Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu 13.04

Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail has been released, this Ubuntu release is much better than last release. Unity is much faster, responsive and a lot of things is better in 13.04. Like previous version, you need do somethings after installed to get Ubuntu better.

Here’s our list of 10 things to do after installing Ubuntu.

Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu 13.04
Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu 13.04

1. Install Third-Party Codecs

For legal reasons Ubuntu isn’t able to play certain music and film formats by default. To be able to play most audio and video formats, install Ubuntu Restricted Extras by clicking the button below:

[button link=”apt://ubuntu-restricted-extras” color=”pink” newwindow=”yes”]Install Third-Party Codecs[/button]

Ubuntu restricted extras
Ubuntu restricted extras

Most codecs you might need can be found in the ubuntu-restricted-extras package, but if you want to play encrypted DVD’s, you’ll need to install some packages from the Medibuntu repository. To enable the Medibuntu repository, you need to enter this long command into a terminal window.

$ sudo -E wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update

Once Medibuntu is set up, install multimedia codecs with:

sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs libdvdcss

2. Install Synaptic Package Manager

The Ubuntu Software Center is a pretty nice software manager, but if you’ve been using Ubuntu or another Debian derivative for a while, you probably want a more fully featured package manager. Synaptic is a graphical package management program for apt. It provides the same features as the apt-get command line utility with a GUI front-end based on GTK+.

Synaptic Package Manager
Synaptic Package Manager

sudo apt-get install synaptic

Install Synaptic

3. Unity Tweak Tool

Unity Tweak Tool is a pretty new application that’s available in the Ubuntu 13.04 repositories, which you can use to tweak Unity: change various aspects of the Unity interface such as auto-hide behavior, change the Unity Launcher icons size, color, and more, set up hotcorners, tweak the Dash search, change the GTK, icon theme or fonts and much more.
Install Unity Tweak Tools with following commands:

sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

Install Unity Tweak Tool

Unity Tweak Tool
Unity Tweak Tool

CompizConfig Settings Manager is a configuration tool for Compiz Fusion. It is used to configure the many plugins included in Compiz and Compiz Fusion, as well as the use of various profiles and intergrating better with existing desktop settings. I recommend it installed on your Ubuntu too.

$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins-extra

4. Adjust Your Privacy Settings

By default, Dash may display private files but there’s an easy way to prevent this. Open System Settings > Privacy and here, you can: delete recent history, blacklist applications or folders / partitions from showing up in Dash.
Along with an “Off” switch, the Privacy options available in the System Settings lets you choose what content is logged and what isn’t. Further more it offers up buttons to ‘clear’ data from given periods.
If you don’t want the Shopping Lens but want to be able to use the other online scopes / lenses, you can simply uninstall the Shopping Lens:

$ sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

You can do the same with another lens:

$ sudo apt-get autoremove unity-lens-music
$ sudo apt-get autoremove unity-lens-photos
$ sudo apt-get autoremove unity-lens-gwibber
$ sudo apt-get autoremove unity-lens-video

5. Select the Fastest Update Server for Your Location

This is a nice little tweak that will help you get your system updates from the fastest server. Server speed can vary based on your location and what route the data has to take to get to you. There’s a utility in Ubuntu that will ping all of the available update servers and locate the fastest one for you.
By default, Ubuntu will choose the best location to optimize download speeds for you. But you need recheck it to prevent slow connection when you install new software or upgrade the system.
To access this tool, open up the System Settings > Software & Updates > Download from: > Other… On the next menu that pops up, click on “Select Best Server” and the utility will start searching for the fastest update server for you. Once it’s done, it will highlight the fastest one and you just need to click on “Choose Server” to complete the task.

6. Enable Additional Drivers

Ubuntu works well with most modern hardware out of the box, but you may want to enable third-party drivers to get the best performance.

This is a must if you’re looking to play games from Steam; watch high-definition video; or just generally want a more peppy-feeling and responsive desktop. Some WiFi Cards also require ‘proprietary’ drivers to function properly.

If you’re using an Nvidia Optimus laptop, also install Bumblebee or else both graphics cards will be powered on all the time, even though the Nvidia graphics card isn’t used:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
$ sudo apt-get update
Online Accounts
Online Accounts

$ sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia

7. Set up Cloud Storage and Online Accounts

If you’ve not heard of Ubuntu One by now then you’re missing out! It’s a free cloud-storage service available for everyone. You get 5GB of space for free in-which to store files, photos, music and more. (You can increase your space for free by referer your friends register new account)

Ubuntu13.04 comes with a centralised hub for your online accounts then lets you choose which applications can use which online account. Rather than having to manually enter log-in details for every app, you just add it once to ‘Online Accounts’ so other applications can use the data securely.

Services supported include Twitter, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook (including Facebook Chat), Flickr, and many more.

8. Install your favorite application

Install your favorite application
Install your favorite application

By default, Ubuntu comes with standard softwares, so it lack of your favorite application like Filezilla, Chromium, Google Chrome, GIMP … Just open the Ubuntu Software Center to browse and install thousands of free applications, including popular choices like:

  • Chromium – Open-source version of Google Chrome web-browser
  • GIMP – Free Photoshop alternative
  • Skype – Instant Messaging & Video Chat App
  • Hotot – Desktop twitter app
  • VLC – Popular media player
  • Clementine – Powerfull Music player
  • and many more …

9. Running Windows Softwares on Ubuntu

If you need to install some Windows software that isn’t available for Linux you can use Wine emulator. It is not going to work for everything but you can do a lot of stuff like installing Microsoft Office.

$ sudo apt-get install wine

If Wine doesn’t work you may want to create a virtual machine and install some programs in it. The problem is that you must have a Windows ISO.

$ echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian $(lsb_release -sc) contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list
$ wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.2

10. Cleaning everything that you wont use anymore

After you’re done installing everything that you always wanted run this commands to clean your packages and to uninstall everything that you don’t need anymore to get more freespace:

$ sudo apt-get autoremove
$ sudo apt-get autoclean

Conclusion

Now it’s your turn. What are the first things you install or tweak after installing Ubuntu?

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