my case) I don't have at least 1GB of space left.

4. So in that case, backup all your data and then simply press the "Erase DISK" button to remove all your data on the USB disk (warning: this will remove all of the current data on the USB drive!).

And then you should be able manually assign the space for your documents data OR completely disable that function by clicking on the "Discarded on shutdown, unless you save them elsewhere" check mark. 

5. After making all the changes, just press "Make Startup Disk" button and the Usb-Creator should automatically "burn" the Ubuntu ISO desktop image to your USB disk!.

Well, that's about it. Before booting using the USB disk, make sure you've setup the BIOS to use USB as the default boot-device location (I know you knew that but just in case :D). Good luck.

Startup-Manager: A Utility to Edit GRUB Boot-loader related Options Easily in Ubuntu

Startup-Manager is a graphical tool that's written in the GTK+ toolkit which was developed for letting the users of Debian GNU/Linux OS to easily edit few "boot-related" options such as GRUB menu delay, Splash screen, other security related settings, etc.

But since Ubuntu is based on the awesome Debian ;-), SturtupManager can also be installed and used to edit few of those settings in Ubuntu as well. The reason I said, "few of those settings" is because, as you can see with the below screenshots, the first one is the original application image running in Debian with lots of settings (tabs) but the second one is from my Ubuntu 11.04 Laptop and has only two tabs thus fewer options than in Debian.

It's running in Debian

As you can see, somewhat "reduced" under Ubuntu...

But still, even though it's a bit "restricted" under Ubuntu, if you want to do things like...

*. Choose the default selected menu in GRUB boot-loader.

*. Change GRUB boot-loader's resolution and color depths such as 8/16 and 24 bits (although Ubuntu uses a bit ugly GRUB loader theme, without any background at all, I don't think changing the color-depth is gonna help :D).

*. Change time-out in seconds.

*. Enable/disable boot-splash (once enabled, this will display a splash screen after the default Ubuntu boot-logo is closed and just before loading the GDM log-in window).

*. Enable/disable boot-text (I don't think this applies to the recent versions of Ubuntu since they all come with text outputs disabled while booting by default).

*. Create a boot-able Floppy "image" (accessed via the "advanced" tab):

This is hardly ever used by computer users these days, since the Floppy-disk drive is a hardware that's almost dead. Although in the "not that long ago" past :), creating a Floppy image was quite heavily used in case of your Boot-loader was corrupted or something bad happens to it, etc.

Well that's about it folks. You can install startup-manager in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

Once installed, press "Alt" + "F2" keys on your keyboard and use the below command to launch it.

startupmanager

Although it can be a bit tempting but I humble suggest you not to enable the "splash screen", not because it'll do any bad to the booting process, but having it disabled (Ubuntu come with it disabled by default) it should help to speed-up the boot-up times, just a little bit though :).

Anyhow, it's your choice mate!. Good luck.

How to Install GIMP 2.7 in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04?

Without A doubt, GIMP is one of the best raster image editors for GNU/Linux (also available for other operating system such as MS Windows and Mac OSX, etc as well).

It also has quite a history with GNU/Linux too, especially with the Gnome desktop since, if I'm not mistaken, GTK toolkit (which is the building block of Gnome desktop interface) was actually designed for the purpose of creating the GIMP at the first place.

Although apart from its popularity, few years ago, Ubuntu developers decided to remove it from the official CD ISO image (I guess because most of the users didn't use it), so if you want GIMP in Ubuntu, then we all gotta install it manually these days nonetheless.

Anyhow, few days ago the GIMP team announced the official availability of the GIMP 2.7.3. But remember, this is actually not a stable release but only a "unstable development" release since the next stable release of GIMP is the upcoming version 2.8. According to the developers, GIMP 2.7 unstable series in general does bring some major UI features + improvements but to quote their own words...

"A lot of new features are incomplete and some things may even be completely broken...", there, I warned you :)...

The new "loading-logo" (I just had to post it :D)...

But still, if you work quite heavy with GIMP and want the all new features available, well then, you might wanna give a try at the GIMP 2.7 nonetheless! :).

Main features...

The default & the usual "dock" mode...

*. Hide or merge the "Docks" into a since window (which I really like):

To be honest, I actually don't use GIMP that much but I do use it from time to time for simple tasks (this blog's ugly logo was created using it, although GIMP had nothing to with it being so ugly :D) and I used the version 2.5 the last time I used it.

Therefore I can't point out all the recent changes and whether they were actually introduced in a bit earlier version. But the rest assured, I like the new merged window which helps both navigation + reminds a bit of the Adobe ... ;-).

The "merged" window, I just love it!...

*. Tools that are rendered on the canvas window are now done via Cairo which "draws" smoother (+anti-aliased) graphics UI.  

*. Did you also noticed that the docks + canvas now has a background of the GIMP "fox" which is another feature. 

*. Easily add/remove color tools, tool-bars, palettes or other whatnots as "docks" via: "Window" -> "Dockable Dialogs" from the main menu-bar.

*. New transparent "Add-Text" dialog is also pretty cool.

I'm pretty sure the transparency of the text-toolbar is also due to the Cairo (an advanced 2D graphics library) rendering ...

Unlike in the past we can make the text Bold/Italic, change font type and size, etc via using the tool-bar rather than using the "left-dock" filled with graphics tools, which was the case in the past. This is a good thing since this should help to increase the productivity.

*. Tag your tools/docks:

For instance, if you have manually added a lot of docks filled with different tools, now we can "tag" them which helps to easily hide/filter out the ones that we don't want thanks to this feature.

*. New GEGL (another graphic library) operation widget for scaling, blur, add drop-shadow, change colors + huge list of other ability for the images.

Just a fraction of the features...

*. A Cairo based PDF importer.

*. A web-page plug-in that lets you render any web page into an image using the Webkit browser engine.

*. If you use a Tablet-PC with GIMP, then you'll love to hear that the developers have added a totally new input dialog that lets you customized the sensitivity, etc according to your personal preference.

These are just a very very small list of all the new features that comes with the 2.7 (2.7.3 is the latest) version. Anyhow, you can install GIMP 2.7.3 in Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04 (might support the latter versions too) by using a PPA provided by Matt Walker. So a big thank goes to him.

As usual, open your Terminal window and use the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gimp

That's about it. Enjoy!.

How to Install GVIM (a powerful text editor) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04?

GVIM is the graphical "implementation" of the command-line text editor (an IDE actually) called the Vim. Although may not certainly be as "connected" as with the GNU EMacs, but Vim text editor also has a quite long history with GNU/Linux thus it comes pre-installed by default in almost all the GNU/Linux distributions.

But for the obvious reason of not having a GUI, Vim (which is also based on another editor called "Vi") is not that popular among the typical GNU/Linux users but other advanced boys and gals such as system administrators still use it quite often since it allows us to edit any text (+ editing programming language code files) file without having to log-into a graphical user interface to this day nonetheless.

In short, it a GUI written using the GTK+ tool-kit (aimed at Gnome desktop, but you can use it in any desktop you want), but since it uses the Vim as the "engine", you'll be getting almost all of its features in a very user-friendly graphical environment!.

Main features...

*. Change font (size, bold, italic, etc).

*. Find and replace.

*. Undo/Redo.

*. Automatic spell checking.

*. Open multiple windows by splitting the window by horizontal or vertically.

*. A "file explorer" of its own which lets you locate and load files to the window for editing.

The "command-line" type, file explorer to the left...

*. Line numbering support.

*. Text wrap.

*. Send to print... are among the features that interests the standard users.

As mentioned, Vim is actually a programmer friendly text editor, thus GVIM also lets you do other things like Syntax editing, set compilers, "Make" files (compiling), etc which are again, not that useful for the usual users.

You can install GVIM in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install vim-gtk

But, just like with GNU/Emacs, this is not for everyone. For instance, if you enter its settings window, then almost all the settings are activated using commands! rather than graphical tools.

But still, if you usually deal with a lot of Syntax editing or HTML/XML editing... then GVIM is a fast and feature-rich front-end to the original Vim "engine" nonetheless.

But as a final verdict, in my humble opinion, if you're looking for something to replace the Gedit type text editor for instance, then you should have a look at something like the Leafpad or Mousepad or even the awesome FocusWriter will certainly suite rather than the GVIM. 

How to Install Geany (text editor & a basic IDE) in Ubuntu?

If you're looking for a powerful, features rich text editor, then Geany is an excellent application. Yes it's a text editor, but after installing it and seeing its features + according to her developers, it's actually more than just a text editor. It's a basic IDE (integrated develop environment) that can be used to edit/create and compile programming codes, so it's more of an "editor" for programmers.

But because it requires very little space (about 2MB of downloading size!) and has a lot of features aimed at editing text entries... if you're looking for a powerful text editor, then heck ya!, give Geany a try... because she deserves it! :).

Main features...

*. Change font size, type, etc.

*. Wrap text.

*. Show/Hide line numbers.

*. Find, find and replace.

*. HTML/XML tag auto-closing.

*. Word count  (one of my favorite features).

*. Add/Remove comments.

*. Zoom in-out, full screen view.

*. Supports plugins.

*. Date/Time insert... are just a fraction of its features to mention.

Although as said, it has a lot other programmer related functions such as compile, make, command-line output, execute, set file-type according to your programming language (C/C++, Java, Pascal, Fortran...), etc type features but since it's beyond the scope of this post and since I ain't a programmer, it's best to stick with what I know :D.

It has heck of a "preferences" window... :)

Anyhow, you can install Geany in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 (perhaps in other older versions too) by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install geany

It will be available via the "Programming" sub menu in Main applications menu in Gnome classic or just press "Alt" + "F2" and put the below command into the box and press enter.

geany

That's it. But as you can see, if you're a professional writer who's looking for a hassle-free professional text editor, then I think you'd better end-up with something like the Pyroom (awesome) or Focus writer. Either way, it's your choice mate!. Good luck :). 

gTweakUI: A Utility for Accessing few "Advanced" Settings in Gnome 2.0!

gTweakUI actually is a graphical front-end that lets us access some of the Gsettings. If you're a bit new to this, then Gconf-editor/Gsettings is the now "old" (it's being replaced by a never version called "Dconf") Gnome desktop's settings editor/manager by using which we can tweak few of the Gnome 2.0 "behavior" :).

So this won't work in Unity right?

No actually. As most knows, Unity is still a new desktop module that follows a different philosophy but yet it uses a lot of Gnome's applications. For instance Nautilus is still the file manager in Unity + it uses the Gconf-editor for configuring desktop settings. So these settings do work in Unity too.

Anyway, gTweakUI is a much more simple utility that's focused on letting us editing few of the settings of chosen apps such as Nautilus, Galeon (a simple web browser), Gnome session and Gnome Menu related options.

Main features...

*. It comes with 4 separate front-ends (for accessing the above mentioned application settings).

1. gTweakUI Nautilus: 

This is the one I like the most and is the most useful one to me :). It lets you, Enable/disable "always use browser mode", show/hide computer/home/trash icons on desktop and rename the "Computer" icon label.

The "Computer" name is changed :)...

Also there is a setting called "Use Nautilus to draw desktop". I'm not sure if this is true to all the OS designs, but in GNU/Linux, almost all the desktops use their default file manager as the desktop manager (the "desktop" is actually a folder that's managed by the file manager) . So if your file manager crashes, then you'll also loose your desktop.

Anyhow, you remove the "check mark" then don't worry, your desktop won't crash :) but it'll actually disable the "desktop" (including both keyboard and mouse functions such as right-click menu, etc) related functions.

So the desktop will just sit there staring at you but you simply won't be able to do anything on it. Although I don't understand the usability of it yet you can do that using GTweakUI nonetheless (perhaps it adds a bit of a stability, I dunno).

2. gTweakUI Galeon:

As said, this lets you tweak few settings of the Galeon web browser (if you use it).

3. gTweakUI Menus:

Lets you configure 3 menus related settings such as make the de-attachable, change menu accelerators, etc.

4. gTweakUI Session:

Although Ubuntu comes with the default Gnome splash greeter disabled (helps to speed up things a bit) but even though with this you can enable it manually still it didn't work in my Laptop, enable/disable log-out menu and save desktop session (note: I'm not sure it's good thing to use this to save Unity desktop related settings, after all it is a bit different :). But you can certainly use it for Gnome classic nonetheless).

You can install gtweakui in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install gtweakui

In Gnome classic desktop you can launch the 4 separate "portions" from: "System" menu in the main desktop menu. OR just put the below 4 commands after pressing "Alt" + "F2" which should launch the appropriate configuration window. 

gtweakui-galeon

gtweakui-session

gtweakui-nautilus

gtweakui-menus

Yup that's about it.

How to Install Transcoder (video converter) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Not that long ago, just forget about converting, but heck, even the playback of multimedia files were a daunting task in GNU/Linux. Although this has nothing to do with developers skills :) but as everyone knows, since most of the codecs are proprietary ones... GNU/Linux was always a bit "shy" on her support for those.

But as the time passed on... thanks to some hard work of many developers now we have not just players but a whole bunch of multimedia frameworks (Phonon, Gstreamer, etc) which are sometimes decodes the proprietary codes, even efficiently than their official decoders!.

Okay, before I go off topic let me start the post right away :D. Transcoder is a GTK+ built GUI front-end that uses the ffmpeg multimedia library that lets you convert a huge list of multimedia files (both proprietary and open-source) with ease!.

Main features...

*. A simple GUI that looks clean and professional.

*. Supports multiple codecs (both audio and video) such as: Theora, H.264, Xvid, MPEG1/2, FLV, Vp8, AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Amr, direct stream copy (means copy the audio/video content to a new container without encoding) etc.

*. Change video resolutions.

*. Change video and audio bi-trate according to your preference.

*. Change frame-rate and aspect ratio.

*. Audio volume Gain, sample rate and channels.

*. Embed subtitles.

*. Add/manage a lit of multimedia files with ease.

When you convert a file, Transcoder also gives you an option called "slower" which puts the converting process in a bit low priority so it'll still convert but you'll still be able to use other apps since the "standard" way of converting consumes almost 100% of your CPU thus slows down the PC/Laptop.

You can install Transcoder in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (might also work in 10.10 and 10.04, haven't tested it though) by first downloading the ".deb" package (supports both 32/64 bit platforms) from this Transcoder's home page.

Once the download completes, just double click on the .deb file which should open-up the Ubuntu software center. Then simply follow on screen instructions and USC will take care the rest for you :).

How to Install Guake Drop Down Terminal Emulator in Ubuntu 11.04, 10.10 and 10.4?

Although GNU/Linux has come a long way since the users had to rely on the command-line interface to interact with their PC... but still with distributions like Ubuntu for instance, we can still get a lot of things done with ease and fast by using the awesome (not always though :D) Command-line interface.

So if you deal with GNU/Linux commands, say for installing and removing applications, reseting settings to default values, to launch applications with administrative privileges, etc in daily basis, then wouldn't it be nice if we could have a bit "unconventional Terminal emulator"?

What I meant by saying "unconventional" was that, what if we had a Terminal emulator that always runs in the background and launches using a drop-down (also called top-down) window that creates less "distractions"?.

What are the benefits?

Well, personally I find it extremely easy to launch (usually using a short-cut key, which can also be set for the usual Terminal emulator that comes with your desktop too but...) but most importantly, unlike with the standard terminal emulator windows, you don't have to deal with a separate window thus you can access the GNU/Linux command-line like lightning fast and it's certainly less distracting if you usually have filled your screen with running programs or windows.

In that sense, Guake is an excellent little tool that serves the exact purpose I've mentioned in the above paragraph!.

Main Features...

*. The GUI is written in GTK+ toolkit and comes especially designed for the classic Gnom desktop but since it runs in the notification area rather than as an applet on the panels, although I haven't tested, but it should also work under the Unity desktop interface too.

See that Green icon thing with the arrow, yup that's Guake :). And you can access its "preference" window by right clicking on that ...

*. You can launch it using the "F12" keyboard short key and then Guake will open a terminal emulator (somewhat cool slider animated way) that takes about half of your screen and and displays on top of other windows.

Once you're done playing with it :), simply push the "F12" key again and it'll be "hidden" into the notification area immediately.

*. Although I said it takes half of your window, but yes you can change the window size with ease (it has a separate "preference" section for that).

*. Chane themes/colors according to your needs.

*. Open more than one Terminal windows as tabs.

The "Preferences" window...

*. Show/Hide tray icon.

*. Change transparency. 

*. Once run, it'll automatically run on each desktop start-up.

*. Notifications (notifies you about what it's up to, etc :) ).

*. Run in full-screen by using the "F11" key.

You can install Guake in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your current Terminal window :D.

sudo apt-get install guake

That's about it geeks :). Enjoy!. 

How to Install Flickr Remote Organizer (Frogr) in Ubuntu?

Flickr is a very popular, online photo sharing service that's now owned by Yahoo. Although the search engine giant Google also has their own version called Picasa which is as good as Flickr is but they're both just give us the ideal opportunity to share and show-off our talents with ease nonetheless :).  

If you use Gnome as your desktop and daily deal with Flickr then wouldn't it be nice if you could find an app that integrates directly into your Gnome desktop and lets you upload pictures to Flickr with ease?... in that case, Frogr which stands for "Flickr Remote Organizer" is a great little tool that can make things much more simpler for you :).

Main features...

*. Written in GTK+ toolkit (in fact the latest 0.6 version now supports the GTK3 tool-kit which Gnome 3 is written) thus integrates seamlessly with Gnome but you can use it in other desktops such as KDE or in other desktops as well.

*. The ability to log-in directly to Flickr using their API and upload pictures directly from the GUI (well it should!, that's the idea, right? :D).

*. Change visibility of your uploaded pictures (whether they are accessible to everyone of just "private").

*. Built it content type:

For instance, I usually upload screenshots of applications. So, since Frogr has a built in "tag" called "Screenshots" (+ "Photo" and "Other"), all I gotta do is just choose "screenshoots" and all my pictures will be categorized as "Screenshot".

*. Safety level settings (safe, moderate and restricted).

*. Build in photo releasing licenses to add with your pictures.

*. Drag and Drop support.

*. Support accessing via Proxy servers.

*. Open images via external image viewers. 

*. Edit Photo name and add descriptions (you know the usual photo tag editing).

*. Multiple Flickr account support... are among Frogr's main features to mention.

You can install Flickr Remote Organizer (or Frogr) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 or even 10.04 by first adding its official PPA. To do that, as usual use the below commands in your Terminal window.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mariospr/frogr

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install frogr

That's it. 

How to Install Potamus (music player) in Ubuntu Linux?

Potamus is a very, very simple music player designed for the GNU/Linux geeks :). Although "it says" that Potamus is an extremely fast (loading) player although while I was using it, well, it loaded fast but not that impressive because I've seen others that loads faster than Potamus even after having a lot more features in them.

Remember, Potamus in no way can replace your current music players such as Banshee, Rhythmbox, BMP, etc because with it you don't have a menu, no options whatsoever + you can't even add a folder or create and manage more than one playlist either.

But I guess that's exactly its purpose, to be as simple as possible. But again, if you want to manage a lot of music files... then THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

Main features...

*. The GUI is written in GTK+ toolkit.

*. Can play MP3, OGG Vorbis, WAV, FLAC.

*. Gap-less playback and 24-bit audio output support.

*. Supports either OSS or ALSA sound servers OR JACK out-put if you prefer enhanced, minimized latency while playback but can "create" a bit unstable environment, sometimes.

This message lets you use "Jackd" sound server with Potamus, but as you can see in the message itself, it can be unstable sometimes. So in doubt, just choose "No" (story of my life :P)...

*. Few audio channels related features. 

Well, that's about it actually. There are no album-art, Last.fm or advanced audio file data fetching (like MP3 tag editing, etc) to talk about.

But if you want a very simple looking GUI and only gonna need to be able to access very little (say 15-30) music files at a time and can cope with the fact that the only way you can add a music file is by just drag-n-drop (yikes!)... well, then just give it a try.

But please don't throw angry comments at poor me ... 'cause I did give you a "warning" ;-). Anyhow, you can install Potamus music player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install potamus

That's about it!.