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.

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. A large and vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities, research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse platform.

Gmail's IMAP support is one of the biggest things to hit the webmail world since, well, Gmail. We've already covered how to use imap from Outlook, and now it's time to show everybody how to use it from the open-source Mozilla Thunderbird email client.

I love how Nautilus can browse network shares using a variety of protocols. I just don’t like typing in the protocol, username, and location into the address bar every time. GNOME makes it easy to create launchers for network locations.

Many of us wonder, why is there so much excitement over Skype when, at its core, Ekiga is a more robust application with even more maturity behind it? The answer to that is rather simple - provide a compelling reason to use something besides Skype. Honestly, I believe Ekiga blows Skype out of the water with mature features (video calls) and it's open source heritage, which means that nothing 'weird' is going on without you knowing about it. Yet many Linux users by the truckload will still migrate over to Skype because they 'know' about this application from other platforms.

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.

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.

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.

The first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04 (codenamed Hardy Heron) was scheduled to be released today, but the official release has been pushed back until tomorrow. However, a preliminary CD image of this first alpha release for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has surfaced today on the Internet. While there is still seven more Ubuntu 8.04 test releases (five alphas, one beta, and one RC) planned before the final release of Hardy Heron in April, we have already started exploring this first Hardy Heron LiveCD.

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”.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions about how to install the free VMware Server on an Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free).

In this HowTo I'll explain how to install and use KVM for running your services in virtual machines. KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a Linux kernel virtualization technique that provides full virtualization by using Intel VT (Vanderpool) or AMD-V (Pacifica).

I really like the Lomo photo effect and I'd love to own a real Lomo camera — I just don't take enough pictures to warrant the purchase. Luckily the Lomo effect can be digitally emulated using a GIMP filter, and the results aren't too bad. See some before and after examples here.

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.

Google Earth is a 3d globe that puts the world’s geographic information at your fingertips. It’s is available on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Start the installation by downloading the Linux installer.

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.

Welcome to part 5 of our Linux Media Player Roundup! Today we'll be going over several more media players for you to consider. But first, I wanted to let everyone know that I've done a little cleanup on part 1 of this article series.

This blog mostly writes about Linux related stuff. However, we occasionally mention the shortcomings of Linux operating system compared to Windows and Mac. Our most recent article, Linux is not so simple, got a bit popular among users of both sides of the world. I mentioned things like Ubuntu takes longer to start up and wireless is a pain to get working and even use properly. That was Feisty Fawn (7.04).

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.