qBittorrent project was created with the idea of developing a new Bittorrent client for Linux that would be easy to use, good looking, featureful but lightweight. qBittorrent can now be considered as a good alternative to other bittorrent clients. QBittorrent 2.9.6 has been released with any updates and bug fixes.

PPA Installation

Open the treminal and type the commands in order to install qBt 2.9.6

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hydr0g3n/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install qbittorrent

New Features

• A polished Graphical User Interface written with Qt4 toolkit
• UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
• Encryption support (compatible with Azureus)
• Multiple simultaneous downloads / uploads
• Download from RSS streams
• IP Filtering similar to the one in eMule or PeerGuardian
• Torrents queueing and prioritizing
• Web user interface for remote contro
• An integrated search engine
• DHT (trackerless) support

Read more here.

Njoy !

Ultimate Edition 3.2 has been released recently and is ready for downloads. It is based upon Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and like always has a lot of improvements and preinstalled packages in it. All in all a perfect Ubuntu based distro, Ultimate Edition is all set to roll Gnome 3, Gnome Classic, Gnome fallback, Unity, Unity 2D, and XMBC selectable via login screen.  It also has a crisp new GTK/3 theme & comprehensive software packages.

Download

Ultimate Edition 3.2 Download – 32-Bit.iso | 64-Bit.iso

New Features

• Multiple Desktop Environments to user preference – Gnome 3, Unity, Unity 2D etc.
• Latest Linux kernels.
• Presintalled Applications – Ubuntu Tweak, Compiz, VLC, Wine, Restricted Extras and everything else you will ever need on Ubuntu.
• Ultimate Player, a new player developer by TheeMahn with tons of streams there, has a smart bar to scan the internet for music.
• Includes all important Ubuntu updates till date.
• New Wallpaper pack.
• Latest Theme pack.

Note : Reportedly, the installation of Ultimate Edition 3.2 utilizes Gnome as your default environment. Boot back into gnome for the last time. Right click your fusion icon in the tray. Please select Metacity as your default manager, trying to save you the headache prior. Then right click again goto settings manager and enable unity plugin.

We are still waiting for Ultimate Gamers Edition 3.2 Hope it will land soon !

Thanks to TheeMahn, you rock !

Njoy UE !

Many of us who regularly use terminal often have used ‘dpkg‘ for program installation and removal. ‘dpkg’ is basically a debian package manager that is used to install/remove Debian packages in Ubuntu as well as in Debian. dpkg itself is a low level tool; higher level tools, such as Advanced Pacakging Tool – APT, are used to fetch packages from remote locations or deal with complex package relations. Tools like ‘Aptitude‘ or ‘Synaptic package manager’ are more commonly used than dpkg on its own, as they have an easier way of managing packages and have a user interface.

Basics

Package Installation & Removal

sudo dpkg –i <filename.deb>

Installs the given .deb file.

sudo dpkg -i *<filename.deb>

Installs all the .deb files present in the current directory being accessed.

sudo dpkg –r <package_name>

Removes the given package from the system, but leaves files behind.

sudo dpkg –P <package_name>

Removes package and configuration files of the given package. (purge)

NOTE: <file.deb> and <package_name> should be replaced by actual file & package names.

Simple Example

Lets suppose you downloaded Ubuntu Tweak and you are trying out dpkg. All you need to do is to locate the downloaded file, reach the directory throught terminal and hit the install command.

wget http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/0.6.x/0.6.1/+download/ubuntu-tweak_0.6.1-1~oneiric1_all.deb /home/Downloads
cd Downloads
sudo dpkg -i ubuntu-tweak_0.6.1-1~oneiric1_all.deb

and that’s it.

File Extraction

sudo dpkg -x <file.deb > <directory>

Extracts the files inside  the .deb file to a destination directory. Note that this will reset permissions on the target directory.

Package Checks

dpkg –l

Lists installed packages. This can also be used to take options for more specific info.

dpkg -L <package_name>

Lists all the files which have been installed from package (package must have been previously installed).

dpkg -c < filename.deb >

Lists files which are installed by the .deb file given (.deb file must be path/filename).

dpkg –I < filename.deb >

Lists information about the .deb given file.

dpkg –p <package_name>

Lists information about the package.

dkpg –S <filename>

Lists the packages where the given file name is found.

dpkg –s <package_name>

Lists the status of the given package.

NOTE : <filename> & <package_name> should be replaced by actual filenames and package names as done in the example.

Njoy !

Aptitude GUI is a graphical version of Aptitude we talked about in our previous post. As Aptitude has already been removed from official repository of Ubuntu, one cant expect to see this GUI based Aptitude by default in Ubuntu Precise Pangolin. But there is a way to install Aptitude-GTK in Ubuntu using the PPA below.

Howto Install

Now, this can be installed using the ppa below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yofel/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install aptitude-gtk

After the install, to run Aptitude, just open the terminal and type :

sudo aptitude

The Aptitude Package manager features include Add/remove of Programs, list of Applications that need update, show Broken packages and help fix them and more.

Njoy !

The Ubuntu app developer project is working real good. The result can be seen in Software Center as a lot of great paid and free applications have landed and are being download every now and then. For February 2012, the following applications were among the most widely download.

Top 10 Paid Apps

1. Oil Rush

Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. It combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS with the sheer fun of Tower Defence. Fight the naval war between furious armies across the boundless waters of the post-apocalyptic world.

2. Fluendo DVD Player

Fluendo DVD Player is a software application specially designed to reproduce DVD on Linux/Unix platforms, which provides end users with high quality standards.

3. CoreBreach

CoreBreach is an anti-gravity racing game with combat-based gameplay. Its unique graphic style, with a cell-shaded look, sets up a very futuristic atmosphere with a wide range of choices for ships, race tracks and powerful weapons.

4. Braid

Braid is a platform game in painterly style where you manipulate the flow of time to solve puzzles. Every puzzle in Braid is unique; there is no filler. Braid treats your time and attention as precious, and it does everything it can to give you a mind-expanding experience.

5. And Yet It Moves

And Yet It Moves is an award-winning physics-based platform game in which you rotate the game world at will to solve challenging puzzles. Navigate through a paper collage world created with colorful pieces of cardboard and set to distinctive music. With three different environments and multiple game modes, And Yet It Moves is a platformer that will provide you with endless challenge

6. Fluendo Complete Playback Pack

Plug-ins which allow you to play certain proprietary audio and video formats. These plug-ins are not included in the default Ubuntu distribution because they are not free software.

7. Uplink

You play an Uplink Agent who makes a living by performing jobs for major corporations. Your tasks involve hacking into rival computer systems, stealing research data, sabotaging other companies, laundering money, erasing evidence, or framing innocent people. You use the money you earn to upgrade your computer systems, and to buy new software and tools. As your experience level increases you find more dangerous and profitable missions become available.

8. World of Goo

Drag and drop living, squirming, talking globs of goo to build structures, bridges, cannonballs, zeppelins, and giant tongues. The millions of innocent goo balls that live in the beautiful World of Goo are curious to explore. But they don’t know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious. The most addicting and awe-inspiring puzzle game will set you on an adventure that you’ll never forget!

9. Steel Storm: Burning Retribution

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution marks the return of top-down shooters with new twists. The game has score oriented competitive gameplay, and is designed for people who like fast paced action, hordes of smart enemies, destructible worlds and ground shaking explosions.

10. TRAUMA

TRAUMA is a game that tells a story of a young woman who survives a car accident. Recovering at the hospital, she has dreams that shed light on different aspects of her identity – such as the way she deals with the loss of her parents. TRAUMA lets you experience those dreams in an interactive way, reminiscent of Point-and-Click Adventure Games.

Top 10 Free Apps

1. Ryzom

Ryzom, one of the best role playing Massively Multiplayer Online Game of the moment (MMORPG), is set more than 2000 years in the future, on a living, evolving world: beautiful Atys!

2. CoreBreach Demo

CoreBreach is an anti-gravity racing game with combat-based gameplay. Its unique graphic style, with a cell-shaded look, sets up a very futuristic atmosphere with a wide range of choices for ships, race tracks and powerful weapons.

3. Crossover Games

Play Windows games like World of Warcraft on Ubuntu! CrossOver Games (Ubuntu Edition) makes it possible to play Windows games such as World of Warcraft and many others. CrossOver Games is built on the latest versions of Wine, based on contributions from both CodeWeavers and the open-source Wine community. CrossOver Games aims to bring you the latest, greatest, bleeding edge improvements in Wine technology.

4. Full Circle Magazine

ull Circle is a free, independent, monthly magazine dedicated to the Ubuntu family of Linux operating systems. Each month, it contains helpful how-to articles and reader submitted stories. Full Circle also features a companion podcast, the Full Circle Podcast, which covers the magazine along with other news of interest.

5. Marble Arena 2

Free, physics based, 3D marble game, featuring vibrant HD graphics, fun and addictive star zapping gameplay, and an easy to use built-in editor for creating custom levels

6. TreeSheets

The ultimate replacement for spreadsheets, mind mappers, outliners, PIMs, text editors and small databases. Suitable for any kind of data organization, such as Todo lists, calendars, project management, brainstorming, organizing ideas, planning, requirements gathering, presentation of information, etc.

7. Vendetta Online

Vendetta Online is a 3D space combat MMORPG. This MMO permits thousands of players to interact as the pilots of spaceships in a vast universe. Users may build their characters in any direction they desire, becoming rich captains of industry, military heroes, or outlaws.

8. CrossOver Pro (Trial)

CrossOver Linux allows you to install many popular Windows productivity applications, plugins and games in Linux. You can think of it as an emulator, but it’s different, because there’s no Windows OS license required. Your applications integrate seamlessly with your GNOME or KDE environment. It’s like running Windows on your Linux machine, but without Windows

9. Tribal Trouble 2

Tribal Trouble 2 is a browser-based RTS game that takes place in the zany age of the Vikings. You are the Chief of a Viking tribe and are responsible for making a name for yourself by conquest and skill.

10. WireframeSketcher Studio (Trial)

WireframeSketcher is a software tool that helps product managers, designers and developers quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It’s standalone software and a plug-in for any Eclipse IDE.

All of them are avialable in Ubuntu Software Center , all you need to do is type the name of app you want in search and its a 1 click away for installation.

Njoy !

Cinnamon 1.4 has been released and has received cool new features this time.’Expo’ & ‘Scale’ features add eyecandy to your desktop experience, and there are lot of other improvements in usability as well. Cinnamon 1.4 is already there in Mint 12 repositories. Ubuntu users can use the PPA below.

PPA

You can use the PPA to install Cinnamon 1.4 on Ubuntu -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

Features & Improvements

The new “Expo” overview

Cinnamon 1.4 comes with two “overview” modes: “Scale” and “Expo”.

“Scale” was present in previous Cinnamon releases and looks like the Compiz Scale plugin, it shows all the windows from your current workspace on the screen and easily allows you to select the one you’re interested in.

“Expo” is new in Cinnamon 1.4. It zooms out of your current workspace and shows you all the workspaces on your system. From there you can switch to the workspace you want, or even drag and drop windows from one workspace to another. As such, it looks and behaves like the Compiz Expo plugin (from which it gets its name).

New “Settings applet” and “Panel Edit Mode”

The introduction of drag & drop support and movable applets in Cinnamon 1.3 confused a lot of people. Some applets such as the workspace switcher, the window list and the panel launchers, due to their internal design and their user interface, made it extremely hard for people to move them around.

Cinnamon 1.4 introduces a brand new applet called the “Settings applet”.

Localization

Cinnamon is now localized. If you want to monitor or participate in the translation effort, please visit https://translations.launchpad.net/linuxmint/isadora/+pots/cinnamon

Cinnamon 1.4 comes with support for 39 languages and features significant improvements for RTL (right-to-left) languages.

New configuration options

Cinnamon 1.4 adds the following new options:

• “Only use workspaces on primary monitor”
• Configurable hot corner position and behaviour
• Menu hover delay
• Draggable panel launchers

Menu improvements

The menu received two significant improvements: full drag & drop support, and edition.

You can use drag & drop to:

• Add applications to the panel launchers from the menu
• To add/remove applications to/from your favorites
• To reorder your favorites

Window list improvements

The window list is an essential part of your desktop. Cinnamon 1.4 comes with some handy features:

• You can now reorder windows in the window list via drag & drop.
• If you drag-over a file on a window in the window list, the window comes to focus (this feature was present in Cinnamon 1.0 and lost along the way, so it’s nice to have it back).
• You can simply right click any window in the window list and send it to other workspaces, or have it shown on all workspaces.

There are lot of other features & improvements in Cinnamon 1.4 which you can read here.

Njoy !

Audacity is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. Good news is Audacity 2.0 has been released with numerous improvements in GUI and features. It has dozens of new features, developed in the 1.3 series. It replaces all previous versions, especially 1.2.6 and 1.3.14.

Download Audacity 2.0

PPA

Open the terminal and type the following commands to install Audacity 2.0 -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:audacity-team/daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacity
sudo apt-get clean

New Features

• New Interface preference to show the track name in the display (this is off by default).
• Longer default Playback preference for effects preview and preview before cut.
• Restored use of Page Up and Page Down to scroll horizontally.
• Many effects significantly improved, especially Equalization, Noise Removal and Normalize. Vocal Remover now included plus GVerb on Windows and Mac. VAMP analysis plug-ins now supported.
• Improved label tracks with Sync-Lock Tracks feature in the Tracks Menu. Multiple clips per track. Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard. Many more keyboard shortcuts.
• New Device Toolbar to manage inputs and outputs. Timer Record feature. New Mixer Board view with per-track VU meters.
• Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.
• Fast “On-Demand” import of WAV/AIFF files if read directly from source. FLAC now fully supported. Added support for optional FFmpeg library for import/export of AC3/M4A/WMA and import of audio from video files.

Njoy !

The latest version of the Mozilla Firefox, Firefox 11 is now available for download officially. Firefox 11 brings along a bunch of new features and a ton of bug fixes. The new features of the update include synchronization features for Google Chrome, where users can move settings and bookmarks to Firefox easily. It also has new developer tools, such as the 3D Page Inspector, which allow developers to look at parts of the pages in 3D.

Download Firefox 11

PPA

PPA will be available very soon. Stay tuned !

What’s New

For Users

• Firefox can now migrate your bookmarks, history, and cookies from Google Chrome.
• With Sync enabled, add-ons can now be synchronized across your computers.
• The CSS text-size-adjust property is now supported.
• Redesigned media controls for HTML5 video.
• The outerHTML property is now supported on HTML elements.
• Numerous bug fixes.

For Developers

• The Style Editor for CSS editing is now available to web developers.
• Web developers can now visualize a web page in 3D using the Page Inspector 3D View.
• SPDY protocol support for faster page loads is now testable.
• XMLHttpRequest now supports HTML parsing.
• Websockets has now been unprefixed.

Njoy !

VirtualBox 4.10.10 has been released. Its a maintenance release and is aimed at bug fixes and other workarounds. Few updates like Linux 3.3-rc1 compile fixes, 3D passthrough work on RHEL 6.2, added support for X.Org Server 1.12 and much more.

Download VirtualBox

Features & Fixes

• Host interfaces no longer have “defaults” for IP address and network mask attributes
• If 3D support on the host is not available for some reason, do not only disable this VM setting but also uncheck the checkbox
• It doesn’t depend on a password for certain guest control operations
• 3D Support: rendering fixes for Linux hosts with NVIDIA graphics SDK: added Python example Web service: added SSL/TLS support Linux hosts/guests: Linux 3.3-rc1 compile fixes
• Make 3D passthrough work on OL/RHEL 6.2
• Fixed missing implementation when copying shared folder data through kernel high memory
• Added support for X.Org Server 1.12

Njoy !

Aptitude is a front-end to the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) system. It displays a list of software packages and allows the user to interactively pick packages to install or remove. It has an especially powerful search system utilizing flexible search patterns. Aptitude also emulates most apt-get command line options. Newer versions also come with a GTK+ interface.

First, we will take up some basic operations of aptitude in terminal also called as Bash (Bourne Again SHell).The ‘dpkg’ and ‘apt’ tools have been around for a long time and work well, but there are many problems with both the tools. The aptitude tool tries to make things easier by automating some of the important package operations (like running apt-get update before upgrading or installing) while allowing enough flexibility to be useful. For these reasons, we recommend the use of aptitude at the command line whenever possible. So, lets begin :

First Things First

First, we need install aptitude if not installed & we do this simple by -

sudo apt-get install aptitude

Now, we can continue to our guide.

aptitude basics

• sudo aptitude -  Starts the curses interface. Use Ctrl+t to access the menu and the q key to quit.
• aptitude help -  Lists help for aptitude usage.
• aptitude search <keyword> -  Lists packages matching the given keyword.

package management

• sudo aptitude install <package> -  Installs the given package to the system.
• sudo aptitude remove <package>  -  Removes the given package from the system.
• sudo aptitude purge <package> – Used to purge an installed package from the system.
• sudo aptitude download <package> -  Downloads the given package, but does not install it.
• aptitude show <package> -  Lists information about the given package, installed or not.

updates &  upgrades

• sudo aptitude update –   Updates the available package indexes from the APT sources.
• sudo aptitude upgrade -  Upgrades all packages in use to their latest versions.
• sudo aptitude safe-upgrade -  Upgrades the packges safely.
• sudo aptitude dist-upgrade -  Upgrades all packages to their most recent versions, removing or installing packages as necessary. The upgrade option is advised over dist-upgrade.

package clean-up

• sudo aptitude clean -  Removes all downloaded .deb files from the /var/cache/apt/archives directory.
• sudo aptitude autoclean -  Removes all outdated .deb files from the /var/cache/apt/archives directory. This maintains a current cache without filling up the disk.

output simulation

• sudo aptitude -s install <package> -  This is a really interesting feature of aptitude which helps ‘simulate what would happen without actually performing the operation’. This will work regardless of aptitude operation.
• sudo aptitude -vs install <package> -  Adding the –v option along with –s gives even more detailed output.

The only sad thing is aptitude unlike Advanced Packaging Tool, “does not have Super Cow Powers”. In apt-get “super cow powers” can be found by issuing the command apt-get moo. But, in aptitude issuing moo will give the user a prompt saying there are no easter eggs. However, aptitude -v moo & aptitude -vv moo are fun

Njoy Ubuntu!