This is an ongoing document that I plan to add to whenever I do anything with my freshly installed Ubuntu 6.10 Desktop (32-bit x86).
- First things first, download the ISO for Ubuntu, burn it, and install. Go to www.ubuntu.com if you need help with this step. I chose the standard "CD Image for desktop and laptop PCs" i386/x86 CD (as opposed to the PowerPC or alternate install CD or DVD).
- NOTE on install: On my PC (with an nVidia video card) I had issues with the graphics being garbled when the live CD loaded X. I followed the instructions here to fix it except for the RenderAccel part because I'm not sure what the ramifications of that is yet. The short version of the instructions is to switch to a different console and change the Driver "nv" section to Driver "vesa" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and restart gdm. I had to kill gdm as it did not stop correctly for me.
- After successfully installing Ubuntu, the first thing I did was update the /etc/apt/sources.list file so I had access to more packages that I would need later. It looked like this afterwards:
## Main repository
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted universe multiverse
## Backport repository
# deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
## Major bug fix updates
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
## Security updates
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted universe multiverse
- Next be sure to open a terminal and run sudo apt-get update to make use of these changes. Note that this can also be performed by the Synaptic tool (as can the step above for that matter).
- For the remainder of this document I will only refer to package names that need to be installed/removed and will not provide the apt-get command. Feel free to use either apt-get or the Synaptic GUI front-end unless otherwise specified.
- If you had video card troubles as I did, you will want to update your video card driver appropriately (you may want to do this regardless). For me I had to install the "nvidia-glx" package and then run sudo nvidia-xconfig. Find more info on video driver installations here.
- Some buttons with side buttons do not work correctly in Firefox. If you want them to work, find the mouse section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following two lines per the instructions here:
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7"
- The next thing I did was set my clock to sync to pool.ntp.org. Just right-click on the clock, choose "Adjust Date & Time," check the "Keep clock synchronized with Internet servers" box, then click the "Install NTP support" button. After that, just uncheck the time servers Ubuntu selected by default and add or check whatever server you want to use.
- Since Ubuntu pretty much sucks out of the box for playing any non-open source multimedia format, we need to fix that. Here's how I did it:
- Install these packages per this page (note that I've skipped a few): "gstreamer0.10-pitfdll," "gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg," "gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad," "gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse," "gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly," "gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse." This worked for all the formats I was interested in except WMV.
- To fix the lack of WMV, take a look at this page. However, I actually added a new "apt" repository so that I could get updates to this package if newer versions come along (assuming they update that repository in the same manner as the others that is). I ran the following two commands from this page (keep in mind the commands are likely wrapped but each is only one line long):
wget -q http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
- Now you must run "sudo apt-get update" and/or press the "reload" button in Synaptic to update the list of packages available.
- Install the "w32codecs" package that should now be available (keep in mind the legality of this package is somewhat suspect). After this, make sure WMV videos play now. If they do not (they did not for me) then run the following two commands:
rm -rf ~/.gstreamer-0.10
gst-inspect-0.10
- An alternative to the above section is to install "mplayer." I used this on Kubuntu 6.06 and was mostly happy with it, but I like the Totem interface better and am hoping it works better for me.
- Finally, what about DVD playback? First off, you'll need to get the "libdvdcss2" package to play many DVDs. Again, this package is of questionable legality so download/install at your own risk. This is found in the same "apt" repository we added for the "w32codecs" package. After installing this package, you have a few options for playback:
- Stick with "Totem-gstreamer" (which is what we've been using up to now). Problem with this is that the current version doesn't handle the DVD menus or alternate audio tracks (it just starts playing the movie with no options). It also did not play back in Dolby Digital 5.1 on my system.
- Switch to "Totem-xine". Note that this requires you to remove "Totem-gstreamer" and you will likely have playback issues with other media formats (when I switched it broke everything except for WMV).
- Install "Ogle" or "Mplayer." I've tried all of the above and don't like any of my options, but I'm also running into sound issues right now and after wasting two nights on the problem I'm done with it for now. Besides, I don't really watch DVDs on my PC anyway. So I'm just going to deal with stereo audio and no menu support with "Totem-gstreamer" for now.
- Next on the list is Adobe's Flash Player. You have a few options here:
- Install "flashplugin-nonfree" and Firefox will have the Flash 7 plugin.
- Go to Adobe's Flash Player site and download the installer for the current version (9.0.31.0 as of this writing) and use Adobe's install script.
- Add the "Backports" repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list file by uncommenting the two lines under the "Backports repository" section (see up above) and then after updating "apt" and/or Synaptic, install "flashplugin-nonfree" which should be on version 9 now instead of 7.
- Go to this page if you don't like my instructions.
- Speaking of Adobe, you may want Adobe Acrobat Reader and the web browser plugin unless you are happy with Evince (I don't like its interface). Install "acroread," "acroread-escript," "acroread-plugins," and "mozilla-acroread" to get Acrobat Reader.
- I'm also not a fan of the "Gnome-snapshot" tool (listed as "Take Screenshot" under "Accessories" menu) so I installed "ksnapshot" and its dependencies and just hid "Take Screenshot" because it is part of the "gnome-utils" package and it includes other tools that I actually find useful. Plus "gnome-utils" is tied to the "ubuntu-desktop" package anyway and I obviously don't want to remove that.
- You'll probably want Java. Install "sun-java5-plugin" and its dependencies.
- You may want to install the core Microsoft fonts package ("msttcorefonts") and set Firefox up to use them unless you want to be a big stud and shun all the sites that use Microsoft fonts on them. After installing the package, you can set Firefox up as it is by default on a Windows installation. It should look as follows:
- BitTorrent client: I prefer Azureus to the "gnome-btdownload" client. Note that I did not use the "Azureus" package from the "apt" repositories to install because it tries to grab all sorts of older Java packages (older than the version we installed earlier) and it caused me issues on Kubuntu 6.06 likely because of multiple versions of Java being installed. So, do this instead:
- Go to azureus.sourceforge.net and download the latest tar.bz2 file for Linux to your home directory.
- From the terminal and in your home directory, run the following command (all one line): sudo tar jxvf Azureus_version_linux.tar.bz2 -C /opt/
- Next, run: sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/azureus.desktop
- Add the following text to the new file:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Azureus
Comment=Java BitTorrent Client
Exec=/opt/azureus/azureus
Icon=/opt/azureus/Azureus.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Network;
- Now you should see the "Azureus" shortcut under the "Internet" menu.
- I like to use an application to store my web usernames/passwords and have settled on KeePassX (keepassx.sourceforge.net). It appears to be in the Ubuntu repositories now, so simply install the "keepassx" package.
- Install Wine--If you don't know what Wine is, check it out here. I need it for one app I use time-to-time that is Windows-only. You can simply install the "wine" package from the Ubuntu repositories or add the Wine HQ repository and get updates directly from the Wine team. I chose the latter since they are more likely to stay the most up-to-date. Just run the following commands that were taken from here (again, keep in mind the commands are likely wrapped but each is only one line long):
wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
- Now just run sudo apt-get update and/or reload Synaptic and install the "wine" package.
- After installation, run the "winecfg" command to configure Wine before using. See the Wine documentation page for more information on how to use Wine.
- Now that the apps I use are installed, I typically hide the ones I don't use from the menu since all the included apps seem to be tied to the "ubuntu-desktop" package. So far this includes (formatted as package name / friendly menu name):
- evince / Document Viewer
- gnome-screenshot / Take Screenshot
- gnome-btdownload / BitTorrent
- ekiga / Ekiga Softphone
- evolution / Evolution Mai
That's it for now. If you see any errors or broken links, please let me know or leave a comment as such so I can fix it.
