Okay, I've pretty much concluded that Unity sucks in the previous post. After two years, it was time for a clean install of Ubuntu. Of the various benefits, what I find most useful is that it makes me rethink which applications I am using, and why am I using them. We tend to develop a fetish for certain apps, which in and of itself is okay, but ultimately computers are tools, and whatever gets the job done, gets the job done. So with a clean install, I can rethink everything.
Natty Narwhal has of course the controversial choice of Unity desktop as default, but otherwise its shaping up to be what I expect from Ubuntu - a distribution that just works. Few quirks - moving windows by the title bar makes them go full-screen, have to shift-page-up/down in terminal, Firefox still doesn't remember it's window position on the desktop.
Here's my installation notes:
11.04 Natty Narwhal, April 28th 2011, clean install on a new HD
1. Installed from 32bit Desktop DVD. checked mp3 support.
2. change login window options, sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal (restart of x), openssh-server, numlockx, landscape-common, gufw, lame, vorbis-tools
3. mount 2nd hard drive; create /mnt/music/, change permissions, put in /etc/fstab:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/music ext3 defaults,relatime 1 2
ln -s /mnt/music /home/one/music (put in banshee prefs)
3a. mount NAS via cifs
sudo apt-get install samba samba-tools system-config-samba smbfs
sudo smbpasswd -a username
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf (add share for whatever to share (old use the old smb.conf)
then mount Network Drive in /etc/fstab:
//XXX.XXX.XX.XX/one /mnt/backup cifs auto,credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,uid=1000,gid=1000,rw 0 0
create .smbcredentials (as root)
cd /root/
echo username= > .smbcredentials
echo password= >> .smbcredentials
chmod 600 and edit smbusername + pwd
4. install apache2, mysqlserver, php5, drupal6. restart. setup websites. untar and copy to /var/www. import, but first create an empty database.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE XXXX; then
mysql -u root -p XXXX < XXXX.sql
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Works!
5. add deb http://debian.slimdevices.com stable main to /etc/apt/sources.list, then sudo apt-get install squeezeboxserver. set library folder and other preferences.
6. AmazonMP3 downloader (what a pain), Opera, Chromium, Filezilla, Nicotine-Plus, Grsync, Pinta, Gimp, Audio Extractor (gstreamer ugly!) (edit rip path with gconf2), VLC, EasyTag, Ubuntu restricted extras!, check gmail
7. scripts and crontab. scripts into /usr/bin then chmod a+x
for cron, need to run as root (sudo crontab -e) then "sudo /etc/init.d/cron restart"
On the web:
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Natty
My Opera
