Thanks for the people who like it, spread it and  report problems for it. Now, a new bug-fixed version is coming. It is Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.1, and of course, with some new features.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.1 fixed 11 bugs, they are:

• LP: #982632 Window module fails to load on Xubuntu, Lubuntu
• LP: #988564 ubuntu-tweak 0.7.0 (oneiric/unity-2d) crashes in Unity settings
• LP: #990270 Ubuntu Tweak crash after install in Ubuntu 12.04 system76 laptop
• LP: #992581 nautilus script-worker fails on 12.04
• LP: #995748 Natural Scrolling takes no effect in some places
• LP: #987573 Old kernel janitor in infinite loop
• LP: #988554 ubuntu tweak login settings crashes
• LP: #988659 If gedit is not installed, Ubuntu Tweak will crash
• LP: #993334 Update Dialog API in Source Center
• LP: #994980 The search icon is missing in Ubuntu 12.04 default theme
• LP: #995135 Quicklists editor crashed when no desktop file

And four little features:

The first feature is for Unity 2D desktop, The “Compositing Manager” makes your Unity 2D desktop with some desktop effects like drop-down shadow, window preview in Alt+Tab switcher. I think every Unity 2D users will like this feature.

And you can use “Number of workspaces” to add or reduce the number of workspaces, if you don’t like the default number: 4.

Overlay scrollbars can save your desktop space, but if you prefer the traditional scrollbar, you can also disable the overlay scrollbars in Ubuntu Tweak easily.

The QuickLists helps you edit your Launcher items easily, in this version, QuickLists Editor adds the support for “locale”, if your locale isn’t English, you will get the locale name of actions. E.G. The Chinese version of QuickLists Editor.

The last little feature is the “Show Desktop” icon in Launcher (Unity Desktop only). This is an alternative way to access your desktop, set it to “On” if you want it back.

And there is also update for the translations. If your language is still incomplete, you can help the translation here.

OK, that’s all, I hope you like this more stable version of Ubuntu Tweak!

Please download Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.1 from the official website: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

And it is also ready in the Stable PPA: https://launchpad.net/~tualatrix/+archive/ppa

Enjoy!

I set the release date just one day before the final release of Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, because I want every one is able to upgrade your Ubuntu Tweak while upgrading Ubuntu. If you haven’t installed Ubuntu Tweak, I would suggest you to install it, this is a must-have tool on your Ubuntu.

If you don’t agree, let’s see what’s new in Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0.

Let’s start the introduction with the highlights of Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0:

• Four great features have returned: App Center, Source Center, Templates and Scripts
• Source Center is integrated with PPA Purge feature and App Center with “Installed Apps” view
• Improved Janitor with cleaning apps cache
• Global fuzzy search
• QuickLists Editor to edit the Unity Launcher
• Login settings for 12.04
• More Unity settings and new Workspace settings

The first screen of Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0, as you can see, there’re some UI polishes compared to Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0, the information clips are now scrollable and a new “search entry” has been added.

So how do you use it? As you can see on the next picture, it’s dead SIMPLE.

After you launch Ubuntu Tweak, the search entry will be focused by default, you can type any keywords of “Tweaks”, like “theme”, “font”, “sound”…

Ubuntu Tweak will return the results that matches your keywords immediately, and you can press “tab” to navigate and launch the target feature.

If you want to disable the “HUD”, but you don’t know where it is, just try to search “hud”. Tell me you are going to love it.

Next, let’s see the new UI of Ubuntu Tweak 0.7. In the old days, Ubuntu Tweak will eat up all the space and fill it up with large wide widgets.

The 0.7 is much “precise” than 0.6, right? And there’s one more option “Install theme”. This feature helps you install the third-party themes (currently only support icon theme).

As Unity desktop is the core of Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu Tweak is also following up by enabling you to tweak the latest technologies.

In Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0′s Unity settings, you can disable HUD and Shortcuts Hits Overlay if you don’t need it. Also we provide you the easy to use “Reset” button (the right one) to revert back to the default settings in case you mess things up.

The Compiz settings has been simplified as a new name called “Workspace”, here you can still set the action of screen edge, and adjust the workspace numbers.

You may notice that the Login window (LightDM) has been modified to follow the user background, but there’re still something you can tweak: draw grid, play login sound, or the theme of login window.

The most exciting news is that I put four good old features back: Application Center, Source Center, Templates and Scripts.

Due to the fact that, a lot of users miss these features and some technical issues were solved, they are back, and of course, more powerful than ever.

In Application Center,  there’s one more “Installed Apps” view, you can view the most common used and installed apps here.

In Source Center, there’s also a similar view called “Enabled PPAs” view, but more useful , because I integrated the “PPA Purge” feature. So now you can select the PPAs and click the “Purge PPA” to safely downgrade packages and disable PPAs.

Another major new feature of Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0 is the “QuickLists Editor”.

Do you often use the Quicklists in Unity Launcher? It is really a powerful feature. What the new Ubuntu Tweak can do is to make it more powerful and easier to use!

In Quicklist Editor, you can add any action to any pinned icon, like the example below, you can add an “SSH” item to Terminal, so in the future you can launch an SSH session without launch terminal before. Of course, manage and reorder the items are easy too.

The Computer Janitor also has some improvements: new “Apps” category makes you clean the apps cache easily, you can clean many apps cache in one operation. And I’ve also improved the display of result, you can see the size of individual items clearly.

Oh, so much! There’re also a lot of small improvements. I don’t have so much time to tell you all, if you’re interested, you can view the release notes here.

So…No matter whether you’ve upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 or not, Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0 is ready for you, both for Ubuntu 11.10 and Ubuntu 12.04.

Please download it from the official website:https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

And it is also ready in the Stable PPA: https://launchpad.net/~tualatrix/+archive/ppa

I hope you enjoy the Ubuntu Tweak 0.7.0, and if you like it, don’t forget to like it in the following sites:

• Ubuntu Tweak @ Twitter
• Ubuntu Tweak @ Google Plus
• Ubuntu Tweak @ Facebook

And one more thing to tell, the translations are not completed yet, please help to translate it here, so that I can update for the next release. Thank you!

Enjoy!

And Ubuntu 12.04 is under heavily development, I’ve also see that many users have been upgraded. So here comes the Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.1, which supports Ubuntu 12.04 better.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.1 is a bug fixes release, and also introduced a few tweaks, here’s the release notes:

• Add support for Ubuntu 12.04
• Remove the background change in Login Settings, because the LightDM for 12.04 already support read user background setting
• Add “Dash color” setting to Unity Settings
• Add “Desktop Font” setting to Fonts Settings
• Hide the Session Control for Lubuntu

Now let’s get started with some screenshots

Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.1 under Ubuntu 12.04

The dash color setting

Three different color of Dash after setting the new color, which one would you like better?

The “Desktop font” setting, if you want the icon in desktop with larger or smaller font, this is what you want.

Download & Update

Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.1 is ready to download from the official website: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

And it is also ready in the Stable PPA: https://launchpad.net/~tualatrix/+archive/ppa

The next

Since the release of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0, I’ve been received a lot of feedback, and most of the users told that he/she likes Ubuntu Tweak. Even the latest Linux Format has a topic about Ubuntu Tweak too:

Ubuntu Tweak will start a new development cycle, to add more new features, and of course, supports the latest Ubuntu well.

Let’s look forward to Ubuntu Tweak 0.7!

Back to two years ago, we made the mock-up of the future Ubuntu Tweak and told the concepts behind the new design.  Later we improved the design and started coding. Although the progress was slow, and I had to maintain the 0.5 version at the same time. At the year of 2011, many things happened, the development of Ubuntu Tweak stopped and started once and again. But finally, it is released.

Let’s get started with the brand new Ubuntu Tweak!

First, please allow me to introduce the concepts of the new Ubuntu Tweak.

The concepts of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0

As a “tweak” application, Ubuntu Tweak provided a lot of options to let you change the default system settings.

While developing Ubuntu Tweak, I added a lot of features, E.G. App Center, Source Center in Ubuntu Tweak 0.5. Soon I realized that Ubuntu Tweak is not a “Tweak” application any more, although the feature like App & Source Center are liked by a lot of users, it also caused a lot of problems.

Finally, I decided to remove the feature of App & Source Center, to make it focus on “Tweak” again. This time, Ubuntu Tweak is fully plug-able, this means everyone can write extension (or plugin) for Ubuntu Tweak.

Release notes of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0

Here’s the noteworthy highlights of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0:

• Brand new UI and interaction focus on better looking and easy to use
• Supports the latest Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and well integrated with system
• Every part of Ubuntu Tweak is plug-able, this make Ubuntu Tweak more powerful then ever before
• Janitor keeps your system clean
• Overview makes you know your system better

Now let’s start with the Overview

The first screen after you start Ubuntu Tweak is Overview, from this screen, you can get many useful information about your hardware, software and others. It can be fully configured, if you don’t want to see the hardware information, or you want to re-sort the items, you can do it at the “Preferences”.

Every small piece is called “Clip”, and it will provide some useful information.

As I said before, it is plug-able too. So you can write or download the “Clip” that written by other people. Think about a clip to show “Everyday tips of Ubuntu”, it might be very useful to the newbie. Right?

And there’s another useful thing in the Overview, the “Recently Used” items in the right side. There must be some features you access frequently, then you can find the most recently used items here, click and access to what you want.

Tweaks & Admins

Now let’s come to the “Tweaks” page, here are the features that you can tweak the system. Currently there’re 12 major features to help you tweak. Most of them inherited from the Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.x, but there’re also many new features:

Unity Settings is introduced by Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 for the first time, it will only be used under Unity desktop (both 2D and 3D). With Unity Settings, you can change the behavior of Launcher, the size of Launcher, the size of Dash, even the blur type of Dash. You won’t be lost in the CCSM (Compiz Config Settings Manager).

And with Theme Settings, you can easily change the default theme of Ubuntu. All of this can be done by just a few clicks.

The fonts settings, if you want a larger or smaller size of font.

Miscellaneous, notes the “Natural Scrolling”, if you are also a Mac OS X Lion user, you will like it.

Here’s the “Admins”, some useful features you can manage your system. I think you’ve met most of them in the previous versions. Due to some technical reasons, the “Templates” and “Scripts” have been removed in this version. Maybe in the future release I will add them again.

There are also something new in Source Editor, this time Source Editor introduced the “Backup” feature. Now you can backup and recover the sources lists easily, the backup feature is also enabled by default.

Janitor

This is Ubuntu Tweak’s killer-feature: Janitor. It is like the old “Computer Janitor”, but with a more easy to use interface and powerful clean feature.

You will never learn how to use it, just select the items you want to clean, then Janitor will scan the cruft, after you double check the items you don’t need, select and click the “Clean”. Everything will get out of your system.

If your system is clean, a cool face will tell you the good news.

And don’t forget the Janitor is also plug-able, try to write the extension for Janitor, such as clean the “Recently Used Items”, this is the extension that I’m currently writing.

This extension is not finished yet, maybe it will be integrated into the next version of Ubuntu Tweak. And I will also release it as a standalone extension.

Oh, and there is one more thing: Ubuntu Tweak is very well integrated with the Ubuntu Unity desktop.

This means you can start to the Janitor directly even Ubuntu Tweak hasn’t started yet, just right-click the icon on the Launcher and choose what you want to enter.

Downloads & Update

I think you can’t wait to use it now, Ubuntu Tweak is ready to download from the official website: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

And it is also ready in the Stable PPA: https://launchpad.net/~tualatrix/+archive/ppa

Download and try it, it’s hot!

What’s the next?

At the end, let’s see another picture: This is a mock-up which designed by Jeonkwan Chan at May, 2010. At that moment, we discussed a lot about how the future Ubuntu Tweak would be like, later he finished this design draft, and I started coding at the beginning of 2011.

When I look back on this, I’m feeling very very very excited! We designed this two years ago, and I spent almost one year to finish the final version. Even some features are still missing, but we finally done the work!

So what’s the next? I don’t know.

I may not have so many times to coding as before, but I’d like to write some documents and help people get involved with the development of Ubuntu Tweak, to make it a community product. Of course, I’m still the project manager, I will keep driving and maintaining this project, hope next version won’t take a whole year to release

Happy Christmas! Don’t forget to tell your friends if you like Ubuntu Tweak!

Yeah, just as the title said: Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 is close to releasing! And I have some other updates want to share with you.

Let’s get started!

First, here’s the major changes since the last post:

• Only support Ubuntu 11.10 and later (and of course: Linux Mint 12)
• Support three major desktop environments: Unity, Unity-2D, GNOME Shell
• More tweaks have been added, E.G. Unity Settings
• Solve some critical bugs of the Janitor and improve the usability

And here’s one screenshot of Unity Settings

Here’s another news I need to announce:

Ubuntu Tweak source code has moved to Launchpad/Bzr

As you may know, I used to manage the source code of Ubuntu Tweak by Git, but it is not so friendly for the Ubuntu Community. Because the prefer tool to manage source code is Bzr.

So I finally decided to move to Launchpad/Bzr, now I’m getting used to play with Bzr, it is also very cool. The most important thing is that the members from Ubuntu Community can easily join the development of Ubuntu Tweak.

The code is located here: https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak

If you want to play with the code of Ubuntu Tweak, just do “bzr branch lp:ubuntu-tweak”

There are still many things to do for the final release, such as: translate, bugs fix and other improvement.

Please help to test the latest Ubuntu Tweak and report any problem you find.

You can get the latest testing version from the Testing PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-tweak-testing/+archive/ppa

Let’s make it happen!

But everything is OK now, and I want to say: Ubuntu Tweak is not dead.

Here comes the beta version of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6!

Ubuntu Tweak 0.6, as I written at April 1st (First look at the next generation of Ubuntu Tweak!), is almost done, even part of the development document is ready.

Now please allow me to introduce the highlights of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 (and screenshots):

• New UI
• New clips feature: first screen information
• All features are plug-able
• Package Cleaner becomes a new major part feature as tbe “Janitor”

Four major features: Overview, Tweaks, Admins and Janitor

At Preferences, you can manage the plugins, enable or disable,  or install new plugin.

Tweaks and Admins, designed like GNOME Control Center, but with a more easy to use “back” and “forward” arrows.

A specific tweaks: Compiz Settings, you know it, right?

Computer Janitor,  clean the cruft has never been so easy!

Because this post is not going to be a release post, so I’m not going to write any more about the details.

If you are interested in the Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 and want to play with it, try to do by these steps (Notes: only for Natty & Oneiric, but Oneiric is not well supported yet)

• sudo add-apt-repository  ppa:tualatrix/next
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

Where is the App Center & Source Center?

As you may notice, where is the “App Center” and “Source Center”?

Currently, they’re not developed yet, but I plan to provide them as plugins in the future. So, it means in Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 beta, you will not be able to use them.

I know everyone likes the Source Center, so I provide another way to keep using it by installing Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.x along with 0.6:

• sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak-0

Yes, the ubuntu-tweak-0 package in the Next PPA is the old Ubuntu Tweak 0.5, you can use it as normal.

What about the support of upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric?

Of course Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 will support Oneiric, but there’re still many works to do. If you can write plugin for Ubuntu Tweak for the Oneiric specific tweaks, I will appreciate your work

When Ubuntu Tweak is ready for Oneiric, I will update for another post.

How to develop plugins for Ubuntu Tweak 0.6?

There is a wiki page about Ubuntu Tweak: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTweak

For more specific page for writing plugins,  you should read: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTweak/HowToWritePlugins

And of course, the source code of Ubuntu Tweak itself is always an up-to-date guide

OK, that’s all.

Feel free to report your issues or ask questions on the launchpad page. Hope it will be ready before Oneiric’s release.

Thanks for all your support!

This version improves the PPA Purge feature, just update!

Last day, I tried the GNOME 3 PPA with my Ubuntu 11.04, but it was not usable yet. So I used Ubuntu Tweak to purge the GNOME 3 PPA and downgrade the packages. But I found a bug in Ubuntu Tweak, it didn’t deal with the case which may cause the failure of downgrading packages.

So I improved the PPA purge, now it will show error and stop if packages can’t be downgrade. And you can follow the error message, then use “sudo apt-get remove pkg-name” to fix it, after this step,  PPA purge will be success.

With PPA purge, you can downgrade all GNOME 3 related packages with just select and click, everything will be done easily.

After restored the packages to the original natty packages, I also used the “Desktop Recovery” in Ubuntu Tweak to recover some settings of desktop application (E.G. GNOME Terminal, because upgrade to GNOME 3 will also update the settings).

So with Ubuntu Tweak, it’s painless to try the GNOME 3 PPA.

OK, here’s the improved PPA Purge, it will show more information, E.G. the current downloading package.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.14 is landed in the stable PPA, or you can download to use it:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

Next post, I will write something about Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.

Back to five years ago, when I first started my blog, many of my articles were just translated from the English articles.

After five years’ writing, I have a lot of my own thoughts, so most articles were written by me. A friend told me that it’s time to translate my articles back to English, to share with the people over the world.

So, here’s the first article not about Ubuntu Tweak. I don’t have a good written English yet, but I will improve. Just point out the grammar/word mistake, thanks!

———-

As a long time Ubuntu user (about 5 years), I’m really happy to see that the release of Ubuntu 11.04. This is really a big jump! Unity is an innovation desktop shell which brings a lot of advantages to make the desktop life much more easier!

And I’m also a Mac OS X user, Unity has many concepts like OS X, such as “Application Menu”(or Global Menu) and Launcher (Dock). So I’d like to compare Unity with OS X, to see which design is better.

The first post, I will talk about the bad of application menu in Unity.

The application menu is first appeared in Mac OS. It can save the vertical screen space, and user can always reach the menu even they don’t watch it (if it can be consider as a feature).

The bad is: there will only be one menu showed in the panel, you have to click and focus the other application, then can click its menu, one more step then typical desktop (Windows, GNOME, KDE etc).

Is that all? No!

Application menu is not about saving screen space, it’s about a consistent way to access the application feature.

Let’s start from Pidgin and its shortcuts.

As you know, Pidgin has two kinds of window: one is buddies window, which you can choose who to chat. The other one is conversation window, this is the window which you can have the real conversation with your buddies.

Each window has its menu,when the conversation window is activated, the application menu will look like this:

So it’s the Pidgin’s main menu when the buddies window is focused.

“What’s wrong with that? It just works!”

You don’t get the point. Let’s see another screenshot, the Adium in Mac OS X.

Adium is an open-source IM application which shares the same protocol library from Pidgin (libpurple). In Mac OS X, application menu is associated with application, not window.

So no matter which the current focus window(conversation window or buddies window), the application menu will always be the only one.

See the highlight item: Quit Adium, I can always use the shortcuts (CMD+Q) to close the Adium, even when I’m chatting with my buddies in the conversation window.

But in Pidgin (also Empathy), I have to do an extra step: 1. use “Ctrl+W” to close the conversation window, or “Alt+Tab” switch to buddies window. 2. use “Ctrl+Q” to close the application.

If you don’t use shortcuts, it is much more inconvenience: 1. move mouse to click to focus the buddies window, 2. move mouse to application menu and click “Buddies” and “Quit”. Really a big mouse movement!

In the classical desktop, you just need to find the Pidgin buddies window, then click the menu.

I hope you understand my words. So here’s my conclusion.

As I said before: Application menu is not about saving screen space, it’s about a consistent way to access the application feature.

It means, I can do everything with the current application through application menu, just because it’s “application”. How can it be “application menu” if it is only show window menu?

I know most applications do not have multi-windows with different menus, so they just work with Unity’s application menu.

But Pidgin/Empathy/GIMP(2.6) are all frequent used multi-window applications, they need to be changed as a real application menu application to make the desktop experience more comfortable.

Of course, the best solution is to provide an API to set the real aplication menu, like the way AppIndicator does.

There’s much more work that Unity has to do, I hope the developers will focus on how to solve bugs and make desktop more consistent, not always focus on new features.

As an application developers, I found it is more important to provide a standard set of API then always hack on the source code.

After the release of Natty, the desktop environment of Ubuntu has never been so complex before: Unity, GNOME classical, GNOME 3(Through PPA), LXDE, KDE…

Oh my god! So many desktop environments! How should I deal with that?

As you may know, Ubuntu Tweak is a desktop tool initially designed for GNOME, but some features (such as Source Center) also work under other desktop environments. I have to check the desktop environment, disable the features which can’t work under the target desktop, E.G. hide the GNOME Settings under KDE.

But It does not always work, and it takes me a lot of time to install another desktop environment, then test under it.

Now I realized if I continue to try to make Ubuntu Tweak compatible with other desktop environments, so the next major update will never come.

So I will try my best to make the next version of Ubuntu Tweak out, but somethings will be changed:

Only for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty)
Only for Unity/GNOME

What does it mean?

First, it does not mean Ubuntu Tweak will not work under Debian, Mint or others. It may work, but not stable, or may cause other problems. And I will not support or response for that, just stop reporting bug(or feature request) for a while, until I have plan to support other distributions and desktop environments.

I hope you understand my decision, and sorry for users who use other desktop environments.

OK, now here’s Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.13 with some bugs fixed. If your desktop environment isn’t Unity, it won’t crash now. Also with many translation updates.

More details here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+milestone/0.5.13

Here’s the deb package (and PPA is ready): ubuntu-tweak_0.5.13-1~natty1_all.deb

I’m going to speed up the development now!

Enjoy!

Recently I left from the company where I worked before, and took an 8-days travel in Southern China. It was really amazing!

If you can read Chinese (or use Google Translator),here’s my Chinese blog with travel diary: http://imtx.me/

OK, Let’s talk about Ubuntu Tweak.

In April 1st, the preview of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 is true. I think many of you have read the post in OMG!Ubuntu, right?

It will not release today, but everything will go on. After my travel, I feel much more better now, in other words, I’m full of energy!

When I came back, I was so surprised that you reported so many bugs! So I released the new bug-fixed version: 0.5.12. jtlebi fixed the bug, thank you!

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.12 fixed the Unity Launcher options, for more details, visit this page: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+milestone/0.5.12

From this link, you can download Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.12 (Natty only): http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/0.5.x/0.5.12/+download/ubuntu-tweak_0.5.12-1~natty1_all.deb

During these days, I also received some donations, thank you! I always forget to make a donation list, but I promise it will be made soon.

Aprl 29~May 2 is another Chinese holiday, so I will take a short trip, then come back to make the Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.

Although I haven’t got my next job yet, I’m always enjoying developing with Ubuntu Tweak to make the Ubuntu life easier.

Thank you for your support!