First of all you have to launch Terminal and add the right PPA to the repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa

Then you need to update and upgrade the OS using:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If you are installing Firefox for the first time the right commands are:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa

sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install firefox firefox-gnome-support
 firefox-locale-en

As usual on Linux, it is not necessary to reboot the computer and you can start immediately to use your updated Firefox. 

Searching on internet I discovered that there are few possible solution to avoid this problem and, in case you have the same bug on your computer, I decided to sum-up the most powerful after I successfully tried them.

First of all you can try to force the update process through the Terminal typing:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If this doesn’t work you will try with this next step:

sudo rm var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Then launch again the Update Manager to verify if you succeed and if nothing happened solve the matter typing:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf
sudo apt-get update

and try again to launch the Update Manager.

In my case this was enough to restore all the Update Manager features and solve the problem. If you have extra problems about this bug or if you want to suggest alternative solutions, please, don’t hesitate to comment this post.

First of all I suggest to use BleachBit because, for my experience, it’s the most powerful software to clean temporary files, log files and unwanted traces on your computer. BleachBit is easy to use and, as we described in previous post, very effective.

Then we have to check if our system is really updated so we can use the usual ways as Synaptics Package Manager or quickly run a some simple commands through Terminal to update, upgrade and remove old packages or Kernel.

For this purpose I collected three simple commands and chained them in a single line:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
&& sudo apt-get autoremove

In this way you will be sure that you can start again to work on your Ubuntu as before the Christmas time!

The last generation of external 3.0 usb disks allows us to create fast multi-boot drive that can be used for different purpose. Commonly we use these “special” drives as recovery tools when something goes wrong in our computers or when we would dig, in a deeper way, a particular desktop.

The best software to create multi-boot disks or ISO have been developed for Windows and the only exception is a French, multi-step solution named LiveUSB Multi-Boot.

Today we focus our attention on Sardu a multi-language Italian project developed for Windows machines. After you have downloaded it you can unzip and save the folder in your favorite location. The sardu.exe file will run the program and you can start to decide if you prefer to create a multi-boot ISO or a multi-boot usb key.

The menus are complex but in a couple of minutes you will be able to properly navigate them and select the software and ISO you’d like to have in your CD or USB key. You can also decide to manually add a specific ISO which is not directly supported.

The CD-DVD burner is included in Sardu consequently you can create your bootable CD-DVD in just few clicks.

In the everyday world, Sardu is also useful to test computers when you want to quickly install a Linux distribution and you are not sure about the best one to choice.

Moreover, Sardu is plenty of extra freeware which can help you to recover the GRUB, partitions, lost files and passwords.

Unfortunately Wine is not able to run Sardu in a correct way and when we tested it on Ubuntu we were able to use just few basic features. 

First of all I started installing the Gmail software I found in the Screenlets repositories on my Ubuntu but it was not able to update itself. Probably the firewall denied to the screenlet to communicate externally. I didn’t want to spend much time (sic) on the research of a Gmail notifier so I decided do uninstall it.

My second option was Popper and reading the program description I believed tha t was really the right one but.. after the configuration I was not impressed by the final flexibility and interaction this software offers. Just to know, for a quick configuration you need Popper configurator that is in the

The next step was represented by KCheckGmail that is for KDE and runs properly also on Gnome but, in this case, the program is not updated with the last Gmail configuration parameters and so it is nice but useless..

Then I tried with Gmail Notify. The configuration is quick and easy but it offers poor results. I mean that you have just the subject of new emails and no possibility to visualize them with a simple mouse click if you haven’t previously done the login of your Gmail account using the browser.

Finally I installed cGmail through the Ubuntu Software Center and I found what I was looking for: a simple program which let me know about new emails and let me open them with a click. The graphic interface is basic but after a couple of hours wasted on searching an effective solution I was satisfied!

Last but not least, if you don’t want to install a Gmail notifier directly on your Ubuntu, consider to install the add-on Gmail Watcher  on Firefox.

Please, if you have better solution and you want to share them with us, don’t hesitate to comment this post. Thank you!