Jezrin Technologies

How Are They Different?

• Chromium is the Open Source project from where Google Chrome is derived from. To put it straight, Google Chrome is a rebranded version of Chromium. 

• Chromium browser support all the extensions that can be installed in Google Chrome.

• Google Chrome is 99.99% Chromium apart from minor changes like the inclusion of auto update.

• Chromium browser is like the bleeding edge of the Chromium project while Google Chrome is the more user focused version, rebranded version ie.

• But in reality, since Google Chrome closely follows Chromium with regard to changes, you will hardly find any difference between the two. Chromium browser updates almost comes daily, and in my experience, not even a single update has caused any serious trouble in the past one year.

EULA Related Issues

• Google Chrome EULA(End User License Agreement) was a matter of huge controversy during the early days. Here is quick excerpt on what it was like - “you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.”

• Sounds scary isn’t it. It resulted in a huge outcry which prompted Google to make Google Chrome EULA less creepy. 

Chromium on the other hand does not have any such issues. It just works

Verdict

• So, in effect Chromium is Google Chrome minus all the EULA and privacy relates issues. And we all know how easy it is to install Chromium browser in Ubuntu or in any other distro. So why can’t we all just use Chromium instead of Google Chrome? Chromium has been my default web browser for more than an year now and I’m loving it.

• On a final note, we all have to understand one basic fact. Be it Chrome/Chromium/Firefox/IE, Google probably doesn’t care which web browser you use. Google wants this internet eco system to grow and that is where their money is.

We have seen our fair share of Android devices running Ubuntu already, like the Nexus S or the NOOKcolor but to see it running on that large beautiful 10″ display on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and pushed by that dual-core CPU makes this a little more interesting.

Having Linux run on an Android tablet with a 1280×800 resolution makes for a much better and clearer viewing experience from what users booting to Linux have seen in the past. It is not natively installed and will be running over Android but the overall speed and responsiveness seems pretty great from the video posted. You’ll need a bluetooth keyboard and mouse if you want to dive in and run Ubuntu on your own Galaxy Tab.

Good news for those that want to try this themselves, Android users have the method for booting to Linux down pretty well so the instructions shouldn’t be that bad for most looking to give this a whirl. Obviously you will need to be rooted and know that you need to still be careful when doing these types of mods to your device. For all the details, instructions and downloads head down to the source to get started. Here’s a video of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Linux while you’re here.

The next major release of Ubuntu-based operating system ‘elementary’ is to be based on Ubuntu 12.04 and not Ubuntu 11.10 as originally expected.

Disappointed? Don’t be. The shunt to the next Long-term support release of Ubuntu will provide elementary developers with an extended timeframe in which to polish, code and test the ‘Pantheon’ desktop shell, as well as provide Luna users with a more throughly-tested and stable base.

Amongst the applications and components expected to ship with Luna are the elementary-developed file browser ‘Marlin’, music application ‘Beatbox‘, application launcher ‘Slingshot’ and developer-friendly System Settings pane ‘Switchboard‘.

 Source : www.omgubuntu.co.uk

The ‘Ribbon’ interface Microsoft introduced with Office 2007 provided an innovative approach to the use and layout of toolbars in applications.

Following the release, OpenOffice toyed with the idea of creating a similar ‘tabbed toolbar’ concept for use with its own office suite. Whilst the mock-ups and discussions never bore much in the way of fruit for OpenOffice the idea of a ‘ribbon’ for use in open-sources apps hasn’t been abandoned.

Reader George T mailed in to share a project he’s working on that implements the “Ribbon” interface in HTML5/CSS3/Javascript for web app developers, should they wish, to use in their applications.

The project is only “half way there” at present, but George told us that it should be “100% completed” within a month or so, at which time the source code will be released.

Work so far

Being built on open standards, and being open-source itself, the ‘Ribbon control’ looks the same in a web-browser on Linux as it does in a web-browser on Windows: -

 

Aping Mad

The aping of anything linked to Microsoft will irk a minority, but the beauty of freedom means if you don’t like something you don’t have to use it. Personally, I look forward to seeing what kinds of web apps make use of George’s Ribbon control.

Twitter is a powerful platform for websites to share their content, and drive traffic and engagement. However, people have struggled to accurately measure the amount of traffic Twitter is sending to their websites, in part because web analytics software hasn’t evolved as quickly as online sharing and social signals.

Today we’re announcing Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that helps website owners understand how much traffic they receive from Twitter and the effectiveness of Twitter integrations on their sites. Twitter Web Analytics was driven by the acquisition of BackType, which we announced in July.

The product provides three key benefits:

1. 
   Understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
2. See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site
3. Measure the effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration 

Twitter Web Analytics will be rolled out this week to a small pilot group of partners, and will be made available to all website owners within the next few weeks. We’re also committed to releasing a Twitter Web Analytics API for developers interested in incorporating Twitter data in their products.

Robert Ancell, the developer behind LightDM (Ubuntu 11.10′s new login manager) demoed a 3D animated login screen as part of his talk at the Desktop Summit in Berlin, Germany, last month.

The crowd ’greeter’ (as LightDM refers to login screens) he put together allows you log in to your desktop by clicking on animated Imps.

 

The good news for LightDM/Ubuntu 11.10 fans is that Robert has made his ‘fun’ greeter available in a PPA, and provided full instructions for adding, installing and enabling the greeter from the command line.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lightdm-team/crowd-greeter
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install crowd-greeter
sudo edit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
Set ‘greeter-session=crowd-greeter’ in [SeatDefaults] section.
Restart machine

Do note that the greeter is not ‘stable’, meaning the Imps are liable to sneak out into your system and do damage. #justsayin

Once you’ve had enough of gormless-imps wandering your login screen you can revert the changes by setting the ’greeter-session’ above back to ‘unity-greeter‘.

2.1.4 is a bug fix update and comes hot on the heels of Banshee 2.1.3 which popped out into release-ville last month. That release brought support for the shipping of ‘default internet radio stations’ by Linux distributions, as well as chucking in support for various hardware devices. These included: -

1. Motorola Atrix
2. Motorola Ace
3. Samsung Galaxy S2
4. Notion Ink Adam tablet
5. Custom support for the Barnes & Noble Nook 

Full release notes for the 2.1.3 release can be found here and for the 2.1.4 release here.

Download

Banshee 2.1.4 can be downloaded as source from the Banshee website.

Source : omgubuntu.co.uk , banshee.fm

The small app uses the indicator applet framework to provide a panel-based timer. Menu items for starting, pausing and stopping the count are available via a drop down menu, as is a timer showing the time elapsed since the ‘Start’ button was pressed.

When your 25 minutes have passed a notification bubble will appear informing you to ‘take a break’ – as the technique teaches. Likewise the Pomodoro tray icon will change from a grey tomato into a red envelope until you acknowledge the break.

Download

Currently the indicator has as to be built from source. Download the latest release from the Launchpad homepage @ launchpad.net/pomodoro-indicator and extract. In a terminal use the ‘cd’ command to enter the extracted folder and run: -
sudo python setup.py install
to install the indicator system-wide.

As the applet lacks a menu item it has to be run manually using the Terminal/Alt+F2 and entering ‘pomodoro-indicator‘.

Source : omgubuntu.co.uk

What does Windows 8 mean for Linux?

The simple answer is ‘nothing’: Windows 8 is unlikely to sway hardened Linux users; dual-booters will continue to dual-boot; and the linux-curious will remain curious.

But on a deeper level Windows 8 is significant: not only is it the first time Microsoft have deviated from the safety of the “Windows 95″ desktop metaphor, but it’s also bringing a bunch of smartphone and tablet concepts, features and technologies to the desktop experience. That’s not an easy thing to do, and from reviews and previews so far it seems Microsoft have outdone themselves in melding the the two successfully.

Metro UI

Ubuntu, GNOME and others have all been busy having their own interface overhauls recently, so the introduction of a new interface for Windows is following the trend of questioning the traditional “desktop metaphor” as it currently exists. They’ve seemingly opted to veer into a different direction than Unity or GNOME 3, and credit for doing something different.

I suspect that the sleek animated transitions and application feedback in the Metro interface so far will cause Linux developers to think a bit more about “polish” and presentation.

Multiplatform

Windows 8 will be ARM compatible, theoretically meaning that the competition for ARM-toting Linux efforts like Linaro is heating up. But Microsoft only demoed Windows 8 on an x86 Intel processor at the BUILD event (which was said to be very hot, very noisy and very sluggish in turning back on).

Microsoft insist that ARM support is being properly attended to, and that future announcements/demos of Windows 8 on ARM will be made.

The “one platform” approach

Windows 8 retains the “old style” Windows desktop as, essentially, another app in the Metro interface. The result is a single OS that is both tailored to tablets, but also to mouse-bound desktop users.

On a Linux related note, Ubuntu 11.04 saw Canonical fold the various netbook spins of Ubuntu into the main release. Similarly, although Canonical insist that Ubuntu is not heading to the tablet sector any time soon there’s no denying that various developments to the Ubuntu interface – particularly with regard to Unity and uTouch – mean Ubuntu already functions well on a tablet, although is by no means ideal.

Windows 8 is being sensible in this ‘unification’ approach. It’s less confusing for consumers, and easier for developers. That said, I still somewhat expect Microsoft to stuff it up by announcing an ensemble of “Tablet Edition Premium” and “Desktop Metro Home Professional” varieties.

Doesn’t close apps

Oh yes – Windows 8 appears, in demos so far, to take the OS X/Smartphone approach to application management and not quitting apps when closing a document/app window.

The result is almost instant launch times when those apps are opened again. Given the memory-hogging nature of many apps, it’ll be interesting to see how memory management works in Windows 8.

Linux developers have recently begun to question loading times of linux applications – but is there a case to be made for introducing a “document-orientated” approach on Ubuntu?

Minimal RAM Requirements

Microsoft “claim” that the ‘base system’ of Windows 8 can be run on as little as 256mB of RAM. Impressive if true, as Ubuntu 11.04 would struggle to perform adequately on such a meagre amount although official “light weight spins” such as Lubuntu are able to thrive on such resources.

Fast Boot Times

Microsoft claim that Windows 8 can boot in as little as 8 seconds. This is helped by the switch to a new filesystem – called ‘Protogon’ – and changes to the way the Windows kernel (the main component of an operating system) behaves during shutdown.

A bold claim that will be interesting to see tested on a typical user hardware rather than high-performance SSD.

Those with long memories may remember that Ubuntu 10.04 promised a 10 second boot, which is didn’t quite manage to achieve.

So what is it?

PlexyDesk is a Qt/QML powered widget space that ‘covers’ the default desktop space with an alternative that, according to its developers, lets you ‘efficiently use your desktop background.’

The app is cross-platform (Windows, OS X and Linux) and works under most desktop environments, such as KDE, GNOME 2, GNOME 3/Shell and Ubuntu Unity.

What can it do?

With the “app” currently in active development there’s not an awful lot to play with just yet, but what is there is more than promising with: -
Small selection of widgets (clock, photo frame, file browser)
Some widgets have extra themes – just right-click to switch between them
Ability to change desktop wallpaper by dragging and dropping an image on to the desktop
3D support
Themepack support for changing themes (QML)
Drag and drop adding of new widgets
For the more technically interested PlexyDesk has an ‘API for writing data models and C++ widget plugins’ and GLSL shader support.

Is it any good?

Plexy isn’t yet complete or stable but the current snapshot feels quite robust, not crashing once during my play with it. Widgets can be freely moved around the desktop although, somewhat annoyingly, none of these can be removed (nor can extra ones added manually.) You can sort of “hide” widgets by double clicking on them, upon which they turn into a semi-transparent square.

The ease of changing background is nifty, as are the different themes some widgets (such as the clock) have when right-clicked on.

Negatives: the ‘File’ widget is a bit slow and cumbersome to navigate, and certainly fails to beat a scatting of icons on the desktop or a smack of the ‘Super’ button to call up the Unity Dash for intuitiveness, and the lack of variety in the widgets will limit the usefulness of PlexyDesk as a replacement for the most ardent of widget fans.

Some extra widgets (many half finished) are available in ‘/usr/share/plexy/themepack/default’. Adding these to the desktop is a matter of dragging and dropping the relevant .qml file from within the relevant folder on to the desktop.

How to Install Plexydesk in Ubuntu

A daily build PPA – which is unstable and unsuitable for users dependent on Ubuntu running smoothly – provides packages for Ubuntu 10.10, 11.04 and 11.10 users. This PPA only contains one package – PlexyDesk – but does pull in a number of Qt dependencies from the main Ubuntu repositories.

To install PlexyDesk in Ubuntu add the following PPA to your Software Sources, update and then install ‘plexydesk’ from the Ubuntu Software Centre: -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plexydesk/plexydesk-dailybuild

Source :  omgubuntu.co.uk

News on the Linux port of Oscar-winning professional video editor Lightworks has been quiet of late – but, it seems, for good reason

Editshare, the company behind Lightworks, have today announced that a stable release of the professional-grade non-linear video editor will be launched on November 29th 2011, with Beta releases for Linux and Mac OS X to follow on December 19th.

A beta of the Lightworks video editor has been available for Windows users since late last year.

So why the wait for Linux users? Oddly it’s because of the demand, as James Richings, Managing Director of EditShare explains : -

“…we had an overwhelming number of requests to support Mac OSX and Linux… so much so, that we re-organized our development efforts to ensure we deliver Lightworks Open Source for all three platforms.”

To this end the release of Lightworks and its ecosystem are being rolled out in ‘Phases’.

1. Phase One began last November and saw Windows users able to grab Lightworks as a free download. Alongside this the Lightworks Community was launched.
2. Phase Two has just been launched (see below for more details on this).
3. Phase Three is due towards the end of this year and will see Lightworks released for Linux and OS X users.
4. Phase Four will see the source code opened. This is targeted for Q3 2012.

Prices 

Free User: Free
Educational User: £20/€25/$30 year
Professional User: £40/€50/$60 year

New features

To compliment the membership model announcement was news on the enhanced features “paid” members can expect to have. These include: -

• 
  Codec support: ProRes, Red R3D, DPX, XDCAM HD, IMX,
• New titling tool with keyframe-based animation, effects, live previews and GPU-accelerated rendering
• Shard Projects for multiple user editing/collaborating
• Extra export options including DVD, BluRay
• Stereoscopic workflow, with real-time adjustment edit and output
• Interoperability through support for AAF, OMF, EDL
• Improved workflow features 

Source : omgubuntu.co.uk, lightworksbeta.com