Linux Road

Synapse is a quick launch application for Linux. It can search for applications, documents, pictures, videos, and other files on your local machine for quick access. Synapse make use of Zeitgeist engine.

Synapse is quite similar to GNOME Do, but is far more powerful. Search capabilities are good and normally shows relevant results. Synapse can be launched by using following short-cut key at anytime:

crtl + space

Once Synapse is launched simply type, search, and go.

Results are sorted per frequency of use. Means that the applications that you use more often will be displayed first.

Plugins are available to find other stuff as well:

• Applications - searches your desktop files
• Banshee - allows you to play/enqueue music files in Banshee
• Commands - runs any command (ie. "sudo apt-get update")
• Devhelp - search documentation using Devhelp
• Dictionary - find definitions of words
• Directory search - allows opening of commonly used directories
• Gnome session - log out, shut down, restart
• Hybrid search - complete Zeitgeist results by searching for similar files
• Rhytmbox - play/enqueue music files in Rhythmbox
• UPower - suspend & hibernate your computer
• Zeitgeist - search anything logged by Zeitgeist

Other than default theme, three more themes are available, shown as follow:

Mini

Virgilio

Dual

Get Synapse

Ubuntu users can get Synapse by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:synapse-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install synapse

For other distros follow the official link.

Alien Arena 2011 has been released for both Windows and Linux platform. Alien Arena is a first person shooter game.

Alien Arena is quite similar to Quake and Unreal Tournament. You can choose from various options such as Deathmatch, Team Core Assault, All Out Assault, Capture the Flag, Duel, and Cattle Prod. Users can also apply a number of different mutators to the game rules as well, creating some pretty interesting scenarios. Players can join others on servers using the in-game browser, or use the Galaxy client, which also serves as a way to communicate with the large, and friendly Alien Arena community.

Alien Arena is quite popular among Linux community and the latest release is certainly a welcomed one (keeping the fact that Linux users don't see much games). You can download and play Alien Arena from here.

New Features

• Ragdoll physics using the Open Dynamics physics engine.
• Revamped in-game IRC client.
• GNU AutoTools for Linux/Unix/MacOS installation.
• True Type Font support.
• Two brand new maps, one revamped map.
• New music by renowned musician Paul Joyce.
• Bugfixes, tweaks, and much more!

The complete change log is listed here.

Screenshots

Oracle executives have talked over the plans for Solaris 11 that is set to be released in 2011. Advancements are to be made in availability, security, and virtualization.

Solaris 11 will feature next-generation networking capabilities for scalability and performance, said John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president of systems, at a company event in Santa Clara, Calif. "It's a complete reworking of [the] enterprise OS," he said. Oracle took over Solaris early this year, when they acquired Sun Sun Microsystems.

Also at Thursday's event, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison expressed Oracle's intention to dominate the Linux space. "Solaris is clearly the number one Unix, and we're working very hard at making Oracle Enterprise Linux the number one Linux," he said.

Oracle has already released Solaris 11 Express, a version of the OS geared for developers and a preview for the upcomming Solaris 11. This Express release of Solaris cannot be used in production or commercial environments.

Oracle announced the version 5.5 of MySQL on Wednesday. Which is the first major update since the database giants took over. Now that Oracle has two general-use databases it has to decide the placement of the product in the market. And so, Oracle has decided to market the open-source database for Web application market with MySQL

"We see them as being very distinct for different use cases," said Monica Kumar, Oracle senior director of product marketing.

"MySQL is a great database for Web-based applications, for custom departmental applications and for embedded uses. And the Oracle database is the leading enterprise database for high-end packaged applications: enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, online transaction processing, large data warehouses and business intelligence applications," Kumar said.

"The two products complement each other and fill in a variety of use cases," Kumar said.

MySQL has been the core product when you want a database for web applications when Oracle database simply cannot be used. She mentioned how MySQL is part of the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Python/Perl) stack, which is widely used for deploying websites and Web applications. "It's been very successful in the Web-based application space," she said.

Another consideration for choosing mySQL over Oracle in the Web space is personnel. In many cases, a LAMP administrator would be more familiar with MySQL than with the Oracle namesake database, said Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering. "It makes it easier to run with MySQL if for no other reason than the actual developer is used to MySQL."

Ricardo López announced the release of Asturix 3. Asturix is an Ubuntu-based distribution that tends to focus on ease of use and a full support for social networking. Asturix allows you to legally download music via Jamendo.

Feature List

The official feature list, posted on Asturix 3's official web site lists the following features:

• Elegant and proffessional interface, combined with an amazing design easy of use
• Total integration of social and microblogging networks as Twitter, Facebook or Identi.ca
• Asturix Bridge lets you to add, remove and execute web applications as native applications
• Face login. Write your password to login now is from the past
• Libre and free music thanks to Jamendo, and it is legal!

Download

To Download Asturix 3 follow the following link: http://asturix.com/download

Donate

If you like the project and are able to help the project financially then you are requested to donate something to the project. To donate follow the following link: Donate

Screenshots

Every program that you make in Java main method is always tagged with the keyword static. Similar to main other method (as well as Fields) can be defined as static.

Static Fields

If a field is defined as static it will mean that there will be only one instance of such field. Consider the following code:

class Employee{
 private int empId;
 private static int nextId = 1;
 private String empName;
 
 Employee(String name){
  empName = name;
  empId = nextId;
  nextId++;
 }
 
 void getDetails(){
  System.out.println("ID: " + empId);
  System.out.println("Name: " + empName);
 }
}

The above class assigns a unique id to every employee that is created. Here, nextId is defined as static which means that there will be a single unique nextId available for all objects. For example, if we make 100 objects of Employee class there will be 100 empId and empName, but only 1 nextId created. The static field (nextId in this case) will be common for all objects.

Static Constants

Static variables are quite rarely used or defined. However, static constants commonly used, consider the following example:

class someMathsClass{
 ...
 private static final double pi = 3.14159265358979323846;
 ...
}

Here we use the keyword final to make pi a constant and the keyword static makes sure that there is only one copy of it available for all objects.

Static Methods

Static methods are the ones that do not operate on objects. To call a static method we use the class name followed by '.', for example:

The pow defined in Math class is static. So, you do not need to make an object of Math to use pow, to call pow you simply write:

Math.pow(a, b)

Since, static methods do not operate on objects they cannot make a call to instance variable but you can make a call to static variable from static methods.

Canonical has decided to change the interface of the next release of Ubuntu (Natty Narwhal 11.04) from GNOME to Unity. Unity is an open source project that focuses on simplified interface and three dimensional displays.

Canonical has to make this decision because the views of developers at Canonical were starting to diverge from the views of the GNOME team. Canonical had different ideas about how a desktop interface should look and operate, according to Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth.

"We were part of the GNOME shell design discussion, we put forward our views and they were not embraced by designers," Shuttleworth said during a press briefing. "We took a divergent view from the GNOME shell folks on key design issues, for example how application menus should appear on the system, how one should search to find applications, [and] how one's favorite applications should be presented."

Ubuntu's next release Natty Narwhal (11.04) is set to be launched in April 2011. Natty Narwhal (11.04) will have Unity shell that will support three dimensional interface. Shuttleworth announced on Monday, at the company's Ubuntu Developer Summit, being held this week in Orlando, Florida. For previous desktop versions of the software, Gnome was the default shell.

Canonical and the developers of GNOME, an open source project led by the GNOME Foundation, have had an increasingly disharmonious relationship over the past year due, in part, to these design issues.

Because Canonical was already developing Unity for netbooks for OEM (original equipment manufacturer) customers, "We went ahead and did the engineering" for a general desktop interface for the next release, Shuttleworth said. "Essentially, it is a very different product from the GNOME shell, and has a very different way of organizing things," he said.

Even though Canonical will switch from GNOME in the next release of Ubuntu, but according to Mr. Shuttleworth users will have little problem. Shuttleworth has also promised that all GNOME application will run without any modifications.

"We have no plans for proprietary extensions to Unity whatsoever," Shuttleworth said.

Being able to capture what is on your screen can be useful at time (one example can be this tutorial in which I had to use pictures of my screen). Taking a screenshot is fairly simple and straight-forward in GIMP. All you have to do is goto File > Create > Screenshot....

Following the menu as shown in the above picture will open the following window that will help you take the screenshot. From here on all you have to do is choose the right option.

The window shown in the above figure provide three options (all of them doing exactly what they say):

• Take a screenshot of a single window
• Take a screenshot of the entire screen
• Select a region to grab

Take a screenshot of a single window

If you want to capture only a single window just select this option and click snap. Doing so will allow you to capture any single window that in visible on the screen just by clicking on it.

This option provides a sub-option as well: Include window decoration. You may or may not check it depending on what you want to do. The name is very self explanatory, if you want to include window borders while taking the screenshot select this option and vice versa.

Take a screenshot of the entire screen

Choosing this option will allow you to take the screenshot of the entire desktop. Using the sub-option: Include mouse pointer, you may or may not capture mouse arrow (if normally opt not to capture mouse arrow).

Select a region to grab

If you have to take screenshot of multiple windows or prefer not to capture the entire screen, you can can select this option. It allows the user to capture any portion of the screen. Simple click and drag across the screen and select an area to capture.

What is delay?

There is a sweet little option at the end of the window labeled as delay. Delay can be used to set the time between the moment you press the Snap button and the moment at which the screenshot is taken. Delay option is available while using the options: Take a screenshot of a single window, Take a screenshot of the entire screen

Most of the times it happens that Ubuntu Netbook becomes agonizingly slow. Checking the RAM usage shows that only half of RAM is used (and quite obviously half is still free not being utilized) while SWAP memory usage is above 50%. This confuses many (including me) because SWAP memory is a lot slower than RAM and since RAM is available why Ubuntu even bother using SWAP.

What is SWAP?

Before moving to why this happens I will like to tell a few things about SWAP. SWAP is a portion of your hard disk dedicated to work as RAM. RAM is a fast piece of hardware and works more efficiently and so it is preferred that most of the process run in it. But, since RAM is very expensive, Linux makes use of SWAP that actually fakes to be a RAM and is used if RAM memory is not sufficient enough to hold the running processes.

Why Ubuntu uses SWAP when RAM is available

The problem here is RAM is available and Ubuntu is still using SWAP memory. This is due to the fact that the default value for swappiness is 60. Now what is swappiness? Swappiness is a parameter that controls the likelihood of the kernel to move the processes from RAM to the SWAP (a sort of virtuall ram). This value can be altered from 0 to 100. The higher the value the higher will be the chance of processes being moved to SWAP area and vice versa. So, here we are simple going to lower the swappiness value. A swappiness value of 10 is recommended but the default value is 60

How do I decrease swappiness value

To change the swappiness value just follow the following instructions. :

To see the current swappiness vaule type this in Terminal (to open terminal goto Application > Accessories > Terminal) and type the following command

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To temporarily change the swappiness value (lost on reboot) type:

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

To change the swappiness value permanently type the following to open sysctl.conf in editor:

gksudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Now search for vm.swappiness and change it to vm.swappiness=10. If vm.swappiness is not found then add following at the end of the file:

vm.swappiness=10

Save and reboot your system, you will notice the increase in performance.

Source:

• Ubuntu Wiki

The announcement of beta version of Ubuntu 10.10 came with the news that Shotwell will be replacing the good old (and trusted) F-Spot as the default photo manager. This is when I first heard of Shotwell and since Ubuntu were showing so much trust in it, I thought it would be worth while to do a review on Shotwell. Even though most people are talking much about the F-Spot and Shotwell war, but I want to make a point that this is no Shotwell v/s F-Spot post. It is a simple review on Shotwell, talking about the strengths and weaknesses of it.

Shotwell can be found in the package repository of most of the distributions and can be installed directly from there. Just open your package manager search for "Shotwell" and install the package. But, if your distro doesn't have it in the package repository you can see the installation details on the official Shotwell install page (http://yorba.org/shotwell/install/) to install Shotwell.

Interface

First thing you will notice about Shotwell's interface will be that it is very simple (a bit too simple). The Shotwell windows contains two panes. A left pane showing photos and events, with photos containing all the pictures in the library and events having the photos arranged in according to the date on which they were taken. The right pane quite obviously shows the preview of images.

Below the right pane we have some very useful buttons and a small slider (to increase the size of the thumbnails). There are by default four buttons (I would prefer to have a few more) Rotate, Enhance, SlideShow, and Publish. Each doing exactly what it say. The image details are shown just below the left pane.

Editing

You can double click on an image to open it in the edit mode. The edit mode offers Red-eye Reduction, Cropping, Rotating, Image Enhance (corrects the image colors, brightness, and sharpness automatically), and Adjust button that allows the user to change attributes for exposure, saturation, tint, temperature, and shadows. Image editing is quite fair, not a lot of options and the ones that are present are quite handy according to my likings.

Publishing

This is a nice and handy mode that allows user to publish/upload photos to facebook, picasa, and flickr albums. There are just three options for now I hope to more will be added later on. just select an image and press the publish button to upload. You will have to put your login details before uploading.

Slideshow

When you click the Slideshow button under the right pane, you will see a full page preview of the image which will switch to the next one after a delay of 5 sec. (delay can be set manually too). Again the simplicity can be seen the Slideshow mode as well, with just five buttons visible: back, pause/play, next, setting, and exit mode. Setting button allow you to set the delay time before the next image is displayed.

Taging and Events

Tagging has become an important feature in any modern photo managing software and so did Shotwell included the feature of tagging the images. Simple select an image click on the tag option in the menu bar to add or modify a tag. Events that are by default present as dates can be renamed to represent an event for your own ease.

Final Words

Shotwell should get my full marks for its simplicity and ease of use. It might not be as attractive as F-Spot but that is a matter of choices. Some features need to be added and polished, I would like to have more places to publish images directly. Overall, it is a very handy tool and the project overall seem to be heading in a good direction. Most Ubuntu users will miss F-Spot but they can install it manually but I would certainly recommend giving Shorwell a try.