aptosid 2012-01

Stefan Lippers-Hollmann has announced the release of aptosid 2012.1, a new version of the project's desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's unstable branch. From the release notes: "New features in aptosid 2012-01 are Linux kernel 3.6 and numerous integration and stabilisation fixes. Special focus has been cast upon improving system compatibility with new hardware platforms like AMD Bulldozer or Intel Ivy-Bridge and reworking the live system environment. Kernel 3.6 doesn't only improve and stabilise hardware support for newer devices, it also adapts ASPM heuristics for better power-saving and improved battery runtimes. Another topic has been the kernel's entropy gathering framework, both improving its performance and quality for systems providing little entropy by themselves." Download (SHA256): aptosid-2012-01-kde-full-i386-amd64.iso" (2,054MB), aptosid-2012-01-xfce-i386.iso (509MB), aptosid-2012-01-xfce-amd64.iso (515MB).

OS4 13.1 "OpenDesktop"

Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of OS4 13.1 "OpenDesktop", an updated build of the project's desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu: "Today the OS4 team is pleased to announce the much-anticipated update of OpenDesktop 13 with OS4 OpenDesktop 13.1. With this release we bring new features and bug fixes to OpenDesktop. OS4 OpenDesktop 13.1 still continues to revolutionize the Linux user experience with an excellent interface and easy-to-use applications, and it comes with new options to enhance your OS4 user experience. Superior functionality with some great new options. Some of the new features include: the Xfce workspace has been upgraded to 4.10 with Thunar upgraded to 1.5.3; we are introducing a revolutionary deskbar interface, enhanced icon set and window manager theme users will find familiar from our early days...." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional notes a video presentation. Download: os4-opendesktop131-32.iso (1,471MB, MD5), os4-opendesktop-131-64.iso (1,503MB, MD5).

Rocks Cluster Distribution 6.1

Philip Papadopoulos has announced the release of Rocks Cluster Distribution 6.1, a CentOS-based open-source toolkit for real and virtual clusters: "The latest update of Rocks, code name 'Emerald Boa', is now released. Emerald Boa is available for CentOS 6.3 (Rocks 6.1). The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of November 27, 2012. New features: host-based SSH authentication is now the default, this eliminates the requirement the users have password-less SSH keys and/or mounted home area on remote nodes; two-factor SSH authentication using Google Authenticator Apps for Android and iPhone is supported for all users; New ZFS Linux roll to support the ZFS file system via the ZFS on Linux; new kernel roll to more easily support vanilla Linux kernels." See the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download (MD5) the "jumbo" DVDs containing the OS and all available "rolls": area51...6.1.i386.disk1.iso (2,516MB), area51...6.1.x86_64.disk1.iso (2,580MB).

How To Lock/Unlock User Accounts From The Terminal Under Ubuntu/Linux Mint

In a previous article, we have seen how to add/remove user accounts from the terminal under Ubuntu/Linux Mint. Today, we will see how to lock or unlock a specific user account from the terminal using two methods.

Method 1 (Recommended)

To lock a user account, open the terminal and run this command:

sudo usermod --expiredate 1 username

Replace username with the user account name you want to disable. The user account in question will no longer be able to login using its password either locally or remotely. To unlock it, use this command:

sudo usermod --expiredate -1 username

The user account name will now be able to log in to its session.

Method 2

Alternatively, you can use this command to lock a user account:

sudo passwd -l username

Replace username with the user account name you want to lock. If the command is successful, you will get this output:

passwd: password expiry information changed.

However, the user may have access to its account remotely (via SSH). So, the first method is highly recommended. To unlock the same account, you can execute this command:

sudo passwd -u username

Note: You can use this tip under Ubuntu 12.10/12.04 and Linux Mint 14 or older.

OpenELEC 3.0 Beta 2

Stephan Raue has announced the availability of the second beta of OpenELEC 3.0, a Linux-based embedded system built to run the XBMC entertainment media hub: "The OpenELEC team is proud to release the second beta of OpenELEC 3.0!. Internally this is known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 2.95.2. This beta fixes some issues found in our beta 1 release, primarily fixing a non-working video output on our ATV builds. NVIDIA has decided to remove GeForce 6xxx and 7xxx support from newer drivers. For this beta we added NVIDIA's 304.64 driver as a legacy version for use with our ATV builds. Users who are using our generic builds together with GPUs older then GeForce 8xxx should switch to our Generic_OSS build or decide to change their graphic card to a newer model. Beta 2 also includes a new setting to change the amount of time before a hard disk goes into standby as well as some fixes for MCE compatible remotes." Here is the brief release announcement. Download (MD5): OpenELEC-ION.i386-2.95.2.tar.bz2 (104MB), OpenELEC-ION.x86_64-2.95.2.tar.bz2 (106MB).

Install The Flowblade Multitrack Non-Linear Video Editor From PPA Under Ubuntu 12.10/12.04 and Linux Mint 14/13

Flowblade is a free open source multitrack non-linear video editor that is very simple to use, there is nothing complicated about it. This video editor allows to insert, trim, merge, delete, or cut parts from your video clips, mix audio and video, drag and drop video clips on the timeline, etc.

Additionally, Flowblade supports almost any audio/video formats as well as JPG, PNG, and SVG image file types. For full features, click here.

Flowblade Installation

To install Flowblade from PPA under Ubuntu 12.10/12.04 or Linux Mint 14/13, open the terminal and issue these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/multimedia 

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install flowblade

Uninstalling Flowblade

To remove Flowblade from your system, run these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:upubuntu-com/multimedia 

sudo apt-get remove flowblade 

sudo apt-get update