Scaine.net

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.

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.

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?)

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.