For users who have already made the switch to Linux, first congratulations!!

Most likely you’re now familiar with something called GRUB, the bootloader that will manage your access to the different OSs you have installed. GRUB comes in when you have a dual-boot (or more) installation on your machine.

If you’re sticking with a simple dual-boot Linux install most likely you’ll not have to change anything after you’ve made the OS installation. GRUB should work well. But… in case you start messing around too much with removing or adding other Linux distros or even want to completely remove Linux, things start getting a little complicated.

Firefox, our favorite web browser, is coming closer and closer to its version 3. I’ve been using Firefox v3 beta 5 for quite some time now and I can say it is working amazingly fast and more stable.

Today Mozilla released Firefox v3 release candidate 2. Compared to the old Firefox v2, the new release is safer, faster, easier to manage with their plug-in management, and even looks nicer! The full list of features for v3RC2 is here.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia is now coming out strong with Wikia Search, an open source collaborative search website. It was first released in alpha months ago, but most recently some new features have been announced.

It isn’t a Google killer (yet), but it surely has the potential to one day become quite visible.

Wikia Search takes on the same principles that Wikipedia does to generate and moderate content, but here for your web search results. Search for any term and if you don’t like something you see from the results, you can alter it the way you’d like. You can:

Blender is an open source, cross-platform 3D content creation program. This kind of stuff is way too off my league, but if you’re in to creating images and want to do some 3D work, Blender will surely be for you.

I’ve heard a great many things about this software. First and undoubtedly that it is feature rich and extremely resourceful. I’ve seen a lots and lots of work done on Blender and they look amazing. But, there is the other side of the world who says that Blender is useless if you want to be a real pro, mainly because the UI and standards it uses will not be the same as those found in other proprietary programs.

Google’s Android, a mobile phone’s open source operating system is coming closer and closer to a reality for us. The most recent news shows a really spiffy phone with tons of features and excellently cool!

I haven’t really made that much of an effort to get an iPhone waiting for an Android phone to be released.

I think Android phones will be better then iPhones because there won’t be the entire hacking / unlocking process and being open source the possibilities for growth in the number of add-on apps is enormous. I can’t wait for it to be released.

This is the third of a sequence of posts where we’ll take a look at a few of the main Linux distros to find out which are the most welcoming to Linux newbies. In our first article of this series we took a look at Fedora 9 Beta, the second article we spoke about openSUSE, and the third in the series was about Mandriva.

We’ll do this test with the live (Gnome) CD to analyze: parts of the hardware that are recognized, software package installed, general usability (setup adjustments, software installation). Computer tested specs: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600, 2GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 6100.

Looking to loose some weight? Open source multi-platform program CRON-O-Meter helps you keep track of your diet.

It looks like a pretty neat program. You tell it what you’re eating and it’ll give you a nice report of the vitamins, minerals, proteins you’re taking in each day. The program will even give you suggestions on what you should eat, so you’ll never be in doubt again on  whether you should eat a salad or a burger for lunch.

Our favorite office app, OpenOffice has just released the OOo 3.0 beta version. My review can be summed up in two words: it rocks! Ok, now you can go back to your other activities.

Just kiddin, let’s dig a bit deeper. First, since this isn’t a stable release you might not want to install this version yet as your main office application. But, so far the tests I’ve done were without crashes.

Red Hat’s sponsored Fedora 9 has just been released. This solid Linux distro is out with some pretty interesting features:

• you can run Fedora 9 from a USB pen drive or external disk;
• unlike Ubuntu, KD4 is integrated;
• for Gnome distribution, version 2.22 was used;
• there is an option for you to run it with ext4 for better performance;
• and as always loaded with programs including OpenOffice 2.4 and Firefox 3 beta.

Taskjuggler is an interesting option for project managers using Linux. The program seems to be pretty complete with all the bells and whistles to keep track of tasks, time, resources, and costs.

From the site, here is a couple of its features:

• Automatic resource leveling, tasks conflict resolutions, and task filtering
• Comprehensive and flexible views and reports so you can find the information you need when you need it
• Built-in templates to get you started
• Unlimited number of scenarios (baselines) of the same project for what-if analysis
• CSV data export for exchange with Office Suites
• Risk analysis
• Flexible working hours and vacation handling
• Multiple time zone support
• Generation of iCal files for data exchange with standard productivity tools