GUVCviewer: Finally Webcam Recording Made Easy

For almost two years my primary recording device for YouTube videos has been with not a fancy camcorder, but a webcam.

So believe me when I tell you that I’ve tried a lot of different applications on different operating systems to get the most from my camera, both proprietary and open source. Out of everything I have tried, GUVCviewer packs the best blend of performance and features.

Check out the video for my full review:

GUVCViewer Video Review

I should mention that one problem web cameras face in Linux, as well as every other O/S, is that they are limited by the interface (to date). USB webcams, even USB 2.0, simply don’t have the ability to output 1080p (or even 720p) video at decent frame rates. It will be a while before we see high-bitrate video recorded at 30 fps in 1920x1080p.

This is not a software fault but a hardware limitation. The good news is that prices for camcorders that can handle 1080p video have come down quite a bit!

( Check out Nixie’s blog here and follow her on Twitter! )

To Install GUVCviewer just open Ubuntu Software Center. search GUVCviewer and install

Source OMG! Ubuntu

Minimal ‘conky Orange’ theme

Just take this minimally-stunning ‘Conky orange’ theme by GNOME-look user hardball.

Amongst the many circular  displays you can see are a clock, CPU monitor (with top 3 processes listed), RAM usage (with top 3 largest memory users) and information on your hard-disks and network connection.

Download @ gnome-look.org/content/show.php/conky_orange

All credit to the creators of Elementary Milk.

Extract file and copy folder.

then in terminal:

gksu nautilus /usr/share/windowbuttons/themes/

and paste the folder into the directory.

(elementarymilkwindowbutton)

source GNOME-Look.org

Divergence Theme Pack

Well, it’s easy to achieve thanks to designer ~jurialmunkey who has packaged them up into one ‘mega-pack’ for easy download and installation.

Download

The Divergence theme set is available to download in one giant ‘megapack’ @: -

• jurialmunkey.deviantart.com/#/d301oik [Zip, 2.0MB]

Requirements

To get your apps looking like the screenshots above you do need to install Nautilus Elementary, the latest Murrine & Equinox GTK engines and the Awoken icon set.

The megapack contains: -

• various spins of the Divergence theme (Steel, Dust, Coal, Light, etc)
• Metacity
• Emerald
• AwOkaenza icon theme, inheriting many icons from AwOken
• Awn Theme

PPA’s

Latest Equinox GTK engine:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-equinox

Latest Murrine GTK engine:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:murrine-daily/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-murrine

Nautilus Elementary:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

nautilus -q

Open Nautilus > Edit > Preferences > Tweaks > Enable breadcrumbs, disable places button.

AwOken Icon Theme:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alecive/antigone

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install awoken-icon-theme

Installation

Installing the megapack is a breeze; download and extract the .zip file above and run the ‘install.sh’ script inside either by double-clicking on it and choosing ‘run in a terminal’ or issuing the following command in the correct directory via the terminal: -

sudo ./install.sh

inSSIDer 2 - Wi-Fi Scanner Tool For Ubuntu

The first Linux release of  award-winning open-source Wi-Fi scanner tool inSSIDer 2 has been made available for download.


inSSIDer scans any network(s) available to your WiFi card/dongle and tracks the signal strength over time – even if you’re not connected to it. This makes it an invaluable tool when deciding on a network to join or for detecting performance issues with your own network.

Download

As this release is of alpha quality it is not recommended for users dependant on the use of a stable WiFi scanning tool.
Pre-packaged .deb files are available for both 32bit and 64bit Ubuntu @ github.com/metageek-llc/inSSIDer-2-Cross-Platform/downloads