Ubuntu is built on coding, but that’s not all it can offer. If you’re used to using Wine to get the most out of your software capabilities in Ubuntu, then you’ll soon find that there are a lot of Windows design programs that will allow you to piece together animations, draw assets and create music that will work near-perfectly the majority of the time.

If you’ve noticed that iOS or Android games development is an attractive market, then you’ll be pleased to know that all the shiny new devices you see at o2.co.uk can be developed for on Ubuntu. Here’s a list of native programs that you can use to facilitate your games development process: Netbeans, code::blocks, jedit, Eclipse, MonoDevelop, vi/vim (old school).

Of course, you’ll also need graphics and assets, but what a lot of developers do until they’ve got everything in place is to use placeholder assets from other games or even just basic blocks with indicators on them to show their current state. There are a lot of aspects to a good game – art, music, design, mechanics, genre, good code – and all can be achieved by taking a look at the Ubuntu Software Center, which has a range of free software to assist you in achieving your goals.

There are also a lot of strong communities built on indie games development, from TigSource to IndieGames, and you’ll soon find that code is a language that transcends operating systems, bringing together everyone to help you solve a particular problem.

Now get out there, and go make games!

sudo apt-get install fortunes-ubuntu-server -y

Now execute below command several times to get really useful Ubuntu command line tips:

ubuntu-server-tip

Here are some examples:

Use lsof to find out which process has open handles for a file. ‘lsof +D /path’ will find all processes for the given path. This is useful for unmounting media.

If you know you typed a command or password wrong, you can use ctrl + u to delete the whole line or ctrl + w to delete just a word.

If you are using a PostgreSQL database, use “ptop” to monitor real time usage.

Browse the command line history with ctrl-r and then type a few characters that you know are part of the command you are looking for.

A for loop in bash syntax: ‘for i in * ; do echo $i ; done’.

To make a backup without typing the full path twice: ‘cp /long/path/to/file/name{,.orig}’ to create a copy with the suffix .orig

Need to print part of text file, e.g. the lines starting from 20th to 30th? It’s no need to use bash scripts or other things like python for that anymore! Here you go:

sed -n '20,30p' /etc/passwd

This command just outputs the line range from 20 to 30. Damn it, I was using the long bash equivalent for the same task for years

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Here is how nautilus terminal plugin looks like in action:

The installation procedure is extremely easy as corresponding package is already included into Ubuntu official repository, so open Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic Package Manager or simply type the following command in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

Once installation is finished you should restart nautilus process that sits in memory when Gnome desktop environment is started:

killall -9 nautilus

In a few moments nautilus daemon will be automatically restarted so you can start nautilus file manager from Ubuntu main menu or by double-clicking on some directory on your Desktop — terminal plugin will start automatically.

In order to install LibreOffice (notice that it is still beta) you have to completely uninstall OpenOffice.org first. Open Ubuntu menu –> Accessories –> Terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-get remove openoffice*.*

Then download latest tar.gz archive containing set of .deb packages of LibreOffice components:

cd ~/Downloads/
wget http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/testing/LO_3.3.0-beta1_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

When downloaded unpack archive contents using command:

tar -xvzf LO_3.3.0-beta1_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

And install LibreOffice .dep packages all-at-once:

sudo dpkg -i en-US/DEBS/*.deb
sudo dpkg -i en-US/DEBS/desktop-integration/libreoffice3.3-debian-menus_3.3-9526_all.deb

Once installed you will see LibreOffice icons in Office section on Ubuntu main menu, for example on my Ubuntu Lucid Lynx Netbook Remix I see the following icons:

Hope it helps!

According to release notes developers implemented more than 260 fixes and enhancements. First of all this is Amazon MP3 Store support that makes it possible to preview, purchase and download mp3 from mentioned store if you sit in USA, UK, Japan, Germany, France or Switzerland. Screencast dedicated to this feature is available here. Now this is up to you how you wish to buy music from Amazon — using Banshee browser or your favourite one like Firefox or Chrome, meet new feature Amazon Mp3 Downloader for this. In the same easy way you can browse through Miro Podcasts Directory using Banshee 1.8.

New feature Tools → Fix Music Metadata helps to merge artists and albums that vary only by case etc. Really useful if you are perfectionist and keep your music collection totally organized. Improved Audiobook Support is now enabled by default and makes audiobook tracks listening more comfortable. And finally they improved support of Apple devices including iPod, iPad and iPhone! Huuraah!

Well, you are welcome to look through complete list of improvements at Release Notes page.

For today Banshee 1.8 is available as tar.bz2 archive but it will appear in official PPA shortly so you will need only to do the following to get the latest version installed on your Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:banshee-team/ppa
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install banshee

In order to get started you have to download utube2mp3 binary, make it executable and create Desktop shortcut. Open Ubuntu Menu –> Accessories –> Terminal and type the following commands:

cd ~/Downloads/
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/utube2mp3/files/utube2mp3_0.1.2/utube2mp3_linux_x86.tar.gz/download
tar -xvzf utube2mp3_linux_x86.tar.gz
chmod +x utube2mp3
ln -s ~/Downloads/utube2mp3 ~/Desktop/utube2mp3

From now you can start utube2mp3 youtube conversion utility from your Ubuntu Desktop. Just copy/paste URL of youtube video you wish to get mp3 from, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9TGj2jrJk8 (Led Zeppelin — Stairway to Heaven) and press “Get mp3!” button. You will be prompted where to save resulting mp3 file to be retrieved from certain youtube video and in a few minutes you will see .mp3 file there.

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

If you ever decide to revert to default window controls position (left) type the following command:

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout "close,maximize,minimize:menu"