The default wallpaper for Ubuntu 12.04 has been revealed in a bug report.

In it Canonical design team member Otto Greenslade presents two version of the same background: one with added ‘noise’ texture and one without.

‘I would of course prefer to use this one if at all possible,’ writes Otto of the former design, although notes that its larger size may be a blocker to this.

The wallpaper boasts ‘subtile adjustments that follow in line with the previous [wallpapers]‘, and a ‘re-balanced’ tone introducing ‘more warmth’.

So if you’re thinking that it looks familiar, it’s because it’s supposed to. Indeed, the each of the wallpapers from Ubuntu 10.04 onwards have retain, largely, the same colour palette and styling with only minor tweaks to lighting having been made.

We can exclusively share with you the official disc artwork for the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS CD and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server releases.

The artwork keeps to the formula of the past designs with the default wallpaper of the release providing the backdrop.

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You use Linux daily – but do you know how it’s built?

The Linux Foundation explain in this slick 3-minute video.

People kept on saying that Windows or Mac OS X are the best operating system nowadays due to its flexibility, usability, functionality and all of the things that an operating system can have its praise and here comes Linux who is just around in a corner still trying to survive even though the competition between Windows and Mac are very far behind.

To be honest, Linux is everywhere! Without Linux there would be no Mac OS X just ask Steve Jobs that around 2002 if I’m not mistaken he get Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux to work on Mac OS X. Most of the web servers run on Linux and only few run on Windows just like Microsoft. Linux is a very secured operating system and there are just few issues concerning its security unlike Windows that you need to add security precaution to the operating system to make sure that the system is safe but it’s not 100% reliable.

Linux is not a very hard to understand operating system and people should appreciate Linux more.

Ubuntu’s default photo manager ‘Shotwell’ has put out a new release.

A new image straightening tool and improved Flickr login are amongst the changes to be found in Shotwell 0.12.

• A new photo straightening tool
• OAuth authentication for Flickr & Facebook login
• Plugins gain support for importing from other photo managers
• Shotwell now imports only photos from the DCIM directory on Android devices
• Saved searches can exclude all photos tagged with a given string

Download

Ubuntu 11.10 users can upgrade their existing version of Shotwell to the latest version by adding the Yorba Shotwell Stable PPA to Software Sources: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install shotwell

Ubuntu 12.04 will ship with Shotwell 0.12.

Little has been heard of Ubuntu’s multi-touch framework ‘uTouch’ of late – but it seems for good reason. 

The uTouch team have today demoed ‘pixel perfect scrolling’ in the open-source web-browser Chromium in Ubuntu, a feat made possible by taking advantage of Ubuntu’s touch-friendly technology stack.

The effort is part of the teams goal of ‘adding multitouch and gesture support to major browsers on the Linux desktop.’

And so far so good: the two-finger drag gesture, as demoed in the video below, offers up some impressive results.

Support for one and two-finger tap gestures, and two finger pinching, are also in progress.

The patch enabling this feature has been submitted ’upstream’ to Chromium, where it will be reviewed for potential inclusion.

Going Further

You can read more about the uTouch team’s work on ‘Chromium Touch’ @ wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch/CurrentWork/ChromiumTouch

Unity 5.8 landed in Ubuntu 12.04 this weekend – but what’s new and what’s improved? Let’s take a quick gander… 

The Music Lens has added support for Rhythmbox:

The Dash now tells you when it can’t find a file, app or folder related to a search: -

The HUD now adapts to your Launcher auto-hide and icon-size settings: -

Calling the HUD also uses a slightly slicker animation: -

An initial version of Ubuntu Software Center/Unity Launcher integration appears in this release. The ‘full version’, as demoed below, is expected to arrive in Unity 5.10.

Multi-Monitor Improvements

Following our recent poll run in tandem with the Ubuntu Design Team on how best to deploy the Unity Launcher on multi-monitor screens, a new option has been added to the Displays settings pane that lets you choose whether a launcher is shown on screen or all.

Also making its debut is a toggle for enabling/disabling ‘Sticky Edges’ for the Launcher on multi-monitor set-ups.

Misc Changes

Other changes appearing in this release include: -

• Minor tweaks to UI of Dash (alignments, spacing, etc)
• Improved ‘chameleonic’ colouring of items, including NotifyOSD bubbles
• ‘Arrow’ keys navigation of Alt+Tab
• Performance improvements
• Bug fixes

Could you imagine a world without Linux?

Such a thought could have been stark reality had Apple managed to successfully recruit Linus Torvalds back in 2000.

The founder of Linux was invited to Apple HQ in Cupertino by Steve Jobs at the turn of the millennium, where is was invited to join Apple and work on (what would become) OS X.

The lure? ‘Unix for the biggest user base’.

The catch? That he would have to stop development on Linux, a condition that led Torvalds to flatly refuse the offer.

Imagine: no Linux would have meant no Ubuntu, no ChromeOS, and no Android; the entire ecosystem of technology could have been dramatically changed by acceptance of this one job offer.

This revelation isn’t actually new, but as it’s been cropping up on social sites for the last few days I thought we should mention it too.

There are many ways to install Ubuntu on a computer, some of which are simpler and easier than others.

WUBI (Windows Ubuntu Installer) is an example of the easy approach. It offers the Ubuntu curious a relatively safe way to install Ubuntu on their PC from within Windows – negating the need for disk partitioning and adding an easy way to ‘uninstall it’ through Windows ‘Add or Remove’ feature.

Current Behaviour

Currently, when a user inserts an Ubuntu CD or USB image into a computer running Windows, a window pops up with a set of options. Once of these is to proceed with installing the OS under Windows. The following simple-screen is then presented.

But changes to way the way the tool is provided in Ubuntu 12.04 are now being discussed.

Disabling Installation

Canonical’s Rick Spencer, in a mail to the Ubuntu Development mailing list, proposes disabling the ‘install’ feature when an Ubuntu 12.04 USB or CD is inserted into a computer running Windows.

This change, he argues, would be of overall benefit to Ubuntu users and Windows users: -

1. We will be able to do maintenance and enhancements to wubi outside of the Ubuntu development cycle. 
2. Significant reduciton of QA work for an already over-streched QA team. 
3. Better overall 12.04 quality, and less stress at release time. 
4. We won’t get stuck with a poor (or worse) user experience on the CD since is a good chance that wubi will not work properly with Windows 8.

I am proposing these changes to the plan because:

1. The key use case for wubi is being able to download and run the installer on Windows, not installing from the ISO. 
2. Wubi is difficult to test, so has been difficult to assure that it will meet the quality standards we have set for 12.04. 
3. There are no developers treating wubi as their top priorities. This combined with the QA difficulties has historically caused late breaking changes that add stress at release time and frequentily invalidate already executed ISO testing. 
4. Most significantly, Windows is changing it’s boot system with Windows 8, and it’s not clear how wubi will work with Windows 8, if at all.
5. (sic)

Not the end of WUBI

No decision has been decided at the time of writing, but it’s important to note that WUBI installation would continue to be possible, and supported, but would require a separate download of the WUBI installer from the Ubuntu website.

Do you use WUBI? Would you miss not being able to install Ubuntu within Windows directly from the CD?

Let me know what you think by asking me!

Grumblr is a GTK based Tumblr micro-blogging platform client. With Grumblr you can post text messages, links, quotes, chat logs, upload photos, audio and video files on Tumblr right from your desktop.

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website, owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, named a “tumblelog.” Users can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private.

Installation

In order to install and run grumblr you should have the following packages installed on your system:

• Ruby interpreter
• GTK+ library
• RubyGems gem manager
• Ruby bindings to GTK+ as a gem
• libXml Ruby library
• REST Client gem

You can install required dependencies with the following command

• $ sudo apt-get install ruby rubygems ruby-dev libxml2-dev zlib1g-dev libgtk2.0-dev

To Install grumbler issue the following commands

• $ sudo gem install grumblr  

• $ cd /var/lib/gems/1.8/gems/grumblr-2.4.2  

• $ sudo ruby ./setup.rb

Grumblr can now be launched from the default menu in Unity or Gnome.

Enjoy!