Ubuntu 10.04
these are my OLD notes for my previous Ubuntu 10.04 instalation:
Fist of all I hate having to type 'sudo' more than I need to. So I use it to change me to the root user.
sudo su
Update the apt sources to include the restricted, third party etc... locations (most of these seem to be enabled already in 10.04). Then update my local copy and install any updated applications and libraries.
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
About this time I then installed the restricted drivers for my graphics card. As far as I'm aware Nvidia support under Linux is still the best for 3D.
Then its time to install some applications that I like to use. the electric sheep screen saver, emacs text editor, wine (so I can install and run spotify), amsn so I can talk to people (I like the interface) and the restricted extras.
apt-get install electricsheep
apt-get install emacs
apt-get install wine
apt-get install amsn
apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
The restricted extras package (at present anyway) doesn't include the latest stable flash from Adobe, it's buggy. I think it has something to do with me running 64 bit Linux and them only providing (easy to find) 32bit. So I had to hunt this one down. Note the version may have changed by now.
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.45.2.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
tar xzf libflashplayer-10.0.45.2.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
The other part that isn't installed with the extras (for legal reasons) is the dvd css library.
apt-get install libdvdread4
/usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Other Software
I have installed picasa for my photographs, this includes the google repositories.
Installing the latest jalbum (for my image gallery) was fun. I found I had to remove the existing open-jdk and install the sun-jdk before the package would work.
The proof was in:
/usr/bin/java -version
If this comes up with open-jdk (or something about the open implementation) then most applications will not work properly if they expect the sun java implementation.
For buying music from Amazon I found this post: Ubuntu Forums install amazon mp3 on 64bit
Video Editing
First I needed to install applications for my DV camera so I can import video:
sudo apt-get install dvgrab
Ubuntu has an issue of not detecting/configuring the dv/raw capture stuff without the following commands:
sudo modprobe raw1394
sudo chmod 777 /dev/raw1394
These need to be executed every time that you reboot the machine and want to use the DV camera, failing that you can add them to a start-up script.
To grab screen recordings (good for demmo and documentation) I have been using gtk-record-mydesktop
apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop
Then I can use it to import video to my machine to use in the PiTiVi application that comes with Ubuntu.
Problems
The biggest problems I had were with my windows partition (I think that the disk is bigger than XP likes). I needed to rerun the grub installer, grub 2 is easier but the learning of a new boot loader is probably what has put a lot of people off upgrading. Fortunately the Ubuntu grub2 documentation is exceptionally good. As a bonus it is easy for a seasoned admin to scan through for what you need.
I had to create and format the NTFS partition using Linux and reinstall windows but this I think was my fault (a recovery partition I didn't know I still had on a spare disk borked things when the boot loader hit it instead of the existing XP install). So I reinstalled windows and then fixed the boot loader. Its annoying that installing windows took half a day (drivers and updates etc...) as I have used it 3 times in the past year (proprietary software for mobile phones).