Compiz 0.8.2 Fully Released

This is the first stable release of Compiz 0.8 series. This release is the first merged release of both (former) Compiz and Compiz Fusion projects, and what is newly released here is what previously was the -fusion part ; the core part was released on Sunday, March 1st. This release is the result of the 0.7 development series and is mostly a bugfix release. A fully detailed changelog is available here.

From here on Compiz will maintain the 0.8 branch, but no new features will be applied. Instead, most of work will go into the 0.9.x branch, which features a complete rewrite of core. It is not recommend that users use the 0.9.x branch as it is unstable, has a lot of regressions and is only half-complete. Compiz aim to make a 0.9.0 release once we feel that the functionality most users use is there.

The Compiz 0.8.2 tarballs are available at http://releases.compiz.org/0.8.2/.

Bugs/enhancement requests as always goes here.

New Default Wallpaper In Jaunty

Just one hour ago, there's finally a new wallpaper in Jaunty. So far the Alpha releases have been using the Intrepid wallpaper. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/ubuntu-wallpapers/0.28.2

ubuntu-wallpapers (0.28.2) jaunty; urgency=low

[ Kenneth Wimer ]
* New wallpapers for Jaunty release. (LP: #34492

[ Daniel Holbach ]
* debian/control:
- update description,
- add ${miscepends},
- updated Standards-Version,
- move python-distutils-extra, xsltproc to Build-Depends-Indep,
- use Vcs-Bzr instead of XS-*.
* debian/copyright: updated.

Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:31:54 +0100
Changed-By: Daniel Holbach
Maintainer: Ubuntu Artwork Team
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/...lpapers/0.28.2

Personally I feel that this is a step down from the two previous wallpaper (Intrepid, Hardy) - let's hope Koala will be beautiful. You'll also notice that the GDM changed today too. The Ubuntu logo is bigger and there are lines above and below the login box. Jaunty is still a work in progress.

Introducing Jokosher Audio Editor

If Audacity, Ardour, or ReZound are too muddled for your taste, try the easy and powerful Jokosher audio editor.

Jokosher is a simple and powerful multi-track studio. Jokosher provides a complete application for recording, editing, mixing and exporting audio, and has been specifically designed with usability in mind. The developers behind Jokosher have re-thought audio production at every level, and created something devilishly simple to use.

Like many open source programs, Jokosher owes its existence to user dissatisfaction: Early in 2006, the project’s founder, Jono Bacon, was looking for an open source alternative to mixers such as Cubase to produce his “LugRadio” podcast. He wanted the new program to be easy to use – and easy to learn for people without expert knowledge of audio editing. Something like Garageband for Linux. Bacon originally launched the project under the name Jonoedit. He announced the launch in his podcast and asked for developers to join the fun. The result is Jokosher


You can download Jokosher 0.11.1 for Ubuntu 9.04 or 8.10. Previous versions of Ubuntu or Debian are untested but may work if they have a recent version of GStreamer installed. Older versions of Ubuntu aren’t supported without a recent version of GStreamer.

There's also a Jokosher for Windows which is available for testing.
Source: http://www.jokosher.org/

Jaunty’s New Usplash Theme

If you somehow managed to miss todays hot topic, here it is: Jaunty’s new Usplash theme

Pushed into the Jaunty repository this morning for Ubuntu 9.04 was a new theme for USplash. This Canonical project for providing a splash screen at boot-up on Ubuntu is being replaced by Plymouth with Ubuntu 9.10 (the Karmic Koala release), but there is a new Ubuntu theme as one last hurrah. This new USplash theme has a fixed-size Ubuntu logo centered in the middle of the display and a new progress bar. From our feelings at least, this new theme looks more professional than its predecessor, but it's not exactly a complete overhaul. Below is a video of this newly-pushed theme.

A new theme should then come in the next Ubuntu development cycle once Plymouth is pushed into the Karmic repository. Plymouth is a Red Hat created project that leverages kernel mode-setting and newer Linux technologies to provide a clean, flicker-free boot experience. A few new features were also recently introduced in Plymouth.


This new theme to mark the retirement of USplash can be found in the forthcoming release of Ubuntu 9.04. For those interested in living on the bleeding edge of software, there are Plymouth packages for Ubuntu available that will work with Ubuntu 9.04 but without Intel kernel mode-setting support and with no Ubuntu theme being available.

Source: www.phoronix.com/

Experimental Update Viewer In GNOME PackageKit

Richard Hughes blogs about a new experimental update viewer in GNOME PackageKit. It looks something like this:


It’s currently called gpk-update-viewer2, and isn’t the default yet. Richard Hughes has patched Fedora rawhide to use it by default so the update can receive some early feedback and testing.

UI feedback is welcome! Some of those strings are mighty difficult to understand, for instance, my fiancée didn’t know what a production system was and Richard Hughes don’t like how the URL’s look - ideas please.

Source: http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2009/03/17/the-next-update-viewer/

QtCurve GTK Style

All of the GTK apps now match KDE4's Qt because QtCurve GTK style has been updated to have a more KDE4/Oxygen-ish look and feel. True, it doesn't fit in perfectly with Oxygen, but even though it fits a lot better than the pixmaps gtk-qt-engine would output.
QT apps are also looking very nice under Gnome in Jaunty. Good work to the developers on this :-)



Source: http://jtechinda.blogspot.com/

Want To Help "Patch The Universe" To Use Notify-Osd?

Earlier I posted news about the wiki page Mirco Müller (SlowMac) setup about notification development guidelines. In the "Development & Programming > Jaunty Jackalope Testing and Discussion" forum at ubuntuforum.org, Mirco Müller today posted information for adapting the software of your choice to correctly use the new notification system.

Quote:

Do you like the new notifications? Do you like hacking? Do you want to help out with the jaunty jackalope?

Here's your kickstart for adapting the software of your choice to correctly use the new notification system:
* notification development guidelines

If that isn't enough and you want to dive even deeper into the subject, reading these here will help:
* notification design guidelines
* notify-osd - the spec

Happy hacking!

Best regards ...
Mirco "MacSlow" Müller

Tired Of Sudo Asking For Your Password?

Tired of sudo asking for your password? Yes! This gets kind of annoying when I'm the only user of this computer - Antonino Arcud provided help.

I am tired of sudo asking for my password everytime I need to install a package with apt or aptitude. Someone could say this is the B-side of security, but not enough for me to justify it (and I’m the only user of this pc). So, even if someone could define this insane or unsafe, here there is a way to avoid that epic question.

DISCLAMER
Keep your eyes open and your fingers ready, you can make a disaster if don’t!

Now that I’ve washed my hands, let’s keep going with the stuff. The configuration’s file we need to modify is /etc/sudoers , and no, we can’t do it with gedit/kate/nano… We need to use visudo, as written in the first line of that file. So we need to open a terminal and launch sudo visudo (and, obviously, insert the password when asked). Now scroll until the line:

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
elwood ALL=(ALL) ALL
and add a new line like this: you-user localhost = command you need . For me it’s as follow

elwood localhost = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/aptitude /usr/bin/apt-get

Save and exit with ctrl+x and from next login sudo will stop prompting for the password. Other commands, if needed, can be addedd at the end of the line without writing a new rule. For other uses and more about setting this permissions just read man sudoers

Source: http://aarcudi.netsons.org/blog/?p=135

Midori: Extremely Fast and Standards-Compliant

Tom Dryer blogs about Midori. Midori is a lightweight GTK web browser which uses the popular WebKit rendering engine.


Midori seems to be stable. Because Midori uses a similar WebKit rendering engine to Apple Safari and Google Chrome, it has few problems with website compatibility. I tried a few web applications, and all of them worked fine with the exception of Google Talk in Gmail, which seems to have a layout issue with Midori.

Not only does Midori score a perfect 100/100 the acid 3 test web standards test, it beats Firefox by a significant margin in the SunSpider Javascript benchmark. Midori scored 2.8 times faster than Firefox 3 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 on my system:

1914.6ms +/- 6.2% --> Firefox 3.1 Beta 3
3082.8ms +/- 0.2% --> Firefox 3
1111.4ms +/- 1.2% --> Midori 0.1.4

A missing feature that would be nice to have on netbooks is a fullscreen mode which, like Firefox, autohides the toolbar and tabs.

Midori is available from the WebKit Team PPA for Ubuntu 9.04, 8.10, and 8.04. Follow the directions on the PPA page to add the repository, and then install Midori from the package midori (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install midori

Midori isn’t as polished or have as many features as Firefox, but it is very fast and standards-compliant. I wouldn’t use Midori as my main desktop browser yet, but it is definitely very well suited for use on a netbook.

I’m looking forward to more WebKit-based browsers becoming available and stable on Linux!

Source: http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2009/03/13/midori-extremely-fast-and-standards-compliant/

SSD Awesomeness

So the Gizmo title actually reads "24 Solid State Drives Open ALL of Microsoft Office In .5 Seconds" and sadly this test only uses Vista and Microsoft software.

Warning: This clip is a piece of Samsung marketing material.

Samsung techies linked 24 of the company's 256GB SSD drives together in a RAID with the hopes of making the fast SSD drives even faster. The system actually reaches transfer speeds of 2GBps. What's that much speed mean to you?

• All of Microsoft Office opens in .5 seconds.
• 53 programs from the test rig's Start menu open in 18 seconds.
• The complete system defrags in about 3 seconds.

Basically, we all know that hard drives are holding other components in computers back, slowing down our day to day usage. But I'll be honest in saying that I didn't things were this bad. While almost no mortal could afford to build this amazing rig, suddenly that SATA3 technology isn't looking so impressive. I wonder how fast Jaunty would boot?



Source: http://i.gizmodo.com/5166798/24-solid-state-drives-open-all-of-microsoft-office-in-5-seconds

DIY Paper Tux (vector)

I just came across this post titled "DIY paper Tux" by Geri (Gary) Druckman.
Unfortunately the image he provided in this post was in very low .jpg resolution (for printing that is), so I converted it to vector using http://vectormagic.com/ (which is fantistic!). The numbers are a little hard to read, but you can always use the original .jpg as reference. Grab the .SVG version here: http://madsrh.googlepages.com/linux_paper_model.svg

Just print it out, cut it out, glue following the numbers and VOILA! You have your own hand made cute as a button Tux!

Microsoft - Just For Fun

Normally I am opposed to Microsoft bashing, but I just couldn't resist - this poster is simply too funny.

A poster advertising Windows Vista in the Czech Republic with an error message on it, but when you get closer the error message says "Error. The installation was completed successfully"

I guess Microsoft's new slogan for Windows 7 will be "The WOW is now... no, wait a minute... NOW!"

Here's another funny one:



Anyway, to elaborate on why I am against Microsoft bashing (I know this is a dangerous topic), it all comes down to:
- If you don't like their products, don't use them.
- Any publicity is good publicity.
- Why not spent your time promoting Linux instead?

Poster source: http://www.scaryideas.com/print/2225/

Jaunty Plymouth PPA Plugin Development Tutorial

Last November we learned that Plymouth would replace USplash in Ubuntu, but the official graphical boot splash screen change wouldn't come until Ubuntu 9.10 (a.k.a. the Karmic Koala). However, for those not interested in trying out Fedora to see Red Hat's Plymouth, there is a http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6892088&postcount=83">Jaunty Plymouth PPA plugin development tutorial on the http://ubuntuforums.org/">Ubuntuforum.org posted byred_team316.

The Phoronix recently reported that new work has entered Plymouth, includes various fixes, an improved layout of the help output, and command line parsing support for the Plymouth daemon. Support was also added to Plymouth for a one-time animation helper and a simple progress sequence helper, both of which will help designers and developers construct new Plymouth boot plug-ins. In fact, Plymouth has now gained a glow plug-in. This plug-in flips through a series of images until the progress reaches 90% completion, and then at that point it runs through the series of images as an animation.

This new Plymouth work -- plus more work we anticipate ahead -- will find its way into Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.10, but it has now yet landed in this PPA for Jaunty.

Tutorial here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6892088&postcount=83

Karmic Koala Timeline

I got so inspired by Andreas Nilssons graphical representation of the GNOME Release Process that I wanted to create one for Ubuntu.
The image represents the 6 months cycle, like a timeline. I've only added actual releases and left out freezes and deadlines (perhaps I'll add that later).
I started out using Andreas Nilssons .svg image as skeleton in Inkscape (which I'm just learning), but I ended up finishing it in Adobe Illustrator.



As you can see, I tried to do more of a natur theme, opposed to Andreas Nilsson. You can see his image of the GNOME release process here...

Wallpaper update

Just made some minor changes to the wallpaper background. There's now a dark 1920x1200 version with a discreet incorporated jackalope on the wiki.

Can you spot the jackalope(s)? here...

Jaunty Countdown Banners - Again...

I've created the first set (32 images) of countdown banners for Jaunty. Everything should be working and ready. You can grab them and the JavaScript here: http://madsrh.googlepages.com/MadsRHcountdownbanner.tar.gz
JavaScript is all new to me, but I've written a new script - which I think works better than the one I grabed of Ubuntu.com.

Stéphane Vergeylen and Wolter Jolan have used javascript to dynamically modify the texte which is displayed on the banner. There is thus infinite possibility of updating the welcome text, or to animated the displayed text. See what it looks like here...
You can also grab a version of my countdown banner using this script: http://madsrh.googlepages.com/Animatedcountdown.rar.

There is no official Ubuntu countdown banner yet (I really like Thorsten Wilms suggestion), but Matthew Nuzum will soon meet with Kat Kinnie who is in charge of "corporate identity" to pick out the ones that are most promising.

LTSP LDM theme for Jaunty

As I mentioned earlier I've created a shiny new LDM login screen for Jaunty (LTSP). Kenneth Wimer forwarded the request from Stéphane Graber in this post on the Ubuntu-art mailinglist.

As you can see from the email, there's a lot of limitations when working with LDM rather than GDM:

- Positioning of all widgets is static.
- Text is black and can't be changed to another color. Careful with dark backgrounds
- Most thin clients are limited to 16bit for speed reason so be careful with gradients.
- LDM doesn't crop the background but scale it down.

I came up with a theme which I think meets all the requirements mentioned above. I'll have to emphazise that this is a re-mix of the Greenome wallpaper found at gnome-look.org. Here is what my version looks like:


Personally, I really think this works great while still fulfilling all the requirements. However I have two concerns.

1. The theme is not matching with the Jaunty desktop wallpaper - because
there is no wallpaper atm. (and I don't think there's any white/light artwork used in Ubuntu, so perhaps it stands out?)

2. As you can see on gnome-look.org, the author of Greenome wallpaper has written “by me “ under license. I’ve already contacted to author to ask permission to used, edit and publish his artwork, which has agreed to.

I really hope this will make it into Jaunty, although this is only for the thin client version and regular desktop users won't see it. Desktop users will however be looking at the new black GDM artwork.

Creating Artwork

It's been a while since I've created any artwork (wallpapers from 2008!!), but this week I've actually been very productive. Besides creating countdown banners and a shiny new LDM login screen for Jaunty (more about this later), I've been creating a desktop wallpaper.


As you can see there's a light and a dark version. Available in 1920x1200 (16:9) and 1280x1024 (4:3). Licensed under CC BY AS

Grab all four images here: http://madsrh.googlepages.com/Colors_of_Ubuntu_Wallpaper.zip

Red Hat's Plymouth Sees New Work

Not a lot of work has gone into Red Hat's Plymouth project since the release of Fedora 10, but now in the middle of the development cycle of Fedora 11 we are seeing some new work emerge. Plymouth is a boot splash program that leverages kernel mode-setting to provide a rich, flicker-free boot experience. In the past week there have been a fair number of commits to the Plymouth Git repository, which is the first time it has seen new work since early January.

The recent work to Plymouth includes various fixes, an improved layout of the help output, and command line parsing support for the Plymouth daemon. Yesterday afternoon support was added to Plymouth for a one-time animation helper and a simple progress sequence helper, both of which will help designers and developers construct new Plymouth boot plug-ins. In fact, Plymouth has now gained a glow plug-in. This plug-in flips through a series of images until the progress reaches 90% completion, and then at that point it runs through the series of images as an animation.

This new Plymouth work -- plus more work we anticipate ahead -- will find its way into Fedora 11. Canonical will also be using Plymouth as a USplash replacement starting with Ubuntu 9.10.

Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzExOA

I guess Joey was right when he called me "obsessed with Plymouth" in an earlier blogpost.

Linux based MSI's Winki

MSI formally announced at CeBIT the creation of a new internet interactive device without an operating system named Winki.

It is a small device with a large array of functions: built in web browsing, immediate communication, VOIP calls, photo searching and more common PC functions.

Winki leverages a Linux base, although MSI has simplified all installations and settings by simply connecting an onboard USB Pin-header and going through a brief set of system settings. More importantly, Winki's greatest ability is how it compares to other OS supported devices: it starts up faster, uses less electricity, will not have problems caused by virus and, best of all, and does not cost customers a penny more.

Winki also optimizes functionality by grouping together various software solutions. This suite includes Mozilla's Firefox handles web browsing, while Skype takes care VOIP phone call and other common applications so users won't have to spend a lot of time learning whole new programs. It also comes with an instant messaging (IM) software called "Pidgin", which supports up to 15 different kinds of IM accounts at the same time.

Find pictures here: http://www.engadget.com/photos/msi-winki-hands-on-its-an-instant-on-os-but-for-desktops/


Source: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=24953

What Does Plymouth Currently Look Like?

If you are wondering what the current Plymouth (available through PPA) boot experience looks like in Ubuntu, here's a short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1U0dK2HpUk

Note that no artwork has yet been added to the project, so everything looks very much like Fedora.

New Set Of Default Themes In Ubuntu

Did you ever wonder who actually uses themes like: Crux, Glider, Glossy or Mist? For Jaunty these themes will be removed in order to make room for New Wave and Dust.

Source: Launchpad

Ubuntu 9.10 Release Schedule Is Now Available

Ubuntu 9.04 will not even be out for another month and a half, but Ubuntu enthusiasts can already start getting excited for its successor, Ubuntu 9.10. Ubuntu 9.10 has been codenamed the Karmic Koala and this release from Canonical will integrate Plymouth to provide a rich kernel mode-setting experience, feature performance improvements, and contain enhancements for Ubuntu cloud computing. In time for Ubuntu 9.10 we may see the latest innovations in the Linux stack as of the Linux 2.6.31 kernel or thereabouts.

While it's a given that Ubuntu 9.10 will be released in October of 2009, the release schedule for the Karmic Koala has just been published by Canonical. The first alpha release of Ubuntu 9.10 is planned for May 14 with a total of six alpha releases before a beta release on the first of October. The final release of Ubuntu 9.10 is then planned for October 29, 2009.

The Ubuntu 9.10 release schedule with all of the important dates can be found on the Ubuntu Wiki.

Source: Michael Larabel (Phoronix)

Feature Packed Fedora

Fedora 11 is reaching an impressive number of accepted features. Beyond introducing Intel and NVIDIA kernel mode-setting, Nouveau becoming the default NVIDIA driver, and a new volume control interface, there will be a plethora of package updates. Fedora 11 will have available Xfce 4.6, GNOME 2.26, and KDE 4.2 for the desktops.

Underneath these updated desktops will be X Server 1.6, EXT4 file-system (or optionally Btrfs), the Linux 2.6.29 kernel, and GCC 4.4.

The Fedora 11 BETA should be out by the end of this month.

More feature info on: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/FeatureList


Source: Phoronix.com

Stracciatella GNOME session

Martin Pitt blogged about the availability of the "Stracciatella GNOME session", which allows users and developers to easily access an environment that is closer to the one from upstream GNOME. It still contains the Ubuntu patches, as providing packages without them is not currently feasible, but it does remove Ubuntu added components, initially the new notification system. So you will be able to choose between the “Ubuntuized” and a more “upstream-like” GNOME experience. Martin Pitt wrote a beautiful metaphor for this in his blogpost:

...I called that “stracciatella GNOME session”, after the favorite kind of ice cream which is mostly vanilla (GNOME), but with some brown chocolate chips (Ubuntu modifications) in it.

Sounds delicious Martin.

http://martinpitt.wordpress.com/
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/265

PPA For Testing Plymouth In Ubuntu

Plymouth will not be arriving in time for Jaunty, but it is currently planned to replace the Usplash in Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10). However Plymouth is now available for testing in Jaunty though PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~plymouth-dev/+archive/ppa

You'll need kernel 2.6.29 which you can get from here:

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa...e/v2.6.29-rc6/

There should be a PPA for the kernel you can add to your software sources soon, but for now this should work for testing purposes. Plymouth seems to be more CPU consuming than Usplash however, the boot time is unchanged.

Some people are hoping the Ubuntu Usplash Smooth will make it into Jaunty, but there hasn't been any sources confirming that. With Jaunty in feature-freeze, this now seems highly unlikely.