I’ve been using Ubuntu 11.04 in the corporate environment for over a year now and this post will attempt to summarise the frankly disappointing state of affairs that is “linux in the corporate environment”.

Thumnbnails

Such a little thing – getting a thumbnail for your images, videos or office documents.  In Windows, once a directory has been thumbnailed, it creates a hidden file “thumbs.db” in that directory, so that when other people visit the directory, there’s no need to recreate every thumbnail from scratch.

In Ubuntu, however, there is. Every user stores their own version of thumbnails .  At work, my .thumbnails directory is a little shy of 40Mb.  If you multiply that by 1000 employees, you’ve just wasted 39.96Gb of data creating the same set of thumbnails 1000 times.  Bandwidth, Disk I/O, wasted.  Worse, if you make your staff’s home directories a network share, you’re now wasting 40Gb of storage across your home share.

It’s a poor model and needs fixed.

Encrypted Home Directories with Likewise

Wanted an encrypted home directory?  Easy – tick the box when you install and you’ve got one.  But wait.  Logging with AD credentials after installing Likewise?  Nope.  Likewise creates a non-encrypted domain directory in your /home and every user that logs in thereafter gets an unencrypted home.

EDIT :

The use case is simply theft.  If a PC is stolen, then anything unencrypted on that device is going to be revealed trivially through the use of a USB boot key.  User documents, settings or, worse, Dropbox installs are going to be readable.  So I’d like to encrypt the home directories to prevent it.  It won’t be as effective as a full-disk LUKS install, but it integrates with login so that only one password is required, so a slicker option in my opinion.

If anyone knows a way around this behavior, please holler.

Passwords

In Windows, every password you enter on the system is shown on screen by substituting asterisks.  On Ubuntu, the same is true, but many of these entries have a tick box that says “Show password”.  What the hell?  Why?  Why on earth, having entered my password would I EVER want it shown on screen??

Basically what this means is that even a 2 minute slip up where you forget to lock your screen while you grab a packet of crisps or a coffee – you’ve possibly just let a colleague see what your password is.  I raised with the Seahorse devs, but they argued that if you leave your laptop/PC unlocked for two minutes then it’s compromised irretrievably and refused to acknowledge that the “show password” option was making things worse.

What can you do, maliciously, in two minutes with a Windows laptop?  Plenty, but I think it would be mostly obvious.  I reckon it would be quite challenging to seriously compromise a user without his knowledge on a Windows computer.  On Ubuntu – 20 seconds to reveal my WIFI password, which also happens to be my AD password, since we use PEAP authentication.

“Linux is more secure.”  Really?  Depends, doesn’t it?

EDIT:

I should clarify my use case here.  We have contractors coming onsite all the time to help with new product install, support cases, or training.  Due to the nature of my job, a lot of what we access is protected by either firewall or ACL, so that only specific devices can access the service that contractor is onsite for.

I trust these guys not be installing root kits or maliciously hacking my laptop while I grab us both a coffee, but in the case of Ubuntu, I literally can’t use it because while I do trust them generally, it’s just too easy for them to stumble upon a password box with a glaringly tempting “show password” button next to it.

The weird thing when I raise the “show password” issue is that no-one can give me a use-case for its existence.  Or if you count “I forgot my password” as a use case, then they can’t explain the huge inconsistencies in Ubuntu – I can “show” my keychain password and my WIFI password but for some strange reason, I can’t show the password for my actual install, or my encryption password.  Why?  If physical access = “toast”, then why do I have to enter my previous password to change it to a new one?  Why am I prompted for my password on login?  Why am I prompted for my password on resume?

Rhetorical questions obviously, but despite everyone seeing that passwords for logging in, decrypting and resuming are necessary, they lose all logic about a simple “show password” box.  IT IS NOT NECESSARY.

I just don’t understand it.  It’s like a blindness.

Proxy support

Very frustrating.  The command line uses one environment variable, while GUI programs use another.  The proxy configuration dialogue has an option to “Apply System-Wide”, but doesn’t appear to do anything.  Bypass options don’t always work, or require a reboot to activate.  Some downloads (flash-plugin for example) will use wget in the middle of the apt-get install, which fails, because apt-get doesn’t pass in the proxy option.

Worse, why isn’t there an option to set the proxy by network?  If I’m on our internet-only WIFI, I don’t want a proxy, but if I’m on our internal-WIFI, I do.  Why can’t it set/unset the proxy depending on what I connect to?

Mapping Drives

In Windows, you map a drive, then there’s an option to “Reconnect at next login”.  Not in Ubuntu.  Or any linux distro I’ve tried in fact.  No, you have to edit your /etc/fstab for this functionality.  It’s 2012 and you have to edit text files to make samba shares persistent.

Evernote

Finally, a non-O/S specific issue.  In fact, it’s a bit unfair to include this, because it’s not really Ubuntu’s fault… but it’s a big one for me, so :  Evernote, which I use every hour of every day, doesn’t have an Ubuntu version.  Some utter genius has coded the awesome “NixNote” in java and so I use that.  But pretty frustrating that such a crucial tool (for me) doesn’t have a native client.  And launching java to run NixNote is a drain – it takes about 30 seconds to start up and synchronisation isn’t quite as slick as the native version.

Summary

It’s not all bad.  Nautilus remains much better to use than Explorer, LibreOffice is getting better all the time, workspace shifting is a joy, start up is very quick and Xenapp covers the few programs I use that don’t have an Ubuntu version – Vsphere, I’m looking at you.

What else?  Network Manager makes setting up multiple networks a joy (overlooking, for the moment, the proxy issues above), external monitor support works well, and of course terminal access with built-in python is superb.

But there’s so much wrong with Ubuntu in the corporate that it takes real determination to make it work, and many of the issues just shouldn’t exist in this day and age.  Maybe 12.04, the Precise Pangolin will deliver a better experience, but nothing I’ve seen so far suggests that this will be the case.  In fact, in many areas, I think there will be regressions due to the move to Gnome 3 – such as external monitor support.

Time will tell, but I’m not holding my breath for the perfect corporate system.

A friend of mine, an iPhone advocate and user, recently compared the Android brand to Vauxhall cars, while maintained that iPhones represented the BMW of the smartphone world.

It’s a great put down although if recent figures prove a trend,  it won’t be long until the Android/iPhone market share actually reflects the Vauxhall/BMW share (i.e. iPhone as a niche).  So, as my friend points out, why would you choose a Vauxhall when you can have a BMW at only a slight price premium?

But the comparison falls apart on one crucial aspect.  If you were about to buy a BMW and the sales rep suddenly pointed out that some roads hadn’t been approved for use by them yet and so were off limits, you’d be somewhat taken aback.  If the sales rep then went on to point out that certain other roads were blacklisted entirely and therefore also off limits… you’d start to question why you were buying this car.

The worst part of owning such a car would be the inability to request that these roads are made available.  The question of their use has been set in stone in a way that the humble owners of the vehicle cannot challenge.

So in the iPhone world, you can’t use Adobe’s Flash technology.  You won’t see many types of applications in the AppStore (and not just porn either, look at Sony Reader, VLC and others).  And of course, you can’t challenge these decisions in any way, except to refuse to buy another iPhone.

So why would I chose to buy a Android?  For freedom.

How can I defend Google while slating Apple?  How can someone put Apple down for their “we know better” walled-garden approach to the AppStore, the iPhone and iPad, while on the other hand defend Google’s invasive “if you need something to be private, you probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” attitude?  It’s a tough one, honestly.  Google is by no means perfect, but there are key differences to the way these companies operate and while I believe that they’re both “the devil you know”, I do feel at least that Google is somewhat more defensible than Apple.

Here’s how I see it.

If I was trying to browse porn :

Apple wouldn’t let me, while Google would, but wants to know what kind so that they can target better ads during the experience.

If I’m trying to rent a movie :

Apple demands that I do so via iTunes and puts barriers in front of any other way, while Google wants to know what kind of movie it is so that they can suggest alternatives and profile my preferences.

If I’m trying to sell my PC :

Apple tries to sell me a Mac, an iPad or an iPhone, while Google doesn’t care because their products don’t often care what your platform is.

I find Apple’s approach insidious, distinctly creepy even.  Like AOL in the late 90′s, they seem to be intent on ignoring the internet-at-large and redefining it to suit their purposes.  Vetting their appstore, denying flash, insisting on a mac-only development model (now recently reversed), Fairplay DRM, iTunes.  It’s all about control – the control that Apple has over what you can see and do on the products they sold you, usually so that they can sell you more products.

After the fact, I don’t believe it feels like ‘owning’ an Apple product – it feels like renting.  First generation products are intentionally crippled to ensure that next year’s model is a must have and despite the fact that this policy spits in the eye of their most loyal followers, the Apple fanbois lap it up and open their wallet year on year.

My Latitude breakdown : home is where the heart is, I suppose

Google is nearly as bad, even if we use the same adjectives - insidious and creepy.  If you’re not careful after you sign up for a Google account, they’ll know nearly everything about you.  Simply by signing on with their latitude service for example, they can deduce where you work by noting your position from 9am to 5pm most week days.  At least they’re not shy about admitting it, but it’s still a big deal.  And their approach to privacy over the years has proven to be only slightly better than Facebook themselves, the undisputed masters of privacy cock-up.  It still surprises me that Google’s high profile blunders with Buzz and Streetview didn’t harm their brand far more.  Dont’ people get it?  Don’t they realise how invasive this stuff is?

So, really, this is an imperfect choice between two high profile monopolists.  But I will never accept that a faceless corporation knows better than me when I chose a course of action and I will therefore never own another Apple product during my life.

Google might know what I’m doing in the near to mid-term future, but at least they won’t judge me while I’m doing it.

The problem I have with Apple is that everything they do, they do for profit.  Not the consumer, not the industry, just their profit.  Yes, their hardware is top class (iPhone 4 notwithstanding), but there’s just too many little things about using Apple products that keep ramming the point home.

1. Pods, Phones and Pads all use proprietary power interfaces.  Mini, or even Micro USB is pretty much the industry standard now, but if you want to conveniently charge your iDevice at more than one place, get ready to buy lots of extra proprietary cables.

2. iTunes.  Until January 2009, “Fairplay” (riiiight) DRM added to all purchased tracks restricted how you could play your music.  In a nutshell, the main restriction was that you had to use Apple iPods to play it.  In January 2009, Apple announced that music bought from iTunes would now be DRM-free and allowed you to remove the DRM from all your previously bought tracks, BUT then went on to charge you for the privilege, despite the fact that any tracks you bought thereafter would have no such DRM applied to them.  So much for rewarding customer loyalty.  Amazon MP3 customers had a good chuckle.  Movies and TV shows still have Fairplay on them today.

Bashing Apple shouldn't be this easy

3. If you want to put some music/video on your Pod or Pad, you have to use iTunes.  Not only does this mean that you have to install this Apple abomination on your Windows/Mac PC (no linux support, sorry), but it also nudges you towards using iTunes for future purchases.  Subtle.  Well, not really.  If there’s a way to get your music on to your Pod or Pad that doesn’t involve iTunes, I’ve not yet found it (beyond using Linux and something like Rhythmbox or Banshee).

4. Crippled first generation devices.  The iPad is an astonishing example of this.  The “magical and revolutionary” device went on sale on April 4th without a front facing camera.   No big deal – they sold by the million.  Then on June 24th, just 11 weeks later, the iPhone4 is released to much fanfare.  What’s this?  Why, it’s a front facing camera and a high-profile announcement of Facetime, allowing you to make video calls to other iOS devices.  Except, you know, the iPad that you just bought a few weeks ago.  But it’s a great sales ploy, because despite this insulting omission, the iPad did sell well and next year, all these rich first generation iPad owners will throw their money at Apple for an iPad with a front facing camera so that they can Facetime away to their heart’s content.

There are other niggles, examples of where Apple’s drive for profit won’t let them admit the real world exists.  They force you to use AAC instead of MP3 (a legacy of Fairplay).  They ship their OSX devices that can’t play any video out of the box except iTunes video unless you add third party codec plug-in Perian (which takes some searching).

And of course, there’s the whole head-in-the-sand approach to Adobe Flash on their iDevices (so if you want to see the Disneyland site, don’t use an iPad).

But they know how to market and by god do they sell.  And why not?  Only techies care about this stuff and possibly only half of it at that.  Some techies will even extol the virtues of AAC over MP3, how Flash (and perhaps Disneyland) was overrated anyway  and why they’d quite happily fall on a big technical sword for their lord and saviour, Steven P Jobs.  Good luck to them.

Not for me though.  I prefer to think different.

It was September last year when I last properly tried Chromium in Ubuntu.  Back then, there was no bookmark sync, extensions were a glint in the dev’s eyes and GTK theme support was a new feature.

I didn’t particularly elaborate in that article about why I didn’t make the switch back then.  In fact, I open the article claiming that the experience was a mixed bag, then pretty much rave about it!  I must have been tired that day…

Then

The primary reason I didn’t switch was that I was hooked on Firefox extensions.  Well, four anyway – SyncPlaces, Flashblock, AdBlock and FEBE.

• Syncplaces will sync bookmarks using any FTP, NFS or Samba share.
• Flackblock does what it says on the tin – it replaces Flash elements on a web page with a click-able placeholder.
• AdBlock Plus needs no introduction.  As far as I know, the best advert blocker for any browser.   Go on, prove me wrong!
• FEBE is a backup and restore tool.

Now

Flash forward, 9 months later : present day.  3 of these extensions now exist on Chromium, kind of.  Here they are :

• Chromium Sync.  Technically, not an extension : this is now built into Chromium itself and all you need is a Google account.  Your bookmarks, extensions, preferences, auto fill and themes can be synced across any PC you use Chromium.  Syncplaces was, by comparison, pretty horrific to set up (and needed to be downloaded first), but it did mitigate any privacy concerns you might have about uploading your data to Google.  Personally, I use so many Google products day to day that uploading my bookmarks wasn’t a concern.  Your mileage may vary.

Chromium Sync Option

Sync Options

• Flashblock for Chromium shares its name with its Firefox compatriot, but they’re by different authors.  There may be trouble ahead!
• Similar story for AdBlock for Chromium.  Well, at least it’s not called “Adblock Plus”!  This has similar functionality to its Firefox big brother, allowing multiple subscriptions to keep the adblock relevant, and it can also be turned on/off for specific sites.  It does not, however, sport the incredible per-element blocking that made the original so powerful.

AdBlock options

So, what’s missing?  Well, FEBE, obviously.  I still can’t find an extension which will “snapshot” my Chromium install and perfectly restore it on another machine.  My Firefox browsing history goes back about 2 years, across 4 different operating systems thanks to FEBE.  However, given that Chromium Sync started off as just Bookmarks before expanding into Themes, and just recently Extensions, I suspect that it’s only a matter of time before we see History too.

Google Sync puts all your data into a special directory on Google Docs, so I imagine that anything (within reason) could be stored there in future.

Google Docs

We Fear Change

So did I make the switch?  Incredibly, given my history and love of Firefox : “Yep”.  In February, I bought my Google Nexus One phone and on that day, I suspect that I may just have sold my soul to Google.  In April, Froyo fever started pitching and in preparation, I started dabbling with Chromium again.  Finally, after May’s Google I/O conference when Froyo was announced, one feature in particular swayed me towards moving to Chromium whole scale – the cloud sync feature.  This is where you buy music on Amazon (or Google themselves this Christmas, perhaps) and you simply send your purchase to your phone, right from within the web page.  Or perhaps you’re on Google Maps getting directions, and those directions are sent as Navigate options to your phone.  Very sweet.  But initially at least, I think it requires Chromium.

Pros

• Start up hasn’t changed in 9 months – it’s still blindingly fast.
• The Javascript engine is famously fast and sites like this will prove that very effectively.  Perhaps Firefox 4 will close the gap here though.
• Extensions install instantly.  They un-install just as fast.  Their options pages are web pages, which makes for a very integrated, natural feeling.
• Chomium Sync, despite being Google-only, will rock your world if you use Chromium on more than one PC.
• The “Awesome Bar” doubles as a URL entry location and a search bar in one.  I think this used to be offered in Firefox, then reverted.  The latest rumours I’ve heard suggest that it’s heading back to one-bar for Firefox 4.
• Did I mention that start up?

Cons

• In order to take advantage of the speed of development, I’m using the daily build PPA (details below).  This means two things.  One, you’ll be prompted to update every day by your package manager.  Two, many banking websites won’t entertain you.  Here in the UK, I have one account at the RBS and they block beta builds.  Interesting actually – even a user-agent switcher doesn’t fool their website, so they must be fingerprinting another way somehow.
• In the short term, a few things will have moved around and will take getting used to.  Nothing major, but here’s an example : right clicking on a link in Firefox, “Open in New Tab” is the third option down, but in Chromium it’s the top option.  There’s a few little gotchas like this.
• Bookmark organisation isn’t quite as slick as Firefox yet.  You can’t grab tabs and create shortcuts from them – you must still use the favicon logo to the left of the URL.  If, like me, you keep multiple folders on the toolbar, you’ll find that you  can’t re-order the bookmarks inside these folder using drag-and-drop.  You have to right-click, open the organiser and do it there.  Finally, I’m not convinced by “Other Bookmarks”.  It gets cluttered very quickly and takes up valuable toolbar space if you don’t use it.
• Downloads are pretty intrusive, with a big bar appearing at the bottom of the browser whenever anything comes down the line.  You have to manually close it after each download.  I couldn’t find a way, extension or otherwise, of changing this.

Install

I use the daily builds (https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa), so in order to install, just pop these commands into a terminal

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

After a bit of research, spurred on by this OMG Ubuntu! article, I bit the bullet and installed Blogilo. Before doing so, I tried BloGTK and Gnome Blog. The former had potential, but no WYSIWYG editor, so you had to know your HTML. I don’t. The latter was incredibly basic and doesn’t even download previous entries for reference or editing. It’s more like a micro-blogging client.

So, KDElibs installed, Blogilo installed and… nothing. I ran it in a terminal, and got some horrific output. It took a bit of Googling, but eventually, I found this post, whose comments reveal that LibQT4-SQL-SQLite must be installed. Total mystery why this isn’t a dependency. Everything else required certainly was.

Blogilo

So, first impressions then? I’m typing this in Blogilo now after a simple “Add Blog” wizard downloaded my meagre previous entries. I tried to make a small edit to one of those, but discovered that although the entry came down and was editable, it didn’t know what tags were applied to the post. I duly ticked the relevant tags and hit the “submit” button. The progress started… and never stopped. But it did, it seems, upload. It put my first paragraph into a bullet list, somewhat unexpectedley, but otherwise it’s fine.

But then some more serious issues arise. I’ve just tried uploading a screenshot of Blogilo in action (after using the awesome Shutter to grab the window). While gnome apps generally let me copy/paste the image from Shutter into the relevant window, in Blogilo the “paste” option remains resolutely greyed out. Perhaps some missing KDE libs, or just a total lack of communication between gnome and KDE. I’m not sure.

Worse, when I manually add the image using the add image button, it will only add at full size. If I add it at say 640×480, I generate a KIO slave error. More missing KDE dependencies, perhaps.

Finally, perhaps I’m missing it, but there’s no “Check Spelling” button. There is, however, an option to enable spell checking as you type, which I generally dislike as it generates flashing red underlines for every word as you type until it recognises what you’re actually doing. It also highlights all the stuff in the post you don’t care about because they’re product names.

I’m not giving up on Blogilo, but I doubt I’ll use it much. Perhaps if media uploading worked, I could forgive the various other quirks, but for the moment, it remains easier to type directly into the web interface of WordPress, at least for me.

Just a quick list of top-quality Ubuntu software that you may or may not have heard about.  In no particular order.  Many are installable from the repository, while others might require a little google/search for their PPA (I’ve kicked you off with a link for each).  This post revolves around Ubuntu 10.04 – the Lucid Lynx.

1. Handbrake.  This allows you to rip your DVDs into MP4 format for viewing on any H264 compatible device, such as Sony PSP or Android phone.  The interface is very slick and easy and it will take advantage of multiple cores to speed up the process.

2.  Remmina.  This is an RDP and VNC client.  You can use it to connect to Windows terminal services (RDP) or Ubuntu (VNC) remote desktops.  It also supports Avahi which is like a local-network autodiscovery of these services.  It can also use SSH if required.  What really makes this stand out though is the beautiful interface for launching these sessions.

3. Deluge.  A superb alternative to Transmission, this superlative client can also run in a client/server mode which is supremely easy to set up.  Simply run Deluge on the server in “server” mode, then run the same package on your laptop in “client” mode, connecting to the server.  Thereafter, anything you kick off on your laptop will actually start downloading on your server.  Close your laptop and everything just keeps ticking over on your server.  Superb functionality and beautifully realised.

4. jBrout.  If you have a lot of photos and struggle to categorise them, this is the software for you.  The idea is that you create tags for your collection (people, place names, things, etc) and then you drag those tags onto the pictures.  What stands this software out from the rest is that while many other programs will then create a database to store these tags in (which you’ll lose if you re-install, sit at another PC and so on), jBrout will actually edit the photo, adding the tags into the Exif details of that photo.   Never lose your hard work again!  I’ve written more about jBrout in an earlier post.

5. Phatch.  The title is meant to be an amalgam of “Photo” and “Batch”.  Another cracking interface makes it very easy to take a folder (or multiple folders) full of pictures and apply various transformations to them.  The main use I found for this is to take ALL your photos and rename them into a folder structure which is dictated by the time you took the photo.  This way, you can see, visually, when each photo was taken.  Combined with jBrout, you’ll never struggle to find another photo again.

Sorry everyone.  The old site borked up during an upgrade, and fickle so-and-so that I am, I decided to jump ship and redo the site from scratch.  The old site was running Drupal 6, but this time around I’ve installed a WordPress 3 instance.

Very, very impressive.  The admin interface is very clean and quick, there’s an incredible choice of templates and the plug-ins are ridiculously simple.  It needs a good gallery, I suppose, but otherwise, incredible.

Let’s see how often we keep this one updated…

All the time, I hear people claiming that the first thing they do with a stock Ubuntu build is turn off “useless” Compiz.  Now, I don’t mind that they’re turning it off – it’s their computer.  But if these people are truly claiming that Compiz is useless and adds nothing, then they’re extremely ignorant of its features.

A lot of early focus surrounding Compiz was on the now famous (infamous?) “Cube” plug-in.  Media coverage then honed into the truly “useless” features, such as burning up closed windows, “raining” on the desktop and painting fire on the screen.  Not only does this do an injustice to the various extremely useful Compiz plug-ins, but I don’t recall any such furore surrounding the Macs introduction of such desktop effects, such as the Genie minimise effect.

Some of these effects are incredibly useful to people with disabilities, such as snapping windows or zooming the desktop.  There are too many to feature in one article without boring the audience, but here’s a few choice plug-ins that I use daily and truly enhance the Ubuntu desktop experience.  I used RecordMyDesktop to upload simple example videos to Youtube.

The Zoom Plug-In

My eyesight isn’t perfect, but it’s not bad.  And I still need to enlarge the text of certain websites, or very simply lean closer to the monitor.  At least, I did until I discovered this incredible plug-in which must surely rank amongst the most useful accessibility aid that no one knows about!

You hold down your Super key (windows or mac key, usually) and then scroll-wheel up/down to zoom in/out.  It’s smooth, intuitive and best of all, you retain complete control over the mouse and keyboard, allowing you to interfact fully with the zoomed in section of screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jiAmlQbC8Y

The Scale Plug-In

Obviously inspired by the Mac’s “Expose” function, the Scale add-in lets you hit a key combination to instantly view a scaled version of every open window.  Then you just mouse-over the one you want and up it comes.  As with all Compiz effects, it’s slick and it makes window management extremely intuitive.  In fact, it’s replaced Alt-TAB as my usual method of window management.  I do have one gripe with Scale – it won’t show minimised windows (unlike its KDE counterpart).  At all.  There’s no option to change this, so if you like to minimise your windows then I’m afraid Scale might not be for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHesPRMTTSg

The “Cube” Plug-In

Yes, it’s been overdone on Youtube and elsewhere, and yes, it’s slightly gimicky and even yes, it’s not strictly required, given that you can still swap workspaces very efficiently without all those flashy, spinny cubes.  However, in terms of visualisation, nothing can beat the Cube.  Drag a window to the edge of your screen and the cube rotates to the next workspace, gradually at first to prevent error, then finally snapping into place when you keep dragging.  Again, it’s intuitive, and it’s visually stunning, which is probably why it got the most attention when Compiz first launched all those years ago (three?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kZWWM3CIqk

So the next time you consider disabling desktop effects in Ubuntu, spare a wee thought for my favourite plug-ins and consider giving them a chance to shine.

Often overlooked, there are a couple of things that Vista got right. Well, okay, one thing then. No, not UAC, I’m talking about the Vista snipping tool. Since I use Vista as work, I know the O/S pretty well and if I had to point out one feature that’s missing from a default Ubuntu build, it’s a decent screenshot capture utility. Of particular note is the snipping tool’s ability to capture regions by dragging, rather than simply the traditional areas of “window” or “full desktop”.

However, I came across a tool last month that not only offers similar functionality to the snipping tool, but in fact far surpasses it! It’s called “Shutter” and it’s like the poster-child for the virtues of a name change. “Gimp”, take note. I doubt many corporations or individuals would extol the delights of “GScrot”, Shutter’s old name, and the same goes for Mr Gimp.

The Shutter website is simply laid out with FAQ entires for use and, of course, plenty of screenshots. So how does it work?

Simply start up the Shutter tool and click on one of the four options : rectangular section, full desktop, window, or section of window. Having taken your screenshot, you’ll get a preview thumbnail, it’ll be copied to you clipboard and it’s automatically saved to the location of your choice using the naming convention of your choice. At this point, either close down Shutter and use the screenshot as you see fit, or leave it open for further modificaitons.

What modifications? Shutter supports a plug-in system and comes ready with about 20 transformations available.

There’s plenty of scope here for customisation. For example, the 3D plug in allows rotation on any access, at any angle. And the Polaroid plug-in allows the creation of text subtitles as well as specifying the angle of the resultant picture.

Effects can also be combined over and over. Perhaps you’d like to sepia your screenshot, blur it, then angle it with the 3D plugin. Or as in the screenshot below, you can try adding a reflection before applying the 3D effect :

Shutter also supports uploads of your screenshots to various services.  Supported services include ubuntu-pics.de (the main author is German), imageshack.us and imagebanana.com.  You can also specifiy any FTP site and credentials for custom uploads.

Version 0.80.1 is in the Ubuntu Karmic (9.10) repositories, but there’s
a deb file or a PPA on the website if you prefer to stay as up to date
as possible.  One feature in the latest version that makes it worth
grabbing is that you can now specify screenshot delays from the app’s
status bar, instead of going into the preferences dialogue.  This is handy if you need to capture menus as part of your screenshot.  The latest version also adds a feature to help you take screenshots featuring tooltips.

One feature I like about the Vista snipping tool is its immediacy.  When you click on the snipping tool, the screen immediately darkens, encouraging you specify what you want to capture.  I originally thought that this was missing from Shutter, but never fear.  Just change your Shutter shortcut to include “–selection” and you’ll get the same behaviour as the snipping tool, but keep all of Shutter’s extra features once you’ve taken the screenshot.  Best of both worlds!

Finally, you can also edit/annotate your screenshot using Shutter’s built-in image editing tool.  The latest (0.85) version of Shutter even lets you drop jpg images straight in so that you can use Shutter’s various features from that point on, without needing to take a screenshot in the first place.

Alternatives

Not much.  Compiz has a screen capture facility which is very similar to the snipping tool.  Having enabled the plug-in in compiz settings, just hold down CTRL-ALT and drag your mouse over the area you want to capture – hey presto.  However, it suffers from a bug when using Intel video cards (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/…) which renders it useless.

Of course, you can also use printscr, built into Gnome, to capture the whole desktop, or hold down ALT while doing so to capture the active window, but that won’t help if you need to capture menus, or parts of a window/desktop.  Well, actually, that’s not quite true – if you really need a quick-fix menu grab using the built-in tools, just hit ALT-F2 to bring up your run dialogue, then entergnome-panel-screenshot --delay 3 to give yourself 3 seconds to set up the shot.  But really, with software like Shutter available why bother with the built in Gnome tool?  Shutter even offers an option to replace the built-in tool with itself – just tick the option in Shutter’s preferences.

If KDE is your thing, you could try ksnapshot, but although I’ve just started playing around with Kubuntu 10.04 on my test machine, I’m still not familliar enough with KDE apps to comment on that.

Finally, while its being removed from the default install in Ubuntu 10.04, current versions of Ubuntu should all have Gimp installed, which also offers a powerful screenshot tool.  Like the rest of that program though, I find it too complicated for my needs.  Your mileage may vary, and if you use Gimp regularly, this is probably your best bet.

Conlusion

A phenomenally well thought out tool and brilliantly executed.