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'.

GNOME 3.4 Available In Ubuntu (Precise) Repositories

GNOME 3.4 was released last week, and is now available in the repositories for Ubuntu (12.04) and Arch (currently only in 'testing' [UPDATE: In extra as of 23-Apr]), and will be included with Fedora 17 when it's released on the 15th May. Here are some of the biggest changes:

Documents and Epiphany Re-styled

The Documents App was introduced in GNOME 3.2, and was designed to make browsing the Documents directory (and your Google Docs) a more streamlined experience. In 3.4, the app has been given a fresh new look, and you can now use it to print documents and create 'collections'. Unfortunately I was unable to get it working properly in Ubuntu (none of the documents from my hard drive will show up), so the screenshot is from the GNOME website.

GNOME Documents

The web browser Epiphany has been renamed 'Web' and given a space-saving makeover, with a new toolbar and a 'super menu'. Other apps have also had overhauls, including Contacts, the Disk Utility (now called 'Disks') and the Passwords & Keys Utility.

Epiphany, now called 'Web'

Document Search

You can now search for files in the activities overview. This feature relies on the Documents app, which means you can search your Google Docs as well as files on your hard drive, but unfortunately it also means that I can't get this working either (for reasons described above!), so again, here is the screenshot from the GNOME website.

Document search

Application Menus

Some of the GNOME apps now have application menus integrated into the top bar, which can be revealed by right-clicking the app's name.

Epiphany's application menu

Dynamic Wallpaper

One of GNOME 3.4's flashier features is 'dynamic wallpaper', a background similar to the default blue stripy one in previous versions, but with the ability to change its brightness according to the time of day. This reminded me of the background of the Playstation 3 'XMB' interface

Other Improvements to Apps

Empathy, the chat client, now supports video, presumably through Google Talk. Chat support for Windows Live Messenger has also been added. Nautilus also gains an 'Undo' function.

How to get it

In Ubuntu 12.04, simply install GNOME Shell from the Ubuntu Software Centre, or enter 'sudo apt-get install gnome-shell' into a terminal. If you already have GNOME Shell in Precise, simply updating the system should do the trick.

In Arch, you will need to wait a little while for this release to reach the stable repositories, unless you have the testing repos enabled. Follow Linux Watch on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ to hear when this happens.

UPDATE: As of 23-Apr-2012, GNOME 3.4 is in Arch's extra repo. If you already have GNOME 3.2, just update your system with 'sudo pacman -Syu', otherwise you can install it with 'sudo pacman -S gnome'.

Ubuntu 12.04 'Precise Pangolin' Shaping Up

The last week has seen the release of Ubuntu 12.04 beta2, the last unstable release before the final version, scheduled for release on the 26th April. Precise looks like a particularly exciting release, gaining some shiny improvements to the Unity interface and the Unity Greeter, the return of Rhythmbox as the default media player, and the solid feeling you expect from a long term support release. Let's have a look some of the main changes since Oneiric:

HUD

One of the big new Unity features is the Head-Up-Display (HUD) which allows you to search application menus (File, Edit, etc.) simply by tapping Alt. This should be especially useful to users of apps like Inkscape and GIMP, where these menus are so vast that you could otherwise find yourself trawling through them for ages to find the tool you're looking for.

Using the HUD to search Inkscape's menus.

The standard app menus in the panel will be sticking around as well though, so don't worry if this isn't for you - the HUD is more of a tool to be used when you can't find something than a replacement for application menus.

The Unity Greeter

The Unity Greeter (login screen) has been revamped, and now includes a pretty new login box showing a logo for the session you're logging into, which smoothly expands into a session chooser dialog. Also, the background of the greeter now automatically changes to match your wallpaper, provided the wallpaper is a sufficiently small file (around 700 kB or less) and its file path doesn't contain spaces. You could change this in Oneiric too, but you had to do it manually using Ubuntu Tweak, or by editing a config file.

New and Improved Dash Lenses

The dash features a new video lens, allowing you to search for videos from your hard drive, and also from online sources such as Youtube, Dailymotion and BBC iPlayer. The files lens has also seen improvements; it no longer relies solely on Zeitgeist, which only lists files you've opened, but you can now use it to search all of your files.

Using the video lens to search BBC iPlayer.

Launchers on multiple monitors

If you have a multi-monitor setup, Precise comes with an option to have a launcher on every monitor (this feature will be disabled by default), instead of the single launcher seen in Natty and Oneiric. You can enable this in display settings. Something which I found a little difficult to get used to when using multiple launchers is the 'Sticky Edges' feature, which restricts cursor movement at the border between displays, designed to make it more difficult to overshoot one of your launchers. This can make it feel as though you have to forcefully ram your cursor from one monitor to the next, but don't worry - again, this can be turned off in display settings if you don't like it.

MyUnity

Settings app MyUnity is not shipped with Ubuntu, but is available in the official Precise repositories (sudo apt-get install myunity). MyUnity allows you to customise the more intricate details of Unity's appearance and behaviour, including the launcher's hiding behaviour and transparency, dash behavior, panel transparency, desktop icons, system fonts and icon and GTK themes. The size of the launcher can now be altered in Ubuntu's appearance settings.

Improved Unity2D

If your system is struggling to handle the more graphics intensive Unity interface it's likely you'll end up using the less demanding Unity2D. Well, in that case you'll be glad to know that Unity 2D has been greatly improved and now looks very similar to its 3D counterpart.

Click to view full-size. Ubuntu 2D above,
standard Ubuntu below.

It's the little things...

It's always nice to see developers paying attention to the tiniest little details - the system icons in the launcher (dash, workspace switcher and trash), as well as NotifyOSD bubbles, will match the colour of your desktop background. OK, so it's not going to revolutionise the way you use your computer but it all adds to the polished feel you get from this release.

New Apps

Rhythmbox will make a return in Precise, replacing Banshee as Ubuntu's media player of choice. Stability and loading time, amongst other things, were given as reasons for this change. Of course, Banshee will still be available in the Ubuntu repositories. Also available in the repos, the freshly released GNOME 3.4, featuring a video calling upgrade for chat client Empathy, 'dynamic wallpaper' and Unity-style quicklists.

What More Could You Ask For?

When even the beta release feels stable and well-finished, it's a good sign for the final version. What I'd really like to see is a more customisable launcher - maybe the ability to move it to the right, or even the bottom to save a bit of space (horizontal space isn't something you can spare much of on a netbook screen, for example). But all-in-all, I'm finding very little to moan about and Precise looks like a release to be excited about. If you can't wait until the 26th, you can download the beta, or upgrade from Lucid or Oneiric by running 'update-manager -d' and choosing to upgrade to 12.04 in the Update Manager. Have fun!