Upgrading Version 2 Thunderbird to Version 3

Introduction

If you have updated recently your version of Linux Distro in Ubuntu, Mint and others you might have hit on a couple of upgrade problems associated with the Thunderbird Version released with the distro. This howto covers the instructions needed to overcome these problems. At least one of the fixes is very simple the other is only slightly more complex.

Installing the latest OpenOffice Suite for Debian and Ubuntu Systems

Introduction

Most of the time you will want to use the installed package manager with the likes of (apt-get or Synaptic) to use for Open Office, using this method whilst it ensures an easy to install solution does not give you the latest version installation, the latest version is harder to install partly because it comes as a tarball and there are several individual Debian packages within it and apparently no setup script of obvious means of installation.

Find out your UUID for an attached drive

For quite some time now the likes of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions have used UUID to determine any attached storage devices for mounting, for many of us whilst we see the value of such things finding out how the UUID is derived or for that matter checking the UUID is a bit of a mystery. Well rest easy because by using the command below can can quickly and easily find out this information yourself.

#> sudo blkid

Clever control sequence for pre-used console commands

You know how it is, you open a new terminal window assured you know the command you want to use you make a cup of coffee and then you forget the command you where to use. Obviously you need better coffee!

Or you can press the "Control Key + r" and your command prompt is replaced with this

(reverse-i-search)`':

A Distribution Query Howto

Here is a very quick and easy tip to find out what distribution of Linux your system is running, open a new terminal window and type the command below at your prompt.

#> lsb_release -a

Please be aware #> is a prompt do not type this in your terminal window just the command

You should get something like this

#> lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

What On Earth is Grep

As a tool "grep" is just one of those commands that once you begin to use you just can't do without, nothing in it name suggests what this command does. Grep Wikipedia documents grep as a command line text search utility originally written for Unix. The name is taken from the first letters in global / regular expression / print, a series of instructions for the ed text editor.

Converting "Mixed Case" filenames to "Lower Case"

Just a head's up on a pretty cool site that I came across today: Command-Line-Fu

How Confusing is Root? Very Confusing!

One of the most difficult concepts within Linux to understand is root it's not that the word root is difficult or difficult to interpret as much as the sheer number of various instances root itself is used within Linux, all of which mean something within the context that it is used.

Tar file archiver and compression utility

In computing, tar (derived from tape archive) is both a file format (in the form of a type of archive bitstream) and the name of the program used to handle such files. Initially developed as a raw format, used for tape backup and other sequential access devices for backup purposes, it is now commonly used to collate collections of files into one larger file, for distribution or archiving, while preserving file system information such as user and group permissions, dates, and directory structures.