Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter on Linux

Some laptops have integrated Wi-Fi adapter which Linux doesn't recognize by default. Probably because the drivers are proprietary. Ubuntu suggests automatic installation of the driver but does it optionally. Lots of other distributives don't do this at all.

I'll describe the process of driver installation for my Wi-Fi adapter in PCLinux. As I could understand on forums, this type of adapter is widely spread and installation process is almost the same for all distributives.

First of all, let's check that system has found our adapter:
$ lspci | grep Wireless
05:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
Now lets install fwcutter:
$ sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter
Then download driver from here, extract the archive and install the firmware:
$ tar -xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
$ cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
$ sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o
After all these steps Wi-Fi should start working. At worst, you can try to reboot your laptop.

BASH: autocompletion after the first <TAB>

Lots of modern Linux distributives prefer this variant of autocompletion. You type a letter, push 'Tab' and receive the list of options. But I don't like this. I like when options appear after the second push of 'Tab'.

It is controlled by show-all-if-ambiguous parameter of inputrc. For double-Tab style (which I prefer) the command will look like:
set show-all-if-ambiguous off
This should be placed into /etc/inputrc (if you have privileges and want system wide setting) or in your local ~/.inputrc. But in the second case you should also add
unset INPUTRC;
to you ~/.bashrc

Aliases in VIM

I usually have a problem with VIM commands ":w" and ":q". I type them very quickly and don't have time to release Shift key. As result I get error messages which inform me that commands ":W" and ":Q" don't exist.

That's why I decided to create an alias for them. They are created by the following command:
command <new_alias> <source_command>
For example, my ~/.vimrc looks like this:
set nobackup
command W w
command Q q
So I obtain correct result regardless state of Shift key.

Firefox: redirection to "jar:file//"

Recently my favorite browser Firefox get used to redirect me to "jar:file//..." with local address of some files. "Backward" button didn't work in this case and it really annoyed me.

The reason of this problem was additional plug-in called Ask.com. When I uninstalled it, the useless redirection disappeared.

Windows: List of network shares

In order to see the list of all current network shares on the local computer and where they point to, imho, the following command is the most useful:
>net share

Share name Resource Remark

-------------------------------------------------
ADMIN$ C:\Windows Remote Admin
C$ C:\ Default share
D$ D:\ Default share
IPC$ Remote IPC