Free Cross-Platform Screenshot Tool: Screenie!

Most of us honestly don't be needing these type of dedicated screenshot capturing tools because we can use the built in photo manager or a painting application that comes with your operating system to do that.

But if you deal with screenshots a lot (just like me :D) and wondering about how to create screenshots that are angled + 3D looking reflections which you usually see with commercial applications "branding", then Screenie is one of the best, free tools that you can use.

One of the best things about Screenie is that it's a cross-platform tool that's written using the Qt toolkit and not only in Ubuntu (or GNU/Linux) but you can even use it under MS Windows and Mac OSX too.

Main features...

*. Supports Left, Middle and Right angled pictures.

*. Change offset, angle and distance of each picture.

*. Change Reflection opacity/angle.

*. Manually define R/G/B colors.

I obviously don't have a taste but this is what you can do with it... :)

That's about it for features!. You can install Screenie in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (might also work in 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04, not sure since I didn't test them) by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install screenie-qt

For the MS Windows users please visit the Screnie official home page. And big thanks to the developer Ariya (who's a very active Qt/KDE developer) for this excellent tool.

And I don't think anyone would need a tutorial on how to use it... but two things. Once opened, you have to drag the pictures to the Screenie window to load them + once you're done, just right click on it and you'll see the "saving" window.

But remember, Screenie is actually a basic screenshot composer rather than an advanced utility like Shutter, thus you cannot crop/resize your screenshots. So make sure to do those things before you drag-em-in to Screenie :). 

So, if you've been looking for a simple, free and yet effective screenshot tool that can be used on different OS environments, then Screenie is certainly an excellent little application.

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Advanced Multi Touch Gesture Recognizer for Ubuntu: Touchégg

It was Apple who "invented" the idea (after they bought the company that really invented it) of Multi touch Gesture Recognizing feature first. Although it was first came out with the iPhone's touchscreen based, but later they integrated it to the Trackpads of their Laptops or Ultrabooks such as Mac Book Air which received a lot of positive feedback from users.

Anyhow, the Multi Touch gestures can be implemented on Trackpads or any similar devices by using main two methods.

1. Embedding it into the BIOS of the Trackpad: This I think is the best methods since we don't have to install any software to enabled the multi-gestures thus it's software/platform independent, somewhat (since the BIOS coded software should be familiar with the OS when it comes to resizing, zooming, etc. But there's is a standard for Multi-gestures thus Max OSX, Ubuntu 10.10 and after and MS Windows fully support it by default) + these hardware integrated devices tend to performs better than the software based ones.

2. Using a dedicated software: This is the only hope for us with a never Trackpads/touchscreens that support this feature but want more control over its functions, etc.

Anyhow if you use Ubuntu Linux and looking for a utility which enables you to do all those nerdy gesture stuff with more advanced features..., then Touchégg is something that's worth looking into.

Main features...

*. Manually add/define a huge list touch-gesture related functions such as: Maximizing, minimizing, show the desktop, horizontal/vertical scrolling, launch the execute a command window, close a window, hove a window, resize a window, etc.

*. Supports up to 5 fingers!. So nothing is wasted :D.

*. Tap and Pinch support. 

*. Works with a lot of window managers such as Compiz, KWin, Metacity, etc.

*. Manually change the "Tap & Hold" time sensitivity.

That's basically about it when it comes to features. 

Touchégg is actually a "portion" of a bigger project called egg Window manager (that supports multi-questers by default). You can install Touchégg in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by first downloading the ".deb" packages from this download page.

But no matter what Ubuntu version that you use, you gotta install two separate files that include both the command-line core files + the GUI window. For instance, if you use 11.04 Natty, then

1. Get the command-line, "engine" from here first.

2. After the installation (just double click on the downloaded file and follow the on screen details), download the GUI from here and install it too.

After you've installed the both of the packages press "Alt" + "F2" keys on your keyboard and put the below command into the window and then you should be greeted with the configuration window by using which you can setup the multi-touch gestures for both the Trackpad or the touch-sensitive screen, etc with ease in Ubuntu!.

touchegg-gui

But remember, as said before, some older trackpads do not support the multi gesture recognition thus (as with my case) even if you install this, you won't be able to use the functions.

So in short, this application is only for those of you geeks, who already have a multi-gesture supported device but just lacks a dedicated software (one that gives you better control over actually, since Ubuntu does support it by default as far as I know) to do that for you under Ubuntu (or GNU/Linux in general)!.  

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PDFedit: A Powerful PDF Editor for Ubuntu Linux!

These days finding a decent PDF editor for GNU/Linux ain't that hard mainly due to the popularity of Ubuntu (I think :D). Although I'm not a PDF editing dude my self and have a very little knowledge about the subject as well.

When Adobe first released the PDF standard it was actually a proprietary standard and it was like that until recently (around 2008) that they realized to make it an open standard. I think it also must have helped the open-source developers to develop PDF editors with ease too (you know, developing an app for a "closed-source" standard can certainly bring some heat towards you :D) .

Anyhow, for all you guys who're searching for a PDF editor for Ubuntu, after a bit of a search, I came up with a one called "PDFEdit" which I then realized is something that's quite popular too.

And unlike with many other "text containers" in general, PDF is a single, platform Independent container that holds all the necessary information about the document such as Font, graphics (GUI), basic layout, images, encodings, etc which are called "objects" to render the file itself.

As mentioned before, this is not just a PDF "text editor" but rather a complete and powerful PDF object manipulator, thus won't suit all the users...

And our PDFedit app, in that sense lets you completely rearrange/change these core values that makes a PDF file rather than changing the text content within the PDF file. 

Main features...

*. As said before, change operators and their parameters.

*. Various tools such as : Text selection, flattern, PDF to XML conversion.

*. Enable/disable property window.

*. Command-line support.

*. Change font, color, zoom in/zoom out, rotate, draw rectangles, lines, etc.

*. Save PDF pages as images.

*. Extract text from the page... are just a few to mention.

You can install PDFedit editor in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your terminal window.

sudo apt-get install pdfedit

As said before, I'm not the expert on these subjects and I'm pretty sure there are many other open-source PDF editors out there... if you know some, then you're more than welcome to tell me about 'em :).  

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How to Install Kplayer in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.4?

Kplayer is a Qt written graphical front-end that uses the MPlayer as the playback engine. So any file that's playable via MPlayer can be played through Kplayer. But as everyone know when it comes to, even designing a "decent" GUI MPlayer just sucks like big time, so if you're looking for a graphical front-end that lets you use all the features of MPLayer and the ability to access a lot of its features, then Kplayer is a great little solution :).

I don't use KDE these days but I think that in the past Kplayer used to come as a part of the Qt/KDE desktop, so say that you've Kubuntu, then most probably you don't need to install it manually.

However apart from all those features and a beautiful GUI, if you use Ubuntu, then while installing Kplayer will take some space of your HDD since it's a part of the KDE project thus needs to download a lot of dependencies which in my case, apt-get told me that she had to download about 72MB + files in size!.

Main features...

Kplayer in KDE 4x desktop...

*. As said, it's written in Qt and has a beautiful GUI.

*. Lots of features (typical KDE, lol).

*. Playlist support.

*. Enable/Disable subtitles.

*. Direct play URL, DVD, VCD, audio CD, DVB, etc.

*. Change video contrast, saturation and hue.

*. Play/Pause/Stop/Next... you know the typical toolbar (which is also customizable thus you can enable/disable + create a tool-bar of your own).

*. Multimedia library support (handy if you have a big collection to manage).

*. Output messages that let you see the playback output and advanced codec information, etc.

*. Audio and especially video filters (de-interlace, post-processing, etc).

These are just a small list of its main features to mention. As you can see, Kplayer easily beats the Totem (the Gnome's media player) by a huge margin ;-). Anyhow, you can install Kplayer in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install kplayer

That's it. Enjoy!.

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Dragon Player (Qt Written Multimedia Player for KDE) Version 3 is On its Way!

Dragon player is a qt-written, multimedia front-end that's designed for the KDE desktop. As said it's a front-end rather than a player engine (such as MPLayer or VLC, etc) thus you can set it to use either Gstreamer or with Phonon (the newlywed KDE multimedia framework).

Although the player itself is a bit awkward when viewing from a KDE's point of view because KDE is always about features and lots of options but the Dragon player is all about simplicity and less features!. Thus it loads fast and does its job quite nicely and many just love it.

Although I actually haven't been using it for a long time but according to the KDE apachelogger, the Dragon player has been there with KDE for almost 4 years as the version 2 but yesterday at the current Berlin desktop summit, the developer of Dragon player Ian Monroe has announced that there's gonna be a Dragon player version 3 in the very near future!.

Few of the "things" expected in this release...

Although the "Blacky" background will most probably be removed which doesn't look that good actually ;-)...

*. He has promised not to clutter anything at all thus the player version 3.0 GUI will also be quite simple :).

*. No features are dropped thus all the things that were/are visible with its older versions will be ported into the version 3.

*. Cool looking (more smooth) start-up animations (well, I ain't a huge fan of those since it slow down the app loading times).

*. Enhanced, "recently viewed" display section.

*. When you stop a multimedia file (both video and audio) they'll fade-out!.

*. Although not revealed yet but in "apachelogger's" own words...

"A revolutionary approach that will make it tons easier to watch a series of videos (yet to be unveiled ;))..."

Well, that's about it for now. If you can't wait till it's out then you try out its scratch repository but please be aware that it's in its early development stage thus even if it builds just fine might not work properly. So use it at your own risk :).

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How to Install Amarok 2.4.3 "Berlin" in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 11.10?

Amarok is one of the most famous applications/portions of the Qt toolkit written KDE desktop. As promised by the developers with the recently released 2.4.2 beta1 version... it did undergo some GUI and few other major changes which was their preparation for the upcoming 2.4.3 release.

And now the developers have officially announced the availability of the Amarok 2.4.3 "Berlin"!. With this release they've decided to remove the lower "status-bar" and from now on notifications will be using that "space" which could be cool (or maybe not).

Main features...

*. Few more dynamic playlist related enhancements that were triggered in the 2.4.2 beta version such as Quiz-play bias and a new podcast integration with the Gpodder aggregator, etc.

*. Now you can use drag-n-drop to copy/move your local music collections (including inside the playlists) which was again introduced with the recent beta version but it seems that the playlist in general has been "cleaned" here and there so much more easy to understand (in their own words).

This is actually a true screenshot of 2.4.3 (too from the official site) but it's a damn shame that they've used MS Windows 7 for the screenshot rather than using GNU/Linux. So I cropped out the borders *put the angry dude here*. Man this attitude of KDE just pisses me off sometimes!...

*. Thanks to a bug-fix now Amarok geeks :) can configure individual podcast episode names.

*. Automatic scrolling in Lyrics applet.

*. The ability to  scrobble the composer as artist to Last.fm + a lot of bug fixes (such as CD ripping related, last.fm, dynamic playlists, etc) as usual.

We can install Amarok 2.4.3 "Berlin" in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the Kubuntu team's back-ports PPA, but here's the thing.

The team haven't come up with the 2.4.3 version since it's so new and only released it like few hours ago. But perhaps when you read this it maybe available. If it is available then you can install it by using the below commands.

Update: Thanks to "jepong" (see below comments) there's actually a PPA that exists created by Philip Johnson and using the we can finally install this "thing" ;-). I have replaced the original commands with this new PPA but if you want to try the official Kubuntu back-ports (they still haven't come up with it yet) then just replace the text in "Green" with the below one.

kubuntu-ppa/backports

For Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal users...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/kubuntu-backports

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install amarok

For Kubuntu 11.04 users use the below command instead.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:philip5/kubuntu-backports

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

But luckily for the Ubuntu (Kubuntu included) 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot users it seems that Amarok 2.4.3 is already in the repositories!, for the obvious reason of we're like few hours away from the official Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 release. So it'll be included in the Alpha 3 ISO image it seems.

Anyhow, if you don't daily update the existing 11.10 Alpha version then you should be able to manually install the latest version by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install amarok

As for the 11.04 users, a little patience goes a long way. I know it's hard but but... :).

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How to Install FocusWriter (Professional Writing Application) in Ubuntu Linux?

If you're a professional writer who'd like to have a simple text editor or a professional writing to be precise with minimal of distractions, then you'd find most of the built in ones that come with almost all the GNU/Linux desktop environments to be a bit of a pain in the as* :).

Although I'm not blaming the developers by any means since they've done an excellent job of creating all purpose, easy to use text editors of their own (such as Gedit, Kate, Leafpad, etc) but as said since the needs of a "true writer" is a bit different than with most of us, thus most of these applications may not simply meet your needs.

Now I've already talked about an excellent one recently which is known as Pyroom but it lacks few things such as no built in spellings checker and other few advanced options. But that being said, if you're looking for a very minimalistic writer app then it's pretty darn good.

But if you're looking for a much more closer to professional writing application for GNU/Linux, then Focuswriter (written in Qt toolkit) is simply an amazing application.

This is in the "windowed" mode... by default it runs in Full-Screen...

Main features...

*. Not just for GNU/Linux actually, this is a cross-platform utility thus you can use it under MS Windows, Mac OSX as well.

*. Has a built in spell checker which as said something that most other applications don't have these days.

*. Find and replace text.

*. A lot of built in text editing features such as - screen alignments, add smart quotes, bold/underline/italic/strike through/, change font, size and colors + redo/undo, etc.

*. Switch between full screen and windowed mode by pressing the "F11" on your Keyboard.

*. Customize the look-n-feel by changing background colors, font colors, etc.

*. Few built in language support.

*. Printing support.

*. Save in different formats.

*. Add a third party dictionary.

*. Save text automatically (you'll have to enable it via the "preferences window").

*. It can even output typewriter sounds! :)... these are just a very few of its features to mention.

You can install Focuswriter in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the developer's personal PPA. Just open your Terminal window and enter the below commands.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:gottcode/gcppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install focuswriter

In Unity desktop you can search for "focuswriter" or put it in your command-line OR from the main application menu go to: "Applications" -> "Office" -> "FocusWriter". That's it!.

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Heimdall - Flashing Samsung Galaxy S Series ROM in Ubuntu Made Easy!

If you own a Samsung S series tablet PC or a smart phone then I'm pretty sure you can find a "decent" GUI to flash new ROM updates (yikes) in MS Windows platform. But what if you use GNU/Linux... say Ubuntu for instance, wouldn't you like to flash your Samsung Galaxy S series while using your Ubuntu Laptop??

If so then then the Xda geeks have an excellent opensource application called Heimdall that does exactly that!. Unlike many other tools this opensource app run in GNU/Linux, MS Windows and Mac OSX as well.

It has two main version (before you panic, they're both free :P). One version is a command-line tool without any GUI... but the other is a graphical frond-end that uses the command-line tool (written in Qt toolkit I assume).

Main features...

*. According to the developer they've tested in various Galaxy S variants such as - GT-I9000, GT-I9000, AT & T Captivate, Vibrant Bell, Telstra I9000T-GT, and the Epic 4G Galaxy Tab and in all those occasions Heimdall has done its duty quite well and seems to have a 100% success rate!.

*. Load the ROM file and it'll show various info such as the Version, Platform, and supported devices, etc.

*. Repartition if necessary.

*. Showing the progress.

But please remember. While using it do not remove the USB cables which will result in a ROM flash/update failure resulting in a non-usable Galaxy S device :/. Also make sure you have a power backup generator (UPS devices, etc).

And lastly even though this has a 100% success rate yet there's no guarantee that it'll work 100% for you and both the developer and myself do not hold any responsibilities for damages that could occur in your Galaxy S ROM flashing procedure.

You can get the latest update 1.3 (still in beta) from this Xda forum thread. Oh one more thing, when downloading choose "Heimdall-Frontend" if you want the GUI instead of the command-line tool.

While I was installing Heimdall 1.3 in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal I also had to manually install a Qt-4 XML library using the below command. Your Ubuntu installation may have it already but after installing if you couldn't run it then use the below command.

sudo apt-get install libqtxml4-perl

After installing, just press "Alt" + "F2" and put the below command and it should run automatically. 

heimdall-frontend

So if you've been wanitng to flash your Galaxy S tablet/smart-phone in Ubuntu, then Heimdall is the one you should be talking to :). I hope this works for you. Good luck.

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Amarok 2.4.2 Beta 1 is Released (New background, GUI changes, etc)

From the day it was released, Amarok, the Qt written awesome music player front-end for KDE was A hit. Came with an excellent GUI, lots of features (usual KDE :D) and ease of use... everybody loves it!.

As said, like many other applications these days, it's actually not a complete player with a multimedia playing engine of its own but only a front-end. A Qt written GUI that relies on few multimedia frameworks such as Gstreamer, Phonon and other players such as VLC, Xine as well.

Anyhow, I think simultaneous to the upcoming KDE 4.7 release, Amarok and a lot other applications are receiving updates accordingly. Like two days ago Amarok was updated to its latest version 2.4.2 Beta 1 which brings bug fixes and some new features such as ...

*. New backgrounds.

*. Re-polished GUI.

*. Few updates to dynamic play-list (prevent duplicate track loads, Quiz-bias features that has the ability to play a multimedia file that has characters similar to the one just finished playing, drag-n-drop support for copying/moving files directly from the play-list in local storages, etc).

*. Removed "redo" button from the main tool-bar.

*. Now uses the ffmpeg 0.6 or higher by default.

*. Preview button, progress bar and few other layout clean-ups to make it look more simpler and "easy to understand" ... are just a few to mention.

While I checked it wasn't yet available through the Kubuntu PPA (backports) but you can add the PPA so when they do, you'll be able to install Amarok 2.4.2 Beta 1 in both Kubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal easily.

To do that, open the Terminal and enter the below commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install amarok

Remember, this is still in its beta stage... so may not be the best of Amarok, yet :).

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How to Install QMediainfo in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Both audio and video (images too) have a "secret" place called the Meta-Tag in which they hold information such as Artist/Album/Year, etc or if it's a picture the camera that captured it, etc ... type information that can be read by your OS once the proper applications are installed.

This information can be accessed via the the File manager of your Operating system. Concerning GNU/Linux, well after you install the proprietary codec pack, the OS can read certain amount of those details, say using the Nautilus file manager, but there are dedicated applications that lets you read/extract a lot of other advanced details.

There is a such an application called Mediainfo that has the ability to read advanced information from the container format of audio/video and even image files and lets you easily see them. If you use MS Windows then Mediainfo comes as a part of the excellent K-Lite codec pack but I don't think that we can easily install its GUI (although the command-line version is available via a PPA) in GNU/Linux.  

So I think after facing the same problem as others who tried to "extract" advanced info from multimedia files, I guess that a developer decided to use the already existing mediainfo command-line libraries and create a GUI front-end in Qt toolkit that is called QMediainfo!.

Qmediainfo lets you read advanced technical information from audio/video files such as ...

*. Year/Track/Artist/Category.

*. Bitrate related info such as - Max/Min and overall bitrate (average).

*. Screen resolution.

*. Encoding app/library.

*. Comments and ratings.

*. Codec ID.

*. Duration.

*. Aspect ratio.

*. Frames per second.

*. Audio channels, sample-rate, etc.

*. Language. 

*. Subtitles

*. Save the date to text/HTML file ... are just a few to mention.

As said it's written in the Qt-4 toolkit but works really well with Gnome desktop nonetheless. It depends on the Mediainfo library. So we'll have to make sure it's installed first. But we can just add the two PPA channels and the installation will take care the hassle for ya :).

You can install qmediainfo in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (10.04 and 10.10) by using the below commands in your GNU/Linux Terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:razrfalcon/qmediainfo

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:shiki/mediainfo

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qmediainfo

That should do it. Unfortunately whenever you want these advanced information, you'll have to separately launch the app and drag-n-drop the files into it because it does not integrate to the Nautilus File manager (don't know how its with Dolphin - The KDE file manager :D).

You can start the app by searching for "qmediainfo" in Unity dash or use it in the command box (use "Alt" + "F2" keys). Big thanks to the developer. Nice work, love it.

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How to Install Unity 2D in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 10.10?

As I've mentioned before, I never had that much of a success running the original Unity desktop interface, mainly because of my ATI GPU (+ Compiz). But as everyone knows Canonical does give you a Qt written 2D Unity desktop interface called Unity-2D (which was previously called Unity-Qt) if your hardware isn't capable of running the default 3D interface for which Canonical does deserve a "thank you" :D.

I'll be honest. I'm a dude who's got nothing that much to lose. No reputation, not that popular (wait!, isn't that the same ;-)) as being pretty much a "no-body" gives me the freedom to say things like, "well even it's been few months, I haven't tested the Unity 2D interface!, until today".What!... :/ parley ;-).

The main reason for this is actually because of the Qt toolkit. I have nothing against (well, at least not that much) nor the believe systems of the Qt "philosophy" which is clearly not that compatible with GNU after considering a bit of history, even though it's released under it, now owned by Nokia.

Because of the past "actions" I guess I'm a bit scared by it. Anyhow, let me come back to the topic. By default the original 3D Unity interface is actually a plug-in that runs on top of the Compiz (an OpenGL composition manager) thus it requires some GPU power + system resources in general which is the reason why my old Laptop cannot keep up with it any more.

Still comes with few effects such as app-launcher transparency, drop shadows, etc thanks to Metacity's advanced compositing effects...

So today I just gave a shot at the other side of the desktop interface called 2D which as the name suggests does not require a lot of GPU (VGA) power because, even though there are some 3D looking graphics, yet, Unity 2D does not use Compiz by default and uses the Metacity Window manager instead.

But you can still enable few of the options manually if you like by using a small app called 2d desktop settings, otherwise you'll miss that transparent applauncher, etc.

Installation...

This is pretty simple actually. Now they have a dedicated PPA for that which is enabled for the 11.04 version. You can install Unity 2D (Qt) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install unity-2d

The installation in Ubuntu 10.10 requires the adding of the PPA since it's not enabled by default. So the 10.10 users, please use the below command instead.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install unity-2d

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

By default the 2D desktop comes the Compiz compositing manager completely disabled. But it still comes with few "advanced" Metacity WM compositing effects enabled such as drop shadows, transparency effects, etc nonetheless.

Notice the "non-transparent" application-launcher after disabling Metacity compositing effects completely...

First impressions...

Well as promised, when comparing with the default Unity 3D, it's a hell lot faster! (after disabling the Metacity compositing effects especially). Although the Unity 3D also comes with very little customizations... which is also the case with the 2D version but I guess we should give Ubuntu developers few more months and wait for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 release which "would" give the users a better controllability that it's now.

You can also change few of the (2 or 3 actually) Unity-2D's app-launcher related settings by using the below command in you Terminal.

gconf-editor

Then from the window that you get, from your left go to:"Desktop" -> "unity-2d" - "launcher".

Now when you click on the "launcher", you'll see to your right few options such as changing the hide-modes, super key enable/disable, preserve screen for the launcher all the time, etc.

Anyhow as a final note, if you're struggling to run the 3D default Unity desktop module with your "old" PC but still would like to get a "taste" of "that desktop" without buying a new PC or a Laptop :).... then apart from the fact that it's written using the Qt toolkit... I'm pretty impressed with its performance and stability, so far.

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How to Install Pencil in Ubuntu Linux (a 2D Cartoon Drawing application)

Pencil is an amazingly small (about 690KB of download size!) yet a powerful and easy to use cartoon drawing + 2D animation creating application for GNU/Linux operating system (it's actually a cross-platform app that can also be used in MS Windows and Mac OSX as well).

The default GUI is written in the Qt toolkit and even though I used it in the GTK written classical Gnome desktop... it integrated pretty well nonetheless. As said it's not just a drawing application it's actually a 2D animation creator thus you can even embed audio file to your hand drawn cool cartoons too :D.


Main features...

*. Pretty easy to use GUI window.

*. A dedicated toobar - pencil, hand-tool, colouring tool, fill, eraser, colour picker, etc.

*. Change colours and other advanced settings such as adjusting Red/Green/Blue/Alpha values.

*. Moveable toolbars and option windows.

*. Multiple layer support.

*. Import images and audio files.

*. Undo/Redo.

*. Set FPS (frames per seconds) for the 2D animations.

*. Auto save function.

*. A dedicated "time-line" area for editing your 2D animation.

*. Import and Export files into various formats (saving in Adobe Flash, as a movie file, etc).

*. Online help and excellent community support.

*. Play/Loop... are the main ones to mention. 

I gotta tell you folks... the Pencil app has an excellent "sensitivity". For instance, I did feel how easy and efficient the default "Sketch tool" was because unlike many other apps... I could draw lines and other weird stuff (well not everyone is an artist alright! :P) with ease and the accuracy was excellent.

One annoying thing though. Whenever I changed the colour of the brush-strokes, I had to choose a different tool from the tool-bar and re-select whatever the tool that I was using before to "apply" the new brush-stroke colour. I hope they'll fix it in a future release. Although the last update was about 3 years ago :/... so that might not be possible.

But again, when considering the fact that I use a much never Ubuntu Linux version (11.04) thus it's more than enough for me. But for all the professionals, it might be a bit of a problem. Anyhow if you have a touch-sensitive device such as a Tablet PC... oh man (girls too :D), you'll love it!. Apart from that issue... this is one heck of a pencil!.

You can install Pencil (0.4.4b current version) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by entering the below command in your GNU/Linux terminal.

sudo apt-get install pencil

Now, go ahead create something cool! :). Good luck.

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How to Install EasyImageSizer in Ubuntu?

EasyImageSizer is a simple yet an advanced Image resizer written in Qt toolkit which lets you easily convert images from one formats to others formats, mass renaming, resize, etc with ease. Although it's written in Qt, yet it integrated quite nicely in the Gnome classic desktop while I was playing with it ;-).

You can both lower or make the images look bigger (increase) by changing the resolution. Although EasyImageSizer comes with predefined presets but you can manually override the settings as well.

They recently released a new version 3.0.2 but it's not available for Ubuntu at the time I was using it... but other than few stability enhancements, etc the 2.1.5 version is pretty close the version 3x nonetheless.


Main features...

*. Add individual images or directories.

*. Convert/save images into .bmp, .jpg, .png or .tiff formats.

Enabling the "plugins" is pretty easy as you can see...

*. Resize with manual quality settings.

*. Add overlay images or texts.

*. Change aspect ratio and resolution settings manually or choose predefined settings.

*. Rotate.

*. Rename images or Exifdata (advanced "tags" which hold information such as the camera which took the pic, shutter speed, etc).

Although almost all these features are disabled by default (resizing, rotating, etc) thus you have to enable them by enabling the plugins since these features are implemented as plug-ins. It's pretty easy, all you gotta do is, from its menu go to: "Edit" -"Plugins"   and choose the ones that you need.

You can install EasyImagesizer in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by first downloading the .deb file from this page. Although I'm not entirely sure but I think it should work in Ubuntu 10.10 and 10.04 version as well + that downloading page holds prebuilt packages for other GNU/Linux distributions such as Fedora, Gentoo, etc too.

In Ubuntu after the downloading completes, just double click on the file and follow the instructions on the Ubuntu Software Center.

Note: even after the installation went pretty well yet I couldn't run the application. When I click on the EasyImageSizer, well, nothing happened :/. So I went for the ultimate trick ;-)... I put the command in the Terminal window which gave me the below error.

gayan@gayan-PC-LL700ED:~$ sh /usr/bin/easyimagesizer.sh
: not foundsr/lib/easyimagesizer/easyimagesizer

Well then I went to that directory in bold letters and doubleclick on the "easyimagesizer" and guess what?, it worked!. The app launched without any issues.

So as you can see, if you want to launch it then evertime you have to go to that folder and double click on that specific executable file or you can just create a shortcut on you desktop OR if you use Gnome classic desktop,

1. Just right click on the main desktop menu and choose "Edit Menu". Then navigate to :"Applications" -> "Graphics" -"EasyImageSizer".

Now double click on the icon which should bring you its properties window as below. Just replace the text for "Command" box with the below text.

Replace the highlighted text with the below one...

/usr/lib/easyimagesizer/easyimagesizer 

And click on the close button. Now everything should be working without any issues. In unity desktop... you can just replace the "command" in the app-launcher any other launcher with the above one.

One thing though... for some reason, I can't save the plugin data. For instance, if I had enabled all the plugins the last time, then whenever I launch the app, the plugins are automatically disabled. So you'll have to re-enable them every time you launch the app. Anyone knows how to fix it?

Yep that should do it. Enjoy!.

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Muon Suite 1.2 Beta 2 is Out (Qt Written Package Manager for Kubuntu 11.04 +)

Since I've written about Muon Suite before I won't be going into all the details all over again. Anyhow for those of you who are new to Muon (well we all are in a way, lol), it is a package manager GUI written using the Qt toolkit (owned by Nokia corporations) aimed at the Kubuntu/KDE Linux desktop.

It's actually becoming apparent that why Kubuntu team "invented" this package manager because the current package manager GUI when compared with the Ubuntu Software Center ... well it does lack few "user-friendliness" and like the Synaptic (although it's most certainly rich in features and the best option for the power users) the current package manager is not optimized for the touch-sensitive devices or the "future" in general.

So in hope for a more user-friendly package manager GUI they came up with the one called Muon. Soon after the initial announcement, they actually made available the 1.2 beta version few weeks ago for testing which you can install via their PPA channel.

The latest news is that few hours ago they've released the latest version of Muon, 1.2 Beta 2!. And according to the developer this won't give new features but seems to carry bug-fixes only. So if you've been using the older 1.2 Beta version, then it's advised to upgrade to this version.

If you have never installed it before, then you can install the Muon 1.2 beta 2 in Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below command in your GNU/Linux Terminal window.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:echidnaman/qapt-experimental
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install muon

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