Something I'm going to share with you today is how to delete a batch of files in Linux (a CentOS distribution in this instance) using the built-in find utility and some regular expressions.

Use case: It turns out that the backup utility for WordPress doesn't delete old backups that it stores on your server. As these files build up, they typically consume a lot of space, and eventually fill up your hard disk.

In case you missed it, the latest edition of Ubuntu was released this week, Natty Narwhal (or 11.04 if you prefer).

It seems to have been one of the most popular releases ever, because I can't connect to the Ubuntu website to upgrade!!! What's happening is that because Canonical's servers are so busy, the upgrade assistant can't download the release notes for the new version. And so the upgrade fails.

It doesn't happen often, but once in a while you'll need to open a RAR file in Ubuntu.

What's a RAR file, you ask? Well, essentially it's a slightly more obscure zip file format. Windows handles ZIP file formats nicely, Linux is comfortable with TAR.GZ archives. Neither operating system loves RAR files.

Aptana Studio is free web development software which runs on Linux and Windows alike. I switched to it a few years ago to break my dependence on outdated versions of Dreamweaver.

If you're working on developing websites, it's handy to have a development server to test your designs and code against. If you're running Ubuntu, it's fairly easy to install a LAMP stack - I use mine for running test versions of WordPress and Drupal for themeing, but you can use this setup for all kinds of web development.

In this post, I'm going to show you how to quickly install Apache, MySQL and PHP to give yourself a fully-functioning development server. By the way, I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 to carry out this tutorial.

Ever been stuck with a single, wired internet connection, but needing to connect more than one computer to the internet?

You'll be glad to know that with Ubuntu, it's easy to share an internet connection by creating an ad-hoc wireless network. It happened us recently on holiday - we had a single wired network connection, but two laptops. Both machines were wireless enabled.

Here's how to set up the connection:

Since most laptop and desktop computers these days can boot from a USB drive, one of the handiest utilities in my toolbox is an installation of Pendrive Linux.

How do you change your password in Ubuntu? Well, using the command line, it's actually quite easy...

I'm going through a process of changing my various computer and web passwords. After the much publicised vulnerabilities with Google and MSN a few weeks ago, I thought it might be a good time to change my passwords.

Now, to change your password through the command line, you simply type in passwd and hit return. You'll be prompted to enter your current password first, then your new password twice. It's that easy.

In the Windows environment, keyboard shortcuts help us get things done more efficiently, without wasting time using the mouse to navigate. Part of the difficulty in migrating to Ubuntu is that many of the old Windows shortcuts don't work anymore. In this post, I've hunted out some useful keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate Ubuntu more professionally.

Because Ubuntu is a free operating system, they don't feel the need to shove the version in your face in quite the same way their commercial counterparts do. So, when you're on the threshold of doing an upgrade, it's nice to know what version you're upgrading from.

There's a quick, command based way to discover what version of Ubuntu you're using:

cat /etc/issue

Alternatively, for a more detailed output, try this command: