LibreOffice 3.5 released

LibreOffice 3.5 was released over the week with an extensive list of changes.

The LibreOffice PPA is still only carrying RC1 at this time though so Ubuntu users wanting to give it a go will need to wait a while more.

Changes include improvements to UI, font hinting, grammar checker, filters and lots of others. PostgreSQL gets a native driver in the office suite. Check out the release notes for the complete list of changes.

Brother MFC-J415W waste counter reset

When the control panel on your Brother MFC-J415W displays "Ink absorber near full", it's time to reset the waste counter.

Here's how:

1. Press Menu followed by *2864 to go into Maintenance Mode.
2. Press 80 then press Up/Down arrow until you see Purge: xxxxx. xxxxx is the purge counter value.
3. Press 2783 to reset waste counter. You should see Purge: 00000.
4. Press Exit followed by 99 to exit Maintenance Mode.

The printer should no longer display the error.

Firefox 11 Beta is available

Firefox 11 is no in Beta with the ability to migrate your bookmarks and settings from Google Chrome. Most of the new additions are geared towards web developers including a Style Editor for CSS editing right inside the browser.

Read the release notes for the complete list.

Opera 11.61 on Ubuntu 11.10

Firefox & Chromium aren't the only browsers in town. Opera is a good browser too though, sadly, it just doesn't seem to be able to gather the same following as the first two.

Opera isn't available from the Ubuntu repositories so you'll have to download the .deb package from the Opera download page. Adding the official repositories and installing from there doesn't seem to work at this time.

Download the appropriate .deb package and run the installation from terminal. Here, I'm installing the 64-bit version.

~$ cd Downloads

~$ sudo dpkg -i opera_11.61.1250_amd64.deb

Opera 11 on Ubuntu 11.10

Wait for it to complete and you're good to go. The installation will automatically add the Opera repository to Ubuntu's Software Sources.

Personally, I don't quite like Opera's look and feel. But, it's awesome fast. Perfect for anybody looking for more speed in their browser.

Uninstalling Opera

Removing Opera is also a simple command away:

~$ sudo apt-get purge opera

The best part is the Opera repositories get purge together so there's no need to open up Software Source to manually remove them.

Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" Alpha 2 released

The second Alpha release of Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" is finally out a the latest stable kernel, a new Upstart, LibreOffice 3.5 Beta 2, Unity 5.0 and lots more.

Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" Alpha 2

The next LTS release already comes with Firefox 10 but there's not need to upgrade to it if all you're looking for is a browser upgrade. Ubuntu 11.10 already has Firefox 10 at this time. It's a simple update away.

As usual check out the technical overview in particular the known issues section before diving in. It's always a good idea to have an idea what you're getting into first.