Chrome 20 might be the most unreliable browser to use on Ubuntu.

I'm a big fan of Google's products, and of course that this includes Chrome, but Google's lightweight browser is not worth being considered as the best one from all the available ones, at least on Linux. Ubuntu (because that's the OS I use most of the time) comes with Firefox for this: even though it is not as fast as Chrome, it is rocket-stable and fully usable (free of bugs). But Chrome has been having bugs since a long time ago and it has some even now. And what's worse, Chrome 20 "features" more bugs than ever.

First of all, there are huge issues with Flash. Most of the content from YouTube still uses Flash (please note that YouTube is also owned by Google), and one of the most used ways make a video start again is to refresh the page. And I have to do this because I simply can't click on anything that's Flash related, for I-don't-know-what reason. Moreover, Samsung's Chromebook computer, which runs on Chrome (there's nothing else to choose) has the same problems with Flash.

Then, there is the Blogger platform. You can write everything you want (just like I do now), but you can't put a title in the article (note: the article is going to have a title put on Firefox, just because Chrome can't do it for a reason or another). And here we are talking about two Google products. Blogger, a Google product, can't be properly used on Chrome, Google's browser. I am sorry, but this is something incredible, and Google should have taken action long time ago on this subject.

And there are other, not so serious, but still annoying bugs. On 9gag, portions of the bar from the top of the screen spread across the entire screen while scrolling. On YouTube, the same thing happens with the bar located just below the videos. And more that this, while watching something, you can't see what you type when you search for something else (on YouTube), it just displays what was searched before (it still searches, if you write something and tap enter you'll see it will return what you wanted, but it's annoying).

Of course that these aren't the only bugs, but with these I have to deal day by day. My girlfriend complains that she can't enter full screen while watching some TV series on the internet (don't know whether it's Flash or not), but there clearly are some issues Google have to take care about.

I can't simply give up using Chrome because, as I've told, I'm a big fan of Google's products, and I have more computers, so I need sync across all of them (bookmarks and stuff). Owning a Galaxy Nexus is also a strong reason for using Google's products. And I don't even want to give up using them, because they make the life a lot easier (Gmail, Picasa, Drive, Contacts, Calendar, Maps etc), I use them a lot and they help me everyday, but the idea is that some of the bugs really have to be fixed sooner or later.

I don't know if they are present only on Linux, because I rarely use Windows, and when I do it, I don't usually have a lot of time to spend on YouTube, 9gag or such websites. 

Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 2 getting out of control.

A few days ago I presented you Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 2 (here), telling you that it has some bugs at sound (it doesn't work at all with some sound cards) and at booting procedure (or more exactly, it fails the installation procedures and is forced to boot in live CD). However, there is another critical bug that I experienced a few minutes ago.

Here are some details: Pidgin + Chrome were running (nothing else) while I was notified that Gwibber crashed (it was not running, I didn't open it). Everything is...normal until now, I periodically receive notifications telling me that Gwibber crashes (even without running it). But what happened after was....let's say, normal for a pre-release version of Ubuntu. The main problem is that you it makes it difficult to save what you were working on at that time. This is what I'm talking about.

When Gwibber crashed, "Report a problem" has opened, in order to let me send details to developers, to help them fixing the problem. And it seems that, I don't know why, "Report a problem" crashed after that, too. And again. And over and over again. I think that every second, two windows of that type were appearing. That's not much, I know, but for my desktop, which doesn't have video hardware acceleration (lack of drivers), they are a real problem, as it is hard to save anything.

So, here's a new bug that developers need to fix for the final release of Ubuntu 10.10.

Apple and AT&T canceling iPhone 4 pre-orders, apparently, for no reason?

Some of the people who pre-ordered the iPhone 4 had received a mail which notified them that their pre-order has been canceled, apparently, without any plausible reason. On the first day of pre-orders Apple had about 600 000 requests, so that they delayed the shipping date for pre-orders two times, until the 2nd of July. There were, on the first day, much more requests than anybody (including Apple) has expected, so Apple's servers had big difficulties in handling that heavy traffic which has been occurred.

AT&T doesn't stay better, they also canceled some pre-orders, saying that they had ten times more pre-orders on the first day compared to the 3GS. I don't know what's with these cancels, but it is certain that this will put some people in an unpleasant situation, especially those who wanted to have their phone on the first day of shipping (OK, who didn't want?). Considering this enormous demand for the iPhone 4, pre-orders which are made today are going to be delivered much later.

By the way, Apple has already started shipping iPhone 4 for those who ordered it in the first period of pre-orders. They will most probably be received on the 23rd of June.

Sources from Engadget, here and here.

Fixing "connection refused" problem in Pidgin (Ubuntu).

"Connection refused" error is a problem which is known by many Linux users. It is usually occurred (sometimes) on most IM clients, especially when trying to connect to Yahoo!. This is a very annoying problem, and almost nobody knows exactly how to fix it (and if they fixed it, what they really did). Certain is that this usually occurs when the guys from Yahoo! are changing the way users are authenticating on their servers. So their servers are probably misconfigured (for Linux users), and they are simply refusing all clients who are coming from other clients, different than their own client (application).

There are some ways of fixing this on the internet. It has been reported that if you continue trying to connect, you could be in a final connected or redirected to a server which allows authentication in the old way. However, theoretically spoken, this solution is only temporary. If you disconnect, you'll probably have again problems connecting. Other users reported that changing the server on which the application is logging on may resolve the problem. I've tried changing it between scsa.msg.yahoo.com, cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com, scs.msg.yahoo.com and other addresses like these. I tried to change the address even with server's IP address directly (thinking that it could be an address resolving problem), everything with no luck.

But I continued trying, and after tens of forums and blogs, I found on brainstorms.in a user who reported that changing the server to scsd.msg.yahoo.com works. And it really works. So, if you have this problem, click on Accounts -> (on your account) Edit Accounts -> Advanced, and on the first row (Pager server), put "scsd.msg.yahoo.com".

Please leave a comment to know if this fixed your problem or not.

Ubuntu 10.04 + Nvidia FX proprietary drivers? Maybe not!

I never was a fan of Nvidia's graphic cards. I don't have a reason for this, but I simply prefer ATI's products. And after what Nvidia proprietary driver did when I activated it in Ubuntu 10.04, I surely won't be a fan of them ever. So here are the details. An AMD platform (32-bit), with a Nvidia FX 5600 graphic card and a fresh-installed Ubuntu 10.04.

Nvidia usually makes its own drivers for Linux distributions. These kinds of drivers are known as "proprietary drivers", which means that their code is made and developed by Nvidia developers. In Ubuntu, in case that something goes wrong (including a driver), developers (from anywhere in the world) start working (on open source code) immediately on a fix so that it is available as soon as possible in the Update Manager. But with Nvidia, the situation is different. Because it's a proprietary driver, Ubuntu's developers doesn't have access to the code (because it isn't a public or open source code), so they can't improve or fix it. Any user using a Nvidia graphic card under Ubuntu has to wait for Nvidia's developers in case that it appears a problem with the driver.

So here's my problem. After I activated Nvidia's driver (version 173), it asked for a reboot. Until then, everything worked fine. But after reboot...it happened...I don't know what. I can't even explain. Under the VGA port, the image was highly affected. I could hardly read something on the screen (the colors and the image were totally misplaced). The monitor (Samsung T220) was continuously warning me that the image is displayed in "not optimum mode", and even after I got into driver's settings and changed them from auto to 1680 x 1050 with 60 Hz, the situation remained the same. The image on the monitor was starting to color white at every 10 seconds, and I was afraid that this can burn the pixels or even broke the entire monitor.

On DVI, the situation was completely different. The image looked pretty OK, however, the monitor was still warning me that it is in "not optimum mode" and it was restarting at every 1-3 seconds. This happens both with driver version 173 which is recommended, and with version 96 to which I have access.

In now stuck on a desktop without any accelerated video driver, but at least, this works (even if it is quite slow). The only thing I can do is to hope and wait for Nvidia to update their stupid driver for Ubuntu 10.04. I don't know why, but I think that Nvidia won't change something here...I hope I'm wrong. I know that there are some open-source drivers for Nvidia called "Nouveau" but I observed that they are only for GeForce6 and above (mine is GeForce 5).

So, if you installed one of these drivers with problems, try to enter into "hardware drivers" to remove it, and then reboot. In this way, you will be able to use your computer.

If you know how to fix this, please let me know via a comment.

Ubuntu 10.04 has 2 important bugs since 13th of June - with all updates installed -.

The first problem is with the sound. What you should do is to avoid putting the sound on mute, because you won't be able to start it again. This is what I did yesterday. And now I realized that I don't have sound anymore. It doesn't matter what settings I give to the system in sound preferences, because on the bar it just displays the speaker followed by three lines (3x "-"). This means that the sound is muted, even if in all my settings the sound is on. Of course that "waking up" the sound would be theoretically possible with third-party programs from the Software Center, but I'll let my system like it is, just to see how much it takes for developers to fix this.

The other problems is related to the...shutdown. Here it is a critical bug, which brings you to the login screen, when you select shutdown. I don't know why, but now the shutdown button has the same functionality as the log out one. Practically, there is now way to shut down your system from the OS. In case that you are here, what you can do in order to shutdown your system is to push and keep the power button on your PC/Laptop for 5 seconds (this cuts the power of your computer), or to unplug it from the power source (if you are on a laptop, use the first option). Both are improper ways of shutting down the system, but there is no alternative.

Note: My Ubuntu is up-to-date, at 9:15 GMT time, Monday, 14th of May, and the problems are not fixed. If an update appears in the update manager which fixes these problems, I'll update this article.

Is Yahoo! Messenger for Mac going to be a beta version forever?

I bought my Mac almost a year ago (10 months), and when I received it I hoped that it would support Yahoo! Messenger by default. I knew that Mac OS X is a very stable and a very complex OS. And mainly, so it was. Except that iChat, the default chatting application from Mac OS X, doesn't support anything else than MobileMe, Mac.com, AIM, Jabber and Google talk accounts. So here started the problem...Apple didn't implement a client supporting Yahoo!, so it was clear that I had to use Yahoo!'s own application.

I was surprised that at least there was a program developed by Yahoo!, for Mac. It was a beta, and it was the only option that I found for Mac. After installation, I noticed several problems, such as: unexpected crashes (prior to this the application becomes unresponsive), a bug which doesn't allow you to click on a contact (you have to move the pointer in order to do that), and the most...idiot problem, that one which displays you as "available" even if you logged in as "invisible". OK, you are "invisible" for all others, but you see yourself as "available". And this happens always.

What I consider that sucks is that you see only the small avatars of your contacts in the list, and if you move the mouse over a contact you will see only its name and status, without the picture. If you want to view the picture in "large" size, you have to open a window chat for that person. On Windows version of Yahoo!, you can view large pictures even on the list with all contacts (there's an option for that).

Those aren't critical problems, but they are very annoying because they seem that they will never be fixed. Yahoo! didn't launched any new version since I first installed it (it's still 3.0 beta (191946) ) and I don't think that Apple is going to move a finger to do something. But I still hope that Yahoo! didn't abandoned at all developing their application for Mac...

Mac OS X 10.5.8 gets serious Wi-Fi bugs with latest update (May 2010).

Today I've decided to update my MacBook with the latest updates from 10.5.8, because it warned me in the last few days that updates are available. I know that it was the iTunes 9.1.1, a security update, and another one, which I can't remember exactly. I'm not sure if it wasn't the AirPort Base Station, which appears to be last updated on 31st of March ( I think it wasn't this because it's too early). But this doesn't matter now.

Everything worked fine, my Mac has been successfully updated, but after the first boot, the problems started. Mac OS X 10.5.8 is sometimes completely unable to communicate with my router via Wi-Fi (Asus WL 520-GU), which is my default internet gateway. Communication with my secondary router works (this is actually an Asus WL 520-GC, not GU), but it is useless since I can't access the internet at all (the secondary router is used to amplify the signal).

An temporary solution is to turn off the AirPort and start it again, but I can't do this again and again, every 15-20 minutes. I've surfed the internet and I found that a problem like this was occurred on the previous year, somewhere in September, again, after an update.

I'm now afraid that it will take a while until Apple will fix this, because they are now concentrating on the iPad/iPhone HD/4G/ iPhone OS 4.0, and I have the sensation that Mac OS X is currently not a priority for them. I hope I'm wrong.

If you have the same issues, please don't hesitate to leave a comment to let me know I'm not the only one having these issues !

Testing the iPad (+video).

A few days ago I had the opportunity of testing the product which Apple says that it's a revolutionary one, the iPad (they said the same when they launched any other product).

Firstly, I'll tell you its specifications. It has an Apple A4 1 GHz processor, based on ARM technology. The storage memory varies between 16, 32 and 64 GB, and, related to RAM memory, this is a complete mystery (yet). It is known that physically it seems to be having 512 MB of RAM, but in practice, it reveals only 256 MB of RAM (showed by different tests). It is certain only that the RAM is integrated into the chip of the processor.

It also has a 10 inch capacitive multi-touch screen, perfect for almost anything. On the connectivity side, we have the Wi-Fi model, which starts at $499 with 16 GB of storage, and the Wi-Fi + 3G model which is going to be available soon, this month. The battery offers 1 month for stand-by, and about 10 hours when surfing web on Wi-Fi and stuff like that.

On the Apple Store I've waited for a few minutes after I got one to play with (everybody was running to get one to test when somebody finished testing one). I think that there were about 15-20 iPads available (it is a quite big store, in Dadeland Mall, Miami).

The first sensation was that it was fast. But not as fast as I was expecting, but it was pretty good. The applications are launching like on the iPhone (slowly, showing who made them or things like that), and some of them really looked very well. But several were made especially for the iPhone, and looked very bad because they were running at a low resolution (I'm sure that this will be a problem for a long time).

I found it difficult to play with it using its accelerometer, considering that I used an iPhone for about 1 year and a half, and now I have the Nexus One. It is an updated version of iPhone OS, so the menus are updated in many basic applications (they look really good).

Many fans of Apple said that the iPad is very fast, faster than even the Nexus One. I don't agree with this. They probably said this even without ever touching a Nexus. It is clearly faster than the iPad.

There have been reported several problems with the iPad after only a few hours after it was launched, many users complaining that on their Windows machines and especially when connected to USB hubs the iPad refuses to charge. Apple says that when it gets into sleep, it starts charging automatically, but they can't actually prove that this happens at all times, because there is no icon indicating if it charges or not. And there are also problems with weak Wi-Fi signal and connection problems on LAN configurations.

And if you want one, if need to know that it has no camera and no GPS. You can buy additional accessories, and even if the iPad starts a $499, you can easily pass $1000, considering that Apple has only quite expensive accessories.

Apple has reached again, a great success with the iPad. In the first day of selling, the sells with the pre-orders passed 300 000 units. This is completely astonishing. To compare, Google sold only 135 000 Nexus One units after 74 days, while there were about 1 million iPhones (first generation) sold after the same period of days. I don't know how Apple does this, but it is known that Steve Jobs has currently the most profitable company in the domain of mobile devices.

Below is a video taken with my Nexus One, while I was testing some of iPad's functionalities:

ATI HD 3xxx + Realtek HD problems on Windows XP.

I have a computer with an ATI HD 3850 graphic card which has, practically, included a sound card. The problem is that on the motherboard I have a Realtek HD sound card, which enters in conflict with the graphic card. From what I have observed, ATI starts the conflict and forces Windows to keep the sound played via their drivers (which is done through a HDMI connected to graphic card). This will make any try to play sound through motherboard's sound card to fail.

The solution is to go on device manager, and there to disable ATI HD sound card (under sound devices). Windows won't have any option, and will automatically playback sound via Realtek HD sound card.

This should apply to any ATI graphic card from series HD 3xxx.

Testing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 2.

Ubuntu launched their 10.04 Alpha 2 release on 7th January, and I've decided to test it now. So far, it has nothing new comparing to 9.10 Karmic Koala. Except probably that it boots a little faster.

The installation took a normal time, similar to 9.10. The boot-up takes about 18 seconds, which is better than 9.10, but I'm curious if the final release will attend what Ubuntu promised, less than 10 seconds to boot. That would be a real performance and a big challenge for any OS developer.

On my Dell D610 laptop everything works out-of-the-box, including wi-fi. After the first boot the touchpad stopped responding, but, using the trackpoint I gave it a reboot and now it is working. There are some problems with the notifications, which appear in a strange way. View the following image to see how
What else I can tell you is that at a first look, the OS moves pretty fast, but the applications are crashing frequently and easily. I observed several flickers of the screen, so I guess it might be a problem with the driver of something like that.

Ubuntu 10.04 (so far, Alpha 2) comes with Empathy as a default internet messenger, Firefox 3.5.7 for brwsing, and OpenOffice 3.1 suite. There's also a new application included, named Pitivi Video Editor.

The 10.04 will be a LTS (long term support) distribution, so it should be an high stable release, which will be supported for 3 years for desktop edition, and 5 years for the server one. The LTS releases are launched every two years, while normal releases are launched every 6 months.

Here's the calendar of the Ubuntu 10.04 release schedule:

• December 10th 2009 - Alpha 1
• January 14th 2010 - Alpha 2
• February 25th 2010 - Alpha 3
• March 18th 2010 - Beta 1
• April 8th 2010 - Beta 2
• April 22nd 2010 - RC (Release Candidate)
• April 29th 2010 - Final Release.

Download Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 from here: http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/lucid/alpha-2/

For detailed schedule, go here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidReleaseSchedule?action=show&redirect=LucidLynxSchedule

Please consider that this is an unstable release ! Do NOT install it as your default OS, as it has frequent crashes that might cause you to lose data ! It is recommended for testing purposes only.

Controlling Synaptics touchpads on Ubuntu.

Even if Ubuntu is a great OS, it might have some problems on laptops with their touchpads. My laptop's touchpad is made by Synamptics, which runs, natively, on Linux, but for changing the way it responds and behaves, it needs a driver. The best way you can get it is via Ubuntu Software Center (located on Applications). Within the software center, search for "Touchpad". Click on the right button from the first result, and click install. Now, it will ask for your password (which you entered when you have installed Ubuntu). Wait for the installation to finish, then close software center, and go to System -> Preferences -> Touchpad. Now you can modify the way your touchpad moves, behaves, and others.

Tested on Dell D610 and works without problems.