Monday, January 7, 2013

Liferea (Feed Reader) Updated To V1.8.12 - Ubuntu 12.10/Linux Mint 14



Liferea is a popular feed reader (news aggregator) for Linux-based systems that has an easy-to-use UI (user interface) written in GTK and it can be integrated smoothly in Gnome-based desktop environments. Liferea supports many web syndication formats such as RSS, OPML, Atom, etc. It also allows users to read RSS feeds offline (offline reading).



Liferea has been updated recently to version 1.8.12 which is now compatible with the Tiny Tiny RSS news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator.

Liferea 1.8.12 Installation

Liferea 1.8.12 can be easily installed in Ubuntu/Linux Mint with the following commands from the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liferea/ppa 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install liferea

NOTE: PPA installation for version 1.8.12 is currently available for Ubuntu 12.10 and Linux Mint 14 only.

Liferea Removal

To uninstall Liferea from your system, enter these commands:

sudo apt-get remove liferea 
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:liferea/ppa 
sudo apt-get update

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Capture, Annotate and Share Screenshots with JShot in Ubuntu/Linux Mint



JShot is a free screenshot tool written in Java that allows users to easily take screenshots of a selected region or fullscreen with the possibility to set capture delay or annotate pictures with text, arrows, rectangles, circles, and lines.



There are many other features that JShot offers for handling screenshots such as photo cropping, resizing, and rotating. It also allows to erase sensitive information from the picture with the blur tool. JShot comes also with a system tray launcher (JShot Tray) that will help users of the Unity desktop environment easily create screenshots from the system tray:


JShot can be even used as an uploader which will help you share your screenshots online via Dropbox, Picasa, Twitpic, Skype, Twitter, or even upload them to your server via the FTP Uploader. You can find full features for JShot here.

The latest version of JShot is 2.1.0.3 which we are going to see its installation in Ubuntu 12.10/12.04 and Linux Mint 14/13 or older.

JShot Installation

If you haven't installed Java in Ubuntu/Linux Mint, install openjdk-7-jdk or openjdk-7-jre to be able to run JShot:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

or

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

Download and install the application with these commands:

cd /tmp 
wget -c http://goo.gl/FFNlR -O jshotinstall.jar 
java -jar jshotinstall.jar

Then follow now setup instructions:

Search now the application in the Unity dash to start it:

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Easily Password Protect Your Files/Folders in Ubuntu/Linux Mint


In this tutorial, we will explain for newbies how to easily password protect files or folders in Ubuntu/Linux Mint systems. You don't have to use any third-party software, we will just use the archive manager to compress the file or folder and lock it with a password so that you disallow unauthorized users from copying your contents.

Getting Started

Right click on the file(s) or folder(s) and select Compress:



In the window that will appear, select a compression format (7z, zip, tar, etc.), then click Other Options:



Enter any password of your choice, check on "Encrypt the file list too", then click Create:


You have now compressed and password-protected your file/folder. No user can now extract the archive file unless he/she provides the correct password:


More Advanced Options

If you want to prevent other users from deleting or moving the password-protected archive file you have just created, open the terminal and cd to where it is stored, then run this command:

sudo  chattr +i file-name.ext
To undo this, enter this command:

sudo  chattr -i file-name.ext

Slax 7.0.3


Tomáš Matějíček has announced the release of Slax 7.0.3, an updated release of the project's Slackware-based live CD: "A new version of Slax is available for download. This release adds several new features and fixes a few bugs as well. Probably the most interesting feature is PXE boot support and improved X auto-detection. All modern computers nowadays support PXE, which allows booting an operating system over network interface independently of data storage devices (like hard disks). Slax fully supports PXE booting now. How to do that? One computer will act as a server, so just boot Slax on it from CD or USB and make sure to have the appropriate boot menu option 'Act as PXE server' checked. Slax on the server computer will provide DHCP, TFTP and HTTP services to enable PXE booting for other computers on the network." See the full release announcement for a list of new features and changes. Download (MD5): slax-English-US-7.0.3-x86_64.iso (219MB).

Bodhi Linux 2.2.0


Jeff Hoogland has announced the release of Bodhi Linux 2.2.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the Enlightenment 0.17 window manager as the default desktop user interface: "The Bodhi team and I are very happy to present to you our 2.2.0 release - the first Bodhi images to feature the stable E17 desktop. This release is exciting for a number of reasons. To start with, we are introducing a few new things with this update release. With this release, we will now be maintaining two 32-bit install discs: one that is PAE enabled by default and one that is not. The kernel without PAE will be an older stable kernel (in this case 3.2) while the PAE enabled kernel will be the latest kernel - for 2.2.0 this means 3.7 kernel. Our 64-bit release also comes with the 3.7 kernel. These discs are also our first released images that are hybrid ISO images." See the release announcement for further details, relevant links and obligatory screenshots. Download: bodhi-2.2.0-64.iso (573MB, MD5).

Snowlinux 4


Lars Torben Kremer has announced the release of Snowlinux 4, a Debian-based distribution with MATE (a desktop environment forked from GNOME 2): "The team is proud to announce the release of Snowlinux 4 'Glacier'. Snowlinux 4 is based upon Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 'Wheezy' and uses Linux kernel 3.5. MATE 1.4 is the default desktop environment and LightDM as the new default login manager that replaces GDM 3. It includes its own greeter for LightDM. Many new features have been introduced, like snowMenu, the Snowlinux menu and snowMount, the Snowlinux mount tool for drives. The Snowlinux metal theme was colored blue and the icon set was updated with the latest Faience icons. Snowlinux now uses Pidgin as the default IM client. This release comes with Firefox 17 and Thunderbird 17, LibreOffice, Rhythmbox and Shotwell." Read the rest of the release announcement which includes a screenshot and upgrade information. Download: snowlinux-4-glacier-amd64.iso (935MB, MD5).