If you are asked a question like - How will you find whether the Linux distribution installed in a PC is Ubuntu or Fedora, what would be your answer?

Before answering something like Ubuntu is orange while fedora will look blue, remember that Linux is the most customizable operating system out there. You can modify the look and feel of the system to any extend, limited only by your imagination. You can make a Fedora installation look like Ubuntu and vice-versa.

How would you know what Linux distribution you are running?

Take a terminal and enter the below command:

lsb_release -a

(Note - You can use this command to know whether you have successfully updated to Ubuntu 8.04 or not after a system upgrade)



This will give you all information like the Distribution name, version, code name etc.

Note that this utility simply reads out the contents of the file /etc/lsb-release. So simply printing this file will also give the same information.



In case the above utility is not installed, try

cat /proc/version

which will give you the details of the installed kernel and the distribution name.

Happy Linuxing.

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The latest version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution code-named Hardy-Heron has been released.

Ubuntu is a distro that’s well known for its user-friendliness and simplicity. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu yet, get it here. You can even get a free CD shipped to you absolutely free of cost through the Ubuntu ship it program.

However, if tested out-of-the-box, Ubuntu is crippled on the multimedia front. This is because of copyright and patent restrictions that complicate distribution of proprietary codecs with Ubuntu, which prides itself as a totally free operating system.

Even though Ubuntu developers haven’t included proprietary codecs, they have made it extremely easy for you to install them later through the Medibuntu repository. You can get encrypted DVD playback, Adobe Flash plugin and non-native media files (Windows media, Apple QuickTime, Real, MP3) support by using this single command.

Take a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and enter the following command:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs

The above command downloads all the required codecs from the Medibuntu repositories and makes your Ubuntu box multimedia ready.

Note: The above command is for 32 bit processors. AMD 64bit users, replace the ending word w32codecs with w64codecs. PPC users replace w32codecs with ppc-codecs.

Bonus Tip

Once you have run the above command, you can easily install third party applications like Skype, Google Earth and Acrobat Reader.

Skype:
sudo apt-get install skype

Google Earth:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.2

Adobe Acrobat Reader:
sudo apt-get install acroread

Happy Linuxing.

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For all the (linux) micro blogging junkies out there, you can now post to Twitter using your terminal.

Just fire up your terminal and:

wget --delete-after --user=username --password=mysecretpassword --post-data status='your message here. and dont remove the quotes' http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

Dont forget to edit your user name, password and message body.
Happy (geeky) twittering.

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In case you are like me, you have experienced the violent urge to rip apart your computer cabinet and pull out that tiny internal speaker every time the Linux terminal/vi beeps at you. Tab beeps, backspace beeps, every stupid action in vi causes it to mock at you with that silly beep. Well it's time to show who is the real master.
In case you haven't noticed, the beep doesn't come from the system's big external speakers. It is from a speaker that is inside your cabinet which according to me should be used solely by BIOS. So today we are going to disable that little speaker.

Temporarily disabling the system beep

sudo rmmod pcspkr

For Debian/Ubuntu users open a terminal and run the above command. For CentOS/Redhat/RHEL/Fedora Linux log-in as root and then run rmmod pcspkr

Permanently disabling the system beep

For Debian/Ubuntu based systems :

sudo echo "blacklist pcspkr" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

For CentOS/Redhat/RHEL/Fedora Linux users, run

echo "alias pcspkr off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

as root

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Did you know

• that you can jump to your home directory from any location by simply typing
  
  cd
  
  and pressing enter?
  
  
• that you can easily create backup of a file using
  
  cp /location/filename{,.bak}
  
  
  
• That you can copy and paste text in terminal using Ctrl + Shift + C and Ctrl + Shift + V?
  
  
• That you can search for previously typed command using Ctrl + R and typing the first few letters of the command?
  
  
• That you can see a list of all commands typed into terminal using the history command and clear it using history -c ?
  
  

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