The first Alpha of the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx development cycle will be released later on today. This will be the first of 3 Alpha releases, the following of which will arrive January 14th and February 25th respectively.

Whilst I do not recommend installing Lucid Alpha 1 on any machine that you intend to use daily, you will find the relevant download details available at the following link: -

(Note that this link is not live as of yet so comments complaining about wrong link/lies/what’s going on will be deleted/ignored.)

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/alpha1

Yesterday we were the first to bring you the news about malware being targeted at Ubuntu users, and today, sadly, another malicious file was uploaded to gnome-look, this time masquerading as a theme called 'Ninja'.

If you fear you've installed it head over to the ubuntuforums @ This thread to help get a fix.

I've e-mailed Gnome-look twice for a response or comment regarding these rogue finds but as of 5PM-ish I'm yet to receive a reply. It would be great to know whether gnome-look (or any of their affiliated sites) intend to introduce safeguards to stop the exploitation of trusts that the Linux community has built up.

Docky developer DBO post a thread on the Ubuntu Forums asking for some feedback on a UI issue. Knowing so many this blogs readers to be devout Docky enthusiasts i though I'd highlight the question here so that many of your can also add your votes.

DBO asks: -

I am looking for some feedback on a new way of titling menus in docky. I am not sure if its worth keeping or not, or if anyone has an ideas for improvement. Let me know what you think (screenshots attached).

Without Titles: -

With Titles: -

Vote Link

Head on over to the thread page @ http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347311 where you’ll find the poll to vote in.

I personally think that the “titles” are logical and beneficial to users by helping to better separate the two sections as letting newer users know instantly ‘what is where’.

http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/gimp-2-8-new-features.html

Single Window Mode

http://www.gimpusers.com/news/2009-10-14/compiling-gimp-27-git-ubuntu-904-910.html

http://www.gimpusers.com/news/2009-09-19/single-window-mode-gimp-2-8-confirmed.html

AWN is a dock-like window and launcher manager for Linux. But you already know that, right?


Evolution
AWN 0.4. is the next major version due for release and is currently in beta for people desperate to try it out.

The point-four series has reworked AWN from a bottom-bound dock into something much more powerful and flexible, adding a slew of new features, enhancements and UI improvements along the way for good measure.

• Intellihide? Check.
• Panel Mode? Check.
• Swish Docky inspire Applets? Check.
• Squishy Icon Animations Still There? CHECK!!!!

What isn't! Let's over-view the new major features one-by-one: -

Styles
Previous version of AWN come with two styles: Flat or 3D. Both of these still reside in point-four but the following are also added: -

Floaty 


Curvy


Edgy



None


"Extended"
Checking 'expand the panel' in the settings dialog extends the dock the full width of your screen. You can then add the 'panel expander' applet to shove notifications, trash cans and whatever else to one end of the panel, whilst keeping your launchers and windows the other end.

Like so: -

Position
AWN 0.4 allows a user to place the dock wherever they wish on screen. (top, bottom, left or right).


It is still only possible to have one dock on screen. Docky allows for multiple docks in various positions.

Auto-hiding
Talking of Docky it's worth mentioning AWN 0.4's new 'hiding features' that were no doubt inspired by the 'intellihide' feature the former introduced.

The full list of 'behaviours' in AWN are: -

• Standard  - Keeps AWN on top, doesn't hide
• Panel Mode - Works almost like a gnome-panel; maximizing windows snap to the top of the panel. 
• Autohide Keep Below - AWN stays under windows
• Autohide Fadeout - AWN fades outs when a window covers the dock
• Transparency - AWN stays on top but goes "transparent" so you can see the window beneath (see image below)
• Custom
  

Launchers Only
AWN allows a user to have a launcher only dock with no window management.


Window Grouping
All windows of one application are grouped under one icon on the dock.

Icons
Drag and drop arranging of icons is now supported.


Applets
Applets now have the opportunity to behave differently. Again, part of this is surely inspired by GNOME Do Docky: -


Settings Dialog

AWN-Manager has been retired and replaced with the shiny new config dialog 'awn-settings'.
The best way to install AWN 0.4 is to add the AWN:Testing PPA. This will make sure you get all of the latest features, fixes... and new bugs!

You can find it @ https://launchpad.net/~awn-testing/+archive/ppa 

Desktop blog editor BloGTK! released a new version - version 2.0 - back in September that, somehow, I missed news of!

What's new
It would be easier to say what isn't new with 2.0. The entire application has been re-written, sports a much more user-friendly editing and account management interface  and includes support for even more blogs and blog features.

What's not so good?
Given this is the first release of the newly re-incarnated BloGTK! it'd be wrong to be too critical of BloGTK!s deficiencies. It is slightly less capable than Blogilo (formally known as Bilbo Blogger) and both are still miles behind the "yard stick" of desktop blog editors - Windows Live Writer.


Composing isn't WYSIWYG meaning you need to pay attention to parsing/formatting. The preview mode corrects some of the short comings here, but it would be nice to have a directly editable WYSIWYG mode.

You may have to hover over icons in the editor mode to check their functions. An option to have text with icons would be a sane additions.

No support for tags on Blogger blogs - as with Blogilo. I hope this is because of an API issue and not because, as another blog editors' developer puts it, "blogger is not as good as wordpress".

Looking Forward
The next major release, 2.1, is seeking to add image upload support via Picasa (for Blogger blogs) as well as native uploads for other blogging systems.

BloGTK is continuing to evolve, and I’m getting more and more assistance in making it better. Again, thank you to everyone who has contributed code and bug reports and feature suggestions. Every little bit helps.

Download/Install
Jaunty & Karmic users can add the following PPA to install and stay up-to-date with all the latest BloGTK! developments.

https://launchpad.net/~jayreding/+archive/ppa

Task management application ‘Getting Things GNOME!’ has just pushed a new version out of the stable door, saddling it with all manner of new plug-ins, UI improvements and 99 firmly squashed bugs. Well done guys! This release is the last on the road to the “full-featured” 0.2 release.

Amongst the new features are: -

• Plugin support
• 6 plugins shipped with the app - Remember the milk synchronization, hamster integration, bugzilla, geolocation, tomboy, and notification area
• Better performance
• Tag group support
• Much implored editor mode
• “fuzzy” due dates (“let me pencil that in sometime around never.”)

I’m a GTG! user myself and the thought of RTM sync makes me want to kiss several of the developers. …In an uber-manly fashion, of course.

I would love to see some form of CouchDb/UbuntuOne sync happening in future releases, but for now 0.1.9 has more than enough to satisfy!

Download

You can get the latest update to GTG! by adding the following PPA: -

https://launchpad.net/~gtg/+archive/ppa

The 'Preferences' menu of popular MSN messaging client 'Emesene' has received a thorough makeover - and looks much the better for it!

Below is a brief over-view of whats changed and whats new.

New Style
Orientating itself horizontaly over the previous vertical menus, the window plays much nicer with smaller netbook-esque displays.


The left-hand pane is dedicated to sorting each section and is much easier to navigate - and nicer to look at - than the previous 'tabs on top' approach of previous versions.
New Features
It is not only a visual shift-around, either. The new menus give the user much more knowledgeable control over Emesene. Take, for example, the  conversation theme menu. Im previous versions it was simply a drop-down list, replying on the user to already know what kind of style GTalk or ICQ looked like. The improved version shows the user a preview of the selected style thus allowing for much more informed decisions.



Easily Install Themes
It is now possible to install new icons themes, emoticon packs etc from Emesene itself. Previously one had to manually unpack archives to various ~/.emesene folders.

What else is new?
Sound is no longer a plugin but part of Emesene's core. The option to start-up minimised to the tray has been renamed from 'Iconify Emesene' to 'Notificaion Icon Only'.


Download
Currently the new menu is only in the SVN build but if you use the SVN weekly PPA you'll find the updates coming your way in a few days time!

SVN PPA
https://launchpad.net/~bjfs/+archive/ppa

Last Thursday saw Ubuntu 10.04 enter User Interface Freeze. As a result, a flood of new themes, wallpapers, icons and various other artwork all sloshed out of the OMG! post doors as fast as it was coming in.

Because Thursday and Friday were so heavily dominated by "theme" related posts many people posted comments calling for us to change our name to "OMG! THEMES!"

Ditch The GIMP
Slim down selection of games included by default
Include PiTiVi as video editor
Remove Synaptic Menu Entry
Removing Menu Editor (apparently causes lots of issues)
Tsclient/vinagre are being merged; only include the one
Include selection of Nautilus plug-ins for simple and common actions
Keep rhythmbox for Lucid
Include a simple GUI backup utility
Include Cheese by default
Add menu entry to EOG to edit photo in F-Spot
Fix F-Spot to allow editing without importing

Earlier we reported on the decision to ditch The GIMP in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx LTS. Lots of reasons why this is a good thing, and a fair few as to why it isn't, but what counts is what you think. So...

Annoyed that in Karmic you can no-longer switch between desktops using your mouse wheel? De-annoy yourself thanks to this easy fix.

1. Open up CompizConfigSettingsManager
2. Go to 'Viewport Switcher'
3. Choose the 'Desktop-based Viewport Switching' tab
4. Enable 'Move Next' 
5. Set it to 'Button 5'
6. Enable 'Move Prev'
7. Set it to 'Button 4'

You can now scroll through your workspaces with your mouse wheel again. 

One feature will on the lips of everyone come Lucid: The Ubuntu Music Store.

The Lucid music store project aims to deliver the ability to purchase music from within a desktop music player.

UDS Wednesday kicked off with a super interesting session; a meeting entitled "Application selection in the default install". 

Over three posts I'll present the main ideas and discussions from these meetings: Whittling the default game selection down, removing GIMP from default installs & what best to use for photo-editing and the decision to potentially include PiTiVi as a default application in Lucid Lynx...

Remember that nothing is final and decisions may change over the course of the development cycle.


Open-source video editor PiTiVi is on course to become a default application in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, as has been proposed at UDS09.


Ubuntu gaining a video editor is a wise decision. Windows has one, OS X has one and so should Linux. Not to follow their lead but to give users what they have come to expect from a modern desktop operating system.


Sadly the decision has been taken to 'trial' PiTiVi as the video editor in Lucid, and depending on its progress during the development cycle, decide on if it should stay.


PiTiVi is deemed "a good and usable choice" for two reasons: -

• It has a simple interface
  
• The company funding PiTiVi, Collabora, are "pushing for it to be included" in Ubuntu. (This quote has since reworded to 'Supportive of it being included in Ubuntu' in the blueprint spec.)

The first issue is a sound one. PiTiVi follows the same "UI" as Windows Movie Maker and closesly resembles other Non-Linear editors.


PiTiVi also uses the Gstreamer framework for its decoding and encoding and as such is the closest thing to a 'native gnome' video editor.


Why It Sucks
PiTiVi can't currently handle a bunch of input formats,  including, for most people i know, a rather crucial one: DV. This was considered irrelevant at the meeting as most people, apparently, use videos from flip-cams. (Source, guys?) Most flip-cam's i've used encode to MP4 which isn't a format enabled by default in Ubuntu. PiTiVi has an issue with MP4, too...


If you use .ogg though you're away!


I used to love PiTiVi but its development is slower than slow. For it to be included in Ubuntu by default, and for the GIMP to be removed, will send a wrong first impression to users; Presenting them with a half-baked video editor that, lets be honest, can't do much aside from trimming and arranging. Is that a good initial impression? Do we really want to give users a video editor which doesn't match even the basic-of-the-basic video editors available for Windows?


Open-Shot is the daddy of video editors on Linux. It can handle green-screen, pretty much every format you chuck at it, you can apply effects and transitions to clips, easily output video into a number of formats using its simple preset menu, or get down and dirty with specifics using the advanced version.


It has good support and fast development.


The reasons why OpenShot isn't a contender is because (quotes from the meeting): -

• "It has serious UI problems"
• "Its GNOME integration is awful"
• "it has issues"

The UI has problems? Compare OpenShot & PiTiVi: -




They look the same!


Gnome Integration is awful? I can drag and drop to both... What more integration does one need in a video editor? 


As for the unspecified "issues" OpenShot has, i'd say PiTiVi has a greater share to worry about...


Regardless of what is included as default, both are useful applications. 


From what i gathered at the end of the meeting, PiTiVi is to be chosen and trialled. It will be reviewed around Alpha 2 and asked "is it worth it?". 


I just fear Lucid is shaping up to be a watered down example of a Linux desktop.

UDS Wednesday kicked off with a super interesting session; a meeting entitled "Application selection in the default install". 


Over three posts I'll present the main ideas and discussions from these meetings: Whittling the defaultgame selection down, removing GIMP from defaultinstalls & what best to use for photo-editing and the decision to potentially include PiTiVi as a default application inLucid Lynx...


Remember that nothing is final and decisions may change over the course of the development cycle.

The decision has been taken, and it seemed pretty final that The GIMP will not be included in Ubuntu Lucid by default.

The decisions behind this are based on a few factors: -

• the general user doesn't use it
• its user-interface is too complex
• it's an application for professionals
• desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot
• it's a photoshop replacement and photoshop isn't included by default in Windows...
• it takes up room on the disc

Linux likes/needs/wants to show that it can do everything Windows can do, has application replacements just as powerful and feature complete and Joe User shouldn't feel that they'll be missing out by coming over to the FOSS world. Ubuntu does this successfully.



Does removing GIMP reduce the 'allure' that first time users will come across? In place of one of the most powerful adverts for OpenSource software they will find what that will impress them as much? Is it the job of Ubuntu to promote the best that Linux has to offer? Does showing off the power of Linux persuade first-timers? 

Did it impress you?



The logic behind this is sound. Desktop users just do not need something as powerful as The GIMP. It takes up space, it's not widely used outside of designers and a simpler "paint" type programme would better serve the features it provides that don't overlap with F-Spot. 

Cos that is what this is really about: It's used to edit photos, but F-Spot edits photos, too. Two apps doing the same thing in a default install is insanity. Pick your horse and back it. In Lucid this horse will be F-Spot... or will it?


The Solution?
Although GIMP won't be installed by default, there was a short discussion on creating "Staff Picks" for the Ubuntu Software Centre. These would be applications highlighted and, in short, promoted as useful. The idea of creating "suites" was also brought up - such as a "Graphics Suite" which would be a one-click install yet give you GIMP, Inkscape, etc. 


F-Spot Vs gThumb Vs Eog Vs Shotwell

Another issue brought up surrounding image editing was F-Spot. 


Users need to manually import photos into F-Spot before they can edit them. They can't just view a photo in F-Spot and edit it which is the functionality those at the meeting feel is important. 

The Contenders
F-Spot has a photo-viewer, but it lacks the speed and the editing integration. You still need to import photos into F-Spot proper to edit. 



gThumb was suggested as a replacement for both F-Spot AND the current default image viewer in Ubuntu "Eye of Gnome". gThumb is fast, has editing capabilities baked in and can do photo management.  


Shotwell was brought up briefly (we reviewed it a couple of days ago) though it is less an image viewer and more a lighter version of F-Spot. 


The Winner

The consensus was to stick with both EOG and F-Spot. Two avenues will be persued in time for Lucid: -

• Getting F-Spot to edit photos via it's photo viewer 
• Inserting an "edit" entry into EOG that opens the photo in F-Spot for editing. 
  

It's a slow news day and this is mildly exciting so here's the deal: Google ChromeOS will be "demoed" in 2 days time. This is, once again, according to TechCrunch.

Although now retreating on their previous 'scoop' that a ChromeOS Alpha would be available "within a week", they're now towing a more conservative line in that ChromeOS will merely be demoed in 2 days time with a "technical overview" presented to the public.

Fire enough bullets and one's got to hit right?

Hopefully both stories are true. Yet even if it is just an overview of the current status of ChromeOS - due to be launched fully in late 2010 - it will prove to be a fascinating show.

Pidgin's preferences menu will be getting a overhaul in time for it's next major release.

Lucid may not be getting a new GTK theme but it will still be getting an entirely new look.

Ubuntu’s Ayatana team (most famed for creating those awesome ‘new’ notification balloons that came in Jaunty) are currently testing a super-duper enhanced version of GTK+ that adds RGBA support (think Windows Aero) and client side window decoration.

Only a few months ago we posted a laborious and complex solution for hacking RGBA support in Ubuntu, but thanks to the Ubuntu Ayatana Team it will arrive out-of-the-box in Ubuntu 10.04 and, if suitably tested, will be enabled by default.

It is easier to demonstrate the visual wow factor that comes with RGBA color maps. Witness: -

note: this is not the patch for lucid, but a hacked GTK using RGBA

Let us all hope that this makes it into Lucid (very early in testing stage, has issues with nautilus) but should it be part of Lucid it will undoubtedly help to modernise the look and feel of Ubuntu aside from opening up a whole new realm of possibilities for theme makers and customizers.

There may be gripes and moans about ‘not being individual’ – but I'm firmly of camp “what works, works.”.

Testing

Lucid Alpha testers may wish to test and bug-hunt this shiny newly empowered GTK+ out. You can find the PPA you need for LUCID ONLY @ https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/+archive/ppa.

Bug reporting to be done @ https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk+2.0/+bug/491521

Thanks to John

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