Linux Blog

Open-Source Folder Comparison and Synchronization Tool - FreeFileSync

FreeFileSync is an Open-Source folder comparison and synchronization tool. It is optimized for highest performance and usability without restricted or overloaded UI interfaces.

FreeFileSync Key Features:
* Detect moved and renamed files
* Copy locked files (Volume Shadow Copy Service)
* Detect conflicts and propagate deletions
* Binary comparison
* Full support for Symbolic Links
* Run as a batch job
* Multiple folder pairs
* Support very long path names > 260 characters
* Transactional file copy
* Cross-platform: Windows/Linux
* Access variable drive letters by volume name (USB sticks)
* Native 32 and 64-bit builds

GUI Interface to Compress & Optimize Image Files - Trimage

Trimage is a cross-platform GUI and command-line interface to optimize image files via optipng, advpng, pngcrush and jpegoptim, depending on the filetype (currently, PNG and JPG files are supported). All image files are losslessly compressed on the highest available compression levels. Trimage gives you various input functions to fit your own workflow: A regular file dialog, dragging and dropping and various command line options.

Trimage Installation:
If you're on Natty (11.04) or oneiric (11.10), Trimage is available in the official repositories:

sudo apt-get install trimage

Utility to Search Google via your GNOME menu/panel - Googlizer

Googlizer is a panel launcher for the GNOME desktop, although is by no means restricted to use in the panel, or within GNOME. It takes the X selection, sends it to either the Google search engine ( , or local equivalent), or an arbitrary search URL specified on the command line, and then passes the results to the user’s preferred browser in GNOME. This browser then starts up and shows the results of the search.

It is not designed to be invoked from the command line; but is supposed to be added to the user’s panel via the menu system. To place it on a panel, add a launcher and specify the path to the Googlizer binary as the command in the launcher options, or if you have a menu entry on the GNOME menu, you can drag a copy of that launcher onto the panel.

Quick File and Folder Preview for Ubuntu Linux - Globus-Preview

Gloobus-Preview is an extension for the Gnome Desktop Environment designed to enable a full screen preview of any kind of file. It’s based on Apple’s “Quicklook”.

Globus-Preview allows instant access to a variety of file types without the need of opening their default application. It allows you to take a quick look at the content of a file on the fly, saving you valuable time and CPU resources. Video and audio files can be navigated on preview mode by dragging the slider of the progress bar at any given time.

Globus-Preview can currently preview over 40 file formats
Images: jpeg / png / icns / bmp / svg / gif / psd / xcf
Documents: pdf / cbr / cbz / doc / xls / odf / ods / odp / ppt
Source: c++ / c# / java / javascript / php / xml / log / sh / python
Audio: mp3 / ogg / midi / 3gp / wav
Video: mpg /avi / ogg / 3gp / mkv / flv
Other: folders / ttf / srt / plain-text

Text To Speech and Translation Application For Ubuntu Linux - Gespeaker

eSpeak is a compact open source software speech synthesizer for English and other languages, for Linux and Windows. eSpeak uses a "formant synthesis" method. This allows many languages to be provided in a small size. The speech is clear, and can be used at high speeds, but is not as natural or smooth as larger synthesizers which are based on human speech recordings.

eSpeak is available as:
* A command line program (Linux and Windows) to speak text from a file or from stdin.
* A shared library version for use by other programs.

Gespeaker is a GTK+ front-end for espeak. It allows to play a text in many languages with settings for voice, pitch, volume, speed and word gap. The text played can also be recorded to WAV file.

Gespeaker supports multiple languages, currently English, Italian, French and Spanish. It works well with both Gnome, XFCE, LXDE environments.