LibreOffice 4.0 Beta 2 is currently available by default in Ubuntu 13.04 Daily Build.

It has an impressive list of new features:

• now integrates with various CMS (Content Management System)
• uses Firefox personas to theme it
• contributing to LibreOffice is easy using Gerrit
• converting non-native formats is now improved
• can edit Visio and Publisher documents

Open up LibreOffice and go to Tools->Options->Personalization. Click the Select Persona button, and in the Persona address field, enter the link to the desired Firefox Persona (e.g. this example uses http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/462094).

Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin is a LTS (long-term support) release and it will ship with Linux kernel 3.2 by default, GNOME 3.2, Unity 5.4.0, LibreOffice 3.5. According to Ubuntu Kernel Release Manager, Leann Ogasawara, as soon as new stable versions of the 3.2 kernel branch will be released, they will be included in Ubuntu. “With Ubuntu 12.04 being an LTS release, our primary focus has been on stability. As such, we chose to ship with a v3.2 based kernel and will continue to rebase to the latest v3.2.y stable kernels as they become available.”

A new Unity version, 5.4.0 will also ship in, introducing the so-called HUD (Heads-Up Display), well-known from shooter games. To invoke the HUD press the Alt key.

Unity 5.4.0 features the new HUD:

In KDE applications:

The user can use the HUD to explore bookmarks and history in Firefox, search in application’s nested menus, and launch various applications. The real utility of the HUD is probably the possibility to explore menu options in a fast manner by using the keyboard only. Integration seems pretty nice, this definitely being an important addition to Unity. The video below is descriptive enough.

It looks like there are some opened bugs on HUD right now, like searching the wrong application or having to click the search field when invoking HUD, but these should be fixed by the time 12.04 gets out.

A video showing the features of HUD is available for some time now on YouTube:

According to this announcement, RC6 will be enabled by default on systems with the Sandy Bridge architecture used by Intel. RC6 is a technology which allows the system to enter in power-saving mode when the GPU is idle.

Other new stuff include a new sound theme and a new version of Transmission, 2.5, which is the default BitTorrent client in Ubuntu.

12.04 will also the first Ubuntu release to be supported five years on both desktop and server, contrary to the previous LTS releases which were supported three years on the desktop and five years on the server.

This first release, codenamed ‘Betta splendens’, includes just a handful of features for now, however it is the base on which development of more advanced features will take place. Still, the goal of NeonView is to remain clean and lightweight, while also trying to implement only the needed functions that a simple image viewer should have.

Some of the features of NeonView:

• supports many image formats, including JPG, PNG, SVG, GIF or TGA (any format supported by gdk_pixbuf)
• allows navigation with next/prev buttons with images sorted by name
• fit to window or normal size image view modes
• it remembers the window size between sessions and can be started maximized (in order to remember these use Ctrl+Q to quit it for now, or just edit the ~/.neonview/neonview.cfg file)
• allows manual configuration via ~/.neonview/neonview.cfg

The full announcement is located on the NeonView homepage, here.

Download

You can download NeonView 0.2.0 binary package from here. To run it just uncompress the archive and double-click the neonview executable.

According to the official announcement, Firefox 5 includes:

• more than 1000 improvements and performance enhancements
• adds support for more modern web technologies
• now supports CSS animation standards
• Do Not Track privacy feature now available on Android too
• the new Add-on SDK allows local development of add-ons

To install it immediately in Ubuntu rather than waiting for the PPAs to update, you can follow this tutorial I wrote a few days ago. It shows how to install Firefox manually and Flash too.

Download Firefox 5

- the new Kontact suite brings next generation groupware to desktop and mobile

- Kontact receives a major architectural boost, using the capabilities of the new scalable Akonadi groupware framework to build interconnected PIM-related applications

- software updates to KDE Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform

To install the latest KDE version in Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, open a terminal and type in the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If you don’t have Kubuntu installed, install it using:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

If you have Ubuntu but want to try KDE with only a core set of applications like KDE Plasma, file manager, web browser, text editor, then install the kde-plasma-desktop package:

sudo apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop

To revert to the default KDE packages from the repositories, install the ppa-purge binary and run it like this:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge kubuntu-ppa

The ppa-purge command will comment your sources lines inside the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubuntu-ppa-ppa-natty.list file, and then replace the packages which were installed from the PPA with the ones in the default repositories.