Linux users of Logitech’s MX Performance Mouse are asking the hardware company to provide proper Linux support for the high-end product.

“I recently purchased a Logitech Performance Mouse MX, and I love it.” writes Linux user atarian88 on the Logitech support forms.

“It feels just right in the hand, and it has so much potential. Note the use of the word “potential”; the mouse could be so much better under my operating system of choice.”

Citing the inability to change the DPI and reprogram the various on-mouse buttons, as well as the lack of official support for the ‘unifying receiver’ on Linux, he calls for the company to consider its Linux users, noting that something as trivial as a utility to change the DPI settings of  Logitech mice ‘would pay off immensely in the long run’ .

The uniquely controred Performance Mouse MX has won praise from reviewers for its ‘comfortable design’ and ‘sturdy’ construction.

Should Logitech provide official first-party for Linux users of their higher-end hardware? If you think so you can add your voice to the support thread below.

 Logitech Linux Support Thread

They’re best known for making Ubuntu laptops and PCs but ZaReason are about to dip their toes into fresh waters with the launch of a tablet.

But, unlike the rest of their hardware line up, the ‘ZaTab’ doesn’t come with Ubuntu but the tried-and-tested tablet Android 4.0 operating system.

‘Guts’

The lower-end of the tablet market is fast becoming identikit, much like the netbook market did several years back. Does the ZaTab have anything unique to offer?

Hardware wise no. The ZaTab sports the same ‘guts’ as most lower-end tablets. But although that means there’s no NVidia Tegra quad core chip tucked inside, the ZaTab is still reasonably specc’d: -

• ARM A8 Cortex CPU @ 1.2Ghz (Single core)
• Mali400 GPU (Handles 1080p, 3D games etc)
• 1GB DDR3 RAM
• 16GB internal storage
• 9.7″ (1024×768) capacitive touch-screen
• 14 hour* battery life
• Front and back cameras
• Metal-back casing
• Weighs 630 grams
• Wi-Fi
• Headphone, MicroSD card, 2xUSB and micro-HDMI ports

A very similar specc’d tablet (same ‘system on a chip’ CPU/GPU combo as the ZaTab, but only 8Gb of internal space) can be bought on Amazon in the UK for around £155. It’s less pretty, only claims to have a 6 hour battery life with WiFi on, and sports only one camera.

Interested? You can find out more information on the tablet, or even pre-order one, by hitting the link below.

ZaReason ‘ZaTab’ Tablet

Thanks to  Ivo

Ubuntu’s Unity interface made a brief appearance in a popular Japanese ‘children’s' show last weekend. 

‘Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters‘ – the latest team in the 36-year strong Super Sentai franchise – can clearly be seen to be running a customised version of Ubuntu Unity desktop on their laptop.

Open-source mail-client Evolution is also on show, as is the Ambiance theme.

Like most instances of operating systems in TV shows and movies the OS itself is actually a pre-rendered recording that is either played back during scenes or inserted during post-production – a fact demonstrated in the above clip by the unique-looking video player that appears mid-way through.

But the fact that designers of the show sought to not only base it on Unity but retain so much of its style is worth being impressed by.

‘What is Sentai?’

Super Sentaiis a long-running and hugely successful live-action ‘Tokusatsu’ children’s show in Japan. The premise is largely the same in every series: a ‘fighting squadron’ of people use super-hero like powers, an arsenal of weapons and giant robots to protect the world from an attacking band of evil aliens/creatures.

If you grew up watching Power Rangers in one of it’s never-ending incarnations then you will have, indirectly, watched Super Sentai. Power Rangers makes heavy use of costumed fight, monster and ‘megazord’ footage.

Here’s hoping that the Go-Busters read OMG! Ubuntu! when not protecting the worlds supply of precious Enetron energy from the evil clutches of Vaglass and their leader Messiah ;)

This is a guest post by Tom Slominski, a 15 year old Ubuntu user who ‘loves Linux, open source and web development with a tad of alternative rock sprinkled on top.’

Here Tom runs through his top 5 app picks for Ubuntu.

Polly

Polly is a multi-column Twitter app for which OMG! readers chose a new name for last year. Since then, Polly learned to update your tweets in real time and developer Conscious User is planning add polish to Polly with reduced memory usage, the move to GTK3, better integration into Unity and enhanced customisation options.

Meanwhile, Polly 0.93 pre-Alpha is still a very capable Twitter client. It offers support for multiple columns, multiple accounts and near-instant notifications for public tweets.

It’s definitely one of the best designed Twitter clients out there.

Polly can be installed from the developer’s personal PPA. The usual precautions about 3rd party software from potentially untested/untested sources apply.

Open up a terminal and execute:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:conscioususer/polly-unstable
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install polly

GDebi

GDebi is a simple tool for installing local packages, like those that you’ve downloaded off the internet, for instance.

For me, it is a pretty basic tool, and the first thing I install on any Linux computer I setup. Instead of waiting for Ubuntu Software Centre to load up, you can view the packages’ details and install it from this lightweight app. Just remember to change the default app to open such files with by clicking on a .deb file and entering Properties/ Open With/ GDebi Package Installer.

Click to install GDebi

Nautilus Actions Extra

Nautilus Actions Extra is a pretty useful package of apps, rather than a singular app for Ubuntu’s default file browser– Nautilus. It adds a wide array of functions to Nautilus, ranging from converting, verifying and advanced searching of files to opening files and directories as root. It also brings back support for emblems for folders, which has been removed since Ubuntu 11.10.

It was previously covered on OMG! Ubuntu! in December of last year, but since then it has been cleaned up a bit.

Nautilus Actions Extra can be installed from the NAE team’s PPA. The usual precautions apply.

Open up a terminal and execute:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nae-team/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions-extra

Shutter

Shutter is an advanced screenshot taking app. It’s an awesome app for pretty much anyone who ever took a screenshot. Even though it pulls nearly 50MB of Python dependencies during install it makes the whole idea of screenshots endlessly easier.

You can take a screenshot of a web page, your entire desktop, a window or a tool tip; edit it with a simple, yet powerful inbuilt editor and then share it online or save it somewhere. Taking screenshots couldn’t be easier.

Even if you don’t feel the need to take professional looking screenshots- I recommend you still download this app, saving yourself the bother when you need to take a good screenshot.

Click to install Shutter

EasyTag

EasyTag is useful for both pedantic audiophiles and casual music-lovers alike. It hides a powerful set of functions behind a simple interface, making it easy to use for all kinds of users. Even though it’s GTK+ interface feels slightly aged, it’s still a great tool for editing most ID3 tags (both version 1 and 2) on all popular music filetypes; automatically tagging music using CDDB and renaming the files themselves and directories they are in.

Click to install EasyTag

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 easiest 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: how to get the plug-in to work.

The steps below are, actually, fairly straight-forward and don’t require much in the way of effort.

First off, assuming you’ve installed Skype-Wrapper using the PPA above, you need to navigate to your ‘Applications’ folder. In here you’ll find two entries for Skype.

Drag the second of these (which should be ‘skype-wrapper’) to your Launcher to ‘pin’ it there for easy access.

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 as 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.

You may find that a number of these windows spawn after logging in. Don’t fret: just hit ‘Yes’ on all of them until only one is left, then following the above.

To remove Skype-Wrapper access from Skype at any-time you can head to Skype > Options > Public API and ‘remove’ the permissions for ‘Skype4Py’.

Things to not

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.

• 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