If you really need Oracle Java (some applications seem to insist on it) on Ubuntu here is the procedure using a PPA.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer
HT to WebUpd8 http://ppa.webupd8.org/
Debugging things on the Android Emulator (incluced in the SDK) can be a very slow and cumbersome process. Thanks to the Android-x86 Project it’s quite easy to run Android in VirtualBox. This is highly useful when you need to test mobile apps and websites from the Android Browser (as well as Chrome Mobile).
wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75945873/android-x86-4.0-eth0-generic_x86-20120426.iso.torrent
transmission android-x86-4.0-eth0-generic_x86-20120426.iso.torrent
Note: You need to disable the mouse pointer integration (if you have installed VirtualBox Client Add-ons) in the menu of Virtualbox (‘Machine’ –> ‘Disable Mouse Integration’) when you start the VM (see screenshot). I have not found a way to disable this by default on Virtualbox on Ubuntu (If anybody has managed this I would love to know how !)
Since the latest version of GIMP has not been included in the main 12.04 repositories because it was not ready at release time you have to use a PPA at current.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp
TIP: Go to the “Windows” menu and select ‘Single-Window Mode’ to use Gimp in one window (see screenshot).
After upgrading my Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook to 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) I noticed that the ability to control the screen back-light was not working using the Toshiba Fn F6/F7 keys.
Thanks to http://www.linlap.com/wiki/acer+aspire+s3 the solution was found quite quickly.
sudo vim /etc/default/grub
This will open the grub configuration file. (Grub is the initial boot selection software)
To be able to dim the screen brightness, You’ve got to modify the line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
to these two lines:
pcie_aspm=force
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor elevator=noop"
Another neat tip: intel-gpu-tools can be used to control brightness from the commandline.
# will set brightness at 50%
intel_backlight 50
To use a Samsung Galaxy Nexus as a media device (MTP) there is a utility called gMTP.
sudo apt-get install gmtp mtpfs mtp-tools
NOTE: Unfortunately there is a bug in the 64-bit version at the moment (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mtpfs/+bug/936165) – which means it’s not all that useful to me at the moment.
Having a guest account might be useful on a home computer, but it’s generally not what I want enabled on a notebook.
To disable the default Guest account you need to edit lightdm.conf and add a line (allow-guest=false).
sudo vim /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=unity-greeter
user-session=ubuntu
allow-guest=false
Tested in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin & Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot
UPDATE: [01-May-2012] It appears that this PPA repo is currently broken (does not allow to get GPG key and has unmet dependencies on x84_64). It appears that the install on i386 systems does work anyway if you ignore the GPG key error, but I wouldn’t install in that case as PPA installs are security risk enough without GPG errors.
UPDATE: [11-May-2012] The reason the PPA does not work is that it has been disabled by Ubuntu due to a licensing issue with (not hard to guess) Oracle. Flexion.org have however created a script (hosted on Github) to allow the automated update of Java 6 for those who still require it as a dependency.
wget https://github.com/flexiondotorg/oab-java6/raw/0.2.1/oab-java6.sh -O oab-java6.sh
chmod +x oab-java6.sh
sudo ./oab-java6.sh
Hat tip to Martin Wimpress from Flexion !
Note: If you do not need Java 6 it’s much safer to stick to the current Oracle Java 7 release.
This is an update to the Java6 install on 11.10 since the previous PPA repository has not been updated. To install on Precise Pangolin you need to add the following repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-plugin
EDIT: [01-May-2012] since there seem to be many comments about the repo not working here’s the manual process (since I can’t find any working PPA that is actually maintained).
Download the Linux .bin install (32 or 64bit) from Oracle’s site Java Archive.
#change permissions to allow execute
chmod a+x jdk-6u[current_version_number]-linux-i586.bin
#run the installer file
./jdk-6u[current_version_number]-linux-i586.bin
Note: you obviously need to also maintain the Java6 updated manually.
I have recently been looking at different CAD options on Ubuntu and LibreCAD (http://librecad.org/) is looking like the best option for my needs at current (apart from the wish there would be some DWG support).
Since the main Ubuntu repositories are usually a fair bit behind the lastest stable realeases of LibreCAD you need to add the LibreCAD Dev PPA Repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:librecad-dev/librecad-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install librecad
Whilst I am by no means a photographer I do end up taking quite a few photos (these days pretty much exclusively on my phone) and the management of these photos can be a pain. So far I have never found an program worth the pain over plain old file management.
But having stumbled across Darktable (http://darktable.org/) I think I might have found a worthwile package.
Install on Ubuntu:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-release
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install darktable
When you need to convert multiple documents to PDF for distribution (or from one Office format to another) there are a few utilities around. The most workable I found is the UNOCONV utility which is build on top of LibreOffice / OpenOffice. This uses the OpenOffice conversion facilities rather than a simple PDF print driver.
On Ubuntu it can be installed via Software Center or via apt-get from the core repositories.
sudo apt-get install unoconv
Combined with the -exec option of the Unix find command this makes conversion of whole directory structures a breeze.
#find all Word Documents and convert to PDF
find . -name "*.doc*" -exec unoconv -f pdf {} \;
#find all Powerpoint Documents and convert to PDF
find . -name "*.ppt*" -exec unoconv -f pdf {} \;
To show all the possible conversion formats you can use:
unoconv --show
The following list of document formats are currently available:
bib – BibTeX [.bib]
doc – Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP [.doc]
doc6 – Microsoft Word 6.0 [.doc]
doc95 – Microsoft Word 95 [.doc]
docbook – DocBook [.xml]
html – HTML Document (OpenOffice.org Writer) [.html]
odt – ODF Text Document [.odt]
ott – Open Document Text [.ott]
ooxml – Microsoft Office Open XML [.xml]
pdf – Portable Document Format [.pdf]
rtf – Rich Text Format [.rtf]
latex – LaTeX 2e [.ltx]
sdw – StarWriter 5.0 [.sdw]
sdw4 – StarWriter 4.0 [.sdw]
sdw3 – StarWriter 3.0 [.sdw]
stw – Open Office.org 1.0 Text Document Template [.stw]
sxw – Open Office.org 1.0 Text Document [.sxw]
text – Text Encoded [.txt]
mediawiki – MediaWiki [.txt]
txt – Text [.txt]
uot – Unified Office Format text [.uot]
vor – StarWriter 5.0 Template [.vor]
vor4 – StarWriter 4.0 Template [.vor]
vor3 – StarWriter 3.0 Template [.vor]
xhtml – XHTML Document [.html]
The following list of graphics formats are currently available:
bmp – Windows Bitmap [.bmp]
emf – Enhanced Metafile [.emf]
eps – Encapsulated PostScript [.eps]
gif – Graphics Interchange Format [.gif]
html – HTML Document (OpenOffice.org Draw) [.html]
jpg – Joint Photographic Experts Group [.jpg]
met – OS/2 Metafile [.met]
odd – OpenDocument Drawing [.odd]
otg – OpenDocument Drawing Template [.otg]
pbm – Portable Bitmap [.pbm]
pct – Mac Pict [.pct]
pdf – Portable Document Format [.pdf]
pgm – Portable Graymap [.pgm]
png – Portable Network Graphic [.png]
ppm – Portable Pixelmap [.ppm]
ras – Sun Raster Image [.ras]
std – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Drawing Template [.std]
svg – Scalable Vector Graphics [.svg]
svm – StarView Metafile [.svm]
swf – Macromedia Flash (SWF) [.swf]
sxd – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Drawing [.sxd]
sxd3 – StarDraw 3.0 [.sxd]
sxd5 – StarDraw 5.0 [.sxd]
tiff – Tagged Image File Format [.tiff]
vor – StarDraw 5.0 Template [.vor]
vor3 – StarDraw 3.0 Template [.vor]
wmf – Windows Metafile [.wmf]
xhtml – XHTML [.xhtml]
xpm – X PixMap [.xpm]
The following list of presentation formats are currently available:
bmp – Windows Bitmap [.bmp]
emf – Enhanced Metafile [.emf]
eps – Encapsulated PostScript [.eps]
gif – Graphics Interchange Format [.gif]
html – HTML Document (OpenOffice.org Impress) [.html]
jpg – Joint Photographic Experts Group [.jpg]
met – OS/2 Metafile [.met]
odg – ODF Drawing (Impress) [.odg]
odp – ODF Presentation [.odp]
otp – ODF Presentation Template [.otp]
pbm – Portable Bitmap [.pbm]
pct – Mac Pict [.pct]
pdf – Portable Document Format [.pdf]
pgm – Portable Graymap [.pgm]
png – Portable Network Graphic [.png]
pot – Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP Template [.pot]
ppm – Portable Pixelmap [.ppm]
ppt – Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP [.ppt]
pwp – PlaceWare [.pwp]
ras – Sun Raster Image [.ras]
sda – StarDraw 5.0 (OpenOffice.org Impress) [.sda]
sdd – StarImpress 5.0 [.sdd]
sdd3 – StarDraw 3.0 (OpenOffice.org Impress) [.sdd]
sdd4 – StarImpress 4.0 [.sdd]
sxd – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Drawing (OpenOffice.org Impress) [.sxd]
sti – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Presentation Template [.sti]
svg – Scalable Vector Graphics [.svg]
svm – StarView Metafile [.svm]
swf – Macromedia Flash (SWF) [.swf]
sxi – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Presentation [.sxi]
tiff – Tagged Image File Format [.tiff]
uop – Unified Office Format presentation [.uop]
vor – StarImpress 5.0 Template [.vor]
vor3 – StarDraw 3.0 Template (OpenOffice.org Impress) [.vor]
vor4 – StarImpress 4.0 Template [.vor]
vor5 – StarDraw 5.0 Template (OpenOffice.org Impress) [.vor]
wmf – Windows Metafile [.wmf]
xhtml – XHTML [.xml]
xpm – X PixMap [.xpm]
The following list of spreadsheet formats are currently available:
csv – Text CSV [.csv]
dbf – dBASE [.dbf]
dif – Data Interchange Format [.dif]
html – HTML Document (OpenOffice.org Calc) [.html]
ods – ODF Spreadsheet [.ods]
ooxml – Microsoft Excel 2003 XML [.xml]
ots – ODF Spreadsheet Template [.ots]
pdf – Portable Document Format [.pdf]
sdc – StarCalc 5.0 [.sdc]
sdc4 – StarCalc 4.0 [.sdc]
sdc3 – StarCalc 3.0 [.sdc]
slk – SYLK [.slk]
stc – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Spreadsheet Template [.stc]
sxc – OpenOffice.org 1.0 Spreadsheet [.sxc]
uos – Unified Office Format spreadsheet [.uos]
vor3 – StarCalc 3.0 Template [.vor]
vor4 – StarCalc 4.0 Template [.vor]
vor – StarCalc 5.0 Template [.vor]
xhtml – XHTML [.xhtml]
xls – Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP [.xls]
xls5 – Microsoft Excel 5.0 [.xls]
xls95 – Microsoft Excel 95 [.xls]
xlt – Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP Template [.xlt]
xlt5 – Microsoft Excel 5.0 Template [.xlt]
xlt95 – Microsoft Excel 95 Template [.xlt]