Things to do after installing Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin
After Installing Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, there are a wealth of things that need to be dealt with. DVD, Audio and Video Codecs, Archiving formats, generally useful stuff.
These instructions presume you are proficient with PPAs, .Debs, and other terminal commands, Ubuntu Tweak, and require a full set of video, audio, and archive codecs, as well as Skype, Flash, and a truck-load of wallpapers.
Download Script
Rather than working your way through this (rather lengthy) page of commands, you can just Download this Script, mark it as executable and execute it by running ./Essentials.sh
Warnings:
Using the sudo command can result in severe system damage. Read all instructions and confirm you understand before executing any commands.
Make sure you type commands correctly, or copy and paste the entire code. Your first click will highlight all the code, or you can double click in the code area to do it again.
Things to do after installing Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin
Download and Install GetDeb and PlayDeb
Both GetDeb and PlayDeb are repositories, sources of updates for actual software you have or will have installed. They are useful for getting more up-to-date versions than those that ship in the official Ubuntu repositories, which programmers can find difficult to update as they encounter red tape. They may also contain less popular software which is not listed in the official repo's.
While this may look like an awful lot of code for something that should be relatively simple, you should know that GetDeb and PlayDeb are repositories, they're not hosted in one.
A large part of this script is also adding support for elementary OS Luna, which, while based upon Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, is detected as Luna by GetDeb. Since GetDeb doesn't support Luna, we have to pretend to be running Precise.
If you really want to shorten it down, you can remove everything from if to fi &&. This won't have much affect on Precise, only a very slight speed increase, but will break support for Luna.
Enable Partner Repositories
The partner repositories are another source of software, but for those with restrictive licenses that mean the general public cannot simply share them, such as Flash and Skype. These are official repo's that are already added but disabled in Ubuntu. This command enables them.
Add Personal Package Archives
Personal Package Archives, or PPAs, are yet more sources of updates and new and exciting software. These are some of the most popular, useful, and reliable sources for some default software and some more things we'll install later.
Updates to the latest version of VLC, the popular media player that many people believe should be installed by default.
The default music player is Rhythmbox, and is usually at least a few version behind. This PPA is provided by the Webupd8 Team.
GIMP is an image editor akin to Adobe Photoshop, except free. It is included in many open-source systems, and it would be a crime to use a version old enough not to have single window mode.
While we won't be installing the full GNOME desktop environment, they do make many of the packages that are already installed on your system, and they can be updated from here.
Another WebUpd8 PPA, this time a masterfully crafted Java package. It hosts Java 8Beta (not yet stable), Java 6 (an old version) and, most importantly, Java 7 (which we will install later).
This PPA (WebUpd8 again), hosts the program Y PPA Manager. That's right, we're adding a PPA so we can add PPAs. But that's not all it does, it can also remove, purge, check for duplicates and remove broken ones.
This PPA is for the amazing(ly popular) Ubuntu Tweak, which, as it's name suggests, is a tool for tweaking Ubuntu (and other distributions based upon it, to a certain extent).
Transmission is the default torrent client in Ubuntu, and as such should be kept shiny and new.
Add the Medibuntu Source
This is another source we're going to add (it's that last one, promise), and has to be done in a slightly different way to the PPAs and packaged lists of GetDeb and PlayDeb.
Unfortunately, it also requires some extra code for elementary OS Luna compatability. You can just execute the second command begining with sudo and ending just before fi. Or execute all of it, for an easier life.
Check for Updates
We need to see what software is available in what version for all those new sources we've been adding.
Authenticate Medibuntu
Unfortunately the way we have to install Medibuntu is unauthenticated, and so not secure. Fortunately we can secure it by installing the keyring.
Check for Updates, Again
Now we've done that, we're going to need to run that update command again.
Upgrade Packages
Now that we've finished adding places to get updates from and secured them, it's time to update what you already have.
Major Upgrades
Some updates are bigger than others. This command is for the huge ones.
Disable Guest
Now we're all up to date, we can disable the guest session. This is the only step not to do with installing or updating software.
Install Essentials
Now we're going to install all the things we thing the average user will need to not encounter any problems playing Music or Videos, watching DVDs, going on YouTube or extracting archives.
Below you can find a breakdown of what each package does. This is the step that most frequently goes wrong and you should read what your terminal prints out before confirming. You may end up removing something you don't want to if there is a conflict.
synaptic is a package manager, which we use in many tutorials.
ubuntu-tweak is far more than a settings manager, it has templates, scripts, workarounds and a file type manager, plus an amazing but simple cleaning utility.
vlc is one of the most popular and powerful media players available.
gimp, gimp-data, gimp-plugin-registry, and gimp-data-extras are all parts of a powerful photo editor, built to rival Adobe Photoshop.
y-ppa-manager is there so you can manage PPAs without needing to use the Terminal.
firestarter is a Firewall management application. All ports are closed by default, which means you should never need to use.
bleachbit is a powerful cleaning utility.
openjdk-7-jre is an open-source Java emulator.
oracle-java7-installer is the official Java installer.
flashplugin-installer is the official Flash installer.
unace, unrar, zip, unzip, p7zip-full, p7zip-rar, sharutils, rar, uudeview, mpack, lha, arj, cabextract, and file-roller are there to extract and compress files in various archive formats.
non-free-codecs, libxine1-ffmpeg, mencoder, flac, faac, faad, sox, ffmpeg2theora, libmpeg2-4, uudeview, libmpeg3-1, mpeg3-utils, mpegdemux, liba52-dev, mpeg2dec, vorbis-tools, id3v2, mpg321, mpg123, libflac++6, ffmpeg, totem-mozilla, icedax, lame, libmad0, libjpeg-progs, libdvdcss, libdvdread4, libdvdnav4, w32codecs, libavcodec-extra-53, libavformat-extra-53, libavutil-extra-51, libpostproc-extra-52, libswscale-extra-2, ubuntu-restricted-extras, app-install-data-medibuntu, and apport-hooks-medibuntu are all media codecs. They play videos, music, and DVDs.
ubuntu-wallpapers* adds basically every wallpaper that has ever lived.
Install Google Chrome
Google Chrome is not only one of the more popular, fastest, and most reliable browsers available, but it also includes a pre-packed and fully patched version of Adobe Flash and a huge array of extensions and apps.
This is another section of the script that seems long for what it does, but Google Chrome sets up it's repository itself when you install it. This script is set to download the current version and install it, but is more than three times as long so that it can detect whether you are using 32bit or 64bit and download and install the right one.
Clean Up
Now it is time to tidy up, and the first command here makes sure we have everything we want. Second, we get rid of any old dependencies, then remove all the packages we've downloaded and installed, as we likely won't use those again. You can also use Ubuntu Tweak to remove orphaned Configurations and Outdated Kernels.