Things to do after installing Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

The new Ubuntu is here 2 days ago. I was using Natty Narwhal (11.04) and didn’t take any risk to use Gnome 3 there. But I couldn’t resist myself to switch to Gnome 3 this time. Here are some things I did after installing 11.10 -

[Note: If you are in Bangladesh, change the default mirror to Main Server or Server for United States, it’ll save a lot of troubles]

1. Update your repository first

sudo apt-get update

2. Install restricted extras package for audio/video codec support and Vlc

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras vlc

3. Surely you want to switch to Gnome 3, aren’t you?

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

4. Install Gnome shell Tweak tool

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

5. You might be very familiar with Synaptic package manager like me, install it

sudo apt-get install synaptic

6. You might need this file previewer for nautilus, it’s nice

sudo apt-get install gnome-sushi

7. To run a quick application launch command, Alt+F2 is the most useful thing. But it didn’t work for me like many others. To fix it, open “System Settings” => Keyboard => Shortcuts => System, click “Disabled” next to “Show the run command prompt” and press ALT+F2. This should set ALT + F2 for running the command prompt.

8. Webupd8 team has a nice repository for gnome3 shell extensions, add that repository

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-tab gnome-shell-extensions-dock gnome-shell-extensions-drive-menu gnome-shell-extensions-pidgin gnome-shell-extensions-system-monitor gnome-shell-extensions-weather gnome-shell-extensions-windows navigator

9. You’ll not see any maximize, minimize buttons in the titlebar. If you are habituated by using the menu in the left side of the window, let’s get those buttons and move them to the left. Open gconf-editor by pressing Alt+F2 and enter gconf-editor as the command. And open just like the image. Set the value of button_layout as “close,maximize,minimize:”.

10. Install google chrome

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
sudo sh -c 'echo deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

11. Hotot is my favorite twitter client, you might love it

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hotot-team
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hotot

12. If you have some drives with NTFS file-system, let’s mount them automatically

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config ntfs-3g hal

then press Alt+F2 and enter the command “ntfs-config” to open the Gui

13. Install pidgin, I hate empathy

sudo apt-get install pidgin

14. If you are a Bangladeshi user like me and use probhat or unijoy keyboard layout, let’s grab the m17-db, as the layouts are missing in this version

sudo apt-get install ibus ibus-m17n m17n-db m17n-contrib ibus-gtk

Now you can use probhat or unijoy or inscript using ibus. The default keyboard has also probhat keyboard support, but I like to use ibus. iBus doesn’t run every time you login in ubuntu, so we need to run it on startup. Goto “Startup Applications” => click the button: Add and input the data like this:

Name: IBus daemon
Command: /usr/bin/ibus-daemon -d
Comment: start IBus daemon when Gnome starts

15. You might need to install build essential package if you are related to programming and geany

sudo apt-get install build-essential geany

16. Install skype

sudo apt-get install skype

17. Shutter is a great tool for taking screenshots

sudo apt-get install shutter

18. You can install tasksel. It helps to install a bunch of things at once. Like installing LAMP server with sudo tasksel install lamp-server. But before this, you need to install tasksel

sudo apt-get install tasksel

That’s the all thing I can remember right now.

Some shell tips:

• You can start screencast recording in gnome3 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R. It’ll save in your home folder in webm format.
• Launch any program by pressing windows key and typing the program name
• In Gnome3, at first you have to logout and then you can shutdown/restart your computer. But clicking at your username in top-right corner at the screen and pressing Alt key will change the option named the “Suspend” into a “Power Off” menu item.