Ubuntu Tips And Tricks

Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 2 released

Time flies when you’re in a development cycle, I guess. To acknowledge the ace-ness of the alpha release (cos alpha’s are always ace, beta’s are brill’ and stables are swell) I’ve decided to write this post as if I was still twelve. And writing about Doctor Who.

So, to the crunch, what’s new and is it worth trying out yet? Buckle up and we’ll take a gander….

New since Alpha 1

Disclaimer: Ubuntu 11.04 is only at alpha 2. What you see listed below is not finished. I don’t know how many times I have to reiterate this to stave off mini-rebellions against Canonical in the comments, but folks: alpha. Remember ‘alpha’.

Unity

Unity, being the default desktop session in Ubuntu 11.04, has received all sorts of tweaking, fixing and honing.

The Launcher now respects your system theme and has intellihide enabled by default. Other important parts have also landed in Unity since Alpha 1, including: -

Dash

A initial version of the Dash is now present.

Places

Browsing for files and applications is a mite easier in this second alpha thanks to theinitial deployment (why am i writing like this is a company report? No idea, I’ll continue) of Unity’s ‘file’ and ‘application’ places.

They look a bit inelegant right now but it’s an alpha, folks. As D:Ream once sang:‘things can only get better’.

Sound menu

As a long-time Sound menu advocate (Yes, being an advocate comes with a Unity-branded beret and sash) I was super pleased to see the return of playlist support to the menu. It’s not 100% as it should be in the Alpha (keyword being: alpha) but it works, therefore making it useful already for playlist aficionados like myself.

Ubuntu one control panel

The new look ‘Ubuntu One Dashboard’ is included by default in Alpha 2. The overhaul is welcome – it certainly helps make syncing and managing your Ubuntu One account easier.

Grid ‘Aero Snap’ feature

A nifty Compiz plugin now enabled by default is the ‘Aero Snap’ style ‘Grid’. Drag an app window to the top to maximise, left or right to resize windows side-by-side.

GTK+ Gripper

For the times when auto-sizing doesn’t do it you’ll find a new ‘grip’ handle on window borders and an invisible ‘border aura’ make manual resizing much, much easier (particularly on touchscreens).

Software Centre

Ahh, and so we come to Ubuntu’s ‘app store’. Notable additions present in Alpha 2 include: -

Ratings and reviews

Long wanted and now they’re here: give your favourite apps a star rating, fill in a short review and then tweet your verdict to your social buddies via Gwibber.

Clever Centre

Zeitgeist-powered application recommendations and application usage tracking is also ticking away in Alpha 2. Use it to find new apps to install, find installed apps you don’t use or just freak out at its intelligence.

Ubuntu Classic Desktop

It may be classic but that doesn’t mean it’s sacred; Unity’s Global Menu applet now appears on the top panel, alongside a compact menu button. (See image above)

LibreOffice

OpenOffice has been replaced with the newly released LibreOffice in this alpha for evaluation purposes.

Download

Did you skim directly to this bit?

Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 2 is not recommended for installation on production systems, your brothers netbook or military supercomputers. If you’re eager to try it out do it safely: use a usb stick or a LiveCD.

The parent-part over, the official download links for Ubuntu 11.04, along with more information, can be found @ ubuntu.com/testing/natty/alpha2. Alternatively the direct links are below.

Use torrents where possible - this helps everyone get it a bit faster by not hammering the servers.

Starry – A New 3D Space Shooter in a Retro Style

Starry is a new space shooter that is vaguely reminiscent of the classic X-Wing/Tie Fighter series, although the style is totally unique. Graphically, the game is beautiful. With simple wireframe and flat-shaded rendering and 8 bit music, it’s a modern game with a retro feel. The game is rail based so there is no worry about getting lost or fighting to figure out a radar system, just simple, fun 3D spaceship blasting.

As they say, a screenshot is worth 1000 words:

If a video is more to your tastes, there is some in game footage here.

Download the Demo

There is a demo available to download from the website. Just simply extract the .tar.gz for your architecture, double click “starry” and click “Run”.

How to play flash games offline and put an entry in Ubuntu’s main menu

Download the flash game you want

The first step is to get the game onto your computer. To do this, go to the webpage where the game is found, for example:

http://www.newsandentertainment.com/zfcurveball.html

Then on the page right click, and view the source. Then find the url for the actual game source. The easiest way to find the url is to search for it (common keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F). Try searching for the name of the game, or for .swf.

When you think you’ve got it, (from the page above the url you should have found is: http://www.newsandentertainment.com/curveball.swf ) click on it, and it should open up in a new tab. If it was the correct URL, save the page. When you do this, check that it is just downloading the .swf file. I suggest adding a . before the name to make it a hidden file and saving it to your home folder.

Adding the entry to the Main Menu

Now, to create an entry for it in the games menu, right click on the gnome menu and go to ‘Edit Menus.’

Then go to internet, find your Chrome or Chromium entry and view its properties. Copy the command field. Now go to games, and click New Item to add to create a new entry.

Paste the command you copied before and add –app=file:// followed immediately by the path to the .swf file.

For example here is mine:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser --app=file:///home/chris/.curveball.swf

The –app opens the file as if it is an application, rather than a webpage, so your game will look native, rather than look as if it were running in a browser. Once your done with the command field, you can fill out the rest: name, description, and even give it an icon. Click ok and give it a try.

If you’re a Firefox person, you can’t run it as an app, but if you enter ‘firefox’ followed by file:// and the path to the game, it should open the game in a full browser.

The result

Launch your app from the Main Menu and you should see something like this:

Latest Ubuntu Wallpaper

Black2 Gtk + emerald GTK 2.x Theme/Style

H-Craft Championship hover racing game for Ubuntu

H-Craft is a futuristic hovercraft racing game which sees players compete in championships to level up and unlock new vehicles to race with.

It features 28+ racetracks, a unique driving physics simulation, a fresh design, and a challenging Championship mode.

The game, which is over 3 years old, still has pretty sharp 3D graphics with support for high resolutions, texture filtering and anti-aliasing.

The Game

Menu presentation is slick, and the gameplay is smooth and challenging – I found myself falling off the track countless times until I got used to how the hovercraft slides around. The computer competitors are fast around the track as well, and the levels are varied enough.

The developers should also be praised for their choice of music – the soundtrack is certainly fitting.

Although there are no weapons, it still reminds me very much of the popular Wipeoutseries for Sony’s PlayStation.

If development hadn’t ceased (see below) I would probably encourage Irrgheist to focus on improving re-playability, with more incentive for the player to win races and level up (other than simply getting new vehicles, most of which look the same anyway).

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to include weapon pickups either, just to give a bit of a boost to the action and show off the slick visuals with some mean explosions and other particle effects.

Trailer

There’s a trailer available to watch on YouTube, also embedded below.

Download the free demo / purchase the game

I’m not sure what the future holds for H-Craft Championship as the latest post on Irrgheist’s News Feed is dated September 1st, 2009 which leads me to believe the company may have disbanded.

The company also apparently owns and runs Indie Game Videos (http://indiegamevideos.com) but the latest video on there is nearly a year old.

Either way, you can still pick up the game for around $15.00 USD or download the free demo version for Windows or Linux and enjoy one of the best looking racing games available for Linux.

Future Blue Conky

Conky based on a "SysMetrix" theme created by Xymantix.

Install:
Extract "Conky" folder to your $HOME directory and rename it to ".Conky".
Create an entry in "Startup aplications" pointing to the "start_conky.sh" file.

(Furure Blue Conky)

Send And Recieve SMS Messages With My Computer

AndroidPC is a free Android application that lets you send and receive SMS messages (and notifies you when you receive new SMS messages through a popup), pickup or deny calls, send/receive files and urls, synchronize contacts with avatars and more - all from your computer. For now the application only works through WiFi. The computer part runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.

(The AndroidPC computer dashboard)

Even though the idea is great, AndroidPC has a few quirks: if you receive an SMS and you don't see the notification, the notification area icon doesn't change so you have to open the dashboard to see it. Also, it doesn't display notifications for calls but you can see these in the history, along with the received SMS messages. What I didn't test is the call feature so I'm not sure how that works.

Installation and usage

Download the Android part via the Android Store (that's a link to the new web store) and the PC part from HERE. Please note that you need JRE to install the PC part.

To use it, open the Android app, then on your computer right click the AndroidPC icon in your notification area, select "Open Dashboard" and here select "Connect to Android". The first time you you'll need to syncronize your Android device with your PC - to do this, click the "Synchronize" icon on your phone or go to or select AndroidPC > Synchronize on the AndroidPC dashboard on your computer. If you have trouble setting everything up, the Android PC website has a full how-to on this.

To add the application to startup in Linux, go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications, add a new startup program and under "Command" enter "javaws /path/to/androidpc.jnlp" (replace /path/to with the path to where you've downloaded androidpc.jnlp).