Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot has been finally released and it comes with a fresh look, redesigned Ubuntu software centre and other improvements. Ubuntu has made available an amazing site where you can take a brief tour of the Ubuntu 11.10 interface and test some of its contents like the refreshed Dashboard, Firefox browser, Software Centre, Thunderbird Mail, Shotwell Photo manager, LibreOffice programs, Ubuntu explorer, etc.

Ubuntu 11.10 comes with a collection of 16 New Wallpapers, which all are intensely beautiful and I think the best ever introduced in Ubuntu OS. You can check them at the tour site by opening ‘View photos’ from the Welcome screen. All the backgrounds are in high-resolution and you might want to set them all as your desktop wallpaper.

A preview of some wallpapers:

Download Ubuntu 11.10 Wallpapers Pack (Includes the default background)

PS: I noticed 16 wallpapers on the tour site but two of them aren’t included in the pack. It seems they added it to the OS at the last moment. You can find both of them below. I’ll try to add their download links soon here.

Take the Ubuntu Tour @ www.ubuntu.com/tour

Related Posts:

• Download Ubuntu Mix – Windows 7 Theme
• 25 Fantastic HD Wallpapers to Enhance Your Desktop
• Download Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) New Wallpapers
• Download Ubuntu 9.10 New Wallpapers !
• Amazing Wallpapers from Desktopography 2010 Exhibition

The latest and final version of Flash Player and Adobe Air has finally been released by Adobe Systems. Adobe Flash Player 11 is now available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android while Adobe Air 3 is available for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. This is a major release that includes new features like Stage 3D Graphics, Flash support for 64-bit OS as well as enhancements and bug fixes related to security, stability, performance and device compatibility. Check the complete set of new features below.

New Features in Flash Player 11 and AIR 3

• Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering (Player & AIR desktop + AIR for TV)
• Flash Access Content Protection Support for Mobile
• Flash Access Content Protection Enhancements
• Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS)
• NetStream.dispose()
• H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras (desktop)
• JPEG-XR support
• Enhanced high resolution bitmap support
• High efficiency SWF compression support
• G.711 Audio Compression for Telephony
• Native JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) Support
• Garbage Collection Advice
• Cubic Bezier Curves
• Secure Random Number Generator
• Socket Progress Events
• DisplayObjectContainer.removeChildren and MovieClip.isPlaying

New Features in Flash Player 11

• Native 64-bit Support (Flash Player desktop) — Take advantage of native support for 64-bit OS and 64-bit web browsers on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.
• Asynchronous Bitmap Decoding
• TLS Secure Sockets Support

New Features in AIR 3

• Native Extensions
• Captive Runtime Support
• Stage Video Hardware Acceleration (AIR Mobile)
• H.264/AAC Playback Support (AIR for iOS)
• Front-facing Camera Support (AIR for Android)
• Background Audio Playback Support (AIR for iOS) — Developers can now write multitasking iOS applications that can play audio while in the background, such as music applications or reliable voice conferencing apps with multitasking support.
• Device Speaker Control for Mobile (AIR for iOS & Android)
• 16 and 32-bit color depth
• Game Controller API (AIR TV)

Read detailed Release Notes

Adobe Flash Player 11.0.1.152 for Android can be downloaded from Android market.

Download Adobe Flash Player 11 for desktop at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer

Related Posts:

• Updated Flash Player 10.3 available for Android devices
• Adobe Flash Player 10.2 for Android coming March 18th
• Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller – Removes Flash plugin
• Free Standalone Flash Player to play .swf & .flv Files
• Adobe Flash Player 10 Released [Download]

Earlier, Mozilla used to release new Firefox builds with a big time difference but lately they’re in a rush to push Firefox to a higher build version. Seems they are trying hard to cope up with the build numbers of Google Chrome and IE. After releasing 6 beta versions of Firefox 7, the Final version of Firefox 7 is now available for download via their FTP site. Official announcement will go soon, get it for Windows, Linux and Mac!

Firefox 7.0 aims to enhance your browsing experience by improving one of its major drawback, i.e. high memory consumption. The latest and new Firefox 7.0 drastically improves the usage of memory (RAM) and is said to consume 20-30% less memory than former builds of Firefox browser.

Changelog based on the recent beta of Firefox 7:

• Vastly improved memory usage (up to 50% better) and increased speed
• Added a new rendering backend to speed up Canvas operations on Windows systems
• Bookmark and password changes now sync almost instantly when using Firefox Sync
• Added support for text-overflow: ellipsis
• Added support for the Web Timing specification
• Added an opt-in system for users to send performance data back to Mozilla to improve future versions of Firefox. This can be enabled by installing an add-on
• Fixed several stability issues

The Final build of Firefox 7 is scheduled to be officially released within 24 hours. You can download it now using the direct download links (English) below.

• Firefox 7 for Windows
• Firefox 7 for Linux
• Firefox 7 for Mac

Update – Firefox 7 is now officially available in over 70 languages. Get it here.

[Release Notes]

Related Posts:

• Firefox 4 now available via Mozilla FTP site [Download]
• Firefox 5.0 Final now available via Mozilla FTP Server
• Download Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 candidate build!
• Download Firefox 4 Beta 10
• Firefox 4 RC2 released [Download]

Google has just updated its Chrome Stable build from v12.0.742.122 to v13.0, that brings two amazing features and a couple of other improvements. The first cool feature that the latest stable version of Chrome has got is ‘Instant Pages’ which is on by default. With Instant pages you can search faster as Chrome starts preloading the first search result in background, thus making it instantly available to you.

Video – Comparison of Chrome with and without Instant Pages enabled

The 2nd impressive feature ‘Print preview’ offers the ability to Preview a webpage before printing. It is currently available for Windows and Linux (coming soon for Mac). This is an easy “print to PDF” option that uses Chrome’s fast built-in PDF viewer and includes several options like changing color, layout of the print page, etc.

In addition to adding new features to Chrome, we’re continually working to improve our old favorites. The omnibox, Chrome’s combination search box and address bar, has gotten much smarter in the latest release, making it even easier for you to get back to pages you’ve visited before. Just type part of the page’s address or title and look in the dropdown for matching pages from your history. Enjoy!

Update to the latest Google Chrome 13 now by clicking on Wrench icon > About Google Chrome. You can also download Standalone offline installer of Stable Chrome 13.

• Google Chrome 13 Stable for Windows
• Google Chrome 13 Stable for Mac
• Chrome 13 Stable for Linux/Ubuntu

Source: Google Chrome Blog

Related Posts:

• How to Enable Google Instant results in Chrome Search bar
• Google Chrome 10 Stable released – Gets Speedier, Safer, New settings, Sandboxing
• Google Chrome 8 Stable released [Download Now]
• Stable Google Chrome 12 Released [Update Now]
• Google Chrome 9 Stable v9.0.597.94 released

Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 5 on June 21st and a new rapid release of Firefox browser is now available – Beta 1 of Firefox 6 has been officially released. Firefox 6 Beta is the latest Mozilla Firefox Beta, now available for download and testing on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. This new release introduces innovative tools to help developers build rich and compelling web experiences.

New in this release for Windows, Mac and Linux:

• Add-ons Manager with Plugin Check: Check that your plugins are up-to-date directly from the Add-ons Manager
• Improved Panorama Groups: Reduces browser startup time by only loading saved tab groups when you use Panorama
• Improved Address Bar: Highlights the domain name of the website you’re visiting to make it easy to identify where you are online
• Streamlined site identity block
• The Scratchpad: Quickly build and test JavaScript snippets in the browser
• Support for Web Sockets with a prefixed API
• Moveable Web Console
• New Web developer-specific menu
• Window.matchMedia API
• Support for server-sent events

New in this release for Android:

• New initial experience: Firefox starts faster and uses less memory. Get to your home page quickly and discover browser features on the side panels.
• Higher-quality image scaling: View crisp Web pages and images with less pixelation
• Enhanced Firefox experience on large screen tablets
• Improvements to the form helper on Android
• Fresh visual style on Gingerbread OS
• Optimization for pages that use right to left layout rendering, e.g. in Hebrew and Arabic
• Touch Events for better interaction with Web pages
• IndexedDB allows Web pages to store data offline for faster access
• Automatic text hyphenation

Technical release notes for: Windows, Mac, Linux / Android

Download Firefox 6 Beta Related Posts:

• Download Firefox 4 Beta 9
• Download Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 candidate build!
• Firefox 5.0 Final now available via Mozilla FTP Server
• Download Firefox 4 Beta 10
• Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Released [Download Now !]

It comes as a surprise that Firefox 5.0 has undergone faster development unlike the former Firefox 4 build that gone through 12 Beta and 2 RC builds prior to release of its final version. After releasing 7 Betas of Firefox 5, Mozilla has now released the final build of Firefox 5.0 (available for download via FTP server) and the official release of browser is expected on June 21. Firefox 5 Final can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux in various languages. Try out this latest build if you can’t hold yourself!

Certainly, no GUI changes are made in Firefox 5 and you will notice exactly the same design as in Firefox 4. At this time, most of the Add-ons seems to be incompatible with Firefox 5. This latest stable version offers more stability and improvements than the former test builds. So, Download it and upgrade your current version of Firefox.

Download Firefox 5.0 (English-US) – [Direct Links]

• Firefox 5 for Windows
• Firefox 5 for Mac
• Firefox 5 for Linux (x86 & x64)

Related Posts:

• Firefox 4 now available via Mozilla FTP site [Download]
• Firefox 5.0 Beta 2 Candidate Build released [Download]
• Download Firefox 4 Beta 10
• Firefox 7.0 Final Now Available for Download
• Download Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 candidate build!

The Ubuntu Manual Team has released a comprehensive guide for Ubuntu OS, named as “Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.10”. This official manual is of great help for beginners and those who never had their hands on a Linux system before. The guide is specially for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), is available for Free in more than 52 languages.

This 158-page detailed PDF manual has a decent layout and covers essential tips to help new users get quickly started with Ubuntu. The guide is simple to follow, with step-by-step instructions and plenty of screenshots, giving a brief intro of Ubuntu, covering basics of Ubuntu such as getting and installing the OS. It shares various How-Tos, lets you understand the desktop and how to work with Ubuntu. Furthermore, it has tips on managing the hardware and software, troubleshooting guide to resolve any problems. There is also a section ‘Advanced Topics’ for advanced users that gives introduction to the Terminal, basic security concepts, system updates, Firewall, and much more.

Features

• Easy to understand – our manual has step by step instructions and is jargon-free
• A picture is worth a thousand words – lots of screenshots to show you how to do tasks
• All in one place – conveniently located in one file, so you don’t have to look all over the web for help
• Progressive learning curve – start with the basics, and learn as you work through each chapter
• Dozens of languages – translated into more than 52 languages, including localized screenshots
• CC-BY-SA licensing – download, modify, reproduce and share as much as you like
• No cost – our documents are all written by Ubuntu community members and there is no charge to use them
• Printer friendly – we have a version optimized for printing to save the trees
• Troubleshooting section – to help you solve common Ubuntu problems quickly

A printed version of Ubuntu manual is also available to buy online for $9.50 only.

Download Ubuntu 10.10 Official Manual [FREE]            

via [Softpedia]

Related Posts:

• Download ‘Your Guide to Windows 7’
• Samsung GALAXY S I9000 User Manual/Guide
• Download Galaxy Nexus Android 4.0 User Guide/Manual
• Samsung GALAXY S II (GT-I9100) User Manual/Guide
• iOS 5 Official User Guide for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch

Google has just updated Chrome from v11.0.696.57 to v12.0.742.91 under the Stable Channel for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This latest Chrome 12 stable release brings improvements in security, privacy, and graphics to over 160 million users of Chrome.

Chrome is now more secure, thanks to enhancements to our Safe Browsing technology. In addition to protecting you from certain malware and phishing websites, Chrome now warns you before downloading some types of malicious files. We’ve carefully designed this feature so that malicious content can be detected without Chrome or Google ever having to know about the URLs you visit or the files you download.

There is improvement in Chrome’s graphics capabilities and this release includes support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, thus to provide you a snazzier experience in some web pages and web apps that choose to implement 3D effects. To see hardware-accelerated 3D CSS in action, check out this Chrome Experiment on Windows Vista / Mac OS X 10.6 or above, featuring clips from Aardman Studio’s “Shaun the Sheep.”

Download the Google Chrome 12 Final now or update directly by going to ‘About Google Chrome’. Added below are links for standalone offline installer of Chrome 12 Stable for users who want to save time & bandwidth when installing the same on multiple systems.

Download Chrome 12 Standalone Setup [Full Offline Setup]

• Google Chrome 12 Stable for Windows
• Google Chrome 12 Stable for Mac
• Chrome 12 Stable for Linux/Ubuntu

Source: Google Chrome Blog

Related Posts:

• Google Chrome 9 Stable v9.0.597.94 released
• Google Chrome 10 Stable released – Gets Speedier, Safer, New settings, Sandboxing
• Google Chrome 8 Stable released [Download Now]
• Stable Google Chrome 11 released, gets a New Logo & Speech Input through HTML
• Google Chrome 6.0 Stable build released [Offline Installer]