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Ubuntu – The most popular Linux distribution for desktop users (with an exponential growth in past few years) and Android – one of the most popular mobile operating system, also based on Linux kernel; developed by Google Inc.

Ubuntu 11.04 (alias : Natty Narwhal) or older versions such as 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) or 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) is now becoming the dominant choice for programmers and web developers probably due to the features (cool desktops (window manager, e.g Gnome, KDE..), open source applications, tools, no licensing cost…) and flexibility available on Linux based operating systems. Android stable version 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) was released a day ago.

Do you want to develop android apps using Linux based distributions, then this post will explain you about installing Android SDK (Software Development Kit) on Ubuntu, despite of that you can apply the same procedure in installing android sdk on other Debian based GNU/Linux OS such as Linux Mint.

Before diving into installing steps for android sdk in Ubuntu 11.04, I assume you have already installed -

1. JDK (Java Development Kit)
2. Eclipse IDE

Now, you can install Android in two simple steps :

Download SDK Starter Package
Then extract the package(s) either by right clicking -> extract or do it from Terminal :

Open Terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and move on (use cd target_directory) to the directory where you have downloaded the packages.

tar -xf android-sdk_r12-linux_x86.tgz

android-sdk*/tools/android

Android SDK and AVD Manager will be started with the above command,

now you just need to select the packages (first one you get after expanding Android Repository, is probably mandatory and select the SDK platform version for your targeted device, documentation, sample apps…or any third party Add ons if required) you want to install, then click on ‘Installed Selected’ button; wait for the Download/Installation to complete. (Since the selected packages will be fetched from Internet you need an active internet connection during installation procedure)

start Eclipse and go to Help > Install New Software, then click on Add. Enter the ADT Plugin in name and the following address (in case of any problem, try http instead of https (The secure version of http protocol).. or simply click on archive and locate the manually downloaded ADT plugin file ) as Location.

https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

Then click on Next -> select developers Tools -> Next -> Finish.

Now, it’s time to configure ADT Plugin, Click on Window -> Preferences -> Select Android in left panel and locate the Android SDK directory, and hit Apply/OK.

That’s all.

Source : blog.sudobits.com

Winamp is a media player for Windows XP/Vista/7.. and now it’s also available for Google Android. Winamp is one of the most popular and powerful media player among windows users. Winamp is specifically known for it’s playlist, skins, and a bundle of advanced features that allow you to customize it effectively. Winamp is a freeware application i.e basic version is available free but you need to pay for it’s pro-version.

Are you looking for Winamp on Ubuntu? In fact, Winamp is available only for Windows (and Android). That’s not exactly true because Winamp vs 3 (The latest stable version is Winamp 5.621, released few days ago) Alpha version was also released for Linux based OS (probably the RPM packages, for Linux distributions like Fedora) but it’s not available anymore for Ubuntu or any other Linux distros. So in this post you may notice some free and open source media players equivalent to Winamp not only in features but also in look and feel (by using Winamp skins).

Audacious is a free and open source (Released under GPL) media player (more precisely an audio player) and provides high quality audio output. The other main advantages is that it consumes very less computational resources and supports a variety of formats. Audicious started a fork (Forking in software development means starting an independent development on a project after getting the source code legally from the original developer) project the BMP (Beep Media Player, which also started as a fork project of XMMS)

How to install

sudo apt-get install audacious

Source : blog.sudobits.com

We all want the latest features and changes an app has to offer, and for many of us that means using unstable, beta or sometimes even alpha quality software.

This ‘bite of the beta pie’ approach has drawbacks: application performance may not be ideal and you risk files being trashed by buggy new features.

Enter Glimpse which lets ‘unstable’ applications run alongside stable applications in a ‘sandbox’, making the testing of alpha software (for curiosity’s sake or more) a relatively fear-free experience.

The developer of Glimpse, Sergey “Shnatsel” Davidoff, explains: -

“Applications run in Glimpse are allowed to read your real data, but when they write to it or modify it in any other way, all the changes stay within their sandbox. Your real files on your system are left intact.”

Download Glimpse

Glimpse works with Ubuntu 10.10 onwards. Just add the following PPA to your Software Sources:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:glimpse-hackers/stable

Next step is to run an update and install both glimpse and a profile for your Apps to use:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install glimpse glimpse-profile-elementary glimpse-profile-ubuntu

Once download launch ‘Glimpse’ from the Dash. In the window that opens click on the ‘Profile’ you wish to use. Depdning on the profile chosen you may need to download or locate an .iso for Glimpse to use.

From there you just hit the ‘Launch Apps’ button to launch an app in Sandboxed mode (such as the ‘Software Centre’ for adding some Unstable PPAs to play with).

Google Music Manager Finally Launches On Linux

Google Music Beta, which was launched back in May, lets users upload as many as 20,000 tracks for free access and streaming through the web and mobile devices – wherever they are in the world.

Music is cached for offline play on both the desktop and mobile devices.

At the time of Music Beta’s launch Google only provided Windows and Mac version of ‘Google Music Manager’ – their desktop client for adding and seamlessly syncing your music folder with Google Music Beta. With the release of Google Music Manager for Linux, everyone* is now free to take advantage of the cloud-music-storage service.

Those of you already signed up/using the service can grab the linux installer – provided as both 32bit and 64bit .deb packages – by hitting the ‘Add Music’ button to the top of the player window.

Download

Music Beta is currently only available in the United States

Source: www.omgubuntu.co.uk

Ubuntu user and Python developer Jonas Frei sent us an email with a new project he’s working on that’s aimed at making Ubuntu updates easier to access, and consistinify (new word, do you like it?) Update Manager’s presence in the panel.

It notifies you of new updates and gives quick access to the most common commands in Update Manager, including the ability to refresh and install new updates. There’s also a nifty preferences dialog for a bit of customization.

Jonas says of his project:

it’s an indicator which informs the user about available updates (see screenshots). Also, there are some settings that can be made. The applications progress is in a very early stage, though it’s basically functional (at least for me). Some features don’t work yet, like the Autostart function, but work is in progress ;-)

My main motivation to write this program was, that i always found the update-management in Ubuntu rather unsatisfying with the manager just popping up. I preferred how it was done when there was just an icon in the gnome-panel in earlier Ubuntu versions, or like e.g. in Linux Mint. The language I used is C# (I wanted to get into C# and Mono).

Source : www.omgubuntu.co.uk

Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux kernel 3.0 on his Google+ profile after a short delay earlier this week.

So what’s new? Well, not a lot really. The new release sees a few new patches as well as a bit of old cruft removed, but as Linus explains in his announcement to the Linux kernel mailing list in May, 3.0 won’t feature a bunch of new stuff.

So what are the big changes?

NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here.

No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We’ve been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one (“20 years”) instead.

here are however a few interesting new tidbits such as a Microsoft Kinect driver, Cleancache support, open source graphics driver improvements including initial support for Intel’s Ivy Bridge, and a lot of changes for the open source Intel, Radeon, and Nouveau drivers.

The new kernel pulls support for a few older, rarely used features such as the Reiser4 file system, and according to Michael Larabel over at Phoronix, unfortunately doesn’t fix the power regressions that were found in Ubuntu 11.04.

Of course Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot will indeed ship with kernel 3.0 stable, but Ubuntu’s Desktop Manager Jason Warner couldn’t say when:

“I don’t know exactly when 3.0 final will get into Oneiric, but it will.”

Source : www.omgubuntu.co.uk

Ubuntu 11.04 (or Natty Narwhal) or most of the Linux distribution has usually a lower hardware/system requirements as compare to Windows or Mac OS X, and of course Linux based operating systems are more compatible with older hardwares, so in general you don’t need to worry about these minimum hardware specifications and requirements, unless you are using a very old computer. Anyhow, before going to install Ubuntu 11.04 from USB or CD/DVD , you are recommended to check this minimum system requirements.

For Ubuntu 11.04 system requirements may vary depending on the need i.e the purpose for which you are using Ubuntu 11.04. Suppose, if you want to play games (heavy games which requires 3D acceleration..) then of course you would need much RAM as well as a dedicated graphics card such as Nvidia, ATI etc (i.e a separate GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) ), this will be true for similar other jobs which need high graphics capability. If so then get a best graphics card for Ubuntu Desktop.

Ubuntu 11.04/10.10/10.04 System requirements
The system requirements for Ubuntu 11.04 is same as compared to it’s predecessor 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) or 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), although Unity may not be supported (or it will run with very poor performance, if that’s the case then switch to Gnome and turn off all those fancy desktop effects) in 3D mode on older computer with low graphics capability, in that case it will fall back to Unity in 2D Mode (or to Gnome in older versions of Ubuntu).

Minimum Hardware Requirements

• 
  1 GHz Pentium or better processor (such as Dual Core, Core 2 Duo, i3, i5,i7… )
• 384 MB of primary memory (RAM) although, at-least 512 MB is recommended
• 5 GB of harddrive space but it would be better if you have more than 10GB (unless you are installing Ubuntu 11.04 , for testing or any specific purpose)
• Either a CD/DVD drive or a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port (or both)
• a Graphics Card if you want to use the Unity in 3D Mode, which is the default mode of Ubuntu 11.04, although it’s optional because you can still use Gnome 2.* efficiently by turning off the compiz or desktop effects which consumes a lot of resources
• A monitor (CRT, LCD-TFT, LCD-LED or whatever) capable of displaying output at Resolution (Min) : 800×600
• Internet Connection is not necessary but it’s recommended

That’s All.

Source : blog.sudobits.com

A new collaborative robotics project is ripping the idea of autonomous assistance for the disabled out from the land of science-fiction and planting it firmly in the real world – and all using the power of Open Source.

‘Robots for Humanity’ is the result of a team up between Willow Garage, developers of personal robotics hardware and software, ‘Healthcare Robotics Lab’ at Georgia Tech and disabled user Henry Evans and his wife Jane.

Henry Evans was left paralysed by a brain stem stroke at the age of 40. He is unable to move, speak or care fully for himself.

But the Robots for Humanity project is giving him back a small chip of independence.

Ubuntu-D2

Using Ubuntu and a webcam Henry is already able to control his computer, surf the web, write e-mail etc, using simple head movements. Regardless of the OS that is great of itself.

The ‘Robots for Humanity’ project simply extends this idea outwards, letting henry manipulate the world around him via a robot called a PR2.

The Pr2 uses a head-mounted Kinect sensor to monitor Henry’s head movements, and feeds the data back to Henry’s computer to allow him to control the robot, via various interfaces, in real time. Henry can move the robot’s body, arms and head – allowing him to shave, scratch and itch – or use autonomous actions – such as navigating a room or reaching out for an object.

A project such as this should be championed regardless of its nature. But, you know, the fact it’s being built as open-source software, making use of open-source software (all of the promotional videos for Willow Garage show software in use on Ubuntu, no less) is pretty awesome.

You can find out more on the project in the short promotional video below: -

So the long heralded ‘flood’ of ARM netbooks on to the shelves barely even materialised as a drop, with a drop in demand for netbooks and massive growth spurt in touch-screen Tablet devices seemingly diverting attention elsewhere.

PC company Hercules are pinning their hopes on a ‘better late than never’ approach with the launch of a new ARM powered netbook series dubbed the ‘eCafé’.

The eCafé comes in two 10″ flavours:

• A slim white model weighing just 880g
• A heavier black model with 13 hours battery life and HDMI out

Both sport the same internal configuration of: -

• 800Mhz ARM Cortex A8 (Freescale i.MX515)
• 512MB RAM
• 8GB Flash Storage

A chiclet keyboard, 8GB of flash storage, HDMI out, 3 USB ports an, card reader, Headphone/Microphone ports, integrated WiFi, Ethernet port and bizarre touch-controls on the ‘arms’ of the device for controlling media playback round out the specs.

The operating system appears to be a slightly modified version of Ubuntu 10.07 (yes, 10.07) for ARM devices, running the EFL Netbook Launcher.

The eCafe models start from £179 on Amazon UK. (Pre-order)

Source : www.omgubuntu.co.uk

The third maintenance update to Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS has been released.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, released in April of 2010, will continue to be supported with updates and security fixes until April 2013 on desktops and April 2015 on servers.

In announcing the release of 10.04.3 Canonical’s Kate Stewart explained what the update contains:

Numerous updates have been integrated, and updated installation media have been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Download | ubuntu.com

Source : omgubuntu.co.uk

One of Several Ubuntu Software Centre Designs Proposed for version 5.0

In a recent Ubuntu Desktop Team meeting, where aspects, changes and progess on the Ubuntu desktop are discussed by developers, Software Centre developer Gary Lasker was asked if the new USC design would be ready in time for the release of Ubuntu Alpha 3.

The good news is that the USC in Ubuntu 11.10 will be getting new feature, if not a new look.

The “incumbent” Software Centre is said to work well under GNOME 3.

Source : omgubuntu.co.uk

Loads of good stuff is happening in Ubuntu these days. You can get a good idea of it when you check out the oneiric-changes mailing list. Lots of these changes have been in the making for a bit longer, so expect the ground-breaking changes to happen in the next few weeks. If you’re after the big picture overview: the status overview should give you a very detailed look on how each feature is progressing.

It’s two weeks until Alpha 3 is going to be released and 3 weeks until Feature Freeze, when the majority of the feature work should have landed. If you have updates you want to get into Ubuntu which shake things up, you better get a move on and do it now.

Ubuntu is busy busy busy. On the events front, there was Ubuntu Developer Week last week: around 300 attendees, 25 sessions, all about getting you involved into Ubuntu Development. (Here’s a summary I wrote of the sessions that happened.) Until tomorrow Ubuntu Community Week is happening with great sessions that help you take your local Ubuntu team to the next level. Monday and Tuesday next week (25th-26th July) there will be Ubuntu Cloud Days. Next up will be Ubuntu Global Jam in early September. Awesome, you don’t just get bored in the Ubuntu world! :-D

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed, particularly packages that fail to build. Also is the Ubuntu Mozilla team looking for help, so if you’re excited about Mozilla and what’s happening there, join IRC, talk to the guys on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net. And then there’s Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.

Since last week we got quite a few new people in the Ubuntu Developer world. This time it’s four people who got their first changes into Ubuntu! Applause everyone! Gal Shalif, Kjetil Kjernsmo, Phil Hagelberg and Vincent Vinet. Good work everyone, rock on!

An update to the indicator menus this weekend saw the ‘Me Menu’ (‘indicator-me‘) removed and replaced with an ‘IM Status’ section in the Messaging Menu.

Why has it gone?
Due to changes elsewhere in Ubuntu the Me Menu had become largely redundant, not least of which is the ‘System Settings’ panel now housing user account settings.

Moving the ‘Status Session’ to the Messaging Menu is also a logical move. Writing on the Messaging Menu wiki page Ubuntu’s Matthew Paul Thomas explains the rationale: 

The messaging menu aims to make communication easier with other people. It does this first by letting you set IM status quickly and across messaging applications; and secondly by providing quick access to messages, concerning you, that you may not have seen

The Messaging Menu is structured to have ‘Status’ section at the top, following by ‘Application’ sections (Empathy, Gwibber, Thunderbird, etc.) followed by two new menu entries: - 

• ‘Clear Items’ – This option removes ‘attention’ from the Messaging Menu by resetting the Messaging Menu panel icons to the default look. Message counts, times, etc. remain visible in the Menu.
• ‘Hide This Menu’ – clicking this launches an alert box “explaining the purpose of the menu, and how you can get it back if you change your mind.”

Source : www.omgubuntu.co.uk

To help tide us over until Google release official Google+ tools for developers to play with reader Tom LeJeune has added ‘drag n’ drop’ Picasa image uploading to the Google+ Unity Launcher Quicklist we featured recently.

Visit : Picasa 3.0 for Linux 

Installing GoogleCL in Ubuntu
The first step is to install ‘googlecl‘ – a set of neat command line tools provided by Google for accessing their various services. GoogleCL is available through the Ubuntu Software Centre, so either search for it manually or hit the button below to launch and proceed.

After installing GoogleCL you’ll need to authorize your Picasa account with it.

Open terminal

• Type ‘google picasa list‘
• Enter your username (sallysue@gmail.com)
• Your browser will launch, taking you to an authorization page.
• Agree/accept/allow access to GoogleCL
• Return to the Terminal window and be patient: it can sometimes take a good few minutes for GoogleCL to receive instructions. 

Adding Google+ Picasa Uploader to Unity Launcher

With the preparation out of the way we can move on to adding and installing the Google+ launcher.

Download the Google+ Unity Launcher package by pressing the button below. 

Download

Once downloaded move this package to your Home folder, extract then press CTRL+H to reveal “hidden” files.

Find the folder named ‘.googleplus‘. (Note the period proceeding the name.)

Inside, open the file named ‘googleplus.desktop’ in Text Edit/Gedit. Change the username of the lines starting ‘Exec’ and ‘Icon’ to yours. (Highlighted in yellow in the image below)

 Save and close the file.

The next step is to get it able to ‘run’. To do this you need to right click on the file (googleplus.desktop) and choose ‘Properties‘ from the resulting menu.

Once the ‘File Properties‘ window has opened choose the ‘Permissions‘ tab, and check the box next to ‘Allow Executing File as Program‘.

Drag and drop the file over to the Unity Launcher.

And you’re done! You can now drag and drop a picture or image file for instant upload to your Picasa web albums, and depending on your settings will appear in your Google+ Stream/Photos tab.

One draw back to TLJ’s app is that you can’t choose which album to add a photo to. As such you’ll be prompted to create a new album with each upload.

Once successfully uploaded the Picasa album will auto-open in your browser, ready for you to edit.

Source : www.omgubuntu.co.uk 

PDF (Portable Document Format, an open standard for exchanging documents, developed by adobe systems in 1993) Reader are softwares or applications that allow users to view the PDF documents, e.g Adobe PDF Reader, Foxit Reader etc. On Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) /10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) /10.04 (Lucid Lynx) ..or other Linux based operating such as Linux Mint has one applications installed by default – called Document Viewer – which is good for reading PDF documents.

But there are some other PDF readers available free of cost, with some advanced features and you would like to try that on Ubuntu, this post explains about all the most popular pdf readers available for Ubuntu users. Some of them are open source while others might be a freeware applications but all works well with Ubuntu.

Evince Document Viewer
Evince is a ‘Document Viewer’ application installed by default on Ubuntu or other Linux distributions. It is a fast application with a lot of useful features such as Index, Thumbnails etc. it’s a free and open source software that is shipped with most of the Linux distributions which is based on Gnome. To view a document using Document Viewer, just double click on the PDF file.

File Formats supported with Evince

• pdf
• xps (XML Paper Specification)
• post script
• cbr, cbz, cb7 and cbt (comic books formats) 

Adobe Reader
Adobe Reader or Acrobat Reader is one of the most popular PDF viewer. It’s standard version is available free (as freeware application). it’s very simple to use and the interface is also very good. it has a lot of features which can be further extended to the professional level by purchasing the Pro or Suite (it includes PDF readers as well as necessary softwares and tools for creating and editing professional quality documents) version of the application.

How to install Adobe Reader

Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is a free software provided by Foxit Corporation. Both basic and full version are available free to use, for all platforms. The Linux version of the Foxit reader doesn’t have so much features as compared to the windows version but still it’s good, specifically if you have used it on Windows platforms (Xp, Vista or 7). It has lot of good features such as support for multi language, short load time and speed (it’s fast as compared to other pdf readers but it may not be true on Ubuntu or other Linux based OS).

How to install Foxit Reader

Source :  blog.sudobits.com/

What is OpenDNS ?
OpenDNS is a DNS (Domain Name Resolution, it’s basically a naming system which maps human friendly domain name (e.g sudobits.com) to I.P (Internet Protocol) address e.g 173.193.206.153 ). Each time ( if it’s not cached ) when you visit a website, your browser sends a DNS lookup query to the DNS server, most probably to your ISP DNS but you can configure your computer to use some other DNS servers such as OpenDNS for name resolution purposes, if you want. So in the end of this post you will learn how to use OpenDNS on your Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) or 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) or 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) or any other Linux based operating systems such as Linux Mint, Fedora, Debian etc (Procedure is almost same).

A typical ISP (Internet Service Provider) DNS server works well in general but there are few extra advantages with OpenDNS, some of the important features are :

• Open DNS is very fast (may not be true for non US users e.g if an Indian users will use OpenDNS instead of the BSNL DNS server, then it will be slow because BSNL DNS servers usually takes 400ms to resolve an I.P address while OpenDNS would take more than 1000ms due to high latency)
• It protects you from the phishing attacks
• Content filtering features are also available which can be used to block unwanted sites
• it’s free for personal use

Setup OpenDNS on Ubuntu 11.04/10.10/10.04 in few simple steps

#1 : Right Click on Network icon -> Edit Connections.

 #2 : Then click on Add button to add a network or exist the existing one (Auto eth0) but it’s better to give configure a new one so that you can use both DNS depending on the need.

 #3 : Next, click on IPv4 settings and select “Automatic (DHCP) Address only” (DHCP ( Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) servers are used to allocate I.P address(usually Dynamic I.P Address) to the users) in Method. You can check the box if you want to connect automatically when your computer starts, better leave it uncheck. Give it a human friendly name e.g ‘OpenDNS’.

In ‘DNS servers’ field put these I.P Addresses :
208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220 

Source : blog.sudobits.com