Quick tips for Ubuntu 9.04

One of the beauties of starting your OS afresh is, well, you get a new and better OS. Ubuntu 9.4 (or 'jaunty jackalope') is a slick version of my previous Ubuntu 8.04 ('hardy heron'). So far, I've ascertained that it looks better, it has better support for hardware, and it boots really fast.

One of the pains of starting your OS afresh is having to reinstall all your software and set your preferences. I thought I'd put a little 'as I do it' guide which may take some of the pain away. This list has a few of the 'biggies' and maybe a couple of items more suited to my personal taste, but what the hey!

1. configure the firewall
sudo apt-get install gufw

2. install wine (windows emulator, for those windows programs you cant live without - an ever decreasing number horray!)
sudo apt-get install wine

3. This one is crucial if you want to run java - it takes ages, and at the end when it installs java, you need to be able to use the tab and 'pg dwn' keys to get to the end of the license agreement
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

4. VLC is still the best media player around
sudo apt-get install vlc

5. skype -
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update

sudo aptitude install skype

6. Google Earth (version 5) - install the binary from here. Right click - Properties - Permissions - make executable. Then double click, and it will install - easy! It will create a desktop icon which, by default, you cannot see because you do not have permission. In the terminal type (here, replace 'daniel' with your username):

cd ./Desktop
sudo chown daniel:daniel Google-googlearth.desktop

7. Expand the capabilities of nautilus file browser

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions nautilus-gksu nautilus-image-converter nautilus-open-terminal nautilus-script-audio-convert nautilus-script-collection-svn nautilus-script-manager nautilus-sendto nautilus-share nautilus-wallpaper

8. Adobe AIR

wget http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
chmod +x ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

9. Adobe acrobat reader

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the below line in sources.list

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install acroread

G'night!