Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have added a brief post to install the Realtek RTL8187SE WI-FI card on Ubuntu 8.10. Surfing Internet we found different possible solutions and well done manuals to solve our problem but at the end we decided to select only the most effective. In particular we would like to focus your attention on the third discovered link http://boskastrona.ovh.org/download_en.html which contains the most effective solution we have tested. Useful!

Category Archives: GNU/Linux
How to solve a boring Firefox crash when you upgrade it on Linux
Firefox is the most flexible browser you can install and use on your computer. It is always upgraded, easily customizable and full of add-ons you can choose to satisfy all your needs but sometimes, after an upgrade it crashes and does not run. Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have added a brief post about solving this problem. First of all, start Firefox in its Safe Mode (open Terminal and then type: firefox -safe-mode or if you prefer Alt+F2 and then type as described before). Immediately you will see a menu window with five different options. Click on the button which allows you to “Disable all the add-ons” and you will able to launch Firefox. This happens because some add-ons are not compatible with the new version of Firefox. To completely solve the matter you have to separately enable each add-ons and restart the browser after having added any single add-ons. In this way, you will be able to understand which is the “guilty add-ons”. Useful!

NoteCase: a simple multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X) freeware to preserve the privacy of your notes!
Today in our Freeware Page we added a brief post about NoteCase a powerful note editor for Linux. In our tests we installed NoteCase on a Ubuntu 8.04 with positive results. This free software allows you to write complex notes dividing them between “nodes” and, if you need, it is also possible to easily create child notes at each level. Moreover, using NoteCase you can insert images and links to your text. Using NoteCase, for complex projects, you can decide to insert tag in each node and find them in just few clicks with the “Find” feature. Last, but not least, when you save your notes, you can decide to save them into an encrypted file. In few wordsNoteCase is one of the best freeware to manage notes using different OS without risks. Recommended!

Three interesting extensions to enjoy a real Web 2.0 experience with OpenOffice 3.0
After more or less a month from its release, the new OpenOffice 3.0 is receiving tons of positive comments. Anyway, this week, in our Freeware page, we have posted some brief notes abut three different extensions which are able to improve your effectivenss in office routines. First of all we have ooo2gd a simple menu bar which allows you to directly upload or download all kind of documents from Google Documents and Zoho. The second one is the Sun PDF Import Extension which has been created to allow minimal but useful changes to PDF documents. After few minutes we were able to make some interesting changes to a complex PDF documents with just a couple of clicks and export the result “into a hybrid PDF file, which is a PDF with the embedded source file asODF “. Last but not least we tested Sun Presentation Minimizer: an effective extensions which cuts the size of presentations reducing, for example, the image sizes. Using Sun Presentation Minimizer you will be able to simply and freely decide what kind of changes you want to make to your multimedia files contained in the presentations. To conclude it is necessary to focus your attention on the feature that also allows Sun Presentation Minimizer to work on Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. In few words we think that these extensions are guaranteed to be 100% satisfactory!!

MobaLiveCD: how to test Linux distros directly from Windows
Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we posted a brief review about MobaLiveCD: a freeware which allows you to freely test new Linux Distro using Windows. MobaLiveCd uses Qemu to work; personally, I think that Qemu is one of the best and lightest open source processor emulator and virtualizer you can find today. Qemu is easy to use and, also more important, it “achieves near native performances by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU” so the results you can obtain using MobaLiveCD are very impressive and I believe that the performances are really comparable to a complete installation. MobaLiveCd allows you to spare your time because all the new Linux distros can be tested with just few clicks running the .iso through it. I personally recommend this freeware also because it light and it can be directly used from a USB key. Something really interesting!

Appnr: an useful webpage where to find the best -ready to be installed- programs for Gnome, KDE and XFCE!
Today in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief review about http://appnr.com/ an online resource page where it is possible to find a huge amount of programs ready to be installed. In few words it is possible to directly install them with just a click on the the download button on the right of the page. To take advantage of this feature please, check (once a time) to have apt url installed. If you have not apt url on your PC you can install it by terminal with sudo apt-get install apturl. Moreover the appnr.com website is very easy to explore with a very intuitive graphical menu on the left side of the screen and a powerful internal search engine. Appnr.com also contains a very practical search option which allows you to find the programs already separated between Gnome, KDE and XFCE. To sum up it is possible to affirm that appnr.com could be very useful especially when we don’t find .deb packages and don’t want to spend time manually installing programs. Anyway, to keep always my Ubuntu updated, I personally prefer to directly add repositories in Third Party Software (in System – Software Sources). Something to try!

Unetbootin: a revolutionary multiplatform (Linux and Windows) software to create bootable Linux USB OS (and not only…)
This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we have described UNetbootin: a powerful software which allows you to install many different Linux OS (Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, CentOS, Debian, ArchLinux and many others) on a bootable USB key. The use of UNetbootin is really simple and after a couple of tests everyone is able to create his/her own portable OS on USB. Moreover can be used to easily install a new Linux OS directly on the local hard disk. In fact, this software properly manages Linux and Windows bootloader without causing side effects. I personally recommend UNetbootin to all the people who always desires testing the last OS versions and do not want to install them directly on their PC. Last but not least, UNetbootin is available in the followiing languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and Hungarian. Easy, useful tool!

How to solve some screen resolution problems when upgrading the kernel on Ubuntu!
Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we added a brief, elemental guide to fix a particular inconvenience that sometimes happens with new kernel versions on Ubuntu. In fact, every time I decide to upgrade the kernel I have big problems with my graphic card (NVidia) and when rebooting I am not able to see my screen. I think that one of the possible problems is the AWN (a -MAC style- bar) I have installed on my PC. After many wasted hours trying to fix this matter I find a very fast solution. I start my Ubuntu 8.04 in the safe mode (sometimes using the previous kernel version) and I launch EnvyNG (Applications – System Tools – EnvyNG) to automatically reconfigure my video card. I know that probably this is not the most advanced way to fix my kernel problem but you can believe that it is very fast and effective. Try it if necessary!

Mixturtle: an interesting online mp3 searcher
Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we have added a brief review about MixTurtle an on-line music portal we have recently discovered surfing the web. MixTurtle is very easy to use: you have only to type your favourite artists (or songs) in the search tab and in less than a second it will bring interesting results to you. During our tests we were also able to find some “rare” (for our experience) mp3 files. Moreover, with a simple registration (email, username and password) you will 100% enjoy all the feature offered by MixTurtle. In fact, after the registration you can “virtually” capture all the music files you want linking them to your account. in this way, when you prefer you can listen to your favourite music with just few clicks. Something to try!

Symbaloo: a new interesting web portal to improve your time efficiency in internet!
This week in our Freeware Page we posted a review about Symbaloo: a new interactive web portal which allows you to directly manage many everyday tasks directly on the web. As soon as you register yourself on Symbaloo you are able to freely modify your personalized Symbaloo, adding new features or deleting the default ones. Symbaloo is an interactive grid with 60 different squares (each of them hosts a different feature) and a central rectangle where some of your features can directly be visualized. Symbaloo is very flexible and allows you to deeply personalized itself. During our test we did not find any bugs and we were able to insert the 95% of the the features we planned to create there. Moreover, clicking on the plus (+) button on the upper left corner you can create a Symbaloo news page or share a new Symbaloo public page with your friends. Just to know, Symbaloo is available in The Netherlands, Spain, France, the UK and the US in beta. To sum up, it is possible to affirm that at the end of a three days test we do think that Symbaloo can really contribute to reduce time wasted on routine internet tasks. Something to try!


