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10 Things To Do Just After Installing Ubuntu 7.10

ovelha.org — Ubuntu is a great linux distro, but there are a few tweaks that you should do after installing it that will make you life much better. This tutorial explains 10 things you should do just after installing ubuntu 7.10

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 10, 2007

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  • Cymrubeats, on 11/13/2007, -2/+481 - Expand the Software Repository List

    First of all, lets make ubuntu “see” more packages:
    Load Synaptic, go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. There, click in the menu Settings -> Repositories. In Ubuntu Software mark these repositories that will be accessed from the Internet:

    Canonical-suported Open Source software (main)
    Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)
    Proprietary drivers for devices (restricted)
    Softwares restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse)

    screenshot-software-sources.png

    After you have selected the new repository list, I suggest you go to the Terminal and type:
    sudo apt-get update
    Then
    sudo apt-get upgrade

    Now all your programs will run on the last version.

    2 - Have more fun with Compiz

    Now you should install advanced graphics settings for compiz. By default, Ubuntu only let you choose from None, Normal or Extra Compiz graphics configuration. To make it more configurable, you can write on the Terminal:

    sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager gnome-art usplash startupmanager

    screenshot-compizconfig-settings-manager.png

    3 - Installing packing softwares

    It’s bad when you don’t have Internet on your computer/notebook, but you have to pack/unpack something but the file format isn’t recognized by the system. To prevent from this bad situation, you can install a bunch of packing softwares by typing this on the terminal:

    sudo apt-get install unace rar unrar zip unzip p7zip-full p7zip-rar sharutils aish uudeview mpack lha arj cabextract file-roller

    4 - Installing More Fonts

    Here you will find a bunch of fonts you can install on your system, but remember that you don’t need to install all of them

    mkdir mkdir -p /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1 sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

    sudo apt-get install ttf-larabie-straight ttf-larabie-deco mplayer-fonts xfonts-terminus-dos xfonts-terminus xfonts-terminus-oblique xfonts-mona tv-fonts ttf-tuffy ttf-sjfonts ttf-sil-padauk ttf-sil-ezra ttf-paktype ttf-georgewilliams
    ttf-fifthhorseman-dkg-handwriting ttf-farsiweb ttf-essays1743 fonty ttf-opensymbol ttf-nafees ttf-mgopen ttf-gentium ttf-freefont ttf-dustin ttf-devanagari-fonts ttf-dejavu-extra ttf-dejavu-core ttf-dejavu ttf-bpg-georgian-fonts ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-alee

    Yes, it’s a big code, but you can just copy/paste it. :)

    5 - Multimedia

    To have ubuntu playing all kinds of stuff, you need to install many codecs. So on the Terminal, type:

    * Installing vlc and mplayer (playis almost everything):

    sudo apt-get install vlc

    or

    sudo apt-get install mplayer

    * Common packs

    sudo apt-get install mpeg2dec a52dec vorbis-tools id3v2 mpg321 mpg123 libswfdec0.3 libflac++6 ffmpeg cdda2wav toolame libmp4v2-0 totem-mozilla libmjpegtools0c2a tagtool easytag id3tool lame lame-extras nautilus-script-audio-convert mozilla-helix-player helix-player libmad0 libjpeg-progs libmpcdec3 libquicktime1 flac faac faad sox toolame a52dec ffmpeg2theora libmpeg2-4 uudeview flac libmpeg3-1 mpeg3-utils mpegdemux

    * Gstreammer 0.10

    sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mpegdemux gstreamer0.10-gl gstreamer0.10-gnonlin gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsightgstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-sdl gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-schroedinger gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse totem-gstreamer

    * More programs

    sudo apt-get install gstreamer-dbus-media-service gstreamer-tools

    * Flash

    sudo apt-get install gsfonts gsfonts-x11 flashplugin-nonfree

    6 - Installing Java

    Java is a very important thing to install, now that many programs like Azureus need it to run. So type:

    sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
    sudo apt-get install equivs ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-sazanami-mincho

    7 - Frontend FTP Software (Filezilla)

    This ia great FTP program, very complete, in my opinion, the best one for linux. To know more about it, click here.

    On the terminal type:

    sudo apt-get install filezilla filezilla-locales

    8 - BitTorrent Client

    screenshot-deluge.png

    * Deluge: Written in python, great one:

    sudo apt-get install deluge

    * Azureus: Uses Java to run, very complete but a bit heavy,

    sudo apt-get install azureus

    9 - Installing Gparted (Making disk partition easy)

    You never know when you will need to change your disk partition, so you better be ready anytime by installing Gparted,
    a great GUI software where you can easily create, resize and format partitions on your hard disk.

    sudo apt-get install gparted
    screenshot-dev-sda-gparted.png

    10 - Get rid of unneeded stuff:

    If you want to keep your Ubuntu clean, you may consider uninstalling a bunch of softwares that comes with. I can’t tell much what to remove then,
    but you can check and see what you will not use. Then to remove, on terminal, you can type:

    sudo apt-get remove “program name”
  • cstrippie, on 11/12/2007, -0/+39Nice list, but save a *bunch* of effort and just install "ubuntu-restricted-extras" This will give you java, extra fonts, and all the standard codecs for mp3, dvd, etc. in a single download & install.
  • wafflez, on 11/11/2007, -1/+20vista sheep.
  • buryyourhead, on 11/12/2007, -4/+20already down? what a piece of *****
  • GuyHersh, on 11/12/2007, -1/+14Well that went down quick..
  • visualphoenix, on 11/12/2007, -2/+15Step 0: Rejoice.
  • arugge, on 11/12/2007, -1/+14I hate to say this but this is what makes people think Ubuntu is impossible to use. Everything he suggested is quite simple to install without having to go into terminal to do it. Just go Applications> Add/Remove. After your in there make sure to change Show which is next to the search box to All Available Applications and your good to go. Then Just search for Compiz Advanced Settings, VLC, Amorak, Torrents and for Java Flash and more fonts look for Ubuntu restricted extras and it will install all of those. A dozen or so clicks later then you hit apply and its all ready to go. Its quite easy to find what your looking for and one of the true advantages of Ubuntu. Why confuse people by telling them to go into terminal and start sudoing away.
  • muep, on 11/11/2007, -0/+12Not true. The Ubuntu-desktop package doesn't contain anything, it is safe to remove. It is only used to ensure that you have all the basic software that belongs to the base Ubuntu desktop is installed.

    When upgrading from a major version of Ubuntu to the next one, it may be useful to have ubuntu-desktop installed, at least after the upgrade, because apt-get dist-upgrade tends to remove lots of stuff when resolving dependencies.
  • EnterDaMatrix, on 11/11/2007, -0/+11That thread is very old. Many of those features (cursers, font antialiasing) are now built into Ubuntu and performing some of those tasks manually as in the thread could be harmful.
  • codyman, on 11/11/2007, -3/+14sudo ./configure --idiot-alert
  • Purin, on 11/12/2007, -0/+10At least I didn't get rickrolled, I guess.
  • MBHoy, on 11/12/2007, -4/+14Down after 34 diggs. Cheers, Wordpress.
  • Coldkill, on 11/11/2007, -0/+10Go ahead and do that
  • zwaldowski, on 11/13/2007, -0/+10Maybe you should install firefox-sarcasm-detector...
  • aazn, on 11/11/2007, -1/+1013) Cry after you get a virus, then install Ubuntu 7.10
  • Kreuelt, on 11/12/2007, -1/+10...I dual-boot.
    you know, ubuntu IS free...
    and no viruses
  • inactive, on 11/11/2007, -0/+9If people using a different distro to you makes you that angry, I hope you never see poverty and oppression in third world countries.

    Calm down.
  • danjwray, on 11/12/2007, -1/+9ha ha ha! yeah! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahaha

    cuz then you wouldnt have ubuntu installed anymore! and you dont like ubuntu! ha ha ha!
  • inactive, on 11/11/2007, -0/+8You've clearly never tried this if you think it breaks the desktop.
  • mrjit, on 11/12/2007, -2/+10OS choice clearly dictates who gets laid and doesnt...............
  • ericesque, on 11/11/2007, -0/+7www.google.com works.
  • Gryffydd, on 11/11/2007, -0/+7You're != Your.

    I wouldn't have said anything but you did it like 4 times.
  • thepxc, on 11/13/2007, -2/+8This is an incredibly stupid list of things to do after you install Ubuntu. It's a great way to fill up your system with stupid bloat, but not very useful. Just install things as you need them. What's worse is that many of these steps are redundant (packages in the last few steps depend on packages in the first few steps, so why manually install both!?).

    For example, "totem-mozilla" is a Mozilla browser plugin for embedded multimedia. You need this to view videos (non-flash) and mp3s on websites. However, if you go to a website without this installed, Firefox does its regular "I need a plugin, somebody help me!" thing. If you click on that puzzle piece or the bar up top, it opens up Synaptic, and offers to _automatically install whatever packages you need_.

    Anyhow, if you really want to achieve a similar effect without the hassle of following the steps on this list, open up a terminal (for those of you with terminal-phobia, trust me--this is the best way, and all you have to do is copy/paste and go have a cup of coffee) and do
    "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras totem-mozilla deluge helix-player helix-mozilla p7zip-full gstreamer-plugins-*"

    Other points:
    -You don't need FileZilla if you're a casual user: Just type ftp:// into Nautilus, and like magic, you're browsing a remote filesystem through FTP as if it were local, with a nice, familiar GUI and everything.
    -Amarok is a wonderful media player (I use it on all of my KDE systems) but it's stupid to install on a Gnome system, now that Exaile is mature enough. Instead, sudo apt-get install exaile.
    -It's redundant to install VLC and MPlayer. They're both the same kind of player and neither of them use the GStreamer libraries, which means extra dependencies and a waste of space. ubuntu-restricted-extras will get you whatever codecs you need.
    -Ubuntu _comes_ with fileroller. Why the hell are you installing it?
    -Multimedia codecs are fantastic, but why would you list out each and every codec you want to install if you want to grab all of them? Isn't it much easier to "sudo apt-get install gstreamer-plugins-*"?

    Ubuntu sure is increasing the Linux-using-noob population. That's fantastic, because everyone has to start somewhere, but that becomes a problem when a noob thinks they can give good advice for other people on what to do with their own systems.

    Buried.
  • Coldkill, on 11/11/2007, -0/+6Another idiot
  • gavintlgold, on 11/10/2007, -0/+6You might also want to run the command that links all the themes to the root account as well, so that you can have a consistent theme if you choose to customize it:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=203093 (see no. 4, i couldn't write them on digg since digg messes up the slashes)
  • xike, on 11/12/2007, -1/+7Hrm, finding drivers for all my devices that didn't work was higher on my list than theming Ubuntu.
  • inactive, on 11/11/2007, -0/+6The difference is you can uninstall *any* part of Ubuntu with no difficulty. Also it's not bloatware that's added to sell stuff, it's just stuff that other people might want but I don't.
  • aazn, on 11/11/2007, -0/+5Please know what the ***** you're talking about before you say it.
  • pwnadog, on 11/11/2007, -3/+8#11: Install wp-cache.
  • stoanhart, on 11/11/2007, -0/+5W00t! Thank you cstrippie! I love learning incredibly useful new things!

    Cheers!
  • inactive, on 11/11/2007, -0/+5Why doesn't aptitude get mentioned for package managing? I almost solely use it.
  • thepxc, on 11/11/2007, -0/+5If it takes you a weekend to pop open a terminal and paste
    "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras gparted deluge filezilla helix helix-player compizconfig-settings-manager totem-mozilla" then I don't know how to deal with you.

    This list is very stupid and very redundant, though.
  • koweja, on 11/11/2007, -0/+5That would be a FF issue, not an Ubuntu issue anyway.
  • freddo, on 11/12/2007, -1/+6Personally I prefer XP, yet i don't know why you would want to reinstall it, since:
    1) you're smart enough to have partitioned your drive so everything can coexist just fine, possibly keeping your /Users, /home, /config and /data directories in safe partitions
    2) you're able to run your XP installation from ubuntu... http://www.advicesource.org/ubuntu/Run_Existing_Wi ...
  • chedabob, on 11/11/2007, -1/+5I heard chicks go wild for guys who run FreeBSD...
  • Vorin, on 11/10/2007, -0/+4well done, worthy adversary
  • shanesemler, on 11/12/2007, -0/+4Install Linux Mint instead. It's Ubuntu except everything REALLY "just works."
  • shotgunefx, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4It's a lot easier to trim down a linux install.

    There is a balance between giving a robust install that's going to have most of what most people will need (and expect) and keeping it small. Especially when you are aiming at a distro for the masses. For example, not every machine will have a printer, but it would be silly not to include it when most will.
  • capitocapito, on 11/12/2007, -2/+6I see what you did there.
  • H2Glitch2007, on 11/12/2007, -1/+5invest in a hosting site
  • mbthompson, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4As is any dream of being a comedian for a living...
  • freddo, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4#11, for me, would be to install the new Tibia client and have fun! Check http://tibia.com/ ... I don't know when CiP *FINALLY* updated their old Tcl/Tk client, but now it's a totally new client, it works like charm, looks the same as the windows one, and works out-of-the-box even in ubuntu 64.

    <rant>
    From my list of things I'm missing from Win, Tibia is now gone, the only things left are:

    ** A Soft-ICE like debugger
    - don't talk about ddd. Thanks.
    - it's a bliss that IDA works fine, but it's a disassembler

    ** System trace
    - strace is fine.
    - dtrace would be heavens.

    ** Game cheating tools (memory search, BP on modification, auto-patch in memory, and in file).
    - most games comes with cheats codes, already... where's the fun?
    - we get the source code, i'm not used to it yet ;)

    ** UltraEdit (or Aurora for DOS)
    - vi/xxd are fine.
    - kate/khexedit are also doing a good job.

    ** Visual Studio
    - kdevelop

    ** PowerShell and and something like WMI access to linux machines
    - this is not about the shell, or CLI, PowerShell handles objects
    - we need various tools to access different programs'configuration, in windows just one (not behind the scene, i know).
    - it would be a great start if we could unify configurations files syntax... yaml seems a good candidate (i don't like xml).
    - a single way to write commands (GetOpt::Long on steroids, for perl lovers): "dd" vs. "ls"

    i could continue but these are the most annoying points for me...
    </rant>

    I don't know how i started this post about a game, and ended up listing that stuff... I'd be happy if someone was posting solutions/alternatives, though. And have fun with tibia, it's really a nice game, with a strong community.
  • dofkex, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4thats a good one ;D
  • daverave999, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4First off, I installed Exaile to try out as I have been using Amarok until now, and I'm quite impressed! I'm going to stick with it for a while to see how it goes. It's looking promising so far.
    Second, not a criticism but a request maybe? I'm new to Linux so could only see a couple of mistakes in the article, but the knowledge that you imparted in your post was also most helpful. Perhaps making the author of the article aware of his mistakes might prove beneficial to more people? You are not reaching as great an audience as you could in the comments at Digg.
    Thanks again!
  • Jareth86, on 11/12/2007, -0/+4Really? Forcastfox works fine for me...
  • Vorin, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4make sure to have a free weekend after installing 7.10?
    you're a bit mixed up.

    but the weekend is worth it.
  • Giga, on 11/11/2007, -0/+3Hehe, complaining about us making assumptions then stating "I am using Linux and i used computers before you were even born, kid." How can you state that without personally knowing their age (which I am assuming you don't) or assuming their age (which you seem to be against). I'm curious now, exactly what distro do you use and how old are you? :P
  • zwaldowski, on 11/11/2007, -0/+3Have you tried Ubuntu?
  • stoanhart, on 11/10/2007, -0/+3Huh? I don't see this package in gutsy...
  • pHreaksYcle, on 11/11/2007, -0/+3lol on a stick
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