Established in 2007, SoundCloud is arguably the most popular online audio distribution platform for collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio content by artists and music promoters. While the web version of the platform is a no brainer for anyone who is familiar with the service, we don’t usually come across a lot of desktop applications catering to SoundCloud. For that reason, when we stumbled across Scup (short for SoundCloud Uploader), we considered it worthy of being taken for a spin. In its essence, Scup is an Adobe AIR-based, cross-platform application that lets you upload multiple tracks to your SoundCloud account and create a set on the fly. The application supports specifying all necessary parameters, such as genre, set and track types, license, record label etc, making your sets ready for publishing in every sense.

When launched for the first time, Scup will present you with an authentication box, requiring connection with your SoundCloud account. Hit the Yes please, move ahead button to launch the authentication page in your default browser. If you are not logged into SoundCloud at present, do so at this point.

The browser pane will ask you for a confirmation of the operation, after which you will be given a unique authentication code. Enter that in Scup, and your account should be linked. In our experience, copy/pasting the code didn’t work, and you’ll need to manually key it in for Scup to recognize.

With authentication out of the way, you will be greeted by Scup’s main interface. Please note that this interface is all that is to this application, as there are no options or customizations. Everything that you get in this interface should cater to all your SoundCloud uploading needs, and you can not only batch upload tracks, but also specify their parameters, such as the genre, set and track type, license version, keywords, record label, release number, release date, EAN/UPC and buying link for the set.

To begin, drap and drop audio files over Scup and define the parameters for the whole set. Some fields under More Options are text entries, while others will let you select one from the drop-down menus. As soon as you drop files, they will start uploading to your SoundCloud account.

You may also configure these parameters for individual tracks by clicking the arrow next to each file’s name in the list. This will expand the view, bringing the same fields for individual tracks. Scup will even let you add album art to your set, making it ready for publishing in almost every sense. The bottom panel of the application lets you control settings such as sharing, making originals downloadable and allowing 128 kbps streaming.

As with all Adobe AIR applications, Scup has a really pleasing outlook. The application is quite user-friendly, and since it is based on an open platform, it will work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, provided you have Adobe AIR installed. Testing was done on Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit version.

Download Scup

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If you are a programmer or someone who regularly requires replacing text strings from multiple files, then Replace-me is just what you might need. It is a Nautilus extension to find and replace text strings from multiple files within numerous directories and sub-directories. It can identify and replace text strings from files via right-click context menu. Replace-me is  a useful tool for those who may require finding and replacing text string from, e.g., code files or even batch files (to change the command parameters).

You can install Replace-me in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot using the following Terminal commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/nautilus-extensions

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install replace-me

After installation, either use the below command or log off and log in again to refresh Nautilus.

nautilus –q

With Replace-me, you can easily search and replace words and phrases by right-clicking a file and entering the search and replace string.

This will open a new window which will display the path of the selected file. Enter the text that you wish to replace, followed by the text string that is to be replaced. As you can see in the below screenshot, you can replace an entire text string with specified text easily within any document. this can help you replace hundreds of text strings in several files, easily. For example, if you have a code file which contains a line of code that is recurring in the file and needs to be replaced with a different line, then you can simply right-click the document, enter the text string that should be replaced (in the Replace section), and enter the text string that is to replace the text (in With section). This will replace the text string wherever it may be present in the respective document.

For more information, check out the developer’s website.

Replace-Me Nautilus Extension

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In a previous post, we showed you three different ways of capturing screenshots in Ubuntu and later reviewed, Lookit, which is a handy screenshot capturing utility for Ubuntu, which enables uploading captured screenshots to the cloud. Recently, we found another handy screenshot taking application for Ubuntu, known as Nanoshot. It provides users with the utility to capture screenshots to upload them to cloud services like Flickr, and to grab screens from specific elements such as a video frame or the Unity Launcher.

You can install Nanoshot by entering the following commands in Terminal. While its compatibility with the raw build of Precise Pangolin is unknown, we successfully tested it in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and the below PPA works with earlier Ubuntu versions, including Lucid, Karmic, Maverick (as specified by the developer) and probably Natty, as well. You can get a list of dependencies for older versions here. The reason I have labeled Natty as a probable supported version, is because we did not test Nanoshot on it, but it worked fine in Oneiric (during testing).

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

Once installed, launch and select options from the app-indicator menu. You can capture the entire desktop, the current window, a selected desktop area, a webpage, a media player, add cursor in screenshot, select a time delay for capturing screenshots, enable auto-run for Nanshot and select a video file for capturing screenshots via the app-indicator menu.

If you wish to capture video frames, then you will have to specify a video file and select the number of frames that are to be captured, as well as the output directory. You can also pick videos from recently viewed video files.

When capturing a selected area, select an area and hit Enter to save the screenshot.

Captured screenshots can be uploaded to Flickr, ImgUR or ImageShack, or saved to a local directory.

You can download the package for Nanoshot from the links given below.

Download Nanoshot

Download Nanoshot [Fedora and Tarball Source Package]

[via WML Cloud]

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When trying to determine the hardware specifications for your computer, it is not desirable to open the hardware casing, which, in some cases, can lead to loosing your warranty claim (e.g., in the case of laptops). In such a scenario, one can use some handy tools for determining the installed hardware specifications. i-Nex is one such tool that provides detailed hardware information within a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Ubuntu. Read on past the break to find out more about this handy tool.

i-Nex is written in Gambas, which is, “A Graphical Development Environment based on a basic Interpreter, with object extensions.” The program works pretty much like CPU-Z. i-Nex comes separated in numerous tabs, with each tab providing information regarding a specific system component. As visible from the screenshot below, you can get detailed information about the CPU, Motherboard/BIOS, Sound and Graphics card, as well as other components such as the Kernel, Memory, Network etc, by clicking the respective tabs. To move across tabs, use the left/right arrow buttons. i-Nex is capable of displaying precise information about a system, including the manufacturer’s name, model number, processors cache information, hard drive sectors, RAM information (total, used, free, shared, buffers, cached and swapped), host name of the system, operating system version, time zone (being used), and more.

You can also check out similar Ubuntu tools for listing hardware information, including HardInfo and dmidecode. You may install i-Nex for your Ubuntu version, from the packages available at Launchpad. The packages are available for all latest Ubuntu versions, including Oneiric Ocelot and Precise Pangolin.

Download i-Nex

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We previously covered an Ubuntu disc mounting tool known as Furius ISO Mount, which mounts virtual discs and provides options for performing checksums to check the integrity of disc images. While Furius ISO Mount is quite an advanced disc mounting tool, one can always benefit from a minimalist disc mounting utility that works from the app-indicator menu. Mounty is one such disc mounting utility, which enables sharing virtual disc images. After installation, Mounty sits in the system tray and provides easy disc mounting options via the app-indicator menu.

Ubuntu users can install Mounty by entering the following command in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kokoto-java/omgubuntu-stuff
  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mounty

When launched, you can mount a disc image via the app-indicator menu applet. To mount a virtual disc image, click Open disk image option and select your virtual disc. You can also enable the Remember mounted images option to make sure that recently opened virtual disc images are auto mounted for quick viewing. You can also load Mounty at system start up by selecting Load at startup option.

When a disc is mounted, a bubble message alerts you that the image has been added to Mounty. You can open the content of the mounted disc image to explore the files inside it. Mounted discs can be ejected anytime and reloaded when required.

What makes Mounty quite handy is the fact that it does not consume a lot of the desktop space and provides a minimalist menu for quickly mounting/auto mounting and ejecting disc images. Furthermore, its ability to remember recently opened disc images makes it even more useful, as compared to other applications of its kind. It is also worth mentioning here that Mounty additionally supports the ability to load (disc) image files from your file manager. You can grab the source code and submit bug reports of this application at Launchpad.

Mounty at Launchpad

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Agave is a Linux application for easily designing and saving color schemes. It provides users with the option to select web safe colors, Gnome icon palette, Visibone or Tango theme Palette. Once selected, you can generate color schemes from a single color selected from the given graph and save color schemes using the Add (+) option. In other words, Agave acts like a color picking utility, which is often found in applications like CorelDraw, that enables generating color schemes based on the selection of a single color block. Once you select a color, adjacent blocks are automatically filled with matching colors, which makes it possible to select a decent color combination, without endlessly pondering over a combination or going through a laborious trial and error process (for matching colors).

Agave can be installed via the Terminal in Ubuntu, by entering the following command:

sudo apt-get install agave

Once done, launch Agave, and select a color format from the drop down menu given at the bottom of the interface (web safe colors, Gnome icon palette, Visibone or Tango theme Palette). You can also choose between compliments, split-compliments, triads, tetrads, analogous and monochromatic color schemes from the drop down menu given above the color graph. After creating a desired color combination, you can add it to your list on the right sidebar. Brightness and saturation may be increased or decreased using the arrows given at the top of Agave interface. The top left arrows allow managing brightness, whereas the top right arrows are for managing saturation of the color schemes (generated after selecting a single color from the given color graph).

You can also generate random color combinations via the Random option, and switch to the previous color combination via Back. Agave has versions available for most Ubuntu variations at Launchpad, including Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, with development active for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

Download Agave

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Videos streams are a great way for companies, as well as individuals, to get their message to people around the world. It can be anything from a news feed to the video of a live performance of a band playing in a concert hall. I, being a huge fan of the multiplayer game DOTA (Defense of the Ancients), follow a lot of video streams of international players showcasing their game play. If you follow, or want to follow, a lot of video streams, it can be a bit of a hassle to manage all of them from your browser. Instead of cluttering up your browser bookmarks, take a look at this stream manager. StreamDesk is an open source client that allows you to view and manage multiple video streams. Keep reading to find out more about StreamDesk.

The application has File, View, Streams, Chat, Favorites and Window menus at the top. File allows you to open multiple windows to view more than one stream at a time. Streams menu contains a lot of pre-saved video streams offered by the application. Tools allows you to search among the saved video streams. Favorites allow you to Add new video streams and Manage existing ones, while Windows menu lets you Cascade, Tile Vertically and Tile the opened streams Horizontally.

The Favorites menu has Add & Manage windows to Add Stream, Add Folder, rename, Remove and Move the saved streams from one folder to another

The complete list of features provided by the developer is as follows.

• Community built stream list
• Simple stream list with single level category sorting
• Database update
• Full updater with downloader
• Easy to use favorites
• Keyword search

It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

Download StreamDesk

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Mendeley is an open source and cross-platform PDF organizer, which provides options for easy document management. It allows easy reference management to help you organize your work, collaborate with friends, and to obtain latest research (via its social network). It automatically generates bibliographies, makes it possible to collaborate with others, import data, sync and access your papers from anywhere (via the internet), and more. It requires users to store all basic data on Mendeley servers, which enables accessing copies of the data any time.

At first run, users are required to either login or sign up for a free Mendeley account and get 500 MB of free storage space, which is sufficient for storing a lot of PDF documents. The credentials of this account are used to synchronize data with Mendeley servers, which is then accessible via the internet and Mendeley application (available for mobile and desktop platforms).

You can drag and drop PDF documents to open them with the Mendeley viewer. The options on the top toolbar allow users to pan, highlight text, add notes, copy/paste data, rotate (right/left), zoom (in/out), email and sync the document. All opened documents are opened in convenient tabs.

It must be noted that Mendeley is also a social network, and therefore, the collaboration can be extended to a lot of Mendeley users for seeking help and managing your research. You can even share bibliographies with your colleagues through a private group, and any member can add or edit a cited reference. Mendeley has clients for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and iPhone. Additionally, you can also login to the Mendeley website to research and collaborate with other members. Furthermore, you can also invite friends to add them to your Mendeley network. You can download Mendeley for various platforms from the link given below.

Download Mendeley

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With each passing day, the pace of life has been increasing all over the world. Compared to our ancestors, we are required to perform a lot more tasks in lesser time. With all the different things one has to complete in a day, it is almost must to have a good task manager to help you remember and manage them easily and efficiently. Back in October 2011, we reviewed a cross-platform task management application for Android, named Conqu. The same task manager is now available for Windows with all its functionality.

The application allows you to manage your tasks by providing you with a comprehensive set of features, such as Quick Add for adding new tasks without wasting time, Tags that allow you to create and apply tags to simplify managing a large number of tasks, Dates with both due date and schedule date calendars for settings up tasks that need to be performed the same day or at a later date. Conqu also allows you to manage tasks that you have delegated to others, and receive notifications when they have completed it.

The application has tabs in the left pane, including Inbox, Today, Next, Future, Waiting etc, to manage tasks separately according to importance, tags, time limits, while their details and edit options appear in the right. Tasks can be added by typing them in the top bar and clicking Add Task.

Once a task has been added, you can edit and enter more information about it, including Project, Due Date, Context, Flag it with different colors, set Energy Level, Time, Tags, set Schedule Date, and enter details of contacts if tasks are assigned to them.

Different type of tasks can be organized into different projects and managed according to their tags, time, flags, schedules etc.

Click Conqu menu in the top-left corner and select Preferences to set up ConquSync if you are using the application on more than one device. Sharing allows you to let others know that you have delegated a task to them. They will receive an email, and when the task is done, check the task in the web-based task manager of Conqu.

The best thing about this application, is that it is available for all the major platforms, so you can manage your tasks from almost every device, including your tablet, phone, laptop and desktop computer. The supported device are Android based tablets, iPad, Blackberry Playbook, Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook, Android based phones, iPhone, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Download Conqu

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We have previously brought you some wallpaper rotating applications for Ubuntu, including Desktop Drapes and Desktop Nova. This time, we have an Ubuntu gadget that rotates images within a photo frame on your desktop and in full screen mode (like a screen saver). Gnome Photo Frame is a desktop picture frame that enables rotating images from sources, such as a local folder, F-Spot database, Shotwell database, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Tumblr, Haikyo Clock and an RSS Feed.

Gnome Photo frame can be downloaded and installed via the Deb packages (download link at the end of this post). Once installed, Gnome Photo Frame can be launched in both the Unity desktop environment, or the Gnome desktop. This gadget is quite scalable, and image size and other attributes can be easily adjusted to suit the needs of the user. You can open the frame image (in your default browser), view recent images, head over to the next image, enable full screen mode (ESC to exit), lock photo frame position, access Preferences and quit the frame, via right-click context menu. As you might have guessed from the Fix Photo Frame option, the gadget can be easily dragged across the desktop and placed anywhere (unless locked).

The General tab (in Preferences) provides options to change the time interval for picture rotation within the frame, set a maximum display size (height and width), enable visibility on visible workspace. and to auto start Gnome Photo Frame with system startup. You can specify image sources from the Plugins tab. Here, you can select a local folder, or authenticate an online account to import album images from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Tumblr, etc. Similarly, the Photos tab enables users to  manually add a new source (e.g., an RSS Feed). It must be noted that all online accounts will have to be authenticated, and access will have to be allowed to the Gnome Photo Frame application for the images to become available to the desktop frame.

During testing, we found Gnome Photo Frame to run quite seamlessly, without any lags or functionality issues. It also detected the source images quite easily; however, it seems that it is impossible to specify any sequence for the images, as they seem to appear randomly from the selected source(s). Perhaps the developer can provide some kind of image sorting options to allow users to define an image rotation sequence, in upcoming versions of the application.

Download Gnome Photo Frame

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At the beginning of each year, we at AddictiveTips compile a list of the best applications from numerous platforms, to deliver a summary of the most useful applications (of the previous year) for our readers. We have already brought you a compilation of the best Windows applications, Mac OS X applications, Windows Phone 7 applications, Android and iOS apps of 2011. Additionally, we also brought you a list of the best Cydia tweaks, as well as the best browser extensions and web apps of 2011. Last, but not least, it is now time to take a look back at the best Linux applications of last year. While there has been extensive development at the end of the aforementioned platforms, Linux has not lacked behind either. There have been numerous OS version coming out for numerous Linux flavors, and Ubuntu itself saw Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot in the same year. With the release of these new operating systems, came new applications and updates for old ones. Let’s take a look at some of the very best Linux applications that we covered in 2011.

1.  Desktop Flickr Organizer (Manage Flickr albums offline)

2.  PDF Mod (Modify PDF documents)

3. eSpeak Speech Synthesizer (Multi-lingual text to speech synthesizer)

4. Arista Transcoder (Transcode files between various media formats)

5. AcetoneISO (Mount, rip, extract, convert, burn, encrypt and decrypt DVD and CD images)

6. Firestarter (Firewall for securing Linux computers)

7. News-RSS Ticker (Feed ticker that brings the latest news to your Linux desktop)

8. Ubuntu One (Dropbox like cloud storage service for Linux and other platforms)

9. Giver (Transfer files easily on a Linux network)

10. KTorrent (Lightweight Torrent client with advanced configuration options)

11. Nanny Parental Control (Parental Control application, with restrictions to limit internet usage time for children)

12. Deja Dup Backup (Backup and restore data)

13. Steadyflow (Minimalist download manager)

14. Comix (Comic book reader that supports CBZ, ZIP, RAR, TAR, JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, BMP, ICO, XBM and other formats)

15. Liferea (Desktop RSS feed reader)

16. Gnome Activity Journal (Keeps a log of all activities, opened files and folders)

17. Blogilo (Blogging client for Linux)

18. HomeBank (Finance management application)

19. Starry Hope Uploader (Upload photos to Facebook)

20. gPoddy (Subscribe and download podcasts)

21. MyPaint (Application for making digital paintings)

22. Parcellite (Lightweight clipboard manager)

23. KTimer (Automate Commands in Linux)

24. Hardware Lister (List hardware configurations)

25. LibreCAD (Create computer aided designs)

26. Cairo Dock (Mac style dock for Linux operating systems)

27. Tea Time (Receive important reminders)

28. Eve Installer (install multiple applications in batch)

29. YeoWorks Ubuntu Solutions (Resolves commonly faced Ubuntu problems)

30. Psensor (Monitor temperature of system components)

31. Super Boot Manager (Boot manager for Plymouth, Burg and Grub)

32. Sunflower (Dual pane file explorer)

33. Boot Repair (Fix Ubuntu boot problems)

34. Lookit (Screenshot taking application, with the option to upload it to FTP server, SSH, Imgur, Omploader and CloudApp).

35. Slingshot (Mac OS X Launchpad style application launcher for Ubuntu)

36. Cryptkeeper (Encrypt folders)

37. Bleeding Edge (install software unavailable in Ubuntu repository)

38. Y PPA Manager (Easily delete and purge Private Package Repositories)

39. Synapse (Quickly Find applications, documents, videos, images, etc)

40. DesktopNova (Wallpaper Rotator for Ubuntu)

41. Hamster Indicator (Time Tracking Applet)

42. gm-notify (Gmail email notifier)

43. eMount (Create and mount encrypted disk images)

44. Gnome Subtitles (Edit, split and marge subtitles)

45. Scribes (Text editor with support for 70+ Programming Languages)

46. PlexyDesk (Widget based desktop transformation application)

47. Activity Log Manager Zeitgeist (Control Zeitgeist logging)

48. Touchpad-indicator (Automatically disable touchpad when mouse is connected)

49. LightDM Manager (Ubuntu Logon Screen Changer)

50. Gnome-Pie (Hotkey based application launcher)

51. Gnome Tweak Tool (Tweak Gnome settings)

52. Remmina (GTK+ based Remote Desktop application)

53. QMediaInfo (Get attribute information for media files)

54. MyUnity (Comprehensive tweak for Ubuntu Unity)

55. LiveUSBInstall (create live Linux USB, CD/DVD and download ISO images)

56. Natural Scrolling (Get Mac OS X style natural scrolling in Ubuntu)

57. Radio Tray (Minimalist internet radio player for Ubuntu)

58. X Neural Switcher (Automatically switch keyboard layout & fix typos)

59. Furius ISO Mount (Mount SO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG Images)

60. Kazam Screencaster (Record screencasts and upload to YouTube)

With the introduction of Precise Pangolin aka Ubuntu 12.04, and other Linux operating system versions in 2012, we are likely to see a rise in application development and update. Please note that these applications are not the ones released in 2011, but the ones reviewed by us. Also, this list is not exhaustive in any manner, and if you think you have a good application that we did not cover, leave us a tip in comments below.

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Sometimes, the maximum netbook resolution can be inconvenient for the end user. This is particularly the case for people who suffer from a weak eye sight. Newrez is a Nautilus-based script that enables enhancing the screen resolution of Linux computers by specifying a resolution higher than the available resolutions. For example, if your maximum resolution is 1024×600, then you can scale it up to 1280×800 or higher (depending on your eyesight). The good thing about Newrez is that it does not overclock the actual hardware of your laptop, and instead, it builds an image with a higher resolution, which is located in a buffer. This image is then scaled to fit your screen for better visibility. This means that you are not constrained to standard resolutions anymore.

To get started, download and extract the Newrez script archive from the download link given at the end of this post, and copy the files (newrez and newrez-v) to ~/.Gnome2 –> Nautilus-Scripts (after hitting CTRL+H in the Home folder to reveal hitting directories, including the Gnome 2 directory). This will add the two scripts to the right-click context menu of your operating system. For example, if you are an Ubuntu user, then the script can be accessed from the Ubuntu context menu. Select the newrez script to change your resolution. The newrez-v script is for users who may not be able to run the newrez script. Selecting the script via the context menu will provide you with an option to choose a new resolution.

Please note that this script depends on the “xrandr –scale” option for creating a framebuffer at a chosen resolution, which can then be scaled to fit the screen. This requires xrandr version 1.3, and also a supported video driver. You can also try “xrandr -v” (in case the former does not work). It is also worth mentioning here that this script currently does not support “non-free” nVidia and ATI drivers, as they do not support xrandr 1.3.

Download Newrez

[via WML Cloud]

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These days, image editing is done both professionally and for fun, and to cater to the needs of this diverse market, both free and paid application are available for people to choose from. The differentiating factors between these applications lie in the level of customization, methods of interaction with the image and the learning curve of the application. Even though Photoshop and Gimp are very useful applications for editing images, their main strength can also come off as a weakness when you only want to perform basic editing functions to an image. SharpShot is a multi-platform, portable application that allows you to easily edit images without any major complications that usually come with comprehensive image editing tools, such as Photoshop or Gimp.

Since it is a java-based application, you can run it directly without any installation. It allows you to edit many images at a time, keeping the progress on each image saved. The application lets you change different image settings, such as its brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, exposure etc. Other than that, you can also apply different effects to the image including blur, sharpen, convert to grey scale, motion blur etc. You can either select the whole image, or just a part of it, to apply effects. The interface has toolbars and menus at the top, image list in the left while the image appears in the center. To load an image into the application, click File menu and select Open File or Open Folder depending on your requirement.

The toolbar at the top contains different selection tools. You can toggle between square and circular selection tools, and choose different preset aspect ratios, such as Free, Original, 4×3, 5×7, 16×9 etc. When you select a ratio, expanding or contracting the selection box will make it stretch with the ratios intact.

The application allows you to apply different effects to the images. Under the Effects menu, you have a list of tools for changing Brightness/Contrast, Intensity/Hue/Saturation, Colors, and add different effects, including Blur, Motion Blur, Sharpen, Despeckle and Convert image to Gray scale and Invert its pixel colors. The Brightness dialog allows you to change the Brightness, Exposure, Contrast and Midtones of an image, either by moving the slider, or entering values in digits. You are able to view the results of all the changes being made to the image in the Preview Pane.

The HIS Dialog lets you increase and decrease the Saturation, Hue and Intensity of an image. For the Brightness Dialog, multiple methods for changing the values, as well as a preview are also provided.

Other than allowing users to change these image values, the application has tools to resize, crop, rotate, add border, add watermark, fix red eye and apply effects according to edge detection. The Rotate Dialog enables you to rotate your image to the left or right to any angle.

The Watermark Dialog lets you set custom text, change the text color, its font style, font size, X-Alignment and Y-Alignment from Left, Right, Center, Top and Bottom or apply custom alignment from (x, y) values. You have the option to add watermark to a single image or to the complete batch.

SharpShot flawlessly performs all the functions that a basic image editor should, and everything is easy to understand and readily available in the interface. It has a memory footprint of around 128 MB, and works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

Download SharpShot

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There are certainly sheer number of benchmarking utilities available for PC, which put primary system components, including CPU, Main Memory, GPU etc., through a diverse range of tests to measure their health, ability and performance. The benchmarking apps are generally built to diagnose PC problems and check the actual ability of a component and its performance in presence of other installed system devices. For instance, a high-end GPU may not be able to perform at its peak ability with one or more incompatible system components. Similarly, main memory requires compatible motherboard and CPU to give its best performance. Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple way to benchmark all the system components, and therefore, one needs to manually check each component’s performance while using the installed OS.

If you’ve just bought a new/old PC and haven’t installed OS on your computer, you could use Ubuntu Live Disk to thoroughly benchmark PC hardware to check system performance without having to install Windows. For those who are not familiar with Ubuntu Live CD/Disk, it’s a simple testing platform that allows user to check quick demo of Ubuntu OS without changing the system. Ubuntu Live CD/Disk can be used to diagnose numerous system issues, run tools to fix complex problems like reset Windows admin password, hard wipe disk partitions, recover hard disk data and repair lost partitions, scan hard disk for potentially dangerous viruses etc.

Since Ubuntu open source software repository holds a multitude of system testing and benchmarking tools to test the stability of different system components, one can use it to conduct tests for measuring overall performance of the system and identifying compatibility issues of various installed system components.

To get started, you need a persistent Ubuntu Live Disk that allows installing additional utilities to run heavy benchmark tests. In our previous guide, we showed you how to create a persistent Ubuntu Live Disk. Just follow the steps to create one, and then plug it into system whose components are to be checked for performance. You need to change the boot order to run Ubuntu without installing it on hard disk. To do so, move to BIOS menu by pressing F2, F10, Del, F9 or other specified key at system startup. Now, move to Boot menu and set External hard disk/USB as first boot option. Now, save the changes made to BIOS menu and reboot the PC. It will take you directly to Ubuntu boot menu. Select Run Ubuntu from this USB option to load Ubuntu 10.10.

Using Memtest86+ To Test Memory

If you’ve created Ubuntu Live Disk (Ubuntu 10.10) using Universal USB Installer, you will find Test Memory option in Ubuntu Boot menu. This option runs Memtest86+ tool to thoroughly scan each sector of main memory for discrepancies, and immediately report the problems. It can also help you identify damaged/unusable memory modules and other like issues. MemTest86+ is an advanced diagnostic application to check that whether main memory faces any problems while reading or writing data or not. It puts main memory under stress by writing different patterns to all memory locations, and then read them back.

When you select the Test Memory option, it will immediately start testing the main memory by writing patterns. You will find L1, L2 and L3 cache memory details on left side, while main memory details are shown in main window. You can see total wall time, cached memory, reserved memory, memory map value, ECC, current test, Pass and Errors etc.

During testing, you can change the configuration by hitting ‘c’ on keyboard; it lets you skip current test, select test type to run, specify address range, enter into Error Report Mode, show DMI Memory info, choose ECC polling mode and more.

It must be noted that Memtest86+ runs indefinitely unless you manually stop the testing process by hitting ESC or C.

Getting Detailed System Information & Testing CPU Computational Strength

Ubuntu doesn’t come with an advanced utility to get information on installed system components including hard disk, CPU, Main Memory (RAM), Network, GPU, Available Ports, PCI slots and devices, Network Interfaces, Battery statistics, For this reason, you need an application called Hardinfo to display information about the installed hardware devices and operating system. To download and install it, enable community maintained open-source software repository option from Synaptic Manager, which can be accessed from System—>Preferences menu.

Now, open Settings menu and select Repositories.

In Ubuntu Software tab, enable Community-maintained Open Source software option, and then click Close. 

This requires updating the default package list; just click Reload on toolbar to start downloading open source software list.

Once the list is refreshed, click All present underneath the Reload button, and enter hardinfo in search bar. It will show hardinfo tool in main window, letting you mark it for installation. Now, right-click it and select Mark for installation, and then hit Apply on toolbar to begin installation.

The Hardinfo tool can be accessed from Applications –> System Tools.

The application is designed to provide users with a detailed insight into system installed hardware. The left sidebar holds 4 categories including Computer, Devices, Network and Benchmarks. Under Computer section, you will find information on Boot, Filesystem, Display and Users, whereas Devices section provides details about Processor, Memory, USB Devices, Battery, Sensors, attached Storage devices, Input Devices and more.

The Benchmark category includes a total of 6 CPU benchmarking tools including CPU Blowfish, CPU CryptoHash, CPU Fibonacci, CPU N-Queens, FPU FFT and FPU Raytracing. These tools basically help you test computational power of CPU by putting it through various tests. Clicking the test immediately starts it, and once the test finishes, it will show the results in main window.

Checking CPU’s Ability To Withstand Extreme Stress

Although Hardinfo provides a handful of CPU benchmarking tools to test computational power, it doesn’t show how CPU will behave under extreme stress. Since resource-hog applications mainly use CPU to perform the required operation(s), you can put your CPU through stress test using cpuburn tool. It’s worth mentioning here the it puts your CPU under extreme stress and maximize heat production to check how your CPU behaves, and therefore, it’s recommended to use it for only 5-10 minutes. The application can be downloaded and installed from Synaptic Package Manager. Just enter cpuburn in search bar, right-click it in main window, and select Mark for installation. Once marked, hit Apply to install the application.

cpuburn packages numerous applications to test CPU performance under stress. It comes without any interface nor does it have a configuration console to tweak stress test settings. First off, open Terminal app from Applications –>Accessories menu.

You can use burnP6 command to begin the CPU stress test. Just enter burnP6 and hit enter. It will begin putting stress on the CPU. You can use System Monitor app (accessible from System –> Administration) to check the CPU usage.

Benchmark GPU Performance / Perform FPS Test

In order to completely test each attribute of your GPU, you may need multiple GPU benchmarking utilities. Just like Windows and other OS platforms, Ubuntu supports various GPU performance test and benchmark applications to check its ability to render glass shadows, pixel shades, FPS for 3D objects and more. The widely known glxgears lets you run a 3D gears in a small window (300×300) to show number of frames that can be rendered in 5 seconds. It’s basically an OpenGL application that does nothing except reporting FPS numbers. It is packaged into Mesa Utilities that can be downloaded and installed from Synaptic Manager. Once open source repo list is added,  enter mesa-utils in search bar, mark it for installation and hit Apply to download and install it on Ubuntu.

Once installed, open Terminal window, and enter glxgears command. It will start the test and provide you with current FPS info in real time. Closing the glxgears test window will show the final results in Terminals window. You can compare the results with glxgears official community

Since glxgears shows FPS for only a small window, and doesn’t really put your GPU through heavy 3D graphics tests, you can download Heaven benchmark utility to check if your GPU supports 3D games with extremely heavy graphics or not. It’s DirectX 11 GPU benchmarking tool that is based on Unigine engine. The application not only supports previous versions of DirectX including DirectX 10 and DirectX 11, but also OpenGL 4.0. You can watch Heaven benchmark test video below.

Testing All System Components With Phoronix Test Suite

Amongst the list of system benchmark applications, Phoronix is probably the most comprehensive and powerful testing and benchmarking plaform that supports more than 130 test profiles and 60 test suites. It provides users with one-stop solution to test numerous system components including Processor, Memory, GPU, Hard disk, Video Encoding and lot more. The application was primarily designed for automated Linux testing, and has the ability to perform both qualitative and quantitative benchmarks via an interactive menu. All you need is to download the DEB package, and install it using Ubuntu Software Center.

Once installed, select Phoronix Test Suite from Applications –> System Tools menu.

Upon click, it will launch the application in Terminal, showing the menu to run a test, run a whole suite by specifying multiple tests, perform complex system test, show system hardware / software info, display auto-detected system sensors and test run repetition.

Just enter the number of test you want to perform, and it will start the test. It must be noted that it may prompt you to install additional components to perform the test. It will first list down all the missing testing modules, and then automatically start downloading them from its online repository.

The Run A Suite option lets you select the tests you want to run in order to check the component’s performance. For instance, you may choose to run pts/gaming test to check if the system specifications meet the requirements of high-end games or not.

The Run Complex System Test option downloads additional packages, which are required to perform pts/apache. pts/c-ray, pts/ramspeed and pts/postmark tests. After downloading all the required components, it will start using each suite to test entire system. You can compare the results with openbenchmarking.org online community and get feedbacks on your system benchmark results.

Running Disk Benchmark Test To Identify Read/Write Issues

Although Phoronix includes a range of components to test the hard disk read/write functions, it prompts you to install the additional modules that are required to conduct a hard disk test. Alternatively, you can choose to install Bonnie++ tool to thoroughly test all sectors for finding read and write issues. It’s a disk benchmarking suite that performs a number of tests to check read and write functions’ performance & speed, and latency rate. Just like other disk benchmark tools, it writes a file on disk volume and then read the file to find the issues. Moreover, it automatically deletes the files after performing the tests, and shows test results. To download and install the application, open Terminal window from Applications –> Accessories menu, and enter the following command.

sudo apt-get install bonnie++

Once the application is installed, navigate to disk volume on which tests are to be performed, and enter bonnie++ to begin disk benchmark tests. The following screenshot shows the type of tests it perform to measure disk performance.

The application has been designed to test database type access to file(s), and check disk health by writing, reading and deleting small files. Once it’s performed all the tests, it will show the disk performance test results in Terminal window. You can check the time it took to write files on disk, read files, and then delete them from the disk. It also shows the average CPU time it took to perform the disk test operations.

We hope that, after using aforementioned benchmarking utilities, you will be able to diagnose potential hardware issues. We have previously brought you a guide on creating a customizable system rescue disk via SARDU to fix a wide range of system issue, and you can make a customized bootable system rescue solution by following the mentioned steps in said post, and then use the required utilities.

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We have covered many desktop wallpaper managers, such as DisplayFusion, Mourao Wallpaper Changer and Kuvva, that let you manage and automatically change desktop background after a certain time. SyncWall is another open source wallpaper manager that allows you to synchronize wallpapers between multiple computers, changes wallpaper periodically and has multi-display support. You can set schedules for automatically changing wallpaper, define global hot key for changing the wallpaper, and add special effects to wallpapers, such as emboss, blur, sharpen, edge etc. Wallpapers can be synchronized, along with the basic display parameters, between multiple computers, by defining the server and clients. More on SyncWall after the break.

The main interface allows you to add wallpapers to the application, preview selected wallpapers and select wallpaper itself. The Auto Change in random order option allows you to randomly change wallpapers included in the list.

The Preferences tab allows you to define global hot key for changing wallpaper and set scheduling parameters, like Auto change at startup and Change interval.

At the bottom, the Display Parameters tab under Preferences enables you to share the image between multiple monitors, export image parameters to clients, choose the resizing method and apply special effects on the background. The Network tab allows you to synchronize your wallpaper by entering the Server and Port.

The application lacks the option to set separate wallpapers if you have multiple monitors connected to your computer. Otherwise, it’s a very useful cross-platform wallpaper manager. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Linux.

Download SyncWall

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Gip is an open source Linux calculator for system and network administrators for performing IP address calculations, e.g., an administrator who may require finding out the IP prefix length, subnets, etc. To calculate IP address related information, simply type the IP, subnet mask and prefix length. Furthermore, Gip can split subnets using a given IP subnet mask, and perform other necessary calculations for converting IP address ranges.

To perform IPv4 calculations, you can input the IP, Subnet mask and prefix length, in order to acquire the binary and hexadecimal output. The IPV4 Address Analyzer tab also displays the output IP address range and number of hosts, including net/broadcast, network address and broadcast address.

Similarly, the IPv4 Range to Prefix Converter can be used to acquire the prefix and subnet mask of a defined IP address range. Other subnet-based calculations, based on subnet to prefix, can be performed from the IPV4 Subnet Calculator tab.

Gip can be quite handy for primarily acquiring the subnet and binary values of IPV4  addresses, without having to manually calculate them through tedious methods. The only downside of this tool, is that, unlike many Windows based applications, such as Bitcricket IP Calculator, Gip does not provide IPV6 based calculations. Gip can be installed in Ubuntu either from the Ubuntu Software Center, or you can download the source package from the link given below.

Download Gip IP Address Calculator

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Super Flexible File Synchronizer is a cloud based backup and synchronization service, capable of supporting FTP, Amazon S3, SSH, WebDAV and Google Docs. Super Flexible File Synchronizer allows setting up different jobs to run manually, or to schedule them for syncing data between local directories or cloud based servers. It provides many synchronization modes, including Standard Copying, Mirror and SmartTracking. While Super Flexible File Synchronizer works on a number of platforms, only the Linux version of it’s (client) application is available for free.

Once the Super Flexible File Synchronizer client is launched, it provides three options to either synchronize/backup data, edit/run saved profiles or run several profiles.

If you choose to select the backup or synchronization path, you can either select the local directories or click the Web icon to specify a cloud based server for data backup or synchronization. Both the source and destination locations will have to be specified.

In the following steps, you will be asked to select sync direction and sub folders, sync modes (Standard Copying, Smart Tracking or Exact Mirror), select a profile and sync or backup your data. Before you sync or backup files, the entire file data can be obtained from a preview log.

Ubuntu users can download and run the Super Flexible File Synchronizer client after downloading and extracting the compressed TAR file.

Download Super Flexible File Synchronizer

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Home videos and memorable pictures are organized by many people in the form of videos that can be played back on media devices and shared with loved ones. For this purpose, pictures and videos are sent to editing professionals, for processing them according to the customer’s requirement. Unfortunately, many people are unaware of the fact, that the same tasks can be done with the help of some easy-to-use applications. ffDiaporama is a cross-platform application for assembling photos and videos and transform them into videos. It can read images and videos in many formats, including from a large number of cameras and camcorders. The program also comes with 140 transitions and a device database for generating videos for more than 50 different models of video viewing devices, including home cinema systems, smart phones and tablets.

ffDiaporama works pretty much like Windows Live Movie Maker, and merely requires importing pictures and/or videos to begin editing them. You can add files. projects, titles and edit the video from the Project tab.

After you have edited frames according to your desired criteria, head over to the Render Video tab, and select a format for viewing the video on smart phones (Smart Phone option, which contains presets for Apple, Nokia and other hand held devices), Web (HTML and SWF formats, along with an option to upload the video to DailyMotion or YouTube), and numerous Multimedia Systems, including gaming consoles, ADSL Box and media players.

After selecting your required preset, click OK to start the rendering process.

This way, you can create and share videos from your memorable pictures and recorded home videos.

ffDiaporama versions can be downloaded for Windows and a number of Linux distributions from the developer’s website, including Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, ArchLinux and others.

Download ffDiaporama

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We previously brought you a guide for transforming your Windows 7 desktop to give it the Android look. Recently, a new Gnome shell theme was released to make Ubuntu look like Android 4.0 ICS, known as the Ice Cream Shell. It is a Gnome Shell theme that has been based on the default Android 4.0 theme. In this post, we will walk you through the process of installing this theme.

To get started, download and extract the Roboto font and Ice Cream Shell (download link given at the end of this post). Now, install the Roboto font, followed by the User-Theme GNOME Shell extension, from the PPA given below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

Once done, hit Alt+F2 or log out and log back in to apply the changes.  You will require the Gnome Tweak Tool to apply the Ice Cream Shell. If you do not have the Gnome Tweak Tool installed, then you can grab it from the Ubuntu Software Center or by entering the below Terminal command.

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

After launching the Gnome Tweak Tool, you will require turning on the User Themes Extension from Shell Extension. After enabling the user themes extension, head over to the Theme section and select Ice Cream Shell. Also download and set the Android wallpaper (link given at the end of this post).

This will give your Ubuntu Gnome desktop the Android 4.0 ICS look. The below screenshots demonstrate the UI of the Ice Cream Shell.

Download Roboto Font

Download Ice Cream Shell

Android ICS 4.0 Wallpaper 1

[via WML Cloud]

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WinUSB is an Ubuntu application for creating a Windows USB installer for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Like other applications that enable creating installer USBs, you can create a bootable (installation) USB from an ISO disc image or a DVD. While other tools like Unetbootin can perform similar tasks, however, WinUSB is much simpler than other competitors, and delivers a two-click solution for creating a Windows installer USB. This may be a blessing for users who may require creating a USB installer for Windows for dual booting it with Ubuntu or other Linux distributions. Similarly, you might require installing Windows on another system, but do not have Windows installed on a computer to utilize tools such as the Windows 7 USB DVD Tool.

To create your bootable installer disc, select an ISO image or CD/DVD disc, and click Install.

This will create your Windows Vista/7 installer USB. It is worth mentioning here that the tool might also work with Windows 8; however, it has not been tested. Having said that, the developer has mentioned that the supported images include, “Windows Vista, Seven+.” You can install WinUSB either from the Deb package given at the developer’s website (for Oneiric, Natty, Maverick and Lucid), or from the PPA given below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:colingille/freshlight
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install winusb

Since WinUSB also works from the command line, you can create a Windows 7 or Windows Vista USB installer by following the command line format given below:

sudo winusb --format <iso path> <device>

Once the USB is formatted using the above method, install a Windows partition and edit the Master Boot Record:

sudo winusb --install <iso path> <partition>

[via WEBUPD8]

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Session control options in Ubuntu are perhaps one of the least likely features that someone might tweak. However, this is not because the options do not require tweaking, but rather the fact that one seldom considers looking for convenience at such a micro level. The session control options include everything from the log out, restart, shutdown options, to the User Menu. Some of these options can often result in confusion, and one can end up repeatedly clicking on an incorrect option when performing session related tasks. In such a case, it is best to simply remove the options that you may not require, or might be better off disabling confirmation prompts for an option (e.g., log out). Furthermore, removing the user menu can also help save some real estate, and make it easier to identify app-indicator menu applets. In this post, we will provide you with a method of performing these simple session control configurations.

To configure Ubuntu session control settings, install the Ubuntu Tweak, launch it from the Unity Dash, and head over to the Session Control section.

This will provide you with a number of session control settings, such as removal of log out, restart and shutdown options, as well as their conformation dialog boxes. Under the User Menu options, you can enable/disable the entire user menu from the system tray and remove the user’s name from the Ubuntu panel.

As most Ubuntu users know, Ubuntu Tweak is compatible with all latest Ubuntu versions, including Oneiric Ocelot, and can be downloaded and installed via the Deb package from the developer’s website.

Download Ubuntu Tweak

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Cinnamon is a Gnome Shell fork, created with the aim of providing a Gnome 2 like layout with a bottom panel (with launchers). Recently, we reviewed Cinnamon, and provided you with a walkthrough of its installation (in Ubuntu). Unfortunately, configuring Cinnamon features at the moment is not as easy as one might prefer. For example, some users may wish to auto-hide the panel launcher. In this post, we will tell you how to auto hide the Cinnamon launcher, and to edit related settings.

In order to edit Cinnamon settings, you will first require installing dconf-tools by entering the following Terminal command.

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Once done, launch dconf tools from Applications –> Others ->Dconf Tools. Now, head over to Org –> Cinnamon and enable/disable your desired features. For example, you can enable/disable panel-auto hide, panel-launchers, development-tools, app monitoring, etc. If you end up messing up your Cinnamon settings, you can easily revert the changes by clicking Set to default. Expanding the Cinnamon section within the configuration editor allows you to enable/disable additional options, like the week date and clock view. If you are confused about the functionality of a section within Cinnamon settings, then simply click the respective option (and not the check box), to view additional information about the configuration option.

Cinnamon is available for a number of Linux platforms, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint 12, Fedora, OpenSuse and Arch Linux.

Download Cinnamon

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Turbo-Secure is a package of Nautilus script that provides the option to safely encrypt & secure personal data. Gnome currently has a program called sea-horse for this purpose, but it is a bit difficult to configure. Apart from that, Turbo-Secure delivers quick SSL and GPG encryption by enabling users to encrypt files and text via right-click context menu in Ubuntu. While Turbo-Secure focuses on securely encrypting your data, it provides numerous encryption types including AES 192bit, 256bit, RC 40bit & 64bit, BlowFish and more.

Turbo-Secure works pretty much like any other Linux script; all you need is to download and extract the compressed archive, and then run the Turbo-Secure-Files-Installer.sh and Turbo-Secure-Text-Installer.sh files. Executing each file will start a wizard that will guide you through the encryption process. In the first step, you will be asked to select either the GPG or SSL encryption standard. GPG is used for protecting personal data (especially text), whereas, SSL is recommended for encrypting personal data.

In the following steps, It presents a number of dialog boxes to configure the security settings. It asks you to specify manual or automatic password input mode, i.e store your password in such a way that you will have to type the password each time you encrypt a file or store passwords on hard drive for ease of use.

During the script wizard, you will be asked to select an encryption type, e.g. AES 256-Bit, AES 192-Bit, 3DES, DESX, AES 128-Bit, DES, RC4 40-Bit, BLOWFISH, CAST, CAST5, RC2 40-Bit and RC2 64-Bit.

Once the wizard completes, the encryption options will be added to the Ubuntu right-click context menu. You can use these options to encrypt files and text.

You can download Turbo-Secure from the Gnome look link below.

Download Turbo-Secure

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In December 2011, we covered Sweet Home 3D, an open source interior design application that lets you design a complete home and place furniture on a 2D plane, with a real-time 3D preview. However, if you have already got a 3D model, and only want to view it, you can use view3dscene. It is an open source browser and viewer for VRML, X3D and other 3D model formats. Other than viewing 3D models in window mode, as well as full screen, it also allows you to play 3D sounds along with the models. The application has a built-in screenshot capturing feature to take screenshots of a loaded scene. Some of the supported file formats are VRML, X3D, Kanim, Collada, 3D Studio 3Ds, MD3, Wavefront OBJ, and Videoscape GEO.

The application has Open (load a new 3D model), Examine (examine the current 3D model), Walk, Fly and Collisions buttons on the main interface, while File, View, Navigation, Animation, Edit, Console and Display menus allow you to access extended options. Information about the loaded animation is displayed on the bottom-left corner.

The Navigation menu allows you to Jump to Viewpoint, change interaction method with the model from Examine, Walk, Fly and None, Adjust Walk, Fly Settings, etc.

The View menu lets you adjust viewing options such as Fill Mode, Screen Effects, Lightning, Shaders, Textures, Blending and other details of the selected 3D model.

Under Display menu, the application also has a built-in screenshot feature, allowing you to take screenshots of the loaded model. You can capture image screenshots for still 3D models, or capture frames for animation.

The application does much more than described in this article. For a complete listing of its features, visit the product page. view3dscene is a cross-platform application, and works on Windows, Mac OS X (32-bit only) and Linus operating systems.

Download view3dscene

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A while back, we covered Nautilus Actions Extra, which is a set of scripts for Nautilus 3 that add many useful options to the Ubuntu right-click context menu. While Nautilus Actions can be easily installed in Ubuntu 11.10 via a PPA, some users are facing issues with the installation of Nautilus Actions Extra version 3.1.5. The problem that they are facing is that, during the installation process of Nautilus Actions, the Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped) error is received. Even if somehow Nautilus Actions gets installed, the Nautilus Actions Configuration Tool auto closes after being launched. In this post, we will provide you with an alternative method of installing Nautilus-Actions (3.1.5), so that you can install it correctly in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

To install Nautilus Actions in Ubuntu 11.10, open a Terminal window, and enter the following commands:

wget -O nautilus-actions-3.1.5.tar.gz http://goo.gl/qitnX
tar zxvf nautilus-actions-3.1.5.tar.gz 

cd nautilus-actions-3.1.5 

./configure --with-gtk=3 

make 

sudo make install

This will install Nautilus Actions, and you can start Nautilus-Actions from the Terminal with the below command, or via the Unity Dash:

nautilus-actions-config-tool

It is unfortunate that such issues have become frequent with Ubuntu applications, as the frequent development cycle updates and kernel changes for Ubuntu seem to be one of the root causes of compatibility issues and errors that are being caused for applications and scripts. In case you come across any further issues or bugs related to Nautilus Actions, you can report them at the Launchpad link given below.

Nautilus Actions Extra

[via Up Ubuntu]

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Get Linux is a portable and open source download client, which interacts with a server side library for downloading numerous Linux-based operating systems. With the help of this utility, you can download up to more than 100 Linux distributions, by simply selecting their name from the available list. This makes it easy to obtain the most updated Linux OS, without having to manually search and download the ISO file via a browser. Along with the selected operating system, Get Linux downloads also downloads a PNG and JPG image, as well as OS.cfg (Script File).

At startup, Get Linux reads the Settings.cfg,file, downloads the OSL.cfg, and then randomly selects an operating system. You can select a desired operating system by scrolling down the list, which includes many of the widely used and even lesser know Linux OS, including Ubuntu, Fedora, ArchLinux, CentOS, Debian, elementaryOS, Fuduntu, Joli OS, Lubuntu, Pinguy OS, Zorin OS, Xubuntu, WattOS, and many others. When you select a Linux distribution, a thumbnail image is displayed along with a description of the operating system, as well as the version, desktop type, file size and country of origin. You can also find out more about the selected Linux OS by heading over to the Distrowatch website (Distrowatch options), watch YouTube videos related to it (via your default browser) and visit the developers website (Website button). Click Download to begin downloading the selected Linux operating system. In case you are having problem finding your desired Linux OS, you can search for it, using the Search For OS option from the main interface or the system tray menu.

The downloaded Linux OS is saved in the same directory (by default) where the executable file of Get Linux is present.

You can enable an action after the downloading process is complete (Open Downloaded File or Open Download Folder), change default download directory, sound and timeout limit (for connecting to the server).

It is worth mentioning here that this application is currently in beta, and therefore, might have some bugs. Get Linux works on Windows XP (requires .Net framework 3.5), Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download Get Linux

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It appears that Gnome shell forks are being updated quite regularly, with new and improved user interface changes that are being designed to deliver the functionality lacking in the original Gnome shell. In a previous post, we reviewed the Linux Mint Mate, which is an alternative session for the Ubuntu desktop. Recently, a new version of a Gnome fork was released, known as Cinnamon.  It comes with a Gnome 2 style classic menu and Gnome Shell Activity icon.

You can install Cinnamon by downloading and installing the Deb package from the developer’s website. Ubuntu users will have to download and install both the Cinnamon package, as well as the session. After installation, log out and log back in using the Cinnamon login session.

The preferences option located at the bottom right corner of the desktop provides the option to view windows from all workspaces or the current workspace. You can also choose to always group, never group or only group windows when there is limited space. Furthermore, you can restore to the current or native workspace anytime at your convenience.

Version 3.1.1 of Cinnamon was recently released with some user interface improvements, bug fixes and additional features. For example, the menu text has been made configurable, the panel can now be hidden automatically, the overview hot corners can be disabled and the overview icon can be disabled. All these settings are configurable via gsettings. So, give Cinnamon a try, and see if you like it more than the default Gnome shell or the Linux Mint session for Ubuntu. Cinnamon is available for a number of Linux platforms, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint 12 (available from default repository), Fedora, OpenSuse and Arch Linux.

Download Cinnamon

[via WML Cloud]

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Clementine is a cross-platform music player based on Amarok, which provides a quick interface for searching and playing music from a number of websites. Last year we reviewed the Windows version of Clementine. Recently, it has been upgraded with added support for Spotify, Grooveshark, digitally imported di.fm and Sky.fm radio stations, a new global search feature, which enables searching for music and radio, audio CD support, addition of Amazon as an alternative album art cover provider, and more.

You can install Clementine in Ubuntu 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04 from the following PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install clementine

To install additional plugins, click the plugin located on the left-sidebar (e.g., Spotify), and click Yes, when a prompt appears for installing the additional plugin.

Once done, you can login with your online accounts for the respective service via Tools –> Preferences.

Now, you can allow the artist and album to be specified separately when searching for album covers. The album cover art now searches more cleverly for the best image, rather than selecting the first one it finds. There are also some statistics displayed after the searching for album cover art, as you can see the album cover dimensions on each image. Furthermore, Clementine now also supports dragging and dropping images onto the cover within the edit tag.

You can download the DEB, RPM, Windows and Mac packages from the developer’s website.

Download Clementine

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qshutdown is an open source application for scheduling shutdown, reboot, suspension and hibernation of Linux computers. It not only provides the option to schedule system shutdown, reboot etc, according to a specified time frame within the current date, but also provides a calendar for selecting the exact date and time to schedule such a system task for a future date. This program is handy for users who might require running automatic system tasks, after which they might wish to shutdown their computer to conserve power. qshutdown is quite similar in functionality to Easy Shutdown; however, it provides more advanced options, such as custom date selection for executing system shutdown. The program is compatible with Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based operating systems like Kubuntu and Xubuntu. According to the developer, this application might also work on UNIX and FreeBSD, but it has not been tested by him.

You can install qshutdown using the following PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hakaishi/qshutdown

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qshutdown

Once installed, simply launch qshutdown and set an action to perform (shutdown, reboot, suspend or hibernate), and select a time frame after which selected action is to be performed (e.g., after 3 minutes). Click OK to begin the countdown timer, or click Now to immediately execute the selected action.

In case you require resetting the timer, you can do that anytime from the app-indicator menu. Furthermore, you can also select an action to execute, minimize qshutdown and access Preferences from the app-indicator menu.

From Preferences, you can change the font size, maximum log file size, disable hiding the application, enable target time at startup, autostart qshutdown with system startup, enable warning and logging.

You can also download qshutdown for your Ubuntu version from Launchpad.

Download qshutdown

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Kazam Screencaster is an open source Linux application, which makes it easy to create and share screencasts via YouTube and VideoBin. It impeccably records the on-screen activity, and additionally, provides the option to captures system audio (if enabled), to provide a robust screencast experience like other useful tools of it’s kind, such as Screencast-O-Matic for Windows. During testing, we experienced no lags or functionality issues with Kazam, and the video recording and uploading feature was extremely smooth.

You can install Kazam in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot by entering the following PPA to your software sources and updating it.

ppa:bigwhale/kazam-oneric

Once done, install Kazam from Ubuntu Software Center.  After installation, launch Kazam from the Unity Dash, and enable video (and optionally, audio) recording. Click Record to being recording the screencast.

This will start a countdown before the recording process is initiated.

You can pause, finish or quit the recording process anytime from the app-indicator menu.

After the recording process is finished, you are provided with the option to either save the recording, or edit it with Kazam Screencaster.

If you choose to edit it with Kazam Screencaster, you can upload the recorded video to VideoBin or YouTube. Before uploading a video, you will be provided with various options to enter the title, description and keywords for the screencast. This way, you can quickly upload videos, e.g., video tutorials, without going through any complicated video uploading process. For instance, when you select YouTube option, a login dialog box opens up, and allows you to enter your YouTube credentials (after entering relevant video title, description etc), and automatically uploads the video to your YouTube account.

Below is an example of a test video that we created and uploaded to YouTube, using Kazam Screencaster.

You can report bugs for Kazam at Launchpad.

Kazam Screencaster at Launchpad

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