When you first installed Ubuntu you were offered the chance to set the Ubuntu hostname, which is what appears at the command-prompt and is also how your computer is identified should you activate services such as file sharing.
When a Linux users wants to get rid of a crashed program, he kills it - literally. The kill command is used for this purpose, but it needs the program ID (PID) number to work. This can be discovered using the pgrep.
Ubuntu has a powerful raft of power management features, accessible through System > Preferences > Power Management, but you might notice one missing if you're used to Windows or OS X: hard disk spin down time.
The standard method of distributing Ubuntu as a full operating system is as an ISO image, which you can burn to disc and boot from. If you need to look into what's in an ISO image you have a number of choices.
Start taking your destiny into your own hands by changing the wallpaper (er, the desktop background). If you bought a new computer with Windows 7 installed, your background text probably says Dell or Vaio or Billy Joe Bob's Computer Emporium / Dial 555-3765 for a good time.
There are a handful of situations where securely erasing data can be useful. If you're about to sell-on a computer, or even if you're about to dispose of it, it makes sense to completely wipe the hard disk.
Ubuntu loves to use sudo/gksu to dish out superuser powers, but if you want to permanently enable the root account so you can log into it, type the following, which will assign the root user a password and thereby activate it.
With some types of CPU it's possible to manually alter the clock speed while the system is running. This can be very useful with a notebook computer, for example, where you might choose to throttle-down the CPU speed when on battery power to save juice, or to minimize heat generation when the computer is resting on your lap.
Programmers will be pleased to hear that Gedit includes syntax highlighting. However, it doesn't appear until the document is saved. It can be enhanced by clicking Edit > Preferences and checking Highlight Matching Bracket which, as its name suggests, will highlight the opening
and closing brackets of any command/phrase.
Thunar is the default file manager used in the stripped-back Xfce4 desktop of Xubuntu. It starts quickly, has a low-memory footprint, yet is very powerful and provides all the features you're likely to need. In fact, it beats Nautilus in many departments when it comes to features.
Ubuntu provides Bluetooth support for both serial connections and BlueZ protocol–supported devices. Bluetooth is a wireless connection method for locally connected devices such as keyboards, mice, printers, and even PDAs and Bluetooth-capable cell phones.
If you find yourself sometimes accidentally hitting the Caps Lock key, this tip will be a God-send. Just open a terminal and type xmodmap -e "clear Lock" to disable it. On my system the keyboard LED for the key still lit when it was hit, but there was no other effect within Ubuntu.
If you work in an office environment or have more than one PC in your home you might be used to connecting to shared folders across the network. Ubuntu's Places > Network view should show the computers that are local to you and let you connect.
At some point, you may decide to remove a role that you no longer need. Removing a role in the past was error prone because you couldn't be sure you had removed all the component parts. Windows Server 2008 improves on this process through the Remove Roles Wizard.
You still have access to the Add or Remove Programs applet, as you did in the past, in Windows Server 2008. However, Microsoft has changed the name of this feature to Programs and Features. It's still possible to add or remove roles using this approach. Server Manager provides another option that you might want to try, however: Adding and removing roles can now rely on a wizard that helps you create a complete role rather than install a particular piece of software and find that you didn't install enough.