My post-installation guide for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

1. Introduction
2. Starting the Installation
3. Configuring the sis 771 video card
4. Modifying the repositories
5. Installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras package
6. Installing multiple applications at once
7. Configuring the desktop
8. Installing Chrome extensions
9. Terminal Settings
10. Latex
11. Colored Manual Pages (man)
12. Python
13. Gedit
14. IRC
15. Conclusion

There is also a portuguese version available.

Introduction

This article describes my update guide of my personal computers with Ubuntu LTS 10.04 Lucid Lynx. This is the third edition of this article. The old ones covered versions 9.04 and 9.10. I usually use many applications beyond the standard installation, either for private use, testing or even for use in classes that I used to teach. So every six months, when a new version of Ubuntu comes out, I do a complete reinstallation of my computers. Currently I have a notebook for use at work and another for home, with my family. I also usually adapt these computers the way i like, and when I reinstall them, I need to go in search of changes I had done.

So, I decided to carefully take notes of every change made to the installation. This script was created considering my needs, but can be adapted to meet other people's. I also realized that with each new version of Ubuntu, some settings I'd done before, now come as standard. Maybe in the future this script can be reduced to simply a list of applications to be installed.

I tried to make the tips short. If you find any that seem incomplete, please let me know and I'll try to explain better. To make corrections or suggest other settings, send me a comment. I will gladly read and answer it.

Starting the Installation

I will not describe the installation. I recommend you to leave a partition of about 25GB for the system, a swap partition with the size of your RAM and a separate data partition (if you have dual boot with Windows, leave the data partition as NTFS or FAT32). The usb flash's installation is much faster than by CD. I recommend setting aside a 1 GB flash drive just for that.

Configuring the sis 771 video card

In my case, I have a Positivo notebook with a Sis 771/671 video card. The driver has been changed for Ubuntu 10.04 but there is already a tutorial that works just fine.

Modifying the repositories

To generate the list of repositories I'm using Ubuntu Source List Generator:

http://repogen.simplylinux.ch/

On the website, you define the country and the repositories you want and it creates a sources.list file. You need to replace the contents of your sources.list file with this new content. To do this, open a terminal or press Alt + F2 (run application) and type (or paste) this line:
gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Remove the entire contents of the file and replace with the one generated by the site. Once you've updated the list of repositories, upgrade the system. In a terminal, type:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude full-upgrade

This will cause your system to be updated with the latest version of the packages. It should download and update hundreds of megabytes, depending on the age of your installation.

My sources.list file, after created and modified, is this .

From that point on, you can install other programs, fonts, drivers, codecs and everything else.

Installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras package

The ubuntu-restricted-extras package installs a series of codecs, applications, fonts and drivers that have some type of restriction and therefore are not part of standard installation. Among them, we can mention: Java Virtual Machine (used on some home banking websites, for example) flash (without it, youtube does not work) true type fonts (that you get on Windows), audio and video codecs (wmv, divx, mp3, rmvb, etc.) and others.

To install this package, type the following at a terminal:

sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Installing multiple applications at once

Ubuntu comes with a standard corporate desktop, but I miss many applications. I will not explain the use of each one. Install all, try and create your own list. If you do not like any of them, you can simply remove it:

sudo aptitude install amule audacious awn-manager bpython cheese DeVeDe funcoeszz gcompris-sound-ptbr gedit-plugins gnome-do gnome-do-plugins gnome-mplayer gparted htop ipython ktuberling meld mousepad mplayer nautilus-dropbox nautilus-gksu nautilus-open-terminal openoffice . org-l10n-en openssh-server-minimal python3 picasa pidgin skype startupmanager sun-java6-jre traceroute tuxmath tuxpaint tuxpaint-plugins-extras ubuntu-restricted-full vim virtualbox vlc wireshark xchat

This process should download hundreds of megabytes, and might take some time to run.

Configuring the desktop

On my desktop, I just keep an upper panel, and delete the bottom one that comes by default. I have been experimenting with using a dock (AWN) and have not used the window listing. My setup is as follows:

- Remove:

• Icon Help
• Default Gnome Menu

- Add:

• Gnome Main Menu (reduced)
• Workspace switcher
• System Monitor
• Window List (optional)
  

- Remove the bottom bar
- Change theme and wallpaper (I'm using the Radiance theme)
- Enable effects (if your hardware supports them)

- Click on the icon of and envelope at the upper right corner, and set up chatting (Google Talk and MSN)

In the end, it looks like this:

Installing Google Chrome Beta

Since Ubuntu 9.10, I have adopted Google Chrome as my default browser. If you want tips on Mozilla Firefox, look at my script for Ubuntu 9.10 .

Chrome's version for Ubuntu 10.04 comes in deb format, which can be downloaded from official website . Once downloaded, run the package manager and install it by following the instructions.

Installing Chrome extensions

In Chrome, go to Tools, Extensions. I have installed the following extensions:

- Anyweather

- Delicious Tools

- goo.gl shortener + share on twitter

- Google Calendar Checker (by Google)

- Episode DownloadHelper

- Reader Plus

- SearchPreview for Google

- Send from Gmail (by Google)

- Ubuntu Theme: Ambience or Radiance

Any other extensions you use and want to recommend? Send us comments!

Terminal Settings

Bash history: add to ~/.bashrc:

export HISTSIZE=5000

- Aliases: uncomment or add the following lines to ~/.bashrc:

if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then
eval "`dircolors -b`"
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
alias dir='dir --color=auto'
alias vdir='vdir --color=auto'

alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto'
alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'
fi

alias ll='ls -lh' alias la='ls -A' alias l='ls -CF' alias ..='cd ..'
alias grep='ack-grep'
- Create or edit ~/.inputrc:

set completion-ignore-case On
"\ E [B": history-search-forward
"\ E [A": history-search-backward

Latex

sudo aptitude install texlive texlive-humanities texlive-lang-portuguese babel latex-beamer \
abntex aspell-en gedit-plugins gedit-latex-plugin rubber texmaker

Colored Manual Pages (man)

sudo aptitude install most & & sudo update-alternatives - config pager

Python

sudo aptitude install bpython ipython python-django python-sqlite

Gedit

Installing plugins:

sudo aptitude install gedit-plugins gedit-latex-plugin

Enable plugins and modify settings. Gedit can be a great editor for programming, writing web pages and manipulating configuration files. Make the following settings:

• Edit - Preferences - View: Check all
• Edit - Preferences - Editor:
• Set the tab width to 4
• Check "Insert spaces instead of tabs"
• Check "Enable automatic indentation"
• Edit - Preferences - Plugins. Enable the following plugins:
• Quick release
• Change captions
• Comment code
• Designing spaces
• Smart Spaces
• Closing brackets (make sure you like this feature before activating)
• Panel File Browser (enable the panel with F9)
• Excerpts
• Spelling Checker

Install other plugins manually from the Gedit site:

open_terminal better_python_console

Configuration of nautilus-rename-exif-date:

- Change the program /usr/lib/nautilus/extensions-2.0/python/nautilus-rename-exif-date.py

def menu_activate_cb(self, menu, names):

"""Called when the user selects the menu. Rename the selected files."""

for path in names:

img_file = open(path, "rb")

tags = EXIF.process_file(img_file)

date = str(tags["EXIF DateTimeOriginal"]).replace(":", "")

date = date.replace(" ", "")

date = date[:8] + "-" + date[8:]

dir_name = os.path.split(path)[0]

file_name = os.path.split(path)[1]

parts = file_name.split(".")

if len(parts) == 1:

extension = ""

else:

extension = "." + parts[-1]

os.rename(path, dir_name + "/" + date + extension.lower())

Create symbolic links to folders

Default: ln -s target

Warning: the following line erases /usr/local/bin and all its contents. In my case, it is empty. It is important to check beforehand.

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin && ln -s /data/Dropbox/downloads/scripts /usr/local/bin
cd
sudo rm -rf Documents Music Pictures Public Templates Videos
ln -s /data/Dropbox/classes/ ln -s /data/images/ ln -s /data/Videos/ ln -s /data/videos/movies/ ln -s /data/Music/ ln -s /data/series/

IRC

sudo aptitude install xchat

- Change encoding to utf-8
- Go to Settings - Options - Registration and enable logging

Conclusion

Ubuntu has matured with each release and has become a reality to desktop systems. The default installation serves a good set of requirements and even the live CD is already well useful. The biggest initial problem is due to the lack of audio and video codecs, Java virtual machine and Flash plugins, installed through the ubuntu-restricted-extras package. After configuring the repositories and having an Internet connection, a huge amount of applications becomes available, allowing each user or organization to have its own customized Linux distribution.

Related articles:

• My script for installation of Ubuntu 9.04
• My script for installation of Ubuntu 9.10

Thanks to Augusto Campos, Eduardo da Silva, Ricardo Bánffy and Rodrigo Bernardes Pimentel for reading earlier versions of this guide.