Crontab

Making sure your system is up to date is a key attribute to its security. Furthermore Ubuntu releases updates pretty often and you probably don't want to miss out on added stability and features. You could run updates manually, but why not schedule the updates in the background to make sure you are always running the latest stable versions, without ever having to worry about it.

If you've got a website that's heavy on your web server, you might want to run some processes like generating thumbnails or enriching data in the background. This way it can not interfere with the user interface. Linux has a great program for this called cron. It allows tasks to be automatically run in the background at regular intervals. You could also use it to automatically create backups, synchronize files, schedule updates, and much more. Welcome to the wonderful world of crontab.