Netspeed applet

Netspeed is just a little GNOME-applet that shows how much traffic occurs on a specified network device. You can configure and select more network cards if you have more than one. You can install it from command line: apt-get install netspeed
More info available on project homepage http://projects.gnome.org/netspeed/

How to merge two pdf files in command line

To do this, we will use ghostscript (in1.pdf and in2.pdf are files to be merged):

gs -q -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out.pdf in1.pdf in2.pdf

Tucan manager

Tucan Manager is a free and open source and multiplatform software designed for automatic management of downloads and uploads at hosting sites like rapidshare or megaupload. It is released under GPLv2 license. What I really like on tucan is, that it checks all the links first before downloading. If you don't have premium account and you have to wait some time between downloads, tucan will check the time and start downloading files immediately after this period of time expired. For more info check the homepage http://tucaneando.com/index-en.html Deb install file is available from here: http://www.getdeb.net/app/Tucan

Sync and Share your files with ubuntu one

With this fancy thing you can: Sync your files, share your work with others or work remotely with your Ubuntu computers. Ubuntu one is only available for Ubuntu and no other OS. You need to register first in order to install the ubuntu one client. If everything goes ok, you will be able to launch ubuntu one via Applications » Internet » Ubuntu One menu. There are 2 options available - 2GB Free space (no fee) and 10GB Free space (charged $10 per month). If interested, check it out on https://one.ubuntu.com/.

Check ubuntu release version from command line

This info is stored in /etc/lsb-release file:

baban@ubuntu :~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=jaunty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.04"

You can also use lsb_release command with -a argument, which shows all info:

baban@ubuntu :~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 9.04
Release: 9.04
Codename: jaunty
baban@ubuntu :~$

Ubuntu releases...

Here is a short list of the ubuntu releases with version numbers and codenames:

4.10 Warty Warthog (Released in Oct 2004 - The First Ubuntu Release)
5.04 Hoary Hedgehog (Released in April 2005)
5.10 Breezy Badger (Released in Oct 2005)
6.06 Dapper Drake (Released in June 2006 - Long Term Support)
6.10 Edgy Eft (Released in Oct 2006)
7.04 Feisty Fawn (Released in April 2007)
7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (Released in Oct 2007)
8.04 Hardy Heron (Released in April 2008 - Long Term support)
8.10 Intrepid Ibex (Released in Oct 2008)
9.04 Jaunty Jackalope (Released in April 2009)
9.10 Karmic Koala (Planned Release - Oct 2009)

Regular releases are supported for 18 months, LTS releases are supported 3 years on desktop and 5 years on server versions. As you probably found out - release cycle is 6 months.