Firefox 3.5 (formerly known as 3.1) adds support for new web standards including audio and video tags and downloadable fonts, a private browsing mode, significantly improved JavaScript performance, and more.
Ubuntu will not be upgrading the default Firefox package to 3.5 until Ubuntu 9.10. However, the universe repository in Ubuntu 9.04 includes a special firefox-3.5 package. At the time of writing this package contains an old beta release. It should be updated soon, but here’s a workaround if you can’t wait any longer.
Update: I’m now recommending installing Firefox 3.5 using Ubuntuzilla rather than the methods described in this post.
Before you update, consider backing up your Firefox profile if you may want to go back to Firefox 3 after trying 3.5. Running the command below will backup your Firefox profile to firefox_profile_backup in your home directory. To restore from the backup, replace your.mozilla/firefox folder with the backup.

cp -r ~/.mozilla/firefox/ ~/firefox_profile_backup

Update: The firefox-3.5 package in Ubuntu 9.04 has now been updated, so it’s no longer necessary to use the Mozilla Security Team PPA.
Open the Synaptic package manager and select Settings->Repositories. Select the Third-Party Software tab and add the APT line for the Mozilla Security Team PPA, which has Firefox packages which are undergoing testing prior to wider release:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Return to the main Synaptic window and click the Reload button to download the repository listings. Find the firefox-3.5 package and mark it for installation. Click Apply to install.
After Synaptic is done working, you can remove or disable the Mozilla Security Team PPA if you don’t want to get any more untested updates.
Unfortunately, this package is still branded as Shiretoko (the codename for this Firefox release). Start Firefox 3.5 from Applications->Internet->Shiretoko Web Browser.

[via tombuntu.com]

The last time I needed to install Ubuntu on a system without a CD drive, my Eee PC, I created a bootable USB drive to run the graphical installer. The UNetbootin tool I used makes creating the USB system simple, but in Ubuntu 8.10 there’s an even easier way.
You’ll need:

• The USB Startup Disk creator tool. It comes as a part of the default Ubuntu 8.10 desktop. I haven’t seen any packages for older versions of Ubuntu yet, but I have have been able to install the 8.10 package in Ubuntu 8.04.
• A USB drive or memory card with a minimum of 700 MB of free space.
• An Ubuntu CD or Ubuntu CD ISO file.

Launch the USB Startup Disk creator tool from System->Administration->Create a USB startup disk.




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SSDs (solid state drives) are great. They’re shock resistant, consume less power, produce less heat, and have very fast seek times. If you have a Ubuntu computer with an SSD, such as an Eee PC, there are some tweaks you can make to increase performance and extend the life of the disk.

1. The simplest tweak is to mount volumes using the noatime option. By default Linux will write the last accessed time attribute to files. This can reduce the life of your SSD by causing a lot of writes. The noatime mount option turns this off.
   Open your fstab file:
   

   sudo gedit /etc/fstab

   
   Ubuntu uses the relatime option by default. For your SSD partitions (formatted as ext3), replace relatime with noatime in fstab. Reboot for the changes to take effect.
   
2. Using a ramdisk instead of the Ubuntu SSD to store temporary files will speed things up, but will cost you a few megabytes of RAM.
   Open your fstab file:
   

   sudo gedit /etc/fstab

   
   Add this line to fstab to mount /tmp (temporary files) as tmpfs (temporary file system):
   

   tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

   
   Reboot for the changes to take effect. Running df, you should see a new line with /tmp mounted on tmpfs:
   

   tmpfs 513472 30320 483152 6% /tmp

   
   

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Being a fan on Ubuntu, I always keep an eye on its progress and development from time to time. Having bough a new Eee PC 901, an Intel Atom-based notebook with RAM 1 GB, 20 GB SSD, and a cute small display of 9 inch, I am curious of installing the new version of Ubuntu called as 9.04. I’ve got the previous Ubuntu class, 8.10 installed into my notebook soon after I bought this Asus-branded notebook. Ubuntu 9.04 seems to be exciting to have instead my existing old version of it.
Ubuntu 9.04 has been released since April 23, 2009, a Cannonical’s tenth, designed by Jaunty Jacklope. New features of Ubuntu 9.04 include faster booting time, integration of web services and application into the desktop interface. Its new usplash screen and login screen supports the Eee PC 901. These features are factors that drove me impatient to make it installed into my current notebook.


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