FEATURE UBUNTU 14.04 RESPINS UBUNTU 14.04 RESPINS Love Ubuntu, but hate feature X? Mayank Sharma shows you over a dozen different spins that make Ubuntu enjoyable again. veryone has their favourite Ubuntu feature the distro’s installer, which is one of the best tools they dislike. Privacy-conscious users loathe for the job, and Canonical is also responsible for Ethe Lenses feature. Desktop users get unleashing ideas, such as the Software Centre irritated with the window controls on the wrong and Ubuntu One, that have helped change the side of the window and the overlay scrollbars. And perception of Linux as a desktop OS. Gnome 2 users can’t bring themselves to forgive As the distro unveils its next Long Term Support the distro for ruining their usability with the Unity release, we introduce you to some of the distros desktop and the lack of customisation options. that have stood on the shoulder of giants, remixing But for every feature that’s rubbed users the the best of Ubuntu with the much wider open wrong way, Ubuntu has contributed several useful source community to create several refreshing new ones that’ve benefitted the community. There’s flavours of what Linux can be. 18 www.linuxvoice.com UBUNTU 14.04 RESPINS FEATURE Ultimate Edition Do you want one with everything? The aptly-named Ultimate Edition distro is Avidemux video editor and Blender for 3D loaded with tons of Free and proprietary modelling. For package management, the software. The latest version is based on distro bundles the Ubuntu Software Centre Ubuntu 14.04 and uses the Mate desktop along with the Synaptic package manager. with custom theme, icons and pointers. The distro has multiple apps for Script customisation accomplishing the same task. In some The most unusual aspect of the distro is its cases, the multiple applications cater to collection of custom scripts for performing users with different experience level – certain desktop-oriented tasks. The scripts for example, there’s Google Chrome for can all be accessed from the right-click regular desktops and Elinks for advanced context-menu, and you can use them to users. Users with ninja-level skills can use quickly shuttle files to another pre-defined ImageMagick instead of firing up Gimp location, convert images to different to tweak images. There’s also LibreOffice, formats, mount ISO images, search for files Blender, multiple screen recorders, VLC in the current folder, and browse the current The latest version of Ultimate Edition is built media player, XBMC media centre, the folder as the root user. from a debootstrapped Ubuntu 14.04 release. PinguyOS PeppermintOS If you have dumped offline apps and and the featherweight Guayadeque PinguyOS is different from the which combines features of can work with the current staple music player for MP3s. others in many ways. For both the modern and the of online apps, PeppermintOS is a Another lightweight app is the starters, it tags its six-monthly traditional application menu. wonderful alternative to ChromeOS. Mirage image viewer. The distro also releases based on the current PinguyOS also includes Ubuntu It’s fast and is equipped with the includes several online tools such as necessary tools to get the job done. Editor by pixlr.com and a bunch of Ubuntu release as Beta releases. Tweak and the Gnome Tweak The current stable version is games. There’s also PeppermintOS’s Only PinguyOS releases based tool to help you configure many based on Ubuntu 13.04 but the home-brewed app called Ice, which on an Ubuntu LTS are different aspects of the desktop. next version, Peppermint Five with is a simple app that can turn web considered stable. be based on Ubuntu 14.04. “We sites into web apps and roll them PinguyOS is designed to Game management base each version of Peppermint into the menu. on the April release of Ubuntu. For package management the appeal to users who are new to Gamers will enjoy the inclusion While we don’t follow a strict distro relies on Mint’s Software Linux. The developer has of the Steam client, PlayOnLinux release schedule, new versions of Manager. Weaver and his team modified the default Gnome front-end for Wine and the DJL Peppermint can usually be expected prefer the interface and user installation with some game manager, with which you each May or June”, explains experience of Mint’s software extensions. Thanks to these you can download and install several PeppermintOS’s lead-developer manager as compared with Kendall Weaver. Ubuntu’s. Weaver would also can place icons and folders on free, freeware and shareware The distro uses the Chromium consider Lubuntu’s software centre the desktop, and can minimise games. The distro also includes web browser equipped to handle if it weren’t for the ratings, reviews, windows. The distro has also several proprietary applications, Flash content. Multimedia duties are and ease of categorisation of Mint’s swapped Gnome’s Activities such as Dropbox, Skype and handled by Gnome MPlayer for video software manager. Overview with the GnoMenu, TeamViewer. PeppermintOS uses a Site The latest release Specific Browser (SSB) to run of PinguyOS based applications on your desktop. on Ubuntu 14.04 will feature the Plex media server and make sure that Netflix works out of the box. www.linuxvoice.com 19 FEATURE UBUNTU 14.04 RESPINS What’s new in Ubuntu 14.04 A whistle-stop tour of the latest release. As far as the official Ubuntu versions go, the Long Term Support releases aren’t all that exciting. They introduce no new features and fuffle no feathers, and are generally a bit boring; but that’s a good thing, because stability is a feature. The goal of the LTS releases is to provide users with a steady base that they can continue to use for a long time. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (codename: Trusty Tahr) is no different. Released on schedule two years after the last LTS release, most of the changes in this release are fairly conservative in nature, and mostly hidden out of view embedded deep with the code. As with every release, all the default applications and core components have been updated to their latest stable versions. One of the strongest points of Ubuntu is its easy-to-use installer. There’s Firefox 28, Thunderbird 24.4.0, LibreOffice 4.2.3, Rhythmbox 3.0.1, Nautilus would display a frame with the new window One of the most prominent additions in 3.10.1, and the distro is powered by Linux size, and the change would only happen Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is the ability to turn off the kernel 3.13. after you were done resizing the window. global menu bar at the top of the screen. It’s At first glance, the Unity desktop in Trusty been a mainstay of the Unity desktop since doesn’t look any different from the one in the More usable Unity its introduction in Ubuntu 11.04, and despite previous Saucy Salamander release. The release also fixes a couple of long- several changes over the years, hasn’t However there are minor visual tweaks that standing usability issues. You can now managed to impress all users. In the latest long-time users will notice (and appreciate) right-click on the global menu even when a release there is finally the option for locally as soon as they start using the distro. window is maximised. This displays the integrated menus (LIM) in an app’s title bar. For starters, instead of the Compiz same menu that’s available when you By default, menus appear in the top panel. decorations, Unity has switched to GTK 3 right-click on the titlebar of an unmaximised To move them closer to the app, head to the CSS-themed window decorations. You’ll window. Also, you can now tweak the Behaviour section under the Appearance tab in the System Settings panel and click on the Local Menus option. “One of the most prominent additions to the latest Once enabled, the app menus are Ubuntu LTS version is the ability to turn off the embedded directly in the window decoration and continue to save the screen real estate. global menu bar at the top of the screen.” When the menus are wider than the available space, the extra items are tucked notice that windows in Unity aren’t bounded behaviour of windows when you click on underneath a small drop-menu at the corner by a one-pixel black line and are now their icon in the Launcher. You can, for of the window. The new menus don’t have completely borderless. Another benefit of example, set this action to minimise an open any impact on the usability of the windows the move from Compiz to GTK 3 is that the window. However, this feature is – you can still move them just as before. window corners are now antialiased. implemented as an “unsupported” extra and When you step away from the computer, Also you can now resize windows in real you’ll need to grab the CCSM app from the Ubuntu will trigger the new Unity lock time. Until now, resizing windows in Unity Software Centre to enable it. screen, and the Unity Spread view (which is triggered when you click on an app’s icon in the Launcher with open windows) now lets you filter the windows by their titles. On a sombre note, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will also be the first release to ship without the Ubuntu One cloud storage service. Canonical pulled the plug on the online storage service along with the Ubuntu One Music service, a couple of weeks before the Users can now turn off global menus.