Dos2unix using Emacs

To convert a buffer(file) from dos file encoding to unix in Emacs use

M-x set-buffer-file-coding-system RET undecided-unix

If you do a TAB after RET, you will see the gazillion other encoding schemes supported by Emacs.

Installing Ubuntu without CD or USB

The following article is helpful if ...

1. ... you are one of those few lucky people who still has an antiquated machine without a CD drive or a boot-able USB thing (check) 
2. ... you are running a very old version of Ubuntu - 8.04 (check) 
3. ... and you don't want to do an incremental network upgrade all the way from 8.04 to 8.10 to 9.04 .. yawn .. to 11.10 (check)

Read this. 

(In a nutshell - installing Ubuntu using a spare partition from an existing Linux system to house the Ubuntu CD image).

Emacs shell

Three solutions

1. Emacs shell (M-x shell) - Not very capable, good enough to run quick commands

2. Terminal emulation (M-x term) - Can't handle formatted output well.

3. Actual terminal instance (M-x ansi-term) - Real thing! 

Reading man pages within Emacs

M-x man
OR
M-x woman

Isn't Emacs awesome?