Ubuntu Tweak Blog

Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.8 released: improved PPA

August 2nd, 2009 | by TualatriX |

Another month has passed since the last release, now I’m proud to announce the release of Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.8.

It doesn’t introduce new features, but I have improved the Third Party Sources. Now it is more usable.

Let’s start with some description and screenshots.

The number of PPA source from launchpad.net is increasing, a lot of new and updated applications have their PPA source. It’s really useful for users, Ubuntu Tweak itself also includes a lot of popular PPA sources to let people to use PPA easily.

But there’s one problem, one source may depends on anther, and one may conflicts with another. How do user solve the problem easily?

So in the Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.8, I have made an improvement.

For example, You want to use the latest version of Midori (A lightweight browser), it depends on the WebKitGtk source. So Ubuntu Tweak will notify you about it like this, if you choose “Yes”, both “WebKitGtk” and “Midori” will be enabled.

It’s the easiest way to do it, isn’t it?

On the other hand, if you disable “WebKitGtk” without disabling “Midori” first, you will get a warning dialog like this.

Another warning dialog will show when you try to use a source that conficts with an already enabled source.

For example, “Skype” and “Medibuntu” both provide the Skype application. To make everything go well, You won’t be allowed to enable both of them.

Your system will be much safer and stable through Ubuntu Tweak’s new Third Party Sources.

Of course, This version includes a lot of new PPA sources, they are:

• Liferea (Famous RSS reader;
• GNOME Colors (A set of cool theme and icon);
• IBus 1.2 (Input method);
• vlc 1.0 (Famous media player);
• Christine (A new media player);
• Empathy (Instant Message);
• smplayer (Another media player based on Mpalyer);
• VirtualBox OSE (Open source editition);

Other updates are:

• Fix dependency(Add policykit-gnome);
• Put icons in different sizes to /usr/share/icons/hicolor (Thanks Clay Smalley’s remind);

The next version

I’ve started implementing some new features already, such as: Add repositories in separate files in sources.list.d

Next version, Ubuntu Tweak will provide an option to let user put their third-party sources in sources.list.d, so that it will be clear of sources.list.

About the major version: Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.0, it will introduce a important feature: update source and application information from the web side. So you can get everything new without update Ubuntu Tweak.

It is always welcomed that if you have ideas about Ubuntu Tweak, I saw a lot of suggestions here. Thanks all of you.

But I recommand you to register your suggestions or ideas as “Blueprints” in Ubuntu Tweak Launchpad (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak), so that I can manage them easily and won’t miss it. Or you can email to me too: tualatrix {at} gmail.com

There’s another important thing that I need to be done as soon as possible, I will migrate the source code control system of Ubuntu Tweak from git to bzr, so it will be easy to intergate with launchpad.net. The most important is: Everyone can help to improve Ubuntu Tweak by fixing bug or implementing blueprint in launchpad easily. I hope you will join the develop team.

OK, that’s all. Thank you. I will reply to your comments soon, there are too many comments here now.

Downloads

Source Code

ubuntu-tweak-0.4.8.tar.gz

Deb Package

ubuntu-tweak_0.4.8-1~jaunty1_all.deb