Install Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Theme For Ubuntu 12.04/Linux Mint 13

GtkDroid is a new GTK3 theme inspired by the new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS. The theme is compatible with both Unity and Gnome Shell. In this tutorial we will help you install it under Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10 and Linux Mint 13 or older. Here is a screenshot of GtkDroid under Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin):

GtkDroid Installation

The theme is available in two different styles (dark & light), you can install them all with these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/gtk3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtkdroid

To enable the default style, run these commands:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Jellybean-GTK'


gconftool-2 --set --type string /apps/metacity/general/theme 'Jellybean-GTK'

To enable the light version of GtkDroid, run these commands:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme 'Jellybean-GTK-Light'


gconftool-2 --set --type string /apps/metacity/general/theme 'Jellybean-GTK-Light'

Note: Icon theme used with GtkDroid is Faenza.

Theme Home Page

How to permanently disable menubar in Gnome Terminal

Normally, when you right click on the Gnome terminal, there will be the option to turn on/ off the Menubar. When you click on this option, the menubar in the Gnome terminal will disappear.

However, if you close this terminal and start another one, the menubar will appear again and you will have to turn it off once more.

In this article, I will show you how to permanently disable this menubar.

If you use Linux Mint MATE, just hit Alt + F2 then type "mateconf-editor" to open the configuration window. After that, go to apps > mate-terminal > profiles > Default then uncheck the "default_show_menubar" option and everything is done:

If you are using Ubuntu or Linux Mint Cinnamon, you will have to install gconf-editor first, just open the terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt-get install gconf-editor

After that, hit Alt + F2 and typ "gconf-editor" to open the Configuration Editor window and go to apps > gnome-terminal > profiles > Default and uncheck the "default_show_menubar" just like what you would do in MATE. And next time you open the Gnome terminal, you wont see the menubar again.

Kickstarter Indie Bundle Brings Games to Linux

The Kickstarter initiative has helped a lot of developers to find funding for their projects, and now, a group of indie game developers are asking for the help of the community once again.

The developers have gathered in a project called Kickstarter Indie Bundle. They are asking for money to develop a total of nine game, but only four of those will make it to Linux.

The first game is Metagolf, a platform action game for 1 to 4 players. It’s like Mini-Golf but crazier since everyone is playing at the same time with the same golf ball.

The second game is called Ensign-1, a space combat game that aims to give the player limitless freedom. You aren't limited to merely piloting a single fighter throughout the course of battle. You can dock and board frigates, capital ships, and even asteroid bases.

The third game is Christmas Magic, a unique combination of a story book and a game for the whole family or for short breaks from work.

The forth and last one is TRI (only possible for Linux, I'm not sure the developers will have the money to port it). The game is a freeform 3D platformer with environmental puzzles inspired by games like Portal, Thief, and Zelda.

You can find more details about the game on the official Kickstarter website.

KDE Software Compilation 4.9 Officially Released

After six month of hard work, the KDE Software Compilation 4.9 is finally here, as announced by KDE e.V. and the developers behind the KDE project a few minutes ago, August 1st.

KDE Software Compilation 4.9 brings beautiful new features, lots of performance improvements, as well as various software updates.

Highlights of KDE Software Compilation 4.9:

• Improved Dolphin file manager with back/forward buttons and in-line file renaming;
• Improve Konsole terminal app with text selection using KDE Web Shortcuts;
• Improved KWin window manager;
• Deep integration of Activities throughout the Workspaces;
• Okular can now store and print annotations with PDF documents;
• Improved bookmarking, search, and text selection in Okular ;
• Added Last.fm support in Juk (includes scrobbling, cover-fetching and MPRIS2 support);
• Added support to group all off-line users in Kopete;
• Improved Kontact;
• Added Pairs, a new memory game;
• Added Rocs, a graph theory app;
• Improved Kstars;
• Upgraded KDE Games;
• Qt Quick improvements;
• Faster access of network shares (including NFS, SSHFS and Samba);
• Faster desktop search by fixed many annoying bugs in Soprano and Nepomuk;
• Stability and performance improvements.

For more details, please check the official announcement for KDE Software Compilation 4.9. Also, check out the screenshots attached below!

 Download KDE Software Compilation 4.9.0

Fedora 18 Adopts ownCloud

ownCloud, the popular open source enterprise file sync and share project, will be available on Fedora 18, completing an impressive list of other important Linux distributions.

The developers of ownCloud think that Ubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE will have a better way of securing, syncing, and sharing their data across platforms.

“The (Fedora) Engineering Steering Committee has also signed off … a plan to add the client and server software for the ownCloud cloud platform; this allows users to host and access files and personal data, such as addresses and calendar entries, from a range of devices.”

ownCloud 4 can now mount external files systems, including Dropbox, FTP and Google Drive, enabling users to have all their file sync and share tools in a single ownCloud interface.

The community edition of ownCloud now has over 450,000 users, and it’s open source.

Install Google Chrome 21 Stable On Ubuntu 12.04/Linux Mint 13

Google has recently made available the stable version of Chrome 21 which comes with more new features and improvements especially for developers and gamers. Here are some of the features that you will find in this latest release:

• getUserMedia JavaScript API Support (allows applications to access your webcam/microphone without using additional plugins)
• HTML 5 getUserMedia API Support
• Better Integration with Google Cloud Print 
• Better support for Gamepad Javascript API 

You can have more information in this video:

 

 If you want to install Google Chrome 21 in Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10 or Linux Mint 13 or older, you can either download the appropriate Debian package from here and install it with Ubuntu Software Center, or install the web browser via your terminal as follows:

32-bit/i386 systems:

cd /tmp && wget -O google-chrome_i386.deb http://goo.gl/itppy


sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb

64-bit/amd64 systems:

cd /tmp && wget -O google-chrome_amd64.deb http://goo.gl/iXDWk


sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb

How to install Ubuntu server 12.04

A linux hosting server is the best choice for you if you are planning to build a web hosting company, small business servers, or simply host your own website at home, since linux  dedicated servers have been known to be extremely reliable and rarely crashes so there's less downtime. Among Linux distros, Ubuntu is very well known and well supported. Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS Precise pangolin has been released announced by canonical in London April 26th 2012 and now support for five years. in addition, Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin now includes support for the Xen Hypervisor (version 4.1.2), Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) packages and XCP OpenStack plug-ins.

I just found a nice,well written article  with a lot of screenshots about how to install Ubuntu server 12.04 LTS on Ubuntuguideserver.com and I believe it will be very helpful for you.

Read the full article at Ubuntuserverguide.com

The Linux Foundation Joined by Antelink, Calxeda and Reaktor

The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, has announced that three new companies are joining the organization: Antelink, Calxeda and Reaktor.

The organization has garnered some important members this year, including Samsung and Nvidia, and now they have managed to get another three prominent members.

The new parters for The Linux Foundation are Antelink, a company that specializes in continuous file and component detection for the management and governance of open source software, Calxeda, a company that brings performance density to the data center with an attractive power footprint by leveraging ultra-low-power processors, and Reaktor, a company that offers software services and consulting.

According to The Linux Foundation, Linux’s success can be attributed, in large part, to the collaborative development model, a combined work of more than 8,000 developers and 800 companies that is helping to advance the operating system faster than any other platform on the planet.

MATE 1.4 Desktop Environment Released

The development team behind the MATE desktop environment proudly announced that the stable 1.4 version of the popular project is now available for download and upgrade.

MATE 1.4 is a fork of GNOME 2, providing a traditional desktop environment for Linux operating systems and low-end machines.

Highlights of MATE 1.4:

· mate-keyring and libmatekeyring backends have been updated and now integrated properly;
· caja-dropbox package is now available;
· New themes have been added to the mate-notification-daemon;
· indicator-applet-session has been removed;
· File sharing ca now be accessed via bluetooth;
· mate-icon-theme-faenza has been added;
· nyancat has been removed from the mate-desktop about dialog;
· mate-screensaver now supports GDM user switching;
· Numerous bug fixes.

A complete list of changes and update can be found in the official announcement.

Download MATE 1.4

Google Owns SPARROW

Google has recently acquired Apple’s iOS and OS X email client Sparrow which is considered to be a big news from Google’s perspective as its own email client g-mail had performed roughly on mobile devices compared to Apples Sparrow. Now after this acquisition, how Google will play around this utility is yet to be seen.

 

On the other end, Sparrows CEO Dom Leca says, “We will be joining Google’s Gmail team “to accomplish a bigger vision – one that we think we can better achieve with Google.” This seems both the respective companies are cranked up about this merger as Sparrow team further affirmed that its app will continue to be available on apple devices for time being only and would be without any further updates or version advancement as they said, “However, as we’ll be busy with new projects at Google, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps. Sparrow will, however, continue to provide support and critical updates to [its] users. Moreover, we do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps.”

Open the terminal in a specific size and position in Ubuntu/ Linux Mint

In Ubuntu or Linux Mint and many other distros, when you open the terminal, the window will appear at the top left corner of the desktop screen and I usually have to drag it down to the bottom left of the desktop. If you dont like the default position and size of the start up window, you can edit it easily.

There are in fact many methods to customize the start up position of the terminal, but in this article I will show you a simple way to do the task without installing anything. In Ubuntu or Linux Mint Cinnamon, just open the terminal and run the following command:

sudo gnome-desktop-item-edit /usr/share/applications/gnome-terminal.desktop

If you use MATE, the command will be 

sudo mate-desktop-item-edit /usr/share/applications/mate-terminal.desktop

After you hit enter, you will see the properties window of the launcher for the terminal.

In the command tab, just append this option after the part "mate-terminal" (or "gnome-terminal"):

--geometry=100x50+800+300

 What this means:
100: the width of the terminal ( in characters)
50: the height ( in lines)
800: x position of the terminal when you open it up
300: y position

Just change the numbers into whatever values you prefer then click on the Close button and everything is done. Next time you open the terminal, the terminal window will appear at the new position instead of the top left corner of the desktop scree.

Pentoo 2012.0 Beta

Michael Zanetta has announced the availability of the initial beta build of Pentoo 2012.0, a Gentoo-based live DVD featuring a collection of applications and tools designed to perform penetration testing: "The Pentoo team is pleased to announce public beta of Pentoo 2012. Yesterday at Defcon I was able to finally complete building of our brand new beta. I now present to you, the best pen-testing distro I was able to whip out in three days of heavy drinking and partying while walking around with my laptop all of Defcon constantly looking for a source of power to keep compile going. This ISO image has had nearly no QA at all, but I can promise it will rock your socks. I'm not going to say much here, except please try it. (Still 64-bit only for now, sorry.)" Visit the project's home page and its Blogspot page to read the two brief release announcements. Download: pentoo-x86_64-2012.0_betazero.iso (1,458MB, SHA512).