I was browsing the Get Deb site and happened to find an application called Ubuntu Tweak which piqued my interest. I'm now wondering how I ever managed to use gnome with Ubuntu Tweak - I spent ten minutes tweaking settings that I didn't even know existed. I'm also wondering why this application isn't shipped with Ubuntu. This application is a must for new Ubuntu users and veterans alike.

What if you want one user to run a command as an another system user without exchanging passwords. For example, you may want an user john to run a find command or custom bash shell script as an user greg or even as a user root ( superuser ) without password exchange. In this case a sudo utility with its /etc/sudoers configuration file will be your friend.

Ubuntu Tweak is a utility created to make it easier for users to configure and change a variety of system settings. You can use it to quickly adjust settings for GNOME Panel, Compiz, and Nautilus, along with some more advanced security settings.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.9 has been released, a great application for tweaking settings in Ubuntu (Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty or the latest development Karmic). From this version, Ubuntu Tweak has different package for i386 and amd64 and works for Karmic too.

Among the improvements and new features:

On Unix platform, tar command is the primary archiving utility. Understanding various tar command options will help you master the archive file manipulation.

Tweak Ubuntu the old fashioned way. Well if old fashioned is using a GUI interface (like TweakUI for Windows) instead of command line tweak, then this is it! Great little open source project.

ufw, the Uncomplicated FireWall, is Ubuntu’s user-friendly, command line frontend to IPTables, the command line utility for managing Netfilter, the firewall application built into the Linux kernel. It is installed not just on Ubuntu, but also on all Ubuntu-based distributions. As simple to use as ufw is, a graphical interface is even better, especially for new users.

One of the things I like about Linux is the command line. I have used nautilus, konqueror, and thunar to manage files in Linux and these file managers are great for what they do. But there are times when one simply wants to find a file when working on the command line without having to open a GUI application.

Ubuntu Tweak is a cute little application meant to make the life of Ubuntu user a lot more easier. It has a number of small workarounds which are really useful especially if you are a newbie Ubuntu user. Some of Compiz animations like "Show Windows" is not at all easy-to-find, if you are not using Ubuntu Tweak.