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Cinnamon: Gnome Shell Fork With Interactive & Configurable Options

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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 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. Read More

Clementine, Now Available With Spotify & Grooveshark Support

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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. Read More

Schedule System Shutdown, Reboot & Hibernate In Ubuntu With qshutdown

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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. Read More

Record Screencasts In Ubuntu Linux With Kazam Screencaster

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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. Read More

Amarok 2.5 For Ubuntu, Now With gpodder.net Synchronization

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Amarok is a famous cross-platform music player, which provides many options to organize a library of music into folders according to genre, artist and album, and allows editing tags, associating album art, attaching lyrics to audio files, and automatically scores music by keeping a play count record of played music files. Recently, a new version for Amarok (i.e. version 2.5) has been released, and is now available in the Ubuntu PPA for Oneiric Ocelot. Amarok  2.5 comes with many improvements, including gpodder.net podcast synchronization, iPod plugin fixes, auto save feature for playlists, Amazon MP3 store and more. Read More

Maintain Your To Do List In Ubuntu Terminal With Devtodo

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devtodo is a program aimed to help developers manager their to do lists from the Ubuntu Terminal. It maintains a list of items that are yet to be completed, allowing programmers to track outstanding bugs or items by adding them to a to do list. You can prioritize items according to importance (e.g., low, medium, high etc), and display them in a hierarchy within the Terminal window. With the use of some small shell scripts (scripts.* in the doc directory of the source distribution), Devtodo can also display the outstanding items in a directory as you make changes to it. For example, if you use the cd command into the source directory for todo itself, you can see a list of outstanding items (if any). Read More

Top 6 Tips To Resolve System Issues Of Your Family Members & Friends In Holidays

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The holiday season has once more arrived and it's time to visit your loved ones, to spend some quality time with them. Having said that, a lot of this quality time can end up being spent on troubleshooting your nieces' laptops, or your uncle’s old computer, i.e., if you are a geek, or even an intermediate computer user. Updating applications, troubleshooting issues, and re-installing the operating system are all those tedious tasks that can eat up a lot of your “quality time,” but all that can be prevented if you can take some simple measures to ensure that you do not have to start from scratch each time your family members or friends end up messing their computer. In this post, we will provide you with some simple guidelines to help you reduce the time and effort that you may spend resolving technical issues of your near and dear ones. Read More

List Ubuntu & Debian Package Dependencies In Terminal With apt-rdepends

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Sometimes, it can become quite a complicated task to make a package work on an Ubuntu machine. The reason for this is mostly associated with the requirement of installing a few package dependencies. In such a case, you are also likely to come across a pop-up dialog box, informing you that the package cannot be installed as the required package dependencies are not installed. apt-rdepends is a utility that performs recursive dependency listings of any Ubuntu and Debian packages. This tool searches for and lists all the package dependencies by looking through the APT cache. Read More

How To Recover Lost Partitions And Hard Disk Data [Guide]

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In our previous guide on securely wiping the hard disk and removable media via Ubuntu Live and DBAN boot CD, we discussed that Windows based disk shredding applications don’t allow wiping the disk partition where Windows is installed. Similarly, there are a great deal of data recovery applications available for Windows such as Recuva, Power Data Recovery,  Undelete 360, RecoveryDesk etc, which can seamlessly perform the data recovery operations over not only auxilirary disks, but also removable disks including USB drives, external hard disks, SD cards and so on. What if you want to recover data from disk partition that holds Windows? What would be the most convenient way to run disk recovery operation over an entire disk (including all basic, extended, logical partitions and unallocated space), especially when system fails to boot up? Read More

How To Completely Wipe/Erase A Hard Disk Drive [Step-by-Step Guide]

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You may know that when you delete a file, it doesn't actually get removed from the hard disk. This is because, when an OS, including Windows, attempts to delete a file, it removes the pointer or reference to the file, making it inaccessible to user. However, the low-level data recovery applications can still be used to view and restore deleted data from storage mediums. When file is deleted from the system, OS makes the space, which was previously used by that deleted file, available for new data write operations, and if OS doesn't fill that deleted space, data recovery application doesn't take long to fully restore the data from unfilled tracks. Therefore, it's always advisable to perform a multi-cycle shred operation over entire hard drive to prevent data theft. You could use CCleaner and other data shred/disk wipe applications (Secure Wipe, Hardwipe, HDShredder etc, for instance), to permanently delete the data, but file shredding can't be performed over the partition where Windows is installed. In this post, we will discuss how to fully wipe out entire hard disk, and make the deleted data unrecoverable.

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How To Encrypt Ubuntu Home Folder From Command Line Using eCryptfs

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Drive encryption is meant to secure your hard drive in case your computer is stolen or compromised with critical information in it, such as bank account credentials, credit card or social security number. During the installation of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, an option is provided to encrypt the Home folder to secure your files and folders. In case you haven’t selected this option during installation, you can easily do it using the ecryptfs-utils command line. eCryptfs is a cryptographic stacked Linux file system, which stores cryptographic metadata in the header of written files, to allow encrypted files to be copied between hosts. The file is then decrypted using the proper key in the Linux kernel keyring. Read More

Create Disk Image & Clone Hard Disk Partition With Ubuntu Live USB

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Earlier, we showed you how to create persistent Ubuntu Live media disk, and use it for resetting and changing Windows 7 administrator and standard user account password. Apart from tweaking with Windows registry hives, Ubuntu Live media disk can be used to create data backup, shrink partitions, clone hard disk, scan system for viruses, imaging disk partitions and more. Although disk imaging or hard disk cloning can be done using data backup and disk copying applications, malware-infected OS often make it hard to perform essential data backup operations. For instance, if a PC is infected with boot sector virus, disk cloning application doesn’t work unless you clean the system from virus and repair boot sector. Read More

Mount Virtual Disc Images In Ubuntu Linux With Furius ISO Mount

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Mounting disc images to a virtual drive can help view the data without having to burn the image to disc. Most users prefer disc images in standard formats (such as ISO format) to avoid straining the lens of their optical drive, as running a game, movie, etc  from a CD/DVD drive reduces its life. But, it is not just disc image formats that need to be mounted for viewing their content, most Linux backup tools use the IMG format for creating system backups. Such a format can also be mounted using a disc image mounting application to read the data in image file without having to restore the complete backup. Read More

Nautilus Actions Extra: Add More Features To Ubuntu Context Menu

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Being the default file manager of the Gnome desktop, Nautilus seems to lack a few built-in advanced options. In order to acquire additional features, one has to often resort to the installation of third-party scripts, like the Shred File Script. Nautilus Actions Extra is a set of scripts for Nautilus 3, which adds many useful options to the Ubuntu Context menu. The available scripts and actions in Nautilus Actions Extra include advanced search, the option to set an image as a wallpaper, open a file with Gedit as a root user, mount/unmount ISO files, check file type, calculate file size, verify MD5 checksums, convert image and audio files, batch rename (pyRenamer), add emblems and more. Read More

X Neural Switcher: Auto Switch Keyboard Layout & Fix Typos In Ubuntu

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X Neural Switcher (Xneur ) is a Linux application for automatically switching the keyboard layout, based on typed text. For example, if you type something in the wrong language, Xneur automatically switches to the specific language. The functionality is similar to Ochepyatka, a Windows application we covered earlier. X Neural Switcher works in two modes, i.e. automatic and manual. When an operating is running in the automatic mode, it auto-detects the layout of the input text and changes the language for you. Likewise, the manual mode allows you to automatically switch the layout of the last word you typed (using the Pause / Break hotkey), the last typed line (using the Ctrl + Break hotkey), the selected text (using Shift + Break), and other handy features. It is worth mentioning here that the aforementioned key combination only works with the automatic mode. Read More

Create Your Own Linux Distribution With SUSE Studio

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If you ever wanted to tweak or create your Linux distribution, and do not have the required know how, then you definitely need to check out SUSE Studio. It is a web service that allows creating your custom Linux distribution by following some easy steps. Using this web service, you can create and download your very own Linux operating system with customized applications and features. Read More

Download And Test Drive New Gnome Web Browser Prototype

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As we all know, Epiphany has been the long standing default browser for the Gnome desktop. However, as the Gnome developer’s look forward to making use of cutting edge technology and Gnome improvements, it appears that the time of Epiphany (at least as far as Gnome is concerned), is coming to an end. This is because a prototype of the new Gnome browser has been released for early testing by users. This new browser is likely to be the Epiphany replacement for the new Gnome desktop. Details after the break. Read More

Radio Tray: Minimalist Internet Radio Player For Ubuntu Linux

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Radio Tray is an open source streaming radio player for Ubuntu Linux that provides streaming via an app-indicator menu applet. Radio Tray comes with support for bookmarks, PLS, M3U, ASX, WAX and WVX playlist formats, and multiple plugins. It can play a number of media formats, which are based on the gstreamer libraries. The aim of this application is to provide internet radio streaming with a minimalist interface, along with the option to add multiple radio streams via internet radio URLs. Read More

Get Ubuntu 12.04 Scrollbar In Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

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The development on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin is fast-tracking ahead, and perhaps one of the most discussed features among Ubuntu users regarding Precise Pangolin, is it’s scrollbar. The opinion of the overlay scrollbar has always had a mixed reaction. While some seem to like it, others simply can’t stand it. If you are a fan of the overlay scrollbar, then you might be interested in updating your Oneiric scrollbar to the Pangolin one, which is available for OS version 11.10 with all new improvements. Read More