Ubuntu 8.04.1 desktop setup steps

From Nick Jenkins

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Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS desktop setup steps for an AMD64 system:

Contents

[edit] Installation

  • Insert installation CD. Follow simple options, installs, ejects CD, reboots. Then login.
  • System -> Networking -> set up static IP address instead of dynamic IP address.
  • reboot to get network changes to apply (theoretically this should not be necessary, but in practice it was, at least for me).
  • reboot, install system updates. Then reboot once updates are installed.
  • system -> hardware drivers -> enable the proprietary nvidia drivers.
  • reboot to enable the proprietary drivers.

[edit] Tweaks and Preferences

  • System -> Preferences -> sound -> sounds -> set all to "no sound", and untick "play system sounds", and on "system beep" tab untick all boxes.
  • System -> Preferences -> Searching and indexing -> General -> tick "enable indexing" and "enable watching" and both of the power management boxes to disable stuff when on battery.
  • To get Subpixel Smoothing on LCDs, do this: System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Fonts -> Tick "subpixel smoothing (LCDs)". Need to restart Firefox for this change to take effect in Firefox.
  • To get reasonable desktop visual effects: System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects -> Select "Normal".
  • To make the system remember running apps and window locations on logout, do this: System -> Preferences -> sessions -> session options -> tick "automatically remember running applications when logging out".
  • To tweak networking performance, follow these instructions.
  • Turn off blinking cursor by going System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> untick "Cursor blinks in text fields".
  • Add terminal icon to gnome panel: Right-click panel -> Add to Panel -> Application Launcher... -> Accessories -> Terminal.

[edit] Firefox 3 configuration steps

Firefox 3 configuration steps

[edit] Firefox Add-ons

Go Tools -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons -> then search for and install these add-ons:

  • Tax mix plus
  • Flashblock
  • Foxmarks
  • Adblock Plus

[edit] Firefox Tweaks

  • Don't want Firefox to close when pressing ctrl-w on the last tab: Tools -> tab mix plus options -> events -> tab closing -> tick "do not close window when closing last tab by hotkey".
  • Firefox: enable printing in print preview mode in Linux: about:config -> toggle "printWhileInPrintPreview" to "true".
  • Stop animated GIFs in Firefox: about:config -> image.animation_mode -> change to "none"
  • Firefox: Fix the stupid behavior of overwriting current tabs when opening new tabs: about:config -> browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace -> toggle to "true".
  • To get autocomplete for the web address, go: about:config -> browser.urlbar.autoFill -> toggle to "true" -> restart FF.
  • Stop the full screen mode-switch animation: about:config -> browser.fullscreen.animateUp -> change to "0".
  • Perform a sync using Foxmarks wizard, and for the initial setup keep the bookmarks on the server, and overwrite those on this computer.
  • File -> Page setup ... -> Paper size = "A4", and orientation = "Portrait".
  • Edit -> Preferences -> Main tab -> tick to close the download window when all downloads are finished.
  • Laptops only: Add a delay to the bookmark menu collapsing (only really useful on laptops when navigating with a trackpad or button, which tends to be fairly inaccurate) - about:config -> right-click -> New -> Integer -> name is: ui.submenuDelay -> value is: 800
  • Prevent JavaScript from messing with browser window: Edit -> Preferences -> Content tab -> Advanced ... -> untick everything.

[edit] Installation of extra software

Go system -> admin -> synaptic package manager -> then Install the following:

  • openarena + openarena-data
  • inkscape
  • hugin
  • neverball
  • dia
  • googleearth-package
  • miro
  • k3b
  • xchat
  • extreme tux racer
  • msttcorefonts
  • audacious
  • nmap
  • filezilla
  • neverball
  • openoffice.org
  • wireshark
  • wine
  • quanta
  • powertop
  • nautilus-open-terminal # adds ability to right click on a folder and get a command prompt there.
  • php5-cli
  • traceroute
  • curl
  • sshmenu-gnome
  • amule
  • tofrodos
  • bum
  • ktorrent
  • openssh-server
  • libxml2-dev libmysqlclient-dev # Optional: Only used for compiling PHP snapshots
  • eclipse sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-jre libmysql-java junit junit-doc # Optional: Java development only.
  • rar
  • sysinfo
  • autofs smbfs smbclient
  • gisomount
  • gtk-recordmydesktop
  • gworldclock
  • ffmpeg2theora

[edit] Uninstall unused bits of software 

sudo aptitude remove --purge tomboy ekiga

[edit] Configure "Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard"

To get the back / forward keyboard keys working in Firefox, when using the "Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard", go System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Layout -> click the model button -> Choose Microsoft -> set model to "Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro USB" -> click "close".

[edit] Install Skype

install Skype - Source of instructions. 

sudo aptitude install ia32-libs
wget http://skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu
sudo aptitude install libqt4-core libqt4-gui qt4-qtconfig 
sudo dpkg --install --force-architecture --force-depends skype-debian*.deb

[edit] Install the Tahoma fonts

Source of instructions.

Once the msttcorefonts package is installed you will notice that Tahoma and Tahoma Bold is missing. You will need to extract Tahoma and Tahoma Bold from the zip file. Tahoma is used for Microsoft desktop, title bars and menu fonts so if you are trying to get that XP look you will need the Tahoma regular and Tahoma Bold fonts. Install Tahoma by doing the following in a terminal. 

cd ~
wget http://www.stchman.com/tools/MS_fonts/tahoma.zip
sudo unzip -d /usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts ~/tahoma.zip
sudo fc-cache -f -v
rm -f ~/tahoma.zip

[edit] Install Flash

For AMD64, as of Nov 2008, there is now an native alpha 64-bit flash plugin for Firefox, so that YouTube and the like can be viewed. Native 64-bit flash installation instructions.

[edit] Install Google Earth 

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install medibuntu-keyring && sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install googleearth-4.3

[edit] Install Acrobat reader

To install acrobat reader, since Ubuntu's native PDF readers don't have shrink to fit when printing. : 

sudo aptitude install acroread

(this uses medibuntu, from the Google Earth step above).

To change the default file handling for PDF's all I had to do was find a PDF, right click, select Properties, click the Open With tab and select Adobe Acrobat Reader from the options.

Also need to do this: 

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/defaults.list

And change this: 

#application/pdf=evince.desktop
application/pdf=AdobeReader.desktop

[edit] Install Opera

To install and configure opera (since's it's useful for testing web pages to be able to check behaviour, and it's useful to have another browser around sometimes), do the following:

  • Go to Opera's download page.
  • Download and open and install the .deb file
  • Then run opera
  • Right-click on the tab bar, select Customise and change the wrapping setting to "multiple lines".

[edit] Enable Apport for crash bug reporting

Enable apport so that crash bugs will be reported and logged: 

sudo nano /etc/default/apport

change enabled from "0" to "1".

Crashes will then be logged to /var/crash/

[edit] Configure Open Office to work in MS Office 2000 compatibility mode

Source of instructions.

  • Start OpenOffice Writer -> tools -> options -> Load/Save -> general -> For document type = "Text document", set Always save as "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP" (instead of "ODF text document"); For Document type = "Spreadsheet", set Always save as "Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP"; For Document type = "Presentation", set Always save as "Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP".
  • Then tools -> options -> OpenOffice.org Writer -> compatibility -> tick "Use printer metrics for document formatting", tick "Do not add leading (extra space) between lines of text", and tick "Consider wrapping style when positioning objects". Then go: Use as Default -> Yes -> OK.

[edit] Set up Australian dictionaries in Open Office

Source of instructions - these instructions assumed Canadian English, but the same bug applies to Australian English too. 

wget http://ftp.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/dictionaries/en_AU.zip
unzip en_AU.zip
sudo mv en_AU.* /usr/share/myspell/dicts
cd /usr/share/myspell/dicts/
sudo chown root:root en_AU.*
sudo ln -s en_AU.aff en-AU.aff
sudo ln -s en_AU.dic en-AU.dic
sudo vi /etc/openoffice/dictionary.lst

Add the following line to the end of the file: 

DICT en AU en_AU

[edit] Custom Key Bindings

That can be done through the UI:

  • System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Set "1" favourite key to "run a terminal"
  • Set "2" favourite key to "open home folder"

Then for the bindings which cannot be done through the UI:

  • In a terminal, run: gconf-editor
  • Navigate to apps/metacity/global_keybindings
  • Change "run_command_1" to be 0x83 (which corresponds to "4" favourite key). Could alternatively use 0xf7, which corresponds to the "5" favourite key.
  • Navigate to apps/metacity/keybinding_commands
  • Change "command_1" to be "/usr/bin/gedit --new-document" (i.e. run a text editor)

[edit] Evolution turn off new email notifications

  • Evolution -> Edit -> Plugins -> Uncheck "Mail Notification" plugin.

[edit] Set up SSH keys

For each machine you want to have password-less SSH login to, do: 

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub machine1

[edit] Automounting Windows shares

Actually, may have spoken too soon, seems kinda flakey. Getting "Input/output error" on the command line when accessing shares after a few minutes: 

$ ls /smb/server/sharename/
ls: cannot access /smb/server/sharename/: Input/output error
$

Also seeing these errors when doing "tail -f /var/log/messages", despite supplying login credentials: 

Oct 23 17:42:02 redux kernel: [66597.665680] Status code returned 0xc000006d NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE
Oct 23 17:42:01 redux kernel: [66597.524118] Status code returned 0xc000006d NT_STATUS_LOGON_FAILURE

To remove, uninstall these packages: 

sudo aptitude uninstall --purge autofs libevent1 libgssglue1 libnfsidmap2 librpcsecgss3 nfs-common portmap smbfs


rebooting seemed to make this better.... although it's still buggy and flakey. Get directories being infinitely recursive, edited files appearing as directories, etc etc.

testing / playing with smbnetfs as an alternative 

sudo aptitude install smbnetfs

sudo nano /etc/smbnetfs.conf 

- show_$_shares           "false"
+ show_$_shares           "true"

mkdir ~/.smb
nano ~/.smb/smbnetfs.auth

auth nickj password

Need to do something with .smb/smbnetfs.conf  ?

Retrieved from "http://nickj.org/Ubuntu_8.04.1_desktop_setup_steps"
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