Linux Media: Dec 3, 2012

Monday, December 3, 2012

How To Enable 'Screen Keyboard' (Virtual Keyboard) Under Linux Mint 14 Nadia (Cinnamon)

New users of Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) with the Cinnamon desktop environment may find it difficult to enable the on-screen keyboard (virtual keyboard). In this tutorial, we will show you how to easily enable it using simple instructions supported by screenshots.

Getting Started

In the taskbar, click the caret icon and open Settings >> Applets:

Another window will appear, check on "Accessibility":

Close the Applets window. In the taskbar, you will notice that an icon for Accessibility is displayed, click it and enable "Screen Keyboard":

That's it!

Install MySQL Workbench 5.2.44 From PPA On Ubuntu 12.10/12.04 and Linux Mint 14/13

MySQL Workbench is a tool with GUI that allows developers to design, model, manage, and generate databases visually. It integrates under a single IDE SQL development, data modeling, server administration, database design/creation/maintenance, etc.

The latest version of MySQL Workbench is 5.2.44 which is available for many platforms. You can find the new changes and bug fixes for this latest release here. In this article, we will see how to install MySQL Workbench 5.2.44 from PPA using Olivier Berten's PPA which is supported by the following distributions:

Ubuntu 12.10/12.04
Linux Mint 14/13

MySQL Workbench Installation

Open the terminal and issue these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:olivier-berten/misc

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mysql-workbench

You can start the tool from the Unity dash or from the terminal with this command:

mysql-workbench &

How To Force Set Display Brightness On Startup Under Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/Linux Mint 14/13

In this tutorial, we will see how to force your system to set a custom brightness level each time you log in to your session under Ubuntu/Linux Mint. To make this possible, we will use xbacklight and Startup Applications. This tip is useful for users of laptops.

Getting Started

Let's first install xbacklight with this command:

sudo apt-get install xbacklight

Open "Startup Applications" and add the following details:

Name: Brightness
Command: xbacklight -set 60

Replace 60 with any brightness value of your choice (70, 80, etc.), then click Add:

On the next reboot, your system will set the selected brightness level automatically after you log in.

NOTE: This tip is workable under Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10 and Linux Mint 14/13.

Fotoxx 12.12 Allows Now To Create False Color Images - Ubuntu/Linux Mint

Fotoxx has been updated to version 12.12 which adds a new false color tool that allows users to create false-color images. A false color image is an image that have colors different from the true-colors of the image. The UI has also known some improvements and some bugs were fixed in this latest release.

As a reminder, Fotoxx is an open source photo editor that allows users to view and edit images, adjust image brightness & contrast, remove red-eyes, blur/sharpen images, rotate/resize images, etc. You can find full features here.

Fotoxx 12.12 Installation

The latest version of Fotoxx is currently not updated in the Ubuntu official repository. So, we will install it under Ubuntu/Linux Mint (12.10/12.04 and Mint 14/13) from Debian packages.

1. i386 Platform

Open the terminal and run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install dcraw ufraw libc6 libtiff4 xdg-utils libimage-exiftool-perl

cd /tmp

wget -c http://goo.gl/iPgwz -O fotoxx-12.12-i686.deb

sudo dpkg -i fotoxx-12.12-i686.deb

2. amd64 Platform

Run the following commands: