A new stable release of Skype-Wrapper is available for download.

Skype-Wrapper is a small third-party ‘plugin’ that integrates many of Skype’s features directly into the Ubuntu desktop. This includes support for Ubuntu’s Messaging Menu, notification system and Unity launcher.

What’s New?

With almost six-months between the last release and this, it’s no surprise to learn that amongst the number of useful fixes and new features to be added amongst is support for Ubuntu 12.04.

One most notable ‘fix’ is that, with Skype minimised to the Messaging Menu, chat notifications no longer appear for each message sent but rather for each person chatting. Additional messages from each chat are simply appended to any existing notification.

For Unity fans the option to ‘Add a Contact’ has been added to the quicklist, as have a selection of in-call actions:

• Answer/Reject incoming calls
• Hold/End calls when busy
• End calls when put on hold
• Resume/End when you’ve put someone on hold

Not everyone makes use of quicklists, but for those of you that do these new actions will let you carry on with your work during a call without needing the main Skype window front-and-center. Most of the quicklist items are dynamic – meaning that they only show when they are available for use.

• Messaging Menu entry
• Native system notifications
• Unity Launcher progress bars and unread message counts

• Group chat support
• Minimise/refocus Skype easily
• Set Skype Status from Messaging Menu

How to Install Skype Wrapper in Ubuntu 12.04

The eaisest way to install Skype-Wrapper and its dependencies is to add the official PPA.

Using Skype-Wrapper

Now for the bit that often confuses people. The steps are fairly straight-forward and don’t require much effort to do.

Navigate your ‘applications’ folder and drag the second ‘Skype’ entry to your Launcher.

All that’s left is to get Skype-Wrapper to talk to Skype.

To do this open Skype using the Launcher item you just added and proceed to sign in and usual.

Not long after you’ve successfully signed in a window like the following will appear:

Be sure to check the ‘Remember this selection’ box before hitting yes so that all features continue to work after your next logout/login.

Things to note

You can still launch Skype using the ‘normal’ Skype launcher however you won’t benefit from the features of Skype-Wrapper.

To remove the Skype tray icon you will need to remove the ‘sni-qt‘ package. Removing this will, however, also stop a small number of other applications from using the panel area.

With thanks to Shannon Black and the Skype-Wrapper devs

If you use any web-apps or websites in Chrome that provide notification pop-ups on your desktop then you’ll know how out of place they look in Ubuntu.

For although Chrome’s notification ‘toasts’ are consistent across all three major operating systems – that is they look and behave the same on Windows, Mac and Linux – they are, unlike, say, Windows, where there is no unified notification system, at odds with the way Ubuntu users are used to seeing their new e-mail, chat or tweet alerts.

For example, here is a Chrome notification on the Ubuntu desktop as it looks by default:

And here’s the same notification from Chrome but delivered using Ubuntu’s native notification system:

Much better, right? And all it requires is one extension.

Download

The extension, called ‘Linux Native Notifications’, supports GNOME-Shell desktop notifications as well as those used by Unity, and should work on ubuntu 11.10 onwards.

It’s a fork of the now-defunct Chromify-OSD extension by developer Tualatrix Chou.

Just hit the download button below to be taken to the Chrome Webstore listing for the item.

Linux Native Notification Extension for Chrome

Having boldly gone where no-one had gone before, it was no surprise to learn that actor Wil Wheaton is concerned about the erosion of ’Net Neutrality‘ – the principle that all web traffic, users and means of access should be treated fairly and without favour.

Illustrating this point in a post on his blog this weekend, the famed Star Trek actor rallied against the perception pushed by the Entertainment industries that ‘torrent traffic = piracy‘.

“One of the things that drives me crazy is the belief in Hollywood that bittorrent exists solely for stealing things. Efforts to explain that this is not necessarily true are often met with hands clamped tightly over ears, accompanied by “I CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA.”

To highlight ‘the usefulness of bit-torrent for entirely legal purposes’ Wil shares his story of turning to Bit Torrent to download a copy of Ubuntu 12.04.

“If I’d downloaded the [ubuntu] .iso straight from [the] server, it was going to take the better part of an hour, so I decided to grab the torrent instead. Turns out it was a good choice, because it was finished in about six minutes,” he writes.

Insert your own jokes here about what Warp Speed that works out to be ;)

“My point …is to illustrate that the bittorrent protocol is useful for more than just infringement, so when you hear industry lobbying groups making a lot of noise about piracy, you’ll remember that they aren’t giving you all the facts.”

Throttling

Sadly, whilst Wil is not a lone voice on the issue, the Entertainment industries and their well-paid puppets in policy are already firmly against the notion of seeing torrenting as a technology for good. Indeed, ‘Shaping’ of torrent traffic is already common with many ISPs throughout the world.

[It's] like closing down freeways because a bank robber could use them to get away,”  Wheaton says.

And he’s right. The ‘bolting of the stable doors after the horse has bolted’ is reactionary; it’s treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

Let’s just hope that the entertainment industries arrive at their ‘final frontier’ – that of fair pricing and accessible distribution methods – before any more damage is done to our digital liberties in their wake.

Wil Wheaton via Gigaom via Daniel G.

A minor update to the Spotify Preview for Linux client is available to download.

A handful of new features are present in the release, which was originally intended to appear at the same time as the Windows and Mac builds. Sadly, a last-minute build error pushed this back a few days – but kudos for the intention, right?

So what’s new?

Playlist streams will be a familiar concept to users of Last.FM or Tomahawk. When listening to an track or album you can hit the ‘playlist radio’ button to begin listening to an auto-generated stream of similar music. The algorithm used seems spot on when i tried it – something that often couldn’t be said of Last.FM’s feature.

Getting code for those embeddable track/album/playlist buttons we blabbered on about a few months back is now super easy. Right-click on a song, playlist or album and choose ‘Copy Embed Code’ to have the relevant HTML text ready to use in your system clipboard, ready to paste around the web.

Tumblr users will find support for sharing tracks/albums to their blogs directly from within Spotify itself. Just hit the share button to set it up.

Download Spotify for Linux

If you’ve not downloaded the Spotify for Linux Preview before do be aware that it is, by its nature, to be considered a development release and not a stable one. Expect things to crash, freeze or otherwise explode.

The app be installed in Ubuntu 10.04+ by following the instructions at the link below.

Spotify For Linux Preview

Thanks to Mo

It lives! Skype have issued a small bugfix update to the static package of their Linux client.

The hotfix patches a ‘serious vulnerability’ with the ‘libpng library’ present in the static package of the VoIP client.

The issue does not affect any other versions of Skype 2.2 for Linux (i.e. the version available in the Ubuntu Software Center).

What is the static package of Skype? It ‘contains executables not linked against any dynamic libraries’, said to be useful ‘when you don’t want to handle dependencies issues.’ Despite this it does, however, still require a number of dependencies to be installed locally in-order to run.

This update bumps Skype static to version 22.0.99, whilst the version in the Canonical Partner repository remains at 22.0.35 and is unaffected.

Download Skype

Tip: Nenad Savković

After six long years (i’m making that up, but it does feel like a horrendously long time) the Ubuntu Forums has added a new theme that matches the revamped Ubuntu branding introduced during the Ubuntu 10.04 development cycle.

The theme is not enabled default, so you won’t see it when logging in. But it can be easily selected without any need for hacks or user-scripts.

To use it, just log-in to the Ubuntu Forums (be sure to blow the dust off of your credentials first) and scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll see a drop-down menu on the far-left of the screen. Select ‘Ubuntu’ from this.

Et voila – new Ubuntu theme.

Via Mike Basinger

You’ve had several weeks to settle in to your Ubuntu installs so it’s time to ask those of you who performed a direct upgrade (either from Ubuntu 11.10 or Ubuntu 10.04): ‘How will did it go?’

My own experience of an LTS-to-LTS upgrade went incredibly well, but one users’ take on it does not a picture paint. I want to know how well your upgrades went.

We ran a similar poll to this after the release of Ubuntu 11.10, and the results were mostly positive. The majority of direct upgraders said that things went ‘perfect’. But how well did things go this time around?

Thanks Themis Paras

Annnnnnd the Ubuntu Developer Summit is over for another 6 months.

Five days, 40 hours, lots of beer, frivolity and discussion have lead to a set of potential plans for the Ubuntu 12.10 release.

Due to the nature of development not everything intended to happen will. But, pessimism aside, the following list of proposals do all on the to-do list…

Desktop

LightDM will be implemented as the lock-screen, thus adding visual and behavioural consistency to the desktop.

Unity 2D is likely to be dropped. Unity 3D will be made capable of running on lower-end hardware via ‘Gallium3D llvmpipe’.

The HUD will sport additional features, including the ability to ‘wrap around dialogs and toolbars’.

GNOME

Ubuntu GNOME fans will be excited by word of a potential vanilla GNOME Ubuntu spin (i.e. a “GNOME-BUNTU/GNOME-Shell Remix”).

Elsewhere, GNOME 3.6 will be used as the base of Ubuntu 12.10.

Apps, Settings and Installer

Ubuntu’s Ubiquity installer will be ‘beefed up’ to provide all of the features offered by the ‘alternate installer’, resulting in the latter being dropped as a download option.

The installer will also see the Windows settings migration assistant feature removed. The team conclude that it is too untested and buggy to remain in place.

LibreOffice will – finally – ship with AppMenu support out of the box, making it fully HUD accessible.

Jockey, Ubuntu’s current 3rd party driver installer, will be replaced with a ’better version integrated with System Settings’.

Technical Stuff

Ubuntu 12.10 will use the 3.5 kernel, with a view to supporting the 3.6 version after its release.

Python 3 will ship on the CD by default, meaning various default apps and utilities will be rewritten to take advantage of this.

Boot speed and application start-up speeds will be improved.

The Wikipedia lens for Ubuntu’s Unity dash we wrote about several days back has been updated.

Visually the Lens now looks neater, sporting article snippets and thumbnails (where applicable) thanks to use of the ‘card view’ layout available to developers.

Multi-lingual users still have no way to specify the Wikipedia locale used by the lens (it currently bases this on system language) but, the developer tells me, this is something he is aware of and looking to seek a solution to.

As the Lens is not yet available to install directly from the Ubuntu Software Center you’ll need to grab it from the Scopes Packagers PPA. This PPA supports Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.10.

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:scopes-packagers/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unity-lens-wikipedia

Ubuntu and free-software was the topic of discussion on Greek TV channel ‘Sunny‘ earlier this morning.

Nick Kakouros from Greek technology site osarena.net appeared to talk about open-source software, Linux, Ubuntu and the ‘global scale’ of free software within the context of the economy, government, etc.

I don’t speak Greek but if you do, and want to see what was said, you can find a video cap of the segment @ osarena.net. You’ll want to skip forward to the 37 minute mark.

As a side-note, you’ll also spot our ‘Top 10 features of Ubuntu 12.04′ video during the talk – thanks to the OSArena.net team for that!

After Microsoft’s aquisition of Skype – the worlds most popular VoIP application – many users had assumed that it marked the beginning of the end for the clients’ life on Linux.

Comments by Microsoft Exec Steve Ballmer on the matter didn’t entirely clarify things, with non-specific wording:

“We will continue to support non-Microsoft platforms, because it’s fundamental to the value proposition of communications …whether they happen to be on your device or not.”

That, believe it or not, was exactly one year ago today.

Since then there has been one very minor update for Skype on Linux - compared to 17 updates to the Windows version in the same time frame.

But the Skype team themselves have now stepped in to clarify matters in a thread on their support forum.

Their response is a brief, vague and non-committal but does, for the optimists amongst us at least, point to a brighter future for the Linux version than many feared:

“Development hasn’t stopped. We are still working towards the next update. Can’t share an ETA though. We’ll release “when it’s done” “

So, Skype for Linux: not dead, just in a coma. 

Tip: Andrew

Ubuntu 12.04 offers a pretty fantastic experience right out of the box but that doesn’t mean it will be 100% perfect for everyone.

In fact there are a few things about it that bug people.

Below we’ve listed solutions to six common questions we’ve seen routinely asked in the comment section here on OMG!

We’ll get the caveat out of the way first: you will need to install the MyUnity app – which is available for free in the Ubuntu Software Centre, link below – to apply many of them.

Click to Install MyUnity

How do I add a Show Desktop Button to the Unity Launcher?

If using the ’Show Desktop‘ item in the Alt+Tab Switcher isn’t as accessible as you’d like you can add a ‘Show Desktop‘ button to the Unity Launcher.

How Do I Disable ‘Apps for Download’ in the Dash?

Seeing icons for applications you don’t have installed appearing near apps you do have installed is confusing – as user testing with Unity has shown.

But you can disable this through one of two ways – with one being a more ‘permanent’ fix than the other.

The first method is the easiest: just open the Dash, head to the Applications Lens and click on Local Apps‘ under the ‘Sources’ section in the Filter bar to hide app suggestions.

But this ‘setting’ is not always remembered, so you may wish to remove the option entirely.

• Open MyUnity
• In the ‘Dash‘ section disable the ‘Display Apps Available’ feature
• Log-out/in to have change take effect

How Can I Auto-login in Ubuntu 12.04?

“The login screen just slows me down!” yelled one commenter, in caps, several weeks ago.

Generally enabling ‘auto-login’ is not recommended, but if you’re well versed in the security issues arising from doing so (i.e. person steals laptop > can login right away) it’s easy to enable it in Ubuntu 12.04.

• Open System Settings
• Click on the User Accounts tile
• Hit the Unlock button to the top of the window and enter your password
• Set the auto-login slider to the ‘on’ position by dragging it to the right
• Hit ‘Lock’ to apply your changes

How Can I Have More Than 4 Workspaces?

Four workspaces not enough? You busy body!

We’ll use the ‘MyUnity‘ tool mentioned above to add some extra work-spaces that can be accessed through the Workspace Switcher icon.

• Open MyUnity
• In the ‘Desktop‘ tab you’ll find two sliders
• Adjust these sliders to set the number of vertical & horizontal workspaces
• Exit the app
• Hit the Workspace Switcher to begin using them

How do I re-enable Dodge in Unity?

Technically you can’t. The ‘dodge’ (also known to some as ‘intellihide’) feature is no longer present in Unity 3D. Mark Shuttleworth explained the reasoning behind its removal during the Precise development cycle.

But, if you can’t live without it, there are options.

Intellihide is still present in Unity 2D but you will need to use a 3rd party Unity 2D tweaking tool to enable it.

For Unity 3D users there is a forked version of Unity which brings the features back – but this is installed at your own risk.

How Can I Show the Date in the Panel Clock?

I find it handy to have the days date on show in the panel – simply because i’m forgetful. Ubuntu makes enabling a custom clock stanza on the panel a snap.

Changes are applied live so play around until you get a set-up you like

• Open System Settings
• Click on the ‘Time and Date‘ tile
• Choose the ‘Clock’ tab
• Check the options you want to enable

If you’ve got a gripe and solution feel free to share it in the comments – but keep things constructive. 

Just when you thought the roller-coaster had stopped the daily builds of Ubuntu 12.10 (Pre-alpha) go live.

If you’re thinking of downloading and installing Qunatal do be aware that there’s very little to see in terms of changes yet – much of the detail is still being hammered out at this weeks Ubuntu Developer Summit.

But if, for whatever reason, that doesn’t put you off you’ll find the usual line-up of 32bit, 64bit, 64bit-mac and PPC images for the Quantal Quetzal hiding behind the button below.

Ubuntu 12.10 Daily Builds

Richard Hilleman of Electronic Arts delivered a short address to the attendees of the Ubuntu Developer Summit this evening, a day after the company released its first two games on the Ubuntu platform.

Highlighting the emergence of new platforms – ‘At least one a week. Sometimes one a day’ - and the changing audiences and business models associated with them.

Hilleman expressed enthusiasm towards the ‘fastest growing platforms’ – mobile, social and web.

‘The biggest thing that’s changed is where our customers play games, who they are, and how they pay for it.’ he said.

‘[In the past] we had a core demographic who played our games: around 50 million of them, and they were disproportionately men.

‘That’s no longer true,’ he continued. ’The fastest growing segmemnts are mobile, social and web – and all three of those formats are dominated by women.’

And this has changed how EA make money.

“The fastest growing payment models, in the fastest growing platform, are in the ‘freemium/free-to-play models’.

‘We have always been a platform agnostic company, willing to support platforms that have a viable business model.” he concluded. One inferred a passing nod to Ubuntu as he said this.

Walled Gardens & Native Games

Using the analogy of ‘walled gardens’, Hilleman compared the ‘open nature’ of projects like Ubuntu and Google as being the ‘white spaces’ between the walls of other products. And these, he believes, are fast becoming what’s more important, helping the company to ‘sew together’ its customers experiences regardless of what, when or when they play.

‘Generally the open systems, the part that unify the rest of the world, are the parts that actually matter. You can only keep the world out for so long.’

During a Q&A with Hilleman, he revealed some interesting information: -

• EA have built 14 different products for WINE but are moving away from it
• They are seeking to create a set of ‘configuration sets’ with Canonical on hardware they will support
• They are most excited about HTML5 and WebGL – which boasts the widest reach
• Hilleman expects China to pick an OS ‘not made by Microsoft’ 
• The company will ‘showing off’ a browser-based game with Playstation 2 grade graphics at Google I/O
• They will be judging the ‘success’ of the Ubuntu titles on user rather than ‘financial’ metrics

How often does your desktop get covered in all manner of – to be blunt - crap? 

Icons, images, links, launcher, folders, stuff you don’t even recall ever download… It all gets dumped on the desktop. And a cluttered desktop hampers workflow and distracts.

Enter DayFolder – a small utility that can organize your desktop for you, created by developer Zach Burnham.

Day Folder

DayFolder is simple enough to use. It sits in your top panel until you need it.

When your desktop gets too cluttered, and you want to organise it, you click the panel icon and choose ‘Clean Desktop’ to have DayFolder group it all up and pop it into a folder with today’s date.

If you don’t want your items grouped in ‘daily’ directories you can choose to have them grouped by ‘week’ or ‘month’.

Smart Tidying

DayFolder also lets you specify “rules” on which files and placed where.

For example, you can tell DayFolder to move .jpg and .png files to your Pictures folder rather than the ‘DayFolder’ directory.

You can add as many rules as you need to, making DayFolder much more versatile than just an automated ‘group and move’ tool.

Install DayFolder in Ubuntu

DayFolder is still in development, and as such the developer wishes us to note that there are ‘kinks to work out’, in particular with panel icons under Radiance.

But it’s core purpose works well and the app as a whole is fairly stable, so if you think it could be useful to you then all you need to know about installing it is below…

.Deb installers:.

Download DayFolder (32bit)  Download DayFolder (64bit)

A PPA is also available, and can be quickly added by running the following commands in a new Terminal window:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thejambi/thejambi
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install dayfolder

 Thanks to Zach Burnham

EA have deposited two games in the Ubuntu Software Center for users to download easily – and for free.

The titles, ‘Lords of Ultima‘ and ‘Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances‘, run in your default browser.

Installing the games through the Software Center adds handy Dash launchers in the Dash and Unity Launcher.

Baby Steps

When we first posted news of EA‘s tie-up with Canonical, which will also see the company present a plenary talk at tomorrow’s UDS, expectation about what titles would be provided reached fever pitch.

So whilst many of you may be slightly disappointed to find these early titles are not native or the platform-exclusive never-bef0re-seen game-changing releases you were hoping they are a start.

For a hulk of a games giant like EA to look at the Ubuntu platform with dollar signs in their eyes is an amazing sign of just how far Linux has come.

But now it’s up to you, as users, to prove to EA that gaming on Ubuntu is worth pursuing and the easiest way to do that is to simply download these titles from the Software Center.

EA’s toes are tentatively dangled in the waters of opportunity – are you up for pulling them further in?

Lord of Ultima

Ultima is one of the worlds longest running RPG series’ with a rich and varied history spread across various consoles and platforms. EA build on this with Lord of Ultima – a strategy MMO taking place in the Ultima universe.

“you must master the art of diplomacy and trade as well as the military activities of spying, plundering and sieging enemy cities.”

Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances

The latest entry into the Command & Conquer series is this strategic MMO written in HTML5.

“Compete or ally with your friends in a worldwide war for precious resources.”

Remember OpenOffice?

It was the office suite we all used before The Document Foundation forked it into LibreOffice to give the suite a ‘brighter future’.

Which was a polite way of saying “getting bugs fixed and features added faster”.

Although LibreOffice may have forked off from it and picked up developers and innovation by the bucket load, the faithful old brand, now under the direction of Apache Software Foundation, has seen its first release since January 2011.

Apache OpenOffice 3.4 doesn’t do anything drastic, but does iterate nicely upon that which was there before. Changes include: -

• Faster startup times
• Improved ODF Encryption
• Various minor additions to Calc
• Support for SVGs in all apps
• New look color picker

The release notes for the update detail these, and more, further.

Looking Forward

Apache OpenOffice has announced initial aims for future releases. These include adding ‘new features and improvements from the upcoming IBM Lotus Symphony contribution’, ‘additional native languages’ and ‘enhanced accessibility, usability and performance improvements’.

Download

OpenOffice 3.4 can be downloaded @ openoffice.org in .Deb installer format.

Installing OpenOffice alongside LibreOffice is not recommended.

Kubuntu is likely to retain its name, the lead developer Jonathan Riddell has said at UDS.

It had been rumoured that legal issues with ownership of the trademark would force Kubuntu and its new financial backer Blue Systems to choose a new name for the project.

But Canonical, Riddell says, have expressed no issue with the team continuing to use the trademark under a new sponsor.

Canonical dropped financial funding of Kubuntu earlier this year. KDE company Blue Systems stepped in, assuring users that they have ‘no plans’ to change anything.

“They [Canonical] are very happy to have extra sponsors …working within the Ubuntu ecosystem.”

“The negotiations are not yet 100%”, David Wonderly, also present, added, ”[But] from the way everything seemed to go yesterday on the Canonical side they more than happy to not just work with us and for us but to to do everything they can to help us out too.”

Name Change or Game Change?

Would Kubuntu changing its name be a good thing? That depends.

By divorcing themselves so cleanly from the “Ubuntu” brandmark they would certainly lose the instant recognition, and traffic, that the ‘ubuntu’ suffix brings. All official Ubuntu spins use this ‘ubuntu’ suffix – Xubuntu, Lubuntu & Edubuntu – and it makes them instantly recognisable as being official community spins.

Had Kubuntu needed to opt out of this trope it would have made consistent branding across the Ubuntu family that little bit harder.

But the change would have only be cosmetic: ‘Kubuntu’ – whatever its name or whoever is backing it – is to remain as it ever was: being developed by the same people, with the same goals, being based upon Ubuntu, and built using Ubuntu/Canonical resources.

And that, at the end of the day is all that matters.

Ubuntu is on course to ship on 5% of the worlds PCs next year, Canonical’s Chris Kenyon has revealed.

Kenyon, who helps lead sales and business development at Canonical, announced the gains during a plenary discussion at the Ubuntu Developer Summit on the company’s work with OEMs and ODMs.

Between 8 and 10 million Ubuntu units shipped ‘last year’, equating to around 7.5 billion dollars worth of hardware sales. That figure, Kenyon expects, will double to 18 million ‘next year’ which, he says, relates to some 5% of the world-wide PC market.

’200 Million Users’

The last year or so has seen the Vodafone ‘Webbook’ go on sale in South Africa, Dell China taking Ubuntu to the masses, and ASUS equip a handful of new EeePC models with Ubuntu options.

“We sell millions of PCs with HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Acer,” Mark Shuttleworth recently told Bussiness Insider website. ”We expect to ship close to 20 million PCs in the next year.’

Kenyon’s 5% quote is a healthy projection – but is it enough to help Ubuntu reach its goal of ’200 million users’ by 2014/15? Mathematically not, but note the wording; ‘Ubuntu users‘ applies to more than those using traditional PCs.

With Ubuntu TVs, phones and tablets in the works the potential reach to new users grows ever wider, making that 200 million aim not quite so ‘pie in the sky’ as many assumed it to be.