The 1.0 Beta release of the Lumina Desktop Environment made some news this week. While it is the flagship DE for PC-BSD, Lumina can be installed and used on many other distros as well. We’ll see how to install it on Ubuntu 15.10 (and link to the procedure for other distros) but a little about Lumina first. Continue reading Lumina DE: a fresh desktop to try out
jeex: useful hex tool
There are several cmdline hex editors available on Linux, even vim can use the xxd
utility to edit a file in hex mode (:%!xxd
to edit, :%!xxd -r
to return to text mode). You may have come across ghex
as well, the standard Gnome hex editor. We found a lightweight and powerful hex utility in the default Ubuntu repos – jeex. jeex is also written in Gtk+ and you don’t have to bother about dependencies (unlike bless
, which takes it to mono libraries!!!). Continue reading jeex: useful hex tool
Wryte: dictate your notes
Wryte is a speech recognition software to help you with your notes. While it doesn’t work at the OS level, Wryte is still very useful for bloggers and authors who want to automate a part of their work. The software is fresh-baked and under active development.
notepad.cc alternatives
It’s been a while we visited notepad.cc, a fast web service to jot down your notes or memos or todos and password protect them, or to share info between different systems. No accounts, no logins, no attachments. However, the developer put down a service end notice in Dec 2015. Though it’s still running, the notice is still there and we started looking for some alternatives. Continue reading notepad.cc alternatives
Zathura: tiny PDF viewer
Zathura is a PDF viewer belonging to the same category as MuPDF. It uses vim-like keybinds and is a delight for vim-addicts. However, late-introduced (and modern) vim keybinds like arrow keys page keys etc. work fine with Zathura, making it easier to get accustomed to for regular users. If you don’t like the defaults, many settings can be configured. Font rendering in Zathura seems better than evince, though they use the same poppler library. Continue reading Zathura: tiny PDF viewer
Day Planner: light calendar & reminder app
Day Planner is a calendar cum task manager cum reminder app for the Linux desktop. You can add or import events and get popup notifications for the events. The app is too simple to start with but there are provisions to supercharge it. However, it has certain limitations as we’ll see. Continue reading Day Planner: light calendar & reminder app
Degoo offers 100GB free cloud storage
Referral link for 3 GB bonus.
Degoo is a new cloud storage service offering 100GB free cloud storage. The service claims military grade data encryption and stores multiple copies of your data for redundancy in case of nodal failures. The free plan allows up to 2 synchronized devices. Continue reading Degoo offers 100GB free cloud storage
Gradio: light online radio app
Gradio is an easy to use radio for the Linux desktop written in GTK3. While there are several options to listen to online radio on Linux (e.g. pmrp for cli, Radio Tray or my favourite YaRock), fresh options are always welcome. Continue reading Gradio: light online radio app
PoGoMap: locate all nearby Pokémons
Caught in PokéMania? Can’t wait to catch them all? PoGoMap is a Python utility to find nearby Pokémons. The data is updated live and optionally shows gyms and pokestops in your locality. The client runs on a flask server and uses the google maps service. Though it is still a proof of concept, the utility works precisely. Continue reading PoGoMap: locate all nearby Pokémons
Beautiful Chrome OS theme for Linux
Wanna try the sleek look and feel of Chrome OS on Linux? Here’s a theme to do that! It’s the default Gtk theme on Chromixium OS, the ChromeOS theme. Continue reading Beautiful Chrome OS theme for Linux