Indicator Brightness

I dual-boot Ubuntu with ChromeOS on one of my Chromebooks but, annoyingly, the brightness controls don’t work out of the box.

Now, with a bit of hackery kung-foo, I could probably get them to work. But as I don’t tend to adjust my brightness often it seems like a lot of hassle. Especially when there is a simpler solution available.

Indicator Brightness

Indicator-Brightness is a panel-based applet for Ubuntu that – no surprise here, folks – lets you adjust the brightness of your computer’s screen.

It’s not revolutionary, but it sure is handy. There are three ways to use the application to control brightness:

• Click on the indicator icon and select an increment
• Scrollwheel over the indicator icon (scroll up to increase brightness, etc)
• Assign keyboard shortcuts to increase/reduce brightness

This latter one will appeal to most. With a few clicks you can readily assign brightness up and brightness down to your respective brightness keys. No editing configuration files, or installing patches from forums.

You can find instructions on setting those up on the project homepage @ this link.

Install Indicator Brightness in Ubuntu

Installing the applet in Ubuntu 11.10 through 13.04 is as easy as running the following commands in a Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:indicator-brightness/ppa sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install indicator-brightness

If a PPA is a bit too much for you, you can grab a .Deb installer from the project launchpad page @ launchpad.net/indicator-brightness

Add Brightness Control to Ubuntu Desktop With This Handy App OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

DeviceGuru tipped us to the release of the latest single board computer from Beagle Board. It's been two years since the previous BeagleBone was released, and today they've released the BeagleBone Black (including full hardware schematics) at a price competitive with the Raspberry Pi ($10 more, but it comes with a power brick). Powered by a Cortex-A8, it has 512M of DDR3 RAM, 2G of onboard eMMC, two blocks of 46 I/O pins, a pair of 32-bit DSPs, the usual USB host/client ports, Ethernet, and micro-HDMI (a much requested feature). Support is provided for Ångstrom GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, and Android out of the box. Linux Gizmos reports where some of the cost savings came from: "According to BeagleBoard.org cofounder Jason Kridner, interviewed in a Linux.com report today, cost savings also came from removing the default serial port as well as USB-to-serial and USB-to-JTAG interfaces, and including a cheaper single-purpose USB cable. (Three serial interfaces are available via the expansion headers.) In addition, the power expansion header for battery and backlight has been removed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Optional New Article List

We updated our Android application yesterday with a few fixes and new features that some of you have been requesting.

Since we re-launched our Android app earlier this year reaction has been fantastic – and not just from those who liked it, but also from those who felt it could be better. Many of those in Camp Latter have been super helpful, offering constructive criticism, and pointers for improvements and fixes.

One feature many of you repeatedly asked for was a slide-in side-bar. So we’ve added one using the awesome open-source SlidingMenu library. Just slide your finger/thumb from the left of the screen to the right, and the sidebar appears.

We’ve also swapped out our network backend to use a new library that addresses some of the shortcomings in Android’s own simplified network library. Sounds boring, but it means that our app now sucks on less battery juice as a result. Which is a result. Result!

Also in the “you asked, we give” category is an optional article list view with (much) larger thumbnails.

Changelog in Full New

• Optional list view with bigger thumbnails
• Slide-in sidebar
• Article list cards now have rounded corners
• New network backend

Fixes

• Links in comments now open in browser
• Fixed reloading quirk
• Browser prompt now remembers choice

Download

OMG! Ubuntu! for Android is free, ad-free, and nice to look at it. Grab it from the Google Play store using the link below. Works on Android 2.3 or higher.

OMG! Ubuntu! Android App

Sliding Menu, Larger Thumbnails & More Added to OMG! Ubuntu! Android App OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Depending on how you pay for it, you'll probably have to part with at least fifty quid for Windows 8, and double (or more) for OS X, and they come with almost no software compared to the average Linux distribution. Yet almost all Linux distributions are free as in zero-cost.

This fortnight we've got a simple question for you: would you (or indeed, do you) pay for Linux?

read more

G-Series SoCs to turn sliver of revenues into wedge

AMD has announced a new range chips for embedded devices, and said it hopes that 20 per cent of its revenues in Q4 2013 will come from that market, rather than the 5 per cent currently.

Adds Insight app nanny to Stream data siphoner

Last year, Atomic Labs, the creator of the Pion web analytics tool, changed its name to Cloudmeter, raised some money, and set above to make its analytics tool more broadly useful for enterprises. Pion has been transformed into a broader tool called Stream, which runs on premises, and Cloudmeter has cooked up an adjunct application performance management tool called Insight, which runs on the Amazon Web Services cloud.

Spanish-made mobes in basic and advanced models

Developers who are interested in building apps for the Mozilla Foundation's web standards–based Firefox OS will be able to get their hands on the first handsets running the open source platform beginning on Tuesday.

New effort to focus on Java EE 7 certification

After tallying the votes in a naming contest that kicked off in October 2012, leading Linux vendor Red Hat has announced that the product formerly known as the JBoss Application Server (AS) will henceforth be known as WildFly.

If it looks like a netbook, feels like a netbook then it probably is a netbook right? 

ASUS don’t think so. They’ve just launched a new 10.1″ “notebook” – the ASUS 1015e - in the USA for a bargainous sub-$300 price tag.

And if that doesn’t scream netbook to you then the middling mobile specs, small screen, integrated graphics, purportedly long battery life and option of a Linux OS might!

The 1015e comes in two flavours: Windows 8 and Ubuntu. Both sport the same base specifications:

• 10.1″ Screen @ 1366 x 768
• Intel Celeron 847 CPU @ 1 Ghz (Dual Core)
• Integrated graphics
• 2GB RAM
• 320GB HDD

Though models with marginally more RAM and HDD space are said to be floating around.

Additional extras include integrated speakers with something called ‘SonicMaster’ (i.e. marketing nonsense); a 720P front-facing webcam; and, if you’re using the Windows 8 version, a smartphone-like 2 second start-up.

Ports wise you’ll find a pair of USB 2.0 slots, a lone USB 3.0 port, VGA and HDMI, card reader and Ethernet. 

On specifications alone the ASUS 1015E is easily of the fastest netbooks ever released. It’s also one of the lightest, weighing just 2.8 lbs with its (default) 6-cell battery, or 2.4 Ibs with a 3-cell battery fitted.

So far there is no word on from where and when the Ubuntu version can be purchased, or whether the “non-netbook netbook” will be available outside of the US.

Via Notebook italia

ASUS Revive The Netbook With Sub-$300 Model, Offer Ubuntu Option OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

When you call your business Penguin Computer & Telephone Solutions, it's obvious that Linux is your favorite operating system. Company owner Frank Sflanga, Jr. happily works on Windows, Mac and whatever else you want or have around, but he is a Linux person at heart; in fact, he's a founder and leading member of The Southwest Florida GNU/Linux Users Group. But the point of this interview, which some will want to label an ad (although it's not), is to show how Frank started his one-man consulting business and made it successful so that other Slashdot readers can follow in his footsteps and become self-employed -- if they are so inclined. You might want to note that most of Frank's clients were not familiar with Linux when he first started working with them, and most are not particularly interested in software licensing matters as long as Frank keeps their stuff working. You might also want to note that Ft. Myers, FL, where Frank is located, is not exactly famous as a hotbed of leading-edge technology, which means that even if you live someplace similar, where business owners ask "What's a Linux?" you might be able to make a decent living running a Linux-based IT consulting business.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The ‘Album’ View in GNOME Music at the time of writing

Work on a new music player for the GNOME desktop continues to pick up pace.

The plainly named ‘Music’ was one of several ‘core GNOME app’ designs envisioned for the ‘new’ GNOME 3.x desktop. But until recently it remained little more than a mock-up on a wiki-page in a cob-webbed corner of the internet.

That was until the irrepressibly motivated Seif Lotfy stepped in, gathered a group of developers around the project and, in less than a month, turned it into a full-working application.

Music is expected to replace Rhythmbox as the default music application on the GNOME desktop, possibly as early as GNOME 3.10.

Music in Ubuntu GNOME 13.04

Development

Music is still very much ‘in development’. But work on the app seems breakneck at present. Almost every day a new key change, feature, or fix is added by the dev team as it pushes towards completing “Phase 1″ of its development road-map.

Post “phase 1″ (and an expected public beta) work on filling out the feature set will begin. This will include:

• Playlist creation/management
• ‘Selection’ functionality across all views
• Adding Search
• Implement remote resources

But so far so good! If you’re interested in testing or helping you’ll find more information about the app on this GNOME Wiki Page.

GNOME’s New Music App Starts to Take Shape OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Red Hat and VMware want to be your private parts

The cloud is at the same point in its history that proprietary minicomputers were at four decades ago.

'K.I.T.T., you try something like that again, I'll put sugar in your gas tank'

What’s your next car dashboard going to look like? The answer may well be: however you want it to look. If Nvidia has its way, car manufacturers and owners will have a much wider range of choices when it comes to dashboard displays, navigation sophistication, and personalising the car to the owner.

Less than 3 days remain for open-source e-mail client Geary to raise $100,000 towards future development.

Yorba, the company behind the mail app, say that the amount of money they’re seeking is the ‘bare minimum needed to make the next version of Geary’

Geary hit version 0.3 back in March, adding support for multiple-accounts, marking mail as ‘Spam’ and improving the way threaded conversations are displayed.

So far over 900 people have given to the Geary fundraiser over on IndieGoGo. The total at the time of writing sits at $42,000 of the $100,000 target.

Yorba have until just shy of midnight PT on Wednesday April 24th to reach their goal – but, as per IndieGoGo fixed-funding rules, if they fail to reach it they won’t recieve a single cent of the money already pledged.

What $100,000 Gets

But what does $100,000 worth of funding look like when translated into development? Yorba pledge to ‘devote’ three full-time developers to crafting a better Geary.

Backers can expect their money to go towards the adding the following features:

• ‘As You Type’ Searching
• Always-on notification of new emails
• Support for all major IMAP servers
• Auto/Saving of Draft E-Mail
• Transparent GPG integration
• Calendar app integration
  
• Google Contact Address importing

All or Nothing Gamble

It’s an all or nothing gamble by Yorba. Their aim of creating a ‘world-class email client’ for Linux (a Mac port is planned should the goal be met) is certainly one most of us can get behind. With Mozilla now all-but-abandoning Thunderbird, there is a electronic-mail-shaped void to be filled.

But do people see it as a $100,000 void worth filling? In 3 days we’ll find out.

To chuck in a few dollars to the campaign hit the link below. To install the Geary in Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04 follow the intstructions in this post.

Geary on IndieGoGo

Open-Source E-Mail App Geary Enters Final Days of Fundraiser OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Analysis El Reg drills into 10TB/s acceleration tech

Like other system vendors with their own software stacks, IBM is trying to boost the processing speed of its database software so it can take on larger and larger data munching jobs.

Got a spare five three minutes? Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be casting your eyes of my ill-worded prose! 

Rather than spend those precious moments of your life trying to unravel my latest mis-punned pun you could choose to use them answering some questions about the Ubuntu Community.

Why? What’s it about? Over to the survey organiser Nathan Heafner to explain more…

Ubuntu Community Survey

“With Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) being released this month we are knee deep in beta testing, bug tracking, and testing out the new features. Once a year we also have the Ubuntu Community Survey to help us better understand our impact and direction. Generally speaking this survey encompasses questions around contributions to Ubuntu, the drivers for those contributions, and general user data (age, gender).

This year however, a few more community based questions were added, thus the name was changed. You may remember this survey being the Ubuntu Beta Users Survey. Don’t worry, the survey should take less than 3 minutes to complete.

The results will be released to the public for review, and there will be a follow up blog post pointing out the highlights.

Also, this year we are incorporating a social aspect to the survey for next year. If you would like to participate, please leave a comment below with any question you would like to ask in the next survey. Two comments will be picked at random, and these question will be included in the next community survey. Questions that are offensive, demeaning, or destructive will not be considered. Questions in the comments section from other sites that cover the survey will also be included in the pool.

The purpose of this survey is to gather data that will allow us to statistically analyze the growing community of Ubuntu users, specifically those that contribute to the community. With this data we hope to better understand our growing community and refocus resources where they are most needed.”

Ubuntu Community Survey

Ubuntu Community Survey Needs Your Help OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Daily builds of the Ubuntu Touch developer preview based on 13.04 are now available

For you bleeding edge Ubuntu Touch users, starting today daily images based on Raring are newly available from the Ubuntu QA isotracker. These are not (yet) the default images, but work is being done to iron out the kinks for it’s transition.

As usual, the officially supported devices are the Nexus series –the Galaxy, 4, 10 and 7 Nexuses (Nexi?)– and the images and further info can be found over on the Ubuntu QA.

Raring Daily Builds on Ubuntu QA isotracker 

Updating Your Nexus Device to Raring Ubuntu Touch

This requires a extra few steps, but is much like flashing it normally. First, if you don’t already have them you’ll need the Ubuntu phablet tools.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install phablet-tools

Second, you’ll need to download a script to provide the alternate settings for your device’s transition to Raring.

wget http://people.canonical.com/~sergiusens/raring_settings.py

Ensuring all these commands are executed from the same directory, update your device using:

phablet-flash --alternate-settings raring_settings.py

If you’re not running Ubuntu Touch on your Nexus you can follow our full guide to installing it:

 [How To] Install Ubuntu Touch Preview on Nexus Devices  

As always, these images are not intended for the average user and Ubuntu Touch is not intended to replace Android. They are intended for developers, testers and people who want to help.

Ubuntu Touch Development Builds Are Now Raring Based OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

An anonymous reader writes with a link to a recent post on Red Hat senior interaction designer Máirín Duffy's blog with an illuminating look at Red Hat's design process, and how things like graphic elements, widget behavior, and bootup time are taken into account. It starts: "So I have this thing on my desk at Red Hat that basically defines a simple design process. (Yes, it also uses the word 'ideate' and yes, it sounds funny but it is a real word apparently!) While the mailing list thread on the topic at this point is high-volume and a bit chaotic, there is a lot of useful information and suggestions in there that I think could be pulled into a design process and sorted out. So I took 3 hours (yes, 3 hours) this morning to wade through the thread and attempt to do this."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ars Technica reviewer Lee Hutchinson says that Dell's Ubuntu-loaded 13" Ultrabook (the product of "Project Sputnik") is "functional," "polished," and (for a Linux laptop) remarkably unremarkable. "It just works," he says. Hutchinson points out that this is a sadly low bar, but nonetheless gives Dell great credit for surpassing it. He finds the Ultrabook's keyboard to be spongy, but has praise for most elements of the hardware itself, right down to (not everyone's favorite) the glossy screen.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

darthcamaro writes "The JBoss Application Server is no more. Just like Red Hat killed Red Hat Linux in 2003 to make way for Fedora, the same is now happening with JBoss and the new WildFly project. 'There was of course the application server, there are a number of JBoss commercial products, there was the community site, etc., so when you asked someone "What is JBoss?" the answer was varied,' Jason Andersen, director, product line management, at Red Hat, explained. 'What we wanted to do was cement the idea that JBoss is a portfolio of middleware products and not just the application server.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.