LottaNZB 0.6 released
February 13th, 2011 - SeverinToday marks an important point in the history of LottaNZB: I’m proud to announce the release of LottaNZB 0.6! The work on this new version has started more than 1 year and 8 months ago. Countless hours were spent in order to lift LottaNZB to a new level of usability and improve it substantially from a technical point of view. Let me present you the most important changes:
Powerful New Backend
LottaNZB 0.6 makes use of a new backend software called SABnzbd, replacing HellaNZB, which was used in previous versions of LottaNZB. In comparison to HellaNZB, SABnzbd is actively being developed, offers a more complete and stable API to third-party applications like LottaNZB and provides much more features, such as a web interface, a history of completed downloads, support for RSS feeds, and so on.
SABnzbd has proved to be a perfectly reliable foundation to build LottaNZB on, which aims to provide the smoothest user experience and best desktop integration for both novice and advanced Linux users seeking to download from the Usenet. In LottaNZB 0.6, only a small subset of SABnzbd’s features can be accessed. This will certainly change in the future.
Polished User Interface
The main window has undergone a redesign, making it slicker and more customizable. The new buttons on the left can be used to reorder the download queue, in addition to the already existing drag-and-drop support. The information bar at the bottom not only makes it possible to monitor and quickly limit the download speed, but also monitor the amount of free space in the download folder.
Also other parts of the user interface have been considerably improved, such as the server dialog, always doing the best to adhere to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.
Improved Feedback and Control
Thanks to SABnzbd, LottaNZB 0.6 provides more information about the state of downloads, especially if something unexpected happens. For instance, LottaNZB displays the progress of verification and extraction operations and allows users to open a dialog that provides more detailed information about a download, such as its age.
The user is given more control over downloads taking place by making it possible to pause and rename individual downloads and to select what kind of post-processing should be done. Also, users are informed when the requried tools are missing. Operations on the list of downloads are applied instantly, making the interface feel snappy.
Streamlined Setup and Upgrade
The setup process of LottaNZB has been greatly simplified. The user can choose to either download to the current computer or monitor the downloads of another computer where SABnzbd is already running. In either case, nearly all capabilities for managing downloads and preferences are available. LottaNZB even offers assistance if SABnzbd is not installed on a Debian-based system.
Both the configuration and incomplete downloads of existing LottaNZB users can be imported, making the transition to LottaNZB 0.6 as smooth as possible.
Updated Help Content
The whole help content has been rewritten using Mallard. It aims to be an easy-to-understand introduction for users new to LottaNZB and the Usenet, but also useful for people who are interested in more advanced or less-known features of LottaNZB. Specific help topics can be accessed directly through various Help buttons added to the user interface. In addition, the whole help content is available online.
How to Get it
You can download LottaNZB 0.6 in the download section for your Linux distribution of choice. No matter if your an existing user of LottaNZB or SABnzbd or neither, just start LottaNZB and it will help you to bring everything in place. Please be aware that even though LottaNZB 0.6 has been tested by both the developers and people who have used the daily builds in the past months, the software is still not perfect and crashes or bugs might be encountered. For instance, some users are reporting frequent crashes due to segmentation faults, which is still being investigated. As always, you’re encouraged to report any bugs you find and help translate LottaNZB, as well as SABnzbd.
I’d like to thank everyone who has helped to make this release become reality, especially the SABnzbd crew for creating such a wonderful piece of software, the people who have tested the daily builds of LottaNZB during the past months and last but not least, all the 180 people who have contributed to the translations.
February 15th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Thanks for all the hard work!!!
February 15th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
SWEET!!! Works great in CrunchBang using Ubuntu debs!
Thanks for all your work!!!
February 18th, 2011 at 2:20 am
Thanks, thanks, thanks, and again, THANKS.
Works perfect in debian sid.
February 22nd, 2011 at 7:57 pm
I take that back. It crashes constantly on CrunchBang
Though it may be my fault….
Going to give it a shot under Ubuntu on the desktop and see how it goes.
February 26th, 2011 at 10:24 am
Severin THANKS for 0.6! It looks GREAT!
I would like to ask for one small request.
Can you please make a nice little popup so when Lottanzb is minimized to a tray or taskbar on any Desktop or WM and you mouse over the icon you can see the speed and time left?
This would really be great to have this information when downloading so you didn’t always have to click it open to always see the speed and time to keep an eye on it.
Thanks again and keep up the great work!
February 26th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
@WiLL: It’s certainly not your fault and CrunchBang is not the only distribution that is affected. The following bug report is used for discussions related to these crashes: https://bugs.launchpad.net/lottanzb/+bug/692635 Unfortunately, I’m currently in the dark w.r.t. what the underlying cause of these crashes is. Fixing this bug is certainly a priority for LottaNZB 0.6.1 and I’m thankful for any help on the matter.
February 26th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
@DasFox: In the case of the good old notification area used on non-Ubuntu distributions, it would be possible to add such a tooltip. However, in the case of the Ubuntu-specific application indicators, it’s not possible to define tooltips, as you can tell by the following blog post: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/330
March 4th, 2011 at 11:42 am
Severin I run Slackware…
So for non-Ubuntu distributions do you think you could roll a tar ball for those that want to use this notification tooltip?
THANKS
March 20th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Hi Severin,
Something I noticed in Lottanzb there is no preferences for the System tray, it just automatically loads to one and I don’t use Gnome or KDE, I run E17.
But no matter what you run or use it would be nice to have an option to not use the System Tray in the preferences…
The System Tray I use in E17 not resizable and I only use it for Wicd to appear in it.
I hope you can please make this option because lottanzb fouls up my system tray…
THANKS
March 20th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
@DasFox: Since the plug-in infrastructure wasn’t ported to LottaNZB 0.6, the checkbox using which the panel icon could be enabled or disabled didn’t make it into LottaNZB 0.6. But you can manually edit LottaNZB’s configuration file ~/.config/lottanzb/lottanzb.conf and set ‘enabled = False’ in the section [plugins.panel_menu].
In future version, there should probably be a way of doing that using the preferences GUI again.
March 20th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
@DasFox: Regarding the panel menu tooltip: This could be useful for all users and may be included in the next version of LottaNZB. I’ll try to keep in mind to create a custom tarball of LottaNZB 0.6 when it is implemented. Thanks for your suggestion!
March 22nd, 2011 at 9:40 am
Hi Severin,
Right now I’m running lottanzb in Arch and I don’t have any [plugins.panel_menu] section this is all I have;
revision = 5
[backend]
delete_enqueued_nzb_files = False
[backend.sessions]
active = local
[backend.sessions.local]
command = /usr/bin/sabnzbd
[backend.sessions.remote]
api_key = “”
host = “”
https = False
password = “”
port = 8080
username = “”
[gui]
[gui.add_file]
last_location = /home/sar/Downloads
[gui.main]
height = 376
maximized = False
width = 777
x_pos = 229
y_pos = 250
[gui.main.view]
infobar = True
reordering_pane = True
toolbar = True
[gui.messaging]
[gui.messaging.download_import]
last_action = 0
[gui.messaging.postprocessing_priority]
last_action = 0
[plugins]
THANKS
March 22nd, 2011 at 9:51 am
@DasFox: Below [plugins], you should be able to add
[plugins.panel_menu]
enabled = False
LottaNZB displays the panel icon if the configuration option doesn’t exist.
April 1st, 2011 at 9:39 am
Alright Severin, you the MAN!
WoOT it worked!
Have a look;
http://img204.imageshack.us/f/lottanzb.jpg/
THANKS
April 4th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
@DasFox: You’re welcome! The situation regarding the panel icon is certainly not getting simpler in the future, as starting with Ubuntu 11.04, given the new launcher, there is even a third way for applications to provide actions to the user when the window is not directly visible. Cleaning the code up and making the whole thing configurable would be desirable.
May 21st, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Hello Severin,
Well I just installed Slackware 13.37 last week and today I compiled Lottanzb and it looks really nice but I haven’t taken it for a test ride yet.
One thing I’d like to ask you PLEASE make it so we can place the ‘Incomplete’ directory where we choose.
Right now I have it making it in the Downloads;
/home/sar/Downloads/Incomplete/
But I don’t like this because I made a Lottanzb path like this;
/home/sar/Downloads/Lottanzb and I want to place it in there;
/home/sar/Downloads/Lottanzb/Incomplete/
THANKS
May 21st, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Hello Severin,
Something else I noticed, I only use OpenBox and my file manger is
PCManFM-MOD you can read about it here if you don’t know it;
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/downloads/mod-pcmanfm/
Can you please make it so that no matter what file manager a person uses, when you click the ‘File’ – ‘Open Download Folder’, it will open it?
THANKS
May 21st, 2011 at 4:31 pm
SORRY Severin,
Forgot to mention the Download icon/button too, so that it opens the file manager also, besides in the menu…
THANKS
May 21st, 2011 at 6:49 pm
@DasFox: Thanks alot for your feedback! It’s greatly appreciated. Quite a few people have proposed to add an option to LottaNZB’s preferences UI that would allow them to change the temporary download folder. Refer to https://answers.launchpad.net/lottanzb/+faq/1519 until this change has been made in LottaNZB.
It may be possible to add support for your file manager using the ‘xdg-open’ application, instead of the GNOME-specific code that is currently in use. Would you mind checking if running “xdg-open ~” in a terminal opens your home folder?
July 11th, 2011 at 2:52 am
Hi Severin,
Will there be support for sabnzbd 0.6.5 soon?
THANKS
July 11th, 2011 at 3:00 am
I forgot even sabnzbd 0.6.0 isn’t supported…