You can find literally hundreds GDM/Logon themes around the web if you type “gdm themes ubuntu” in Google. At the same time I’ve organized links to the most interesting Ubuntu GDM themes in this multi-page post so you are welcome to navigate between its pages using links above. If you wish to share something here — just contact me via e-mail and your theme will appear here shortly.

Continue reading…

Today it was announced that the latest version of Shotwell 0.7.1 has been released. Shotwell is smart digital photo organizer for Gnome environment. In general it brings a lot of common features like importing photos from digital camera, non-destructive image editing, rotate-mirror-crop and many-many more other handy features.

The latest Shotwell version fixes multiple bugs, has improved translation languages and in general looks more attractive than previous versions. It is available either as tarball or through PPA. If you run Ubuntu Lucid Lynx or Maverik Meerkat you can install Shotwell 0.7.1 in a few quick terminal commands:

Lucid Lynx:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yorba/ppa/ubuntu lucid main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E549B1AC
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shotwell -y

Maverik Meerkat:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yorba/ppa/ubuntu maverik main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E549B1AC
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install shotwell -y

Once the installation is finished you will see Shotwell Photo Manager link in Graphics section of Ubuntu main menu.

While writing articles for Ubuntuka I usually make some screenshots of my Ubuntu Lucid Lynx desktop. This is absolutely ok to capture just whole desktop or certain window (PrntScrn or Alt + PrntScrn keys) but it gets really annoying to edit every screenshot in gimp to cut something out or add a label/note etc. Thankfully there is extremely powerful and useful software to make life easier — Shutter screenshot tool for Ubuntu.

Continue reading…

There are a lot of possible reasons why Ubuntu user may want to find out Ubuntu version installed on his or her computer. And this is not due to short-term memory or something. Many Ubuntu newbies just feel lost in all those Ubuntu codenames e.g. Lucid Lynx or Maverick Meerkat and version numbers like 10.04 LTS, 10.10 etc. There are several ways to find out what Ubuntu version is installed on a computer/laptop. See them below in this post.

Continue reading…

Java is a programming language that was developed by Sun Microsystems (it was acquired by Oracle Corporation). The major characteristics of Java is the portability meaning that the applications written in Java are cross-platform by default so can be run seamlessly on Windows, MAC OS X and Linux including Ubuntu. It is required to have Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your Ubuntu system to run Java programs or visit web sites with Java applets. See below how to get JRE installed and also how to test Java/JRE in Ubuntu.

Continue reading…

I would like to tell you about two absolutely different Internet radio players for Ubuntu: steamtuner2 (do not mix with streamtuner from apt repository) and radiotray. Both of these applications were developed for listening to online radio but streamtuner2 is targeted to geeks while radiotray — to minimalists. See more info below in this post.

Continue reading…

As far as Apple’s doesn’t support Ubuntu Linux iTunes is compatible only with Mac OS and Windows operating systems. Therefore a lot of Ubuntu newbies have problems with permanent switching as they still require iTunes. In this post I describe all possible approaches and workarounds to run itunes in Ubuntu and also tell how and why to replace itunes with one of native Ubuntu software. So how to run itunes in Ubuntu? There are all known approaches below.

Continue reading…

This is rather popular question among people who switched to Ubuntu recently or who just take the first steps in this operating system: How to add certain program to autostart or startup? Thankfully in latest versions of Ubuntu (e.g. Lucid Lynx or Maverik Meerkat) the answer is really simple.

Continue reading…