OK. Here's my Ubuntu tweak guide
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If you download Ubuntu version 7.04 (codename "Feisty Fawn") from here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download...you'll pick a "Standard installer" disk and your choice of either normal CPU or "64bit" - basically any AMD 64bit chip or the Intel Core Duo series.
What you'll download is a 700meg "disk image" file ending in .ISO. This gets burned to CD via any number of Windows utilities. The resulting CD is bootable.
Do so, and you'll likely get a basic "live boot" from CD that is fully operable. You'll probably have basic video support and even DHCP Ethernet support right off the bat - the Firefox web browser will likely work right away. And this is without installing ANYTHING to the hard disk until you pick the "install" icon.
That initial "install" is dead simple. Trust me, I'm not even going to insult you by describing it. It's the easiest part
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What you then have is a fully bootable, working system. It will tell you it needs updates via an orange "asterisk" button in the top-right corner area. Go ahead and do that first. Note that this is one of the installer programs (one of four) and when ANY of them are running, you can't run another. So wait for updates and close that out before continuing. Oh, and it'll want to reboot post-update, let it.
What you DON'T have yet (even after the initial update) is all sorts of proprietary codecs and software that's legally free as in "no cost" but is tied up in weird licensing/patent issues that preclude it shipping with the initial setup.
Follow?
OK. First and most critical of these is the video card driver for either ATI or NVidia cards. These are crucial enough that Ubuntu has special easy-access support for these. Once it's up and you've logged in, go to the "system" menu and under "Administration" find the "Restricted Drivers Manager". Turn on drivers for your video card.
By default, Ubuntu will support one monitor. You can tweak it for multiple, and even run different monitors at different resolutions even with their own separate programs running (surf the web on one, watch a movie on the other) but it's WAY tricky. The next version coming in October promises to automate it. Let me know if this is an interest, we'll talk about how to edit xorg.conf
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OK. We got video and basic updates.
Heh. Now it gets fun.
Look, this sucker is a Unix variant. So under the "Applications" menu, under "accessories", you have "terminal". Yup. A really serious hardcore command line that puts DOS to shame with it's flexibility.
The good news is, people like me are able to give you a block of text to just paste into the terminal and let it cook - just say "yes" to everything. And you can paste in a bunch of lines at once. One problem: you can't paste the text into the terminal with the "ctrl-V" normal paste command because that's a terminal command (sigh) but you CAN use the mouse to right-click in the terminal and do "paste".
So, first paste this one line in:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
"Sudo" is a command prefix saying "I'm going to do this in admin (root user) mode" so it asks you for your password. "gedit" is a text editor. "/etc/apt/sources.list" is a text file (in a directory of course) that sets which "sources" (repositories) of software you're pointed to. When you enter this command plus password, you'll be put into the text editor (standard GUI stuff) and you add the following FOUR lines to the end then save:
deb
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu feisty universe multiverse
deb-src
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu feisty universe multiverse
deb
http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/ feisty free non-free
deb-src
http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/ feisty free non-free
Save that, quit GEdit, you're back at the terminal. Do the following (enter after each line):
wget -q
http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
Then:
sudo apt-get update
If you get any errors in that last, do it again until you get no errors.
OK, now the "big dumps". Paste everything between the three "equal sign" markers I'm gonna use into the terminal, copy/paste it all as one big block. Somewhere in here Java will ask for license confirmation in a blue-text screen, use "tab" to go to the "ok" buttons...EXCEPT: if you're running the 64bit version of Ubuntu, replace the word "w32codecs" with "w64codecs"
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sudo apt-get install w32codecs libdvdcss2 acroread kolourpaint gftp
sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer
sudo apt-get install banshee
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For your info: "acroread" is the Adobe Acrobat Reader, "kolourpant" is "Windows Paint on steroids" and "GFTP" is a graphical FTP client. "Mozilla-mplayer" means you'll be able to play online videos directly in your Firefox web browser. And Banshee is my personal favorite movie player.
"Libdvdcss" bears particular mention. It's a "cracker" for DVD encryption. With this baby around, you'll be able to play all commercial DVDs regardless of "region code". IF you combine it with a "DVD ripper application" you've violated the Federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Bigtime. I haven't got you downloading a DVD ripper in all this. If you want one, they're available. Legal issues are on you
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Kewl. The next one is a single huge line - copy/paste this into a text editor to make sure it's all one line (your EMail reader might cut it up):
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sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras libxine-extracodecs
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-plugins-good \
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-pitfdll
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Another chunk, five lines (make sure they're not broken up) - this will install a Windows emulator program(!) called "WINE":
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wget -q
http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget
http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/feisty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine
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DVD playback improvement (bigtime) - one line:
sudo apt-get install totem-xine
...while this one gives Linux the ability to write data to NTFS partitions:
sudo apt-get install ntfs-config
How about more fonts, cloned from the MS-world? Do the following 2 lines at the terminal window:
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
Preload performance upgrade - for systems with 1gig+ ONLY!:
sudo apt-get install preload
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OK, no freaking out yet? Good. We're done with the command line for now
, you can close that window.
Next: start up "Firefox" (web browser) and go to
www.youtube.com - if nothing will play, it will ask you to load the flash player. Except...damn, if you're doing the 64bit version of Ubuntu, it's a little bit trickier. If you're doing this, go here and follow directions, let me know if you get into trouble:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=476924OK, assuming flash is up. Pull down the "System" menu, go to "Administration", pull up "Synaptic Package Manager". This is a graphical version of the command-line "apt-get" process. You'll need to put your password in. Once it's up, hit "search" - you're going to look for each of the following terms and do a "mark for installation" on them. There's a fair number of 'em but they're all very cool:
Scribus (desktop publishing - goooood stuff - DON'T grab the "development/test" version but the lower-version-number stable variant)
XPDF (small and fast PDF reader)
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Now want to laugh your butt off? Go here:
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_PageA set of free scripts that let you load Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 off Microsoft's site, into Linux, via Wine (which we already installed). You'll love the resulting program icon. And there's always some website or another that chokes on Firefox...
Remember I said there were four "program loaders"? Yeah..."apt-get" at the command line, Synaptic (powerful GUI-based software finder/loader/unloader), "Add/Remove Applications" at the bottom of the "Applications" menu is more of a newbie software finder (check it out!), and the auto-updater that appears in the top-right corner now and then when new stuff is pumped out.
Again: try any of them when another is running and it just won't let you.
You've already got the following:
* OpenOffice is a clone of MS-Office roughly 2003 vintage. Quite good in terms of spreadsheet, word processing and even the "Powerpoint clone" ("presentation") is halfway decent. The database sucks - or at least, it isn't as powerful as MS-Access and is the only module that can't usually load it's Microsoft equivelent documents.
* MPlayer/MoviePlayer is your general purpose video playback critter. You've set it up above to cope with .WMV windows video, DivX, Quicktime, DVDs (try sticking a movie in!), video CDs and more.
* "The GIMP" (Gnu Image Manipulation Program") is a decent Photoshop near-clone.
That's just a start...but a damned good start that didn't cost anything 'cept a blank CD
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And it's all more or less totally immune to viruses/spyware/malware
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There's another way of handling Windows-apps compatibility without dealing with that pain-in-the-butt Wine thing.
It's called Virtualization: you use special software to create a "fake computer" ("Virtual Machine") and run that machine as a task. The VM can in turn run complete operating systems. I use this to run MS-Windows XP as a task.
It's fairly hardcore stuff. Figure you need at least a P4 CPU, at least 1.4gHz CPU and at least a gig of RAM to even think about this - and those are minimal specs. I do quite well with a late-model Celeron 1.6 and 1.5gigs RAM. I tell the virtual machine manager software to assign 512megs RAM to the VM. I also turn OFF network access for the VM, and use a "shared folders" command in the virtual machine manager to let the XP task see the Linux hard disk as a "network drive". That way, if I need to feed data into the XP system I put it somewhere on the Linux disk, start the VM and copy it in from within XP.
The virtual machine manager software I use is called "Virtualbox", free to download (for non-commercial use) at:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/DownloadsFrom there you download a ".deb" file which is an installer program type for Ubuntu and it's parent Linux distribution "Debian".
NOTE: if your net RAM after starting a VM drops to 1gig or less, don't run pre-load.
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One more tip: in Linux-speak, the word "dependencies" translates as "the programs you need to have already running before loading this NEW software critter of some sort". In other words, when you go into the IE6 install process, it may say that WINE is a "dependency". Cool. The package managers in Ubuntu try and FIND any dependencies you need for any given app and confirm that you're installing those too. That's why Ubuntu is considered a "non-geek-friendly" Linux variant. Others like Gentoo and Slackware don't do auto-dependencies and are hence more "Linux hardcore geek oriented".
