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A month has been passed since the eventful release of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Many loyal Ubuntu users turned hostile with this release and Canonical's new Unity interface is at the receiving end for what it does and what it doesn't. I actually liked the new Unity approach to desktop and I believe that it has got a great future, provided that Canonical is able to rectify the bugs and usability issues in time. This post is for those who would like to use Unity. A quick recap of Ubuntu 11.04 tips and tricks that we published during the month.

Chrome Web Store is becoming more and more interesting everyday. The super addictive games from Chrome Web Store that we featured almost a week ago is a telling example. Chaufr Chrome Extension is another great find. This extension lets you navigate and search the web using voice commands. And it works pretty good too.

Plymouth is simply an application that provides a graphical boot animation while the boot process happens in the background. Ubuntu has a simple yet beautiful Plymouth screen by default. But that doesn't mean that you should not experiment with some really cool alternative Plymouth screens in your Ubuntu. As we had promised while featuring Zorin Splash Screen Manager, here is our collection of beautiful Plymouth Screen themes for Ubuntu.

I am not averse to changes. I like experimenting with new applications and features every now and then. I have no problem with that. But that is not the case with majority of Computer users out there. For them, Computer is just a tool to get things done in a much faster and efficient manner. The sooner Canonical realize this, the better.

Alternative LibreOffice splash screens. If you don't like the default LibreOffice splash screen or if you just want to try something new, here is a collection of 4 LibreOffice splash screens for Ubuntu with installation instructions.

Zorin Splash Screen Manager is a nice and simple application to install, change and manage different plymouth themes in Ubuntu. It has got a GUI which is very easy to understand and use. Zorin Splash Screen Manager is available in both 32bit and 64bit versions.

One thing that keeps Linux in the back foot is the lack of good quality applications that can compete with the best out there. The advent of paid softwares section in Ubuntu Software Center is a start, things like that can kick start application development for Linux in a big way. But things were not as bad I thought it would be. On further browsing, I found out that there are indeed a good number of paid applications for Linux, some of them were a total surprise for me. Here are some of those paid applications for Linux which I found interesting.

After weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurora channel, the next version of Firefox(Firefox 5.0) is already available in the Mozilla Firefox beta channel. Firefox 5 beta release includes the Firefox channel switcher, performance and stability enhancements and support for the new CSS Animations standard. Installing Firefox 5 beta in Ubuntu has not been easy, until now.

Even more Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal customization tips. We have seen some of the most beautiful themes for Ubuntu 11.04 Unity desktop already and one of the highlights of that list was Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme. We think we have just found out an icons theme that gels pretty well with Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme and it's called Clarity.

Speaking of games, Linux users never had much of a choice. But the ever growing importance of web as a platform and web browsers as the tool is encouraging. Even if the big league game developers completely ignore Linux in the future as well, Games, like other applications, could become totally platform independent. Chrome Web Store is growing in importance everyday, which was evident during the recently concluded Google I/O 2011 event. Chrome Web Store gives you a glimpse of what future is going to look like for all of us. Anyways, here are some of the most addictive games available for download in Chrome Web Store.

There is literally no dearth for music player applications in Ubuntu. Banshee, which is the new default music player for Ubuntu 11.04, is among the best you can get. Alternatives include Clementine, Rhythmbox, Amarok, DeadBeef among others. But MPD(Music Player Daemon) and NCMPC(an MPD client) combination opens up a whole new genre of music players for Ubuntu power users. Folks who like tools like Twidge Twitter Client are gonna adore this.

Its time for some extensive customization of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal's look and feel through a bunch of cool looking themes. Following is a collection of some of my favorite GTK themes for Ubuntu 11.04/GNOME 2.0 based desktops.

Many long term Ubuntu users have been quite critical towards Ubuntu's new Unity interface. Unity has its share of issues which Canonical is hopeful of rectifying by the next major release, Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. In the mean time, if you are not at all able to adjust with the revamped albeit buggy Unity desktop, there are a bunch of absolutely awesome Ubuntu based distros which runs on other interfaces like KDE, XFCE, LXDE etc. Here is how you install each of them as a different session in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

Awoken Icon Theme was among our collection of top icon themes for Ubuntu and it surely is one among the best free icon themes available for Ubuntu GNOME desktop. Awoken 2.0 was released few days ago and the latest update brings with it a new customization script, many Ubuntu 11.04 specific improvements and updated PPA for Natty Narwhal as well.

It's time for another important Ubuntu release cycle. The upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 codenamed Oneiric Ocelot won't be bombarded with the kind of sweeping changes that its predecessor had to deal with. But in terms of the importance, Oneiric Ocelot might be an even bigger release. A quick peek into the important changes for upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is probably *the* most controversial Ubuntu release to date. Tech Drive-in reviewed Ubuntu 11.04 few weeks ago and we felt that, even after accounting its share of bugs and rough edges, Natty Narwhal is not as bad a release as you think it is. But one thing is sure, a lot of genuine hard core Ubuntu users absolutely hate the latest Ubuntu release. Here are some of the responses we received from our readers through our feedback forms and comments on brand new Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

Y PPA Manager lets you search, add, remove or even purge PPA's in Ubuntu the easiest way. This is not a command line tool and is very easy for even a newbie Ubuntu user to understand and use.

I have seen many articles on how to play Angry Birds game in Linux using Wine and other similar tools, but as you are about to see now, there is an even easier method to play Angry Birds in Ubuntu and other flavors of Linux. It is called Chrome Web Store. Yes, Angry Birds is now available in Chrome Web Store for free installation.

During the Google I/O 2011 keynote address, director of Android product management, Hugo Barra, presented a number of interesting statistics. Google has now activated more than 100 million Android devices worldwide and as of April 2011, Google is activating nearly 400,000 Android devices every single day. That number was just around 100,000 just an year ago!

"Our goal is 200 million users of Ubuntu in 4 years", said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, while delivering the keynote address to the attendees of the Ubuntu Developer Summit, currently taking place in Budapest, Hungary.