Feisty Fawn customization

Here are the things I did after I installed Feisty Fawn Ubuntu 7.04 off of the alternate install CD on my Compaq X1000 laptop/other systems.

If on an AMD64 processor system

• Follow these instructions (and run the script) to get mplayer, flash and java support for firefox. Update all launchers and shortcuts to launch firefox32 instead of firefox
• Skip the remaining instructions that are italicized
  

Install add-on packages (by the way, all except the first can be done in one command... just append all the packages you want to install after "install")

• Edit /etc/apt/sources.list following these instructions to add extra repositories
  
• Install full Vim support (without this, no help, syntax highlighting, etc.) sudo aptitude install vim-full
• Install Flash sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree
• Install media codecs sudo aptitude install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-gl gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse w32codecs
• Install Amarok sudo aptitude install amarok
• Install Java sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts
• Install Azureus sudo aptitude install azureus (or, alternatively, ktorrent)
  
• Enable DVD support
  
• Possible user programs: xmms, xchat, mplayer plugin, vlc, skype, picasa, eclipse, google earth, beagle, clipboard manager
  
• Security programs: sudo aptitude install nmap kismet wireshark airsnort aircrack-ng john
• Install Beryl (nVidia) (I also find it convinient to add a sessions entry for beryl-manager so the stone shows up in the tray)
  

Trick out Firefox

• Add desirable extensions
  
• Customize Google toolbar
  
• Edit /etc/hosts to block ads
• Install multimedia plugins
• Change default colors Edit->Preferences->Content->Colors
• Set a master password Edit->Preferences->Security->Use a master password
  

Trick out the Terminal (and partners in crime)

• Either create a new profile or edit the current profile
• Disable General->Show menubar by default in new terminals
• Set Colors to aesthetically pleasing values
• Set Effects->Transparent background and set the bar about 2/3 of the way to Maximum
• Set Scrolling->Scrollback to 2000 lines
• Edit ~/.bashrc
  
• Edit ~/.vimrc
• Put the line set editing-mode vi in ~/.inputrc (the configuration file for readline... this also makes the set -o vi in the .bashrc redundant)
  

Trick out GNOME

• Fix the Right Alt key System->Preferences->Keyboard->Layout Options->Third level choosers->Press Menu Key to Choose 3rd Level
• Change the Desktop Background by right clicking on it (good backgrounds here (OSX Tiger) and here (fractals) and at DeviantArt)
  
• Map the Windows keys to do something cool in System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts (I think "Run a terminal" and "Hide all windows and focus desktop" are good candidates)
• Enable visual system beep System->Preferences->Sound->System Beep->Flash Window Titlebar
• Make the panels transparent Right Click on Panel->Properties->Background->Solid Color and adjust the slider appropriately (about halfway looks good)
  
• Add the system monitor to the panel Right Click on Panel->Add to Panel->System & Hardware->System Monitor->Add to Panel (I enable all but "Load"... wtf is load?)
• Disable launching of unnecessary programs at startup (such as Evolution Alarm Notifier) Preferences->Sessions->Startup Programs
• Save your session in a desireable state: gnome-session-save (don't use the automatic option in Prefs->Sessions... it causes problems!)
  
• Put the panels in a desirable place by dragging them across the screen
• Get 4 workspaces Right Click on Workspaces on Panel->Preferences->Number of Workspaces
• Disable Rhythmbox launching upon iPod detection (Amarok rulez!) System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media->Multimedia->Uncheck "Play Music Files when Connected" and also Uncheck Storage->"Browse removable media when inserted"
  
• Enable the text-based location bar in Nautilus (in favor of the button-based one) by hitting the notepad button on the top left in a Nautilus window
  

If on a laptop...

• Configure Wireless Networks
• In /etc/default/acpi-support set ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true

So what's so different about Feisty (as opposed to Edgy)?

• All the latest stable versions of software in the repos, obviously
• GNOME network manager manages wireless devices by default (and keyring support to boot)
  
• Fool-proof support for installing restricted drivers, media codecs, etc.
• Nice command line assistance if you try and run software that's not installed (prints a "use this repository and this command to get the software"-type message)
• Easy enabling of "Desktop Effects"
• And more
  

Finding and Killing a Process in GNOME

There are a few different ways to find and kill a process in Linux. Using the GNOME interface, you can call up the System Monitor (similar to the one on Windows XP) under System->Administration->System Monitor. Under the Processes tab, right clicking on a process will give you a variety of options: stop/end/kill/continue the process, change the priority (nice), display a memory map (pmap) and display open files (lsof -p <procID>).

Embedding the system monitor in a desktop panel is useful for constantly monitoring the system and quickly determining if and where there is a problem. Do this with Right Click on Panel->Add to Panel...->System & Hardware->System Monitor->Add. The display provides graphs of Processor, Memory, Network, Swap Space, Hard disk and Load activity (not quite sure what load is, perhaps some metric computed from all the others? I don't use it, personally).

On the command line, list processes with the ps command or ps -e for all users' processes. Pipe that through grep (i.e., ps -e | grep firefox) to find a process ID of the target process (if you know the exact name of the program, you can also use pidof firefox-bin). To kill a process, use the kill <procID> command (with the -9 flag if you want to kill it unconditionally). Alternatively, if the process uses a gui, you can use xkill to merely click on the gui to kill the corresponding process. There is also killall if you want to kill by process table name (i.e. killall firefox-bin).

pgrep and pkill are two very useful utilities, especially for dealing with processes with long command line invocations. pgrep -fl -u danny "ruby.*asdf" will print the process id and name of every process owned by danny whose command line invocation matches the passed in regular expression. The -f argument tells it to match against the full command line invocation instead of just the process name. pkill -fu dannyc "ruby.*asdf" will kill those same processes (for the life of me, I can't seem to coax similar behavior out of killall).

The top command provides an integrated way of finding and killing a process on the command line. If the process-to-be-killed is using a lot of system resources, it will appear towards the top of the display. Hit k and then the process ID to kill the process. Top comes with a lot of other functionality -- hit h for help.

UPDATE: I recommend using htop instead of top, which is top with less suck. It has lots of good features like color, mouse support, a more responsive interface, a tree-based process view, etc.

Connecting to servers in Ubuntu with "Connect to Server..."

I don't know how this has eluded me for so long, but there is actually a very nice interface built into Ubuntu that allows you to connect to servers using any of the following protocols: ftp, ssh, windows share, WebDAV (http), Secure WebDAV (https), and more. This is a nice alternative to using third party software like FireFTP (even though that program rocks) or the command line.

Simply pulling down the Places->Connect to Server... option in GNOME opens a dialog box which allows you to enter the appropriate information about the server you want to connect to. After the connection is successful, a folder representing the remote file system will appear on both the Desktop and in the Places menu. Another nice feature is that the folder even has some little letters on it telling you what protocol it is connecting over. You can now drag and drop files via the Nautilus interface, as if the directory was local. How convenient!

This tip found via the free online book Ubuntu Linux Bible. (Reviews on Amazon) By the way, this is an incredibly comprehensive reference on all things that an end user might want to do on Ubuntu. It also has sections on setting up subversion, using LaTeX, setting up other servers such as Apache, multimedia usage, and just about everything else. UPDATE: Whoops! This actually got posted by mistake by Lifehacker... the book has been taken down... it's still a good book, though!

UPDATE: For some more (unrelated) GNOME fun, right click on an icon and select "Stretch Icon" to blow up the icon to a cartoonish size. Click "Restore Icon's Original Size" in the same menu if you get tired of it (which you will, after 2 seconds).

Everything you've ever wanted to know about GNOME

About.com's GNOME Desktop User Guide

Some useful keyboard shortcuts from another About.com page:

• Alt+Tab Switch between windows. A list of windows that you can select is displayed. Release the keys to select a window. You can press the Shift key to cycle through the windows in reverse order.
• Alt+F4 Close the currently focused window.
• Alt+F5 Unmaximize the current window, if it is maximized.
• Alt+F7 Move the currently focused window. After pressing this shortcut, you can move the window using either the mouse or the arrow keys. To finish the move, click the mouse or press any key on the keyboard.
• Alt+F8 Resize the currently focused window. After pressing this shortcut, you can resize the window using either the mouse or the arrow keys. To finish the resize, click the mouse or press any key on the keyboard.
• Alt+F9 Minimize the current window.
• Alt+F10 Maximize the current window.
• Alt+spacebar Open the window menu for the currently selected window. The window menu allows you to perform actions on the window, such as minimizing, moving between workspaces, and closing.
• Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys Move the current window to another workspace in the specified direction.
• Ctrl++ enlarge the screen/text
  
• Ctrl+- shrink the screen/text
  

All of these settings are customizable: go to System->Preferences and there's a bunch of menus there that you can use to trick out your setup (such as Keyboard Shortcuts). I set those annoying windows keys that are next to the alt keys to actually mean something in linux. The right one (Super_R) I use to hide all the windows on the screen and the left one (Super_L) I use to launch a terminal.

UPDATE: To get Nautilus in GNOME to have the location bar (like default in KDE): Open a Nautilis window->Edit->Preferences->Behavior->Always use text-entry location bar ... There's a host of other useful display/behavior options there, too.