Elementary OS or Mint 17.3 KDE

I switched from Mint KDE and Kubuntu (dual boot) to ElementaryOS Freya and for a long time I was very happy with Elementary.  But despite all the things I like about Elementary I found a few shortcomings.  And the biggest showed up when I decided to change from 32 bit Linux to 64 bit. 

I always have a dual boot system, so I left 32 bit Elementary on my main computer and installed the 64 bit version in the spare partition.  Then everything went sideways.  Too many 64 bit programs simply did not work in Elementary OS Freya and some wouldn't even install properly.

So I burned the most recent Mint 17 (17.3 at the time), but this time in 54 bit so I could use a few programs like Viber for Linux.  And because I am used to the responsiveness of Elementary I installed Mint Mate.  Bad move.  Like stepping back in time.  So boosted it to Cinnamon, which was also a horrible experience.  Now, when I say horrible, I mean from 'MY' point of view.  Thousands of people love those Mint flavours.  But I like to tweak stuff and like the flexibility I used to have in KDE.

So I installed the KDE Plasma 4 package.  And it picked up all my tweaks from the last time I had KDE running.  All my 64 bit software worked as I installed it, and despite my earlier experiences, Mint KDE was mostly pretty smooth and snappy in its performance.

It wasn't all great though.  There's a neat part of KDE desktop that few people use called Activities.  I used them all the time.  It allows me to not only have multiple desktops, but I can set each activity to be just like a separate computer and switch instantly between them.  

So for example I used to have one Activity set specifically for Normal computer day to day stuff, another dedicated to Graphics, and a separate Activity for Video Editing.  And each of my multiple desktops in the separate activities was uniquely designed to put everything where I wanted it.

But with Mint 17.3 KDE Activities were simply not available.  A bit of Googling showed this has been a problem in other distros for some time, so it is not a Mint problem. 

Installing a few packages as suggested in various forums gave me back my Activities, but killed my KDE.  It took days to get the system more or less stable again and eventually I will have to reinstall and then reinstall all my programs and tweaks again.

But most of it is working again and working very, very nicely.  

Mint 17.3 with KDE is slower to boot up than Elementary OS, but this latest version of Mint KDE seems just as fast, as long as you don;t try to get Activites working (assuming on yours it is not).  And I now have my HD video wallpaper working more easily again.  I had been so used to having to write special routines and script files to do things on Elementary that are just dead easy on other Linux distros.

Elementary OS is great for new users, but for long term Linux users there's just not enough flexibility for applying your own tweaks.

youtube-dl avconv error when downloading video update Ubuntu libav-tools

Sometimes runnign youtube-dl to download video from a web page will give an error warning about your avconv being out of date, and suggesting that you upgrade.  Recently mine has been telling me to upgrade to  version 10 or later.  but Elementary (Ubuntu 14.04 based repository) was only on version 9.18-6:9.18

A post on the Ubuntu forums:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/563245/avconv-warning-while-downloading-youtube-video
had the answer.

There is a PPA available (at 20 March 2016) and running the following commands added it and updated my avconv.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:heyarje/libav-11 && sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

Now, entering avconv -version in a terminal window tells me:




radu$ avconv -version

avconv version 11.3-6:11.3-1~trusty, Copyright (c) 2000-2014 the Libav developers

  built on Apr 13 2015 22:25:55 with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)

avconv 11.3-6:11.3-1~trusty

libavutil     54.  3. 0 / 54.  3. 0

libavcodec    56.  1. 0 / 56.  1. 0

libavformat   56.  1. 0 / 56.  1. 0

libavdevice   55.  0. 0 / 55.  0. 0

libavfilter    5.  0. 0 /  5.  0. 0

libavresample  2.  1. 0 /  2.  1. 0

libswscale     3.  0. 0 /  3.  0. 0

radu$

Slimjet Browser 64 bit in ElementaryOS / Ubuntu Couldn't Load Plugin - fixed

Friday 11th March 2016 and after updating my ElementaryOS Freya from 32 bit to 64 bit and going through all my Brother scanner problems and finally getting both Skype and the 64 bit version of Viber working, I had another glitch.  Googling the problem shows that it is pretty common but none of the suggestions worked.

I use Flashpeak Slimjet for most of my browsing.  It is based on Chromium and as well as being fast, it has some handy built in features.  Because I now had the 64 bit version of Elementary I installed the 64 bit deb package.  And it worked nicely until I wanted to play a video.  That's when I go the message that it 'couldn't load the plugin'.  So I did the usual chrome thing and installed the latest Flash (Adobe Flash Player - Version: 21.0.0.182  at the moment) made sure it was enabled and restarted Slimjet.  When that failed I tried googling and tried the various suggestions.

Nothing worked.  I rebooted the computer and restarted Slimjet - and nothing worked again.  And it seems from discussions on forums and blogs that it is a bit of a lottery.  Some suggestions work for some people and not for others.

So I went back into Slimjet and entered  about:plugins in the address bar again and re-enabled the native PPAPI player plugin, which I think is called something like pepper-flash.  Then I checked the old Adobe Flash player v11.x was actually gone and I only had the 21.x version and made sure it is enabled.

And I downloaded the 32bit deb package.  Opened it using Software Centre and told it to install anyway when it told me it was not a good idea.  I had to do that twice to get the install to complete.  It removed some files, but they all seemed specific to Slimjet or Chromium.  I suppose I will find out if they affect anything else in the next few days.

But the good news is, I now have a 32 bit Slimjet running on 64 bit Ubuntu based OS (Elementary OS Freya) and I can play all my Youtube stuff again.   And the download tool still works nicely.

The neat thing about the download tool is that when I make a video in say OpenShot, I can upload a big mp4 to YouTube, and Youtube makes it into several smaller sized options at different resolutions.  Slimjet lets me open one of my videos in Youtube and choose what size file to download.  Great for emailing or uploading somewhere else.

So if all else fails, and you are sick of downloading and messing with things and getting nowhere, and if you already used Synaptic to install the latest Adobe Flash Player plugin.
Don't uninstall the 64 bit Slimjet.  Download the 32 bit, then open it using Software Centre and let is sort out the changes.

It just might work!  (and of course - it might not)

U P D A T E  - The Next Morning

Ok, I found the first problem.  Logging in this morning, there was no Network Manager icon in the Plank (Elementary's name for Panel).  I connected to my network using the menu.

Applications (Elementary's name for the start menu) >  System Settings > Network

From there I just selected my network and turned the toggle at the top right ON and it connected.  
Then in a terminal:

sudo apt-get indicator-applet

That put my Network indicator back.

Other than that so far all is well and Slimjet 32 bit on Elementary OS Freya 64 bit is still happily playing Youtube Videos.

Brother MFC-Jxxxx Scanner not working on 64 bit Elementary and Ubuntu

I use Brother multifunction inkjet printers. Specifically MFC-J6510DW and MFC-J6520DW on USB.   And when I change my linux distribution I always end up with working printers, but no scanner.  And I'm O L D  so I forget what I did (which is the reason I created this blog).

Here's how I got them working when I changed from 32bit to 64bit Elementary OS.  It will also work on UBUNTU.

 

FIRST - Before installing the BROTHER Printer LPR and Cupswrapper and brscan drivers

Make Sure you install the 32 bit libs needed (see Brother Support Pre Install Instructions)

Either of these (Elementary only had lib32stdc++ 

ia32-libs or lib32stdc++

(Elementary only had lib32stdc++ in the repository - and it worked fine.

Then do the install 

Test the printers.  They probably work.

If you don't already have them, install xsane, sane and sane-utils.  

Open xsane and try to scan.

Usually you will get errors when you try to use xsane.  This is because by default Brother scanner driver needs to be root.  

***  There is actually a hint about this in the Brother Support Website, but it is easy to miss and I could not find it again after the first time I saw it  ***

To test this, if you cannot open the scanner with xsane open a terminal and type:

sudo xsane

You'll get a warning saying it is dangerous, but go ahead anyway - Chances are, xsane will work.

So you need to change the user from root to yourself.

In the terminal type;

sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools    (if you are using Ubuntu this might already be installed)

In your menu you should fine a new entry 'Users and Groups'

Edit the saned  and scanner groups and add yourself as a user.

REBOOT and try xsane again

If you still have the error you might have to add an entry in a file.

Open a File Manager as root and go to:

/lib/udev/rules.d/

Edit the file called        40-libsane.rules

near the bottom of the file is a line that says "# The following rule will disable"

Above that line, add these two new lines:

# Brother scanner

ATTRS {idVendor}=="04f9", ENV {libsane_matched}="yes"

(Leave a BLANK LINE AFTER them)

Reboot and it should all work.

If it still doesn't work after all this you can use Brute Force if you're only using this computer at home.  It has some security risks in the work place!

Open a file manager as root and go to the /etc/udev/rules.d/ folder

Create a new file called 40-scanner-permissions.rules

Put these lines in the new file:

# usb scanner

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE:="0666"

SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device",MODE:="0666"

Then Save and REBOOT

See if the scanner is working

****   NOTE   ****

If you installed using the Brother Install Tool and all the stuff above doesn't work  (Unlikely)

Go back and MANUALLY  (download each driver and install it).

Then try xsane.  

If it still won't work, start at the beginning again by changing the permissions and try xsane.

You should not have to edit any files again.

By the time I remembered it was a permission thing I had installed using both the Brother install tool  and then manually installed, so I can't say if it would have simply worked after changing permissions.

Elementary OS Freya, Resizing Windows, keyboard shortcuts and other annoying stuff

One of the most frustrating things about Elementary OS Freya is that it 'native' application windows cannot be easily resized by dragging on a side or corner. With most Linux distributions you can simply hover the mouse over an edge or a corner, click and drag to resize.  With Elementary OS there is just nothing there to grab.

Most windows have the traditional window border and the usual method works, but not the native Elementary programs.  And in certain other programs, like the GUI designer 'glade' shown below.  As it opens I cannot use the interface to add widgets etc to a GUI design.

It can be done however!   By holding down the 'Windows key' (the one between the left side CTRL and ALT keys) and holding down the right mouse button on the edge or corner of the window.

Freya has a lot of annoying little quirks.  But so far it has been the most stable, forgiving and almost crash proof 'modern' Linux distribution I have ever used.  But many of the functions we have come to expect to be easily available are hidden away and some only seem to be accessible as keyboard shortcuts.

Here is a list of common keyboard shortcuts in Elementary OS Freya.

⌘+Space	App Launcher
Alt+Tab	Window Switcher
⇧+Alt+Tab	Switch Windows Backwards
⌘+W	Window Overview
⌘+A	Window Overview (Across All Workspaces)
⌘+Left/Right	Switch Workspace
⌘+S	Workspace Overview
⌘+0	New Workspace
⇧+⌘+Left/Right	Move Window with Workspace
Ctrl+⌘+Left/Right	Snap Window to Half of Workspace
Ctrl+⌘+Up/Down	Maximize/Unmaximize Window
⌘+L	Lock Screen
⌘+Click+Drag	Move Window
⌘+Secondary (Right mouse button) click+Drag	Resize Window
⌘ = Super (Windows or Command key), ⇧ = Shift

SlimJet browser - Fit More Buttons beside Address bar

Sometimes it is nice to have a few toolbar buttons to make life easier by giving quick access to functions we need a lot.  But a few browsers now seem to think the Adrees bar has to take up almost the full width of the browser window,and some buttons get hidden behind a little arrow, making it necessary to open a drop down list to access them.

Luckily in Slimjet browser here's a simple way to let us set the Address bar to resize as we add more buttons.  Click the little black arrow to the right of your toolbar buttons and choose:

'Show toolbar buttons on left'

This puts all new buttons you might add using the customize menu, before the left end of the Address bar.
Like This:

Now the Tool Bar buttons are grouped to the left of the Address Bar, and the address bar will resize as we move more buttons into and out of the Toolbar.

Quick, Simple and Effective.

There are many posts on the web asking how to resize the Address bar to make room for buttons.  i have not yet seen a post on this method that I use in Slimjet, and I have no idea if it can be used in Chrome, Chromium or any other browser.

But if you have those little black arrows at the end of your Tool button bar, there's a good chance the option to move the buttons left or right will do the same thing on those browsers.

install Google Earth on Elementary OS Freya - Ross Devitt

Google Earth has changed from just being a popular diversion on Linux to becoming a handy and for some people, indispensable tool used by many.   There are several ways to install Google earth in Debian based Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Elementary OS.

If you are using the 32 bit Elementary OS system, the quickest and by far the simplest way to install Google earth at the time of writing this post (October 2015) is from the terminal.   Simply press Ctrl+Alt+T  keys and when the terminal opens, type the following commands.  Type each one as soon as the previous one is completed and you have the $ prompt again.  You will need to be connected to the Internet of course, and you will be asked for your root password after you enter the second command.

This first command will get the install package from google.

wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb

This one will unpack the deb file and prepare it for installation.

sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable*.deb

(you will now be asked for the [sudo] password.  this is your root password.

You may see a message that there are dependencey problems with lsb-core and that Errors were encountered while processing.  You should be able to ignore these, because lsb-core is probably already installed.

The final command which actually installs Google Earth is

sudo apt-get -f install

You might be asked to confirm you want to go ahead with the installation - just hit enter.  Once complete Google Earth will appear in your Applications Menu under the Internet section.

Here are the three commands one after the other.  Just copy each one (one at a time), paste and hit enter.

wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable*.deb

sudo apt-get -f install

NOTE!  This is for 32 bit systems.  64 Bit installation is a little more tricky.
For various reasons I run 32 bit OS on my 64 bit somputers.

Elementary OS and other distributions - ROOT low on space

This morning I again got a warning message the 'root' is low on space.  I've mentioned before that I'm used to the old days when Linux fitted nicely onto a single floppy.  And that a legacy of that is my tendency to only allocate about 15GB to the Linux root file system.

One major problem with root getting low is its impact on /tmp, particularly during operations like working with a HD video or something similar that uses /tmp a lot.  That is easily fixed in the short term by making /tmp a link to a tmp directory in my /home.

But even with that in place, I was warned that I knoy had around 500MB of free space in /root today.  So I set about discovering the culprit.  An analysis of my file scructure soon showed that I had almost 7GB in /usr, with much of it in /share.  One of the  surprising finds was around 2GB of icons that I never use.  Another was a huge stash of old Linux kernels and headers.

By deleting the folders for icons I never use from /usr/share/icons I managed to get about 1GB of free space.  it was after that I discovered all the kernels and headers.  But past experience reminded me that digging around these stripping one at a time was slow and tedious.  However deleting them all in one go is a big risk.

I used the uname -r command in a terminal to show me which kernel is being used, the rebnooted the system to confirm that this was the one used by GRUB.  I am aware of the importance of leaving at least one previous kernel and header in the system as a fallback in case the one being used fails.  In practice however, I have never managed to get a system to boot into one of the old kernels from GRUB.

So I opted for the riskier method of stripping the old kernels by purging all but the one currently in use.

Using the following in a terminal (acquired from:  https://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/ubuntu-cleanup-how-to-remove-all-unused-linux-kernel-headers-images-and-modules/)

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge

Then waiting while it did its business then rebuilt GRUB brought my total free space on /root  to a little over 4GB.  Plenty to get me out of trouble until I decided some time to repartitions the hard drive and reinstall from scratch.

Before too long Elementary should complete another update with a replacement kernel and I should have a backup kernel and headers in place anyway.

For now, I have some room to move again!

Elementary OS FREYA Some keyboard shortcuts and a little surprise

Ok, this is probably no secret, but it is something I just noticed.  After using Elementary OS Freya for quite a while now it still provides little surprises from time to time.

I was about to put a hot key combination in a program and I pressed what used to be the 'Windows' key but is now more commonly called the 'SUPER' key.  (That's the one between Ctrl  and  Alt on most keyboards).   The plan was to use an easy to remember combination of Super and something else.  But I pressed the combination without opening the program.

And here's the result!

This is the menu as it first pops up - showing 'Places' on the computer.  Files, folders and stuff:

And here's what happens when I click on Graphics from that MENU:

A rather neat shortcut to a nice elegant desktop menu.

This is probably built into most Linux distributions, but because I'm so used to simply right clicking the desktop to bring up a Desktop Menu, I've never seen it.  it is probably also in Windows, but I haven't used that OS in more than a decade.

Almost 18 years now of using Linux and it still surprises me.  One thing about Freya's implementation of the desktop menu is that it is attractive.

The most common actions activated by the  'SUPER' key are.

SUPER and TAB will
cycle between desktops,
(just as Ctrl Alt Right Arrow - but with one less key to hold down)

SUPER and Home as well as SUPER and End -
will move forwards and backwards through workspaces
(just as Ctrl Alt Right or Left Arrow - but with one less key to hold down)

SUPER and W
toggles a view of all running programs in the current workspace

SUPER and A  on the other hand is quite useful.    It is similar to Supper W, but it
shows ALL programs currently running regardless of whatever workspace they are on.

SUPER and S
opens the normal Slingshot menu on the panel.

SUPER and L   -  
LOCKS the screen and requires your login password to get back in.

N O T E ! ! !

SUPER and P -  is   something to avoid.    It cycles between screen mirroring, swapping primary and secondary display settings and other stuff.  If you had 'Conky' clock running on your secondary display for example, it will rewrite it to appear on the primary display.
so SUPER and P is a SUPER P ain in the Arse.

Linux, Elementary and the problem with temp files

One legacy of more than fifteen years using Linux is complacency.  some of us are so used to Linux being pretty well bulletproof that we forget it has changed.  And it has grown.  I fall for this all the time.  A root file system of a grew hundred megabytes used to be plenty.  Later as Linux distributions grew I started making root about two, then four gigabytes.  Over the last few years I installed into root partitions of fourteen and twenty gigabytes.  Now I find my Elementary OS Freya is taking all but three and a half of the fourteen gigabytes allocated to root.

This was not much of an issue in the past, but with NBN in Australia we have significantly increased our ability to move data around.  And as someone who likes playing with operating systems and graphics, not to mention editing video, I end up with large files in my /tmp directory.  This creates fairly regular warnings that my hard disk is low on space.

As an example, just now I decided to pull in a 1.6GB iso.  It wants to transit /tmp on the way to its eventual destination.  And there is only about 2GB space in /root.  Next time there's a major release of Elementary I will probably reformat my hard drive and allocate about 30GB to root.  For now though the simplest option is to make more room in /tmp.

Luckily in Linux the problem is relatively easy to solve.  First I need to redirect all saves to /root/tmp to my home directory.   So first I make a new /tmp under /home/user.   Then I send all 'current' tmp stuff there.  This applies to operations after Linux has actually booted.  There will be some files still going to /root/tmp, but most of them will be zero bytes in size.

Opening my text editor as root I can edit the environment file.

$  sudo kate /etc/environment          And on a new line enter the following:

TEMP=/home/user/tmp

Then save the file and reboot the computer.   whatever text editor you use can be substituted for kate.  gedit, kwrite, vi, whatever is in use at the moment.

Something to be aware of though is that things like lock files for the word processor and other functions will also be redirected to this /home/user/tmp directory.  So it is easy to kill stuff that shouldn't be 'made dead'.   If that is a concern, make the tmp directory hidden by putting a dot in front of it.  But remember to make the environment path read    TEMP=/home/user/.tmp      so the system can find it.

SLIMJET - My Favourite Browser for Linux and other Operating Systems

 Ok, I've been a naughty blogger again and haven't written anything for a while.  One of the joys of bad health.  However, I have been plagued by the slow browser thing again.

 Over the years I have seen web browsers gain more and more features, while becoming slower and slower to use.  This can be blamed on many things. The Internet becoming overloaded is the main suggestion I hear, but with the massive improvements in delivery speed people are writing richer and more intense content.  This often means downloading much more 'stuff and then everything slows.

However it is more than that.  Firefox used to be fast.  Opera once blitzed almost every other mainstream browser.  Google Chrome was brilliant for a while, and recently I switched to Chromium to get away from some of the annoyances that Mr Google imposes on us.

Opera is still fast and nice but has serious limitations in a Linux Environment.  Quite simply it cannot cope with the demands of something more powerful and versatile than poor old Windows.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though.  One of my annoyances with Google Chrome that has been inherited by Chromium is the lack of customization.  And of course one of the reasons may of us 'old timers' still love Linux and particularly Ubuntu is that we can customise 'stuff'.  We can make most things look and work almost exactly as we want to.

I save a lot of pages from the web.  Pages I have created for people that I want to experiment on in a live situation.  And in most browsers I can simply go to File > Save Page As  and save the page with its various 'bits' to a folder.  Now, it is easy enough to do this with a keyboard shortcut, but I'm an old man and I use so many keyboard shortcuts that sometimes it is easier to click the File menu and choose Save As than to remember the shortcut.

But Google Chrome no longer makes that available.  I can find it by opening the file dropdown and looking under More Tools.  And there I can see the shortcut.  But right next to the shortcut is the menu item anyway, so I can click that.  However it is not somewhere easy to find.

So I discovered Flashpeak Slimjet.  Now, Slimjet is built on Chromium.  But unlike Chromium it allows customization.  So I can have just about anything just about anywhere I want it.

Slimjet (http://www.slimjet.com/en/) claims to be the "Fastest web browser for Windows & Linux Powered by Blink engine".  But it doesn't stop there.

Let's have a look at the features offered by this browser.


Efficient Ad BlockerKill Annoying Ads with Ad Blocker

 
internet download managerTurbocharged Download Manager
  Fed up with all the annoying ads? Kill them all with the built-in ad blocker. Boost the performance of your browser by saving memory, CPU and bandwidth consumed by the ads. Boost file download speeds by up to 12 times by making multiple parallel connections to the server. Also allows you to resume download jobs between different sessions.
 
form filler and password managerQuickFill Intelligent Form Filler
 
Fast Download ManagerFully-customizable Toolbar
  Smarter and more convenient than the basic password manager in Chrome. Save page link and login data in a form file which lets you open your favorite online account with a single click later on. Slimjet let users customize the toolbar and add/remove additional buttons to quickly access more features and functionalities.
 
In-Browser Facebook IntegrationConvenient Facebook Integration
 
download videoYoutube Video Downloader
  In Slimjet, you can share the link you visited, a paragraph of text or an image easily on facebook with a single click on the facebook toolbar button. Download any youtube videos to local hard disk in various resolution and format for offline viewing. You can also extract mp3 file from the downloaded video file.
 
fast photo uploadingPhoto Enhancement & Photo Framing
 
photo shrinkingInstant Photo Upload
  Slimjet includes a Photo Salon in which you can apply different effects or add beautiful frames to the photos before they are uploaded. Automatically compress photos to web-optimized resolution so that photos are uploaded up to 20 times faster.
 
Integrated Weather ForecastWeather Condition & Weather Forecast
 
url aliasURL Alias Support in Omnibox
  Display currrent weather condition and weather forecast directly on the browser window. Slimjet lets you define short aliases for long URLs which are slow to type and hard to remember. After that, just type the aliases from the omnibox to open the corresponding page.
 
browser extensionExtensive Support for Plugins and Themes
 
quick-dial new tab pageCustomizable New Tab Page

  Slimjet is compatible with most plugins and extenions designed for Chrome, such as Adblock Plus, RoboForm, LastPass, Avast Online Security, etc. It is also compatible with all the chrome themes. You can customize the number of quick-dial buttons and the background image. Multiple search engines and voice input are supported on the search box in the New Tab page.
 
Built-in Web Page TranslationFlexible Web Page Translation
 
options and settingsFlexible Options and Settings
  Instead of automatically translating a full web page into the current UI language, Slimjet lets you translate a web page or a piece of text between any two specified languages. Slimjet provides many additional options and settings so that you can customize the browser to best suit your personal preference instead of being forced to take everything as it is without any choice.
 
I must admit that I have replaced Slimjet's speed dial with FVD 3D Speed Dial, and I will write about that another time,  But it is simply because I like the curved screen look of FVD 3D.  On the other hand, I do use the YouTube download part extensively and I can also vouch for the ridiculously fast download manager.

There are many more features and options that can be used in Slimjet, but I don't know how much it can be loaded up without slowing it down.  For now though I find it lives up to its promise of speed and flexibility perfectly.  Chrome keyboard shortcuts work of course and I had no problem importing bookmarks and stuff from both Chrome and Firefox.

 More Features and Options:


 Auto refresh web page
Auto refresh one or more web pages based on a preset period.

 Enhanced autofill from predefined identity information
Added support of login id and preferred password to the autofill feature available in Chrome.

 Bookmarks side panel
Get quick access to more bookmark links and folders with the bookmarks side panel.

 Quickly switch search engine
A drop down button is available at the right end of the omnibox which allows users to quickly switch between different search engines.

 Save webpage screenshot
Save screenshot of the entire page or selected region as an image file.

 Flexible Tab Behavior Control
Options to control automatic tab activation, automatic tab creation, tab insertion order and more.

 Stop all gif animations
A simple switch can be flipped to stop all gif animations (most of them annoying ads) from playing.

 Allow mixed-mode http/https content
Option to allow mixed http/https content to run properly.

 Option to disable desktop notification
A simple switch to quickly disable all desktop notifications that many users find annoying in Chrome.

 Upload clipboard image
Upload image stored in clipboard quickly without having to manually saving it to a file first.

Elementary OS Freya - The DropBox problem.

Elementay OS has been one of those computing experiences that simply sneaks up on me.  What I mean is that I forget am using it, and forget to write about it.  That is a good thing in a way because it means I am not frustrated with it or challenged by it - it simply works.

There are still a few odd things that are still a bit strange.  Dropbox is one of them.  Sure, it can be installed form the Software Centre, but often that doesn't add the dropbox icon to the Wingpanel, which means you can't right click on the icon to check status and perform other actions.  If does however incorporate Dropbox into the default file manager, where right click actions are available.

Then you get people like me who have their Elementary OS Freya modified.  I don;t use the default file manager - I use a personally tweaked Dolphin.  And while my Dropbox folder shows up in Dolphin, there are no right click actions for Dropbox available.

So back to the Wingpanel icon.  Adding that gave me one click availability for Dropbox.

First, open Software Centre or Synapric (whichever you use) and REMOVE Dropbox.
Then close Software Centre or Synaptic.

Open a terminal and if you don;t already have it - install 'git'

sudo apt-get install git

Then 'git' the installer for Dropbox

git clone https://github.com/zant95/elementary-dropbox /tmp/elementary-dropbox

Then install Dropbox.

bash /tmp/elementary-dropbox/install.sh

I think from memory I got a message asking if I wanted to run Dropbox.  Accept, and it will ask for your login details.  Once that is done and you go through the initial guide stuff you should have the DropBox icon in Wingpanel.  If it is not there, try logging out and in again.  

If all went well it will be there.  In the screenshop Dropbox is the white icon on the left.

Elementary OS FREYA and video desktop wallpaper

Ok, I'll admit it, I like messing with stuff.  So when someone assured me video wallpaper would not work with Elementary because it uses its own window manager, I had to find out.   And it does work.  The picture above and those following are screen shots from a 4k (very high definition) mp4 running ;in an oval porthole through' (the easiest way to describe how it looks) one of my normal wallpapers.

Running a full movie at 4k definition is probably not the best thing to do as you will chew up between 20 and 30% of a low end AMD cpu processing.  But it works well and the performance hit is just a little lag occasionally when loading a new firefox page or some other cpu intensive task.  Anyway it is quaint.

I also made a .desktop script so I could drag it to docky and run the script that creates the video wallpaper.  One neat trich here is that clicking the icon in Docky once starts the wallpaper, and clicking it in Docky again stops it.  Which turns out to be rather handy.

The tools you will need are.

(1)    Shantz xwinwrap
available here:   http://tech.shantanugoel.com/resources/downloads/shantz-xwinwrap.zip

You can read about xwinwrap here:   http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/09/03/shantz-xwinwrap.html

(2)    Mplayer
Download and install mplayer from your normal repository

(3)    A video you like.   RENAME the video file with NO SPACES.
So if it is called my fave video.mp4,  rename it to my-fave-video.mp4   (you get the drift.  unix scripts don;t like spaces)
 I created a folder for my video wallpapers and the script should (repeat - SHOULD) just cycle through any videos in that folder.   It does on mine.  If it doesn;t check that there are indeed no spaces in the file names.

UPDATE - I managed to kill the cycling through the videos thing.  I may have changed settings in mplayer.  I'll have to look into it.  But for now it will repeat the first video it finds in the folder.
If I work out what I changed I'll try to remember to update this.

Ok, down to work.  You need to install xwinwrap.  After you install it, open a terminal and type the command  xwinwrap.  If you get a list of things you can tell it to do, it is installed.  Move to the next step.

If you haven't already got it, install mplayer.

1 -  Create a folder to use for your wallpapers.  Give it a suitable name.
2 -  Create a new blank text document.   Give it a suitable name with NO SPACES.

Create a blank text file in your video wallpaper folder.  Give it a suitable name.name

Copy everything between the rows of start (but not the stars themselves) into the file and save it.
The following script is not mine.  Someone else did the work to make it. 
****************
!#/bin/bash
if ps -e | grep xwinwrap
 then
  killall xwinwrap
  sleep 1
  exit
 fi
# first number is width
xwinwrap -ni -o 1.0 -fs -s -st -sp -b -nf -g 1355x800+0+0 -sh circle -- mplayer -wid WID -nosound *.mp4


fi
sleep 1
exit
******************

The final step here is to save the file and then make it executable.  I am too lazy to use chmod, so I simply open the folder in Dolphin and right click the file, go to Properties and choose Make Executable.  You will need to do whatever you normally do.  If you get stuck just google how to do it from the command line.

A little note here.  If you delete "-sh circle" from the script you will end up with full screen wallpaper without the oval port hole.  If you change the  first two numbers in "1355x800+0+0" you will change the oval or circle.  If you change the last number you will change the horizontal position and the third number should change the vertical position.   Just so you can play around. 

Ok, so now if you were to run that file from inside the folder you should get a video wallpaper. But then you have to open your system monitor and stop mplayer manually when you want it to stop.

So I made a .desktop file that I dragged to Docky.  It should work fine on plank too. 
Make another file in the wallpapers folder and copy the following between the stars as you did before.

****************
[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=
Exec=/home/YOUR USER NAME/Your-Folder-You-Made-for-Wallpaper/NAME-Of-The-File-You-Made
GenericName[en_US]=
GenericName=
Icon=avidemux
MimeType=
Name[en_US]=
Name=
Path=/home/YOUR USER NAME/Your-Folder-You-Made-for-Wallpaper
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
*****************




CHANGE the two lines in BOLD to whatever paths and file names you need.
Save the file with a name like   start-wallpaper.desktop     or something.  
Drag the   .desktop   file to Docky.  I think you can also drag it to Plank if that is your dock.

In Dolphin I right click on the .desktop file and give it a pretty icon to make it easier to find.

That's it really.  To start my video wallpaper I click the icon in Docky.  To turn it off and release memory I simply click it again.  It is that simple.

Thanks to Shantanu Goel  for creating xwinwrap.  And thanks for the person who created the script I use to make xwinwrap run easily.

In my video wallpaper folder I have another folder with a library of videos I like.  I simply drag videos out of the library to run them and back in again when I want to change them.  Dead Easy !!

Transferring files to Elementary OS Freya by Bluetooth

Recently I had to move a heap of files from my phone's camera to my computer running Elementary OS Freya.  I was about to turn the phone off and remove the Micro SD card as usual when I realised that every computer I have has Bluetooth.  So I paired the computer and phone and sent the pictures that way.  And got a message on the phone saying the attempted transfer failed.

So I did a little snooping.  There waas no obvious setting in 'Bluetooth' in system settings, but some reading led me to a Gnome utility.  In Unity, there is a 'personal file sharing' option in the Dash.  But not in Elementary. 

In Applications, you can find an item called 'Bluetooth Transfers' that allows you to select a file to transfer from your Elementary OS computer to another device via Bluetooth.  But there's no obvious way to transfer a file from the other device to your computer, nor to set it up to accept transfers from other devices.'

Likewise choosing 'Bluetooth' in system settings allows you to transfer files to another device but I can see no obvious way to accept files from elsewhere.

Luckily though the actual program that does the leg work is there. 

Open a terminal and type in the command:    gnome-file-share-properties
This will open a window that allows you to set up to receive Bluetooth transfers. 

Towards the bottom of the window under 'receive Files over Bluetooth', tick the following.
(*)  Receive files in Downloads folcer over Bluetooth
(*)  Notify about received files

Between these two options is another where you can choose the type if devices you will accept files from.  It has a drop down menu.  I changed mine to 'Always' but the default is 'Only for set up devices'.

That's all there is to it really.  Close the window after you do these steps and pair with your bluetooth deice as you normally would, then send files as you wish.

Elementary OS and Apps

Just a note about the odd looking screenshot.  I usually have one image spread across two monitors.  In this shot I have the same image on each screen, but the screens are each of vastly different size and resolution.  that's why the odd black sectio top and bottom.  :-)

A little further into usage of Elementary OS Freya and I am discovering more good bits.  One f the best bits of news is that as far as I recall, so far not one of my computers running Elementary OS has crashed.  Crashing on relatively old computers was one reason I moved away form KDE and Mint KDE.  Even XFCE was causing problems and Gnome.  Well I just had problems working wit it.  But so far Elementary has coexisted nicely with the various things I have changed to make it 'mine'.

I wrote previously about myt dislike for some aspects of the Plank dock, and that I have installed Docky.  One thing Docky gave me was the ability to scroll through my desktops using the mousewheel.  A neat thing about Elementary is that because it is using its own window manager and other bits, there is a small but devoted team writing applications just for it.  One of the Elementary App sites is here:
https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/

And one of those Apps is a simple workspace switcher for the wingpanel indicator.  Now, this indicator is missing possibly the most useful component.  The ability to switch desktops with the mousewheel.  But on the other hand, what it does is let me swap between a fixed number of desktops, and dynamically added desktops.  While I wasn't a fan of dynamic desktops before Elementary Freya, I am now.

In the picture at the top of the page you might just be able to make out the workspace indicator (showing Workspace 1).  Here's a close up of the Workspace Indicator App.

And here it is open for switching to the next dynamically created work space.

 Here is the App with the preferences window open.

You can rename workspaces to reflect what you are doing on them at any given time.  So maybe Workspace 1 could be called 'Browsing', Workspace 2 might be called 'Graphics' and so on.  And of course, switch dynamic workspaces on or off.

As  mentioned.  It would be nice to be able to simply scroll the mouse wheel on the App and switch workspaces. 
But I'm sure the developer has either thought of that already and has a good reason not to implement it, or that I can make a few tweaks to the code myself.

Until then, it serves as a reminder of what workspace I am actually on at the moment, and as a way to set the workspaces to a definite number and rename them if I am doing say, web work on one and graphics work on another.
Finally, here's the link directly to the home page for this handy little tool.
http://dysonsimmons.com/indicator-workspaces/

Elementary OS Freya and Docky - (by Ross Devitt)

I like Docky better than Plank.  And I do all sorts of things to Docky including making my own custom additions with their own icons to make it do stuff, because, well, it is simple.

But no matter that I have used it for years, occasionally I will find something it does that I simply didn;t know.  And a few minutes ago I found one trick.

I like to have the icons ZOOM larger as I move the mouse over them.  The normal way to change the zoom amount is to go into Docky Settings and select a dock, then adjust the zoom amount for that dock.  You can zoom up to 400% above the base icon size you have chosen.

Today I discovered quite accidentally that scrolling the mouse wheel over an icon on Docky while holding down the CTRL key will also allow you to change the zoom size.

No only that, but I can zoom far further than 400% as you can see in the screen shot!  Obviously this is a ridiculous amount of zoom, but there are times when I do adjust the zoom amount and this is a nice easy way to do it without going into settings.

Elementary across two monitors - Docky zoomed on primary screen with CTRL and mouse wheel
Wallpaper - One of the wallpapers that comes with Elementary OS

Elementary OS Freya - Desktop Switching with Two Monitors

Elementary OS Freya on Two Screens - Dolphin File Manager - and KIM (Right Click Image Menu)
Wallpaper - The Rocks - Nara Inlet, Whitsundays, Queensland Australia

Another one of my little annoyances with Elementary OS Freya has been solved.  I use two monitors and I often have related tasks across two screens on each workspace.  So my main workspace for example might be running my web browser on one screen, and either a video or a music player on the other.

Then I might switch to another workspace where I do my writing in Libre.  A third workspace might have whatever graphics I am working on, so GIMP or XARA or Inkscape might be on one screen along with Libre Office Draw, and my file manager and perhaps an image viewer on another screen.

The default setup with Elementary OS Freya was driving me nuts, because when I switched workspaces, only the primary display switched.  

Now, there are advantages to this, and one of them is that I can leave something like my to do list open all the time.  bt that can easily be accomplished by right clicking the title bar and choosing 'Always on visible workspace'.

Our friends at Reddit.com however have discovered the solution, and I'll paraphrase their answer here, because I am sure to forget it myself some time.

That behavior changed on Freya.  You can set it with dconf-editor. 

Go to org.gnome.mutter and uncheck workspaces-only-on-primary.

If you are using Elementary OS Freya and don;t see dconf-editor you should be able to find it in Software Sources, alternatively Google it and install it.

Once installed, if it doesn;t show in your menu, simply type dconf into the search box in your menu and it should appear.

Obviously if you want to switch back to having only the main screen swapping workspaces, just go into dconf-editor and check the box again.

Elementary OS Freya - Not Enough Apps? - (by Ross Devitt)

I've been reading views and even the very few complaints about Elementary OS, however most are positive comments.  In fact, it was a user review that caused me to try it in the first place.  There seems to be only a couple of things people are not satisfied with.

Elementary OS Freya with Conky Clock running in corner of second monitor
Wallpaper - Hill Inlet, Whitsundays, Queensland Australia

One is that there are not enough Applications built into it.  I noticed that too.  One reviewer was surprised that there's no native system monitor.  Another wondered why Libre Office and Firefox or Chrome are not installed as part of the default suite.  More users are concerned that only a few settings can easily be tweaked.

I thought about this, and realised one of the refreshing things about Elementary OS is that I don't have to delete a lot of stuff to replace it with things I like.  The developers have worked hard on what is essentially a new Operating System 'based on' Ubuntu, rather than simply adding a theme to an existing distribution.

To that end it seems they took a fairly new window manager, then wrote enough code around it that Gala has become a new window manager in its own right, with the advantage of still falling back to code that is compatible with the rest of Ubuntu.  So nothing actually breaks, but the user gains from this. They wrote their own 'shell', Pantheon, and again, it makes a pleasant experience.  It is interesting to see some of the big Linux Distros looking seriously at incorporating Pantheon and Gala.

However when it comes to Applications they seem to have decided on enough functions for a beginner to get the job done on basic installation, then leaving the end user who knows enough, to add and remove what they want.

So there's a basic Music Player and a basic Video Player which both work well.  The one thing I liked about the Video Player was that it has a working repeat function, something often either missing or not working in some other light weight players.

The Midori browser complies with modern web standards and is fast.  It also has a Private Browsing mode that doesn't load your system up with redundant tracking data as well as the normal browsing mode.  If you want to slow your system down, just add one ot the big browsers, like Firefox, Chrome or Opera.

I think the one big omission is the lack of an Office Suite.  There might be an argument that the Elementary OS team is building their own, but this is unlikely.  It would also be a stupid waste of resources.  There is little to be gained from trying to compete with something like Libre Office.  As cute as the Gnome and KDE office suites are, they simply don't come close to Libre.  I can see why someone would develop Calligra for example, as a hobby.  But for serious use?  Not really.  Although with a bit of work, the Caligra Writing program might be a reasonable standalone Desktop Publisher, as Microsoft Office was.  Bearing in mind that MS Office was never really as good as its DOS predecessor Express Publisher, which it seemed to more or less mimic. 

So in my personal opinion the one big thing missing from Elementary OS is Libre Office.  And fixing that is as simple as opening the Software Centre and clicking a couple of times!

Elementary OS - FREYA Workspace Switching with mouse wheel (by Ross Devitt)

Elementary OS Freya on Twin Monitors with Workspace Switcher selected on DOCKY
Wallpaper - Sunset at Islaverde Tropical Friendly Resort - Batangas, Philippines

(Ross Devitt)

I'm well into my Elementary OS usage now, and while I like it better every day there are some things about it that are simply annoying.  The main one is being able to switch the workspace using my mousewheel.

So because I always have two Linux operating systems installed I've been installing others where I'd had my XFCE installation to compare and see just how much this really means to me.

I tried KDE with Plasma 4.x again, and the newest KDE with Plasma 5, which happens to be so cumbersome it is horrible despite all the things I like about KDE.  I tried the new Chalet OS, which is kind of cutesy but has its own set of problems.  I tried Mint Mate and Cinnamon and remembered why I never use them.  Until it began breaking things Mint KDE was my favourite.

So I'm back now to TWO installations of Elementary OS Freya.  One with everything tweaked, and one to experiment on.

So, about the workplace switching, and the topic of this post.  In an earlier post I pointed out that the Elementary dock, called Plank, is based on Docky.  So it was not a big deal to install Docky and write some .desktop files to drag to docy so I had my own icons to launch whatever I want.

This morning I remembered a Workspace Switching 'docklet' in Docky.  Because I've always been able to switch workspaces in the past by scrolling the mousewheel I never found it useful.

When you click the Workspace Icon in Docky you are presented with a list of available workspaces and you simply click the one you want.  And Elementary being what it is, dynamically adds workspaces as you want, and deletes each space when all programs on that space have been closed.

 But, as well as being able to show a list of Workspaces to choose with a click, this clever little Docky Docklet allows you to simply scroll the mousewheel over it and it will scroll through the workspaces.

And it has one big advantage over scrolling the mousewheel on the desktop.  You don;t have to change out of full screen mode to get a clear spot to scroll!