Niftiest Thing You've Done with Ubuntu?

[Cola_Cartel]

Howdy-ho everyone,

I'm new to Ubuntu and experimenting with it as a dual-boot on my laptop alongside XP. I'm enjoying it so far but I want to get a better idea of Linux's supposed flexibility. So my question to you is: what is the niftiest trick you've done with Ubuntu or any other Linux distro? Or better, what capacity does Linux offers you that you think best illustrates its superiority to commercial OS?

[Glucklich]

Still as fast as the day I installed it. How's that for a neat trick?

[CharmyBee]

Make a TV out of it. Ubuntu + TVtime + remote control = almost perfect. Just need push-button live recording that doesn't require 63 hours of a broken MythTV setup process to just write what's on my screen to AVI file.

[unknownPoster]

I used it as a liveCD environment to install Gentoo from a Stage3 tarball.

Other than that, every Linux distribution experiences the same usage from me. :P

[ericmc783]

Just about anything I could do in windows. Video Editing, Viewing, listening to music, uploading my listens to last.fm, using the command line to get things done, etc.

[tacantara]

I've used a bunch of FOSS programs to do neat things like edit photos (GIMP), and prepare presentations and lesson plans (Open Office), on a fast and stable OS platform. The best part is, that these are programs that come with the Ubuntu distribution, and unlike many of the "free" or "shareware" programs written for Windows, I didn't have to worry about them being crapware or bogging down my system.

I know now that there are versions of GIMP and Open Office for Windows, but I wonder how well they perform on Windows. I guess I'll never know, as the only thing I use Windows for now is syncing my iPod and my Zune, and when I absolutely need IE for websites that won't play nicely with the Firefox or Opera web browsers (and those are becoming fewer every day).

[mcduck]

I made myself automatic script that loads RAW images from my camera, converts them to JPG (using proper color profiles etc) and resizes them for web use, creates pretty nice randonly tilted polaroid-like thumbnails, reads EXIF data from images and then writes XHTML to turn the images into a web gallery and finally uploads it through FTP to my server.

Took me half a day to write, and I have pretty much zero programming skills. But since this is Linux and we have actually usable command-line tools for almost anything all I had to do was to write a bit of shell script to use those ready-made tools.

..not that I'd really use the script, as I rarely have need to upload every photo I've taken to net, but the idea of being able to make everything apart from plugging the camera in happen automatically was interesting enough to try. :D

Of course being able to get a fully functioning system with all the programs I like in less than hour is pretty cool as well, considering that getting a fresh Windows install to usable state usually takes most of the day. ;)

[mkendall]

A broader Linux/Unix thing than just Ubuntu: symbolic links. I have no idea if such a thing exists for windows.

[Aearenda]

A broader Linux/Unix thing than just Ubuntu: symbolic links. I have no idea if such a thing exists for windows.

Links exist on NTFS, but they are worse than a dog's dinner.

For me, the niftiest thing that comes to mind is a script that, once an hour, grabs my wife's sunbird calendar (ical) from her laptop if it is present on the local network, removes the tasks from it and makes it suitable for evolution on my laptop, likewise pushes my calendar to hers minus my tasks, and syncs both to google using gcaldaemon. Almost all of this could be done with Windows too; it's the 'sed' part that removes the tasks and bits of sunbird-ical that evolution-ical doesn't understand that makes it nifty. We don't sync the laptops via Gcal plugins since that loses some attributes on the round trip.

[ozanamn]

About the best thing i done with Ubuntu is install it.

Installed it on my laptop and Pc

Also have linux installed on my ipod and xbox.

never have I had a problem unless it was something I did to break it, which is all the fun of it anyway.

Oz

[KegHead]

Hi!

Nothing specific.

I've learned a new OS and how to work around problems and get away from M$.

KegHead

[automaton26]

If you'd have told me 10 years ago that I could have an OS-on-a-stick (Live USB) that allowed me to use a decent desktop OS (Kubuntu 64) on almost any old PC I had access to without changing the hard drive contents at all, I would not have believed it.

Funny how MS doesn't provide the equivalent for Windows...

[TBOL3]

1. Non-destructive partition editing via gparted, on the ubuntu liveCD.

2. 3D modeling/animation via blender.

3. Obvious compiz effects.

4. Multiple desktops (boring I know, but I still love them).

5. Learned never to run make install, or edit any config files, unless I want my computer to crash in 2 months time (fortunately, ubuntu is making it easier and easier to do this).

6. Ironically enough, contradicting number 5, install linux from scratch (ok, so I'm only 1/2 of the way there, but still...).

7. Apt-get anyone?

8. Musical Composition via Rosegarden mainly.

9. I've learned patience, as I haven't thrown my laptop across the room yet (although, I almost did when I was booted into my HP-Vista Partition).

10. And a lot more stuff, which I'm too lazy to write here.

[chris4585]

Make a TV out of it. Ubuntu + TVtime + remote control = almost perfect. Just need push-button live recording that doesn't require 63 hours of a broken MythTV setup process to just write what's on my screen to AVI file.

Big +1, I do this too minus the remote, and the part about MythTV is sooo true. But the coolest thing I've done is make remixes or use sshfs to connect to my home computer from my laptop. I've also turned my computer into a server, maybe not noifty but its worth mentioning.

[elianthony]

Well, plenty.

1- Run more apps at one time than any other machine/OS I've ever used.

2- Install tons of new apps, try them out, keep or delete them, all safely and freely.

3- Have no issues with burning CD/DVDs

4- Make a *.iso copy of any CD/DVD in a few minutes with one right click. Very handy for rented movies that haven't been watched yet, but need to be returned.

5- Perform a local install of a webserver, & then Wordpress to test out the blogging software.

6- Customize just about anything I want to on my system

7- Plenty more I'm sure, but I've got to go.

[Bart_D]

Compiz Fusion/Compiz or whatever that toy is called now-a-days.

[l-x-l]

The nifties thing I've done with Ubuntu so far was create a cli function in bash that automatically takes a large FLAC image file and:

1. convert it to WAVE
2. split the image into individual tracks using a cue file
3. covert the WAVE file back to FLAC
4. tag the FLAC files with metadata from the cue

When in Windows I had to use 3 seperate apps to do all this.