December is a busy month for the LibreOffice developers and community members, with the release of 2 bugfix releases of LibreOffice Fresh and Still series and the publication of 24 blog posts – the Advent Tips – to help you make better use of this open source Office Suite.
On 1st December Italo Vignoli from The Document Foundation began publishing a series of interesting and short-to-read posts regarding tips for the LibreOffice suite.
If you want to learn easily how to improve your LO experience, you will find here nice tips to read and experiment:
A lot of changes and fixes have been introduced in these two minor releases, you will not find new features if compared to the previous versions, but the developers have made a great work with 119 fixes for LO 5.0.4 and respectively 14 fixes for LO 4.4.7.
LibreOffice 4.4.7 is also the final release for the 4.4 family!
If you are interested, you can take a look at the release notes:
Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf has been officially released today. You will not notice big visual changes but yes, it’s beautiful and full of interesting updates.
New features for Ubuntu Wily Werewolf
The desktop interface has been under bug-fixing in this release, so don’t expect visual differences, but al least a more stable graphical environment.
Unity received some bug-fixes, such as fixes for icon scaling inside the Launcher, Dash and app switcher and other less visible changes. This is a good step in the correct direction to provide the best Unity 7 experience in the future LTS version.
Compiz has been also updated, now in version 0.9.12.2 which improves the MATE integration (for the Ubuntu MATE flavour) and provides other bug-fixes.
A new Scrollbar has been introduced from the GNOME DE:
Overall it’s a refinement of the Ubuntu desktop experience, which is always welcome.
Apps updates
As with every release, the apps packages have been updated to the new versions. This includes LibreOffice 5.0.2.2 which brings a lot of improvements, Simple scan 3.18.1 now saving directly in the PDF format, Brasero 3.12.1, Cheese 3.16.1, Videos (Totem) 3.16.4 with several performance and stability fixes, Shotwell 0.22.0 with some user interface improvements, new photo sorting and other changes.
Rhythmbox 3.2.1 received several translations updates, a new Soundcloud plugin, the ability to clear, re-fetch and manually set cover art using the song info window as well as many bug-fixes.
Browser has been updated introducing the Tabs bar, Private mode, Share button, Find in page search, new settings and other things that make it really usable (and useful) on the desktop. Browser now looks really well and seems also really fast, try it!
Firefox, Thunderbird and Chromium (the last one is available inside the repositories but not pre-installed) are now at their latest versions and will be kept updated for all the time of support of Ubuntu 15.10.
Linux kernel 4.2
Wily Werewolf is released with the new Linux kernel 4.2, which brings better hardware support especially for the latest AMD graphics cards thanks to the new AMDGPU kernel driver (even if it’s still in early stage), Intel Broxton support and F2FS file-system encryption support.
Open source graphics cards drivers such as Radeon, Nouveau and Intel are now at their latest versions. Regarding proprietary graphics drivers, now you can install the latest AMD Catalyst 15.9 or Ndivia 352.41 drivers from the Ubuntu repositories, if you need them.
You can download Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf from the ubuntu.com download page.
Before to skip at the “first things to do after installing Ubuntu 15.10”, you can take a look at the following screenshots from Ubuntu 15.10:
Enhance the user experience
Now a few steps to make your Ubuntu Wily more complete and whippy in 15 minutes or less.
The steps here below require a functional internet connection. If your wifi card doesn’t work without a proprietary driver, use temporarily the ethernet cable to connect the PC to your modem/router.
1. Install updates
First of all, install all the freshly released updates inside your new OS. What? Already updates?? D:
Do not be astonished, in Ubuntu the updating process installs the updates for every single piece of software you have inside the OS. So, why there should not be new updates?
To do so, launch Software Updater and install all the proposed packages. Reboot if needed!
2. Search for proprietary drivers, but only if you need them!
With Ubuntu you can install the needed proprietary drivers in a single and simple way, but them are not always needed. For some graphics cards for example, such as ATI/AMD or Nvidia, you are already using the open source drivers that are pre-installed inside the OS. Follow this step only if you really need to install a proprietary driver for your machine; if you don’t and all works well, go to the next step.
Open Additional Drivers, select the proprietary driver you want to install, then press Apply Changes. Remember to reboot your system when the progress is complete!
3. Make Ubuntu completely in your language
Your first language is not english and some menus are still in english? Then, open Language Support and install the missing packages you need. The english words will change to your language after the next reboot.
4. Everything for your multimedia life
Audio/video codecs, MS core fonts and Flash Player: open Ubuntu Software Center and install the meta-package ubuntu-restricted-extras, which provides all the audio/video codecs you need, the Adobe Flash Player plugin and the Microsoft True Type Core Fonts for the Web.
During the installation a window named Configuring ttf-mscorefonts-installer will be opened, select the voice “Do you accept the EULA license terms?” the push Forward.
Playing encrypted DVDs: open a Terminal window, paste the following command:
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
press Enter, then insert your password. That’s all!
5. Improve your Ubuntu experience
Enable the Workspaces: right click on the desktop and select Change Desktop Background → Behavior, then choose the option Enable workspaces.
Show apps menus inside the window’s title bar: if you don’t like global menu, right click on the desktop and select Change Desktop Background → Behavior, then choose the option Show the menu for a window: in the window’s title bar.
Install the WebApps you need: WebApps are special features that you can install in your Ubuntu Unity desktop. These apps provide an easy way to access your socialmedia, websites, e-mails or other kind of online content directly from your Ubuntu desktop.
To install them, read this post (it refers to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, but explains what the WebApps are and how to install them).
Speed up the Dash search: open System settings → Security & Privacy
select the Files & Applications tab, then remove the categories of files you don’t want to see in your Dash history. This helps you maintain your Dash clean and fast, for example if you have a lot of music you can uncheck the Music item.
if you don’t want to see online content inside the Unity Dash, select the Search tab, then move the “Include online search results” option to OFF. This will prevent the system to search what you type inside the Dash from online resources and only local resources (your files and applications) will be showed. This change saves search time inside the Dash and is useful if you need only your local content.
These are some basic steps you have to follow in order to make your Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf fully functional and ready in a few minutes. You can obviously install all the software you need through Ubuntu Software Center or from external sources. Do not be too hasty to add external PPAs to your freshly installed system, keep it clean and updated and you will live happy and free.
As a final tip, because errors can happen in every single piece of software over the world, if something goes wrong DON’T PANIC!! I do not have The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but Ubuntu has a huge and active community, ready to help everyone needs a suggestion or a solution. So, if your system does not work correctly, read the official documentation or ask help in the community support channels and explain punctiliously what’s wrong.
If you have not noticed, Unity WebApps in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS work really well now! You can finally play videos and copy/paste content without problems.
Do you remember that fantastic feature that lets you access your Facebook, G+, Gmail, Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, Launchpad and a lot of more accounts and content, directly from your desktop? That feature is still here and now, really, it is more functional and practical then ever!!
Ok, so, let’s refresh the memory and start from the beginning.
The story: why WebApps were not so popular in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has been the first release to introduce Browser, the new pre-installed web browser made by Canonical. Due to the long term support of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, it was a good idea to make WebApps working with a browser which is not supposed to change in the years. Due to this, developers updated the WebApps to be usable with the new application Browser.
The idea was good, but new problems were introduced: Browser was a fresh application, a lot of bugs were discovered and a couple of them were really annoying. I’m referring to the following bugs:
Often Browser could not play flash contents; WebApps like YouTube or FacebookMessenger were not useful for users. Would you use an application to watch YouTube videos that can’t play videos??
You were not able to copy/paste text between WebApps and other applications; for example to copy/paste from Firefox or Libreoffice to Gmail WebApp, that was really annoying!!
A lot of bugs were fixed, but these two features were always missing and this caused the relative abandon of this really interesting OS feature. But things finally have changed.
The good news: now WebApps work as expected, and they are amazing!
Yes, the good news is that now WebApps work really better, letting you to play all kind of videos inside Browser and to copy/paste content.
Those two missing features now are here and you have no excuse to not play with these exclusive WebApps. You have full access to your online content, directly from your Unity Launcher.
Install and try them, you will not regret.
How to install WebApps on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
This is as simple as immediate: open Ubuntu Software Center and search for the “webapp” entries, then install those you want. That’s all 😉
Just remember that Browser is still in the first version introduced in April 2014, this app will not be upgraded to a new version (except for bug fixing), consequently some web browser-related features, such as tabs, are missing. But if you want to access rapidly to your content from the desktop, there’s nothing better than Unity WebApps.
Open source projects do a lot of interesting work, and sometimes there’s nothing better than what they make. The game industry is full of commercial games with incredible graphics and musics, intense gameplay and all that you can expect from a good commercial game. But sometimes, open source games can be competitive.
0 A.D. is a real time strategy game, an open source and free game of ancient warfare developed by Wildfire Games, a global group of volunteer developers. Its focal points are a really excellent 3D graphics, really good soundtracks (registered with real instruments) and a large number of well balanced populations, all of them characterized by different units and buildings, different technologies and abilities.
0 A.D. allows you to choose among 12 populations represented at the peak of their civilizations, over a period of time ranging from 500 B.C. to 1 B.C: Athenians, Britons, Carthaginians, Gauls, Iberians, Macedonians, Mauryans, Persians, Ptolemies, Romans, Seleucids and finally Spartans.
A premise must be made: this game is still in alpha stage, currently alpha 18, but let me write that you will not notice big shortcomings or errors. 0 A.D. is definitively playable, online and offline.
You may find some funny elements not completely implemented (such as a specific animal that moves without walking) or something else not correctly placed inside the map. Things can be improved and some functions are not yet fully implemented, but that’s all.
Let’s start with a preview: 0 A.D. alpha 18 Trailer.
Gaming experience
Launched the game, you can find a lot of interesting features, such as the scenario editor (named Atlas), manuals, structure trees, language menu and bla-bla-bla.
But when you install a new game, you want to start to play immediately: let’s see the characteristics of a single player match (i.e. you against the AI).
You can choose which kind of match you want to play. Scenario is based on real historic events: you choose which map you want to play, but the number of players and civilizations will be set automatically by the game. Skirmish lets you choose which factions you want to let fight, but not the number of players involved (it depends on the map’s dimensions). Finally, Random lets you configure completely the match (number of players, populations, maps, population cap and much more).
Started the match, you have to find resources: food such as beef, fish, fruits or vegetables, wood, metal and stone. With these resources you can build farm and military centres, houses, walls, naval ports and everything you need to increase your population, economy and technologies. In order to increase the technology, it’s really important to use part of your resources to advance to a superior phase of your civilization. In 0 A.D. there are three phases: the Village Phase, the Town Phase, and the City Phase, each characterized by different technology improvements, new structures and units.
You can understand that it’s not enough to make a huge army if your shields and swords are old or your tactics outdated. You need special units to fight and defeat your enemy, new technologies and a high amount of resources.
Enlarge your empire and conquer new territories, the stronger you become, easier will be the victory.
Soundtracks
Music is an important part of every game and people at Wildfire Games knows it. The music department published some interesting posts in the past, however you can listen (and also download, hey, it’s open source!) to the incredible soundtracks in the music section of the website.
My favorite one is the number 8: Ammon-Ra, and yours??
Multiplayer lobby
Single player mode is always a good start, but if you want something different you can play online against other players.
Just register inside the game, selecting the menu Multiplayer → Game Lobby and start joining some battle, or start a new one.
Additional infos
0 A.D. works well on not too recent hardware. You can play this game with only an integrated Intel HD 3000 or a really old Ati Radeon HD 3650. If you use Linux, you’ll be pleased to know that it also works with the open source Radeon driver, without problems (at least in the most recent versions of Ubuntu and derivatives).
Regarding the graphics, in the Game Options tab you can activate additional functions, such as HD water effects (coastal waves and other things), Shadows on water or VSync.
Finally, one bad thing has to be reported: if units become too numerous, the game runs slowly. With an old graphics card you can find this problem really irritating: to get around this, simply select a match with a low number of players.
Install 0 A.D.
You can play this game on Linux, Mac and Windows.
For Ubuntu and derivatives, follow these simple instructions to install and always get (through the system updates) every new release of the game. Copy and paste, one by one, the following commands inside a terminal window:
For other Linux distributions, look at this page.
For Windows and Mac, download the game from this page.
In addition, because 0 A.D. is in alpha stage, every new version of the game introduces a lot of new interesting features. If you love this game, you will enjoy every single new release. And remember: if you want to help artists and developers, they are always in need of help!
Have a nice fight.
viprooni 