Everyone of us likes watching movies and if a movie is worth keeping in our collection, we also look forward to its official DVD/Blu-ray release. After we’ve brought the movie DVD, we either want to keep a copy of it in our computer for archival purpose or want to watch it on our growing collection of portable media devices.

Now, you might be wondering how to rip and encode your DVDs for keeping them safe and watch them on your iPod, iPad, Android, iPhone or other portable device? Handbrake is one such good free tool to rip and encode your DVDs for keeping them safe.

Handbrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multi-platform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. Let’s take a quick read and know more about Handbrake.

How to use Hadbrake? Quick Overview

First of all you’ll need to download Handbrake. For downloading the software, visit www.handbrake.fr and click on download for Windows/Mac OS/Linux. After download completes, install the software. The installation process is easy and fast.

Now, insert the DVD you want to rip, into your computer. Click on “Source” and choose the video folder on the DVD. Handbrake will now scan the DVD for titles and chapters. After the scan is complete, choose the encoding preset (about which we’ve talked later in Functionality) and click on Start.

Depending on the preset chosen by you, length of the movie and speed of your machine, in a few minutes or hour, you’ll have the movie saved on your computer as a file. You can now sync this file to your portable device and watch the movie.

Handbrake User Interface

The user interface of Handbrake is very clean and is well laid out. You’ll find all the important functions available in the form of buttons at the top. The presets are organized in expandable lists, available at the sidebar. The outputs are organized in clean labelled tabs.

Handbrake Functionality

Handbrake is a very good tool for both novice users as well as advanced users in video encoding. Novice users will like the encoding presets offered by the software. Though we found most of the presets are for Apple devices optimized for the highest quality, screen size, and file type.

Advanced users will find Handbrake very useful because of the control it offers when you mess around with the encoding settings. You can customize everything, from file container settings to the videos aspect ratio and size, which is really overwhelming. Further diving in, you’ll be able to choose the video filters, video quality and codec, audio codecs, mix down settings, bit rate, and sample rate settings. If you’re really want to take control, check out the advanced tab!

Handbrake options lets you configure all the aspects of the software.

Conclusion

Once you start using Handbrake and see the results, we’re confident you’ll fall in love with Handbrake just like us. Handbrake is the best video transcoder we have used till date and offers the best features and performance. The icing on the cake, its open source, free and available on all platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux)! Thanks for reading.

AVG Technologies has released AVG Internet Security 2012 and AVG Antivirus 2012 the latest edition of their flagship security software. The latest version added new protection technologies, computer performance enhancements and content download acceleration. AVG 2012 is lighter, faster and smaller than any previous AVG product.

The earlier versions AVG 9 Free and AVG 2011 Free is still quite popular among our readers. It provides basic security protection for your computer against malware, viruses and other malicious programs. The standard security module that AVG Antivirus Free Edition 2012 comprises of are an antivirus, anti-spyware, email protection, resident protection, LinkScanner, search-shield, surf-shield, anti-rootkit, PC analyze and identity protection.

Each of the following three applications of LiveKive, Family Safety, and PC Tuneup is available as a standalone AVG product, and an optional part of your AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 2012 installation. Within the Your AVG Apps dialog (accessible via the My Apps button directly from the AVG main dialog) you can see an overview of applications already installed, and ready to be installed optionally:

Direct download links to AVG Free Antivirus offline installer: (Links updated on 31, January 2012) If the links to the offline downloaders are not working, please comment below. We will update the article with fresh links.

Download AVG Antivirus 2012 32-bit (139 MB)

Download AVG Antivirus 2012 64-bit (158 MB)

You can download the online installer from the link here.

You can download offline installers of AVG Antivirus 2012 trial version from the link below:

AVG Anti-Virus 2012 Offline Redistributable Setup Installer Download Link: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download.prd-triavc#tba2

You can download offline installers of AVG Internet Security 2012 trial version from the link below:

AVG Internet Security 2012 Offline Redistributable Setup Installer Download Link: http://www.avg.com/us-en/download.prd-triisc#tba2

Linux/FreeBSD users can download AVG Anti-Virus Free edition for Linux from the direct download links below. (Links updated on 06, January 2012)

• Download AVG Free Edition for Linux (avg2011flx-r1408-a4116.i386.deb) (138 MB)
• Download AVG Free Edition for Linux (avg2011flx-r1408-a4116.i386.rpm) (138 MB)
• Download AVG Free Edition for Linux (avg2011flx-r1408-a4116.i386.sh) (138 MB)
• Download AVG Free Edition for Linux (avg2011flx-r1408-a4116.i386.tar.gz) (138 MB)
• Download AVG Server Edition for FreeBSD (avg2011ffb-r1408-a4117.i386.tar.gz) (139 MB)

Adobe Flash Player 11 and Adobe Air 3 has been released by Adobe software.

Adobe Flash Player 11 features hardware accelerated graphics rendering support through Stage 3D. According the Adobe, the support for hardware accelerated graphics rendering improves the rendering times by a factor of up to a 1000 times over Flash Player 10. The new technology also enables playing high quality games on the Flash platform. To show the new features and capabilities of Flash Player 11, Adobe has published two sample videos.

You can watch the demo videos below:

As you can in the demo videos yourself, The capabilities of the new Flash is very impressive.

Another important feature of Flash Player 11 is the native 64-bit support. The new version of Flash also offers theater-quality HD video and high-quality HD video conferencing support.

How to get Flash Player 11 for your supported system?

Check the version of Adobe Flash Player installed on your system by visiting Adobe Flash Player’s About page.

Online Installation

If you want to update to Flash Player 11, simply download Flash Player installer from Adobe’s website. The website automatically detects your operating system and offers an online installer. When this installer is executed, it automatically downloads the correct Flash Player 11 edition and installs it.

Adobe Flash Player 11 Offline Installer

If you want to download the offline installer of Flash Player 11, which you can use to update all your computer systems, simply download the correct version of Flash from the links below. So if your system is 64-bit, download Flash Player 11 64-bit, else download the 32-bit edition.

• Windows OS:

• Internet Explorer: 32-bit | 64-bit
• Other web browsers: 32-bit | 64-bit
• Mac OS: 32-bit | 64-bit
• Linux OS: 32-bit | 64-bit

If you want to download Adobe Air 3, you can get it from here.

Airtime, developed by Sourcefabric, is a free, open-source radio broadcasting software for scheduling and remote station management. The radio software runs on Linux platform, and features easy management and automation. The Airtime server software runs on Ubuntu Linux, Debian, and Red hat and multiple users can use the software to schedule radio shows remotely through any web browser. After installed, the user can control it from anywhere using a modern web browser.

Recently, Sourcefabric has released Airtime 1.8.2 with 58 improvements and bug fixes. It now provides the users ability to download audio, cancel a show that’s being recorded, and watch the recording status of a show on the “Now Playing” screen. The latest version has also improved the installation and upgrade process. A new command-line program called “airtime-check-system” now verifies the environment in which the radio software is being installed and helps troubleshoot problems.

Overview

Airtime provides a one-stop solution for a range of broadcast projects: from community to public and commercial stations. It can play the commonly used MP3 format and the open Ogg Vorbis format.

The Liquidsoap stream generator is the heart of the software. Liquidsoap generates streams from files present in the Airtime media archive, indexed in a PostgreSQL database. Live shows are automatically recorded with Ecasound, using the soundcard line input. Editors and station controllers can use Airtime to build playlists and manage files (upload, add metadata, manage advertisements) inside the station or via the Internet, using a standard web browser such as Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Combining Airtime, the Liquidsoap stream generator, the PostgreSQL database and file storage, you can supply a broadcast station with all the functionality needed for automation.

How to Automate Your Own Radio Broadcasting Station?

1. After installing, login to the Dashboard.

   

2. Add your files to the library using the “Add Media” button or drag and drop files to it.

   

3. Create a playlist in the Playlist Builder menu using your audio files.

   

4. Create a show by going to “Calendar” in the menu bar, and then clicking the “+ Show” icon. This can be either a one-time or repeating show. Only admins can add shows.

   

5. Add the playlist to the show by going to your show in the Schedule calendar, left-clicking on it and selecting “Add Content.”
6. Select your playlist and drag and drop it to the “Items in this show” area.

   

Example System Diagram

In the diagram below, the media files are stored on a separate machine which also includes a PostgreSQL database, accessible through the local network. Liquidsoap outputs streams to both the transmitter and a streaming media server. The machine running Airtime is behind a firewall because it is connected both to the local network, and to the Internet for remote access. This enables Airtime to offer password-protected access to the media database and scheduling from both inside and outside the studio building.

If you want to explore more, you can explore a full demo online or download it for free.

About Sourcefabric

Sourcefabric is a Czech non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting quality journalism through open source software and tools.

Oracle’s decision to give OpenOffice.org (OOo) assets to the Apache Software Foundation and not The Document Foundation (TDF) has not stopped TDF to roll out a major release of LibreOffice (LO), a fork of OpenOffice. LibreOffice is widely adopted now and is becoming very popular. Major Linux distros including Ubuntu, Fedora and Linux Mint has dropped OOo for LO.

LibreOffice 3.4.0 is the second major release of the suite since the announcement of TDF in September 2010. LO 3.4.0 is a major release of the open-source free office suite now incorporates the contributions of more than 120 developers (six times as many as the first beta released on the launch date).

LibreOffice was created as a fork of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite back in September, of course, due to uncertainty over the future of OOo after Oracle acquired the project.

“We care for our developers, and it shows,” noted Italo Vignoli, a steering committee member and The Document Foundation official. “Our core developers have invented the mechanism of the easy hacks, which makes it simple and enjoyable for volunteer contributors to get to know LibreOffice code, challenging their development skills with basic or elementary tasks.”

“Once they have completed the first easy hacks, contributors are ready to scale to more difficult tasks”, says Michael Meeks, a senior developer working for SuSE. “We spend quite a lot of time mentoring new contributors, in order to increase the number of people working on bug fixing, patches and features. This is soon going to be reflected in the quality of the software and the number of new features of future releases”.

Improved Features of LibreOffice

1. Updates to Calc
   Calc spreadsheet now boasts faster performance and an improved compatibility with Excel spreadsheets. Pivot Table — the new name of DataPilot — now offers support for unlimited numbers of fields and named ranges as data source.

2. UI Improvements
   The user interface of Writer, Impress and Draw has been improved with many new features, and several cosmetic changes have been applied to the Linux version, with a better text rendering engine and an improved GTK+ theme integration.

3. Support for Unity
   LibreOffice’s latest release adds initial support for Unity, the new user interface of Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).

4. Linux Performance
   LibreOffice 3.4.0 now offers smoother startup on Linux with a splash screen before starting to read all the application’s data, giving a faster time to splash and cleaner code.

5. A Smaller Windows Installer
   Shrink LibreOffice Windows installer download by more than 30 Mb using better compression schemes.

6. Parallel Installations on Linux
   LibreOffice 3.4.0 can be installed in parallel with LibreOffice 3.3 on Linux. Note that the user configuration is shared and both versions cannot be started at the same time.

7. Better Code
   Code wise, several thousand lines of German comments have been translated into English, and over 5.000 lines of dead code have been removed from Writer, Calc and Impress.

Interested users can view a complete list of new features and fixes on the LibreOffice Website.

LibreOffice Version Naming Clarification

The first release of the 3.4 series, LibreOffice 3.4.0, is targeted to community members and power users, and should not be implemented in a corporate environment. The Document Foundation has explained that following its time based release schedule – the best strategy for a distributed and cooperative development environment – the best releases for such deployments start from x.x.1. Because of this, LibreOffice 3.3.x is going to be maintained for several months to come, until the end of calendar year 2011, for the most conservative users.

LibreOffice 3.4 can be downloaded from http://www.libreoffice.org/download.

In one of our earlier articles, we shared a good news for Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick” users who wants to get Unity 2D without upgrading to the latest Ubuntu 11.04 version.

Unity 2D is basically a desktop shell developed for hardware platforms that don’t support Unity’s OpenGL requirements. In other words, it’s developed for Ubuntu systems having less hardware resources.

2D’s architecture is very close to that of the original Unity desktop shell since it shares the same backend components, except that it replaces the user interface elements. The user interface elements which gets replaced in this strip down version of the desktop shell are the panel, launcher and places components. Moreover, it uses a tweaked version of Metacity instead of Compiz as its window manager.

You can follow any one of the two ways described below to install Unity 2D on your Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick” build.

1. Install using Adi Roban’s PPA (more information about this PPA is available here):

Open a new terminal window and type the following commands, pressing Enter after each command. You will be once asked to give your sudo password, which is nothing but your Ubuntu’s login password for your account.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:adiroiban/unity-2d-maverick
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-2d

2. Install using Ubuntu’s own PPA:

Open a new terminal window and type the following commands, pressing Enter after each command. You will be asked once to give your sudo password, which is nothing but your Ubuntu’s login password for your account.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-2d

Note: Use any one of the above method, do not use both of them.

One last step before activating Unity 2D as your default desktop shell:

After Unity 2D installation is completed, follow the steps below to activate Unity 2D as the default desktop shell for your Ubuntu account.

1. First, log out of your Ubuntu account
2. Now, during logging back in again, don’t forget to choose “Unity 2D” session in the drop-down menu, present at the bottom center of the login screen
3. Congratulations, if you have performed the above steps carefully, your Ubuntu account should be running Unity 2D.

If you need any kind of help about the installation procedure, comment below, we will help you out.

Mozilla has released the Beta version, Firefox 5. Firefox Beta channel will let you experience cutting edge features but with more stability. Adapting themselves to the Google Chrome’s rapid release cycle, Mozilla devs have released their flagship web browser in three versions; Firefox 4 (which is the stable version now), Aurora (Chrome users can relate this to Google Chrome Dev version) and in between both, Firefox Beta (can be related to Google Chrome beta).

The beta version of the web browser is little more polished and stable than the Nightly and Aurora channels, but lets you test some of those cool new features before they’re released to everyone else, released to the stable version of the browser.

Mozilla Firefox 5 beta includes the much waited fast channel switcher along with performance and stability improvements.

Mozilla recently introduced the Firefox Aurora development channel to support more frequent releases. The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster.

After five weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurora channel, the next version of Firefox is ready for the beta channel. This release includes the Firefox channel switcher, performance and stability enhancements and support for the new CSS Animations standard to allow developers build more amazing Web experiences. The new Firefox channel switcher lets users move between Firefox Aurora, Beta and Release channels to test features at various levels of development, quality and polish.

First Rapid Release Firefox Beta Now Available – Mozilla Blog

Mozilla Firefox Channel Switcher lets you effortlessly switch between your current stable version of the web browser, Aurora build or the Beta version. You can change channels without affecting your Firefox profiles, right from within the About Firefox menu.

If you’re already using either the Aurora or Beta channel, simply click on the Firefox Menu > Help > About > Click on the “Change” link next to where it tells you what channel you’re running. Now, from the drop-down menu, you can easily switch to the Aurora, Beta, or Stable channel.

We have earlier covered in detail about how to change Firefox channels here.

[ Download Firefox beta version ]

Unity is “the completely new” user experience available in Ubuntu 11.04. It is available in two versions; Unity for the powerful machines with compatible graphics cards and Unity 2D, the less hardware resource hungry version. I prefer and use Unity 2D much more than Unity 3D on my Ubuntu 11.04 system.

If you’re still stuck with Ubuntu 10.10 for some reason or the other and you don’t want to miss out entirely on the “new” Unity user experience. You can now get it on your Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick” by using the PPA‘s listed in this article.

When Unity 2D was in its early development, Ubuntu 10.10 users were able to install it, for development purposes obviously, via the “Unity 2D PPA.” But as the launch of Natty came closer and closer, understandably the back porting for Maverick stopped.

But now Ubuntu 10.10 users can install and enjoy Unity 2D again, thanks to Ubuntu developer Adi Roban. He picked up the development where the Unity 2D team left off, and packaged Unity 2D into a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users. He explains on his blog:

“So being stuck with Ubuntu 10.10 I started using the Unity 2D team PPA repository. It worked quite well, until the team decided to stop supporting Unity 2D on Maverick. With valuable help from Unity 2D team I was able to build the latest Unity 2D on Maverick.”

–Adi Roban

The result of his work is a Unity 2D PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users, available at: ppa:adiroiban/unity-2d-maverick

The code is available at lp:~adiroiban/unity-2d/unity-2d-maverick

He continues on his blog:

“The global menu is not working it the current Maverick build. I will try to fix this since I like global menu. Feel free to suggest any improvements to the current build.

Please note that the Unity 2D on Maverick is not supported by the Unity 2D team. 
In the same time, I am a junior Ubuntu packager so the package might have some bugs.”

–Adi Roban

[Thanks to OMG! Ubuntu]

Rovio Mobile, the makers of smash hit mobile game Angry Birds, have unleashed a HTML5 version of the popular game that’s designed to run in Chrome (or Chromium) on any operating system. This release came after an announcement by the makers of the game at Google I/O event. This made Angry Birds, one of the most popular games already available on mobile phones and tablets, available for almost all platforms.

The new release was built using WebGL and uses local-caching so players can continue to cause mayhem even when not connected to the internet.

The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 70 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.

If you use Google Chrome web browser, you may be delighted to know that Angry Birds is available for free as a Chrome app. The game features all-new Google Chrome inspired levels. The Mighty Eagle add-on will be available via the new Google Payments in-app purchasing feature at a later date.

You can however play the game online using any browser at chrome.angrybirds.com.

Rovio now have native support for Angry Birds on a number of mobile and desktop platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Amazon Kindle, Mac OS X and Windows, but have never supported Linux natively. With the launch of the HTML5 version of the popular game, Linux users can now enjoy the game on their desktops!

Angry Birds is now so much popular that now a Hollywood movie is in production. You can watch its official movie trailer below:

Gerry Carr of Canonical has announced on the official Canonical Blog that they will be discontinuing the free CD shipping service ShipIt and would be focusing on their CD distributor programme and shipping CDs directly to LoCos instead. Below is an excerpt of the official announcement:

It’s with some regret that we are announcing the end of the ShipIt Programme and the CD distributor programme. … Technology moves on and as we look at ways to spread Ubuntu further, a CD distribution programme, especially one of that size and delivered in that way, makes less sense. We have been slowly easing back the programme over the last two years to limit the number of CDs per person and the number of times a person could apply for a CD. But for Ubuntu 11.04 you will no longer be able to go to our website and apply for a free CD.

That’s not to say there won’t be CDs. We are going to make large numbers of CDs available to the Ubuntu Local Communities (LoCos) through a shipIt-lite program. We are asking the LoCos, who are much better placed than Canonical in many ways, to find creative ways to get CDs to those that need them. And of course, every single person reading this who has a CD is a potential distributor — it is after all free to copy, modify and redistribute. We will also continue to make the packs available through the store which are sold more or less at cost price (plus shipping).

For the late comer’s: What was Shipit?

Shipit was a service that Canonical used to distribute Ubuntu CDs free of cost to individuals around the globe. Shipit came into existence when broadband was non-existence and downloading a CD ISO image was a nightmare. Since then, Canonical’s Shipit service has shipped millions of CDs worldwide freely to people who weren’t able to download it themselves. This helped millions of people discover Ubuntu, Linux and the world of open-source.

What next then?

Now, starting with Ubuntu 11.04, Canonical has decided to stop the service and people would no longer be able to order the free CDs. But people who still don’t enjoy broadband connections should not feel left out as Canonical will continue to distribute Ubuntu through a Shipit like programme LoCos. And of course, you can still buy Ubuntu CDs from the Canonical store or burn your own ones and then duplicate and distribute them.

Gerry also hinted that Canonical would be launching cloud based free online trial service.

R.I.P Shipit, we all will miss you…

BleachBit is an open source cross-platform system clean-up and privacy application for Windows and Linux operating system. Windows users do have the option of CCleaner, which recently got updated to support Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4. But what about Linux users who need to clean their Linux machine? Well, that’s where BleachBit comes in to fill the void. And the good thing about it is, it’s also available for Windows users alike.

BleachBit has added several new features to its latest version that make it an even better utility for removing unneeded/unnecessary files from your computer. On Linux systems, BleachBit can now remove swap files (in addition to swap devices). The Windows version has added the option to remove Windows Update uninstaller including hot fixes and Internet Explorer patches. It’s well worth checking out the full list of features.

Latest features introduced are as follows:

• Add command line option --preset which selects all the cleaners previously selected in the GUI.
• Specific to Linux
  • Support Thunderbird on openSUSE 11.3 thanks to Manfred Schwarb (LP#668231)
  • Fix wrong button label when adding folders for overwrite disk space and for whitelist (pointed out by jtarin)
  • When cleaning localizations, show warning to point user to configuration
  • Packagers: BleachBit will try to use the built-in json module on Python 2.6+ instead of simplejson, which is still required on Python 2.5.
• Specific to Windows
  • Import winapp2.ini files: the CCleaner community maintains winapp2.ini files with about 450 cleaner definitions. Just download a winapp2.ini file and place it in one of the BleachBit cleaner directories.
  • Internet Explorer: delete autocomplete passwords
  • Support registry keys in the HKCR (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT) hive

Use BleachBit to:

• Free disk space
• Reduce the size of backups and the time to create them by removing unnecessary files
• Maintain privacy
• Improve system performance (by vacuuming the Firefox database, for example)
• Prepare whole disk images for compression (common for “ghost” backups and virtual machines) by wiping free disk space

How to use BleachBit to clean up the system?

Ubuntu users can simply click here to install it. Other Linux systems users can easily find BleachBit in their respective repostories, or download specific version made for your Linux distribution available at the official BleachBit’s website. Windows users can download standard installer version or portable version from here.

Ubuntu users will find it in their applications menu under “System“.

By default only the programs installed in the system will show up. You can now check the things you’re interested in deleting. BleachBit will inform you about the consequences of everything as you check items for cleanup. Once you’ve selected everything, click on “Preview” to see how much disk space you can save.

After being satisfied with the result, do check settings one last time before clicking on “Delete“.

So, in a sentence: read the descriptions, check the boxes you want, click preview, and click delete.

Advanced cleaning options provided are:

• Clear the memory and swap on Linux
• Delete broken shortcuts on Linux
• Delete the Firefox version 3 URL history without deleting the whole file–with optional shredding
• Delete Linux localizations: delete languages you don’t use.
• Clean APT for Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Linux Mint
• Find widely-scatted junk such as Thumbs.db and .DS_Store files.
• Execute yum clean for CentOS, Fedora, and Red Hat to remove cached package data
• Delete Windows registry keys–often where MRU (most recently used) lists are stored
• Delete the OpenOffice.org recent documents list without deleting the whole Common.xcu file
• Overwrite free disk space to hide previously files
• Vacuum Firefox, Google, Liferea, Thunderbird, and Yum databases: shrink files without removing data to save space and improve speed
• Surgically remove private information from .ini and JSON configuration files with deleting the whole file

BleachBit is a program that can save you a lot of hard disk space quickly, but be sure you know what you’re doing.

Do you have any tips for using this program more effectively or use any other app with similar or better functionality? Share them using comments below with us!

Canonical has introduced 17 new wallpapers that will be part of the final release of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system. The default wallpaper for Ubuntu 11.04 has also been reveled. The default wallpaper (the last one) is very similar to the Ubuntu 10.10 wallpaper. These wallpapers are created by community members. As you will see, for the first time, illustrated designs are also offered alongside traditional photographic wallpapers. On April 28th, Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) will become the 14th release of the Ubuntu operating system.

Ubuntu is one of the most widely used and popular Linux distribution. It is available for normal desktops and server and is very fast. Easy installation procedure, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine available from the network, and professional technical support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies around the world is the reason behind its continued success.

In order of appearance, the wallpaper titles are: Arboreal ballet, Aubergine Sea, Berries, Bird, Fabric, Green, Grey day, Holes, Ilunabarra Azkainetik, La no alto, Quandro, Signpost, Tiny Worlds, Touch the light, Tri Narwhal, Variations On Natty Narwhal and White flowers.

Writing on the reasoning behind the subtle changes Ubuntu’s Otto Greenslade says, “…as we move towards becoming more of a ‘household’ platform and with the great changes coming with Unity (launcher/dash) general users will get reassurance from the familiarity of the wallpaper and will also identify with it as part of our personality in new screenshots.”

Natty’s kernel packages will be based on Linux kernel 2.6.38, and will come with applications such as LibreOffice 3.3, Mozilla Firefox 4, Banshee 1.9, Transmission 2.13, Pidgin 2.7.9, Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1.9 and The GIMP 2.6.11. Natty Narwhal will also include the latest stable version of the GNOME 3.0 desktop environment, which brings many improvements in various areas, such as Nautilus, Empathy, Evolution, Tomboy, Totem, Brasero, and much more.

Ubuntu 11.04 Wallpaper Pack Download

You can download the package containing all the gorgeous wallpapers from the link below:

Official Ubuntu 11.04 Wallpaper Pack: ubuntu-wallpapers_0.31.9.tar.gz

via OMGUbuntu

LibreOffice is a fork of the popular open-source office suite, OpenOffice. LibreOffice is a free power-packed Open Source personal office productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It provides six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation. The Document Foundation maintains LibreOffice release schedule thanks to a growing and vibrant community of developers. Its developers’ goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. The name is a hybrid word with the first part Libre, which means free (as in freedom) in both Spanish and French, and the English word Office.

The Document Foundation has recently announced the release of LibreOffice 3.3.2, the second micro release of the free office suite for personal productivity. The latest update improves the stability of the software and sets the platform for the next release 3.4, due in mid May. The community of developers has been able to maintain the tight schedule thanks to the increase in the number of contributors, and to the fact that those that have started with easy hacks in September 2010 are now working at substantial features. In addition, they have almost completed the code cleaning process, getting rid of German comments and obsolete functionalities.

“I have started hacking LibreOffice code on September 28, 2010, just a few hours after the announcement of the project, and I found a very welcoming community, where senior developers went out of their way to help newbies like me to become productive. After a few hours I submitted a small patch removing 5 or 6 lines of dead code… enough to get my feet wet and learn the workflow“, says Norbert, a French developer living in the United States. “In a short time, I ended up removing the VOS library – deprecated for a decade – from LibreOffice, and finding and fixing various threading issues in the process“.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 Final release notes:

• This release is bit-for-bit identical to the 3.3.2 Release Candidate 2, so you don’t need to download or reinstall if you have that version already.
• The distribution for Windows is an international build, so you can choose the user interface language that you prefer. Help content is available via an online service, or alternatively as a separate install.
• For Windows users that have OpenOffice.org installed, we advise uninstalling that beforehand, because it registers the same file type associations.
• If you run Windows 2000, you may require this update before being able to install LibreOffice.
• If you run Linux, the GCJ Java variant has known issues with LibreOffice, we advise to e.g. use OpenJDK instead.
• LibreOffice contains all the security fixes from OpenOffice.org in 3.3.0, and perhaps more as a side-effect of the code clean-ups.

There are a few non-critical issues still contained in this release, which will be addressed soon with upcoming bug fix versions:

• If you install third-party extensions that bring their own help, you may only be able to view that after installing the separate help packs on Windows.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is being released just one day after the closing of the first funding round launched by The Document Foundation to collect donations towards the 50,000-euro capital needed to establish a Stiftung in Germany. In five weeks, the community has donated twice as much, i.e. around 100,000 euros. All additional funds will be used for operating expenses such as infrastructure costs and registration of domain names and trademarks, as well as for community development expenses such as travel funding for TDF representatives speaking at conferences, booth fees for trade shows, and initial financing of merchandising items, DVDs and printed material.

Italo Vignoli, a founder and a steering committee member of The Document Foundation, will be keynoting at Flourish 2011 in Chicago on Sunday, April 3, at 10:30AM, about getting independent from OpenOffice and Oracle, starting The Document Foundation, raising the capital and the first community budget, organizing developers and other work, and outlining a roadmap for future releases and features.

Recently, LibreOffice have been accepted as a Google Summer of Code 2011 organization.

You can download LibreOffice from the official website.

Do you want to install LibreOffice and make it your primary office suite instead of OpenOffice in Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04? Here’s a quick tutorial that will teach you how to install the new LibreOffice open source office suite and replace the old OpenOffice.org office suite. Natty Narwhal (11.04) will support the new LibreOffice, which is due for release in late April this year.

However, the LibreOffice office suite package is also available for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) users. There are two ways to install, you can either remove OpenOffice completely and install or you can add the LibreOffice PPA and test it. Adding the LibreOffice PPA only won’t affect OpenOffice.

How to remove OpenOffice.org?

Open the terminal and type the following command:

sudo apt-get purge "openoffice*.*"

You will be asked for your password, type your password and press the Enter key on your keyboard to continue. When asked, “If you want to remove the OpenOffice.org package,” type “Y” and press the Enter key. Wait for the OpenOffice.org packages to be removed.

How to add the LibreOffice PPA repository?

To add the PPA, add ppa:libreoffice/ppa to your software sources or open the terminal and type the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

You will be asked for your password, type your password and press the Enter key on your keyboard to continue.

How to install LibreOffice?

Open a new Terminal session and run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

You will be asked for your password, type your password and press the Enter key on your keyboard to continue.

Now, Ubuntu users should run the following command:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

Kubuntu users should run the following command:

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

That’s it! LibreOffice is now completely installed in your Ubuntu machine. If you have any problems, do not hesitate to comment below!

Bleeding Edge is a Linux shell-script designed for the popular Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system, both 32-bit and 64-bit version of Ubuntu are supported. With the help of Bleeding Edge, you can easily install all the multimedia codecs, system fonts, Flash Player, Mozilla Firefox 4, Ubuntu Tweak, Hulu, LibreOffice, VirtualBox 4 and more with just a click.

Bleeding Edge can also install additional software repositories, disable the annoying system beep, enable 5.1 sound support, install restricted extras and media players, move the window buttons to the right, install proprietary hardware drivers, and the “Open in Terminal” extension for GNOME/Nautilus.

Bleeding Edge can also clean your system. That means removing locales (language files), removing old kernels, removing apt cache, removing config files for unused .deb packages, and emptying the trash.

How To Install Bleeding Edge in Ubuntu?

The installation process is the same for both Ubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit operating system, and requires you to download a .sh (shell-script) file. Once you have .sh file you need to give execute permissions to the file, you can do this by two ways.

Right-click on the downloaded .sh file, select Properties.

Select the Permissions tab, check the Execute option and close the Properties dialog box.

Now, double-click the .sh file and choose the Run in terminal option, follow the on-screen instructions.

The second simple option which I like is using the terminal. Type the following command at the Terminal and press Enter:

sudo chmod +x BleedingEdge1_0_6.sh

You can then run this script using the following command at the Terminal:

sudo sh BleedingEdge1_0_6.sh

Now, simply select the applications that you want to install and let Bleeding Edge do the magic for you.

And also the cleaning:

Opera Software has released Opera 11.01 final version, which is an update of Opera 11. The latest updates fixes many security issues and improves overall stability of Opera, one of the popular web browser. This final version of Opera has come up after many snapshot releases and two RC (release candidates) updates. Opera 11.01 is a highly recommended update for every Opera 11 user.

The full change logs for Windows, Mac and Linux and FreeBSD are linked from the blog post announcing about the new version release.

The security issues fixed in Opera 11.01:

• Removed support for “javascript:” URLs in CSS -o-link values, to make it easier for sites to filter untrusted CSS.
• Fixed an issue where large form inputs could allow execution of arbitrary code.
• Fixed an issue which made it possible to carry out clickjacking attacks against internal opera: URLs.
• Fixed issues which allowed web pages to gain limited access to files on the user’s computer.
• Fixed an issue where email passwords were not immediately deleted when deleting private data.
• Fixed an issue which could cause the wrong executable to be used to display a downloaded file in its folder.

Users can update to the latest version of Opera web browser directly by clicking on Help > Menu > Check for Updates.

Users can also download the latest version of Opera directly from Opera Software.

Mozilla has just released the latest beta version of Firefox 4, beta 9, bringing them closer to a release candidate and final version release in February 2011. There’s still one more beta to pump out, though. In this new beta release, there aren’t any new features but just some tweaks and bug fixes.

Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta is based on the Gecko 2.0 Web platform. In this release, Mozilla has overhauled the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and startup performance. Per-compartment garbage collection is now enabled, reducing work done during complex animations.

Mozilla has also added support for 7 new languages for Firefox 4 taking the total supported languages to 76. The Firefox Sync setup experience has been greatly improved across desktop and mobile devices. Firefox 4 beta now uses the JägerMonkey JavaScript engine, which is supposedly fast. Firefox button has a new look for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users.

Tabs are now on top by default on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu. The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. Firefox 4 beta now comes with native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.

To view the complete list of changes, visit this page. You can download Firefox 4 Beta 9 from here orvisit this post to learn what has changed in this beta.

This Firefox 4 Beta is considered to be stable and safe to use for daily web browsing, though the features and content may change before the final product release.

Google Chrome web browser stable has been updated to 8.0.552.237 for all platforms. The latest stable release fixes several security vulnerabilities, making it a mandatory update for all Chrome stable users.

The Google Chrome Releases blog lists 16 different vulnerabilities that have been fixed in the new version of which one received the highest rating critical and 13 of high. Sergey Glazunov, the researcher who discovered the critical vulnerability has received the first “elite” Chromium Security Reward, $1337 reward and several other rewards at the same time.

The releases contain the security fixes listed below.

• [58053] Medium Browser crash in extensions notification handling. Credit to Eric Roman of the Chromium development community.
• [$1337] [65764] High Bad pointer handling in node iteration. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [66334] High Crashes when printing multi-page PDFs. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [66560] High Stale pointer with CSS + canvas. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$500] [66748] High Stale pointer with CSS + cursors. Credit to Jan ToÅ¡ovský.
• [67100] High Use after free in PDF page handling. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [67208] High Stack corruption after PDF out-of-memory condition. Credit to Jared Allar of CERT.
• [$1000] [67303] High Bad memory access with mismatched video frame sizes. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined) and David Warren of CERT.
• [$500] [67363] High Stale pointer with SVG use element. Credited anonymously; plus indepdent discovery by miaubiz.
• [$1000] [67393] Medium Uninitialized pointer in the browser triggered by rogue extension. Credit to kuzzcc.
• [$1000] [68115] High Vorbis decoder buffer overflows. Credit to David Warren of CERT.
• [$1000] [68170] High Buffer overflow in PDF shading. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG.
• [$1000] [68178] High Bad cast in anchor handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68181] High Bad cast in video handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68439] High Stale rendering node after DOM node removal. Credit to Martin Barbella; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
• [$3133.7] [68666] Critical Stale pointer in speech handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.

Interested users can find full details about the Chrome changes in the SVN revision log.

As Google Chrome gets updated automatically, most of the users are already running the latest version of Chrome. You can check which version you are running by clicking on the wrench icon and clicking on About Google Chrome. If you want you can visit the official download page to download the latest Google Chrome version. You can also download an offline version of Google Chrome from the links that we have shared in one of our earlier posts.

NEWS is a free open source RSS ticker for Windows and Linux systems. It lets you stay up-to-date with the latest news from your favourite feeds directly on your desktop. With a single click, you get the latest headlines scrolling in a thin window on your desktop (similar to what can be seen on News TV channels).

News is light on resources and an extensive set of preferences lets you easily control the scrolling speed, update, fonts, bar size, transparency, colours, and a lot more options. The default feed is provided by BBC News but you can change it via ‘File > Open RSS feed’.

Simply tweak the settings of News to display it the way you want to on your desktop and you will love it.

After a few tweaks, below is what I got on my Ubuntu Desktop:

You can download News from the download links given below:

[ Download News RSS Ticker ] [ Mirror Download Link (only for Windows) ] [Source]

Oracle VirtualBox 4.0 is recently released and is a major upgrade. The new user interface is now known as “VirtualBox Manager.” It has made management of virtual operating systems a lot more easier. VirtualBox is a free virtualization software released under GNU General Public License (GPL) for personal use and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux host systems. The user interface is easier to get around, you can now easily move or wipe away virtual machines. Display and hardware compatibility improved in this new version, and you can now even add new capabilities using the new “extensions.”

There aren’t many Extensions now, but third-party developers may soon add some nice capabilities to this free virtual machine manager. Oracle offers one extension, namely, USB management, that will likely allow users of the open source version (usually distributed by Linux desktops) to get that previously unavailable ability.

You can check out the VirtualBox 4.0 changelog for the complete list of enhancements and bug fixes.

Features in VirtualBox 4.0

• VirtualBox is now segregated into a base package and Extension Packs which can be downloaded separately from VirtualBox official website.
• Live preview of the virtual machine is the most real enhancement in the GUI . Users are also equipped with the option to configure the refresh rate to be in between every half second to every tenth seconds, or to disable the refresh completely.
• The virtual machine details in the right tab of VirtualBox Manager such as General, System, Display, Storage, Audio, Network, Serial Ports, USB and Shared Folders are now divided neatly into groups.
• Extension prefaced in VirtualBox 4.0 enables the virtualization tool to be an open architecture. Through the installation of the new extensions, the users are now able to add new functionalities into virtual machines such as USB 2.0 devices support and Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE) boot. Although more extensions are yet to be made available, it is expected that new VirtualBox extension packs will be later developed by Oracle and community developers to offer functionalities which are not now available .
• 2GB of RAM or more is now supported for the guest OS running in a 32-bit host.
• Process of exporting and importing virtual machines in VirtualBox no longer requires tedious tweaking of XML configuration files. The Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) facilitates the improved export and import process which involved only a single file.
• In addition to Virtual Disk Image (VDI), various disk image files are also supported such as VMDK by VMware, VHD by Microsoft and HDD by Parallels version 2.
• New virtual hardware such as Intel ICH9 chipset and Intel HD Audio are available for better support of modern guest operating system.

VirtualBox 4.0 is available as free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.

You can also download VirtualBox 4.0 using the direct download links given below:

• Download VirtualBox 4.0 for Windows hosts
• Download VirtualBox 4.0 for Intel Macs
• Download VirtualBox 4.0 for Linux hosts
• Download VirtualBox 4.0 for Solaris hosts