10 things to do after installing Ubuntu 9.10

Ubuntu 9.10 is excellent, it has improvements in every field, it is faster, more responsive, the effects are smoother, the apps installation easiest than ever :)) But after installing your system you must spend some time of fine tuning your system... Here is 10 things how to do that: 1. Install Graphics drivers. According to your graphic card, you need to install graphic drivers to support advance compiz effects. In this particular case, I'm using nvidia, so in Applications/Ubuntu Software Center search for nvidia drivers without quotes (or ATI, Intel, VIA or other depending of your graphic card). Next select the newest one and click install. If you have older graphic card maybe you should downgrade your driver version. Ubuntu will automatically suggest that when you start System/Administration/Hardware drivers to activate your graphic driver. Select the driver from the list a click activate. After restart you will have new drivers activated with advance compiz effects.. 2. Fonts. To install Microsoft Windows fonts, open your terminal (Applications/Accessories/Terminal) and enter: sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer If you want to install any other fonts you can get from the net or use your font database follow this steps: Go to your home folder (Places/HomeFolder) Enable Show Hidden Files option from Nautilus View menu Then create new folder with name .fonts (with dot in front) Now in new folder copy all your true type fonts. If you want to copy your Windows fonts, you can find it in WINDOWS/Fonts folder. After that, the new fonts will be active, you can try it with OpenOffice or other application. 3. Make LCD Monitor Adjustments To optimize your Ubuntu LCD Screen go to: System/Preferences/Appearance and choose Fonts tab. Select the SubPixel Smoothing (LCD) and click details. Next - find Hinting field and select Medium. Close the Appearance window. Your pixels should be smoother now. 4. Make Ubunty 9.10 Multimedia ready (DVD, Divx, Xvid, MP3, WMA, WMV, MOV, etc..). Go to Applications/Ubuntu Software Center and search for Gstreamer plugins. From the list bellow, install one by one next Gstreamer plugins: GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin GStreamer extra plugins GStreamer plugins for mms, wavpack, quicktime, musepack GStreamer plugins for aac, xvid, mpeg2, faad After installation you can play all you favorite songs and movies in various multimedia formats. To enable protected DVD playback, you must install a few things more: First, Medibuntu to the repository - Medubuntu is a repository of packages that cannot be included into the Ubuntu distribution for legal reasons (copyright, license, patent, etc). Doing that is quite easy, just copy and paste in terminal this commands block by block(Ctrl+Shift+V in terminal to paste): For DVD: sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/karmic.list output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 You can also add Windows, Real Networks, Quick Time and other codecs support: Ubuntu 9.10 32bit sudo apt-get install w32codecs Ubuntu 9.10 64bit sudo apt-get install w64codecs That's it. For DVD player, we recommend to install VLC media player. For anything else, the native Ubuntu player is excellent. 5. Install Screenlets Screenlets are Widgets (Clock, Calendar, Weather and other useful things on your desktop). Go to Application/Ubuntu Software Center, search for Screenlets and Click install. Next you can set up screenlets from Applications/Accesories menu. 6. Mount your Windows HDD 's on Ubuntu startup with PySdm. You can install Pysdm with Ubuntu Software Center or with your terminal: sudo apt-get install pysdm Next run the app with sudo pysdm On partition list you can found all your hard drives. Click on the drive you want to mount, then on general preferences tab click Mount and apply. If the disks are not mounted on startup, start your Pysdm again and select Mount on startup options then apply. Be careful, dont play with the rest options if you are not experienced user because you can damage your Ubuntu system. 7. Set another Keyboard Layout If your language is not native English, you can set another keyboard layout so you can write to you native language. Open System/Preferences/Keyboard and select layout tab. Then click Add, and from the new window select your country or language and click add again. You default keyboard layout shortcuts are both ALT. If you want to change that, go to Layout Options/ Keys to Change Layout/ and select your combination. 8. Add Rar support to Ubuntu. Many files on the net (music, subtitles, e-books, rapidshare files etc...) are packed in .rar so you must add rar support to use them. It is easiest part of all tuning processes so open your terminal and copy/paste next line: sudo apt-get install rar unrar 9. Install Skype and additional themes on your Empathy messenger. To install Skype go to Skype official page and download the latest Skype for Ubuntu 8.10+. Open it with gdebi installer and follow the on screen instructions. After that you can find Skype on Applications/Internet menu. To install additional empathy themes follow this excellent DetectorPRO tutorial. 10. Install Adobe Flash Plugin to Firefox You can do it manually from Ubuntu Software Center or Adobe official page (select .deb package in version download) or enter some address with flash content example "youtube" and select install missing plugins from Firefox After all this tunings, make update to your system Go to System/Administration/System Update and make sure that everything is on and up to date. Enjoy and have fun with your new Ubuntu 9.10 experience.

Easy Install 65+ empathy chat themes on Ubuntu

To install new chat themes first download the themes .deb file from here. Install it with double click and then follow the next easy tutorial. You must copy the installed themes on your home folder. Here is the steps: Find the installed files in /usr/share/empathy-chat-themes . You can do it manually or in nautilus click on pencil below the back/forward icons and copy the path without quotes. Next open your local folder on new nautilus window: Click Places/Home Folder. From the View tab select Show hidden files Go to .local/share folder and make new folder adium then make another folder inside adium called message-styles. Final step, copy all files from /usr/share/empathy-chat-themes (Ctrl+A to select all and Ctrl+C to copy) and copy to .local/share/adium/message-styles/ (Ctrl+V to paste) That's it, you can found empathy themes in edit/preferences/themes in empathy window

Install Emesene 1.5 with one click on Ubuntu

The new emesene version comes with various bug fixes and improvements and new features: Compatible with the latest Window Live Messenger(tm) New plugin set (Plus! colors, Notifications, Mail check, etc.) HTTP connection and proxy support @msn accounts support Better contact list management with Privacy Tab and ability to reject users Improved Offline Messaging experience Support for msn groups No more gui locks Experimental webcam support with a configurator New layout options and improved usability along with customization Tons of new languages supported To install emesene 1.5 on your Ubuntu system with just one click, download .deb package from getdeb.com according to your Ubuntu version or follow the next links: Emesene 1.5 for Ubuntu 9.04 32bit click here Emesene 1.5 for Ubuntu 9.04 64bit click here Emesene 1.5 for Ubuntu 8.10 32bit click here Emesene 1.5 for Ubuntu 8.10 64bit click here After downloading, double click on downloaded .deb file to install it. Enjoy.

How to mount your hard drives on Ubuntu 9.04

Usually Ubuntu mounts your hard disks during OS installation, but sometimes your windows hard drives are not mounted and you must mount manually for every use. Fortunately, there is a simple solution with a an app called Pysdm. This app has Graphical User interface and mounting your disks and setting mount options on every Ubuntu start is a breeze. To install the Pysdm, start your terminal and enter: sudo apt-get install pysdm After installation enter: sudo pysdm On partition list you can found all your hard drives. Click on the drive you want to mount, then on general preferences tab click Mount and apply. If the disks are not mounted on startup, start your Pysdm again and select Mount on startup options then apply. Be careful, dont play with the rest options if you are not experienced user because you can damage your Ubuntu system.

How to launch OpenOffice.org faster on Ubuntu

Open Office is a little start up slow, so to fix that follow this excellent tutorial. Open the Startup Manager, you can find it on System-Preferences-Startup Applications and add a new entry. In the command filed type: openoffice-nodefault-nologo and reboot. With this option, OpenOffice.org will be cashed on system start up, so the feature OO opening will be blink fast. There will be a little startup delay to initial boot-up but I'm sure that you'll hardly notice it. Enjoy.

How to install Skype 2.1 beta on Ubuntu 9.04

This is beta version and anyone who uses Skype professionally should avoid this installation tutorial. Skype 2.1 beta announced new features and improvements: Skype's SILK codec for outstanding sound quality High Quality Video PulseAudioSending SMS messages Organizing your contacts with contact groups Chat improvements (typing indicator, new emoticons and message editing) To install the new version, first download .deb file from here (for 9.04 choose 8.10 +). Next, double click on downloaded file to install it or if you cannot install it with double click open your terminal and copy and paste this lines (Ctrl+Shift+V to paste): sudo apt-get autoremove skype skype-common sudo dpkg -i skype-ubuntu-intrepid_2.1.0.47-1_i386.deb Enjoy.

Skype 2.1 beta for Linux

It is known that Skype for Linux greatly lags behind the Windows and Mac version; it has fewer options and offers only basic functionality. Becouse the code is closed, Linux users can only remain the developers and let them know that we are their customers too. After an almost year break, the new beta version 2.1 is here. News is just a few, but they are certainly welcome. Now there is a SILK codec, which should provide better audio quality even on slower connections, support for high quality video and also PulseAudio. Contacts can be organized in groups, and now it is possible to send SMS with Skype, there are new emoticons, typing indicator, so you can see when the other side is writing message. More info can be found here. If you're impatient for the final release, beta version can be downloaded from the official Skype website (there are ready-made packages for Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 8.10 +, Debian Lenny, Fedora 9 and openSUSE 10 & 11 +).

Free modeling and composition program for Linux KPovModeler

KPovModeler is a modeling and composition program for creating POV-Ray(TM) scenes in KDE. For most of the modelers, POV-Ray is nothing but a rendering engine and they bring a lot of limitations to the innate possibilities of POV-Ray scripted language. This is not the case for KPovModeler which allows you to use all the features of POV-Ray through the translation of POV-Ray language into a graphical tree. Almost all options of POV-Ray's script language can be used within KPovModeler. "Almost" because variables, loop instructions, macros and some operators can't directly be, unfortunately. On the other hand, KPovModeler allows you to include a part of a script with the "Raw POV-Ray" tool; such a raw code will only be taken into account by POV-Ray during the rendering stage. Among the features you can find: Management of the scene through a graphical tree. Object modification with control points in a graphical view or direct manipulation of object attributes in a dialog. Nonblocking scene rendering with OpenGL as wire frame views. Freely configurable view layout with dock widgets. Copy/paste and drag/drop of (a subset of) povray(!) code into and out of the object tree. Undo and redo. Scene rendering and texture preview with povray inside the program. Support for almost all povray objects. Support for all textures. Prototypes (declarations) and references. All projection modes of the camera. Link: http://www.kpovmodeler.org

CinePaint Free Image and Movie Retouching Tool for Linux

CinePaint is a FREE deep paint image retouching tool that supports higher color fidelity than ordinary painting tools. With CinePaint you can retouch feature films and in pro photography. It opens high fidelity image file formats such as DPX, 16-bit TIFF, and OpenEXR, and conventional formats like JPEG and PNG. It has a flipbook for movie playback of image sequences in RAM and supports 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit color channels, HDR and CMS. It is mostly used of professionals for motion picture frame-by-frame retouching, dirt removal, wire rig removal; render repair, background plates, and painting 3D model textures. It's been used on many feature films, including The Last Samurai where it was used to add flying arrows. CinePaint can be used also of professional photographers. CinePaint can import bracketed HDR exposures. It has gallery-quality 16-bit per channel color printing with GutenPrint. CinePaint's high dynamic range is crucial with B&W still photography, where images only have a single channel. Link: www.cinepaint.org