Only a few days have passed since digiKam 1.0 was released to the delight of its users, and the developers already announced that version 1.1 will be available by the end of January 2009. According to the official announcement, digiKam 1.1 will be a bugfix release to the stable 1.x series.
digiKam is a powerful, open-source photo management application for KDE 4, which has support for various image manipulation plugins, importing or exporting photos, and organising your entire photographies in collections sorted by albums.
The announcement also asks for digiKam users to submit splash screens for the next version of digiKam. From the article: "So, time has come to find the ideal splash-screens to go with it. Now is your chance to join the ranks of the precious few who have had their artwork associated with a release of digiKam!"
For compiling and installing digiKam in Ubuntu 9.10 see this post.
Battle for Wesnoth
Battle for Wesnoth is one of the most popular turn-based strategy games for Linux, if not the most popular. Completely free and open-source, it provides both singleplayer campaigns, as well as online multiplayer, hotseat or LAN support. The game takes place over various maps composed from hexes, and in each hex a unit at a time can be deployed. The player has to take advantage of various terrain types (which increase or decrease defence), use wisely the types of attack and abilities each unit has. Wesnoth currently comes with 6 factions (Loyalists, Rebels, Knalgan Alliance, Undead, Northerners and Drakes), but the add-on server has a whole bunch of custom eras and new factions.
Scripting is handled in Wesnoth by WML, the Wesnoth Markup Language, which allows for building entire scenarios and campaigns.
Wesnoth is in a continuous change, with every new release bringing more features and gameplay innovation. The current stable release is 1.6.5, but soon 1.8 will be out, and it will include new unit portraits, WML (Wesnoth Markup Language) improvements, updated campaigns and more. 1.8 will also allow the user to directly upload user-made campaigns and scenario from in-game add-ons menu.
To install Wesnoth in Ubuntu, type in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install wesnoth
SuperTux
SuperTux is a 2D jump and run Mario clone, with the difference that it uses its own maps, enemies, and the main character is... you guessed, Tux, the story taking place in Antarctica. It is licensed under the GPL and it is free of charge. SuperTux has very nice graphics, especially since it has support for software and OpenGL rendering, 26 levels and 9 types of enemies.
Except for the official website, there is also a fansite for SuperTux, with screenshots, user-made maps and a forum.
To Install SuperTux in Ubuntu, type in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install supertux
World of Padman
When it comes to Linux shooter games, there isn't only one choice. Games like Nexuiz, OpenArena or Sauerbraten were a good fit here too, but I decided upon World of Padman.
Based on the Quake 3 engine, World of Padman is a fun, cartoon-style first-person shooter with maps, weapons and characters inspired from the Padman series. It features nice, colourful graphics, popular modes like FFA, TDM or CTF, and weapons which will definitely make you laugh the first time you'll see them.
Although it is not included in the repositories, WoP can be easily installed like this:
- download the Linux installer and Linux patch installer from here
- make them executables:
chmod 755 padman.run
chmod 755 wop_patch_1_2.run
- and install both of them, padman.run (or worldofpadman.run, depending on the name of the file) first, and then wop_patch_1_2.run:
./padman.run
./wop_patch_1_2.run
Updated: Jan 2, 2010
Written in Java, RSSOwl is a powerful feed reader for Linux, with support for RSS, RDF and Atom feeds, with a lot of features and customisation options.
Licensed under the Eclipse Public License, RSSOwl includes features like:
- tabbed browsing
- three view modes: classic, vertical and newspaper
- possibility to share news to popular social networks like Twitter, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati or Delicious
- labels
- notifications
- news filters
- add-on support
- importing and exporting feeds and feed preferences
- system tray integration (via the Tools -> Preferences -> View menu)
And these features aren't all the features RSSOwl can offer.
By default, RSSOwl opens with a typical interface to feed reader applications, with the feeds list to the left and the web browser tabs to the right (classic view), but this can be changed from the View -> Layout menu. The other two view modes are Vertical View (which will split the news widget to the left and the browser to the right) and Newspaper View (which will list both the news title and the feed content in the same widget).
The 'import' function allows the user to import feeds from a file or website, but it also includes the possibility to import recommended feeds, and, more useful, feeds which match user-specified tags from pre-defined news websites, like Google or Yahoo News. I'm not sure which is the service providing these feed lists, but they are definitely useful:
The 'export' function allows not only to export feeds, but also preferences and labels.
RSSOwl also allows to search the news feeds, and it supports wildcards like ? or * for a more powerful search. The fullscreen mode (F11) is also available.
The configuration window allows to customise the internal browser, feeds (update interval, sorting, display method, when to delete old news), notifications, labels, sharing and view modes. RSSOwl can also be integrated in the system tray.
One of the minuses I could catch was that RSSOwl will fail to fetch and display feeds which contain some invalid code, although other feed readers like Akregator or Liferea show them.
Except for refusing to fetch certain feeds (which can be a big minus), RSSOwl is a complete and powerful feed application who deserves a try and easily competes with readers like Akregator or Liferea.
Official website
Install RSSOwl 2.0.1 in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic: See this article
RSSOwl is a feature-rich RSS feed reader written in Java. To install the latest release in Ubuntu 9.10, follow the instructions below:
Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
And add the following line:
deb http://packages.rssowl.org/ubuntu karmic main
Save the file (Ctrl+O), exit (Ctrl+X) and then add this repository's key to the trusted keys:
wget -q http://packages.rssowl.org/project/rene.moser.pubkey -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Update the packages list:
sudo apt-get update
And install RSSOwl:
sudo apt-get install rssowl
This is it. To remove RSSOwl from your Ubuntu box use:
sudo apt-get remove --purge rssowl
Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 was released earlier this year, on December 17 at the Adobe MAX 2009. This release comes with several new features and numerous bug fixes.
To install Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 in Ubuntu 9.10, just follow the steps below:
First, remove your existing Flash plugin. Do this depending on whether you installed Flash from the repositories or manually. If you installed Flash from the Ubuntu repositories, typing:
sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-installer
should remove your current installation of Flash. If Flash was installed manually, the plugin should be located in the ~/.mozilla/plugins directory, where ~ is the home directory. So, to remove it:
rm -f ~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
Next, download the archive for the new Flash player from here (direct link here), or alternately you can type in a terminal:
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_1_p2_linux_121709.tar.gz
Make sure the current working directory is the one where you saved the archive and uncompress it:
tar -xzf flashplayer10_1_p2_linux_121709.tar.gz
Next, create the ~/.mozilla/plugins directory (if it doesn't already exist):
mkdir -p ~/.mozilla/plugins
And copy the plugin inside it:
cp install_flash_player_10_linux/libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins
Now restart Firefox and this should be all.
Nexuiz is one of the most popular shooter games which emerged after the open-sourcing of the Quake 3 engine, featuring a fast-paced game style and several game modes, like the popular DM or CTF. Nexuiz is a free, GPL-licensed, first-person shooter developed online by the Internet-based team Alientrap, and it comes with ports for Linux, Windows and Mac.
Ever since it was launched, in May 2005, Nexuiz went through a lot of changes and evolved with every release. The 2.5 series bring many improvements, featuring new graphics, new maps and an even faster gameplay. The latest version is 2.5.2, a bug-fix release to the stable 2.5 release. To test the latest Nexuiz, download the Zip archive from the official website (direct link here), uncompress it, and then run the binary specific to your OS (the archive includes binaries for Linux, as well as Windows and Mac).
Nexuiz 2.5 offers a futuristic interface, with fast access to settings and other configuration options. One of the nice things which bumped out when configuring the keys was that Nexuiz allows for switching between fullscreen and windowed mode just by pressing a key, even if the game is running. Older versions of Nexuiz used Shift+Esc in order to open the console, but it looks like in 2.5 you can use the classic ` key.
Besides multiplayer, Nexuiz also includes support for bots and a singleplayer campaign. It comes with 15 player models, 13 weapons and 24 official maps, music and original character and weapon sounds.
Nexuiz will run smoothly on older machines at 1024x768, but you will need a decent video card to enjoy it on higher resolutions at a steady framerate. However, lowering texture details and particle details will help if you have an older video card and CPU.
Overall, I think Alientrap is doing a great job by continuously developing this game, which became one of the favourite FPS games for Linux users, together with other well-known names like OpenArena or Tremulous. Read more...
Following the most popular TuxArena articles in 2009 post, here are the 10 most popular tips published here at TuxArena in 2009:
1. Install Adobe Flash Player 10 in Debian (for 32-bit architecture only)
A tutorial on how to manually install Flash Player in Debian Lenny.
2. Split APE Files Using a CUE File
A tutorial which shows how to manipulate APE (Monkey's Audio) files, and how to split them depending on the info found in a CUE file.
3. Convert MKV to AVI using mencoder
This is a short tip which has a one-liner showing how to convert MKV-encoded videos to xvid.
4. Easily Close a Port in Linux
Tip which shows how to close ports in Linux.
5. Convert OGV to FLV Using ffmpeg
How to convert OGV (the free Theora video format) to Flash Video.
6. Use lm-sensors to Monitor Your Hardware
Tutorial on how to install and use the lm-sensors utility to monitor CPU temperature, voltages and more.
7. Split FLAC or WAV Files Using a CUE File
Tutorial which shows how to use cuebreakpoints and shnsplit tools to split FLAC or WAV when a CUE file is available.
8. Easily Start a Dedicated Urban Terror Server
How to start a dedicated server for the popular Urban Terror game.
9. Convert AC3 to WAV Using MPlayer
One-liner on how to convert AC3 audio to WAV with mplayer.
10. Make a Memory Usage Script
Tutorial which shows a practical Bash script for memory usage.
This is a short tutorial explaining how to post to Twitter using command-line in Linux, without needing to even open up your web browser.
First, install the curl package:
sudo apt-get install curl
Next, create a script anywhere in your $PATH, for example twitter.sh inside ~/bin, where ~ is your home directory (make sure ~/bin is included in your $PATH variable, in case echo $PATH doesn't return it, edit ~/.bashrc and add a line like this: export PATH=/home/USER/bin/:$PATH).
The script twitter.sh should contain the following:
#!/bin/bash
curl -u USER:PASS -d status="$*" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml > /dev/null
echo "Message sent!"
Replace USER and PASS with your Twitter username and password, and then make the script executable:
chmod 755 ~/bin/twitter.sh
And now test it:
twitter.sh Hello, world! This is a test.
So just use it as:
twitter.sh YOUR MESSAGE
This should be all. Have a look at the screenshots below:
Here's a list of 10 commands which may come handy when using the command line in Linux:
Search for all files modified in the last N days containing a specific text in their name
find DIR -mtime -N -name "*TEXT*"
For example:
find ~ -mtime -5 -name "*log*"
Will display all the files modified in the past 5 days which include the text 'log' in their filename.
Determine which processes use the most memory
ps aux | sort -nk 4 | tail
Will show the first 10 processes which use the most memory, using ascendant sorting. Alternately:
ps aux | sort -nrk 4 | head
Will show the first 10 processes using most memory, using descendent sorting.
Display the username which is currently logged in
whoami
Show date using format modifiers
date +"%H:%M:%S"
Will output time in format HOUR:MINUTE:SECOND. You can use any format specifiers explained in the man page. The double quotes are required in case you need to use spaces.
Show info about a specific user
finger $USER
Show disk usage separately for each partition
df -h
The -h switch will tell df to show human-readable sizes (KB, MB and GB when it is the case)
df -B 1K
Will show sizes in kilobytes.
Show which modules are loaded
lsmod
Add or remove a module to/from the Linux kernel
Insert a module:
modprobe MODULE
Remove a module:
modprobe -r MODULE
Search for a file using locate
locate FILENAME
Will search the locate database (created with updatedb) for any path or file which contains FILENAME.
Change the encoding of a text file
iconv -f INITIAL_ENCODING -t DESIRED_ENCODING filename
For example:
iconv -f ISO-8859-16 -t UTF-8 myfile.txt
Will change the encoding of myfile.txt from ISO-8859-16 (Romanian) to UTF-8.
Since it's Christmas and 2010 is knocking at the door, it's time to put up a round-up of the most popular articles published at TuxArena in 2009. This post is divided in two parts: a list of most popular tutorials and a list of most popular reviews (selected exclusively by number of views according to Google Analytics, from which I made a selection). Of course, it's not 100% accurate, considering some articles were published earlier this year (thus having more page views than newer articles), but it is, however, a good way to choose the articles without making a subjective, by-hand selection.
In 2009, two of TuxArena articles hit Digg.com (3 Ways to Record Your Linux Desktop and Top 10 KDE4 Applications).
Most popular tutorials
How-To: Install Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
3 Ways to Install Latest Wine in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
3 Ways to Record Your Linux Desktop
3 Tweaks to Speed Up Firefox 3 and Free Memory
4 Ways to Create CD/DVD ISO Images in Ubuntu
How-To: Install KDE 4.3 in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.04
How-To: Compile and Install XMMS in Ubuntu 9.04
How-To: Install VLC 1.0 from the Ubuntu PPA Repository
How-To: Install OpenOffice.org 3.1 in Debian Lenny
6 Bash Productivity Tips
Most popular reviews
Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (Alpha 4) Overview & Screenshots
An Early Look at Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala - Overview & Screenshots
Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Overview & Screenshots
Top 10 Applications to Install After Installing Ubuntu
10 File Managers for Linux
KDE 4.3 RC1 in Kubuntu 9.04 - Overview & Screenshots
Top 10 KDE4 Applications
First-Person Shooter Games for Linux III: Urban Terror
10 Essential Applications Included in Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
5 Best Applications to Rip and Transcode DVDs in Linux
Indent is a powerful application developed by the GNU project, designed to format and change the appearance of C code. Indent will insert or delete whitespace characters to make your C code easier to read. It supports several code styles, including:
- GNU indent style (which is the default, or indent -gnu)
- Kernighan & Ritchie indent style (invoked with indent -kr)
- original Berkeley indent style (invoked with indent -orig)
Thus, to indent a C source file using the Kernighan & Ritchie style, one would use:
indent -kr source.c
Have a look at the screenshots below:
Notice that indent is developed to work with C code, not C++; also, it will try to cope with invalid code too. Read more...
The popular web publishing platform reached today version 2.9 (see official announcement) and it comes with notable new features and a whole bunch of bug fixes. WordPress is one of the most popular, open-source platforms for blogging, and also the platform of choice for many people who need a complete content management system.
The highlights of this release, codenamed 'Carmen', include:
- global undo (or 'trash') feature, which eliminates the messages asking if you want to delete each comment or post, and instead sends those into the trash
- a built-in image editor which offers basic image manipulation functions, like edit, crop, rotate, flip or image scaling
- batch plugin updates, which allows for updating several plugins at once, and also verify if the plugins are compatible with new WordPress releases
- video embeds only by pasting a URL which will turn into embed code, with support for YouTube, Daily Motion and Google Video to mention a few
WordPress 2.9 also comes with a large number of many smaller features and bug fixes.
There is a huge number of audio players for GNOME which strive to offer as many features as possible, with Banshee, Exaile or Rhythmbox currently being the most popular for this matter. Since features like easy access to lyrics, Wikipedia information or collection management are a must-have for a complex audio player, it looks like Listen makes no exception regarding those either.
The version I'm going to talk about in this review is the latest, 0.6.3, which was released on July 30, 2009.
Listen is written in Python using the GTK toolkit, and it features a simple and organised interface, providing fast access to information related to the currently playing song, like lyrics, Wikipedia artist's page, concerts and Last.fm info.
The library is divided into five sections:
- Music, which will show available artists and albums
- Podcast, for managing and listening to podcasts
- Last.fm Station, allowing you to listen to Last.fm radio
- Filesystem, a file browser
- Webradio, a collection of Internet radio stations
Listen offers drag-and-drop support, and besides the usual sorting, the playlist font can also be changed. One of the minuses is that the playlist cannot be sorted by full path or filename.
Among the notable features of Listen are: Last.fm song submission, support for podcasts, Internet radio, OSD (on-screen display), Wikipedia info and lyrics fetching, upcoming concerts, cover fetching (either from the local directory or from Amazon.com), tags lookup, tag editing, support for plugins, song queue, system tray integration, visualizations. Most of these come with the bundled plugins.
An interesting option is the ability to set custom web service filters, which will be skipped when performing web queries. For example, you can add here information which you don't want to be searched for, like cd 1, cd 2 etc.
Listen also provides no fewer than four view modes: small, normal, full display and party mode, and the latter is practically a fullscreen mode.
Regarding plugins, Listen comes by default with several useful ones, like:
- a 10-band equalizer
- PidginStatus, which will show the song you're listening to as your Pidgin status message
- a visualization plugin
- Last.fm events, to retrieve upcoming concerts for a band from Last.fm
- Jamendo and Magnatune integration
Installation in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
There is a PPA available for the latest Listen release, and to use it add the following two lines inside your /etc/apt/sources.list file:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/listen-devel/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/listen-devel/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
Next, add the trusted key for this PPA:
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AA832887
Update the packages list:
sudo apt-get update
And install Listen:
sudo apt-get install listen
Official website
Listen on Launchpad Read more...
Although GRUB 2 replaced the older GRUB 0.9x (currently known as 'GRUB Legacy'), the latter still is the default boot loader on some distributions, like Debian 5.0 for example.
The splash screen for GRUB Legacy is an XPM image which appears as a background when you select which OS to boot. For those who are tired of the default splash screen, here is a short tutorial on how to change it.
First, download some splash screens from here (or Google some). Each splash screen comes as an XPM image archived as a Gzip file. Once you downloaded the desired splash images, copy them inside the /boot/ directory, or create symbolic links in this directory which will point to the actual location of the files. For example, if you downloaded the file tenerife.xpm.gz inside your home directory, you can type as root (and replace USER with the actual username):
cp /home/USER/tenerife.xpm.gz /boot/
Or, to create a symbolic link to it:
ln -s /home/USER/tenerife.xpm.gz /boot/grub/tenerife.xpm.gz
In Ubuntu (pre-Karmic releases, since Karmic uses GRUB 2 by default), use one of those, with the user password:
sudo cp ~/tenerife.xpm.gz /boot/grub/
Or:
sudo ln -s ~/tenerife.xpm.gz /boot/grub/tenerife.xpm.gz
The next step is to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, and tell it to use the newly downloaded splash image. For this, add a line which looks like this inside the file mentioned earlier (don't forget to edit it with root privileges):
splashimage (hd0,0)/boot/tenerife.xpm.gz
This will tell GRUB to search for the file tenerife.xpm.gz on the first partition of the first hard drive. Save the file and restart the computer.
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