29 Sep

Meet Compton

Did you miss anything in Lubuntu? Maybe some eyecandy like Compiz does in Ubuntu? Well, that solved for low-spec computers too. You can have shadows, transparencies and smooth transitions in your windows and programs thanks to Compton, the new composite manager in town. It’s a fork from xcompmgr-dana (which is a fork istelf from xcompmgr). Thanks to our pals at Crunchbang Linux, we can use the GIT versions on Lubuntu too.

Download your 32bit or 64bit version and try it while it’s hot. Combine it with your favourite dock or whatever. And this program solves the problem that Lubuntu 12.10 users may have with other composite managers, like Cairo or XCompMgr. You can check the screenshot to see it’s really beautiful, but I can sure you that it’s really fast too!

17 Aug

Happy Birthday, Debian and Gnome!

Debian is 19 years old, from Ian Murdock’s foundation letter to this year’s celebration. Also, Gnome, another of our favourite desktop environments gets a bit older, 15 years (almost a teen!) and launched this website for spreading the word.

Congratulations from this blog and all the Lubuntu Team and crew, and dedicated this blue (of course!) cake. You’re inspiring us. Go ahead!

Via MuyLinux.

14 Aug

A few things

First of all, let me introduce this article with a major update on PCManFM and LibFM. It reaches up to 1.0 with a lot of changes and memory leak fixing. Literally, from the author:

This is a historic milestone for PCManFM and libfm. For some things you have waited years to get there, for other things it’s only been 10 months (since last release) but we can now bring you a MAJOR (really!) update. Mainly thanks to the work done by Andriy lately but ofc building on top of shoulders of giants who laid the foundation earlier. Just check the changelogs, they keep going on and on and on!

The changes ranges from minor things, nice features (multiple wall papers anyone?) to fixing memory leaks and crashes. And we can already spot the next minor feature upgrade of this bundle. Give 1.0 a good spin and report bugs in the tracker.

Via LXDE blog.

Also, the Box icon theme is being complete, as we need to substitue completey the Elementary dependencies. So the new mini icons are in progress and, of course, following the Lubuntu / Box design guidelines:

02 Aug

Box icon theme

The new Box icon theme is (almost) finished, already pushed up onto Launchpad for being merged with *buntu repos. So, if you’re a lucky person because you installed Lubuntu 😀 then a simple update will change the icons to the new ones soon. But if you don’t like them don’t worry, the original Elementarized is still there.

This was an extremely hard work. Every icon is being retouched pixel by pixel so you c an get a nice interface and you’ll be comfortable with your desktop. I’d like to dedicate this theme to my “mentor” and inspiration icon guy, Jakub “Jimmac” Steiner, and of course, Dan Rabitt, the creator of Elementary, both obligatory references in the interface design scene. Oh, and to all the Lubuntu crew, specially the one who usually saves my life designing with me, Alexander Andjelkovich, another member of the Lubuntu Artwork Team.

09 Jul

PCManFM 1.0

PCManFM is arriving “dangerously” to 1.0 final (now it’s jusrt a release candidate). A lot of improvements within, like external thumbnailer support, new file attribute dialog, support for modifier keys on drag and drop, symbolic link creation, individual wallpapers per desktop and documentation. See the changes and download (if you  like to compile by yourself). Or wait for Lubuntu repos update. It won’t be too late.

Via LXDE Blog.

02 Jul

Quantal UI Improvements

The Lubuntu Artwork Team is not sleeping. We’re getting some UI revamped elements, improving the current theme and getting it to a higher level. Among the icon theme (being exhaustely developed), the GTK2 / GTK3 themes had been redesigned (for both looking better and integrate between them). Look how the PCManFM’s toolbar look now:

Also, I’d like to remember to any reader and user that the Wallpaper Contest is still open and we accept submissions. Create a wallpaper and we will include it on the Quantal distro. Remember, you could be famous! Check it out at Flickr.

21 Jun

Audacious 3.3 alpha

The default audio player of Lubuntu has get a new and revamped interface with lots of UI improvements, like the “lcd” screen, move the controls to a primary toolbar (better for use in Gnome), and a new genre column. Also, all these changes were added to the list:

  • the MPRIS2 plugin now supports seeking and getting/setting the volume
  • the search tool plugin is more inteligent and lets you search by artist, album and song title simultaneously and also, more info is displayed when searching
  • new search tool shortcut (CTRL + Y) using the GTK interface
  • partially re-written core output code
  • new “speed and pitch” plugin (replacing SndStretch)
  • fixed audio conversions so that bit-perfect playback for 16 and 24 bit audio files
  • GIO transport plugin enabled by default, supporting ftp://, sftp://, and smb:// URI protocols
  • the LIRC plugin has been re-added to Audacious (it was missing in the 3.x series)
  • a new output plugin has been added for OpenBSD’s sndio audio system
  • the OSSv3 output plugin has been removed
  • a global hotkey can be assigned to raise/focus Audacious
  • Audacious now only supports GTK3
If you want to install this update do this at the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/unstable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacious

Via: WebUpd8.
11 Jun

LXPanel 0.5.10

Updates from LXDE blog:

Some weeks ago we gave you 0.5.9, this time some changes has been made to the plugins distributed with LXPanel and thus we put a new version for your feets. Given the translation status in this release a new version is very probably coming out soon as most languages did not get their strings to 100% done.

And the best, automatically passed through the GIT to the Ubuntu general repos., so this time you don’t have to wait. Also, small updates on PCManFM and its libraries also happened today. Great news, indeed. Thanks, brother, for the info.