Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Post-Install Checklist

When the last version of Ubuntu was released, I wrote a post-install checklist with my preferred customizations out of the box.  Here is the slightly updated version for 10.10.

These are the steps I do after installing Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I am collecting them here because I have several computers to upgrade, and I want to make sure I make the necessary customizations on all of them – a standard image if you will, so I can move from one to another and have a consistent environment.

Note: I will be modifying this article as time goes on and my installation technique gets tweaked. Don’t come to this article 3 months later and start blindly running the commands because you think you remember what they do.

Fix the Theme

  1. Right Click Desktop -> Change Desktop Background
  2. Change the background to something other than purple.
  3. Under the Theme tab, select New Wave to put the close button back to the right.
  4. Click Close.

Fix the Terminal

  1. Open Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
  2. Edit -> Profile Preferences
  3. Uncheck “Terminal bell”
  4. Unckeck “Show menubar by default in new terminals”
  5. Set the Default size to 125 x 25.
  6. On the Colors tab, uncheck the box that says “use colors from system theme” and set to “White on black”
  7. Hit Close
  8. Re-open the terminal to see the new size.

Change Some Nautilus Settings

  1. Hit Alt + F2 and type in “gconf-editor”
  2. Navigate to /apps/nautilus/preferences/”
  3. Check the box that says “always_use_location_entry” to show the full address path instead of the folder box thingys
  4. Navigate sideways to the desktop directory to add additional icons to the desktop as desired

Change the Logon Background

  1. {old method does not work in this version…researching…}

Set Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to Restart the X Server

  1. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard
  2. Click on the Layouts tab
  3. Click on the Options button
  4. Expand the section that says “Key sequence to kill the X server”
  5. Check the box next to “Control + Alt + Backspace”

Restore Various Computer Settings / Files

Assuming you backed up your home directory, these are the specific files that I usually restore.

  • Nautilus bookmarks: ~/.gtk-bookmarks
  • Mozilla Firefox Profile: ~/.mozilla
  • Mozilla Thunderbird Profile: ~/.thunderbird
  • SSH Keys & Authorized Hosts: ~/.ssh
  • Pidgin Profile: ~/.purple
  • Gnome Keyring: ~/.gnupg & ~/.gnome2/keyrings
  • gEdit Settings / Snippets: ~/gnome2/gedit
  • QuickSynergy: ~/.quicksynergy

These are just the settings and program profiles. Of course don’t forget Documents, Desktop (even though you don’t store a bunch of crap on your desktop, right…right?), Videos, Pictures, and all the other random folders created over the years.

Configure Local Apt Mirror

  1. Fire up a terminal
  2. I have the sources.list on my server with the local mirror already in place, so to import it into a new machine, I run this command:
    sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.original
    sudo scp server-01:/home/share/apt/maverick.list /etc/apt/sources.list
  3. Run “sudo apt-get update” to make sure all the sources are reachable.
  4. Run “sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” while we are at it.

Install Some Software

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

sudo apt-get install abiword alltray amarok armagetronad audacity \
banshee blender bluefish cdrdao chromium-browser clusterssh \
compizconfig-settings-manager devede duplicity dvdauthor easytag-aac \
epiphany-browser ffmpeg filelight frozen-bubble gdesklets gftp gimp gnibbles \
gnome-breakout gnomebaker \
gnumeric gpaint gpass gphpedit graphviz gwakeonlan htop hydrogen inkscape \
k3b kino listen mdbtools-gmdb mencoder mousepad mplayer mysql-admin \
mysql-client mysql-navigator mysql-query-browser neverball neverputt \
oggconvert openclipart-openoffice.org openclipart-png openoffice.org \
openoffice.org-base openssh-server oxygen-icon-theme p7zip-full pidgin \
pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr pidgin-plugin-pack pingus prism prism-facebook \
prism-google-calendar prism-google-docs prism-google-mail \
prism-google-reader prism-twitter rapidsvn rar sound-juicer sqlitebrowser \
ssh supertux-stable supertuxkart terminator thunderbird ttf-dejavu \
ttf-dejavu-extra ttf-lyx ttf-sil-gentium ttf-sil-gentium-basic \
ttf-symbol-replacement ttf-ubuntu-title vlc wine wireshark xchat subversion \
smbfs gedit-plugins quicksynergy padevchooser nautilus-image-converter

Install Binary nVidia Driver

  1. Install the driver via the Drivers manager & reboot.
  2. Run “sudo nvidia-settings”
  3. Click on the X Server Display Configuration and enable the second screen.
  4. Click on Apply, and then Save to X Configuration File.

Connect Samba Shares in /etc/fstab

I have a couple Samba shares that I want visible on my computer. Create the empty directories in /mnt where they are to be mounted, and then use the commands like the one below to setup the mount.

  1. Copy this in the fstab:
    //server/path /mnt/path smbfs credentials=/root/.smbpasswd,uid=1000,gid=1000 0
  2. .smbpasswd looks like this:
    username=user
    password=topsecret

Install the Citrix XenApp for Linux

Citrix is a virtualization software package to run programs remotely. I use it for work.

  1. Download the package from the download page.
  2. Extract the package using the Nautilus right-click menu or this command: tarr -xzvf linuxx86-*.tar.gz
  3. Fire up a terminal and cd into the directory where the package was extracted to.
  4. Run “sudo ./setupwfc” and follow the installation instructions

The Citrix receiver will now allow you to run Citrix applications from your favorite web browser. If you want to configure desktop shortcuts or need to use the GUI manager, run these commands:

sudo apt-get install libmotif3
ln -s /usr/lib/libXm.so.3.0.2 /usr/lib/libXm.so.4

Install DVD Playback

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

Install MythTV From Source

http://www.mythtvbook.com/wiki/The_Hard_Way:_Installing_MythTV_From_Source

Set the Background to Something Useful

http://www.webupd8.org/2009/09/real-time-earth-wallpaper-for-linux.html

Configure Alternate Networks (If Laptop)

  1. Configure wireless networks
  2. Configure mobile broadband connection

Enable Sudo Insults

sudo visudo
Defaults …,insults (add insults to the end of this line)
sudo -K

Note: I will be modifying this article as time goes on and my installation technique gets tweaked. Don’t come to this article 3 months later and start blindly running the commands because you think you remember what they do.

Posted in: Linux

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 10th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply