Cron jobs need quiet operation; if a command generates output, you’ll get an email from cron with the command output. So if you want to fetch a file silently with wget or curl, use a command like this:
curl –silent –output output_filename http://example.com/urltofetch.html
wget –quiet –output-document output_filename http://example.com/urltofetch.html
There are shorter versions of these options, but using the verbose options will make code or cron jobs easier to understand if you come back to them

Different Linux distributions package up software in different ways. RedHat uses .rpm files, while Debian and Ubuntu use .deb files. To convert a .rpm to a .deb file, you can use the alien program:
alien -k package.rpm
The -k option preserves the minor version number of a package (don’t worry about it, just do it or read the man page).
Installing a package in Debian or Ubuntu is also easy. To install a .deb file, you can type:
sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb
To uninstall a package, use
sudo dpkg -r packagename

Sometimes when you try to start Firefox, it warns you that Firefox is already running. The message looks like this:

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.

Usually, you can just kill the firefox process to solve this problem

The LinuxBIOS project aims to take down the last barrier in Open Source systems by providing a free firmware (BIOS) implementation. LinuxBIOS celebrates its Sixth anniversary this year, and has an installed base of over 1 million LinuxBIOS systems

Last week, Google hosted the Ubuntu Developer Summit at our Mountain View headquarters. Developers and community members from across the world congregated over six days to plan the next release of