OMG! Ubuntu

The countdown banner contest for Ubuntu 12.04 is now open for submissions.

As one of the most widely distributed pieces of pre-Ubuntu release media, the countdown banners provides creative users of Ubuntu with the chance to make, in the words of contest lead Matthew Nuzum, ‘a highly visible contribution to Ubuntu’. 

As with the previous banner competitions, the guidelines set out for contributions are concise: -

• Banners should be 180px  wide by 150px high
• Banners should not be created in PHP or Flash
• Do not over-emphasis the codename (in this case ‘Pangolin’) in the banner

The banner will need to countdown the days from the Beta release of Ubuntu 12.04 to final release on April 26th. Thus: -

• Images counting down from 30 days to 1
• 1 image for day 0 saying “It’s Almost Here”
• 1 further for days past release saying “It’s Here”

Deadline for submission is Monday, March 12th.

As ever the place to submit your entries is on the Ubuntu Wiki at the following link.

• wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/PreciseCountdownBanner

For some inspiration check out the winning designs for Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 10.10.

Ubuntu 12.04 Countdown Banner Contest Opens OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Adobe will no longer provide new releases of Flash Player for Linux after version 11.2, the company has today announced.

Google will, instead, take over the implementation of Flash Player via a new plugin API called ‘Pepper‘.

The pair-up means that Linux users using Google’s Chrome browser will still be able to benefit from new Flash Player features and improvements. Google are expected to begin shipping the new Pepper-based version of Flash player in Google Chrome later this year.

In their short statement, Adobe write: -

“For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.” 

Adobe aren’t jumping ship entirely. Security updates for Flash Player 11.2 will continue to be provided for five years following its release.

Peppered With Caveats

As all well and good as promoting the Pepper API is there is one glaring caveat: the only browser using it (at present) is Google Chrome.

Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, have no plans to add the technology to their own browser, and it’s unlikely to find favour with other, smaller browsers who lack the development resources to integrate the feature.

Although Pepper will ship in the Windows and OS X builds of Google Chrome Adobe will continue distributing new and improved versions of the Flash Player for those two platforms in the traditional way.

Adobe axed support for their Air runtime on Linux last summer.

Is this a good move by Adobe? Regster your voice in the poll below.

Take Our Poll

Adobe Abandons Flash on Linux OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Developers continue to cook up intuitive uses for Unity’s Lenses feature – the latest of which of a Cooking Lens. 

The lens uses social food network ‘recipefy.com‘ as its search back-end, meaning access to a searchable catalog of 4000 recipes is placed within easy reach. Better still, all search results show displays the number of likes a given recipe has received from users, along with difficulty level and cooking time – perfect for letting you narrow down results with a simple glance.

The lens might seem simple on the surface but for its developer, Eduard Gotwig, things weren’t so straight forward. Recipefy.com, unlike sites such as ‘BigOven‘, lacks an API for interested parties to take advantage of. This meant Eduard had to write the scope and parser (the magic bits that read and relay search information back to the lens) by himself.

But his work thus far is sumptuous: you can search by keyword, ingredient, or dish type. For example, vegans and vegetarians will find plenty of meat and animal-derivative recipes on offer by combining terms, e.g, ‘egg free’, ‘vegan muffins’, ‘vegetarian curry’.

In the Oven

Although the lens is currently limited to showing 12 results (with no option for loading more than 12), and lacks filtering options such as cooking time, likes, difficulty, dish type, etc, Eduard is working on adding some of these features into future versions of the lens.

So consider this first version an appetizer for a more substantial course to come.

The lens is presently only available for Ubuntu 12.04 users to install, and can be found  in the Unity Scopes Packagers PPA. 

Thanks to Eduard

Hungry? New Cooking Lens Puts 4000 Recipes in the Dash OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Canonical’s newly announced ‘Ubuntu for Android‘ technology has made a lot of people very excited. 

But words and pictures can only relay so much about how the device, which is still a prototype, works.

Can you run Android apps on thedesktop? How flawless is the Ubuntu experience? How do I connect to the mobiles 3G via Ubuntu?

All of those questions and more are answered in the following 3 minute and 57 second long walkthrough of Ubuntu for Android…

Watch Ubuntu for Android in Action OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Pre-order registration for the KDE Plasma Active tablet ‘Spark’ has been closed due to ‘phenomenal’ demand. 

“It has been so successful that we’ve reached our initial production capacity and have closed the pre-order program for now,” writes Spark project lead Aaron Seigo on his blog.

The 7″ARM Cortex A9 device ships with a capacitive multi-touch screen, 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal storage. An SD card slot, various USB ports and a mini-HDMI out offer expandability.  It is expect to retail for €200.

“When purchasing goes live, we will be sending out emails in batches to those who pre-ordered in the order that pre-orders were placed. So those who got in earlier will have the opportunity to get theirs first.”

European registrants are expected to be able to place pre-orders in March. A logistics reshuffle to better benefit American customers will see orders from the Americas start two weeks later.

Further details on the roll-out plan (assuming you were lucky enough to register) can be found on the Spark blog @ aseigo.blogspot.com

Demand For KDE Tablet ‘Phenomenal’ OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Meet ‘Ubuntu for Android’ – a side-by-side pairing of the Android and Ubuntu OSes on a single phone, the latest part of Canonical’s ‘multi-device’ future for Ubuntu.

When in your pocket the phone is the same as it always was: an Android device. But when the connected to a monitor (by way of a nifty looking dock) it launches into a fully fledged Ubuntu desktop running the Unity interface.

Both OSes share the same kernel – so this isn’t a case of an ‘Ubuntu’ app running atop Android or vice versa. Both run at the same time on the same device. The net result of this is a super efficient workflow.

With emphasis on the super.

Data and settings are consolidated and shared between the OSes; you can see and reply to SMS notifications through Ubuntu’s Messaging Menu; make and receive calls directly from the desktop; and search through your unified contacts in the Ubuntu Contacts Lens or through your Android address book.

You can even run your Android apps on the Ubuntu desktop (albeit in a special window).

200 Million Users in 4 years

When Mark Shuttleworth set a goal for 200 million Ubuntu users by 2015 many scoffed – by that was until he began laying out Ubuntu’s multi-device plan. In many countries mobile phone sales dwarf those of PC sales -

“The desktop is the killer-app for quad-core phones in 2012” says Mark Shuttleworth. “Ubuntu for Android transforms your high-end phone into your productive desktop, whenever you need it.”

You can find out more about Ubuntu for Android on the official website @ ubuntu.com/devices/android.

Just don’t expect to get your paws on one of these just yet.

Much like the recently unveiled Ubuntu TV the current incarnation of the Ubuntu for Android is a prototype. Manufacturers and interested parties are being encouraged to speak to Canonical if wanting to take advantage/learn more about the technology.

Meet Ubuntu for Android: The Next Step in Ubuntu’s Multi-Device Plan OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Small indie game developer Cube Noir recently gave let us play with their forthcoming ‘text based adventure game’ Incursion.

By their nature ‘text based’ games are considered old hat these days; in an era of high-def graphics and motion-controlled input the idea of gameplay momentum generated by reading passages of text and typing in commands seems slow and antiquated.

But Incursion aims to breathe modern magic into the tried and tested format.

Incursion

Nostalgia fans will be happy to hear that, by and large, Incursion looks and feels like the adventure games of Atari, DOS and Apple II yore.

Slowly-revealed on-screen text informs you about the scene, scenario or situation you find yourself in, and, at certain points, a prompt will appear for you to enter information (name, nickname etc) or make a choice.

Quaint, if predictable, right? Well that’s where Incursion get’s interesting. The narrative of the game will exploit a ‘non-linear storyline‘ so as to make gameplay more interesting, and more challenging. It’s likely for this reason that one of the games unique features has been implemented. A ‘roll back’ feature can be triggered by the mouse scroll wheel, letting you you rewind text, actions and choices made.

The exact nature and set-up of the narrative is still being decided on (the game is in development) but, whatever form it ends up taking it’s sure to put a new spin on an old classic.

Public Beta

So when can you get your hands on it? A public beta demo will be available in ‘early March‘.

The finished game is expect to appear in Autumn of this year and, if all goes to plan, will be available to buy on Desura for Mac, PC, Linux at a not-so-shabby cost of £4. One would also hope to see the game appear in the Ubuntu Software Center so that the less ardent gamer can easily discover it.

Hands On With Incursion – A New Linux Bound Text-based Adventure Game OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

The results of the recent Ubuntu Sound Theme survey, which asked users to pick a new start up for Ubuntu 12.04 from a shortlist of 4 sounds, are in.

The winning sound was was Sound 1 – which you can hear in the following video.

The next step for the Ubuntu Design Team and the soundscape creator is to work on adapting the sound to user feedback gained from the survey. This includes making the sound ‘more human, less synthesised’, lowering the pitch, and increasing ‘the warmth of the tone’.

If all of these tasks can be achieved to a satisfactory result then all that will be left is to land the chime in Ubuntu 12.04.

Happy with the result?

New Ubuntu Start-Up Sound Chosen OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Vodafone have chosen to stock the Ubuntu One Files app in their custom Android app store ”Vodafone AppSelect“. 

The app store, which comes pre-loaded on Vodafone-branded Android mobiles across Europe, provides a range of applications that have gone through Vodafone’s thorough app approval process. This process includes QA testing, an assessment of ‘value delivered by the application’, provision of approved graphical assets, and more.

Other than a slightly logo there should be no significant difference between the AppSelect and Android Market versions of the application.

Ubuntu One Files gives on-the-go access to music, photos, files and folders stored in your Ubuntu One cloud. In-app options for publishing, renaming and downloading files are provided, as is support for the auto-uploading of photos taken.

South-African company Vodacom, part owned by Vodafone, launched the Ubuntu WebBook last year.

Ubuntu One Files is available to download now from the Vodafone AppSelect store in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Russia, Italy, Greece and Portugal.

Via UbuntuOne

UbuntuOne Files Lands in Vodafone AppSelect Store OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

The latest update to open-source media player VLC has been released, and brings with it multi-threaded decoding for a variety of popular formats.

Other new features and changes to be found in VLC 2.0 include: -

• Broadcom CrystalHD hardware decoding
• New video and audio filters
• Experimental BluRay support
• Improvements to the MKV demuxer
• SDI and HD-SDI card support for input on Linux
• Minor tweaks to interface

How to install VLC 2.0 in Ubuntu

Ubuntu 12.04 users can install the latest version of VLC directly from the Ubuntu Software Center.

Ubuntu 11.10 users will need to add the following PPA to their Software Sources:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install vlc

How to Install VLC 2.0 in Ubuntu 11.10 OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Unity 5.4 has landed in Ubuntu 12.04 ‘Precise Pangolin’.

Alongside a tonne of performance, stability and bug fixes come a handful of minor visual changes and features.

New in Unity 5.4

The new Unity Video Lens, which we revealed news of yesterday, joins the ranks of default lenses shipped in Precise. Pulled in by the Unity 5.4 update, the lens comes with a handful of additional search sources than previewed yesterday -

Ubuntu’s much hyped HUD feature makes the transition from testing PPA to the desktop. Press Alt to reveal it.

The tweaked Launcher tooltips and Quicklists we showed off a day or two back feature in the update:

Dash window controls are now consistent with the rest of the Ubuntu theme: -

Chameleonic Ubuntu button, workspace switcher and trash can launcher items:

The title of the in-focus tile during Alt+Tab switching is displayed in the panel: -

HUD, New Video Lens Land in Ubuntu 12.04 Unity Update OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Support for Last.FM scrobbling has been added to the visually attractive music player Musique – which was formerly known as MiniTunes.

In keeping with the apps’ minimal ethos the log-in dialog to enable the feature is a suitably simple affair:

The update also sees a raft of other improvements made to the app, including: -

• Faster music collection scanning
• Wider selection of artist photos
• Track titles corrected using Last.fm data
• Supports reading of album covers stored locally and embedded in files
• Able to read embedded lyrics in audio files

There a few things still missing, such as Sound Menu and Quicklist support in Ubuntu, but these are trivial and don’t otherwise detract from the player itself.

How to Install Musique in Ubuntu

Installing Musique in Ubuntu 10.04 through 12.04 can be done by adding the following third-party PPA to your Software Sources: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/minitunes
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install musique

For the PPA-weary a tarball of Musique can be downloaded from the official website.

Music App Musique Adds Scrobble Support, Faster Scanning OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

AIM have no plans to create a messaging client for Ubuntu, a company spokesman has said.

The announcement comes after a call to support Ubuntu became the most popular suggestion on their ‘User Voice‘ feedback service.

Marking the idea ‘declined’ AIM product manager ‘Adam’ offers little reasoning behind the decision, simply saying:

“Sorry, we won’t be able to get to this in the short term, but may eventually add it in the future. Thanks for your feedback.”

The decision, whilst not unexpected, is disappointing. Benjamin Kerensa points out that ‘AOL has the resources to develop a client for Ubuntu (Linux) if they so chose and [could] even get help if they open sourced it but instead of fulfilling one of the highest voted feature requests they decided to decline.’

Aim? More like mis-fire. 

AIM isn’t the first company to fly in the face of user demand. Calls for Adobe to port their Creative Suite to Linux also failed in cajoling support for the platform.

Recently Revamped

The AIM chat clients for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android were revamped and relaunched in 2011. A web app for transient chatters using the service was also launched.

All is not lost for AIM users. Pidgin and Empathy – arguably the most popular IM clients available on Linux – both support the AIM service. The new AIM web-application also works in Ubuntu.

via benjaminkerensa.com

AIM Say No To Desktop Linux Client OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

An auto-updating Twitter stream has been added to the Ubuntu 12.04 installer.

The stream shows tweets containing the hashtag #ubuntu, and appears alongside a short blurb on Ask Ubuntu. The slide, titled ‘Any Questions?’, is the last item shown during installation of Ubuntu.

It might sound like a trivial, inconsequential addition to many, but it’s actually quite smart. Once a user has seen the entire slideshow the tweet stream presents them with accessible, current and varied options to explore further from, thus taking their mind off of the (short) wait whilst Ubuntu continues installing.

Tweet Stream Added to Ubuntu 12.04 Installer OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

The fourth and final maintenance release of Ubuntu 10.04 is now available to download. 

Ubuntu 10.04 will continue to be supported with updates and security fixes until April 2013 but 10.04.4 marks the the last update to ‘installation media’.

“For the first time, this point release includes backported updated hardware support,” Canonical’s Kate Stewart states in the release announcement.

“In addition, numerous post-release updates have been integrated, and a number of bugs in the installation system have been corrected. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.”

Amongst the updates present in 10.04.4 is the addition of the VMWare View Client for installation, update translations for the Ubuntu installer, and security updates for Firefox.

A change-log containing full security and bug fix details can be found online @ wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/ReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/10.04.4

Download Ubuntu 10.04.4

Ubuntu 10.04.4 Released OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

The developers behind puzzle game Bobby have made the title free to download and play.

Whilst the game is devilishly simple in theory – you, as a jet-pack powered hero called Bobby, have to knock bouncing balls into the spiralling vortex – it’s a lot (read: much) harder in practice.

The ball-bouncing game features over 75 levels of increasing complexity each stocked with obstacles and layouts designed to frustrate and annoy you. But hey – challenge is just another word for fun, right?

I dislike the lack of customisation for the controls, and its easy to tire of the repetitive gameplay, but free is free, and as a boredom buster Bobby makes for a satisfying way to waste 10 minutes.

• Get Bobby @ Developers Site
• Get Bobby @ Gameolith

Puzzle Game Bobby Now Free to Download OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Pre-order registration for forthcoming KDE tablet ‘Spark’ is now live.

The Spark team hope to use the registration period as a means of gauging demand for the fledgling tablet.  Those who register now will be given a ‘priority order code’ when pre-ordering begins that, the team say, ‘will jump your order to the front of the line’.

The 7″ARM Cortex A9 device ships with a capacitive multi-touch screen, 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal storage. An SD card slot, various USB ports and a mini-HDMI out offer expandability.  It is expect to retail for €200.

• Register @ Make Play Live

A short video demoing the Plasma Active interface on the Spark tablet can be seen below

Pre-Order Registration Opens for KDE Tablet OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Searching for something to watch will be much easier in Ubuntu 12.04 thanks to addition of a new default Video Lens.

As well as being able to sift through the metadata of local files stored in your Videos folder based on a search term, the lens is backed by a set of smart ‘remote video’ scopes that query online services such as YouTube Movies, Amazon, indie service VODO and, for British users, the hallowed BBC iPlayer.

It’s worth noting that this Lens does not (currently) search “standard” YouTube, but YouTube Shows, Education and Movies, returning results that are available to stream (some free, some not) based on your search term.

And you don’t need to worry if you don’t see a source to your tastes – the list of supported services is still being worked on.

Unique Feature

Unlike Ubuntu’s other default Lenses – which provide standard functions  - the Video Lens demonstrates the possibilities that Unity’s Lens feature offers – more so than searching through your files and applications. Few operating systems provide such media-centric features for popular online services in an easily accessible way. Even OS X, which ships with iTunes and the iTunes Store by default, isn’t as easy to use, not to mention wider in scope, as the Video Lens.

Without ramping the hyperbole up to eleven, I can’t help but feel that this feature – as superfluous as it may seem – could just prove to be one of Ubuntu 12.04′s strongest assets.

Ubuntu 12.04 users can expect to see the Lens appear in the update channels for Ubuntu 12.04 sometime shortly.

Ubuntu 12.04 Gets A New Video Lens For Finding Online Movies, TV Shows OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Apple today lifted the lid on the next iteration of their OS X operating system - OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Exciting news in itself for Mac fans, but the reveal introduces a number of new features to the OS X desktop that Ubuntu users have enjoyed for a little while…

Cloud Storage Built In

OS X 10.8 is Apple’s first release since the introduction of iCloud – their free online storage service. Signing into  Mountain Lion is achieved using your Apple ID (which, in turn, is linked to iCloud), thus automatically pulling in contacts, bookmarks, calendars and other data in ‘sync’ with the service when you first log in.

Canonical’s cloud storage service Ubuntu One has shipped in Ubuntu for a number of  releases now. The installation slideshow of Ubuntu 12.04 features an Ubuntu One slide, and although signing in to the OS with your Ubuntu One details was mooted at the last Ubuntu Developer Summit, Ubuntu makes no demands on using it.

Notification Centre

Having never used an iOS there is only one thing the new ‘notication centre’ in 10.8 reminds me of: The Ubuntu Messaging Menu – the alert icon even turns blue!

Now, to be fair, a centralised place for application/system notifications is a rather logical feature to add to an OS – mobile or desktop – but its introduction in OS X does point to the fact that, despite the vocal minority deriding it, the Ubuntu Messaging Menu was a sensible, forward-thinking addition to the desktop.

Software updates integrated into the App Store – that’s on the roadmap for the Ubuntu Software Center, too.

A Notes App That Syncs to the Cloud

I’m happy to admit that the new ‘notes’ app in Mountain Lion looks a little nicer than Ubuntu’s default notes tool ‘Tomboy’, but it’s the cloud-syncing feature I’m highlighting here. Tomboy has, and has had, Ubuntu One sync support for a while, a feature that I, like many Ubuntu users, rely on regularly.

Things to Learn from 10.8Sharing

10.8 introduces ‘Share Sheets’ – a small, in app button that lets you share whatever you’re looking at/working on with social networks.

It would be fantastic to see Linux applications offer something similar, perhaps by taking advantage of elementary’s Contractor specification. With a few simple lines of code app developers could add seamless sharing from one app to another; e.g. preview a photo in one app, say Eye of GNOME (Ubuntu’s default image viewer) and be able to seamlessly attach it to an e-mail in your mail app or upload it to Twitter via a social networking app, etc.

Gaming Center

The Ubuntu Software Center does a diligent job of providing games for download – but could Ubuntu go a bit further and offer some of the features set to appear in OS X 10.8′s Gaming Center?

A dedicated app for browsing and buying games, logging achievements, sharing high scores, and challenging online buddies to multi-player fun. A social hub for gamers – both casual and committed – on the Ubuntu desktop.

3 Features New to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion That Ubuntu Already Has OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

The Linux port of professional-grade video editor Lightworks is still ‘on its way’ according to Editshare, the company behind the app.

The assurance follows repeated failures to launch a beta version of the application on given dates – the first in Autumn of 2010; the latter in December of 2011.

Responding to a user query on the status of the Linux port, an Editshare representative replied with the following statement:

“It’s on it’s way! There’s a lot of work that has to be done before it’s handed over to external developers. This work is being done, and we’re adding development resources. We have three platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) to prepare, so it’s a big task; but progress is good. We’ll make an announcement as soon as there’s something substantive to say.”

The statement echos that made late last year in which Editshare’s Matt Sandford excused the delays as a result of the company not being ‘…fully satisfied with the stability of this version with its many new features’. 

Kings Speech

Ever since Editshare open-sourced the Oscar winning editor there has been a palpable sense of excitement from creatives in the Linux community as to the possibilities the tool will provide on the platform. And for good reason – some notable films edited using the software include ‘The King’s Speech‘ and ‘Hugo‘.

And having that calibre of software on the Linux desktop – for free – is worth being excited about.

 

Video Editor Lightworks Still Linux Bound – But Don’t Expect It Soon OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.