Book Image

Instant Ubuntu

By : Christer Edwards
Book Image

Instant Ubuntu

By: Christer Edwards

Overview of this book

Ubuntu is widely considered the worlds' most popular Linux distribution. Focusing on simplicity and ease of use, it provides an intuitive desktop environment suitable even for the novice user. Built by a worldwide team of developers, Ubuntu provides a welcoming approach to software. "Instant Ubuntu" will guide you through the steps required to begin using the Ubuntu Linux distribution on your desktop or laptop. This book provides a guided tour of the installation, followed by an overview of the desktop environment, and an introduction to all of the top applications. Starting out with detailed instructions on the installation, this book will walk you step-by-step through the basics of getting started. Once you're up and running, you'll be given a full tour of the Ubuntu Dash and Launcher, followed by an outline of the top applications and features.
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

Top 10 features you need to know about


Now that you've had a basic tour of your new Ubuntu desktop, we're going to dig a little deeper and demonstrate some of the unique features that really makes Ubuntu stand out. We'll go over some of the previously outlined applications in more detail and delve deeper into the system settings to customize your system to meet your needs. We'll also demonstrate using the Ubuntu Software Center in more detail, by ensuring your system is fully up-to-date, install some popular applications, and suggest some tips for speeding-up parts of your system. By the end of this section, you'll be much more familiar with the power and flexibility of your Ubuntu desktop.

The following sections describe a number of the core applications, included in the base Ubuntu system as organized by category. You can view these categories, by launching Ubuntu Dash, selecting the Applications icon at the bottom of Dash, and using the Filter results option in the top-right corner. This will organize all of your installed applications by category, and allow you to explore them by similar type.

Note

At different points during this section, you'll be prompted to install additional software to your system to improve on the included application set. Some of the suggested applications are only available after configuring the subscribed software sources at the end of this section. If you discover you're unable to find any of the suggested applications using the search feature of the Ubuntu Software Center, please see the 10 – Software Sources section at the end of this section.

Accessibility

You might recall from the So, what is Ubuntu? section that Ubuntu is designed to be available and accessible to people around the world, despite any physical disabilities. This section will explore some of the accessibility options built into the Ubuntu system. The two main included applications are called Onboard and Orca.

Onboard is an on-screen keyboard useful for tablet PC and mobility-impaired users. This accessibility application allows users to use a virtual keyboard to type and interact with the machine. This is helpful for users may be able to control a mouse, but are unable to fully operate a physical keyboard.

Orca is a free, open source, flexible, and extensible screen reader that provides access to the visual desktop via user customizable combinations of speech, braille, or magnification. This allows visually-impaired users the ability to interact with a visual desktop by allowing Orca to translate the visual information into speech or braille for them.

I have seen these applications in use by visually-impaired users, and it is very impressive how well they are able to interact with their machines despite these disabilities.

Accessories

Ubuntu provides a number of basic accessory utilities that provide core functionality that you'd expect in a desktop operating system. These include applications, such as an archive manager, backup utility, calculator, and basic text editor. Here we'll introduce some of these applications to give you more of an idea of what you're able to do with your Ubuntu desktop.

Archive Manager is a very flexible utility for managing archived data. It supports a range of archive formats and provides you the ability to archive or unarchive data. This application supports archiving with the ZIP, TAR, RAR, and many other popular formats. If you've ever sent a ZIP file, this is the application you'll use to unzip it. If you need to create an archive, perhaps to create a manual backup of some of your data, you can use this application to archive and compress the data to be backed up elsewhere.

deja-dup is the included Backup utility. This application provides you the ability to create automatic backups of your important files on a regular schedule. It supports daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling. The length of time to keep the backups is configurable, as well as the location of the backup. These backups can be automatically shared to cloud storage, FTP, Windows shares, or local-folder locations. With this application, there is no excuse to not have regular backups of your system!

The Calculator application is just what you'd expect at first look, a calculator. Upon closer inspection, you'll discover that it supports basic, advanced, financial, and programming modes of calculation. It's lightweight and easy to use, and of course, comes with Ubuntu out of the box.

Text Editor is a very flexible utility for everything from taking simple notes to creating computer programs. It isn't a full-blown word processor, but a plain-text text editor. I use Text Editor when I teach beginner programming courses at my local university, as it is flexible enough to support basic programming syntax, while still being simple enough for beginners to use. If you find that you need a basic editor to simply take notes for class, Text Editor is a great place to get started.

Customization

You'll discover that your Ubuntu desktop is very customizable, allowing you to make your desktop environment your own. You're able to customize the overall theme, desktop backgrounds, fonts, launcher characteristics, and much more. This section will outline a few of the basic things you might want to customize as you're getting started. This will include desktop look and feel, online account configuration, and even hardware and driver support.

Customizing the look and feel of your Ubuntu desktop is done within the Appearance application. Here you'll be able to customize the desktop background, theme, and launcher settings. Select from the many included desktop wallpaper backgrounds and see a preview on the virtual display. Change your theme within the theme drop-down menu. You can also optionally customize the launcher icon size and overall behavior.

The default theme is called Ambiance. This provides the darker look that you see now. If you prefer a lighter theme, you might try the Radiance theme, which is an opposite look and feel to Ambiance. I like to configure my desktop with Ambiance, relatively small launcher icons, and an auto-hiding bar.

Feel free to customize your desktop however you like. Experiment with different themes and settings until you find the look and feel you prefer.

In regards to hardware support, Ubuntu provides a system to check for and install the drivers for proprietary hardware. This generally includes popular video cards from ATI or NVIDIA as well as some wireless network cards. While these drivers are not open source, Ubuntu can automatically detect the need for them, and handle the installation for you. This will give you better support for hardware not normally supported by open source operating systems. Launch the Additional Drivers menu item, and let Ubuntu scan your hardware. If it detects a need for proprietary drivers, it will prompt you, and walk you through the installation. If nothing is found, it simply means that you are already using open source drivers, and that your hardware is already fully supported.

Also available within the customization section is the Broadcast Accounts and Broadcast Settings applications. This is where you can configure your Twitter and Facebook chat accounts as well as preferences. Once configured, these accounts will be available directly from the status bar in the top right of your screen. If you click on the icon that looks like an envelope, you should see an entry for broadcast. This is where the broadcast accounts are integrated into your Ubuntu system, allowing you to update your status, and view and reply to messages from friends and family without needing to keep Facebook or Twitter open in a web browser.

Games

Ubuntu has both basic and more advanced gaming options available. Some of the games are things you'd expect, such as Solitaire or Minesweeper. Also included are tile-matching game Mahjongg and the number puzzle Sudoku. These are sure to provide hours of gaming fun. If you're interested in other gaming options, quite a few more are available in the Ubuntu Software Center.

For those that are looking for gaming options beyond what is in the Ubuntu Software Center, Ubuntu is also supported by the Steam gaming platform. Historically, Steam has only supported Windows and Apple; however, Ubuntu was selected as the first (and currently only) Linux platform to be officially supported by Steam.

The following section will describe how to install Steam on your Ubuntu system and gain access to the Steam supported games for Ubuntu.

First, launch the Ubuntu Software Center and search for Steam in the search window. This should provide a number of results. You'll want to select the one labeled The ultimate entertainment platform. Select this option from the list, and click on Buy. You'll be prompted with and need to agree to the Software License Agreement. This will take you to the Ubuntu single sign-on page, where you'll need to log in or create a new account. If you have not yet registered for an Ubuntu account, you'll need to register here. This takes only a few minutes, and is completely free. Once you have created andor logged into your account, the installation will continue.

When the installation is finished, a window will appear notifying you that you'll need to Start Steam to complete the installation. Click on Start Steam to continue. This will be followed by a Steam Installation Agreement, which you'll need to agree to. Check the box I have read and accept the terms, and click on OK. At this point, Steam will launch and begin downloading any available Steam updates. This may take a few minutes depending on your Internet connection.

From this point, you'll have the option to create a new Steam account or sign into an existing account. If you've played Steam games on other platforms, you should be able to use your existing credentials here. If you're new to Steam and want to get started, create a new account, and continue.

From here on you're ready to play Steam games!

Graphics

Your new Ubuntu system includes some very helpful applications in terms of graphics management and editing. You'll find the basic photo viewer applications, PDF viewers, basic graphic editing software, and even more advanced full editing suites available in the Ubuntu Software Center. Here we'll explore some of the offerings available, and outline how to install GIMP, the free software-equivalent to Adobe's Photoshop.

For basic photo viewing, you have a couple of options available. First, there is the Document Viewer and Image Viewer applications, which are applications used when viewing documents and photos in a read-only format. You won't be able to do any editing with these, but they're perfect for simply browsing your documents or photos, and displaying what you currently have.

If you need something more, you'll find the Shotwell Photo Manager available also. This application allows for basic rotation, cropping, red-eye reduction, basic image enhancements, and more. It isn't a full-blown Adobe Photoshop equivalent, but if all you're doing is some basic cropping and touch-up of photos imported from your digital camera, it likely has all the options you need. I used the Shotwell Photo Manager to crop and edit the screenshots used in this book.

If you are of the type that wants to do even more with your photos, you'll likely want the GIMP Image Editor application. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and is the free software solution to the proprietary Photoshop application. GIMP supports most of the same features of Photoshop and is available in the Ubuntu Software Center. The following section will describe how to install GIMP and start using it on your Ubuntu system.

I'm sure at this point, you're one step ahead of me in knowing you'll need to navigate to the Ubuntu Software Center. From there you can search for GIMP in the search field, and look for the listing for Create images and edit photographs. Click on Install, and enter your administrative password when prompted. If you're interested, there are also add-ons available for GIMP that should be presented to you below the main description within the Ubuntu Software Center. These include the following add-ons:

  • An extra set of brushes, palettes, and gradients for GIMP

  • Scanner plugin for GIMP

  • The GIMP plugin for GREYC's Magic Image Converter

  • Print plugin for GIMP

  • Repository of optional extensions for GIMP

  • Userspace virtual file system backends

  • The command-line tools for extracting data for the XCF files

These are all optional of course, and you may not need them until you get into some of the more advanced features of GIMP, but it's good to know that they're available.

Internet

Within the Internet section of the Ubuntu Dash, there are a number of options available for getting online and connecting with friends, family, and co-workers. From Internet browsing to e-mail to Twitter and Facebook, Ubuntu provides some of the best applications in terms of Internet connectivity. We'll start here with the web browser Firefox, outline how to install the Chrome browser, and start checking e-mail with Thunderbird. There are of course, a number of additional Internet-related applications available in the Ubuntu Software Center, but the are too many to mention here.

We'll begin with Firefox, one of the most popular, secure, and extensible Internet browsers available today. Firefox is included in the default installation and should be one of the default applications included in the launcher bar. If you haven't already, go ahead and launch Firefox, and get online. Browse to your favorite websites, post an update on a social media site about your new system, or share a link to this book with your friends. I'm sure they'll enjoy exploring Ubuntu as much as you do!

Firefox has a number of configuration options available and is extensible through the included add-ons and extensions system. The extensions and add-ons are too many to number here, but we can take a minute and look at some of the configuration options.

To begin, open Firefox using the launcher, and open the Preferences menu. This can be found at Edit | Preferences in the File menu. The Preferences menu allows you to customize different aspects of your browsing experience, such as default home page, tab handling, privacy, security, and more. The default settings are generally pretty sane, but there are a couple of options that I generally like to change. First, under the Privacy tab, I check the box Tell websites I do not want to be tracked. This option disallows certain types of cookies often used by online advertisers to target or retarget advertising based on sites that you've visited or products you've viewed previously.

Toggling this setting is completely optional. This same tab also allows you to toggle what Firefox remembers about your browsing history. Customize this and other options as desired, and click on Close.

To install add-ons, navigate to the Tools | Add-ons option within the File menu, and you'll be taken to a page displaying your current Add-ons, Extensions, Appearance, Plugin, and Language options. You can quickly search for add-ons and extensions using the search bar at the top-right corner. Again, there are simply too many to mention here, but you can get an idea of what extensions are popular and available, by visiting http://addons.mozilla.org.

The Google Chrome browser is Google's alternative to Firefox, which is also available for Ubuntu systems. While not included in the default installation, it is available for download from the Google website at http://google.com/chrome. Visit this page, click on Download Chrome, and select the version to match your system. Currently Chrome formally supports the Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, and Fedora Linux distributions. You'll of course want to select the Ubuntu offering, and depending on your system, the 32-bit or 64-bit option. If you remember the Installation section, we discussed the differences between 32-bit and 64-bit. Select the same option here that you did at the Installation section, and click on Accept and Install.

Note: if you don't recall which option you selected, it's safe to select either. If it is incompatible with the rest of your installed system, you should be prompted accordingly, and you can simply go back and select the other option.

You should next be prompted with a window to Open with or Save As. You can safely save as and the Google Chrome installer will be saved to your Downloads folder. You can then find this file by navigating to Downloads within the Nautilus file browser, and double-click on the Google Chrome .deb file. This will open the Ubuntu Software Center and walk you through the rest of the installation. You'll likely be prompted for your administrator password somewhere along the way. Enter your credentials as needed, and within a couple of minutes the Google Chrome browser will be installed on your machine.

If you're wondering which browser you should use, it is completely up to you. I prefer the Google Chrome browser, but Firefox is a very worthy competitor. It really just comes down to personal preference, as both are considered very secure, support extensions, and are faster than most other browsers today.

Now that we've explored both Firefox and Google Chrome as web browsers, let's look at what Ubuntu has to offer in terms of e-mail management.

Thunderbird is included in the base installation of Ubuntu and is designed by the same people that make Firefox, the Mozilla foundation. This makes Thunderbird a very popular, secure, and fast solution for e-mail management that also supports similar extension architecture with the web browser. Here I'll briefly outline getting started with Thunderbird to download and manage your e-mail on your local system.

Thunderbird is not included in the launcher bar by default, so you'll need to search for it in the Ubuntu Dash, or select it from the filtered results within the applications section.

When you first launch Thunderbird, you'll be prompted with a getting started wizard to help you configure your e-mail account. Thunderbird includes a database of common e-mail providers around the world and their respective configuration options. This means all you should need to do is enter your e-mail address and password, and Thunderbird will do the rest. The more popular your e-mail provider, the better luck you'll have with this system. If you find that Thunderbird is unable to auto-detect your settings, you may need to contact your Internet service provider for additional details.

Once you have Thunderbird configured, you'll be able to send and receive e-mail from the application, quickly and easily. Thunderbird also supports features, such as spam filtering, and automatically organizing e-mail using filters and folders.

Media

Ubuntu comes with a great media player called Rhythmbox. This player has great support for a number of media formats, supports podcasts, last.fm integration, and connectivity to the Ubuntu One Music Store. Rhythmbox includes a very easy to use interface, allowing you to easily find and organize all of your music.

Rhythmbox supports the creation and importing of playlists, fetching of album art, search, and Internet radio. Rhythmbox is a preferred application for handling music collection.

When it comes to watching videos on Ubuntu, one player reigns supreme in supporting the widest number of formats and including the most features. This player is VLC. Unfortunately, VLC isn't installed by default on Ubuntu so we'll have to grab it from the Ubuntu Software Center. We can do that by launching the Software Center, and searching for VLC. You should see a result for VLC Media Player: Read, capture, and broadcast your multimedia streams. Select this from the list and then click on Install. As is the case any time you install software, you'll be prompted for your password, and then the installation will begin.

Once VLC is installed, you can make it the default application for different media types by launching the System Settings application, and selecting the Details option within the System section. This application gives you an overview of your system, allow you to set default applications, and configure the default action for removable media. Select the Default Applications, look for Video on the right side, and select VLC from the drop-down menu.

Office

As outlined in the previous section, Ubuntu provides the LibreOffice productivity suite in the default installation. This includes the Writer, Calc, Draw, and Impress applications. If you use your computer for school or work, these applications are probably something you'll use regularly. Whether you're writing papers or reports, managing spreadsheets, or creating detailed presentations, the LibreOffice suite has you covered.

LibreOffice Writer is flexible enough to take simple notes or write papers and books. I'm using Writer right now to write this book. There are far too many features to go into much detail, but Writer is a very powerful, compatible word processor. It supports a number of document formats including the global Open Document Format standard. It can read and write Microsoft Office document formats as well as export directly to PDF or HTML.

LibreOffice Calc is the included spreadsheet application. This supports the same level of compatibility with other platforms and the features that you'd expect from any mature spreadsheet management application. I use LibreOffice Calc for everything from managing consulting services invoices to basic budgeting and fitness tracking. Calc is very intuitive for new users, while remaining powerful enough for professional data miners and number crunchers.

Impress is an outstanding tool for effectively creating multimedia presentations for work or school. These presentations can be enhanced using 2D and 3D clip art, special effects and transitions, animations, and even drawing tools. I have seen some very impressive presentations created with LibreOffice Impress. What's more, it supports the popular PowerPoint format and can even output directly to the Flash format for viewing online.

System

Last in the Dash is the System category. This category provides you with the system management tools you'd expect in any mature desktop environment. This section includes privacy settings, system monitors, system settings, and the update manager.

As you continue to use the Dash, you may notice that Ubuntu keeps track of your recently used applications, files, and folders. This can be configured within the Privacy settings. The options allow for limiting activity recording to specific files, folders, and even per-application. You also have the ability to erase the recorded history in the same way you might within a web browser. If you're concerned about privacy, you might elect to disable activity recording. It should be noted that all information recorded is completely anonymous, and is generally only used to offer you improved access to your recently used applications, files, and folders. The important thing to note is that your privacy is up to you, and can be configured all in one place.

System Monitor is a central overview of your system, process, resources, and disk usage.

From the System tab you're able to determine whether you've installed 32-bit or 64-bit Ubuntu, your Ubuntu version, kernel release hardware, and disk usage.

The Processes tab displays the processes currently running on your system and allows you to manage them. By right-clicking on the process you're able to stop, kill, end, and change process priority on most of the running applications on your system. This tab gives you a good overview of what is running and what may be using more than its share of CPU or memory.

The Resources tab gives you a visual overview of CPU history, memory and swap, and network history.

Finally, the File System tab gives you an overview of free and available disk space.

Software sources

The Update Manager is the application that handles all security and errata updates for you. It is likely that Ubuntu has made security and errata updates available for your installation and these will be presented by the Update Manager application. The following section will outline how to configure the update manager to check frequency, what sources you'd like to subscribe to, and even what location you'd like to download updates from.

The first thing the Update Manager application will do when launched is make sure your machine is fully up-to-date with security updates and errata. This will ensure that you have the latest security fixes applied and the latest improvements available for your version of Ubuntu. When you first launch the Update Manager application, you may be presented with a list of available updates. Before we apply these updates, I'd recommend making a few configuration changes to the Update Manager settings that will provide you with additional available packages and speed up the time it takes to check for and download updates.

First, open the Update Manager application from the Dash and click on the Settings... button on the bottom-left corner. This configuration section allows you to customize what you want to make available from the Software Center and even where you'd like to download it. Ubuntu provides mirrors of the software repositories all over the world. Selecting one closest to you can significantly improve your download speeds.

In the first section under Ubuntu Software, you'll see Downloadable from the Internet. I would suggest ensuring that the first four boxes are checked. Also, unless you're going to be developing Ubuntu software, you can safely uncheck the fifth box labeled Source Code. Next, select Download from: from the drop-down menu. This list should be populated with options to use the main server, the server for your country, or Other....

Selecting the server for your country instead of the main server will offer some improvement, but you might also want to try the Other... option. This option will display a second menu allowing you to select a server in nearly any country around the world. There is also an option to try and determine the fastest server for your connection. If you click on Select Best Server, a series of tests will be performed to find the best mirror for your location. This can take a few minutes and will auto-select a location when it is finished. This test isn't always perfectly accurate. You might experiment with a few different locations until you find one that you feel performs the best.

The other items you might configure on this page are in the Updates tab. Here you can configure what types of updates you'd like to see and how often. If you're using the LTS release, you'll probably want the Important, Recommended, and Unsupported updates. Pre-release updates are for those want to help test the updates before they're pushed to the rest of the public. Beware, while this will provide you with updates before everyone else, some can cause problems as they still need to be tested.

You're also able to update the frequency of which Ubuntu checks for security and errata updates. You can check for updates daily, every other day, weekly, or every few weeks. You can configure how Ubuntu will act when it finds available updates, including download, and install them automatically. I am a bit compulsive about my security and errata updates. I always like to have the latest and greatest software, which is why I have my system check for updates daily, automatically download and install them, and display a notification immediately when found. Of course, you don't have to use the same settings, but choose the right combination for you and your system.

Once you make these changes, Ubuntu will ask you for your administrative password, and then refresh against the server you selected. The Update Manager application may then have updates available, which you can apply by clicking on Install Updates.

A few extras

There are certain software packages that due to licensing restrictions, cannot be distributed with the Ubuntu CD, but are available through the Ubuntu Software Center. These packages include MP3 support, Flash media player, DVD playback, and more. As I'm sure you'll want support for these things on your Ubuntu system, this section outlines how to install them. The instructions here depend on having enabled the software sources in the previous section.

To install support for these formats, open the Ubuntu Software Center, and search for ubuntu-restricted-extras. This should come up with one result with the description of commonly used applications with restricted copyright (MP3, AVI, MPEG, TrueType, Java, Flash, Codecs). Select the result from the list, and click on Install on the right side of the window. You may be prompted to reboot for these changes to fully take effect. Once these are installed you should now have full support for MP3 playback, Flash media player-based websites, and DVD playback.