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Installed Ubuntu 14.04...now what?

Donal

Philosopher
Donal
Joined
Sep 8, 2006
Messages
8,914
I got my old Vista machine working and partitioned the hard drive so I could install Ubuntu. Went with 64 bits on about 113 GB of storage.

So far, I've:
- installed Cairo as a dock,
-Conky for my background and adjusted it to show the weather,
-Firefox,
-Chrome,
-Wine to run Spotify,
-had to installed hal to make Flash run in my browsers (even though hal was supposedly obsolete)
-GIMP,
-Sublime Text 3 (trial version still),
-Steam,
-Unity Tweak Tool (I know people hate Unity, but it doesn't seem to get in my way)
-Dropbox

On my to do list:
- Remove that "helpful" Amazon Results feature (I know how, I just for some odd reason keep forgetting to toggle the switch when I start playing with the box)
-add some of my messenger accounts
-get some sort of remote desktop going
-compile some code (HTML and Python to start, C++ later on)

I honestly couldn't care less about adding the Facebook and Google apps. I'm trying to keep it nice and streamlined. As it is, I'm about to remove Chrome.

My main concerns at the moment are:
- I can't get Chrome remote desktop to work, which was the whole reason I installed Chrome. I should have read up on it first, as it seems it won't work without a lot of tweaking in Wine. Is there a simpler solution? I want to be able to remote in from my Win7 laptop.
-Where can I find some good projects for my new toy?
 
That looks kind of cool. I knew SETI ran something like that, but didn't know about Stanford. It looks like a good cause. Although, I'll have to explain to my lady why my desktop is running 24/7 (she pays the electric bill).

I should also mention I have Trackr running RSS feeds from Ars Technica, CNN, BBC, and ESPN.
 
A question for Donal and Blue Bubble.

Over the years, I have installed various distros of Linux, most recently Ubuntu 10.x (IIRC)- on various computers. The story is always the same:-
I experiment with it, maybe use it for a few weeks or months. Then I revert to Windows, generally because something or other that I need to work just doesn't and it's easier to revert to an OS I know will work than to make the effort to find out why I can't make it work in Linux. (Hardware drivers in particular).

This is , assuredly, because my limited computer skills are just not up to it. But I don't want to be an IT expert. I just want to use the 'net, save my photos, send email, print the odd document. Basic stuff. I want the OS to be invisible - which Windows has become over the years. (Up to 7. I know nothing of 8, nor want to).

Apart from lower cost and higher AV resistance, why should I ditch the Windows applications I've bought over the years and move to a new OS?

Or at least, why did you?
 
This is my first go at Linux, so I can't really speak from a great deal of experience.

I don't think I would call Windows invisible. I think it is more of a case that we're just used to how it works, so we accept it. Windows eats a lot of resources to do very simple things. MS' core approach hasn't really changed in the last 20 years. Not that Open Source products never get bloated, just that I'm not paying several hundred dollars for them.

I haven't really bought a lot of licensed software for a while now. I've been alternating between Google Docs and LibreOffice for a while now. Granted, I cheated a little bit since I have blank MS Office documents and templates saved and work from those. It helps that I really have no need for the features Office has that the free options don't.

And I work in IT, so experience with Linux looks good on my resume.

There's also the nerd cred.
 
Software bloat. when each successive version just adds upon the older version rather than rethinking the approach in the first place. Think of it as the extreme opposite of "re-inventing the wheel". It also happens when you have a mass marketed product made for a "one size fits all" approach. You get a lot of bells and whistles that end up slowing the product down and make it harder to navigate.

I've never paid more than $75 (usd) for windows (7, 64 bit).
Click to expand...

$75 more than I paid for Ubuntu. I wasn't just referring to Windows. I meant proprietary software in general.
 
LibreOffice. You'll probably want the Linux x64 (deb) version from down the bottom of the page.

If you have a fondness for the old Doom games, and still have the old Doom WAD files lying around, I highly recommend installing the Doomsday Engine. It greatly improves the graphics, turning the old-style games into high-definition old-style games.

(The only downside is that modern Doom engines, such as PrBoom support WAD files containing extra features that weren't supported by the original DOS programs, and Doomsday doesn't support the extra features, so WAD files that use these extra features, such as the FreeDoom WAD file, don't work properly in thee Doomsday Engine.)
 
LibreOffice came with Ubuntu.

I can do some old school gaming. Although, to be honest, I'll probably keep this machine for coding.
 
At one point I dual booted, into Linux for coding and Windows for gaming. Linux is better for coders, and especially if one does any sysadmin type stuff.

Now I just run CentOS in a VirtualBox, too annoying going back and forth, and I can't give up the gaming :D
 
You don't have any issues with degradation in graphics or sound?
 
Most of what I do with the VirtualBox is from the console so it doesn't matter. The GUI stuff seems to run well enough, and I don't think I ever tried to get sound working.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Apart from lower cost and higher AV resistance, why should I ditch the Windows applications I've bought over the years and move to a new OS?
Click to expand...
Linux can bring new life to a laptop/PC that is struggling to cope with windows.

Every computer bought in my family in the last couple of years came with 2GB ram standard. They ran Win7 fine - for a while. However, in every case, they gradually slowed down until it wasn't worth switching the thing on.

I could solve the problem by installing more ram or .........................
 
DGM said:
[...] I never use IE (I use Chrome) and I use open source for word processing.
Click to expand...


When I travel, I go to libraries to check my email.* Most of them have wifi available, so I can use my laptop rather than one of the library's computers.

After connecting to the library website I usually need tob ring up a library website to accept the TOS. This always requires opening IE. Don't know why I can't use Firefox, which is set as my default browser.


*ETA I camp, usually where there is no electricity, let along wifi.
 
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I use my Ubuntu machine (running 13 something something) mostly as a media server. Have my external connected to it and use Plex Server to stream my movies, tv-shows an music to other devices.

One of the other devices is an old(ish) netbook with Ubuntu 12, which I connect to my TV as a media player.

If you like old school gaming (as many people here seem to do), check out good old games (www.gog.com), they have really cheap, DRM-free copies of a whole host of old, and new but old-school style games. They also include lists of which of these games run under wine.

I've gotten Commandos 2 and 3 working under wine with minimal fuss.
 
I have Kubuntu, which is Ubuntu + KDE. On my box I have:

- Krusader. A dual-pane file manager. They're just so sleek, and you can see so much at once. I dunno. Once I tried this type of file manager, I never wanted to go back.

- Comix. If you read any comics on your computer, this is definitely the way to go. Easy, one-key shortcuts for zooming in and out, switching from two-page to one-page view, etc.

- Geany. A simple, bare-bones text editor / IDE. Has tabs, syntax coloring, smart indenting...all the stuff I want in a text editor. It also has tons and tons of plug-ins if there's some extra functionality you want.

- Thunderbird. Mozilla's email client. Nothing really special about it. If you like Firefox, you'll probably also like this.

- Clementine. For music and Internet radio. This is a fork of the old Amarok codebase, before it got all bloated. Simple, sleek, and non-intrusive.

- Pidgin. For instant messaging. Supports any network you can think of: Google Talk, Facebook, and a dozen or so others.

- Inkscape. GIMP does raster graphics; Inkscape does vector. Really awesome, but I recommend going through the tutorials in the Help files, especially if you've never used a vector graphics program before. If you have used a vector graphics program before (like Illustrator), you'll find it's very similar.

- KeepassX. This is VITAL! You can store all of your passwords in an encrypted, password-protected file. Memorize one password, instead of 50!

- MAME. Arcade game emulator. I don't play games very often, but it's good when I need to get some Neo-Geo or Pac-Man or something like that.

- Mednafen. Console emulator. This emulates NES, SNES, Genesis, PSX, and lots of other systems I can't think of at the moment. It is a command-line app, but fortunately I found a good frontend for it.
 
Pidgin, Thunderbird, Clementine, and Keepass I either use now or used at some point in the past.

What types of files does Inkscape create? The annoying thing about GIMP (as with most OS productivity software) is that it doesn't use the same types as the proprietary standard options.

Does Geany come with hot keys to c-n-p frequently used code? Like if I am making multiple pages for one site and want to maintain the same structure, can I just save the basic parameters to a clip board or something?
 
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