Chrome and latest Firefox for Android both go stable

On Tuesday, the latest version of Firefox for Android was released, with new features including Flash support (at last!), a new UI featuring Australis tabs (an upcoming change in desktop Firefox) and a hefty increase in speed, making Firefox look like a very competitive Android browser.

Yesterday though, at Google's I/O conference, besides the announcement of Android 4.1 'Jelly Bean', the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q streaming device, the first stable version of Chrome for Android was released, with the familiar sleek UI and fantastic integration with chrome for the desktop.

Both are now available on the Play Store (Firefox, Chrome) - this calls for a face-off!

Tabs

Firefox gives a small Australis-style box with a tab counter to the right of the address bar. When pressed, this reveals a neat list of tabs with thumbnails and close buttons. In Chrome, the process is a little more flashy - tabs are shown as stacked-up screenshots, scrolling up and down slides the tabs over one another, and a side-swipe will close a tab with a fancy animation.

Firefox

Chrome

Australis Tabs

Speed

I ran a test on my HTC One V with both browsers using Peacekeeper, a universal browser test. Despite  Mozilla's claims that the new Firefox is considerably faster than the other major Android browsers (based on canvas rendering), Chrome was actually faster in every area - in some cases twice as fast. Chrome even won out in HTML5 canvas rendering. The only area in which Firefox was superior was HTML5 video codec support. The overall scores were Firefox 179-276 Chrome.

Bookmark Syncing

Both browsers offer a bookmark syncing service so that you can access all your bookmarks on your Android device. With Chrome this was very simple to set up - as expected you are asked to sign in to Chrome with your Gmail account and your bookmarks sync straight away. With Firefox this involved a bit more fuss - you have to manually pair your device with an account created on your desktop, by plugging a code from Android Firefox into the settings of desktop Firefox. Not too tricky, but you need to be at your desktop to get it set up.

The Verdict

While Firefox definitely feels more finished, there are still a few glitches in Chrome which I'm sure Google will iron out soon enough. Due to its speed and the seamless integration with its bigger brother on the desktop, I'll be using Chrome from now on, but both are superb browsers and I definitely recommend giving both a try to see what's right for you.

Could gaming on Linux become a reality?

We've seen a lot of big news lately about gaming on Linux - a lack of games available on Linux has been the reason for many people sticking with Windows, or at least keeping a Windows partition. For a long time, your best bet for playing games on Linux was Wine (used to run the Windows version of the game on Linux), which has severe limitations. Only older games would play, and even then they would often be glitchy.

Now though, it looks like game developers might finally start to support Linux natively. Anyone who's been engaged in the Linux community will probably have heard of the Humble Bundle - a collection of Indie games which would normally set you back $155 in the US, the fifth edition of which was recently made available on a 'Pay What You Want' basis, with some of the profits going to charity.

'Super Meat Boy', one of the games in Humble Bundle V

Overall, people across all operating systems people paid a total of over $5 million for the bundle. Interestingly, on average, Linux users paid more for the bundle than either Mac or Windows users, and almost 10% of the profit came from Linux users. It seems that this statistic was too much for the developers of Unity3D to ignore.

No, not the Ubuntu desktop interface - Unity3D is a huge gaming engine which currently supports Mac and Windows, and is also used for some browser games, console games and phone games. Now though, it's been announced that version 4 will support Linux, which will give developers a huge boost of encouragement to make their games support Linux.

But some big game publishers have already showed signs of interest in the Linux platform - EA, known for such giant games as Battlefield, Sims, Crysis, Need For Speed, Harry Potter, Mass Effect and a huge range of sports games (FIFA, NFL, the list goes on), attended the Ubuntu Developer Summit in May, and have released two games in the Ubuntu Software Centre. OK, so they're essentially just links to browser based games, but it's a step in the right direction!

And they're not the only ones - Valve, the company behind the 'Steam' distribution platform, is currently working on a Linux port, so perhaps we could be seeing games like Portal, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike on Linux soon?

The ball is definitely rolling - maybe soon a vast number of Linux gamers could be waving goodbye to Windows altogether...

What to Expect in Ubuntu 12.10 'Quantal Quetzal'

The first alpha release of Ubuntu 12.10 saw daylight last week, and although Quantal won't be released until the end of October it's hard not to get excited - let's take a look at what we have to look forward to.

New Spread Design

A new spread design was prototyped and tested during the build-up to 11.04 'Natty Narwhal', but never made into the final release in as other parts of the OS took priority. Now though, according to the Canonical Design Blog, the new design is finally being given another go, and should feature in the final release of Quantal.

The new 'Spread' design.

Although this new design doesn't appear to be present in Alpha1, this looks like an interesting change. In the above screenshot, the user has pressed the Firefox launcher icon to spread all Firefox tabs (as usual) and they have been positioned so that they fill most of the screen, except for a 'new tab' button. This immediately strikes me as a very tablet-friendly interface, but should still be very usable on a desktop and seems to fit in well with Unity.

Similar behaviour will also apply to the Super+W command to spread all windows.

This screenshot was found in an article giving the specifications for Unity Task Switching - could it also hint at at different wallpapers for each workspace? Or was this achieved with a third party app? Time will tell!

Update Manager becomes 'Software Updater'

The Update Manager has been renamed 'Software Updater' in order to make it more clear that its purpose is to update installed software, rather than just to carry out system updates (like Windows Update).

Software Updater

A New Look

In his blog, Mark Shuttleworth has promised a refreshed look over the next two years, in particular a look at typography and iconography, although the Ambiance and Radiance themes were not mentioned.

Other Updated Components

Firefox and Thunderbird have been upgraded to version 13, and Rhythmbox has been upgraded to version 2.97, with a new control panel design. Also, the kernel moves to v3.4, GCC to v4.7 and only Python 3 will be shipped with the final release.

How to avoid paying 'Windows Tax' on your next PC

Unfortunately for many avid Linux users, most new computers - laptops or desktops - ship with Windows, which means that part of the price you pay for your new machine is spent on an operating system which you plan to eradicate as soon as you turn it on. Nobody likes seeing money go down the drain, so how can you avoid gifting your hard-earned cash to Microsoft when you buy your next PC?

Ask for a Windows refund

When you buy a new Windows 7 PC, it is possible (although often difficult) to obtain a Windows refund from your manufacturer, as long as you don't accept the terms of the EULA - basically it's best not to go through the Windows setup if you plan on doing this. Instead, try sending a polite email to the manufacturer explaining that you do not plan to use your copy of Windows and asking for a refund for it. What they do about it is completely at their discretion, but the more persistent you are, the further you are likely to get!

You may need your Windows serial number, and the manufacturer may ask you to send your machine back to them so that they can remove Windows (this seems to be a policy in the case of Acer hardware) but again, persistent negotiation may get you out of this situation. Best of luck, and let me know how you get on in the comments!

Get a non-Windows machine

The easy way to avoid the customer service pass-the-parcel described above is to simply buy a machine without Windows pre-installed; be it one without any OS, or one that ships with a Linux distro. Many custom PC manufacturers give the option of not having an operating system. If it's a desktop you're after, why not try building your own? A quick Google search will pull up thousands of guides on how to do this, and you tend to spend less on components than you would on an equivalent spec pre-built machine, even without taking Windows tax into account.

Chris Kenyon of Canonical recently revealed that Ubuntu is set to ship on 5% of all PCs sold next year. Unfortunately though, many systems are only shipped with Linux distros due to their budget performance - because they simply can't handle the more resource-hungry Windows. Some manufacturers, however, build their hardware specifically for Linux - take a look at System76 - these guys make desktops, laptops and servers that ship with Ubuntu, and they range from Intel Atom powered NetTops to liquid-cooled i7 beasts.

How about something a little different...

Just this morning, Linux Mint announced the MintBox - a mini PC which bears resemblance to a wireless router. In fact, it's a dual-core PC with ATI Radeon graphics, up to 8GB RAM, USB 3.0 outputs and two HDMI outputs. And of course, it will ship with Linux Mint!

The MintBox

If you want something even smaller, check out the credit card sized Raspberry Pi, or even smaller, the USB stick sized Cotton Candy, which runs Android or Ubuntu for ARM.

The Cotton Candy

So there is no shortage of ways to avoid paying for the OS you never wanted in the first place, at least until the fabled 'Year of Linux on the Desktop' rears its head!

A Look at Cinnamon 1.4 in Linux Mint 13 ('Maya')

Linux Mint 13 shipped towards the end of last month in two editions: one featuring GNOME 2 fork 'MATE' and the other with Mint's own Cinnamon UI. Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME Shell which made its first appearance in Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' and provides a more traditional GNOME-2-like feel to GNOME Shell.

Workspace Switching

In 'Lisa', Cinnamon inherited GNOME Shell's workspace switching style which, it has to be said, has its faults. When using multiple monitors, the workspace would only be switched on the primary display (now changed, you can change it back in 'Cinnamon Settings'), and the 'add-a-new-workspace-as-it's-needed' approach can be confusing.

In Cinnamon 1.4, workspace switching has been completely restructured. The hot corner at the top (or Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow) now reveals a Compiz-style 'expo', with a neat 'plus' button to add another workspace, and a cross in the corner of each workspace to remove it - no more automatic adding or removal of workspaces!

The 'Expo'

Cinnamon 1.4 keeps the 'scale' overview too (Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow), which spreads out all the windows within your current workspace for you, so you can see the one you're looking for more easily. Oh, and all of this works a lot better with multiple monitors too!

The 'Scale' Overview

Friendlier Panel and Mint Menu

The Cinnamon Panel is now more friendly to tweak to your liking - a 'Panel Edit Mode' enables you to drag applets to your heart's content without worrying about messing up individual applets. The Mint Menu now features drag and drop support, and some new artwork. 'Alacarte', the old GNOME 2 menu editor, has been resurrected for Cinnamon 1.4 and made compatible with Mint Menu so you can edit the structure of the Mint Menu to suit your tastes.

Menu editor, forked from Alacarte

The Mint Menu

Overall Impression

Whereas Cinnamon 1.2 felt very much like GNOME Shell, but with a few extensions added on, 1.4 sees Cinnamon really come into its own. Cinnamon 1.4 is highly recommended to anybody looking for a modern, up-to-date desktop with the traditional GNOME feel.

Gloobus-Preview and CoverGloobus

Gloobus Studio is a small company which has made a name for itself with 'Gloobus-Preview', capable of quickly previewing almost any kind of file (similar to Apple's 'Quicklook'). They've also given the world 'CoverGloobus', a desktop-gadget sort of app, which shows you the album cover and information about your current track in a variety of media players.

CoverGloobus

Gloobus-Preview

Gloobus-Preview will preview pretty much anything. Once it's installed, all you have to do is open Nautilus (or Marlin - see below for details on how to install), select a file and press space, and a sleek, transparent preview window will appear. Gloobus-Preview supports images, documents, audio (unfortunately FLAC support is missing), video, and even source code and fonts.

Reading from the top left: JPEG, PDF, MP3, AVI, TTF, C++. Many more formats are also supported.

CoverGloobus

Covergloobus is a highly customisable/themeable app that you can stick anywhere on your desktop. Depending on the theme, CoverGloobus can feature album art, song information, player controls, rating and song progress. It can even show song lyrics from a variety of sources, and guitar tabs from ultimate-guitar.com (I should mention that the screenshot below misses out the warning from UG that you are using an unauthorised app, and that they'd rather you used their official paid app)! CoverGloobus works with every media player I can think of, so I definitely recommend giving it a go.

This CoverGloobus theme (designed by me :D) is available on DeviantART (click here!), as well as many others.

How to install (Ubuntu)

Gloobus-Preview has a PPA for Karmic through to Precise:

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gloobus-dev/gloobus-preview
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get install gloobus-preview gloobus-sushi unoconv

You only need gloobus-sushi in Oneiric and Precise, this replaces gnome-sushi which was introduced in GNOME3, but doesn't work properly in Ubuntu. You only need unoconv for OpenDocument files.

To use Gloobus-Preview with Marlin (see my post on Elementary OS Luna for details on Marlin) open dconf-editor (install it with 'sudo apt-get install dconf-tools') and navigate to apps/marlin/preferences and change the previewer-path entry to '/usr/bin/gloobus-preview'. You should be ready to go.

CoverGloobus has a PPA for Lucid through to Oneiric:

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gloobus-dev/covergloobus
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get install covergloobus

If you want to use CoverGloobus in Precise you can take the slightly dodgy route of downloading the .deb build from Launchpad (find it here), this worked fine for me, and hopefully will do until Gloobus get a Precise build into PPA (which should hopefully be soon, as they recently did this for Gloobus-Preview).

How to install (other OS)

Fedora: Gloobus-Preview is in the repos, so just 'sudo yum install gloobus-preview'. CoverGloobus unfortunately isn't, and after much Googling I'm afraid I couldn't find any further information on it (though if you're wiser than me, please let me know in the comments).

Arch: Gloobus-Preview is in the AUR, if you're running GNOME3 install this to replace gnome-sushi, otherwise you just need this. CoverGloobus is also in the AUR here, but it is out of date (1.6, latest is 1.7.6).

Sneak Peek at Elementary OS 'Luna'

If you haven't heard of it, Elementary OS is a fairly recent distro based on Ubuntu. Elementary say they're all about "performance, ease of use and simplicity", and having given their first release a go, I certainly agree. 'Jupiter' was released just over a year ago now, based on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), and at first glance looked very much like Maverick itself, but with DanRabbit's beautiful Elementary GTK theme and icon theme, and Docky along the bottom, featuring some unfamiliar icons for the new Elementary apps.

Now though, the second iteration of Elementary looks as if it's becoming closer to release (or at least testing), and things are looking a bit different - 'Luna' is based on Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) and features a whole new desktop environment called Pantheon.

Pantheon in Ubuntu 12.04

Here are some of the things to look forward to:

Plank

Plank is a lightweight dock. It's loosly based on Docky, but rewritten in Vala, which means there's no need for Mono libraries, but it's also a lot simpler than Docky, perhaps a bit too simple for some. There's currently no drag-and-drop support, so you have to lock launchers to Plank in the order you intend to keep them, if you want to customise it there's not much you can change (and if you want to, you have to edit /home.config/plank/dock1/settings - be careful!), and there's no fancy zoom effect either, but remember that any of this could change as Luna isn't even beta testing yet. Other than these issues, Plank loads fast, and seems quite stable - it works.

Plank

Wingpanel

Wingpanel seems very similar to the Unity panel, with the same applets on the right-hand side, each bringing up the same menus. The only real difference is the date (in the centre, like GNOME Shell) and the 'Applications' button, which opens the Slingshot launcher.

Wingpanel

Slingshot

Slingshot is Luna's take on the Unity dash, or the GNOME Activities overlay, and can be used to search for apps or run commands. At first I didn't think it fitted in too well with the Elementary theme, but Slingshot is growing on me. I do, however, think that scrolling might have been a bit more intuitive than the iOS-style 'pages' system. I've also found that Slingshot loses focus as soon as it's opened, so you have to click on it to start typing, although I imagine this is a bug that will be fixed in good time.

Slingshot search

Marlin

Marlin is the file manager in Elementary, and has risen from the ashes of 'Nautilus Elementary'. It combines a sleek appearance with some rather unique functionality - to open a file or folder in Marlin you only click once, and to select it you just press the plus icon which appears when you hover over it. The behaviour of the address bar is similar to that of Nautilus, however in Marlin you have the ability to type locations into the address bar and edit the current path in a very smooth fashion.

Marlin

Midori

Midori is Elementary's web browser. You can search using a range of engines from the address bar, including Duck Duck Go, Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia, and there's even an 'In Private Browsing' mode.

Midori

Beatbox

Beatbox is the Elementary music player, and clearly takes a lot of inspiration from iTunes, at least as far as the interface is concerned. Beatbox has support for smart playlists, last.fm scrobbling and internet radio.

Beatbox

Postler, Maya, Dexter

Postler is the mail client, Maya is the calendar and Dexter is the contact manager, and the three work together very nicely. Postler was very simple to set up with my Gmail account, and Dexter was able to find contacts from my online accounts (Google and Windows Live), but unfortunately I couldn't get Maya set up with my Google calendar.

 The Dexter screenshot is from the Elementary website (so as to avoid publicly listing the personal details of my friends and family)! Remember, if any of the default apps don't fit your taste, Elementary is a Ubuntu variant, so you can install any of your favourite apps in exactly the same way as you would in Ubuntu.

When will Luna be released?

The Elementary developers insist that Luna will only be released when it's ready - they don't want to put pressure on themselves to rush their work by announcing a release date now. We can guess that since Luna is based on Precise, it won't be released until after Precise is officially released at the end of April (see my post on Precise and its new features), so perhaps after Precise's release we'll see a beta/some sort of test? We can only guess, but Luna looks to be shaping up as a brilliant OS, and I for one am looking forward to giving the final release a go.

How to try it

Luna hasn't been officially released for beta testing so it could still contain critical bugs, but if you really want to give the Pantheon desktop a go you can install it in Ubuntu (Oneiric or Precise) by adding the Elementary OS daily builds PPA: 'sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/daily' and Marlin's separate daily build PPA: 'sudo add-apt-repository ppa:marlin-devs/marlin-daily', and then running 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install elementary-desktop marlin'.