EA Starts Publishing Games in Ubuntu Software Center

EA is one of the most established names in the world of gaming. They have just published two of their browser based games - Lord of Ultima and Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances - in Ubuntu Software Center. May not be their greatest of games but still, EA took some effort to actually publish some of its games in Ubuntu Software Center. I consider this as a welcome move and hopefully a sign of things to come. 

EA Publishes Two of its Browser Based Games in Ubuntu Software Center

EA may not be the kind of company that everyone love. AS a matter of fact, EA was named America's worst company in a recent consumerist survey. But they are definitely big. And their recognition of Ubuntu (and Linux) as a viable platform for playing games can help Ubuntu and Linux community in general, in more ways than one. I know of a number of people who are still using Windows solely for playing games. If more genuine games slowly starts finding its place in Ubuntu Software Center, it is going to be a big win for the entire Linux community. 

As you can also see, both the games are pretty highly rated in Ubuntu Software Center already. And they are both free too. Like most of you, I really want to believe that these are just testing-the-water phase of things and more ingenious and native games from EA are on its way. Let us all hope for a favorable outcome.

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Slow or Erratic Wi-Fi in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS? Try Wicd

Ever since I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Wi-Fi connection has become a pain in the neck. In my laptop, though the network-manager detects my router and easily connects to it through Wi-Fi, internet connection itself was really slow and erratic. On the other hand, Wi-Fi connection itself started dropping very often in my netbook.

Slow Internet Over Wi-Fi Issue in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Both my the laptop and netbook had Wi-Fi speed and connectivity related issues after upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and above (netbook is running Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 1). Either Wi-Fi kept dropping or it became painfully slow. I had to do all kinds of stuff to reconnect it again and sometimes, even a full system restart won't make it connect to Wi-Fi.

Then I came to know about Wicd from this reddit thread. All the time I was thinking like this is some sort of issue caused by faulty network driver, never did I suspect Ubuntu's default Network Manager itself. So I decided to give Wicd (an alternate network manager available in default Ubuntu 12.04 repositories) a try. I installed Wicd and removed network-manager afterwards. Much to my amazement, everything started to work great afterwards.

How to Fix Slow/Erratic Wi-Fi Problem in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS?

• First, you need to install Wicd from Ubuntu Software Center.

• CLICK HERE to install Wicd network manager from Ubuntu Software Center.

• After Wicd installation is complete, search for 'network-manager' in Ubuntu Software Center and remove it before going any further.

• Now, open Wicd from Unity Dash (see screenshot above). Wicd will automatically detect the available networks around. Simply enter the credentials and CONNECT.

• And when you tick "Automatically connect to this network" option, Wicd will be added to your Startup Applications list. And you're good to go.

• OR if you prefer command line, all you need to do is the following:

sudo apt-get install wicd
sudo apt-get purge network-manager

If this is indeed a network-manager related issue, I wonder how such a serious problem went unnoticed for a long-term support (LTS) release. I hope it gets fixed soon. Until then, you can always use Wicd. Thanks for reading.

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Download Gimp Image Editor (free)

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The terms of usage and rules about copying are clearly listed in the GNU General Public License.

• Painting
  • Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone, etc.
  • Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
  • Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool
  • Supports custom brushes and patterns
• System
  • Tile based memory management so image size is limited only by available disk space
  • Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
• Advanced Manipulation
  • Full alpha channel support
  • Layers and channels
  • Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
  • Editable text layers
  • Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip
  • Selection tools including rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy
  • Foreground extraction tool
  • Advanced path tool doing bezier and polygonal selections.
  • Transformable paths, transformable selections.
  • Quickmask to paint a selection.
• Extensible
  • A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
  • Advanced scripting capabilities (Scheme, Python, Perl)
  • Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters
  • Over 100 plug-ins already available
• Animation
  • Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format
  • MNG support
  • Frame Navigator (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
  • Onion Skin (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
  • Bluebox (in GAP, the GIMP Animation Package)
• File Handling
  • File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others
  • Load, display, convert, save to many file formats
  • SVG path import/export
• Much, much more!

click  DOWNLOAD  For Windows

(or)

DOWNLOADS FOR LINUX

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GIMP for Unix-like systems

It's very likely your Unix-like system such as a GNU/Linux distribution already comes with a GIMP package. It is a preferred method of installing GIMP, as the distribution maintainers take care of all the dependencies and bug fix updates.

Ubuntu, Debian

Ubuntu or Debian users can simply run apt-get install gimp to get the latest stable release of GIMP. Ubuntu users can also install GIMP from Software Centre.

openSUSE

SUSE users can install GIMP by running yast -i gimp or zypper in gimp, depending on the distribution version.

Fedora

Similarly to the above, Fedora users can install the latest stable GIMP by running yum install gimp.

Mandriva

Mandriva Linux users can install the latest stable GIMP by running urpmi gimp.

(or)

DOWNLOADS FOR MAC OS X

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Mac OS X 10.8.x Mountain Lion

1. ➡GIMP 2.8.0 for Mountain Lion  

         (internal: 2.8.0p1 md5. 3051064ce51853c619b3695bdbf3a9c8)

Mac OS X 10.6.x Snow Leopard & 10.7.x Lion

1. ➡GIMP 2.8.0 for Snow Leopard & Lion

         (internal: 2.8.0p1, md5: 37058e55e85236baf266ce9ac9e1ccd4 )

Mac OS X 10.5.x Leopard

1. ➡GIMP 2.6.11 for Leopard

            (internal 2.6.11, md5: f4964598dfedc6817cf28a892aee93be )

Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger: 

1. ➡GIMP 2.6.11 for Tiger
   

          (internal 2.6.11, md5: 7710246ec4ac8a737a1f8d58483fda46 )

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100 linux Tips n Tricks Ebook

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