How to Install Kplayer in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.4?

Kplayer is a Qt written graphical front-end that uses the MPlayer as the playback engine. So any file that's playable via MPlayer can be played through Kplayer. But as everyone know when it comes to, even designing a "decent" GUI MPlayer just sucks like big time, so if you're looking for a graphical front-end that lets you use all the features of MPLayer and the ability to access a lot of its features, then Kplayer is a great little solution :).

I don't use KDE these days but I think that in the past Kplayer used to come as a part of the Qt/KDE desktop, so say that you've Kubuntu, then most probably you don't need to install it manually.

However apart from all those features and a beautiful GUI, if you use Ubuntu, then while installing Kplayer will take some space of your HDD since it's a part of the KDE project thus needs to download a lot of dependencies which in my case, apt-get told me that she had to download about 72MB + files in size!.

Main features...

Kplayer in KDE 4x desktop...

*. As said, it's written in Qt and has a beautiful GUI.

*. Lots of features (typical KDE, lol).

*. Playlist support.

*. Enable/Disable subtitles.

*. Direct play URL, DVD, VCD, audio CD, DVB, etc.

*. Change video contrast, saturation and hue.

*. Play/Pause/Stop/Next... you know the typical toolbar (which is also customizable thus you can enable/disable + create a tool-bar of your own).

*. Multimedia library support (handy if you have a big collection to manage).

*. Output messages that let you see the playback output and advanced codec information, etc.

*. Audio and especially video filters (de-interlace, post-processing, etc).

These are just a small list of its main features to mention. As you can see, Kplayer easily beats the Totem (the Gnome's media player) by a huge margin ;-). Anyhow, you can install Kplayer in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install kplayer

That's it. Enjoy!.

How to Install Amarok 2.4.3 "Berlin" in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 11.10?

Amarok is one of the most famous applications/portions of the Qt toolkit written KDE desktop. As promised by the developers with the recently released 2.4.2 beta1 version... it did undergo some GUI and few other major changes which was their preparation for the upcoming 2.4.3 release.

And now the developers have officially announced the availability of the Amarok 2.4.3 "Berlin"!. With this release they've decided to remove the lower "status-bar" and from now on notifications will be using that "space" which could be cool (or maybe not).

Main features...

*. Few more dynamic playlist related enhancements that were triggered in the 2.4.2 beta version such as Quiz-play bias and a new podcast integration with the Gpodder aggregator, etc.

*. Now you can use drag-n-drop to copy/move your local music collections (including inside the playlists) which was again introduced with the recent beta version but it seems that the playlist in general has been "cleaned" here and there so much more easy to understand (in their own words).

This is actually a true screenshot of 2.4.3 (too from the official site) but it's a damn shame that they've used MS Windows 7 for the screenshot rather than using GNU/Linux. So I cropped out the borders *put the angry dude here*. Man this attitude of KDE just pisses me off sometimes!...

*. Thanks to a bug-fix now Amarok geeks :) can configure individual podcast episode names.

*. Automatic scrolling in Lyrics applet.

*. The ability to  scrobble the composer as artist to Last.fm + a lot of bug fixes (such as CD ripping related, last.fm, dynamic playlists, etc) as usual.

We can install Amarok 2.4.3 "Berlin" in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the Kubuntu team's back-ports PPA, but here's the thing.

The team haven't come up with the 2.4.3 version since it's so new and only released it like few hours ago. But perhaps when you read this it maybe available. If it is available then you can install it by using the below commands.

Update: Thanks to "jepong" (see below comments) there's actually a PPA that exists created by Philip Johnson and using the we can finally install this "thing" ;-). I have replaced the original commands with this new PPA but if you want to try the official Kubuntu back-ports (they still haven't come up with it yet) then just replace the text in "Green" with the below one.

kubuntu-ppa/backports

For Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal users...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/kubuntu-backports

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install amarok

For Kubuntu 11.04 users use the below command instead.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/kubuntu-backports

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

But luckily for the Ubuntu (Kubuntu included) 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot users it seems that Amarok 2.4.3 is already in the repositories!, for the obvious reason of we're like few hours away from the official Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 release. So it'll be included in the Alpha 3 ISO image it seems.

Anyhow, if you don't daily update the existing 11.10 Alpha version then you should be able to manually install the latest version by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install amarok

As for the 11.04 users, a little patience goes a long way. I know it's hard but but... :).

Introducing "Muon" - The All New Software Manager for Kubuntu Geeks!

I remember this quote from a movie... 

"We don't wanna die because of your fu**ing arrogance!"

In a way, I think this is the reason for the KDE desktop's birth ;). At some point, those who does not like Gnome for what it is, well, they had to say that!. If you want a powerful desktop with a lot of features (which they/KDE reduced starting with the version "4", still it's totally awesome, in a way) then KDE is an excellent choice.

Anyway, Kubuntu exists for those who does not like Gnome and it is actually one of the major Linux distribution that comes with optimized for KDE. Today one of the Kubuntu developer called DarkwindDuck (David you asked for it man :P) announced an all new graphical application manager for Kubuntu users called Muon!.

To be honest I don't use Kubuntu... so I'm not quite sure how the current application manager looks in Kubuntu. If I remember correctly, it was like 3 years ago that I last tried it (while they were just about to introduce KDE4) and at that time I always kinda felt that Ubuntu's front-end for apt-get is a bit superior to Kubuntu's app.

But I'm pretty sure with the KDE4, Kubuntu dudes and dudees are totally rocking your world :P. Anyhow, the Muon comes with a simple interface but as usual, it also has a lot of features as well. It uses the same software "ratings" that the Ubuntu software center uses and displays them to your right side (see below screenshot).

And once you click on an application, then Muon will display a nice (not necessarily simplified but uncomplicated ;-) ) "overview" of that application in more details as shown below.

And as usual, it has a frond-end for the apt-get package manager (like with Ubuntu) with a lot of "traditional" information with a familiar looking GUI like dependencies, details, filter apps, etc.

As said, I don't use Kubuntu, so I haven't tested it, but if you use Kubuntu, then you can actually install Muon by using the below command!.

apt-get install muon
apt-get install muon-installer

Enjoy... take it easy now would ya, just kidding :). 

Ktorrent 4.1.1 Is Released!, How To Install it on Kubuntu 11.04 and 10.10?

There are a lot of Bittorrent clients for GNU/Linux and unlike Microsoft Windows (they'll never support "that" protocol by default) all the major desktop environments support the Bittorrent protocol. As a result, if you've installed Ubuntu 11.04 or Kubuntu, etc... then you actually don't need a dedicated client back-end.

Lot of powerful features by default... the KDE's way of doing 

"things"...

But most of the "default" applications don't usually come with a lot of features. In that case, you should try the always excellent KDE's Bittorrent client called Ktorrent. Recently they updated to the latest version called 4.1.1.

It's written in Qt hence comes with a lot of features such as protocol encryption, change upload/download speeds, optimize according to your network speed settings, etc. But most importantly, with this new update, now we can watch movies while they're being downloaded! as well.

If you use Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal then you can install Ktorrent 4.1.1 by using the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/natty
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

In Kubuntu 10.10, use the below PPA channel instead.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/maverick
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

qBittorrent, An Excellent Bittorrent Client Written in Qt

Although there are few (Ubuntu does ship with one as well) Gnome based bit-torrent clients available, but most of them offer "little features" thus they are somewhat "limited" in both features + customizations that can even help to boost your downloads a little bit as well.

So, if you're okay with running a Qt based applications on your Gnome desktop and have nothing against the excellent KDE :D, then qBittorrent is one of the best Torrent clients that you can find!. It's a cross-platform utility and can be run on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX, etc as well.

Main features...

*. Search easily - Rather than opening your web browser and entering the URL... qBittorrent lets you easily search within popular torrent tracker web-sites via its built in "search" area.

*. Update/remove tracker information.

*. UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support.

*. Bandwidth scheduler.

*. Encrypt the protocol (helps to unblock torrent file downloads which are sometimes blocked by various ISPs)... are few to name.

If you run Ubuntu 10.10 then you can install qBittorrent using the below command...

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hydr0g3n/ppa

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

Install Choqok in Ubuntu, A Twitter/Micro-Bloging App For KDE

With the help of the online social networks, micro-blogging is becoming very popular by each day. When properly used, micro-blogging is actually a great way to reach/build a huge audience online nonetheless. Anyway, if you use KDE and looking for a desktop micro-blogging client for KDE, then you should seriously consider Choqok.

Here are the main features...

*. Twitter-micro blogging supported by default.

*. Send receive messages.

*. KWallet integration.

*. Incoming messages notifications.

*. Live picture thumbnails support for services such as Twitpic, YFrog, img.ly, plixi, Twitgoo and TweetPhoto.

Intuitive configuration window... 

*. Flickr, ImageShack, Twitpic, Twitgoo, Mobypicture and Posterous... image uploading support.

*. Skype integration... are few to name.

So, if you want to install the latest builds using PPA (unofficial) in Ubuntu 10.10/11.04, then open your terminal and issue the below command...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:adilson/experimental
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install choqok