Need Microsoft Office on Ubuntu? Install the Official Web Apps

By Joey-Elijah Sneddon     It’s not everyone’s cup of joe, but Microsoft Office and its family of finicky file formats are a mainstay of many working and educational environments — for better or worse.
Reading, editing and saving to these proprietary formats is sort of possible on Ubuntu using the LibreOffice suite of apps. Writer, Calc and Impress all boast varying degrees of Microsoft Office file interoperability, though in my own real world experience (thankfully brief) it’s not perfect.
For the times you can’t go without using Office file formats (as ideological as most of us are about open standards, we shouldn’t be blind to practicalities) but you’ve no desire to purchase a full MS Office licence to run through WINE, the official set of Microsoft Office Online web apps are the perfect answer.

Install Microsoft Office Online Apps in Ubuntu

To make accessing these online versions easier from the Ubuntu desktop, the ‘Linux Web Apps project’ has created a small, unofficial installer that adds web app shortcuts (“glorified bookmarks”) to your application launcher.





These are nothing more fancy than shortcuts to the respective Microsoft web app that opens in your default system browser.  Sound nifty? You get application shortcuts for:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• OneDrive
• Calendar
• OneNote
• People

The package also creates a new application category housing the links, letting you view the shortcuts separately from other applications as well as under the regular “office” apps directory.
Are these essential? Not really. Are they useful? Depends on your workflow. But is it nice to have the option? For sure.
You can grab the .deb installer containing the links from the link below and is suitable for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and later.

Download Microsoft Office Web Apps (.deb)

Other Alternatives

A similar alternative is to install the official Office Online web applications from the Chrome Web Store, then add the app launcher to Linux. This will still create launchable shortcuts for them in the Dash, but ones that can be set to open in their own window frames and forgo the need to install any third-party packages.
Similarly,  Google recently folded in full Office capabilities (thanks to its purchase of QuickOffice) into its own Docs, Slides and Sheets applications, retired the QuickOffice Android application and rebranded the companion Chrome extension.
If you’re a heavy Google Drive/Docs user, this may be the better solution for you.

Source: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/07/run-microsoft-office-web-apps-ubuntu-desktop

Linux Mint 17 Mate

I gave Linux Mint 17 Mate desktop a try and was pleasantly surprised. It is a very smooth and fast performing distro based on Ubuntu 14.04. The only annoyance is the Firefox search engine default which uses Yahoo and the Mint logo. I found a fix for this under a previous post. Otherwise a great distro for those who like the old GTK2 interface, yet is based on Gnome 3.13 kernel. They use the fine Caja file manager instead of Nautilus. It found my wireless card right from the live distro through to install.

 

 

 

 

You can get Linux Mate here: http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

How to remove Linux Mint's Firefox Yahoo search engine

Removing Linux Mint’s Google page hack from Firefox

10 Mar

I know this is a revenue stream for Linux Mint, but I just can’t do without the “more options” on the normal Google search results page that allow me to  limit searches to results from the last year, or the last 24 hours, etc. So, thanks to some folks at the Mint forum, here’s a quick way to restore normal Google pages:

1) go to this page and click “add to Firefox” https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3682
2) go to Google’s home page and Right-Click in the search box. Select “add to search bar.”
3) go to “manage search engines” (click the drop down arrow on the search bar)
4) remove the old Google search engine, and move the new one to the top.
Clem, if you can come up with a way to keep all of Google’s functionality on the results pages, I’d be more than happy to keep the Mint hacks in place.

------------------------------

Remove and Disable Yahoo! Search from Firefox
One of the neat tricks with Firefox is that when you type in a partial URL into the search field, say for example "netflix," Firefox will automatically direct you to "http://www.netflix.com/."

This is very useful because you do not have to type in "www" or ".com" or anything else.

Firefox does this trick by using Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature. So, while you never see Google.com, you are actually using the Google search engine to find the partial Web address that you have entered.

This all works great unless you somehow download the Yahoo add-on which makes Yahoo! Search the default browser for Firefox. If you have AT&T DSL service or if you installed Yahoo IM (Instant Messenger), you may have installed this Yahoo add-on without being aware. Yahoo does not alert you that this add-on is being installed to Firefox.

If you have the Yahoo add-on in Firefox and you type a partial Web address into the Firefox search field, you will not go straight to the Web site. Instead you will see a list of Yahoo Search results.

This is a step backward in terms of usability, but it is also very easy to remove/disable this Yahoo add-on feature from Firefox. To make Google your default search engine in Firefox, just follow these five easy steps:

Step 1: Open a new Firefox browser window.
Step 2: Type about:config in the search field and press Enter.
Step 3: Click the "I Will Be Careful" button if necessary.
Step 4: Scroll to find a configuration key titled: keyword.URL
Step 5: Select "keyword.URL" and right-click, then hit "Reset" from the drop-down menu.

Firefox will automatically reset the URL value to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
This should solve your problem and remove/disable Yahoo Search from Firefox and go back to Google.

Source: http://www.scholarshiphunter.com/firefoxyahoosearch.html

July Desktop

I tried the new Radiance Manilla theme from my previous post for Ubuntu 14.04 and it is a fresh face for my desktop this month. I used the Gnome Colors Dust icons also. Below is a link to more variations for this theme. Enjoy.

You can download the new Ambiance and Radiance colors theme here:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Ambiance+%26+Radiance+Colors+Suite?content=165994

Ambiance And Radiance Colors Theme Pack Gets 3 New Colors, Full Cinnamon Support-webupd8.org

Ambiance & Radiance Colors, a theme pack that provides Ambiance and Radiance in various colors, was updated today with 3 new colors: Aqua, Teal and Manila, to match the latest Humanity Colors icons. 

The new release also includes full Nemo / Cinnamon support (with a Cinnamon theme) and other changes.

With this update, the theme pack is now available in 12 color variations (the theme already included the following colors: blue, brown, graphite, green, orange - different from the default orange -, pink, purple, red and yellow), all available as both light (Radiance) and dark (Ambiance).

The theme pack supports Unity, MATE, Xfce and Cinnamon. Since the default/stock Ambiance and Radiance don't support client side window decorations, the Ambiance and Radiance Colors pack doesn't support it either, so GNOME Shell is currently not properly supported.

Besides the 3 new colors, the latest Ambiance & Radiance Colors 14.04.5 includes other changes such as:

• improved window buttons color (it's now brighter / less dull) - white window buttons are also still available if you don't want to use colored window buttons (set the theme to Ambiance-COLOR-pro or Radiance-COLOR-pro to get white window buttons);
• full support for Nemo file manager and the Cinnamon desktop (including a Cinnamon theme);
• new menubar gradient for GTK3 apps. No longer a upside down one like it is in the stock Ambiance / Radiance themes;
• Nautilus and Nemo now use a dark sidebar;
• Xfce Virtual Desktop Pager is now more visible and uses prelight color for selected desktop (as opposed to grey);
• fixes for some GTK2-based terminal apps - they now use a nice black/grey background;
• fixes for dark MintMenu on MATE;
• 2 new (optional) window border themes are available for MATE and Xfce with classic big window borders for easier resizing: 4px wide as apposed to 1px, as it was before. This is for use on MATE and Xfce without Compiz if you have issues with the window border resize area being too small (an issue that was introduced with all new "borderless" themes such as Ambiance and Radiance in Ubuntu 14.04);
• other under-the-hood fixes and enhancements.

Note that in my test, MintMenu under MATE still has an issue: the favorites text is blurry. 

It's also important to mention that the Nautilus toolbar doesn't look like the original Ambiance/Radiance theme because of a limitation in its code (probably some Nautilus / Unity patch or something like that) - the Nautilus toolbar code is identical in both the stock Ambiance/Radiance themes and in Ambiance & Radiance Colors (so in theory, they should look the same, but that's not the case as you can see below):

Here are a few more screenshots with some of the changes mentioned above:

Ambiance Aqua - Cinnamon

Ambiance Aqua - MATE

Ambiance Teal Xfce

Ambiance Teal - Unity

Radiance Manila - Unity

As a reminder, for matching icons, see the Humanity Colors icon theme pack.

Install Ambiance & Radiance colors in Ubuntu 14.04 or Linux Mint 17

Ambiance and Radiance Colors can be installed in Ubuntu 14.04 or Linux Mint 17 (and derivatives: Xubuntu 14.04, etc.) by using the RAVEfinity PPA. Add the PPA and install the themes using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ravefinity-project/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ambiance-colors radiance-colors

For other Linux distributions or if you don't want to add the PPA, you can get the themes from HERE.

To change the theme in Unity, you can use a tool such as Ubuntu Tweak or Unity Tweak Tool

Source: http://www.webupd8.org/2014/07/ambiance-and-radiance-colors-theme-pack.html