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.
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.