Tag Archives: lubuntu

11 Aug

Get Facebook on Pidgin

Facebook made some changes in his API, so any account trying to access from Pidgin Instant Messenger was unsuccessful, until now, thanks to James Geboski and his new plugin for (L)Ubuntu, Debian and OpenSuse. To install put these five command lines in your terminal:

 

sudo sh -c “echo ‘deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jgeboski/xUbuntu_$(lsb_release -rs)/ /’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jgeboski.list” c

cd /tmp && wget http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/jgeboski/xUbuntu_15.04/Release.key

sudo apt-key add – < Release.key

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install purple-facebook

Now open Pidgin, create a new Facebook account (important, not a Facebook XMPP one). This plugin will keep up to date, as the developer will upgrade it. Maybe further versions of Lubuntu or Pidgin will ship this by default. Enjoy!

07 Aug

Lubuntu 14.04.3 LTS

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS
(Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products,
as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support. And that includes, of course, Lubuntu.

We have expanded our hardware enablement offering since 12.04, and with
14.04.3, this point release contains an updated kernel and X stack for
new installations to support new hardware across all our supported
architectures, not just x86.
As usual, this point release includes many updates, and updated
installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to
be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and
corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining
stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

Official announcement here. Download it here.

26 May

Notifications fixed

Remember these ugly notification messages?

Finally, and thanks to Xubuntu guys, the notifications in the Lubuntu desktop will look properly. This is an old bug (see #1362555), affecting multiple themes, crossing and assigning incorrect values to some GTK widgets. But now they’re fixed. If you want to fix it in your system, you must add the Lubuntu Artwork PPA to your system (instructions here). This is how it looks now:

23 Apr

Lubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet is here

As expected, the next version of Lubuntu is here. It’s known as a bug release, as we’re preparing the next generation Qt based desktop. Lots of bugs have been fixed, and there’re many improvements. Artwork has been redesigned too, with a smoother and unified overall look and feel.

Remmarkable changes are:

  • General bug fix release as we prepare for LXQt
  • Many LXDE components have been updated with bug fix releases
  • An update of the artwork (more icons, theme update, more compatibilities …)
Check out the full list of included applications. More data at the official website.
You can read the release notes here. Grab it while it’s hot here.
13 Apr

Client side decorations fixes

Since the arrival of Gnome3 and its Client Side Decorations widgets, some GTK3 apps look weird. That’s why we’ve had another re-merge with Light Themes and adding some specific Lubuntu fixes. These includes Geary full (theme and icons) support, CSD menus, CSD gradients, borders and miscellaneous colours.

Some things must be fixed yet, like toolbar icon sizes and some borders (we’re on it). The fixes have been uploaded to the main branch (in case you want to use our PPA) and as a standalone archive (for other Linux distros). As Lubuntu is on Interface Freeze stage, these late changes won’t be uploaded to Ubuntu’s main repositories for final release on Vivid Vervet, so you’d need to upgrade your theme if you want to fix it. Sorry for the annoyance.
28 Feb

Lubuntu 15.04 Beta 1

We’re preparing Lubuntu 15.04, Vivid Vervet, for distribution in April 2015. With this Beta pre-release, we are now at the stage of being semi stable. However pre-releases are not suitable for a production environment.

Note: this is an beta pre-release. Lubuntu pre-releases are NOT recommended for:

  • regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
  • anyone who needs a stable system
  • anyone uncomfortable running a possibly frequently broken system
  • anyone in a production environment with data or workflows that need to be reliable 

Lubuntu Pre-releases ARE recommended for:

  • regular users who want to help us test by finding, reporting, and/or fixing bugs
  • Lubuntu developers

Read the release notes before downloading.

21 Feb

Lubuntu 14.04.2 available

Lubuntu developers are proud to announce that (with a delay of two weeks) version 14.04.2 of the fast and lightweight operating system is now available for download via this
link.

Release Manager Walter Lapchynski explains: we had to delay the release for two weeks because of problems with X meta-packages which caused us numerous re-spins. But we wanted to do it right in order to maintain stability of existing installations and – on the other hand – roll up accumulated stable updates into updated images to reduce download requirements for new deployments.
Jens Leineweber, Head of Lubuntu Press adds in: and because we want our users to experience a stable environment even for computers with low resources, we decided to not release a .2 version of the alternate installation. That’s due to the fact, that we were not able to fix all the bugs brought to our attention.

One major issue the team is fighting with is the debian-installer that causes troubles. Once again Walter Lapchynski: we’ve been asked a lot lately to stop doing alternates in lieu of netboot, but that’s not really a good solution.

The Lubuntu Team will now team up with the Ubuntu Release Team and Servers Team to develop a possible low resource version of the Ubiquity installer.

Caution: before you install Lubuntu, we advice you to have a read of the
Release notes!

23 Jan

Vivid Alpha 2 ready, so time to work towards Beta 1

Closer and closer we creep towards the release of Vivid Vervet. Alpha 2 testing went well with flying colors thanks to the likes of:

Thank you to all of you that did any sort of testing or bug work. We need all we can get! In about a month’s time, Beta 1 will be ready for official testing. We can have a similarly smooth sail through testing if you can all get out there and test the daily builds. Report bugs on anything (make sure to subscribe the Lubuntu Packages Team) and work with Lubuntu QA to get your bugs properly triaged.
In fact, we need more triage. As much as possible. All the time. We need bugs reports to be detailed, with clear, repeatable steps. We then need to make sure they’re confirmed and that a Bug Control member (me!) can confirm them. They can set the priority and create an upstream bug report and then officially call the bug triaged. Long story short: if you find a bug that does not say Triaged, In Progress, Fix Commited, or Fix Released, there’s more work to be done.
Without this work, we can do little to guide developers. Right now much of the team is heavily focused on developing LXQt, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stomp out some bigger bugs together. If you’d like to help with the triage, join the Lubuntu Packages Team and Bug Squad. Ask for help. The aforementioned Dave Kokandy has been doing a wonderful job lately, as modest as he is, and deserves big ups for attack the problem so vigorously.
For those of you that don’t feel like doing triage, I encourage you to test (all you need is a virtual machine) and to report some bugs. QA is a friendly team and we’re always happy to help if you need it.
For the rest of you simply trying to figure out where the heck to get Alpha 2, here’s the Release Notes. Make sure you read them before you download. There’s always important information on there.