Ubuntu 8.10 comes with some excellent new features and enhancements and promises a more secure and stable Linux platform. The basic focus in this new release is to introduce a better network integration in Ubuntu for both WiFi and 3G.

Here is a list of some of the new enhancements.

• 3G Support – Improvements to the network manager in Ubuntu 8.10 makes it simple to detect and connect to 3G networks and manage connectivity.
• Carry on a USB Drive – Now a simple application in Ubuntu will allow users to write Ubuntu to a USB drive.
• Guest Accounts – A handy new feature just the same as the one found in Windows.
• Tabs in Nautilus – It means that now when you open file browser window in Ubuntu you get tabs.
• Auto-install Printer Drivers – Drivers for most printers will now be automatically detected and installed.
• Better Flash Support – Flash for Linux just became a lot better.

and a lot more.

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is supported until 2010 and it should be noted that it is not an LTS release. It has already been pushed for download to a number of mirrors. Use the link below to select a mirror of your choice and download the ISO.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Don’t forget to take a look at the History of Ubuntu.

Though such clients are good and useful but updating Twitter status through Pidgin has its own ease and fun.

IceHot shares a very useful plugin for Pidgin known as Pidgin-Microblog which allows user to post updates to Twitter even without using the Jabber service. This way you can stay connected to your followers anywhere, anytime on Ubuntu.

The plugin also works for Pidgin on Windows. To download and install for Ubuntu Linux, simply use the deb package.

To be honest, it is not much different to Twhirl except for the fact that Twitch is very clean, simple and low on features.

Twitch currently only allows you to update your Twitter status, view friend’s timeline, reply to tweets and view highlighted replies which makes it a perfect client for new Twitter users who do not want to play with the complicated features such as the ones provided by Twhirl.

Moreover it even supports embedding of URLs using the TinyURL system.

To install Twitch, simply download the latest version of Adobe Air from here and install the Twitch Air File.

However, browsing different websites and collecting information from multiple resources is a big pain in the ass. Therefore following are some desktop apps that you might find helpful to fetch all news, photos, event updates related to Beijing Olympics 2008 right on your desktop.

BBC Sports Desktop Monkey

This is a light Adobe AIR app by BBC that will efficiently fetch you the latest Olympic stories for your favorite sports.

Apart from keeping you updated with all the latest sports news, it gives you handy reminders about events that you might want to follow.

You can set up to five of your favorite sports that you want to follow and be reminded about and BBC Desktop Monkey will take care of the rest. The best part is it even automatically adjusts itself to whichever time zone your system is currently using.

Download

TeamUSA

The other app used to track Olympics 2008 events is the TeamUSA desktop widget that delivers up-to-date news and coverage on Team USA at Beijing Olympics 2008.

This app mainly focuses on USA team stats, news and updates and provides information about the games in which USA athletes are participating.

TeamUSA gives you the option to follow selective events or athletes.

Download

More apps will be added to the list soon. Just make sure to get the Adobe AIR Runtime for Windows, Mac or Linux before installing these apps.

Unfortunately, Windows does not come pre-installed with any such application which allows user to download and manage various other softwares. However, QWinApt can do the same job for you on Windows that Synaptic does for Ubuntu users.

QWinApt is a package manager for Windows which allows for bulk downloading, installing and updating of a huge number of softwares.

It has got a user-friendly GUI just like that of Synaptic and the applications have been divided into categories for easy search and download. Mostly all softwares listed in QWinApt are free or open-source.

QWinApt can be downloaded from the link below. To install the app, download and extract all the zip archives from the featured downloads section on the right. Thanks Lee for sharing this great app.

http://code.google.com/p/qwinapt/

Take a loot at some of the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Mockup Design created by Will.

However searching for proper packages of your favorite application could be time consuming. Ultamatix is one great application which makes this task easier for you and also automats installation of application.

Ultamatix supports range of applications which you need to carry out for your day to day tasks. With Ultamatix, you can install all the multimedia codecs, archiving tools and the Adobe Flash Player for Firefox, and it will all take your 5 minutes and 3 mouse clicks.

Ultamatix is kind of application repository where you can find almost every favorite application. It has 101 applications/Games. The list of applications is huge to list out here, so below is a category listing of the supported apps:

• Audio/Video Ripping and Burning tools
• Audio/Video Players and Editors
• Chat clients
• E-mail clients
• Programming tools
• Eye Candy tools

Supported Operating System – Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.4.0, Ultimate Edition 1.8, Debian

Download Ultamatix

This is a guest post by Sandip from Blogsdna. For more reviews on linux apps, web 2.0 and technology, please visit his blog.

Apple hasn’t sued Psystar yet, so it’s no surprise the company is pushing the envelope as far as it can — it’s just introduced two rackmount servers that come with OS X Server pre-installed. The OpenServ 1100 and 2400 are both configurable with 2.5 GHz Xeon processors and up to 16GB of RAM, with the 1U 1100 sporting four drive bays and the 2U 2400 rocking six. Just like Psystar’s other products, you’re on your own (or at the mercy of Psystar) for service and support, since Apple won’t help you — and considering Psystar kept sending us support tickets for that DHCP issue but never actually called us to resolve it, that might make enterprise customers a bit wary. On the other hand, with prices starting at $1599, we’re certain some desperate render shop will take the plunge.

[Via Information Week]

The extension, known as Ubuntu Forums Menu, adds additional navigation menu for Ubuntu Forums via main-menu and context to Firefox.

As Ubuntu Forums are currently the most active and only platform to search for Ubuntu related question/answers therefore this extension can come quite handy for new Ubuntu users.

This extension is also useful for Windows users who are planning to shift to Ubuntu soon as it gives one easy access to all Ubuntu related questions and answers.

Ubuntu Forums Menu Firefox extension can be downloaded from the link below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2302