Some Things I Do After Each Installation

Things differ from distro to distro..
Some things I like to be my way...
I might have repeated some, just because this was not edited all at once.

• Edit grub
• Remove unwanted lines, for example, remove the lines for the same distro, older kernels
  
• Reduce timeout to just enough to enter when alert. 5 Seconds is sufficient when you are alert to press any key
  
• If there is no "quiet" or "splash" add them
  

• Update the distro


• Most of the distro's have the default auto-update enabled. I try to make sure I wait for this to popup and execute it.
  




• Make sure wireless works, make sure sound works (I still have some distros with problems with one of these two.)

• Install vlc
• It may be as simple as sudo aptitude install vlc or using "add/remove software" type application.
  


• Install latest firefox (curently 3.5)




• Install Ubiquity Addon


• Change the keystroke to CTRL+SPACE (go to settings tab on ubiquitiy's help page)


• Remove the Bookmark Toolbar (I can just type CTRL-B to see th e bookmark toolbar)


• Use small icons for toolbars (View->Toolbars->Customize->Use Small Icons)




• Remove Thunderbird (if exists)


• Fine tune the desktop




• KDE




• Date format, add date to time display


• Lock all the panels, after I am happy with the setup




• Gnome




• Reduce the icon size to 66%, set list view as default, etc


• Workspace switcher increase to 4, two rows and two columns


• Remove one of the panels either top or bottom and include all the stuff on the only one left out




• Common




• Create shortcuts to terminal (konsole/gnome-terminal), firefox etc


• Remove any unwanted shortcuts (mail, trash, show desktop)


• Try to set the font on the terminal to a convenient size.


• Adjust the default terminal size (use gnome-terminal --geometry 100x25 for example)
  






• Install flash - Each distro has its way to install the flash, mostly have to follow instructions when prompted for.
  


• Install vim/gvim




• On Ubuntu sudo aptitude install gnome-vim works


• Other ways include looking for vim in the package manager (add/remove software)




• Make sure user ids and groups ids match the existing distros to access the common stuff


• I have a /dump partition which is common to all the distros. Here is where I store all my music, pictures, etc.
  



• Depending on the box I am on, configure compiz (Its System->Preference->Appearance->Visual Effects->Extra On Ubuntu based distros


• Try to get the terminal (gnome-terminal or konsole) to have transparent background (40%), Color->White on Black.

How to install other language fonts

Before I did not know the easy way, I did it the hard way.

Download the font (whatever.tar.bz2). Then unzip it (tar jzvf ) to ~/.fonts directory (mkdir if does not exits).

Finally run fc-cache. Restart the browser (most of the times refreshing the 'foreign' page worked for me).

Was it simple? Well I found it was simpler to just start synaptic (mintlinux, probably common on all 'debian' based distros) and search for the font, right click, say mark for installation, then 'apply' (of course restart/refresh the web page)

My latest linux "hop" - Fedora 11

Fedora 11 (leonidas) - one word "impressive".

Downloaded the KDE Live version - did not look at the "type/version" carefully, which lead to a little bit of "circus" I had to do. I had downloaded a "ext4" version (also looks like I got a i686).

Understand that Fedora does not allow you to have /boot on a ext4 partition. But the liveCD I have does not support installation on a a ext3 partition! This situation is new to me.

Here is what I had to do for getting my installation:
a) Delete the existing partition.
b) Create a partition for /boot (ext3)
c) Create a partition for / (ext4)

The "copying to disk" part of installation was real quick, took little more than 5 minutes.

Hoping for not needing to do any wireless setup, disconnected my lan cable and fired up the live CD. Right after booting, I clicked on the "disconnected" computer icon in the system tray and was able to provide my wireless key and connect to the internet immediately! Very impressive! I was unsuccessful in getting this USB dongle to work with Debian (but it works with OpenSUSE, with a little work and with Mandriva, without any effort)

The liveCD did not seem to like to shutdown. After ejecting the CD, it started complaining something about /sbin/shutdown ..... did not jot down the exact error message :( Ctrl+Alt+Del kept repeating the same message. I forced the push button reset to poweroff.

The music on boot, is familiar, not sure if it belongs to KDE4.

Kpackageit, came right up and "informed" me that there are 2 enhancements, 59 updates and 1 bug fix - WHAT??? It is just a day since the release and there are already 62 updates???? Anyways, I just let it do its job and now it is all done.

Here I noticed one thing. While the Kpackageit was running, my terminal (konsole) had become unbelievably slow.

I have to refresh my yum commands! It has been a while since I have used fedora. I guess fedora 8 was the last one I tried. Somehow I started disliking fedora since then. But fedora 11 brings me back!

Just had to do a

yum install firefox thunderbird gvim

Fedora 11 came with python 2.6, perl 5.10, gvim 7.2, pretty much what other distros come with. Now I got firefox 3.5b4, Thunderbird 3b2 - not what other distros give you!

Not very straight as I had expected, to get idle (and bonus tcl 8.5!)

yum install python-tools

Little bit of googling (does binging help??) and got vlc with the following commands

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum install vlc

I do not have openoffice as of yet (I guess just "yum install openoffice.org-core" should do it). But I just tried to open kspread, and it opened up in split of a second.

There is no wait time (timeout 0) on the grub. Was this made to "speed up" the boot time? The actual boot time is not anything greatly different from other distros (they say <20 secs??). Though I did not time it, I did not feel any difference between mandriva 2009.1 and fedora 11.

The screen is impressive, the icons are cool.

Few observations:
a) After selecting to boot (I pressed enter while it was counting down from 10 to 0) on the live CD, there was no sign of anything going on for few seconds. Right when I was about to press the "reset" switch on my PC, I started seeing some movement.
b) This Wierd baloon like looking thing at the center of the screen. Happens to be the fedora logo without the "f" in the center, and a single light blue color!
c) The waves that float right below fedora logo, beautiful!

This happens to be one of my longest posts. The reason is partly because I am so impressed with fedora 11. Before trying fedora 11, my best experience of KDE4 was with Mandriva.