The program speaker-test comes in the alsa-utils package, and provides pink noise by default. This is described by its man page as “perceptually uniform noise”. There are a number of other options, but for a quick noise generator, speaker-test is very handy.

Here’s some sample output from lsb_release:
$ lsb_release -a
LSB Version: core-2.0-ia32:core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-ia32:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-ia32:core-3.1-noarch:core-3.2-ia32:core-3.2-noarch:core-4.0-ia32:core-4.0-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS
Release: 10.04
Codename: lucid

The “lsb” in these commands refers to the Linux Standard Base.  For more information, see the Linux Foundation .

Here’s a copy of lucidor 0.9, which was difficult to find due to problems with the lucidor site:

lucidor_0.9-1_all.deb

md5sum:  08faa6b60df2dae654e70431aa2e7626  lucidor_0.9-1_all.deb.gz
sha1sum: 0397853f5c4fe013fe36aed71ec0aa219f7f35f2  lucidor_0.9-1_all.deb.gz

‘Ubuntu Bloke’ had the easy fix :

"Create the directories that for some reason are not created by the installer
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/graphics
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/flows
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/interfaces
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/interfaces/eth0
sudo mkdir /var/lib/ntop/rrd/interfaces/ppp0
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/lib/ntop"

Lucid Lynx has arrived. The release day was yesterday, though I’ve been running several systems on 10.04 since the alpha stage. It’s well done. I don’t yet have a use for the social networking tools/toys (the gwibber app and indicator-me gnome package), but I’m not unhappy with them either. The server image has been robust so far, but I haven’t thrown too much at it. I’m thinking of putting the netbook edubuntu version (à la the system 76 starling edubook ) on my older laptop to see how that flies.  Looks like fun.

To convert a pdf into navigable html (with images intact), you can use pdftohtml:

E.g.,

 pdftohtml -c originalfile.pdf  newname_template.html

Converting a book-length pdf using this method gave me a directory full of files, with consecutively numbered html files representing the pages.   Names were based on the ‘newname_template’ supplied, as were the png image files.  Not the prettiest, but functional, and viewable on devices lacking native pdf-rendering capabilities.

For instance:

# update-rc.d -f apache2 remove

The “-f” is required if you have existing scripts in /etc/init.d/apache2. If you are planning on manually starting apache, the “-f” is [barring heroic/quixotic effort to create alternatives] a requirement.
Otherwise, in this situation, you will see:

update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/apache2 exists during rc.d purge (use -f to force)

A good write-up is here:
http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-manage-services-with-update-rc.d

update-manager -d

No major problems.  I did have to manually remove a couple of ppa entries from my /etc/apt/sources.list.  Also, I changed from the generic ‘main server’ to a much, much faster (at the time) server.  The easiest way to do this is via gui, as far as I know.  Ubuntu will check for the fastest responding site if you use ‘System’ -> ‘Administration’ -> ‘Software Sources’ and ‘Select Best Server’,’ or use ‘Settings’ under the update-manager interface (‘settings’ is on the lower left) to get to the same place.   I shaved off several hours from my package download by switching to a server that had some combination of proximity, light load, and high bandwidth.   This involved a generous amount of luck, and probably the uneven demand associated with a pre-release version of the OS.