Tag Archives: Installing Linux

Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

This is one of four related posts:

Should You Install Ubuntu Linux?
Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
How to use Ubuntu Unity
Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:
Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and Administration
The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction

If you have already considered your options for installing Linux, done the installation, and learned your way around the Unity Desktop, then you are ready to tweak your system. This will be easiest if you use the terminal for several of the steps. Just copy and paste the lines I give you here. Note that in Linux, unless you change it, to paste into a terminal you hit shift-control-v, not just control-v.

Most of these commands start with the word “sudo.” This is because these tweaks change the software or the operating system, and Linux needs to know that the person in charge of the computer is doing that. Start a command with “sudo” and after you enter the command, you will be asked for your password. Enter the password, hit Enter, and you are good to go. If the next time you use “sudo” is soon enough, you won’t be asked for your password.

There is one other thing you might want to know so the rest of this makes sense.

Software, applications, apps (three words for the same thing) typically come in “packages.” A package is a bunch of stuff that includes information on what needs to be installed to make a piece of software work, what needs to be done to let the system know it is there, etc.

Packages live in repositories, and they live on the internet. (They can also live on a DVD but that is rarely done for the average user … there were in fact packages on your installation DVD but that’s the last time you’ll probably use DVD or USB stick based packages.)

Your computer, after installation, is set up to know about certain repositories. This is the great advantage of using Ubuntu or many of the other major distributions. You get that distribution’s repository, and the packages stored there are carefully maintained and secured. Installing off a major repository like this means no viruses, malware, “freeware” or other junk will get onto your computer. It also means that when you issue a general update command, your computer visits the repository and updates all of your installed software based on whatever is new or changed in the repository.

During the following process, you will likely add some new repositories to your computer’s database of repositories. Just follow the instructions. But note, in order for an added repository to be known about, you add it, then you update the package system. Again, just follow the instructions.

It is also possible to install software using a downloaded package. In the case of Ubuntu (or any debian based Linux distribution), these are files with the “deb” extention. If you have the right software installed, you should be able to just double click on a deb file and pick an option to install it. I include an example or two of that process in with the tweaks below.

Finally, as you will see, there are several different software interfaces to this installation system. For the most part, you can install anything from the available repositories using the Ubuntu software center. But the Ubuntu software center is one crappy piece of software, in my opinion. It looks slick, but is slow and clunky and frustrating.

There is a system that works better (it is more responsive) but harder to use (because it does not hold your hand much) called synaptic.

Check out:

UBUNTU AND LINUX BOOKS

BOOKS ON COMPUTER PROGRAMMING AND COMPUTERS

But generally, the smoothest, quickest, easiest way to install most software from the repositories that your computer is aware of is with the command line, using the command “sudo apt-get install bla-bla-bla.” As shown below many times.

So, now, on to the tweaking.

1. Make the terminal program handy

First, open a terminal. You may have already placed an icon for the terminal on the Task Panel; if so, click that. If not, hit the “super” key (the Key Formerly Known as the Windows Key) to bring up the Unity dash. Then, type in “terminal” and choose the icon for the terminal program.

Now that the terminal program is running, you’ll see it in the Task Panel. If you’ve not already locked the terminal icon to the Task Panel, right click on that icon, and opt to have the terminal icon always be in “the launcher” even if it is not running.

2. Update the software and operating system you just installed

Even if the system was updating while installing (that was an option you had during the install), there are probably still some things that need updating. If you have not done so yet, type or copy/paste this into the terminal (shift-ctrl-v to paste in a terminal) and hit enter:

sudo apt-get update

You will be asked for your password. Type it in and hit “enter.”

If you are asked a question with a “Y/n” answer, type in “y” and otherwise follow any obvious instructions.

The updated command is a quick and dirty way of making sure that the software you have installed is updated. Chances are that when you do this after install, almost nothing will happen because little or no software will be ready for an upgrade.

When all the gobbledygook is done in the terminal, type in:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The dist-upgrade command will, in short, do a more thorough job of updating the things that are installed on your sy stem (it does not upgrade you to a new distribution, it just updates the software with more awareness of what the distribution specifies in terms of packages and interrelations between packages). The details are not too important. What you need to know is that “apt-get update” is quick and useful, and “apt-get dist-upgrade” will take much longer to run, but do a much better job of updating things and cleaning up after itself, and should be done now and then.

If you are asked a question with a “Y/n” answer, type in “y” and otherwise follow any obvious instructions.

These steps can be fast or slow, depending.

3. Make installing software easier

First, enable the Canonical Partners’ Repository. This will allow you easier access to some software. A repository is where software lives, and your installation programs know about only certain repositories, and ignore others.

Open System Settings (on the Task Panel, the gear and wrench icon)
Click on “Software and Updates”
Go to Other Software tab.
Click the check box for “Canonical Partners”
You may be asked for your password.
You will be asked to “reload” the repository info. Do that.

There are a couple of applications for installing and updating software, and you can have fun with them, but two tools that are really helpful that Ubuntu mysteriously does not install by default should be installed now. One is called “synaptic” and it is a menu drive graphical interface to your repositories, the other is gdebi, which allows you to install software that comes to you via download in a “deb” package.

sudo apt install synaptic
sudo apt install gdebi

If asked to choose Y/n at any point, choose Y

4. Install Linux graphics drivers

This may not be important, or it may be, depending on your hardware. So just do it and see what happens!

Unity Dash >>> Software & Updates >>> Additional Drivers

Do whatever it says there to install any graphics drivers that may be available.

5. Allow Workspaces To Work

I have no idea why a Linux distribution would not have work spaces right there in your face by default, but Unity seems not to. Workspaces is one of those desktop things that makes non-Linux users go “wow, that’s cool, now I want Linux!”

A workspace is a desktop, and multiple workspaces are multiple desktops, on which one or more applications are running. Macs have something like this now (stolen from Linux, but implemented poorly). The Linux implementation is better. You smoothly sail between desktops with Ctrl Alt Arrow Keys, and Linux does not randomly make new desktops for you like a Mac does.

System Settings >>> Appearance >>> Behavior

Check the box to enable workspaces, and the box to Add show desktop icon to the launcher.

6. Install Java

Java is required for running many application’s on Linux platform, So should install java using these three commands in sequence (one at a time).

sudo apt-get install default-jre

7. Fix app menu problem

One of the bad things about Unity was to cause application menus to become invisible and to not be on the application. If you want to see the menus where they belong, you can fix that.

System Settings >>> Appearance >>> Behavior tab >> ‘Show the Menus for a Window’

Check ‘In the window’s title bar’
Check ‘Always displayed’

8. Classic Menu

One of the things I miss most from an old fashioned Gnome 2.0 style desktop is a simple menu, with submenus, that includes all the software installed on my system. To me, this is really important.

And, solvable. We can add a Gnome 2.0 style menu thingie to the app panel in Unity.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator

You will have to log out and back in again for the menu to show up. Use the gear icon in the far upper right of the screen to log out/shut down, etc.

9. Show Your User Name On The Top Menu Bar

It may be useful to show your user name on the Top Menu Bar (the strip along the top of your screen). Here is one way to do that, using the terminal.

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session show-real-name-on-panel true

If you want to turn this back off, do this:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session show-real-name-on-panel false

10. What about Adobe Flash? And Therefore, Chrome?

This is complicated. Flash turns out to be something of a nightmare. Perhaps it was a good idea at the time, but increasingly developers and such are avoiding using it. But you probably need Flash now and then, but almost always in a browser window. So, the way to handle this is to use Google Chrome as your browser. Not Chromium.

The Firefox browser is installed by default in most Linux distributions. This is cultural, maybe even political. Firefox as a piece of software, and an organization, has been central to the development of OpenSource software, so it is sort of worshiped. I recommend ignoring it. So, when you get to the part below about installing Chrome, do that.

If you google “how to install Google Chrome on Linux” you get this:

  • Click Download Chrome. Go here to do that.
  • Choose either 32 bit .deb (for 32bit Ubuntu) or 64 bit .deb (for 64bit Ubuntu)
  • Click Accept and Install.
  • Download .deb file to a folder (Downloads is the default folder)
  • Open up your Downloads folder.
  • Double-click the .deb file you just downloaded.
  • This should launch Ubuntu Software Centre.

NOTE: Google often updates its method of installing. I just installed Chrome and it took fewer steps than indicate above. If you’ve already installed gdebi (as suggested above) this will be very quick and automatic.

You will be asked if you want to make Chrome your default browser. I recommend doing this. Then, run Chrome and lock the icon to the Task Panel, because you will probably be using it a lot.

11. Install Dropbox…

… if you use Dropbox.

sudo apt install nautilus-dropbox

Then simply launch Dropbox from Unity Dash and follow the instructions.

An alternative method for installing Dropbox:

wget https://linux.dropbox.com/packages/ubuntu/dropbox_2015.10.28_amd64.deb

This uses the wget command to go on the internet and download a part of a web site, in this case, a file on the web site. This may not work if they changed the name of the file, but this is currently the correct name.

After downloading the package, install it using the previously installed deb package application:

sudo dpkg -i dropbox_2015.10.28_amd64.deb

12. Install VLC

Linux, and in this case, Ubuntu, comes with various multimedia playing software, but generally not with VLC, which is a very good piece of software. If you want, you can install it this way:

sudo apt-get install vlc browser-plugin-vlc

13. Install Gimp Image Editor

GIMP stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program.” It is an OpenSource pixel-based image manipulation program for photographs, drawings, etc. In the old days, it was included in most Linux distributions but no longer is. If you want to install it:

sudo apt-get install gimp gimp-data gimp-plugin-registry gimp-data-extras

14. Install A Junk Cleaner (Bleachbit):

I’ve not used Bleachbit. But everyone seems to like it, and you might want to try it out. It cleans up internet histories, destroys temporary files, and other junk that tends to accumulate on your system.

Linux is not like Windows (or at least, like Windows was in the days I used it). It does not accumulate a lot of junk to the point where it slows down and stops. But it can accumulate some junk, and apparently, Bleachbit helps take care of this.

I’ve decided to remove the recommendation to install bleachbit. As I already suggested, Linux is designed in such a way that the things a clean-up program like bleachbit does are unnecessary. I suspect bleachbit is a bit like Linux based ant-virus software, something that former Windows users want to see, because such kludges are necessary in Windows.

So skip this step (I deleted the code for installing it anyway).

15. Install Skype…

… if you use it.

sudo apt-get install skype

16. Install the Unity Tweak Tool

You can configure, tweak, and generally mess around with your Unity Desktop using the installed System Settings and various esoteric bits of software, but if you install the Unity Tweak Tool you will probably find most of what you want to do, and more, there.

sudo apt install unity-tweak-tool

In the unlikely event that you end up messing up Unity with all your crazy tweaking….

…you can reset unity like this:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
dconf reset -f /org/compiz/
setsid unity
unity --reset-icons

Have Fun

Now, you know how to install software in Ubuntu, and generally, in debian based distributions, and you have some experience with the command line.

What you can do now is explore all the software that was automatically installed on your system, such as Libra Office (which stands in for Word, Excel, Power Point, etc) and all sorts of other cool stuff. If you installed the traditional style menu applet as described above, that is a good way to explore around among the available software offerings.

From now on, every now and then, run

sudo apt-get update

and

sudo apt-get upgrade

Also, on the standard Ubuntu distribution, there is a semi-automatic software updater that will remind you to update software now and then, or that can be set to do it automatically. I don’t like setting it for automatic on a laptop, but maybe on a desktop.

Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

This is one of four related posts:

Should You Install Ubuntu Linux?
Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
How to use Ubuntu Unity
Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:
Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and Administration
The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction

Linux isn’t for everyone, so I’m not going to try to talk you into using this superior operating system if you have some reason to not do so. But if you have a computer that runs Windows, it isn’t that hard to install Ubuntu. The main advantages of doing so are 1) You get to have a Linux computer and b) you get to not have a Windows computer.

Here, I have some advice on installing Ubuntu (this is general advice and applies across many versions).

How to install Ubuntu

If you are going to try Linux, I recommend installing Ubuntu’s latest version, which is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus.

A Linux distro (the specific version of Linux you install) includes a specific “desktop,” which is your user interface and a bunch of tools and stuff. The default Ubuntu desktop is called Unity. If you’ve never used Linux before, you’ll find the Unity desktop to be very good, especially if you tweak it a bit. If you have used Linux before, you may prefer a different style desktop. For me, I preferred the older style “Gnome 2.0” style desktop. The differences are cosmetic, but I happen to like the cosmeticology of the Gnome style better.


Check out:

<li><a href="https://gregladen.com/blog/2017/03/ubuntu-linux-books/">UBUNTU AND LINUX BOOKS</a></li>

<li><a href="https://gregladen.com/blog/2017/03/books-computer-programming-computers/">BOOKS ON COMPUTER PROGRAMMING AND COMPUTERS</a></li>

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What I liked most about the older style desktop is the presence of a menu that had submenus that organized all the applications (software, apps) installed on the system. I also prefer the synaptic system for installing new software over the Ubuntu “Software Center.” But, there is a menu that can be installed in Unity that serves this purpose, and it is easy to install synaptic installation software as well. So, even as an old time Gnome 2.0 guy, I have decided to go with Unity.

There are many forms of Linux out there, and one of the best maintained and well done versions is called debian. Ubuntu bases its distribution on debian, but modifies it in ways that are good. The most current version of Ubuntu is therefore the version of Linux that is most up to date but at the same time stable, and the best supported. This situation has developed to the extent that people are now often using, incorrectly but harmlessly, the term “Ubuntu” to mean “Linux” with the assumption that the Unity desktop is the primary desktop for Linux.

So, how do you install Linux, in the form of Ubuntu, on your computer?

Should you install Linux along side Windows (dual boot)?

If you just want to install Linux on a computer, where Linux will be the only operating system, skip this section.

The first thing you need to decide if if you want a dual boot system or not. Say you have Windows installed on your computer. If you make this a dual boot computer, you install Linux along side Windows. Then, when you fire up your computer you chose which operating system you want to use.

This may sound like a good idea, but I strongly recommend against it. It adds a significant layer of complexity to the process of installing the system. Also, things can go wrong. A normal single-boot installation of Linux will usually give you no problems, and it will be more stable as an operating system than any other operating system out there. But things can go wrong with dual booting which could drive you crazy and, depending on your hardware and a few other things, may cause you to unexpectedly lose the ability to use your computer.

Dual booting and partitioning are related operations, because in order to dual boot you will have to mess around with partitioning. How you do this will depend on whether or not Windows is already installed on your computer.

There are people who will tell you differently, that dual booting is harmless and fun and good. Those individuals are unique, special individuals with the ability to solve complex problems on their computers. They may have good reasons to have dual boot systems. In fact, many of them may have several different operating systems installed on one computer. This is because, as a hobby or for professional reasons, they need to have a lot of different operating systems. Good for them.

I recommend that if you are not sure if you want to use Linux, don’t install it along side Windows, but rather, find an extra computer (or buy a cheap used one somewhere), install Linux on it, and if you find yourself liking Linux more than you like Windows, go ahead and install Linux on your main, higher-end computer and be done with it.

Using two partitions is a good idea for some

As with dual booting, I recommend that the first time Linux user skip this idea entirely, but here are some thoughts on it in case you are interested.

One of the great things about Linux is that it uses the concept of a home directory. The home directory is a directory associated with a particular user, one for each user of the system. In most cases, a desktop or laptop computer has just one user, you. But you still get the home directory. (Apple’s OSX uses this system as well.)

This means that your data, configuration files for software, and all that stuff, ends up in one single directory. So, in theory, if you decide to install a whole new version of Linux, all you have to do is copy all of the contents of your home directory somewhere, install an entirely new system, then copy all that stuff into the new home directory and it is like you never left.

This also means that you only have to back up your home directory. Installing software on Linux is so easy that you really don’t have to back any of that up. By backing up your home directory, you are also backing up your settings and preferences for most of that software, so if you reinstall it, the software will figure out how to behave properly.

One method people use is to make a partition for their home directory and a separate partition for the system. You can think of a partition as roughly equivalent to a hard drive. On a simple system, the hard drive has one petition (that you need to know about … there are other specialized partitions that you don’t interact with). But you can divide (partition) the hard drive into multiple parts, put your operating system on one, and your data (home) on the other. The operating system, if you are running Linux, can be fairly small, while your data directory, in order to hold all those videos you take with your smart phone and your collection of cat picture, needs to be larger.

There is also a third partition you can make, called the swap partition. This is a separate dedicated part of your hard drive that the operating system uses to put stuff that won’t fit in RAM (memory). If you don’t have a dedicated swap partition, Linux will use another parittion for this purpose. It is probably slightly more efficient to have a dedicated swap partition, but with a reasonably fast computer with a good amount of ram, you probably won’t know the difference.

You can totally skip the separate partition thing and have Ubuntu put everything on one partition. The advantage of separate partitions are not worth the effort if you are not comfortable playing around with partitions. But, if you do, 10 gigabytes will comfortably hold the operating system, and the swap partition should be something like 5 or 6 gigabytes. The rest should be your home directory.

Simply installing Ubuntu on a computer.

There are two major divisions of operating systems for regular computers: 32 bit and 64 bit. If your computer can run a 64 bit operating system, and most made any time recently can, then you should install the 64 bit version of Ubuntu. You need to know that 32 bit operating systems are becoming a thing of the past, so, in fact, some software is no longer developed to run on such systems.

Due to an historical quirk, the 32 bit version of Linux is often has the word “Intel” in it, while the 64 bit version of Linux generally has the word “AMD” (a competitor of Intel) in it. This does not mean that you have to have an AMD processor in your computer to run the 64 bit system.

There are other forms of Linux that run on other processors. I’m assuming you have a typical run of the mill desktop that normally would run Windows, so it is probably an Intel or AMD 64 bit machine.

You should have three things handy in order to install Unbutu on a computer where it will be the only operating system.

1) The computer

2) Installation media that will fit in your computer, such as a CD, DVD, or a thumb drive

3) An internet connection that works

You can get the installation media by going to the Ubuntu site and downloading a file from Ubuntu and putting it on a medium of some sort.

When you are looking for the file, look for “Ubuntu Desktop.” There are other versions of Ubuntu, don’t use those. The current version is Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

This page has the download materials and provides good guidance.

To do a clean install with a DVD, download the operating system from that link. The file will be called something like “ubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso”. The “iso” part means that it is a disk image that you will want to burn onto a DVD using a working computer.

This download took be about five minutes on a medium-fast Internet connection.

You then burn the iso image onto a DVD or USB stick.

Using a DVD

In Windows, you right click on the iso file and pick “burn disk image” and follow the instructions.

On a Mac, use “Disk Utility.” Insert the blank DVD and drag/drop the .iso file onto the left pane of the Disk Utility. Select it, and click the “Burn” button. Follow the instructions.

In Linux, insert the DVD or CD into your computer and if you are lucky a window will pop up asking if you want to burn the disk. Otherwise, run Brasero and follow the instructions to put the iso image on the disk.

Now, here comes the slightly tricky part. You want your computer to boot off of the DVD/CD drive. (Which, by the way, can be an external USB device if that is what you have.)

So, first, put the CD or DVD into the computer, turn the computer off properly, then turn it on. It might just boot off that disk and you are good to go.

But, just in case, watch your computer screen as the computer is booting up. Note any message that gives the name of a function key and tells you what it does. It may say something like “F2 = boot order” or “F9 = configure bla bla bla” or words to that effect.

If the computer did not actually boot off of the disk you inserted, turn it off again, and start it again, but as it is booting up press the function key that should get you to either boot sequence or configuration.

Using the arrow keys (the screen will give you info on what keys to use) find the part that shows the boot order. If your computer ignored the boot disk you inserted, you probably have “Internal Hard Drive” as the first place to boot from. But you should see other options down below. Using the arrow keys and other keys as suggested by the instruction on the screen to move the DVD drive, or whatever device you want to boot from, to the top of the list. Then save the configuration (i.e., with F10, or some other method … it will tell you on the screen) and exit out of the configuration thingie.

You may then have to restart one more time, but your computer will boot from the DVD and will actually start to run a mini version of Linux set up to help you install the operating system on this computer.

Using a USB

You can also boot from a USB thumb drive. You may have to make your computer boot first from the USB drive instead of an internal hard drive (see above) and, of course, you will have to make a bootable USB stick.

You need a USB stick with at least 2 gigs of space and that doesn’t hold anything important.

Then, if you are using Windows, install the Rufus USB installer. Run that program and follow the instructions to make a bootable USB drive. You’ll be using the same iso image you previously downloaded.

If you are using a Mac, install the UNetbootin utility and use that to make the bootable USB stick.

Insert the USB drive before you run UNetbootin, or UNertbootin may not recognize the USB you insert later.

Since this will be “unconfirmed software” open it by finding it in the finder (the actual finder, not a finder replacement or any other method), control-click on the icon for the software, and select “open.” You will then be asked to confirm that you want to open it. Say yes. You will likely be asked for your password. Enter it.

Also, no matter what system you are using, make sure to “eject” the USB stick properly.

The installation process.

Note: It is possible that your computer will give you some sort of text-based menu when you boot off the USB or DVD drive. Just go with the default, and let the process continue until you get what looks like a normal graphical user interface that is, actually, a temporary Linux operating system running on your computer.

Also note, that during the install process, if you need to enter any numbers, there is a good chance the “numlock” button is turned off. You can, of course, turn it on.

If, as recommended, you are going to make your computer a Linux computer and not bother with a separate petition for home, swap, etc., then the rest is simple. I assume you have no data on this computer that needs to be backed up or saved. Indeed, you may have installed a new clean hard drive which is empty anyway.

You have inserted the boot medium, you taught your computer to boot off of it, you’ve restarted your computer, and now you are looking at a welcome screen that gives you two options: Try Ubuntu and Install Ubuntu.

If you pick “Try” then you now have a Linux operating system temporarily running on your computer and you can play with it. I’m not sure why you would bother with this.

If you pick “Install Ubuntu” then you have a series of easy tasks to perform, mostly picking the defaults.

Make sure to pick “Download updates while installing” and “Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware, etc. etc.”

If your computer is not currently logged into a network, you will have the option of doing so. Do so. You want to be hooked up to the network in order to download updates and stuff during installation.

Logging into the network may not be obvious. It isn’t an option on the install screen, but rather on the desktop that is currently running on your computer. Click on the blank triangular thingie on the top menu bar — this is the network applet. Pick your network, enter your password, etc.

Then you get to allocate drive space. For the simple, recommended, install, pick “Erase disk and install Ubuntu.” Pick “encrypt the new Ubuntu install” if you like. If you don’t know what LVM is, don’t bother with it.

Or, pick “something else” if you want to define different partitions for home directory, dual boot, swap files, etc. Then, good luck with that. For your first Linux install on a fresh machine, you don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. While such endeavors are not that difficult to do, you should probably make that the project for your next Linux install.

How to set up separate Root, Home and Swap paritions

Skip this part if you are doing the recommended default install. This will destroy everything on your hard drive. If it does not go well, you can always do a new fresh install and pick the default.

At this point you have booted off the DVD or USB and you have clicked the icon to “install Ubuntu.” You are now looking at several options, including “something else.”

Select “something else”

Accept (hit Continue) with the scary message “You have selected an entire device to partition. If you proceed with creating a new partition table on the device, then all current partitions will be removed…”

(But do note that you are about to blotto your computer, so there better not be anything you want to keep on it!)

Make the first partition for the Ubuntu install as a primary partition.

Put it at the beginning of this space

Use EXT4journalingfilesystem (unless you have some reason to use some other file system) … this will be the default already chosen.

Set the “mount point” as /

This is the partition in which your operating system will be placed, and is known as the root partition.

How big should it be? Ubuntu needs a minimum of 20 gb. I would make it larger. I used 50 gigs when I did this.

Hit OK

Make a swap partition

This is the partition your computer will use as “extra memory.”

Now select “free space” and set up a “logical” petition (at the beginning of this space) that is twice the size of your installed RAM.

If you don’t know how much RAM your computer has, open a terminal right there on the computer you are working with (The upper left button with the Ubuntu symbol on it, type in “terminal” and hit enter). In the terminal, type in

free -h

That will give you a total number (and other numbers) Round up to the nearest gigabyte and multiply by two.

Enter that number into “size” (if you want 16 gigs, it will be 16000 mb).

Select from the dropdown list “swap” to make this a swap file. Hit OK

Install the home directory (where all your stuff goes)

Select the free space again.

Just take for size whatever is left on your computer (hopefully a lot). Pick logical, beginning of this space, and EXT4journalingfilesystem again.

For mount point, enter

/home

This will be your home directory. Hit OK

Now, you’ll see a nice table with a graphic bar on the top showing you what you’ve set up. If it all looks OK to you, a small but not too small root directory, a smaller swap file (probably), and the rest a huge home file, hit “Install Now”

You’ll get another warning, but we don’t care about not stinking warnings.

Later, if you need to change any of these size requirements, run a live USB/DVD (like you did to make this install) and run “gparted” to change the partition sizes. (You can’t change the partition sizes from within an operating system. That would be like changing the fundemental fabric of the universe while you are actually in the universe. Not even The Doctor can do that)

And now, go back to the normal install.

Continuing with the default normal install…

If you have Windows installed, you may then get the option to Install Linux along side Windows. Pick that if you want, and chose how much hard drive space to allocate to each system.

After that are a few screens that are simple and self explanatory. Give the installation system a location, choose the kind of keyboard you want to use.

Then you get to chose your login and password details. Here you have to decide how simple vs. secure you want your system to be. You should make sure you never forget your user name and password or you will be locked out of your system.

So, enter your name, then pick a name for this computer for identification on networks, etc, then enter your user name which will contain no spaces or strange symbols, and be all lower case.

Then enter your password twice. The system will complain if your password is lower security, feel free to ignore this if you don’t care, pay attention to it if you want a more secure system. You are going to be using this password a lot. Just sayin’.

Check “require my password to log in” for most installations. You can also chose at this point to encrypt your home folder to limit access to your data if someone gets physical access to your computer.

Then, the system will install while you get to see some info about Ubuntu.

Then you are “done” in that you have a Linux computer. You may or may not have been prompted to remove the DVD or USB. If you restart the computer and fail to do so, you’ll be back in the installation system. Just remove the DVD/USB and restart the computer.

Once the computer is restarted, you’ll have to re-establish your network connection one more time. (This is your new system, it doesn’t know about your networks or network password yet.)

At this point, go right to this post and start tweaking your computer. If you don’t do that now, at least do the things noted below.

But there is something else you should do right away. Open a terminal (hit the super key, aka windows key, and start typing “terminal” and the terminal option will come up. Click it).

Then, type in:

sudo apt-get updates

You will be asked for your password, which hopefully you will remember. The computer will then go on the internet and find updates for stuff that was installed during the installation. Even though you told it to do something like this during installation, it probably didn’t do it for all the software that is now on your computer.

Following all this, you do now have a Linux computer. There are several things you can do after installing Ubuntu 16.04. First, go to this post to find out how to navigate around on your new Unity desktop, and then, see this post for how to tweak and refine your Linux installation in useful and important ways.

Have a good time using your Linux computer!

10+ Things To Do After Installing Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn

NEW: Very first look at Ubuntu Linux 15.04 Vivid Vervet Beta Mate Flavor

See: Ubuntu Unleashed

Here is a list of things to do after you have installed Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn.

There is some discussion of whether or not you should upgraded to 14.10 here, but the short version is, for most people an upgrade from 14.04 is not necessary but not a bad idea, and an upgrade from any earlier version is a very good idea. Mostly, though, you should just upgrade.

One could ask the question, should you be installing Ubuntu with Unity. You have to like Unity. I personally like to have a wider range of desktop options than Ubuntu with Unity allows, but for a notebook or laptop where you are going to be using one application at a time, usually use GUI apps, and like to have your computer integrated fairly seamlessly to social networking services, etc., it is a good option.

But, as is always the case with any operating system, you can either use it out of the box or change a few things. Because of OpenSource related licensing things a few things need to be done by you that would normally be done by the provider of the OS (but this is a free OS so you don’t get that) but most of these changes are just to make the OS more like you like it. So pick and choose.

First, before you do anything…

Run these commands to bring your system up to date, even if you just installed Ubuntu 14.10.


sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Reminder: When you start a command with “sudo” you will be asked to enter your password. If you use “sudo” again soon after, the system figures a bad guy did not konk you on the head to take over your computer, and it is probably you issuing the command so it does not ask for your password again. After a while, the system figures you probably did get konked on the head and will attempt to verify your identity by asking for your password.

Also, for the various commands being suggested here (and I should say you are totally on your own and I take no responsibility if you muck up your system, good luck and have a nice day) you may have to enter a “y” (for yes) or do some other things, so keep an eye on your computer.

Install Better or More Appropriate Graphics Card Drivers

Using Software & Updates ~ “Additional Drivers” tab ~ Do what it says there

Install Ubuntu Restricted Extras

This includes some fonts, java, the flash plugin, DVD playback ability, and so on. You need some of this stuff. Use this command:


sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Install additional extras for multimedia

To install DVD playback ability:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Some, many, users will want additional codecs:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gxine libdvdread4 totem-mozilla icedax tagtool easytag id3tool lame nautilus-script-audio-convert libmad0 mpg321 libavcodec-extra

Adjust the degree to which the Ubuntu Unity Dashboard annoys you and violates your privacy

Method 1

System Settings ~ Privacy and Security ~ Turn stuff off, especially the online items.

Unity now has the settings people usually turn off unset by default, so you may not need this.

Method 2

If you do need to turn off all the settings check out Fix Ubuntu has a nice script that will maximally crack down on Unity. You can get the script and run it right away, if you are trusting (it looks trustworthy to me) with this nifty one liner:


wget -q -O - https://fixubuntu.com/fixubuntu.sh | bash

While you are addressing privacy, you may or may not want to disable system crash reports. Sending system crash reports to Ubuntu is probably the polite thing to do, but you may not want to. You will need to edit a file to do this.

Open the file with sudo because it is a file you can only modify and save as a quasi-super-user:


sudo gedit /etc/default/apport

Then find the line that says

enabled=1


and change it to


enabled=0

Save the file, close the text editor, and now at the terminal enter:


sudo service apport stop

Put your name back on the top menu bar panel

You might like the name of the user showing, especially if more than one entity uses your machine.

Name on:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session show-real-name-on-panel true

Name off:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.session show-real-name-on-panel false

Put the damn menus where they are supposed to be

Ubuntu Macified their Unity experience a while back by moving the menus that go with applications to the menu bar on the top of the screen. This breaks the Linux Philosophy by requiring a menu bar in a particular place. Then, they made it even more useless by making the menus disappear until you run at them with the mouse. With 14.04 and now 14.10 you can undo this travesty.

System Settings ~ Appearance ~ Behavior ~ Show the menus for a window ~ In the window’s title bar

Resize menu bars and panels

Linux users apparently would not stand for having panels and menu bars unscalable. Another feature taken away by Ubuntu Unity, but now with 14.10, you can make this adjustment.

System Settings ~ Displays ~ Scale for menu and title bars ~ Use the slider thingies

Install TweakTools or Unity Tweak Tools

This will allow you to tweek things. TweakTools is a Gnome tool, Unity Tweak Tools is specificall for the Unity Desktop (that yo just installed). They are not the same, you may want both. They merely give you access to things that are already there that you can tweak.


sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool gnome-tweak-tool

Turn off the most annoying scrollbars ever invented

Some say you let designers design your operating system, and users will later catch up. I say to them, Baaaaa.

The odd weird looking essentially useless scrollbars that plague Ubuntu Unity can be gotten ride of by typing this command:


gsettings set com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode normal

If you realize you like these new fangled scrollbars later, you can put them back like this:


gsettings reset com.canonical.desktop.interface scrollbar-mode

Turn Nautilus Recursive vs Typeahead Search Off and ON

After you play around with the newest version of the file manager Nautilus, you may find that you prefer one or the other behaviors in the search bar. I’ve not decided. Switch recursive search on:


Terminal Command:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search false

Switch to typeahead search:


gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-interactive-search true

Set up your online accounts (facebook, twitter, etc)

Seetings ~ Online Accounts ~ Then do obvious stuff there

Laptop users: Power Management

There are things one did with 14.04 to enable power management and related features, or to improve them. I am not certain what the best course of action is for 14.10, so I’m not going to suggest anything here. I’ll update this section at a later time. (Feel free to make suggestions below.)

Meanwhile, you may have a look at this, which covers 14.04 and other distributions.

Install a bunch of stuff

Ubuntu is a bit light on file archiving software. You may want to install more:


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

Adobe Flash Plugin


sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Install the latest version of Google Chrome. I don’t think it will be found in the software center, so check here, or go here and press the right buttons. Then you can Watch Netflix on Linux!

Install Dropbox

and/or

Install Copy, which is similar to Dropbox. Slower, but you get more storage for free. I’ve been using it for a while and I like it. (I actually use both.)

Cleanup

Some people like to clean up after themselves. I tend not to, but I know I should. These commands will get rid of some of the chaff you may have created while messing around with your system.


echo "Cleaning Up" &&
sudo apt-get -f install &&
sudo apt-get autoremove &&
sudo apt-get -y autoclean &&
sudo apt-get -y clean

So, you totally screwed up your installation, what do you do now?

Not everything you broke above can be undone easily, but you can reset some of it. Use the following commands. Then see what happens. Good luck. Did I mention that you are totally on your own here and I take no responsibility for anything that goes wrong?


sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
dconf reset -f /org/compiz/
setsid unity
unity --reset-icons


Other posts of interest:

Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, set in the Congo.

Can't boot from a DVD/CD drive

In order to install a new operating system on a computer, you can make a bootable DVD that includes the software to install the new system, put it in the DVD/CD reader, and reboot your computer. If all goes well your computer will boot off the DVD/CD reader and then you follow the install process and there you go.

But sometimes this doesn’t work. The most common reason is that your computer is not configured to boot from the DVD/CD reader first (if it has a bootable disk in it). You have to go into bios and change the “boot order” so “boot from DVD” is on top of the list, above “hard drive.” A less common problem is that your motherboard is old and not configured properly at a deeper level, which may require installing a new bios. Another, probably common, reason is that the DVD you made is messed up somehow. The “.iso” image you downloaded is corrupted or something went wrong during the burning process. One way to check that is to use the checksum hashtag to verify the image. Never heard of that? Just look it up. It involves obtaining and comparing two numbers which are constructed from the image. One number is provided by the maker of the image using specific software that does this, the other number is obtained on your final version of the image (or downloaded version) using similar software. If the numbers are different, the data are corrupted. This might be more likely if your computer was doing wonky things while downloading or burning, or if the drive you did the burning with is messed up. (Yet another possibility is that the disk is dirty or damaged, but if you just made it, that seems unlikely.) A typical run down of the problems, in the context of installing Ubuntu Linux, is here.

But I think there is yet another explanation that occasionally happens. It is possible that your DVD/CD reader will only participate in the boot under certain circumstances. This would be the case either with older DVD/CD readers, or possibly, a matter of a broken or dirty DVD/CD reader. I’m pretty sure this is the case because I have an old computer with a DVD/CD drive into which I can put known functioning bootable CD’s and get results, but that will not boot off a known functioning bootable DVD.

I could have cleaned the DVD drive, or I could have replaced it (they are cheap). I did not do the former for no particularly good reason, and I did not do the latter because a long time ago I learned it was better, when buying a new DVD/CD drive, to get a nice external drive so it can be moved between computers.

What I did do in this case was to burn a regular CD rather than DVD with a system. This is a problem if you want to install Ubuntu because, apparently, there are no longer such images available for current versions of the operating system. But, Debian sill has an image that does this. Since I was giving serious thought to installing Debian rather than Ubuntu (which is based on Debian but with a lot of changes that I don’t like), this was a good move. Someday I’ll clean the DVD.

I am not certain that I’ve isolated an actual problem, but when I search around for explanations for what I observe, I tend to find the same thing over and over; the usual explanations are repeated and the user with the problem is left wondering. So, I’m putting this on the Internet for people to run into while searching for answers.

Ubuntu Linux Made Easy

I checked out the book Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux by Rickford Grant and Phil Bull (No Starch Press). With any book like this, the trick is matching it to the correct user. If you are the kind of person inclined to install the latest version of Ubuntu on your computer, you probably have already done enough with Linux to not need this book. If you are the kind of person who believes the trash talk about how bad Linux is, or who is frightened of the idea of stepping away from Windows or your Mac for any reason, run away now. This book is not for you. But, if you are the kind of person who has been thinking about installing Linux on that second or older computer you’ve got sitting there and want to do it in a relatively painless way, then this is a good choice. You can get all the info you need off the internet, but then you have to deal with snarky self aggrandizing technogeek obfuscation which is annoying.

I happened to be in need of a new installation of a Linux system when this book arrived; I had just gotten a new Solid State Drive and wanted to try it out in an old laptop. Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux comes with a Ubuntu install disk, like in the old days when computer books always came with disks. Just for the heck of it I pulled out the disk and tried installing the most current version of Ubuntu Linux on the system free laptop. That worked fine, and I had Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin up an running.

I think I should mention that I may be one of the few people you’ll ever meet (if you meet me) who has Pangolin on his computer and has eaten pangolin. But I digress.

The newer Ubuntu systems have a new desktop environment called Unity. When Unity first came out, I, like may others, hated it. I prefer, and probably still prefer, the older Gnome 2.0 style desktop. But, since I had Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux in hand I went through with the process of using the text to inform me about using Unity and I actually changed my mind. I still hate it .. in particular, I hate the way Unity has ruined the functionality of menus and scroll bars, two of the most important things in any desktop environment. But, I also like it now in certain ways. In particular, I like the fact that I can press the “Super” key (formerly known as the Windows key) and then type in a string of text that corresponds to a known piece of software and run it. This is using the Heads Up display which at first I thought I would not like but now realize is cool. In the near future, I will attempt to install a heads up display on a more traditional version of gnome

In general, one of the things you’ll find most valuable about this book is the tutorial on how to navigate among your software and stuff on the Unity desktop. A little time with that will save a lot of time later. this includes using software like MyUnity (chapter 9) to fix up the Unity desktop more to your liking.

Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux also guides you through the use of the standard software, not just the system, such as the various office and graphics applications as well as Shotwell, the only photo management software I’ve ever let near my real photographs. (In this book I learned about Phatch Photo Batch Processor which looks like a functioning and very nice version of some of my own bash scripts I’ve had to write.)

I’ve always ignored Linux games, but the chapter on games in Ubuntu Made Easy: A Project-Based Introduction to Linux included a lot more than I remembered ever being there and I may have to revisit that activity. Overall, you’ll get a summary of some of the software in each category of possible software, and if you are installing Linux for the fist time you’ll want to sample in each area. Installing software in Linux is very easy. If someone tells you it is not, that “compiling from source” and/or “dependencies” will make it difficult, ignore them they know not of what they speak. That’s like saying “Windows is hard because all the software is written in C++ and that is hard to program in” or “driving a Subaru is difficult because it was really hard to engineer that balanced drive train thingie they are famous for.” Yes there are hard way to run any OS. Just don’t do it the hard way. The book will help here.

All books I’ve ever read about setting up Linux have a fair percentage of the text devoted to running you through some of the more esoteric (to the average person) functionality that you will probably never use, but is mainly only easily available on a Linux machine, like programming in Python or using vim as a text editor, etc. etc. This book has some of that but much less than other books. As with any system or software guide, you simply have to give yourself permission to skip some of the chapters. Having said that, do work your way through the chapters on using the command line because it is easy, fun, and sometimes useful.

Go ahead and try installing Linux, using this book as a guide. Just remember, Linux is not for everybody.

Some Linux/Ubuntu related books:
Ubuntu Unleashed 2016 Edition: Covering 15.10 and 16.04 (11th Edition)
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop: Applications and Administration
The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction