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Category: LibreOffice 5.0

My review of Ubuntu Gnome 16.04

2016-05-06 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a couple of weeks since Ubuntu 16.04 was out! I decided to take my time and give the new distribution some time before making a review, I think two weeks are enough time, so let’s take a look at Ubuntu Gnome 16.04!!

 

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 new logo

The distribution

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 became an official Ubuntu flavor, making use of the Gnome interface, unlike the official Ubuntu that uses Unity as interface, it comes with Gnome software and isn’t a clone of Ubuntu, there are some minor differences in apps, Basero is  the default disk burn utility for example, and gnome software is at 3.20 out of the box.

 

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 Screenshot
Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 Screenshot

Please note that some of the tools in the screenshot aren’t installed natively, such as Zim-wiki and Sublime text.

Download and Install

I’ve downloaded Ubuntu Gnome via torrent because I read it’s better for the servers, and come to think of it since the electricity goes out very often here, it’s better to download Ubuntu via torrent to save myself the trouble of downloading it all over again! It was downloaded eventually after 6 hours.
Checkout the download link from here.

 

It took 6 hours to download!
Torrent download information

I put it on a USB and began installing, pretty much the same since Ubuntu 10.10.
This version has 3 years of LTS support, why not five years? I’m not sure.

 

Steps to take after installing Ubuntu Gnome 16.04

Most of these steps are on my blog, but it won’t hurt to collect them all together in one neat list, would it?
  • Configuring wireless and Bluetooth, which is really easy to do but very important.
  • Installing the extras, the restricted extras needed to view media files and flash, and some fonts.
  • Installing my softwares, the usual package of stuff: VLC, Inkscape, Gimp,  Xmind and Zimwiki
  • Installing extensions: Clipboard indicator and OpenWeather.
  • Editing input sources to make it change between languages by pressing alt + shift, you can find how to do it from this link.
  • Restore the bookmarks and data (notes), Firefox is pretty easy to restore, and so is Zimwiki! All you have to do is to put the note folder in Home.
  • Customize LibreOffice. To make it more compatible with Arabic.
  • Disable apport, more details in the defects section.
  • Installing powertop for more power save and CPU Frequency to reduce fan noise!
  • Pomodro timer works beautifully with Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 and you have to install it, it’s the best timer app for Ubuntu to date! Read my review about it from here.
  • Disable tracker-store as shown in this askubuntu link. 
  • Disable evolution safely without uninstalling it. Saving nearly 170 MB of RAM.
  • I also decided to skip the Grub menu since I only use Ubuntu 16.04, to do that you need to download and install Grub Customizer with these commands:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

    After that go to Grub customizer and enter your password, go to settings and uncheck: show menu and look for other operating systems. This way you will get rid of Grub and boot to Ubuntu right away, don’t do this if you dual boot!!< red;”

 

 

Features and improvements

  • I do appreciate the Gnome 3.18 interface! A huge jump from the 3.10 that Ubuntu 14.04.4 ships with, as it has many improvements and tweaks and fixes for annoying bugs in Gnome 3.10 (LTS to LTS upgraders will relate!).
  • The notifications style has changed completely, it’s now displayed in a drop-down menu under the clock.
  • The annoying bottom bar was removed completely, a feature I will never miss! It’s replaced with a neat arrow that’s docked on the bottom left corner of the screen.
    Notification dock in Ubuntu Gnome 16.04
  • The new boot logo is so much better than the old one! That looks like a foot! This is more sleek and streamlined, reminds me of SEGA’s logo somehow!

 

Ubuntu Gnome’s new logo

 

Issues and defects

  • So far the performance is OK and there are few crashes, pretty much the same as Ubuntu 14.04.4 which is pretty stable by the way.
  • I’ve noticed that the network icon sometimes disappears, hopefully an update will fix this, my only fix is to reboot.
  • I would recommend that you disable apport as it will bring up a message every time you reboot.
  • Software isn’t as clear as it should, I can’t tell how big are the softwares and updates, so I use Synaptic on a daily basis to get things done!
  • When disconnecting the wireless network with the hardware key it’s not recognized anymore until several reboots, it’s a known bug but with no fix afaik! The only info I could find was this terminal command: sudo service network-manager restart This command will restart the network manager and allow it to connect without the need to restart several times.
  • The fan noise was too much at times, even when the computer was idle, I thought upgrading from Ubuntu Gnome 14.04.4 to Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 would fix this but it didn’t, until I installed CPU Frequency!
  • Nautilus 3.14 could use an update and we don’t have to wait till 16.10 to get one! I managed to follow a rather risky tutorial to update it to 3.20 and it’s so much better!
  • If you are using an SSD you might want to look at this post to avoid the /dev/sd1 :Recovering Journal issue.
  • Starting up without a user interface at times, and my only cure was to restart the computer, I found a fix that suggests to clear the packages config from Synaptic.
  • Sometimes shutdown can be slow, I found the steps in here worked like a charm!

“Software”

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 ships with Gnome software 3.20. Which is the software that is supposed to replace Ubuntu Software center, I find them both buggy and unusable, as I use Synaptic to do my package work.

 

Softwares 3.20 on Ubuntu 16.04

I do believe it needs more work to become a reliable software center, it stays in the background and behaves oddly, it doesn’t show the download progress on software being downloaded too, which seems odd!

I winded up un-installing software and reinstalling the good’ol Ubuntu software center!

Final words

Ubuntu Gnome is a great choice for anyone who wants to enjoy Gnome  without having to leave the Ubuntu universe to Fedora or OpenSuse, it provides the purist Gnome experience possible for Ubuntu, and it preformed better than regular Ubuntu installed on older machines (with proper tweaking mentioned here).

The more I use it the more I could tell that this is the distro for me, great job indeed by the team, and I rate it as a must have!

I hope you enjoyed this post, please let me know what you think in the comments section below, and remember: Sharing is caring!!

LibreOffice 5.0 hanging on Ubuntu, can’t highlight fix!

2015-08-13 / / 0 Comments

While messing around with LibreOffice Writer 5.0 on Ubuntu I discovered that I can’t highlight text, and trying to highlight text made the whole program freeze! I managed to fix it and this is how I did it..

I always download two versions of LibreOffice, one for Linux and the other for Windows, usually the one with the issues it the Windows version, but in this case it worked fine, while the Linux version was acting off.

I assumed that the main culprit is the Java machine, because in Windows it refused to work with the 32 Java machine I had installed which ran version 4.4 well. So installing a 64 bit Java machine did the trick, and the reports worked fine!
I looked at the machines I have installed and they were: and none of them made the problem go away!
You can access them by clicking: Tools Options Advanced

 

Java machines on Ubuntu

They were both excepted by LibreOffice but the problem persisted even after restarting over and over again!

I’ve finally been able to fix the problem that made LibreOffice hang and freeze when highlighting a text.

All you have to do is to navigate to:

/home/”User name”/.config/ and delete the folder LibreOffice.

It will work fine after that!!

Thunar confing file unhidden to delete LibreOffice config

You might have to unhide the folder in your file manager!

It’s not a Java machine problem. But I don’t think it would hurt if you download the latest version.

Setting the first line as the file name in LibreOffice

2015-08-10 / / 0 Comments
LibreOffice Logo

One of the few features I missed moving from Microsoft Office was the auto name upon save, where Word takes the first line of the text and uses it to name the text file. LibreOffice (and OpenOffice before that) don’t have this feature! It’s a small thing but over time it becomes a growing nuisance!

Luckily there is an easy fix for that! Which enables you to enjoy the luxury of easy naming of files and limit the Untitled flood over time!

We are going to use a feature known as macros. macros in office are a Visual Basic code that is used to preform a certain task over and over and is triggered by an event. In this post I’ll be showing how to create a macro that saves the file using the first line of text when pressing the key combination of CTRL + S (assigning the macro to save or save as will result in two files: untitled and the first line of text!) So at first, we are going to need our macro. I took this code as is from an OpenOffice form, it works fine without editing:

 

  Sub FirstLineFileName_Writer
    On Error goto EH
    oDoc = ThisComponent
    oVC = oDoc.CurrentController.getViewCursor
    Mark = oDoc.Text.CreateTextCursorByRange(oVC)'mark position of view cursor.
    oTC = oDoc.Text.CreateTextCursor 'created at the beginning of doc.
    While oTC.isEndOfParagraph 'skip empty paragraphs.
    oTC.gotoNextParagraph(false)
    Wend
    oVC.gotoRange(oTC,false) 'a text cursor can't go to the end of a line
    oVC.gotoEndOfLine(true)  'so we have to use the view cursor.
    filename = oVC.String
    url = ConvertToURL("C:\" & filename & ".odt")'Insert Your Desired Directory Path.
    oDoc.StoreAsURL(url,Array())
    oVC.gotoRange(Mark,false) 'return view cursor to original position.
    oDoc.Modified = false 'avoid Save being called if doc closed without further edits.
    End 'end normal execution.
    EH: 'error handler.
    MsgBox "You may have illegal file name characters in the first line." & Chr(13)_
    & Chr(13) & filename,,"AN ERROR OCCURRED"
    End Sub

 

This code is used to save the text file by taking the first line of text and setting it as the name. You can edit the directory of the save. Please note that it saves without conformation!

 

Tools > Macros > Organize > Macros >LibreOffice >Basic

Opening the macro menu

New to add a new macro.

 

Adding a new macro

 

Run Macro then choose the macro manually from the menu. But that’s not too handy, is it?

Customizing the key combination

Go to LibreOffice writer and navigate to the menu: Tools > Customize > Tab: Keyboard.

Delete whatever is on CTRL + S, and assign it to the new macro by looking for it, and if everything went according to plan. It should save the 1st line as a file name.

Checkout this for more information.

Important notice

If you get errors it’s because the directory isn’t correct. Libreoffice will default to C:\ and when it can’t save in it. It will crash the macro. I edited the code to: “D:\Documents\ but make sure to choose your own folder.

LibreOffice 5.0 is out!

2015-08-07 / / 0 Comments

Finally after what seemed like forever! LibreOffice 5.0 is out!
“LibreOffice 5.0 is the tenth major release since the launch of the project and and the first of the third development cycle. LibreOffice is a full feature open source office suite which compares head to head with every product in the same category, while it stands out for superior interoperability features.”

 

I’ve downloaded it for both Windows and Linux. And I immediately noticed the different GUI elements implemented into LibreOffice 5 in comparison with 4.x which are differently cleaner and takes less screen space!

 

Thanks to improved filters the compatibility between LibreOffice and other office suits like Microsoft Office has improved. And a lot of under the hood work has been done to improve the stability and reduce the crashes overall.
Version 5 with be the foundation of the Android version, Ubuntu touch, and the upcoming cloud version.

Note: if you are downloading the 64x version for Windows you are going to need a 64x Java machine.

It looks really good and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into it and make full use of it’s amazing features!

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