Google Play Music Desktop Player (GPMDP) is a brilliant new open-source desktop based client for Google Play Music. GPMDP is cross-platform and has just recently released 32 and 64 bit builds for Linux.

Google Play Music Desktop Player for Ubuntu 

How about a desktop based client for Google Play Music that is less resource hungry than its web counterpart? Well, that's GPMDP in a nutshell. The player is HTML5 based and requires no Flash. There is Last.fm integration and there is even a neat implementation of hands-free voice controls (experimental).

Having been playing around with this cool little player for the better part of the day, I have to say I'm impressed! GPMDP is seriously lightweight as advertised and it frees up your browser resources big time. And it is definitely more faster and responsive than my browser tabs. And like a lot of other native Linux apps, it minimizes to tray by default when you hit the close button. The mini player also works just great.

Another big plus is the media key support. From what I have tested, all my media keys are working without any need for tinkering. Additionally you can assign hot keys for specific actions in the GPMDP settings. Last.fm scrobbling though, hasn't worked properly yet in my installation. All in all, if you are a Google Play Music user, I would strongly recommend GPMDP over Nuvola Player any day.

As we mentioned earlier, the app is cross platform and supports Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32/64 bit builds) platforms. Download links here: Google Play Music Desktop Player. If you are into more traditional music players, here is a list of Linux's most good-looking music players. Do share if you like and thanks for reading.

Remember cool-old-term? The gorgeous Terminal Emulator has a name change and is now called cool-retro-term. And I think 'retro' fits the description better, a welcome change. More importantly, cool-retro-term now comes in a nicely packaged Ubuntu PPA making the whole installation process a breeze.

Install cool-retro-term in Ubuntu (PPA available for 15.10, 14.04 LTS)

Remember all the hoops you had to jump through just to install cool-retro-term (previously called cool-old-term) in your Ubuntu? Well, that's all history now. The new releases of cool-retro-term Terminal Emulator comes with its own Ubuntu repositories with support for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and limited support for Ubuntu 15.04.

For those who didn't read our one year old post about cool-retro-term Terminal Emulator, here are a few things you should know. cool-retro-term is a Terminal Emulator that mimics the look and feel of old-school CRT monitors. First released more than a year and a half ago, cool-retro-term had gone through several iterations and is now ever more stable and lightweight. Highlight though is the availability of new stable releases via PPA for Ubuntu based distros. Here's how you install cool-retro-term in Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily) and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bugs-launchpad-net-falkensweb/cool-retro-term
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cool-retro-term

The above steps should work with Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic) and Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid) as well. If you like the project and wish to contribute, head over to Swordfish Labs. Thanks for reading.

Ambient Noise is a very clean implementation of a simple idea that will help you stay focused on your work while on the computer. And it integrates well with your Ubuntu sound menu. Care to learn more? Read on.

Ambient Noise for Ubuntu PPA (Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04)

Listen to the sounds of nature and relax yourself. Ambient Noise is a no non-sense application that is capable of playing a wide variety of sounds from nature non-stop and without much fuss. The idea behind Ambient Noise might be simple, but such is the nature of extremely popular apps, that can also have a profound impact on your work habits. Selection of sounds include rain, storm, coffee shop, forest, night, wind and fire.

Installation is super easy. Just do the following in Terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:costales/anoise
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install anoise

After completing the installation, launch the Ambient Noise application from Ubuntu menu. That's it. The app sits nicely in your sound menu and you can skip, pause and play through the preloaded sounds from the Unity sound menu. Ambient Noise works in offline mode as well.

And guess what, you can download even more sounds from the ANoise Preferences window. I have to concede that I'm enjoying this app more than any other supposedly relaxing music I've in my playlist. And my favorites are rain and storm modes. If you want to support the project, do visit ANoise homepage. Thanks for reading.