A while back, Leann Ogasawara, Canonical Kernel Team Manager, has said that it has been discussed internally to use a rolling release model for Ubuntu between LTS releases, but that it is just an idea for now. With the new Ubuntu Touch, which needs both "velocity and agility", the rolling release mode seems to be more than just an idea and Rick Spencer, Engineering Director at Canonical, has made a proposal about this on the Ubuntu Devel mailing list.

In the thread named "Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling Release)", he states that "we should keep LTS releases, but starting now, stop doing interim releases and start a rolling release".

Drawers is an application that creates "stacks" (drawers) on the Unity Launcher, which can be used to organize various files, folders, applications or links for quick access, create drawers that automatically display the applications in a category and more.

The application has been updated today, getting quite a few new features, including a new type of drawers called "Active Drawers". This type of drawer lets you view and launch the contents of a folder that's constantly monitored for changes, so when you add new files to that folder, they show up in the drawer. You can also access the files in that folder via quicklists (right click) available for the Active Drawer Unity Launcher icon:

Even though it has many Unity-specific features, Everpad isn't just for Unity and it works with GNOME Shell or KDE too (it even has Krunner integration).

CopyQ is a clipboard manager written in Qt that comes with some advanced features, image support, editable history, command line support, keyboard shortcuts and more. The application is available for Linux and Windows.

Bumblebee is a (unofficial) tool that brings Nvidia Optimus GPU switching to Linux. Nvidia Optimus is a technology used to increase battery life by switching the dedicated GPU (Nvidia) off when it's not needed; when the dedicated GPU is off, the integrated graphics chip (Intel) is used. Bumblebee also supports legacy Nvidia hybrid graphics.

GNOME has introduced the AppMenu for some of its core applications a while back (for some applications like Epiphany, with GNOME 3.4 and for others like Nautilus, etc. with GNOME 3.6), meaning that part of the menu or the whole menu is displayed as a drop-down on the top GNOME Shell bar:

Besides the new color variations, the latest version comes with other changes, including many redesigned widgets, new progress bar style, many fixes and also, it's no longer required to make any changes to use the themes in GNOME Shell or Unity.

The Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview has been released. This includes the source code and images for both the phone and tablet interfaces and are aimed at developers so it's not something you should install for actual every day usage. For now you'll find that some features are missing, like playing music, no mobile data connection, PIN/PUK support, etc., there are bugs and so on.

The Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview should be available for download later today and although I've found some daily images which can already be downloaded (I won't give you a download link but if you can't wait for the official release, you can do a Google search), I unfortunately don't have a Nexus device to test them on.

Update: the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview has been released.

But some Ubuntu for tablets hands-on videos have already started to show up on YouTube and below you can watch two of them, via Engadget and TheVerge:

Quick update: Oracle has released a Critical Patch Update for Java 6 (JDK 6u41) and 7 (JDK 7u15). Also, 6u41 is the last public Java 6 release and Oracle no longer recommends using it in production, so if you're using it, you should upgrade to Java 7.

Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail: Unity has been updated today and besides many bug fixes, the update brings a new feature which allows users to switch between multiple windows of an application using quicklists:

Just like more than a month ago, when Ubuntu Phone OS was announced, a countdown is displayed on the Ubuntu.com homepage, and this time it says: "Tick, tock, tablet time!".

So what could this be? An Ubuntu tablet is about to be released? Or more likely, an optimized Ubuntu Phone OS for tablets?

Update: this might be a coincidence (?), but if it's not, it's big (via +Nate Carpenter)! Below is a screenshot of ubuntu.com and htc.com, side by side:

Dota 2 is an upcoming multiplayer online battle arena game developed by Valve. The game is currently available for early test access purchase and will be free-to-play when released. More about Dota 2 on Wikipedia.

`My Weather Indicator` is an Ubuntu AppIndicator which displays the current weather in the top panel. The application comes with many features, including weather forecast, a cool forecast map and even desktop widgets.

Because of API limitations, Wunderground and World Weather Online didn't work properly in My Weather Indicator lately, so a new version has been released recently which allows users to enter their own API keys for these services in the My Weather Indicator preferences.

You can continue to use Open Weather Map and Yahoo weather services, which don't require you to enter an API key, so this isn't something required to get My Weather Indicator to work, it's just if you want to use Wunderground or World Weather Online services.

TextAdept features unlimited split views, support for over 80 programming languages, powerful snippets and key commands, code autocompletition and API lookup and is entirely keyboard driven.

Valve has launched `Steam for Linux Celebration Sale` and all the games available for Linux are now on sale. During this campaign, the discount ranges between -50% and -80%.

Profile Sync Daemon is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes (useful for SSDs, some would say), increased speed and responsiveness.

The tool supports most browsers: Chromium, Google Chrome, Firefox (stable, beta, aurora and firefox-trunk), Conkeror, Midori, Opera (including Opera Next) and Qupzilla and is based on an old script (we've covered it on WebUpd8 back in 2009), with some extra features: this is a daemonized script and has recovery protection, as well as support for all the above mentioned browsers as opposed to the old script which only supports Firefox. It's also a lot easier to use.

Since RAM content is cleared on reboot, Profile Sync Daemon automatically syncs the profile back to the physical disk using a symbolic link and rsync at a given time interval. Furthermore, the profile is synced back to the hard disk before you shut down or restart your computer, so no profile data is lost. Still, use it at your own risk!

Xubuntu, the Xfce Ubuntu flavor, will ship with a 1GB ISO starting with Raring. Obviously, after this change, Xubuntu will no longer fit on a CD but this will allow some packages that were dropped in Xubuntu 12.10 to be added back by default.

TeamViewer is a popular application for remote control, desktop sharing, file transfer, online meetings and more, that's available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, Android and iPhone. The application is free (freeware) for personal use only!

The Linux version uses Wine which comes bundled with it (it doesn't require the user to install Wine, like the old Picasa for Linux package), so it's not a native Linux application.

The latest TeamViewer 8 (stable) for Windows was released back in December and today, the stable version is also available for Linux. While in beta, there were two bugs that affected for many users (myself included) until recently, which resulted either an "TeamViewer Daemon is not running. Please start teamviewerd and then restart TeamViewer" error message or a ghost window showing up.

But these issues seem fixed and TeamViewer 8 for Linux has worked properly in my tests under Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10 and 12.04. I'm not sure if these issues were present in other Linux distributions and if they were fixed or not.

The application combines some of the features available in Guake and Terminator, resulting in a nice drop-down terminal emulator in which you can use multiple terminals in the same window (you can split the terminal horizontally or vertically):

The notification area (systray) was removed from the Unity panel with Ubuntu 11.04, but you could still use it by whitelisting applications which would allow the icons to show up in the notification area. But not any more!

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 4.0 today, which, according to the official announcement, is the "first release that reflects the objectives set by the community at the time of the announcement, in September 2010: a cleaner and leaner code base, an improved set of features, better interoperability, and a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem".

GIMP 2.8.4 has been released yesterday, bringing some important bug fixes. This is the stable GIMP branch and no new features will be added in the 2.8.x releases, only bug fixes.

KDE SC 4.10 has been released today with many improvements and additions, including a new QML-based screen locker, additional KWin effects and scripts thanks to GHNS (Get Hot New Stuff) integration, a new print manager, a new Air theme and wallpaper and many improvements to Kate, Dolphin, Konsole, Okular, Gwenview, Kontact, re-written typing tutor and more. 

The application is written in Qt and besides the icons, it integrates pretty well under GNOME, including desktop notifications and an AppIndicator for Unity.

A quick tip for those of you who are using Steam for Linux in Ubuntu: you've probably noticed that Steam for Linux has recently got an AppIndicator, but its icon doesn't integrate with the default Ubuntu icons, so here's how to use Ubuntu Mono dark / light icons for the Steam AppIndicator.

Minitube, a native Youtube client for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X which you can use to play (and download) YouTube videos without Flash, has been updated today and the new version is available in the main WebUpd8 PPA for Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10 and 13.04.

The latest Minitube 2.0 adds YouTube categories and "standard feeds": "Most Popular", "Featured", etc., country selection for YouTube categories and feeds, related videos, bigger and nicer 16:9 thumbnails as well as some other changes such as:

Oracle has released updates for Java 7: 7u13 and Java 6: 6u39, which come with a Critical Patch Update for 50 new security issues, of which 49 could be used to execute code remotely, without authentication.

The updates were scheduled for February 19th, but because of the vulnerabilities affecting Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in browsers, Oracle has decided to accelerate their release, specially since some browsers have automatically blocked the Java browser plugin because of these security issues.

The Unity Dodge Windows script was initially created by Jorge for Ubuntu 12.04 and it has now been updated by WebUpd8 reader Alex Piggott to work with Ubuntu 12.10. With a minor change, I've also got it to work with Ubuntu 13.04.