Ignacio Sánchez Ginés

I have just installed a fresh copy of the new Ubuntu 8.10.

In order to mantain all the packages installed in my old system I generated a list of the currently installed packages, so I could restore them later.

dpkg --get-selections > packages

This generates a file with all the installed packages in your system. Just copy it to a safe place, usbstick or CD.

After you have installed the fresh copy of Ubuntu you can recover what was installed in your previous system with the file you generated and the following commands:

dpkg --set-selections < packages
apt-get dselect-upgrade

Today I was googling to figure out how I could minimize any application to the Ubuntu system tray.

I am very used to Outlook and I have recently migrated to Thunderbird, so I was looking for a method to minimize Thunderbird to the system tray.

I found two solutions.

The first one was New Mail Icon, which is an extension for Thunderbird. It works like a charm, putting the Thunderbird icon in the system tray. This icon changes when a new mail is received.

I also found the AllTray application. With this software you can minimaze any application you want to the Ubuntu system tray. Pretty cute!

To install it, open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install alltray