With all due respect to Kevin Smith, the web is no longer only for complaining about movies. In fact, there are a large number of very helpful sites that teach you how to do things. These are do-it-yourself sites, but we're not talking about building a deck or baking a cake -- the web is full of more general interest sites that give quality instruction on all sorts of fun and useful projects. Including, sometimes, how to build a deck or bake a cake.

So far, the most useful new feature I’ve found in Firefox 3 is the  much improved location bar autocomplete that unlike Firefox 2 which only looked for web addresses in my history, this one looks on visited and bookmarked page titles and tags along with web addresses.

Dell agreed to ship PCs and laptops with the Ubuntu operating system after more than 130,000 people promoted the notion on the company's IdeaStorm web site. It would seem, however, that only a fraction of these zealots were willing to back their votes with cash.

Switching operating systems is not for the faint of heart. You're essentially forcing yourself to do some serious remapping of your ingrained work habits, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. With both Vista and Leopard off to somewhat bumpy starts, Linux is starting to look better everyday, but what about all those software tools you're used to from Windows and Mac OS X?

The 7th Issue of Full Circle, the Ubuntu Community Magazine has been released!

This issue comes with:

• Step-by-Step Ubuntu Studio install
• How-To : Simply Install SSH, A Terminal on your Desktop, Easily
• Convert from Windows and Learning Scribus pt.7. Review : Wubi Installer
• Top 5 - Audio/Video Apps.
• Interview with Howard County Library.
• News, Letters, Q&A, MyDesktop and more!

Get it while it’s hot! The English language versions can be downloaded here. English language only at the moment, translations on the way.

Try to describe Hotwire, and you'll eventually wind up saying something that sounds like an oxymoron, like "command-line GUI," "graphical shell" or "GUI xterm." Well, that's pretty much what Hotwire is: something halfway between a text-based shell and a modern graphical user interface.

Though Google is at the top of the search engine food chain, the mega site is taking a page from successful social indexing sites like Digg by testing out a new feature that will allow users to vote up their favorite search results and ignore results that aren’t individually pertinent.

Tom Dryer offers some good advice to novice Linux users concerning the execution of malicious terminal commands/shell scripts:

Don't run a command if you don't understand what it is doing and don't run commands from untrusted people or places. Check with someone you trust if you are not sure, or check out the command's manual page.

I’d like to take a moment of your time to discuss a recent disturbing trend the staff has been noticing on the forums, and also take this as an opportunity to raise awareness of this situation through education.

This post is an adaptation of one post I made on my portuguese blog. It may contain some write errors (especially on manicurist part). One day I was talking with my friend (and GSoC Guy) Lucas Veloso, and I solved a problem that bother many Linux users: the use of “win key”.

Legend has it that a Moleskine notebook and a pen were the tools of choice for Chatwin and Hemingway -- but that's because they didn't have Writer’s Café. Designed specifically for writing professionals, this application suite includes a few clever features that make it a must-have tool, whether you write for a living or for fun. Although the Writer's Café developers state that it's most suited for writing fiction, novels, and short stories, you can easily use it for all kinds of writing activities.

I have used X10 modules on assorted lights and devices for home automation for several years, and although the remote control facet has always worked well, tying the system into my Linux boxes has never been easy. Numerous small, typically one-person X10 controller projects have come and gone. But one application has survived: Heyu. It runs on desktop Linux machines without requiring the overhead of a Web or database server, and it enables direct X10 control, event scheduling, and more.

Every year since 2004 has been touted as the year of the Linux desktop. That year where Linux of some flavor makes huge inroads into the home and work desktop scene. Every year these predictions have fallen short. Now 2008 being the year of the Linux desktop stories are already making the rounds.

I found an interesting post on the Ubuntu Forums explaining some malicious commands in Linux. It was in response to recent posts that have been attempting to trick new users into running commands that cause damage. The Linux command line is very powerful, which means there are a lot of ways to mess up a system.

Most of you reading this are likely doing so with the now popular Web browser lovingly known as Firefox. Born out of the frustration to need something with less bloat, Firefox fit the bill with flying colors. These days, however, this is looking less and less like what we can expect from them in the future.

Continuing our Server Team theme again this week we are talking with Soren Hansen. Soren is working in Canonical’s server efforts (most notably he’s working on getting ebox ready for Ubuntu Server) , and is the latest addition to the Ubuntu Core Developer ranks.

The open source package manager for Google applications, powered by Mozilla Prism.

Most people lock their doors and windows, use a paper shredder to protect themselves from identity theft, and install antivirus software on their computers. Yet they routinely surf the Internet without giving a second thought to whether their browser is secure and their personal information safe. Unfortunately, it's easy for someone with nefarious intentions to use a Web site to glean data from -- or introduce spyware to -- your computer. Even worse, sometimes all you have to do is randomly click on a site to have your data probed in a most unwelcome way.

You can add custom colors with > Tools > Options > Openoffice.org > Colors. In this process, OOo crashed down on me this morning (I’m running Gutsy and using OOo from Ubuntu repos). It would run again, reopen the files, but all the color palette for text or objects was gone gone gone.

Recently I’ve seen a good bit of discussion regarding 32bit vs 64bit installations of Ubuntu. We’ve even had long conversations at the office on the matter as well. For a long time I’ve simply installed 32bit on my Core2Duo machine, even though it supports the 64bit installation. I just didn’t see a lot of reason to make the step forward. Well, I thought I’d type up some of my thoughts on the matter and get some of the community thoughts…