Back to two years ago, we made the mock-up of the future Ubuntu Tweak and told the concepts behind the new design.  Later we improved the design and started coding. Although the progress was slow, and I had to maintain the 0.5 version at the same time. At the year of 2011, many things happened, the development of Ubuntu Tweak stopped and started once and again. But finally, it is released.

Let’s get started with the brand new Ubuntu Tweak!

First, please allow me to introduce the concepts of the new Ubuntu Tweak.

The concepts of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0

As a “tweak” application, Ubuntu Tweak provided a lot of options to let you change the default system settings.

While developing Ubuntu Tweak, I added a lot of features, E.G. App Center, Source Center in Ubuntu Tweak 0.5. Soon I realized that Ubuntu Tweak is not a “Tweak” application any more, although the feature like App & Source Center are liked by a lot of users, it also caused a lot of problems.

Finally, I decided to remove the feature of App & Source Center, to make it focus on “Tweak” again. This time, Ubuntu Tweak is fully plug-able, this means everyone can write extension (or plugin) for Ubuntu Tweak.

Release notes of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0

Here’s the noteworthy highlights of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.0:

• Brand new UI and interaction focus on better looking and easy to use
• Supports the latest Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and well integrated with system
• Every part of Ubuntu Tweak is plug-able, this make Ubuntu Tweak more powerful then ever before
• Janitor keeps your system clean
• Overview makes you know your system better

Now let’s start with the Overview

The first screen after you start Ubuntu Tweak is Overview, from this screen, you can get many useful information about your hardware, software and others. It can be fully configured, if you don’t want to see the hardware information, or you want to re-sort the items, you can do it at the “Preferences”.

Every small piece is called “Clip”, and it will provide some useful information.

As I said before, it is plug-able too. So you can write or download the “Clip” that written by other people. Think about a clip to show “Everyday tips of Ubuntu”, it might be very useful to the newbie. Right?

And there’s another useful thing in the Overview, the “Recently Used” items in the right side. There must be some features you access frequently, then you can find the most recently used items here, click and access to what you want.

Tweaks & Admins

Now let’s come to the “Tweaks” page, here are the features that you can tweak the system. Currently there’re 12 major features to help you tweak. Most of them inherited from the Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.x, but there’re also many new features:

Unity Settings is introduced by Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 for the first time, it will only be used under Unity desktop (both 2D and 3D). With Unity Settings, you can change the behavior of Launcher, the size of Launcher, the size of Dash, even the blur type of Dash. You won’t be lost in the CCSM (Compiz Config Settings Manager).

And with Theme Settings, you can easily change the default theme of Ubuntu. All of this can be done by just a few clicks.

The fonts settings, if you want a larger or smaller size of font.

Miscellaneous, notes the “Natural Scrolling”, if you are also a Mac OS X Lion user, you will like it.

Here’s the “Admins”, some useful features you can manage your system. I think you’ve met most of them in the previous versions. Due to some technical reasons, the “Templates” and “Scripts” have been removed in this version. Maybe in the future release I will add them again.

There are also something new in Source Editor, this time Source Editor introduced the “Backup” feature. Now you can backup and recover the sources lists easily, the backup feature is also enabled by default.

Janitor

This is Ubuntu Tweak’s killer-feature: Janitor. It is like the old “Computer Janitor”, but with a more easy to use interface and powerful clean feature.

You will never learn how to use it, just select the items you want to clean, then Janitor will scan the cruft, after you double check the items you don’t need, select and click the “Clean”. Everything will get out of your system.

If your system is clean, a cool face will tell you the good news.

And don’t forget the Janitor is also plug-able, try to write the extension for Janitor, such as clean the “Recently Used Items”, this is the extension that I’m currently writing.

This extension is not finished yet, maybe it will be integrated into the next version of Ubuntu Tweak. And I will also release it as a standalone extension.

Oh, and there is one more thing: Ubuntu Tweak is very well integrated with the Ubuntu Unity desktop.

This means you can start to the Janitor directly even Ubuntu Tweak hasn’t started yet, just right-click the icon on the Launcher and choose what you want to enter.

Downloads & Update

I think you can’t wait to use it now, Ubuntu Tweak is ready to download from the official website: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

And it is also ready in the Stable PPA: https://launchpad.net/~tualatrix/+archive/ppa

Download and try it, it’s hot!

What’s the next?

At the end, let’s see another picture: This is a mock-up which designed by Jeonkwan Chan at May, 2010. At that moment, we discussed a lot about how the future Ubuntu Tweak would be like, later he finished this design draft, and I started coding at the beginning of 2011.

When I look back on this, I’m feeling very very very excited! We designed this two years ago, and I spent almost one year to finish the final version. Even some features are still missing, but we finally done the work!

So what’s the next? I don’t know.

I may not have so many times to coding as before, but I’d like to write some documents and help people get involved with the development of Ubuntu Tweak, to make it a community product. Of course, I’m still the project manager, I will keep driving and maintaining this project, hope next version won’t take a whole year to release

Happy Christmas! Don’t forget to tell your friends if you like Ubuntu Tweak!

Yeah, just as the title said: Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 is close to releasing! And I have some other updates want to share with you.

Let’s get started!

First, here’s the major changes since the last post:

• Only support Ubuntu 11.10 and later (and of course: Linux Mint 12)
• Support three major desktop environments: Unity, Unity-2D, GNOME Shell
• More tweaks have been added, E.G. Unity Settings
• Solve some critical bugs of the Janitor and improve the usability

And here’s one screenshot of Unity Settings

Here’s another news I need to announce:

Ubuntu Tweak source code has moved to Launchpad/Bzr

As you may know, I used to manage the source code of Ubuntu Tweak by Git, but it is not so friendly for the Ubuntu Community. Because the prefer tool to manage source code is Bzr.

So I finally decided to move to Launchpad/Bzr, now I’m getting used to play with Bzr, it is also very cool. The most important thing is that the members from Ubuntu Community can easily join the development of Ubuntu Tweak.

The code is located here: https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak

If you want to play with the code of Ubuntu Tweak, just do “bzr branch lp:ubuntu-tweak”

There are still many things to do for the final release, such as: translate, bugs fix and other improvement.

Please help to test the latest Ubuntu Tweak and report any problem you find.

You can get the latest testing version from the Testing PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-tweak-testing/+archive/ppa

Let’s make it happen!

But everything is OK now, and I want to say: Ubuntu Tweak is not dead.

Here comes the beta version of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6!

Ubuntu Tweak 0.6, as I written at April 1st (First look at the next generation of Ubuntu Tweak!), is almost done, even part of the development document is ready.

Now please allow me to introduce the highlights of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 (and screenshots):

• New UI
• New clips feature: first screen information
• All features are plug-able
• Package Cleaner becomes a new major part feature as tbe “Janitor”

Four major features: Overview, Tweaks, Admins and Janitor

At Preferences, you can manage the plugins, enable or disable,  or install new plugin.

Tweaks and Admins, designed like GNOME Control Center, but with a more easy to use “back” and “forward” arrows.

A specific tweaks: Compiz Settings, you know it, right?

Computer Janitor,  clean the cruft has never been so easy!

Because this post is not going to be a release post, so I’m not going to write any more about the details.

If you are interested in the Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 and want to play with it, try to do by these steps (Notes: only for Natty & Oneiric, but Oneiric is not well supported yet)

• sudo add-apt-repository  ppa:tualatrix/next
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

Where is the App Center & Source Center?

As you may notice, where is the “App Center” and “Source Center”?

Currently, they’re not developed yet, but I plan to provide them as plugins in the future. So, it means in Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 beta, you will not be able to use them.

I know everyone likes the Source Center, so I provide another way to keep using it by installing Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.x along with 0.6:

• sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak-0

Yes, the ubuntu-tweak-0 package in the Next PPA is the old Ubuntu Tweak 0.5, you can use it as normal.

What about the support of upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric?

Of course Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 will support Oneiric, but there’re still many works to do. If you can write plugin for Ubuntu Tweak for the Oneiric specific tweaks, I will appreciate your work

When Ubuntu Tweak is ready for Oneiric, I will update for another post.

How to develop plugins for Ubuntu Tweak 0.6?

There is a wiki page about Ubuntu Tweak: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTweak

For more specific page for writing plugins,  you should read: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTweak/HowToWritePlugins

And of course, the source code of Ubuntu Tweak itself is always an up-to-date guide

OK, that’s all.

Feel free to report your issues or ask questions on the launchpad page. Hope it will be ready before Oneiric’s release.

Thanks for all your support!

This version improves the PPA Purge feature, just update!

Last day, I tried the GNOME 3 PPA with my Ubuntu 11.04, but it was not usable yet. So I used Ubuntu Tweak to purge the GNOME 3 PPA and downgrade the packages. But I found a bug in Ubuntu Tweak, it didn’t deal with the case which may cause the failure of downgrading packages.

So I improved the PPA purge, now it will show error and stop if packages can’t be downgrade. And you can follow the error message, then use “sudo apt-get remove pkg-name” to fix it, after this step,  PPA purge will be success.

With PPA purge, you can downgrade all GNOME 3 related packages with just select and click, everything will be done easily.

After restored the packages to the original natty packages, I also used the “Desktop Recovery” in Ubuntu Tweak to recover some settings of desktop application (E.G. GNOME Terminal, because upgrade to GNOME 3 will also update the settings).

So with Ubuntu Tweak, it’s painless to try the GNOME 3 PPA.

OK, here’s the improved PPA Purge, it will show more information, E.G. the current downloading package.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.14 is landed in the stable PPA, or you can download to use it:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

Next post, I will write something about Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.

After the release of Natty, the desktop environment of Ubuntu has never been so complex before: Unity, GNOME classical, GNOME 3(Through PPA), LXDE, KDE…

Oh my god! So many desktop environments! How should I deal with that?

As you may know, Ubuntu Tweak is a desktop tool initially designed for GNOME, but some features (such as Source Center) also work under other desktop environments. I have to check the desktop environment, disable the features which can’t work under the target desktop, E.G. hide the GNOME Settings under KDE.

But It does not always work, and it takes me a lot of time to install another desktop environment, then test under it.

Now I realized if I continue to try to make Ubuntu Tweak compatible with other desktop environments, so the next major update will never come.

So I will try my best to make the next version of Ubuntu Tweak out, but somethings will be changed:

Only for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty)
Only for Unity/GNOME

What does it mean?

First, it does not mean Ubuntu Tweak will not work under Debian, Mint or others. It may work, but not stable, or may cause other problems. And I will not support or response for that, just stop reporting bug(or feature request) for a while, until I have plan to support other distributions and desktop environments.

I hope you understand my decision, and sorry for users who use other desktop environments.

OK, now here’s Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.13 with some bugs fixed. If your desktop environment isn’t Unity, it won’t crash now. Also with many translation updates.

More details here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+milestone/0.5.13

Here’s the deb package (and PPA is ready): ubuntu-tweak_0.5.13-1~natty1_all.deb

I’m going to speed up the development now!

Enjoy!

Recently I left from the company where I worked before, and took an 8-days travel in Southern China. It was really amazing!

If you can read Chinese (or use Google Translator),here’s my Chinese blog with travel diary: http://imtx.me/

OK, Let’s talk about Ubuntu Tweak.

In April 1st, the preview of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 is true. I think many of you have read the post in OMG!Ubuntu, right?

It will not release today, but everything will go on. After my travel, I feel much more better now, in other words, I’m full of energy!

When I came back, I was so surprised that you reported so many bugs! So I released the new bug-fixed version: 0.5.12. jtlebi fixed the bug, thank you!

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.12 fixed the Unity Launcher options, for more details, visit this page: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+milestone/0.5.12

From this link, you can download Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.12 (Natty only): http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/0.5.x/0.5.12/+download/ubuntu-tweak_0.5.12-1~natty1_all.deb

During these days, I also received some donations, thank you! I always forget to make a donation list, but I promise it will be made soon.

Aprl 29~May 2 is another Chinese holiday, so I will take a short trip, then come back to make the Ubuntu Tweak 0.6.

Although I haven’t got my next job yet, I’m always enjoying developing with Ubuntu Tweak to make the Ubuntu life easier.

Thank you for your support!

Before we talk about the new Ubuntu Tweak, let’s go back to the November 2009.

At that time, the first version of Ubuntu Tweak 0.5 was not released, but we had already designed the mock-up for Ubuntu Tweak 0.6:

Designed By Kevin Chou, 2009-11

It had been re-designed from bottom, and according to the feedback from those comments of the post (Mockup of Ubuntu Tweak 0.6), a lot of people like the new design.

While the development of Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.x, we’ve never ever stopped improving the design. Here’s another mockup which was made at May, 2010:

This design added a “Recently used” list to right side, which enables you to easily access the target feature.

Designed By Jeonkwan Chan, 2010-05

A few days later, after our discuss, Jeonkwan made a more detailed mockup. Added the “Search” feature.

Designed By Jeonkwan Chan, 2010-05

Finally, a mock-up created with balsamiq came out. Everything settled.

Designed By Jeonkwan Chan, 2010-05

OK, you might be thinking: “I’ve already waited for more than one year, but there’re only mock-ups. Where is the alpha, beta or RC?”

Today, no more wondering! This is what I called: the next generation of Ubuntu Tweak.

It’s no longer a mock-up. What? You don’t believe that? Come on! This isn’t a fake iPhone jailbreaking YouTube video. OK, let the next screenshot blows our mind. See how Ubuntu Tweak is integrated with the Unity:

Isn’t that incredible?

A public beta testing will be available soon, and our shinny Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 will be released as Ubuntu 11.04 Natty comes out.

Let’s look forward it!

Recently the update of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty made Ubuntu Tweak couldn’t start (See the bug report). So I tried to find out what’s the problem. Now the problem has been solved.

Now Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.11 has entered the stable and testing sources, you can update from source, or download and install from the deb package: ubuntu-tweak_0.5.11-1~natty1_all.deb

Enjoy!

The release notes of Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.10:

• Disable the broken sources and notify the user to make it easy to fix
• Add the Launcher Autohide setting to Compiz (Natty only)
• Fix bug: LP: #695294 No module named simplejson
• Fix bug: LP: #665841 ubuntu tweak crash in Login

What is “Disable the broken sources and notify the user to make it easy to fix”?

Recently I received a lot of bug reports caused by broken sources. It is often a misspelled PPA source.

I don’t know how does it happen, because I’ve never meet this problem. PPA sources are less important then the main sources.list, but it will make the package manager  not work.

So, from this version, I add a sources validation feature for Ubuntu Tweak: Every time when you start Ubuntu Tweak, it will check the sources to make sure the package manager is working. If one of the sources is broken, Ubuntu Tweak will disable it, then notify the user with dialog, so user can edit the sources easily.

The dialog will be showed like this when Ubuntu Tweak starts.

In Source Editor, you can see the broken sources has been disabled. So your Ubuntu can still work like normal.

And in Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.10, I also add the option to make the Launcher hide automatically. It will give you a wider screen space.

Because Ubuntu 11.04 Natty is still under development, so the it might be changed in the future. Just for testing.

OK, that’s all. I hope this version will keep your system always work. And I will try to find out what causes the misspelled sources.

Now Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.10 has entered the PPA sources, try to update from here: http://blog.ubuntu-tweak.com/downloads

Or download the packages from here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+download

In the last Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.8, I made a mistake. If you disabled the “Use Separated Sources” in the preferences in Ubuntu Tweak, all your Launchpad PPA sources may be “lost”(In fact, they’ve been moved to the separated file).

Because Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.8 has a feature which will convert the PPA source files to standard name, E.G. ubuntu-tweak-testing-source.list will be converted to ubuntu-tweak-testing-ppa-maverick.list.

I forgot to check the “Separated Sources” setting so that the PPA source in /etc/apt/sources.list will be converted too.

The bug report has been created: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/+bug/694741

Now I’ve fixed this bug in Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.9 and provided a script to merge these PPA sources back to your sources.list.

First update your Ubuntu Tweak to 0.5.9 (Download packages here or update from sources)

Then open your terminal, run this command:

sudo /usr/share/ubuntu-tweak/merge_sourceslist.py

Now your sources.list with be OK!

Sorry for the mistake! I will be more careful in the future.

BTW: I’ve updated the translations for Bengali, Finnish, French and Spanish. Thank all the translators!